proceed equally and undividedly from the whole three Persons from God the Father and from his Son Iesus Christ our Lord and from the eternall Spirit of them both the Holy Ghost as from one entire indivisible and coessentiall Agent But for that we are grosse of understanding and unable to conceive the distinct Trinity of Persons in the Unity of the Godhead otherwise then by apprehending some distinction of their operations and offices to-us-ward it hath pleased the wisdome 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 speciall manner than unto the rest although indeed and in truth none of the three persons had more or lesse 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 Wisdome 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 appropriated to the Father and the work of Redemption wherein is specially seen the wisdome of God to the Son and so the works of sanctification and the infusion of habituall 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 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 spirituall gifts and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the manifestation of the Spirit We see now why spirit but then why manifestation The word as most other verballs of that form may be understood either in the active or passive signification And it is not materiall whether of the two wayes we take it in this place both being true and neither improper For these spirituall 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 in Acts 10. that they of the Circumcision were astonished When they saw that on the Gentiles also was poured out the gift 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 spirituall Gift then is a manifestation of the Spirit as every other sensible effect is a manifestation of its proper cause We are now yet farther to know that the Gifts and graces wrought in us by the 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 Schooles and differenced by the names of Gratiae gratum facientes Gratiae gratis datae Which termes 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 termes though haply for the better hath by experience been found for the most part unhappy in the event in multiplying unnecessary book-quarrells 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 generall 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 given Nobis Nobis both to us and from us that is chiefly for our own good these Nobis sed Nostris to us indeed but for others that is chiefly for the good of our brethren Those are given us ad salutem for the saving of our own souls these ad lucrum for the winning of other mens souls Those proceed from the speciall love of God to the Person and may therefore be called personall or speciall these proceeed from the Generall love of God to his Church or yet more generall to humane societies and may therefore be rather called Ecclesiasticall or Generall Gifts or Graces Of that first sort are Faith Hope Charity Repentance Patience Humility and all those other holy graces and fruits of the Spirit which accompany salvation Wrought by the blessed and powerful operation of the holy Spirit of God after a most effectuall but unconceivable manner regenerating and renewing and seasoning and sanctifying the hearts of his Chosen But yet these are not the Gifts so much spoken of in this Chapter and namely in my Text Every branch whereof excludeth them Of those graces of sanctification first we may have indeed probable inducements to perswade us that they are or are not in this or that man But hypocrisie may make such a semblance that we may think we see spirit in a man in whom yet there is nothing but flesh and infirmities may cast such a fogge that we can discern nothing but flesh in a man in whom yet there is spirit But the gifts here spoken of do incurre into the senses and give us evident and infallible assurance of the spirit that wrought them here is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a manifestation of the spirit Again Secondly those Graces of sanctification are not communicated by distribution Alius sic alius verò sic Faith to one Charity to another Repentance to another but where they are given they are given all at once and together as it were strung upon one threed and linked into one chain But the Gifts here spoken of are distributed as it were by doal and divided severally as it pleased God shared out into severall portions and given to every man some to none all for to one is given by the Spirit the word of Wisdome to another the word of Knowledge c. Thirdly those Graces of sanctification though they may and ought to be exercised to the benefit of others who by the shining of our light and the sight of our good works may be provoked to glorifie God by walking in the same paths yet that is but utilitas emergens and not finis proprius a good use made of them upon the bye but not the main proper and direct end of them for which they were chiefly given But the Gifts here spoken of were given directly
because we know we may lawfully do it but for that we know we must of necessity do it as bound thereunto in obedience to lawfull authority and in the conscience we ought to make of such obedience And the refusers do not onely de facto not conform to the contempt of authority and the scandall of others but they stand in it too and trouble the peace of the Church by their restlesse Petitions and Supplications and Admonitions and other publications of the reasons and grounds of their such refusall And verily this Countrey and County hath been not the least busie in these factions and tumultuous courses both in troubling our most gracious judicious and religious Soveraign with their petitions and also in publishing their reasons in a Book called The Abridgement printed 1605. to their own shame and the shame of their Countrey He who as I have been informed was thought to have had a chief hand in the collecting of those reasons and printing of that Book was for his obstinate refusall of Conformity justly deprived from his Benefice in this Diocess and thereupon relinquished his Ministery for a time betaking himself to another Calling so depriving the Church and people of God of the fruit and benefit of those excellent gifts which were in him But since that time he hath upon better and more advised judgement subscribed and conformed and the Church like an indulgent Mother hath not onely received him into her bosome again but hath restored him too though not to the same yet to a Benefice elsewhere of far better value Lastly there is difference in the faulty carriage of the persons and that on both parts especially on ours For though our Non-conforming Brethren condemn us with much liberty of speech and spirit having yet lesse reason for it than the weak Romans had for the strong among them might have forborn some things for the Weaks sake and it would have well become them for the avoiding of scandall so to have done which we cannot do without greater scandall in the open contempt of lawfull authority yet we do not despise them I mean with allowance from the Church if particular men do more than they should it is their private fault and ought not to be imputed to us or to our Church but use all good means we can to draw them to moderate courses and just obedience although they better deserve to be despised than the weak Romans did they being truly Weak ours Obstinate they Timorous ours also Contemptuous Now these differences are opened betwixt the Case in my Text and the Case of our Church we may the better judge how far forth Saint Pauls advice here given to the Romans in their case of eating and not-eating ought to rule us in our case of conforming and not-conforming in point of Ceremony And first of not despising then of not judging The ground of the Apostles precept for not despising him that ate not was his weaknesse So far then as this ground holdeth in our case this precept is to be extended and no further And we are hereby bound not to despise our Non-conforming Brethren so far forth as it may probably appear to us they are weak and not wilfull But so farre forth as by their courses and proceedings it may be reasonably thought their refusall proceedeth from corrupt or partiall affections or is apparently maintained with obstinacy and contempt I take it we may notwithstanding the Apostles admonition in my Text in some sort even despise them But because they think they are not so well and sairly dealt withall as they should be Let us consider their particular grievances wherein they take themselves despised and examine how just they are They say first they are despised in being scoffed and flouted and derided by loose companions and by profane or popishly affected persons in being styled Puritanes and Brethren and Precisians and in having many jests and fooleries fastened upon them whereof they are not guilty They are secondly despised they say in that when they are convented before the Bishops and others in Authority they cannot have the favour of an indifferent hearing but are proceeded against as far as Suspension and sometimes Deprivation without taking their answers to what is objected or giving answers to what they object Thirdly in that many honest and religious men of excellent and usefull gifts cannot be permitted the liberty of their Consciences and the free exercise of their Ministery onely for standing out in these things which our selves cannot but confess to be indifferent To their first Grievance we answer thâ—t we have nothing to do with those that are Popishly affected If they wrong them as it is like enough they will for they will not stick to wrong their betters we are not to be chaâ—ged with that let them answer for themselves But by the way let our Brethren consider whether their stiff and unreasonable opposing against those lawfull Ceremonies we retaine may not be one principall means to confirm but so much the more in their darknesse and superstition those that are wavering and might possibly by more ingenuous and seasonable insinuations be won over to embrace the truth which we professe And as for loose persons and profane ones that make it their sport upon their Ale-benches to raile and scoff at Puritanes As if it were warrant enough for them to drink drunk talk bawdy swear and stare or do any thing without controll because forsooth they are no Puritanes As we could wish our Brethren and their Lay-followers by their uncouth and sometimes ridiculous behaviour had not given profane persons too much advantage to play upon them and through their sides to wound even Religion it self so we could wish also that some men by unreasonable and unjust other some by unseasonable and indiscreet scoffing at them had not given them advantage to triumph in their own innocency and persist in their affected obstinacy It cannot but be some confirmation to men in errour to see men of dissolute and loose behaviour with much eagernesse and petulancy and virulence to speak against them We all know how much scandall and prejudice it is to a right good cause to be either followed by persons open to just exception or maintained with slender and unsufficient reasons or prosecuted with unseasonable and undiscreet violence And I am verily perswaded that as the increase of Papists in some parts of the Land hath occasionally sprung by a kind of Antiperistasis from the intemperate courses of their neighbour Puritanes so the increase of Puritanes in many parts of the Land oweth not so much to any sufficiency themselves conceive in their own grounds as to the disadvantage of some profane or scandalous or idle or ignorant or indiscreet opposers But setting these aside I see not but that otherwise the name of Puritane and the rest are justly given them For appropriating to themselves the names of Brethren Professors Goodmen and other
serpentis the spawn of the old Serpent children of their father the Devil And they do not shame the store they come of for the works of their Father they readily do That Hellish Aphorisme they so faithfully practise is one of his Principles it was he first instilled it into them Calumniare fortiter aliquid adhaerebit Smite with the tongue and be sure to smite home and then be sure either the grief or the blemish of the stroke will stick by it A Devillish practise hateful both to God and Man And that most justly whether we consider the sin or the injury or the mischief of it the Sin in the Doer the Injury to the Sufferer the Mischief to the Common-wealth Every false report raised in judgement besides that it is a lye and every lye is a sin against the truth slaying the soul of him that maketh it and excluding him from heaven and binding him over unto the second death it is also a pernicious lye and that is the worst sort of lyes and so a sin both against Charity and Iustice. Which who so committeth let him never look to dwell in the Tabernacle of God or to rest upon his holy Mountain GOD having threatned Ps. 50. to take speciall knowledge of this sin though he seem for a time to dissemble it yet at lest to reprove the bold offender to his face Thou satest and spakest against thy brother yea and hast slandered thine own mothers son These things hast thou done and I held my tongue thou thoughtest wickedly that I was even such an one as thy self but I will reprove thee and set before thee the things that thou hast done And as for the Injury done hereby to the grieved party it is incomparable If a man have his house broken or his purse taken from him by the high way or sustain any wrong or losse in his person goods or state otherwise by fraud or violence or casualty he may possibly either by good fortune hear of his own again and recover it or he may have restitution and satisfaction made him by those that wronged him or by his good industry and providence he may live to see that losse repaired and be in as good state as before But he that hath his Name and Credite and Reputation causlesly called into question sustaineth a losse by so much greater then any theft by how much a good name is better than great riches A man may out-weare other injuries or out-live them but a defamed person no acquittall from the Iudge 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 markes and the scarres of it to his dying day Great also are the mischiefs that hence redound to the common-wealth 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 endlesse delayes and expose him to the pillage of every hungry Officer It is one of the grievances God had against Jerusalem and as he calleth them abominations for which he threatneth to judge her Ezek. 22. Viri detractores in te In thee are men that carry tales to shed blood Beware then all you whose businesse or lot it is at this Assises or hereafter may be to be Plaintiffs Accusers Informers or any way Parties in any Court of Justice this or other Civil or Ecclesiasticall 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 suite 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 fundamentall Principle of morall and civill Iustice yea and proposed by our blessed Saviour himself as a full abridgement 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 then 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 livelyhood 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 groate for every petty trespasse scarce worth half the money or fetch you over the hippe upon a branch of some blind uncouth and pretermitted Statute He that should deal thus with you and yours I know what would be said and thought Griper Knave Villain Divel 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. Doe as you would be done to There is your generall Rule But for more particular direction if any man desire it since in every evil one good step to soundnesse is to have discovered the right cause thereof I know not what better course to prescribe for the preventing of this sinne of sycophancy and false accusation then 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 Obsequiousnesse Coverture and Covetousnesse The first is Malice Which in some men if I may be allowed to call them men being indeed rather Monsters is universall 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 seemeth David met with some such men that were enemies to peace when he spake to them of peace they made themselves ready to battell Take one of these men it is meat and drink
is the harmony and conjuncture of the Parts exceeding in goodnesse beauty and perfection yet so as no one part is superfluous or unprofitable or if considered singly and by it self destitute of its proper goodnesse and usefulnesse As in the Natural Body of a Man not the least member or string or sinew but hath his proper office and comelinesse in the body and as in the artificial Body of a Clock or other engine of motion not the least wheel or pinne or notch but hath his proper work and use in the Engine God hath given to every thing he hath made that number weight and measure of perfection and goodnesse which he saw fittest for it unto those ends for which he made it Every Creature of God is good A truth so evident that even those among the Heathen Philosophers who either denied or doubted of the worlds Creation did yet by making Ens and Bonum terms convertible acknowledge the goodnesse of every Creature It were a shame then for us who Through Faith understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God if our assent unto this truth should not be by so much firmer than theirs by how much our evidence for it is stronger than theirs They perceived the thing we the ground also they saw it was so we why it is so Even because it is the work of God A God full of goodnesse a God who is nothing but goodnesse a God essentially and infinitely good yea very Goodnesse it self As is the Workman such is his workmanship Nor for degree that is here impossible but for the truth of the Quality not alike good with him but like to him in being good In every Creature there are certain tracks and footsteps as of Gods Essence whereby it hath its Being so of his goodness too wherby it also is good The Manichees saw the strength of this Inference Who though they were so injurious unto the Creatures as to repute some of them evil yet durst not be so absurd as to charge the true God to be the cause of those they so reputed Common reason taught them that from the good God could not proceed any evil thing no more than Darkness could from the light of the Sun or Cold from the heat of the fire And therefore so to defend their Errour as to avoid this absurdity they were forced to maintain another absurdity indeed a greater though it seemed to them the lesse of the two viz. to say there were two Gods a Good God the Author of all good things and an Evil Good the Author of all evil things If then we acknowledge that there is but one God and that one God good and we doe all so acknowledge unless we will be more absurd than those most absurd Hereticks we must withall 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 S. Iames. As the Sun who is Pater Luminum the fountain and Father of lights whereunto S. 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 and 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 Gods 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 sinfull defect and obliquity of a wicked action There is a natural or rather transcendental Goodnesse Bonitas 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 exte Israel Osea 13. O Israel thy destrâ—ction 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 farr 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 sinne 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 doe 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 farr 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 whatsoever it be Transcendental Natural Moral or if there be any other to God alone but by no means any of the Evil. We are unthankfull 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 guesse 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
in the Scribes and Pharisees to tye heavy burdens upon other mens shoulders which they would not touch with one of their fingers but if they should without superstition and upon reasonable inducements have laid such burdens upon themselves and not imposed them upon others for any thing I know they had been blameless There are many things which in my conscience are not absolutely and in Thesi necessary to be done which yet in Hypothesi for some personal respects I think so fit for me to do that I should resolve to undergo some inconveniency rather than omit them still reserving to others their liberty to do as as they should see cause There are again many things which in my conscience are not absolutely and in Thesi unlawful to be done which yet in Hypothesi and for the like personal respects I think so unfit for me to do that I should resolve to undergo some inconvenience rather than do them yet still reserving to others the like liberty as before to do as they should see cause It belongeth to every sober Christian advisedly to consider not only what in it self may lawfully be done or left undone but also what in godly wisdom and discretion is fittest for him to do or not to do upon all occasions as the exigence of present circumstances shall require He that without such due consideration will do all he may do at all times under colour of Christian liberty he shall undoubtedly sometimes use his liberty for a cloak of maliciousness And that is the second way by using it excessively It may be done a third way and that is by using it uncharitably which is the case whereon I told you Saint Paul beateth so often When we use our liberty so as to stumble the weak consciences of our brethren thereby and will not remit in any thing the extremity of that right and power we have in things of indifferent nature to please our neighbour for his good unto edâ—fication at least so far as we may do it without greater inconvenience we walk not charitably and if not charitably then not Christianly Indeed the case may stand so that we cannot condescend to his infirmity without great prejudice either to our selves or to the interest of some third person As for instance when the Magistrate hath positively already determined our liberty in the use of it the one way we may not in such case redeem the offence of a private brother with our disobedience to superiour authority in using our liberty the other way and many other like cases there may be But this I say that where without great inconvenience we may do it it is not enough for us to please our selves and to satisfie our own consciences that we do but what we lawfully may but we ought also to bear one another burdens and to forbear for one anothers sakes what otherwise we might do and so to fulfil the Law of Christ. S. Paul who hath forbidden us in one place to make our selves the servants of any man 1 Cor. 7. hath yet biâ—dden us in another place by love to serve one another Gal. 5.13 And his practise therein consenteth with his doctrine as it should do in every teacher of truth for though he were h free from all and knew it and would not be brought under the power of any yet in love he became servant to all that by all means he might win some It was an excellent saying of Luther Omnia libera per fidem omnia serva per charitatem We should know and be fully perswaded with the perswasion of faith that all things are lawful and yet withal we should purpose and be fully resolved for charity sake to forbear the use of many things if we finde them inexpedient He that will have his own way in every thing he hath a liberty unto whosoever shall take offence at it maketh his liberty but a cloak of maliciousness by using it uncharitably The fourth and last way whereby we may use our liberty for a cloak of maliciousness is by using it undutifully pretending it unto our disobedience to lawful authority The Anabaptists that deny all subjection to Magistrates in indifferent things do it upon this ground that they imagine Christian liberty to be violated when by humane laws it is determined either the one way or the other And I cannot but wonder that many of our brethren in our own Church who in the question of Ceremonies must argue from their ground or else they talk of Christian liberty to no purpose should yet hold off before they grow to their conclusion which to my apprehension seemeth by the rules of good discourse to issue most naturally and necessarily from it It were a happy thing for the peace both of this Church and of their own consciences if they would in calm bloud review their own dictates in this kind and see whether their own principle which the cause they are ingaged in maketh them dote upon can be reasonably defended and yet the Anabaptists inference thence which the evidence of truth maketh them to abhor be fairly avoided Yet somewhat they have to say for the proof of that their ground which if it be â—ound it is good reason we should subscribe to it if it be not it is as good reason they should retract it Let us hear therefore what it is and put it to trial First say they Ecclesiastical Constitutions for there is the quarrel determine us precisely ad unum in the use of indifferent things which God and Christ have left free ad utrumlibet Secondly by inducing a necessity upon the thing they enjoyn they take upon them as if they could alter the nature of things and make that to become necessary which is indifferent which is not in the power of any man but of God only to do Thirdly these Constitutions are so far pressed as if men were bound in conscience to obey them which taketh away the freedom of the conscience for â—f the conscience be bound how is she free Nor so only but fourthly the things so enjoyned are by consequence imposed upon us as of absolute necessity unto salvation forasmuch as it is necessary unto salvation for every man to do that which he is bound in conscience to do by which device kneeling at the Communion standing at the Gospel bowing at the name of Jesus and the like become to be of necessity unto salvation Fifthly say they these Constitutions cannot be defended but by such arguments as the Papists use for the establishing of that their rotten Tenet that humane laws binde the conscience as well as divine Then all which premises what can be imagined more contraâ—ious to true Christian liberty In which Objections before I come to their particular answer I cannot but observe the unjust I would we might not say unconscionable partiality of the Objecters First in laying the accusation against the
then laid aside she might not have lawfully so done or why the things so retained should have been accounted Popish The plain truth is this The Church of England meant to make use of her liberty and the lawful power she had as all the Churches of Christ have or ought to have of ordering Ecclesiastical affairs here yet to do it with so much prudence and moderation that the world might see by what was laid aside that she acknowledg'd no subjection to the See of Rome and by that was retained that she did not recede from the Church of Rome out of any spirit of contradiction but as necessitated thereunto for the maintenance of her just liberty The number of Ceremonies was also then very great they thereby burdensome and so the number thought fit to be lessened But for the Choice which should be kept and which not that was wholly in her power and at her discretion Whereof though she were not bound so to do yet hath she given a clear and satisfactory account in one of the Prefaces usually prefixed before the Book of Common Prayer § XVI Besides this of Popish they have bestowed also upon the Ceremonies the Epithet of Superstitious Which is a word likewise as the former of late very much extended and standeth in need of a boundary too and a definition as well as it But howsoever they do with the words I must set bounds to my discourse lest I weary the Reader The point of Superstition I have had occasion to touch upon more then once as I remember in some of these Sermons and proved that the Superstition lieth indeed at their dore not ours They forbid the things commanded by the Church under the Obligation of sin and that Obâ—igation arising not from their forbidding them but from the things themselves which they judge to be unlawful and thence impose upon all men a necessity of not using them which is Superstition Whereas the Church required obedience indeed to her commands and that also under the obligation of sin but that obligation arising not at all from the nature of the things themselves alwayes held and declared Indifferent but immediately from the authority of the Superiour commanding the thing and originally from the ordinance of God commanding Obedience to Superiours as already hath been said and this is not Superstition For further satisfaction therefore in this matter referring the Reader to the Sermons themselves I shall only by way of addition represent to the Objectors S. Pauls demeanor at Athens Where finding the City full of Idols or wholy given to Idolatry he doth not yet fall foul upon them nor exclaim against them in any reproachful manner no nor so much as call them Idolaters though they were such and that in a very high degree but tempering his speeches with all lenity and condescension he telleth them only of their Superstition and that in the calmest manner too 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the comparative degree in such kind of speaking being usually taken for a diminnent terme How distant are they from his Example with whom every thing they mislike is presently an Idol Christmas day an Idol the Surplice an Idol the Cross after Baptism a great Idol the Common-Prayer-Book an abominable Idol When yet if the worst that can be said against them were granted the most it could amount to is but Superstition and till that be granted which must not be till it be well proved it is more childish then manly to cry out Superstition Superstition § XVII Their next is a Suspicion rather then Objection and that upon no very good ground But charity is easily suspicious nor without cause Wherein I have somewhat to say in behalf of my self and other my Brethren and somewhat by way of return to them For my self I had a desire I may truly say almost from my very childhood to understand as much as was possible for me the bottome of our Religion and particularly as it stood in relation both to the Papists and as they were then stiled Puritanes to inform my self rightly wherein consisted the true differences between them and the Church of England together with the grounds of those differences For I could even then observe which was no hard matter to do that the most of mankind took up their Religion upon trust as Custome or Education had framed them rather then choise It pleased God in his goodness to afford me some opportunities sutable to that my desire by means whereof and by his good blessing I attained to understand so much of the Romish Religion as not only to dislike it but to be able to give some rational account why I so do And I doubt not but these very Sermons were there nothing else to do it will sufficiently free me from the least suspicion of driving on any design for Rome As for those other regular sons of the Church of England that have appeared in this controversie on her behalf how improbable and so far forth uncharitable the suspicion is that they should be any way instrumental towards the promoting of the Papal interest may appear amongst other by these few considerations following 1. That those very persons who were under God the instruments of freeing us from the Roman yoke by casting Popery out of the Church and sundry of them martyred in the cause those very persons I say were great favourers of these now accounted Popish Ceremonies and the chief authors or procurers of the Constitutions made in that behalf Hae manus Trojam erigent II. That in all former times since the beginning of the Reformation our Arch-Bishops and Bishops with their Chaplains and others of the Prelatical party many of them such as have written also in defense of the Church against the Puritanes were the principal I had almost said the only Champions to maintain the Cause of Religion against the Papists III. That even in these times of so great distraction and consequently thereunto of so great advantage to the factors for Rome none have stept into the gap more readily nor appeared in the face of the Enemy more openly nor maintained the Fight with more stoutness and gallantry then the Episcopal Divines have done as their late learned writings testifie Yea and some of them such as beside their other sufferings have layen as deep under the suspicion of being Popishly-affected as any other of their Brethren whosoever IIII. That by the endeavours of these Episcopal Divines some that were bred Papists have been gained to our Church others that began to waver confirmed and setled in their old Religion and some that were fallen from us recovered and reduced notwithstanding all the disadvantages of these confused times and of each of these I am able to produce some instance But I profess sincerely as in the presence of God and before the world that I have not known at least I cannot call to remembrance to much as one single example of
leave them worse than they found them Stomach will not bear out a matter without strength and to encounter an adversary are required Shoulders as well as Gall. A good cause is never betrayed more than when it is prosecuted with much eagernesse but little sufficiency This from the Method Observe secondly the Apostles manner of speech 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Translators render it As we are wrongfully blamed As we are slandered As we are slanderously reported And the word indeed from the Originall importeth no more and so Writers both profane and sacred use it But yet in Scriptures by a specialty it most times signifieth the highest degree of Slander when we open our mouths against God and speak ill or amisse or unworthily of God that is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and properly the sin we call blaspemy And yet that very word of Blaspemy which for the most part referreth immediately to God the Apostle here useth when he speaketh of himself and other Christian Ministers 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as we are slandered nay as we are blasphemed A slander or other wrong or contempt done to a Minister quà talis is a sin of a higher strain than the same done to a Common Christian. Not at all for his persons sake for so he is no more Gods good creature than the other no more free from sins and infirmities and passions than the other But for his Callings sake for so he is Gods Embassadour which the other is not and for his works sake for that is Gods Message which the others is not Personall Slanders and Contempts are to a Minister but as to another man because his person is but as another mans person But slanders and contempts done to him as a Minister that is with reference either to his Calling or Doctrine are much greater than to another man as reaching unto God himself whose Person the Minister representeth in his Calling and whose errand the Minister delivereth in his Doctrine For Contempts S. Paul is expresse elsewhere He that despiseth despiseth not man but God And as for Slanders the very choice of the word in my Text inferreth as much The dignity of our Calling enhaunceth the sin and every slander against our regular Doctrines is more than a bare Calumny if no more at least petty blasphemy 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as we are slandered as we are blasphemed That from the word Observe thirdly the wrong done to the Apostle and to his Doctrine He was slanderously reported to have taught that which he never so much as thought and his Doctrine had many scandalous imputations fastened upon it whereof neither he nor it were guilty As we are slanderously reported and as some affirm that we say The best truths are subject to mis-interpretation and there is not that Doctrine how firmly soever grounded how warily soever delivered whereon Calumny will not fasten and stick slanderous imputations Neither Iohns mourning nor Christs piping can passe the pikes but the one hath a Devil the other is a Glutton and a Wine-bibber Though Christ come to fulfill the Law yet there be will accuse him as a destroyer of the Law Matthew 5. And though he decide the question plainly for Caesar and that in the case of Tribute Mat. 22. Give unto Caesar the things that are Caesars yet there be that charge him as if he spake against Caesar Iohn 19. and that in the very case of Tribute as if he forbade to give Tribute unto Caesar Luke 23. Now if they called the Master of the house Beelzebub how much more them of his houshold If Christs did not think we the doctrine of his Ministers and his Servants could escape the stroke of mens tongues and be free from calumny and cavill How the Apostles were slandered as Seducers and Sectaries and vain bablers and Hereticks broachers of new false pestilent doctrines their Epistles and the book of their Acts witnesse abundantly to us And for succeeding times read but the Apologies of Athenagoras and Tertullian and others and it will amaze you to see what blasphemous and seditious and odious and horrible impieties were fathered upon the Ancient Christian Doctors and upon their profession But our own experience goeth beyond all Sundry of the Doctors of our Church teach truly and agreeably to Scripture the effectuall concurrence of GODS Will and Power with subordinate Agents in every and therefore even in sinful actions Gods free election of those whom he purposeth to save of his own grace without any motives in or from themselves The immutability of Gods Love and Grace towards the Saints elect and their certain perseverance therein unto Salvation The Iustification of sinners by the imputed righteousnesse of Christ apprehended and applied unto them by a lively faith without the works of the Law These are sound and true and if rightly understood comfortable and right profitable doctrines And yet they of the Church of Rome have the forehead I will not say to slander my Text alloweth more to blaspheme GOD and his Truth and the Ministers thereof for teaching them Bellarmine Gretser Maldonate and the Jesuits but none more than our own English Fugitives Bristow Stapleton Parsons Kellison and all the rable of that crew freely spend their mouths in barking against us as if we made God the author of sin as if we would have men sin and be damned by a Stoicall fatall necessity sin whether they will or no and be damned whether they deserve it or no as if we opened a gap to all licentiousnesse and profanenesse let them believe it is no matter how they live heaven is their own cock-sure as if we cryed down good works and condemned charity Slanders loud and false yet easily blown away with one single word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 These imputations upon us and our doctrine are unjust but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 let them that thus mis-report us know that without repentance their damnation will be just It would be time not ill spent to discover the grounds of this observation and to presse the uses of it something fully But because my aim lyeth another way I can but point at them and passe If seldome Truth scape unslandered marvel not the reasons are evident On Gods part on Mans part on the Devils part God suffereth Man raiseth and the Devil furthereth these slanders against the Truth To begin ordine retrogrado and to take them backwards First on the Devils part a kind of Contrariety and Antipathy betwixt him and it He being the Father of lies and Prince of darknesse cannot away with the Truth and with the Light and therefore casteth up slanders as Fogs and Mists against the Truth to bely it and against the Light to darken it Secondly on Mans part And that partly in the understanding when the judgement either of it self weak or else weakened
becommeth wholly sinfull Nay more not onely a true and reall but even a supposed and imaginary defect the bare opinion of unlawfulnesse 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 onely a setled opinion that the thing we do is unlawfull but the very suspension of our judgement and the doubtfulnesse of our minds whether we may lawfully do it or no maketh it sometimes unlawfull to be done of us and if we do it sinfull 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 universall 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 severall 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 Apostolicall writings the word Faith is used to signifie that Theologicall vertue or gracious habit whereby we embrace with our minds and affections the Lord Iesus Christ as the onely 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 whilest 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. Mat. 12.33 Rom. 8.8 Tit. 1.15 Heb. 11.6 c. Howbeit I take it with subjection of judgement that that Conclusion what truth soever it may have in it self hath yet no direct foundation in this Text. The Verb 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to believe and the Nown 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 faith or belief are both of them found sundry times in this Chapter yet seem not to signifie in any place thereof either the Verb the Act or the Nown the Habit of this saving or justifying Faith of which we now speak But being opposed every where and namely in this last verse unto doubtfulnesse of judgement concerning the lawfulness of some indifferent things must therefore needs be understood of such a perswasion of judgement concerning such lawfulness as is opposite to such doubting Which kind of Faith may be found in a meer heathen man who never having heard the least syllable of the mystery of salvation by Christ may yet be assured out of clear evidence of reason that many of the things he doth are such as he may and ought to do And as it may be found in a meer heathen man so it may be wanting in a true believer who stedfastly resting upon the blood of Christ for his eternall redemption may yet through the strength of temptation sway of passion or other distemper or subreption incident to humane frailty do some particular act or acts of the lawfulnesse whereof he is not sufficiently perswaded The Apostle then here speaking of such a Faith as may be both found in an unbeliever and also wanting in a true believer it appeareth that by Faith he meaneth not that justifying Faith which maketh a true believer to differ from an unbeliever but the word must be understood in some other notion Yet thus much I may adde withall in the behalf of those worthy men that have alledged this Scripture for the purpose aforesaid to excuse them from the imputation of having at least wilfully handled the Word of God deceitfully First that the thing it self being true and the words also sounding so much that way might easily induce them to conceive that to be the very meaning And common equity will not that men should be presently condemned if they shall sometimes confirm a point from a place of Scripture not altogether pertinent if yet they think it to be so especially so long as the substance of what they write is according to the analogy of Faith and Godlinesse Secondly that albeit these words in their most proper and immediate sense will not necessarily enforce that Conclusion yet it may seem deducible therefrom with the help of some topicall arguments and by more remote inferences as some learned men have endeavoured to shew not altogether improbably And thirdly that they who interpret this Text as aforesaid are neither singular nor novell therein but walk in the same path which some of the ancient Fathers have trod before them The Rhemists themselves confesse it of S. Augustine to whom they might have added also S. Prosper and whose authority alone is enough to stop their mouthes for ever Leo Bishop of Rome who have all cited these words for the self-same purpose But we are content
a good man as well as a great and being good he was by so much the better by how much he was the greater Nor was he onely Bonus vir a good man and yet if but so his friends had done him much wrong to make him an Hypocrite but he was Bonus Civis too a good Common-wealths-man and therefore his friends did him yet more wrong to make him an Oppressour Indeed he was neither the one nor the other But it is not so useful for us to know what manner of man Iob was as to learn from him what manner of men we should be The grieved spirit of Iob indeed at first uttered these words for his own justification but the blessed spirit of God hath since written them for our instruction To teach us from Iobs example how to use that measure of greatness and power which he hath given us be it more be it lesse to his glory and the common good So that in these words we have to consider as laid down unto us under the person and from the example of Iob some of the main and principal duties which concern all those that live in any degree of Eminency or Authority either in Church or Common-wealth and more especially those that are in the Magistracy or in any office appertaining to Iustice. And those Duties are four One and the first as a more transcendent and fundamentall duty the other three as accessory helps thereto or subordinate parts thereof That first is a Care and Love and Zeal of Iustice. A good Magistrate should so make account of the administration of Iustice as of his chiefest businesse making it his greatest glory and delight Ver. 14. I put on righteousnesse and it clothed me my judgement was a robe and a diadem The second is a forwardnesse unto the works of Mercy and Charity and Compassion A good Magistrate should have compassion of those that stand in need of his help and be helpful unto them ver 15. and part of 16. I was eyes to the blind and feet was I to the lame I was a father to the poor The Third is Diligence in Examination A good Magistrate should not be hasty to credit the first tale or be carried away with light informations but he should hear and examine and scan and sift matters as narrowly as may be for the finding out of the truth in the remainder of ver 16. And the cause which I knew not I searched out The Fourth is Courage and Resolution in executing A good Magistrate when he goeth upon sure grounds should not fear the faces of men be they never so mighty or many but without respect of persons execute that which is equall and right even upon the greatest offender Ver. 17. And I brake the jaws of the wicked and plucked the spoil out of his teeth Of these four in their order of the first first in these words I put on righteousnesse c. This Metaphor of clothing is much used in the Scriptures in this notion as it is applyed to the soul things appertaining to the soul. In Psalm 109. David useth this imprecation against his enemies Let mine adversaries be clothed with shame and let them cover themselves with their own confusion as with a cloke And the Prophet Esay speaking of Christ and his Kingdome and the righteousnesse thereof Chap. 11. thus describeth it Righteousnesse shall be the girdle of his loins and faithfulnesse the girdle of his reins Likewise in the New Testament Saint Paul in one place biddeth us put on the Lord Iesus Christ in another exhorteth women to adorn themselves instead of broydered hair and gold and pearls and costly aray with shamefastness and sobriety and as becoming women professing godlinesse with good works in a third furnisheth the spirituall souldier with Shooes Girdle Breastplate Helmet and all necessary accoutrements from top to toe In all which and other places where the like Metaphor is used it is ever to be understoood with allusion to one of the three speciall ends and uses of apparell For we clothe our selves either first for necessity and common decency to cover our nakednesse or secondly for security and defence against enemies or thirdly for state and solemnity and for distinction of offices and degrees Our cloaks and coats and ordinary suits we all wear to cover our nakednesse and these are Indumenta known by no other but by the generall name of Clothing or Apparel Souldiers in the warres wear Morions and Cuiraces and Targets and other habiliments for defence and these are called Arma Armes or Armour Kings and Princes were Crowns and Diadems inferiour Nobles and Judges and Magistrates and Officers their Robes and â—urres and Hoods and other ornaments fitting to their severall degrees and offices for solemnity of state and as ensigns or marks of those places and stations wherein God hath set them and these are Infulae Ornaments or Robes It is true Iustice and Iudgement and every other good vertue and grace is all this unto the soul serving her both for covert and for protection and for ornament and so stand both for the garments and for the armour and for the Robes of the soul. But here I take it Iob alludeth esecially to the third use The propriety of the very words themselves give it so for he saith he put righteousnesse and judgement upon him as a Robe and a Diadem and such things as there are worn not for necessity but state Iob was certainly a Magistrate a Iudge at the least it is evident from the seventh verse and to me it seemeth not improbable that he was a King though not likely such as the Kings of the earth now are whose dominions are mider and power more absolute yet possibly such as in those ancient times and in those Eastern parts of the world were called Kings viz. a kind of petty Monarch and supreme governour within his own territories though perhaps but of one single City with the Suburbs and some few neighbouring Villages In the first Chapter it is said that he was the greatest man of all the East and in this Chapter he saith of himself that When he came in presence the Princes and the Nobles held their tongues and that He sate as chief and dwelt as a King in the Army and in this verse he speaketh as one that wore a Diadem an ornament proper to Kings Now Kings we know and other Magistrates place much of their outward glory and state in their Diadems and Robes and peculiar Vestments these things striking a kind of reverence into the subject towards their Superiour and adding in the estimation of the people both glory and honour and Majesty to the person and withall pomp and state and solemnity to the actions of the wearer By this speech then of putting on Iustice and Iudgement as a Robe and a Diadem Iob sheweth that the glory and pride which Kings and Potentates
is no lesse good to the poor that whippeth him when he deserveth This is indeed to be good to the poor to give him that almes first which he wanteth most if he be hungry it is almes to feed him but if he be idle and untoward it is almes to whip him This is to be good to the poor But who then are the poor we should be good to as they interpret goodnesse Saint Paul would have Widowes honoured but yet those that are widowes indeed so it is meet the poor should be relieved but yet those that are poor indeed Not every one that begges is poor not every one that wanteth is poor not every one that is poor is poor indeed They are the poor whom we private men in Charity and you that are Magistrates in â—ustice stand bound to relieve who are old or impotent and unable to work or in these hard and depopulating times are willing but cannot be set on work or have a greater charge upon them than can be maintained by their work These and such as these are the poor indeed let us all be good to such as these Be we that are private men as brethren to these poor ones and shew them mercy be you that are Magistrates as Fathers to these poor ones and do them justice But as for those idle stubborn professed wanderers that can and may and will not work and under the name and habit of poverty rob the poor indeed of our almes and their maintenance let us harden our hearts against them and not give them do you execute the severity of the Law upon them and not spare them It is Saint Pauls Order nay it is the Ordinance of the Holy Ghost and we should all put to our helping hands to see it kept He that will not labour let him not eat These Ulcers and Drones of the Common-wealth are ill worthy of any honest mans almes of any good Magistrates protection Hitherto of the Magistrates second Duty with the Reasons and extent thereof I was eyes to the blind and feet was I to the lame I was a Father to the poor Followeth next the third Duty in these words The cause which I knew not I searched out Of which words some frame the Coherence with the former as if Iob had meant to clear his mercy to the poor from suspicion of partiality and injustice and as if he had said I was a Father indeed to the poor pitifull and mercifull to him and ready to shew him any lawfull favour but yet not so as in pity to him to forget or pervert justice I was ever carefull before I would either speak or do for him to be first assured his cause was right and good and for that purpose if it were doubtfull I searched it out and examined it before I would countenance either him or it Certainly thus to do is agreeable to the rule of Iustice yea and of Mercy too for it is one Rule in shewing Mercy that it be ever done salvis pietate justitiâ without prejudice done to piety and justice And as to this particular the commandment of God is expresse for it in Exod. 23. Thou shalt not countenance no not a poor man in his cause Now if we should thus understand the coherence of the words the speciall duty which Magistrates should hence learn would be indifferency in the administration of Justice not to make difference of rich or poor far or near friend or foe one or other but to consider onely and barely the equity and right of the cause without any respect of persons or partiall inclination this way or that way This is a very necessary duty indeed in a Magistrate of justice and I deny not but it may be gathered without any violence from these very words of my Text though to my apprehension not so much by way of immediate observation from the necessity of any such coherence as by way of consequence from the words themselves otherwise For what need all that care and paines and diligence in searching out the cause if the condition of the person might over-rule the cause after all that search and were not the judgement to be given meerly according to the goodnesse or badnesse of the cause without respect had to the person But the speciall duty which these words seem most naturally and immediately to impose upon the Magistrate and let that be the third observation is diligence and patience and care to hear and examine and enquire into the truth of things and into the equity of mens causes As the Physician before he prescribe receipt or diet to his patient will first feel the pulse and view the urine and observe the temper and changes in the body and be inquisitive how the disease began and when and what fits it hath and where and in what manner it holdeth him and inform himself every other way as fully as he can in the true state of the body that so he may proportion the remedies accordingly without errour so ought every Magistrate in causes of Justice before he pronounce sentence or give his determination whether in matters judiciall or criminall to hear both parties with equall patience to examine witnesses and other evidences advisedly and throughly to consider and wisely lay together all allegations and circumstances to put in quaeres and doubts upon the by and use all possible expedient meanes for the boulting out of the truth that so he may do that which is equall and right without errour A duty not without both Precept and Precedent in holy Scripture Moses prescribeth it in Deut. 17. in the case of Idolatry If there be found among you one that hath done thus or thus c. And it be told thee and thou hast heard of it and inquired diligently and behold it to be true and the thing certain that such abomination is wrought in Israel Then thou shalt bring forth that man c. The offender must be stoned to death and no eye pity him but it must be done orderly and in a legall course not upon a bare hear-say but upon diligent examination and inquisition and upon such full evidence given in as may render the fact certain so far as such cases ordinarily are capable of certainty And the like is again ordered in Deut. 19. in the case of false witnesse Both the men between whom the controversie is shall stand before the Iudges and the Iudges shall make diligent inquisition c. And in Iudg. 19. in the wronged Levites case whose Concubine was abused unto death at Gibeah the Tribes of Israel stirred up one another to do justice upon the inhabitants thereof and the method they proposed was this first to consider and consult of it and then to give their opinions But the most famous example in this kinde is that of King Solomon in 3 Kings 3. in the difficult case of the two Mothers
Either of them challenged the living child with a like eagernesse either of them accused other of the same wrong and with the same allegations neither was there witnesse or other evidence on either part to give light unto the matter yet Solomon by that wisdome which he had obtained from God found a meanes to search out the truth in this difficulty by making as if he would cut the child into halfes and give either of them one halfe at the mentioning whereof the compassion of the right mother betrayed the falshood of her clamorous competitor And we read in the Apocryphall Story of Susanna how Daniel by examining the two Elders severally and apart found them to differ in one circumstance of their relation and thereby discovered the whole accusation to be false Iudges for this reason were anciently called Cognitores and in approved Authors Cognoscere is as much as to doe the office of a Judge to teach Iudges that one chiefe point of their care should be to know the truth For if of private men and in things of ordinary discourse that of Solomon be true He that answereth a matter before he heareth it it is folly and shame unto him certainly much more is it true of publick Magistrates and in matters of Justice and Judgement by how much both the men are of better note and the things of greater moment But in difficult and intricate businesses covered with darknesse and obscurity and perplexed with many windings and turnings and cunning and crafty conveyances to finde a faire issue out and to spye light at a narrow hole and by wisdome and diligence to rip up a foule matter and search a cause to the bottome and make a discovery of all is a thing worthy the labour and a thing that will adde to the honour I say not onely of inferiour Governours but even of the supreme Magistrate the King It is the glory of God to conceale a thing but the honour of Kings is to search out the matter To understand the necessity of this duty consider First that as sometimes Democritus said the truth lyeth in profundo and in abdito dark and deep as in the bottom of a pit and it will ask some time yea and cunning too to find it out and bring it to light Secondly that through favour faction envy greedinesse ambition and otherwise innocency it self is often laden with false accusations You may observe in the Scriptures how Naboth Ieremy Saint Paul and others and you may see by too much experience in these wretched times how many men of faire and honest conversation have been accused and troubled without cause which if the Magistrate by diligent inquisition do not either prevent or help to the utmost of his endeavour he may soon unawares wrap himself in the guilt of innocent blood Thirdly that informations are for the most part partiall every man making the best of his owne tale and he cannot but often erre in judgement that is easily carried away with the first tale and doth not suspend till he have heard both parties alike Herein David failed when upon Ziba's false information he passed a hasty and injurious decree against Mephibosheth Solomon saith He that is first in his own tale seemeth righteous but then his neighbour cometh and searcheth him out Prov. 18. as we say commonly One tale is good till another be told Fourthly that if in all other things hastinesse and precipitancy be hurtfull then especially matters of justice would not be huddled up hand over-head but handled with mature deliberation and just diligent disquisition Cunctari judicantem decet imo oportet saith Seneca he that is to judge it is fit he should nay it is necessary he should proceed with convenient leisure Who judgeth otherwise and without this due search he doth not judge but guesse The good Magistrate had need of patience to heare and of diligence to search and of prudence to search out whatsoever may make for the discovery of the truth in an intricate and difficult cause The cause which I knew not I searched out That is the Magistrates third Duty There yet remaineth a fourth in these words I brake the jawes of the wicked and plucked the spoil out of his teeth Wherein Iob alludeth to ravenous and salvage beasts beasts of prey that lye in wait for the smaller Cattel and when they once catch them in their paws fasten their teeth upon them and teare them in pieces and devour them Such Lions and Wolfs and Bears and Tygers are the greedy great ones of this world who are ever ravening after the estates and the livelihoods of their meaner neighbours snatching and biting and devouring and at length eating them up and consuming them Iob here speaketh of Dentes and Molares Teeth and Iaws and he meaneth the same thing by both Power abused to oppression But if any will be so curiously subtill as to distinguish them thus he may doe it Dentes they are the long sharp teeth the fore-teeth Dentes eorum arma sagitâ—ae saith David Their teeth are speares and arrowes Molares à molendo so called from grinding they are the great double teeth the jaw-teeth Those are the Biters these the Grinders these and those together Oppressors of all sorts Usurers and prouling Officers and slye Merchants and errant Informers and such kinde of Extortioners as sell time and truck for expedition and snatch and catch at petty advantages these use their teeth most these are Biters The first I know not whether or no the worst sort of them in the holy Hebrew tongue hath his name from biting 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Naschak that is to bite and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Neschek that is Usury Besides these Biters there are Grinders too men whose teeth are Lapidâ—s Molures as the over and the nether mill-stone Depopulators and racking Landlords and such great ones as by heavy pressures and burdens and sore bargains break the backs of those they deale withall These first by little and little grind the faces of the poor as small as dust powder and when they have done at length eat them up one after another as it were bread as the Holy Ghost hath painted them out under those very phrases Now how the Magistrate should deal with these grinders and biters Iob here teacheth him he should break their jawes and pluck the spoileÌ„ out of their teeth that is quell and crush the mighty Oppressor and deliver the Oppressed from his injuries For to break the jaw or the cheek-bone or the teeth is in Scripture-phrase as much as to abate the pride and suppresse the power and curb the insolency of those that use their might to overbeare right So David saith in the third Psalm that God had saved him by smiting his enemies upon the cheek-bone and breaking the teeth of the ungodly And in Psalm 58. he
Title too I have said ye are Gods Psalm 82. If you be Gods why should you feare the faces of men This is Gods fashion he giveth grace to the humble but he resisteth the proud he exalteth the meek and lowly but he putteth the mighty out of their seats If you will deale answerably to that high name he hath put upon you and be indeed as Gods follow the example of God lift up the poore oppressed out of the mire and tumble downe the confidence of the mighty and proud oppressour when you receive the Congregation judge uprightly and feare not to say to the wicked be they never so great Lift not up your horne So shall you vindicate your selves from contempt so shall you preserve your persons and places from being baffelled and blurted by every lewd companion Courage in the Magistrate against these great ones especially is thirdly necessary in respect of the Offenders These wicked ones of whom Iob speaketh the longer teeth they have the deeper they bite and the stronger jawes they have the sorer they grinde and the greater power they have the more mischief they doe And therefore these great ones of all other would be well hampered and have their teeth filed their jawes broken their power curbed I say not the poore and the small should be spared when they offend good reason they should be punished with severity But you must remember I now speak of Courage and a little Courage will serve to bring under those that are under already So that if meane men scape unpunished when they transgresse it is oftner for want of care or conscience in the Magistrate then of Courage But here is the true triall of your Courage when you are to deale with these great ones men not inferiour to your selves perhaps your equalls yea and it may bee too your Magistracy set aside men much greater than your selves men great in place great in wealth in great favour that have great friends but withall that doe great harme Let it bee your honour that you dare bee just when these dare bee unjust and when they dare smite others with the fist of violence that you dare smite them with the sword of justice and that you dare use your power when they dare abuse theirs All Transgressours should be looked unto but more the greater and the greatest most as a Sheepherd should watch his Sheep even from Flyes and Maukes but much more from Foxes most of all from Wolves Sure hee is a sorry Sheepherd that is busie to kill Flyes and Maukes in his Sheepe but letteth the Wolfe worry at pleasure Why one Wolfe will doe more mischief in a night than a thousand of them in a twelve-moneth And as sure he is a sorry Magistrate that stocketh and whippeth and hangeth poor Sneaks when they offend though that is to be done too but letteth the great theeves doe what they list and dareth not meddle with them like Saul who when God commanded him to destroy all the Amalekites both man and beast slew indeed the rascality of both but spared the greatest of the men and the fattest of the cattell and slew them not The good Magistrate should rather with Iob here break the jawes of the wicked and in spight of his heart pluck the spoile out of his teeth Thus have you heard the four duties or properties of a good Magistrate contained in this Scripture with the grounds and reasons of most of them opened They are 1. a love and zeal to justice 2. Compassion to the poor and distressed 3. Paines and Patience in examination of causes 4. Stoutnesse and Courage in execution of justice The uses and inferences of all these yet remaine to be handled now in the last place and altogether All which for order and brevities sake we will reduce unto three heads accordingly as from each of the foure mentioned Duties or Properties or Rules call them which you will there arise Inferences of three sorts First of Direction for the choyce and appointment of Magistrates according to these four properties â—econdly of Reproof for a just rebuke of such Magistrates as faile in any of these four Duties Thirdly of Exhortation to those that are or shall be Magistrates to carry themselves therein according to these four Rules Wherein what I shall speak of Magistrates ought also to be extended and applyed the due proportion ever observed to all kinds of officers whatsoever any way appertaining unto Iustice. And first for Directions Saint Paul saith The powers that are are ordained of God and yet Saint Peter calleth the Magistracy an humane ordinance Certainly the holy Spirit of God which speaketh in these two great Apostles is not contrary to it self The truth is the substance of the power of every Magistrate is the Ordinance of God and that is Saint Pauls meaning but the Specification of the circumstances thereto belonging as in regard of places persons titles continuance jurisdiction subordination and the rest is as Saint Peter termeth it an humane ordinance introduced by Custome or positive Law And therefore some kindes of Magistracy are higher some lower some annuall or for a set time some during life some after one manner some after another according to the severall Lawes or Customes whereon they are grounded As in other circumstances so in this concerning the deputation of the Magistrates person there is great difference some having their power by Succession others by Nomination and other some by Election As amongst us the supreme Magistrate the King hath his Power by succession some inferiour Magistrates theirs by nomination or speciall appointment either immediately or mediately from the King as most of our Iudges and Iustices some again by the elections and voices of the multitude as most Officers and Governours in our Cities Corporations or Colledges The Directions which I would inferre from my Text cannot reach the first kind because such Magistrates are born to us not chosen by us They do concern in some sort the second but most neerly the third kind viz. Those that are chosen by suffrages and voices and therefore unto this third kind onely I will apply them We may not think because our voices are our own that therefore we may bestow them as we list neither must we suffer our selves in a matter of this nature to be carried by favour faction spight hope feare importunity or any other corrupt and partiall respect from those Rules which ought to levell our choice But we must conferre our voices and our best furtherance otherwise upon those whom all things duly considered we conceive to be the fittest and the greater the place is and the more the power is we give unto them and from our selves the greater ought our care in voycing to be It is true indeed when we have used all our best care and proceeded with the greatest caution we can we may be deceived and make an unworthy choice For we cannot
judge of mens fitnesse by any demonstrative certainty all we can do is to go upon probabilities which can yield at the most but a conjecturall certainty full of uncertainty Men ambitious and in appetite till they have obtained their desires use to dissemble those vices which might make a stop in their preferments which having once gotten what they fished for they bewray with greater freedome and they use likewise to make a shew of that zeal and forwardnesse in them to do good which afterwards cometh to just nothing Absalom to steal away the hearts of the people though he were even then most unnaturally unjust in his purposes against a father and such a father yet he made shew of much compassion to the injured and of a great desire to do justice O saith he that I were made a Iudge in the Land that every man that hath any suite or cause might come unto me and I would do him justice And yet I doubt not but if things had so come to passe he would have been as bad as the worst When the Roman Souldiers had in a tumult proclaimed Galba Emperour they thought they had done a good dayes work every man promised himself so much good of the new Emperour But when he was in he proved no better than those that had been before him One giveth this censure of him Omnium consensu capax imperij nisi imperasset he had been a man in every mans judgement worthy to have been Emperour if he had not been Emperour and so shewed himself unworthy Magistratus indicat virum is a common saying and a true We may guesse upon likelyhoods what they will be when we choose them but the thing it self after they are chosen sheweth the certainty what they are But this uncertainty should be so farre from making us carelesse in our choice that it should rather adde so much the more to our care to put things so hazardous as neer as we can out of hazard Now those very Rules that must direct them to govern must direct us also to choose And namely an eye would be had to the four properties specified in my Text. The first a Zeal of Iustice and a Delight therein Seest thou a man carelesse of the common good one that palpably preferreth his own before the publick weale one that loveth his ease so well that he careth not which way things goe backward or forward so he may sit still and not be troubled one that would divide honorem ab onere be proud of the honour and title and yet loath to undergoe the envie and burthen that attendeth them set him aside Never think that mans robes will do well upon him A Iusticeship or other office would sit upon such a mans back as handsomely as Sauls armour did upon Davids unweildy and sagging about his shoulders so as he could not tell how to stirre and turn himself under it He is a fit man to make a Magistrate of that will put on righteousnesse as a garment and clothe himself with judgement as with a Robe and a Diadem The second property is Compassion on the poor Seest thou a man destitute of counsell and understanding a man of forlorne hopes or estate and in whom there is no help or one that having either counsell or help in him is yet a churle of either but especially one that is sore in his bargaines cruell in his dealings hard to his Tenants or an Oppressour in any kind Take none of him Sooner commit a flock of Sheep to a Wolf than a Magistracy or office of justice to an Oppressour Such a man is more likely to put out the eyes of him that seeth then to be eyes to the blind and to break the bones of the strong then to be legges to the lame and to turn the fatherlesse a begging then to be a Father to the poore The third property is Diligence to search out the truth Seest thou a man hasty and rash and heady in his own businesses a man impatient of delay or pains one that cannot conceale what is meet till it be seasonable to utter it but poureth out all his heart at once and before the time one that is easily possest with what is first told him or being once possest will not with any reason be perswaded to the contrary one that lendeth eare so much to some particular friend or follower as to believe any information from him not any but from him one that to be counted a man of dispatch loveth to make an end of a businesse before it be ripe suspect him He will scarce have the Conscience or if that yet not the wit or not the patience to search out the cause which he knoweth not The last Property is Courage to execute Seest thou a man first of a timorous nature and cowardly disposition or secondly of a wavering and fickle mind as we say of children wonne with an apple and lost with a nut or thirdly that is apt to be wrought upon or moulded into any forme with faire words friendly invitations or complementall glozes or fourthly that dependeth upon some great man whose vassall or creature he is or fifthly a taker and one that may be dealt withall for that is now the periphrasis of bribery or sixthly guilty of the same transgressions he should punish or of other as foul Never a man of these is for the turne not one of these will venture to break the jawes or tuskes of an oppressing Tygre or Boare and to pluck the spoile out of his teeth The timorous man is afraid of every shadow and if he do but heare of teeth he thinketh it is good sleeping in a whole skinne and so keepeth aloofe off for fear of biting The double minded man as Saint Iames saith is unstable in all his wayes he beginneth to do something in a sudden heat when the fit taketh him but before one jaw can be half broken he is not the man he was he is sorry for what is done and instead of breaking the rest falleth a binding up that which he hath broken and so seeketh to salve up the matter as well as he can and no hurt done The vain man that will be flattered so he get fair words himself he careth not who getteth foul blowes and so the beast will but now and then give him a lick with the tongue he letteth him use his teeth upon others at his pleasure The depending creature is charmed with a letter or message from his Lord or his honourable friend which to him is as good as a Supersede as or Prohibition The taker hath his fingers so oyled that his hand slippeth off when he should pluck away the spoyl and so he leaveth it undone The guilty man by no means liketh this breaking of jawes he thinketh it may be his own case another day You see when you are to chuse Magistrates here is refuse enough to be
to him which to a well-minded Christian is as Gall and Wormewood to be in continuall suits Et si non aliqud nocuisset mortuus esset he could not have kept himself in breath but by keeping Termes 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 reclaime unlesse very want when they have spent and undone themselves with wrangling for that is commonly their end and the reward of all their toyle 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 spleene and hatred against some particular men for some personall respect or other as to seek their undoing by all meanes they can Out of which hatred and envy they raise false reports of them that being in their judgements 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 faithfull in their callings especially in the callings of the Magistracy or Ministery that very faithfulnesse 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 bitternesse springing up trouble you thereby many be defiled Submit your selves to the word and will of God in the Ministery submit your seles 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 envie to any of your brethren to raise false reports of them The second Inducement is Obsequiousnesse When either out of a base feare 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 baudes unto their lust and open instruments of their secret malice Out of that base feare the Elders of Iesreel upon the Queenes Letter whom they durst not displease caused an accusation to be framed against innocent Naboth And out of this base Ambition Doeg to pick a thank with his Master and to endeare himself farther into his good opinion told tales of David and Ahimelech To remedy this remember the service and offices you owe to the greatest Masters upon earth have their bounds set them which they may not passe Usque ad aras the Altar-stone that is the Meere-stone and Iustice hath her Altars too as well as Religion hers Goe as far then as you can in offices of love and service to your friends and betters salvis pietate justitiâ but not a step farther for a world If you seek to please men beyond this you cannot be the servants of God Coverture is the third Inducement And that is when either to make our own cause the better we seek to bring envie and prejudice upon our adversaries by making his seeme worse or when being our selves guilty we think to cover our own crimes and to prevent the accusations of others by getting the start of them and accusing them first As Potiphars wife accused Ioseph and the Elders Susannah of such crimes as they were innocent of and themselves guilty An old trick by which C. Verres like a cunning Colt often holpe himself at a pinch when he was Praetor of Sicily as Cicero declareth against him by many instances and at large For sithence the Lawes in most cases rather favour the Plaintiffe because it is presumed men should not complain without grievance we may think perhaps to get this advantage to our selves and so rather choose to be Plaintiffes then Defendants because as Solomon saith He that is first in his own tale seemeth righteous To remedy this Do nothing but what is just and justifiable be sure your matters be good and right they will then bear out themselves well enough without standing need to such damned shifts for support But the fourth thing is that which causeth more mischiefe in this kind then all the rest That which the Apostle calleth the root of all evil and which were it not there could not be the hundreth part of those suites and troubles and wrongs which now there are done under the Sun Even the greedy worme of Covetousnesse and the thirst after filthy lucre For though men be wicked enough and prone to mischief of themselves but too much yet are there even in corrupt nature such impressions of the common principles of justice and equity that men would not often do great wrongs gratis and for nothing If Zibah slander his Master falsely and treacherously it is in a hope of getting the living from him And it was Naboths Vineyard not blasphemy that made him guilty Those sinners that conspired against the innocent Pro. 1. Come let us lay wait for blood let us â—â—rke privily for the innocent without a cause Let us swallow them up c. They had their end in it and what that was the next following words discover We shall find all precious substance we shall fill our houses with spoil And most of our prouling Informers like those old Sycophants in Athens or the Quadruplatores in Rome do they aime think you so much at the execution of good Lawes the punishment of offenders and the reformation of abuses as at the prey and the booty and to get a piece of money to themselves For let the offence be what it will deal but with them and then no more speech of Lawes or Abuses but all is husht up in a calme silence and no harme done To remedy this as Iohn Baptist said to the Souldiers in Luke 3. Accuse no man falsly 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is the word there too and be content with your wages so if you would be sure not to accuse your neighbour falsly content your selves with your own estates and covet not his Oxe or his Asse his land or his money or any thing that is his Reckon nothing your own that is not yours by fair and just meanes nor think that can prosper with you and yours that was wrung from another by Caviâ— or Calumny I have now done with you that are Accusers whose care must be according to the Text-reading not to raise a false report But the Margent
remembers me there are others whom this prohibition concerneth besides you or rather above you whose case it must be not to receive a false report A thing so weighty and withall so pertinent to the generall argument of this Scripture thâ—t some Translations have passed it in the Text. And the Original word comprehendeth it For albeit the Raiser indeed be the first taker up yet the Receiver taketh it up too at the second hand As it is commonly said of stollen goods There would be no thieves if there were no receivers and therefore some Laws have made the Receiver equal thief with the Stealer 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 so certainly there would be fewer false reports raised in judgement if they were more sparingly received And therefore in this case also the Receiver must goe pari passu with the Raiser who if he give way or countenance to a false report when he may refuse or hinder it by being an Accessary maketh himself a Party and becometh guilty of the same sins the same wrongs the same mischiefs with the first offender the false Accuser David as he inveigeth against Doeg in the Psalm for telling so he elsewhere expostulateth with Saul for hearing unjust reports of him The Raiser and Receiver are both possessed with the same evil spirit they have the same Devil the same Familiar onely here is the difference The Raiser hath this Familiar in his tongue the Receiver in his eare Whosoever then sitteth in the place of Magistracy and publick judicature in foro externo or is by vertue of his calling otherwise invested with any jurisdiction or power to hear and examine the accusations of others I know not how he shall be able to discharge himself in foro interno from a kind of Champerty if my ignorance make me not abuse the word or at leastwise from misprision of Calumny and unjust accusations if he be not reasonably carefull of three things First let him beware how he taketh private informations Men are partiall and will not tell their own tales but with favour and unto advantage And it is so with most men the first tale possesseth them so as they hear the next with prejudice than which there is not a sorer enemy to right and indifferent judgement A point so material that some Expositors make it a thing principally intended in this first branch of my Text Ut non audiatur una pars sine alia saith Lyra. Suiters will be impudent to forestall the publick hearing by private informations even to the Iudge himself if the accesse be easie or at leastwise which indeed maketh lesse noyse but is nothing less pernicious to his servant or favourite that hath his ear if he have any such noted servant or favourite He therefore that would resolve not to receive a false report and be sure to hold his resolution let him resolve so far as he can avoid it to receive no report in private for a thousand to one that is a false one or where he cannot well avoid it to be ready to receive the information of the adverse part withall either both or neither but indeed rather neither to keep himself by all means equal entire for a publick hearing Thus much he may assure himself there is no man offereth to possesse him with a cause before-hand be it right be it wrong who doth not either think him unjust or would have him so Secondly let him have the conscience first and then the patience too and yet if he have the conscience certainly he will have the patience to make search into the truth of things and not be dainty of his pains herein though matters be intricate and the labour like to be long and irksome to find out if it be possible the bottome of a business and where indeed the fault lieth first or most It was a great over-sight in a good King for David to give away Mephibosheths living from him to his Accuser and that upon the bare credit of his accusation It had been more for his honour to have done as Iob did before him to have searched out the cause he knew not and as his son Solomon did after him in the cause of the two Mothers Solomon well knew what he hath also taught us Prov. 25. that it was the honour of Kings to search out a matter God as he hath vouchsafed Princes and Magistrates his own name so he hath vouchsafed them his own example in this point An example in the story of the Law Gen. 18. where he did not presently give judgement against Sodome upon the cry of their sins that was come up before him but he would go down first and see whether they had done altogether according to that cry and if not that he might know it An example also in the Gospel-story Luc. 16. under the parable of the rich man whos 's first work when his Steward was accused to him for embezeling his goods was not to turn him out of doors but to examine his accounts What through Malice Obsequiousness Coverture and Covetousness counterfeit reports are daily raised and there is much cunning used by those that raise them much odde shuffling and packing and combining to give them the colour and face of perfect truth As then a plain Countrey-man that would not willingly be cousened in his pay to take a slip for a currant piece or brasse for silver leisurely turneth over every piece he receiveth and if he suspect any one more than the rest vieweth it and ringeth it and smelleth to it and bendeth it and rubbeth it so making up of all his senses as it were one naturall touchstone whereby to try it such jealousie should the Magistrate use and such industry especially where there appeareth cause of suspicion by all means to sift and to bolt out the truth if he would not be cheated with a false report instead of a true Thirdly let him take heed he do not give countenance or encouragement more then right and reason requireth to contentious persons known Sycophants and common Informers If there should be no Accusers to make complaints Offenders would be no offenders for want of due Correction and Laws would be no Laws for want of due Execution Informers then are necessary in a Common-wealth as Dogs are about your houses and yards If any man mislike the comparison let him know it is Cicero's simily and not mine It is not amisse saith that great and wise Oratour there should be some store of Dogs about the house where many goods are laid up to be safe kept and many false knaves haunt to do mischief to guard those and to watch these the better But if those Dogs should make at the throat of every man that cometh neer the house at honest mens hours and upon honest mens businesse it is but needful they of the house should sometimes
more to expresse their sorrow lay grovelling upon the Earth mourning and sorrowing for their sin and for the Plague it could not be but the bold lewdnesse of Zimri in bringing his strumpet with such impudence before their noses must needs adde much to the grief and bring fresh vexation to the soules of all that were righteous among them But the rest continued though with double grief yet in the same course of humiliation and in the same posture of body as before Onely Phinehes burning with an holy indignation thought it was now no time to sit still weept but rowzing up himself and his spirits with zeal as hot as fire he stood up from the place where he was and made haste to execute judgement Here is a rich example for all you to imitate whom it doth concern I speak not onely nor indeed so much to you the Honourable and reverend Iudge of this Circuit of whose zeal to do justice and judgment I am by so much the better perswaded by how much the eminency of your place and the weight of your charge and the expectation of the people doth with greater importunity exact it at your hands But I speak withall and most especially to all you that are in Commission of the Peace and whose daily and continuall care it should be to see the wholesome lawes of the Realme duly and seasonably executed Yea and to all you also that have any office appertaining to justice or any businesse about these Courts so as it may lie in you to give any kind of furtherance to the speeding either of Iustice in Civil or of judgement in Criminall causes Look upon the zeal of Phinehes observe what approbation it had from God what a blessing it procured to his seed after him what glorious renown it hath won him with all after-ages what ease it did and what good it wrought for the present state and think if it be not worthy your imitation It is good saith the Apostle to be zealously affected alwaies in a good thing And is it not a good thing to do justice and to execute judgement nay Religion excepted and the care of that is a branch of justice too do you know any better thing any thing you can do more acceptable to God more serviceable to the State more comfortable to your own soules If you be called to the Magistracie it is your own businesse as the proper work of your calling and men account him no wiser then he should be that sluggeth in his own businesse or goeth heartlesly about it It is the Kings businesse who hath entrusted you with it and he is scarce a good subject that slacketh the Kings businesse or doth it to the halves Nay it is the Lords businesse for Ye judge not for man but for the Lord who is with you in the cause and in the judgement and Cursed is he that doth the Lords businesse negligently That you may therefore do all under one your own businesse and the Kings businesse and the Lords businesse with that zeal and forwardnesse which becometh you in so weighty an affaire lay this pattern before your eyes and hearts See what Phinehes did and thereby both examine what hitherto you have done and learn what henceforth you should do First Phinehes doth not post off the matter to others the fervency of his zeal made him willing to be himself the Actor He harboured no such cool thoughts as too many Magistrates do Here is a shamefull crime committed by a shamelesse person and in a shamelesse manner pitty such an audacious offender should go unpunished My heart riseth against him and much adoe I have to refrain from being my self his executioner rather then he should carry it away thus But why should I derive the envy of the fact upon my self and but gain the imputation of a busie officious fellow in being more forward then others A thousand more saw it as well as I whom it concerneth as neerly as it doth me and if none of them will stirre in it why should I Doubtlesse my uncle Moses and my father Eleazar and they that are in place of authority will not let it passe so but will call him to account for it and give him condigne punishment If I should do it it would be thought but the attempt of a rash young fellow It will be better discretion therefore to forbear and to give my betters leave to go before me Such pretentions as these would have kept off Phinehes from this noble exploit if he had been of the temper of some of ours who owe it to nothing so much as their lukewarmnesse that they have at least some reputation of being moderate and discreet men But true zeal is more forward then mannerly and will not lose the opportunity of doing what it ought for waiting till others begin Alas if every man should be so squeamish as many are nothing at all would be done And therefore the good Magistrate must consider not what others do but what both he and they are in conscience bound to do and though there should be many more joyned with him in the same common care and with equall power yet he must resolve to take that common affaire no otherwise into his speciall care then if he were left alone therein and the whole burden lay upon his shoulders As when sundry persons are so bound in one common bond for the payment of one entire summe conjunctim divisim every one per se in toto in solidum that every particular person by himself is as well liable to the payment of the whole as they altogether are Admit loose or idle people for who can hold their tongues shall for thy diligence say thou art an hard and austere man or busiest thy self more then thou hast thank for thy labour First that man never cared to do well that is afraid to hear ill He that observeth the wind saith Salomon shall not sow and the words especially of idle people are no better Secondly He maketh an ill purchase that forgoeth the least part of his duty to gain a little popularity the breath of the people being but a sorry plaster for a wounded conscience Thirdly what a man by strict and severe execution of Iustice loseth in the breadth he commonly gaineth it all and more in the weight and in the length of his Credit A kind quiet Man that carrieth it for the present and in the voice of the multitude but it is more solid and the more lasting praise to be reputed in the opinion of the better and the wiser sort a Iust man and a good Patriot or Common-wealths-man Fourthly if all should condemn thee for that wherein thou hast done but well thy comfort is thine own conscience shall bestead thee more then a thousand witnesses and stand for thee against ten thousand tongues at that last day when the hearts
thine owne spleene or malice to sweare and forsweare as these shall prompt thee or to enterchange deposition with thy friend as they used to doe in Greece Hodie mihi cras tibi sweare thou for me to day I le sweare for thee to morrow or tempted with any corrupt respect whatsoever by thy word or oath to strengthen a false and unrighteous report When thou comest to lay thy hand upon the booke lay the second Rule in that Text to thy heart Put not thy hand with the wicked to be an unrighteous witnesse Though hand joyne in hand The false witnesse shall not be unpunished If thou comest hither thirdly to serve for the King upon the Grand Inquest or between party and party in any cause whatsoever like those selecti judices among the Romans whom the Praetor for the yeare being was to nominate and that upon oath out of the most able and serviceable men in his judgement both for estate understanding and integrity or to serve upon the Tales perhaps at thine own suit to get something toward bearing charges for thy journey or yoaked with a crafty or a wilfull foreman that is made before-hand and a messe of tame after-men withall that dare not thinke of being wiser than their leader or unwilling to stickle against a major part whether they goe right or wrong or resolved already upon the Verdict no matter what the Evidence be Consider what is the weight and religion of an Oath Remember that he sinneth not lesse that sinneth with company Whatsover the rest doe resolve thou to doe no otherwise then as God shall put into thy heart and as the evidence shall leade thee The third Rule in that Text must be thy rule Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evill They are silly that in point either of Religion or Iustice would teach us to measure either Truth or Right by multitudes If thou comest hither fourthly as to thine harvest to reape some fruit of thy long and expencefull study in the Lawes and to assist thy Client and his cause with thy Counsell Learning and Eloquence thinke not because thou speakest for thy Fee that therefore thy tongue is not thine owne but thou must speake what thy Client will have thee speake be it true or false neither thinke because thou hast the liberty of the Court and perhaps the favour of the Iudge that therefore thy tongue is thine owne and thou mayest speake thy pleasure to the prejudice of the Adversaries person or cause Seeke not preposterously to win the name of a good Lawyer by wresting and perverting good Lawes or the opinion of the best Counsellour by giving the worst and the shrewdest Counsell Count it not as Protagoras did the glory of thy profession by subtilty of wit and volubility of tongue to make the worse cause the better but like a good man as well as good Oratour use the power of thy tongue and wit to shame impudence and protect innocency to crush oppressours and succour the afflicted to advance Justice and Equity and to help them to right that suffer wrong Let it be as a ruled case to thee in all thy pleadings not to speak in any cause to wrest judgement If lastly thou art in any place or office of service or trust or command or attendance about the Courts rejoyce not as if it were now in thy power to doe a friend a courtesie or a foe a spite Doe not shew a cast of thy office for the promise or hope of a reward in helping a great offender out of the Bryars Compell not men that have been long weather-beaten in the Maine and are now arrived at the Haven of their businesse to wither for their pasports untill they have offered some sacrifice to that great Diana Expedition Let no feare or hope or bribe or letter or envie or favour no not charity it self and compassion to the poverty or distressednesse of any make you partiall for the Person to disregard the Cause If you would be charitable to the poore give them from your owne but doe not carve them from anothers trencher To relieve a poor man in his wants is the proper office of Charity but Iustice must have no eyes to see nor bowells to yearne at the wants of any man Be he rich or poore that bringeth his cause hither Currat lex Let him finde such as he bringeth Let him have as his cause deserveth The last of those Rules must be thine Thou shalt not countenance no not a poor man in his cause If any of these to whom I have now spoken Accusers Witnesses Iurers Pleaders Officers shall transgresse these rules to the perverting of Iustice our refuge must be next under God to you that are the Magistrates of Justice and sit upon the Bench of Judicature At your gravity and authority we must take sanctuary against them that pursue us wrongfully as at the hornes of the Altar It is your Duty or if it be as to most men it is a more pleasing thing to be remembred of their Power ' thâ—â— of their Duty it is in your power if not to reforme all the abuses and corruptions of these persons yet to curbe their open insolencies and to contain them at least within modest bounds Nay since I have begun to magnifie your power let me speak it with all the due reverence to God and the King there is no power so great over which in a qualified sense you have not a greater power It is in your power to beare up the pillars of the State when the land is even dissolved and the pillars thereof grown weake for that is done by judging the Congregation according to right Psal. 75. In yours to make this yet flourishing Country and Kingdome glorious or despicable for righteousnesse exalteth a Nation but sinne is a reproch to any people Prov. 14. In yours to settle the Throne upon the King and to entaile it by a kinde of perpetuity unto the right heire for many succeeding generations for The Throne is established by justice Prov. 16. In yours to discharge Gods punishing Angel who now destroyeth us with a grievous destruction and by unsheathing your Sword to make him sheath his as here in my Text Phinehes stood up and executed judgement and the plague ceased In yours though you be but Gods on Earth and in these Courts mortall and petty Gods yet to send prohibitions into the Court of Heaven and there to stop the judgements of the great and Eternall GOD before they come forth yea and when the decree is gone forth to stay execution In a word as it was said to Ieremy but in another sense you are Set over Nations and over Kingdomes to root out and to destroy to build and to plant Onely then be intreated to use that power God hath given you unto edification and not unto destruction And now I have done my
it for his time I will not bring the evil in his dayes As if God had said This wretched King hath provoked me and pulled down a curse from me upon his house which it were but just to bring upon him and it without farther delay yet because he made not a scoff at my Prophet but took my words something to heart and was humbled by them he shall not say but I will deal mercifully with him and beyond his merit as ill as he deserveth it I will do him this favour I will not bring the evil that is determined against his house in his dayes The thing I would observe hence is That When God hath determined a judgement upon any people family or place it is his great mercy to us if he do not let us live to see it It cannot but be a great grief I say not now to a religious but even to any soul that hath not quite cast off all natural affection to forethink and foreknow the future calamities of his countrey and kindred Xerxes could not forbear weeping beholding his huge army that followed him onely to think that within some few scores of years so many thousands of proper men would be all dead and rotten and yet that a thing that must needs have happened by the necessity of nature if no sad accident or common calamity should hasten the accomplishment of it The declination of a Common-wealth and the funeral of a Kingdome foreseen in the general corruption of manners and decay of discipline the most certain symtomes of a totering State have fetched teares from the eyes and bloud from the hearts of heathen men zealously affected to their Countrey How much more grief then must it needs be to them that acknowledge the true God not only to foreknow the extraordinary plagues and miseries and calamities which shall befall their posterity but also to fore-read in them Gods fierce wrath and heavy displeasure and bitter vengeance against their own sins and the sins of their posterity Our blessed Saviour though himself without sinne and so no way accessory to the procuring of the evils that should ensue could not yet but Weep over the City of Ierusalem when he beheld the present security and the future ruine thereof A grief it is then to know these things shall happen but some happinesse withall and to be acknowledged as a great favour from God to be assured that we shall never see them It is no small mercy in him it is no small Comfort to us if either he take us away before his judgements come or keep his judgements away till we be gone When God had told Abraham in Gen. 15. that his seed should be a stranger in a land that was not theirs meaning Egypt where they should be kept under and afflicted 400 years lest the good Patriarch should have been swallowed up with grief at it he comfortteth him as with a promise of their glorious deliverance at the last so with a promise also of prosperity to his own person and for his own time But thou shalt go to thy fathers in peace and shalt be buried in a good old age vers 15. In Esay 39. when Hezekiah heard from the mouth of the Prophet Esaiah that all the treasures in the Lords house should be carried into Babylon and that his sonnes whom he should beget should be taken away and made Eunuches in the palace of the King of Babylon he submitted himself as it became him to do to the sentence of God and comforted himself with this that yet there should be peace and truth in his dayes verse 8. In 4 Kings 22. when Huldah had prophesied of the evil that God would bring upon the City of Ierusalem and the whole land of Iudah in the name of the Lord she pronounceth this as a courtesie from the Lord unto good King Iosiah Because thy heart was tender and thou hast humbled thy self Behold therefore I will gather thee unto thy fathers and thou shalt be gathered unto thy grave in peace and thine eyes shall not see all the evil which I will bring upon this place verse last Indeed every man should have and every good man hath an honest care of posterity would rejoyce to see things setled well for them would grieve to see things likely to go ill with them That common speech which was so frequent with Tiberius was monstrous and not favouring of common humanity 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 When I am gone let Heaven and Earth be jumbled again into their old Chaos but he that mended it with 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 yea saith he whilest I live seemeth to have renounced all that was man in him Aristotle hath taught us better what reason taught him that Res posterorum pertinent ad defunctos the good or evil of those that come after us doth more than nothing concern us when we are dead and gone This is true but yet Proximus egomet mî though it were the speech of a Shark in the Comedy will bear a good construction Every man is neerest to himself and that Charity which looketh abroad and seeketh not only her own yet beginneth at home and seeketh first her own Whence it is that a godly man as he hath just cause to grieve for posterities sake if they must feel Gods judgements so he hath good cause to rejoyce for his own sake if he shall escape them and he is no lesse to take knowledge of Gods Mercy in sparing him than of his Iustice in striking them This point is usefull many ways I will touch but some of them and that very briefly First here is one Comfort among many other against the bitternesse of temporal death If God cut thee off in the middest of thy days and best of thy strength if death turn thee pale before age have turned thee gray if the flower be plucked off before it begin to wither grudge not at thy lot therein but meet Gods Messenger cheerfully and imbrace him thankfully It may be God hath some great work in hand from which he meaneth to save thee It may be he sendeth death to thee as he sent his Angel to Lot to pluck thee out of the middest of a froward and crooked generation and to snatch thee away lest a worse thing than death should happen unto thee Cast not therefore a longing eye back upon Sodome neither desire to linger in the plain it is but a valley of tears and misery but up to the mountain from whence commeth thy salvation lest some evil overtake thee Possibly that which thou thinkest an untimely death may be to thee a double advantage a great advantage in ushering thee so early into GODS glorious presence and some advantage too in plucking thee so seasonably from Gods imminent Iudgements It is a favour to be taken away betimes when evil is determined upon those that are left
Peter and Iohn rejoycing when they suffered for the name of Jesus and Saint Paul so farr from fearing that he longed after his dissolution and the blessed Martyrs running to a faggot as to a feast Verily Gods children see great good in these things which others account evils and therefore they take them not as bare punishments sent to afflict them but as glorious tryals to exercise them as gracious corrections to humble them as precious receipts to purge and recover and restore and strengthen them So that it is not any of the temporal evils of this life but much rather the everlasting pains of hell wherein the just reward and punishment of sinne properly and especially consisteth The wages of sinne is death the proper wages of sinne eternal death For so the Antithesis in that place giveth it to be understood viz. of such a death as is opposed to Eternal Life and that is Eternal Death The wages of sinne is death but the gift of God is Eternal life Rom. 6. By the distribution of those Eternal punishments then we are rather to judge of GODS righteousness in recompensing sinners than by the dispensation of these temporal evils It was a stumbling block to the heathen to see good men oppressed and vice prosper it made them doubt some whether there were a God or no others nothing better whether a providence or no. But what marvel if they stumbled who had no right knowledge either of God or of his providence when Iob and David and other the dear children of God have been much puzzled with it David confesseth in Psal. 73. that His feet had welnigh slipped when he saw the prosperity of the wicked and certainly down he had been had he not happily stepped Into the Sanctuary of God and there understood the end of these men Temporal evils though they be sometimes punishments of sinne yet they are not ever sent as punishments because sometimes they have other ends and uses and are ordinabilia in melius and secondly they are never the only punishments of sinne because there are greater and more lasting punishments reserved for sinners after this life of which there is no other use or end but to punish since they are not ordinabilia in melius If we will make these temporal evils the measure whereby to judge of the Iustice of God we cannot secure our selves from erring dangerously Gods purposes in the dispensation of these unto particular men being unsearchable But those 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 judgement of God Implying that howsoever God is just in all his judgements 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 judgement shall be revealed to every eye in the condign punishment of unreconciled sinners That is the second Certainty Temporal evils are not alwayes nor simply nor properly the punishments for sinne 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 farr 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 sinne yea and that also for his own personal sinne 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 terrours 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 sinne 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 sinne or as a fatherly correction and chastisement to nurture us from some past sinne or as a medicinal preservative to strengthen us against some future sinne or as a clogging chain to keep under and disable us from some outward work of sinne 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 justice for the admonition and terrour 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 sinne There may be other ends there may be other occasions there may be other uses of such Evils but still the original Cause of them all is sinne When thou with rebukes doest chasten man for sinne It was not for any extraordinary notorious sinnes either of the blind man himself or of his parents above other men that he was born blind Our Saviour 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 Saviours answer there never intended other but that still the true cause deserving that blindnesse was his and his parents sinne but his purpose was to instruct his Disciples that that infirmity was not layd 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 Sonne 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 wonderfull providence It is from Gods mercy ordering them to those Ends he hath purposed that his punishments are good but it is withall from our sinnes deserving them as the cause that they are just Even as the rain that falleth upon the earth whether it moysten it kindly and make it fruitfull 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
no single man might marry nor any servant become free which are apparently contrary both unto common Reason and unto the very purpose of the Chapter But taking the word as we have hitherto specially intended it and spoken of it for some setled Station and Course of Life whereby a man is to maintain himself or wherein to doe profitable service to humane society or both is it yet lawfull for a man to change it or is he bound to abide in it perpetually without any possibility or liberty to alter his course upon any terms I answer it is Lawfull to change it so it be done with due caution It is lawfull first in subordinate Callings For where a man cannot warrantably climb unto an higher but by the steps of an inferiour Calling there must needs be supposed a lawfullness of relinquishing the inferiour How should we doe for Generals for the wars if Colonels and Lieutenants and Captains and common Souldiers might not relinquish their charges and how for Bishops in the Church if beneficed-men and College-Governours were clench't and riveted to their Cures like a nail in a sure place not to be removed Nay we should have no Priests in the Church of England since a Priest must be a Deacon first if a Deacon might not leave his station and become a Priest But St. Paul saith They that have used the office of a Deacon well purchase to themselves a good degree and so in lower Callings it is that men should give proof of their worthiness for higher It is lawfull secondly yea necessary when the very Calling it self though in it self good and usefull doth yet by some accident become unlawfull or unusefull As when some Manufacture is prohibited by the State or when some more exact device of later invention hath made the old unprofitable It is lawfull thirdly when a man by some accident becommeth unable for the duties of his Calling as by age blindness maim decay of estate and sundry other impediments which daily occurr It is lawfull fourthly where there is a want of sufficient men or not a sufficient number of them in some Callings for the necessities of the State and Country in such cases Authority may interpose and cull out men from other Callings such as are fit and may be spared to serve in those Not to branch out too many particulars it is lawfull generally where either absolute Necessity enforceth it or lawfull Authority enjoyneth it or a concurrence of weighty circumstances faithfully and soberly and discreetly laid together seemeth to require it But then it must be done with due cautions As first not out of a desultory lightnesse Some men are ever restlesse as if they had Wind-mills in their heads every new crotchet putteth them into a new course But these rowling stones carry their curse with them they seldom gather mosse and who prove many Conclusions it is a wonder if their last Conclusion prove not Beggary If thou art well keep thy self well lest thinking to meet with better thou find worse Nor secondly out of the greediness of a covetous or ambitious lust Profit and Credit are things respectively amongst other things to be considered both in the choice and change but not principally and above all other things certainly not wholly and without or against all other things Thirdly nor out of fullennesse or a discontednesse at thy present condition Content groweth from the minde not from the condition and therefore change of the Calling the mind unchanged will either not afford content or not long Thy new broom that now sweepeth clean all discontents from thee will soon grow stubbed and leave as much filth behind to annoy thee as the old one thou flungest away Either learn with Saint Paul in whatsoever state thou art to be therewithall content or never hope to finde content in whatsoever state thou shalt be Much lesse fourthly out of an evil eye against thy neighbour that liveth by thee There is not a baser sin than envy nor a fouler mark of envy than to forsake thine own trading to justle thy neighbour out of his Nor fifthly out of degenerous false-heartednesse That man would soon dare to be evil that dareth not long be good And he that flincheth from his Calling at the first frown who can say he will not flinch from his conscience at the next In an upright course fear not the face of man neither Leave thy place though the spirit of a Ruler rise up against thee Patience will conjure down again that spirit in time only if thou keep thy self within thy circle But sixthly be sure thou change not if thy Calling be of that nature that it may not be changed Some degrees of Magistracy seem to be of that nature and therefore some have noted it rather as an act of impotency in Charles the fifth than a fruit either of Humility or Wisedome or Devotion that he resigned his Crown to betake himself to a Cloister But our Calling of the Ministery is certainly such There may be a change of the station or degree in the Ministery upon good cause and with due circumstances but yet still so as that the main Calling it self remain unchanged This Calling hath in it something that is sacred and singular and different from other Callings As therefore things once dedicated and hallowed to religious services were no more to return to common uses for that were to prophane them ipso facto and to make them unclean so persons once set apart for the holy work of the Ministery separate me Paul and Barnabas and invested into their calling with solemn collation of the holy Ghost in a special manner if any more they return to be of that lump from which they are separated they do as it were puffe the blessed breath of Christ back into his own face and renounce their part in the Holy Ghost Bethink thy self well therefore before-hand and consider what thou art in doing when thou beginnest to reach forth thine hand towards this spiritual Plow know when it is once there it may not be pulled back again no not for a Dictatorship That man can be no lesse than disorderly at the least that forsaketh his orders You see I do but point at things as I go which would require further enlarging because I desire to have done This then that we should persevere in our callings untill death and not leave or change them upon any consideration whatsoever is not the thing our Apostle meaneth by abiding in our Callings The word importeth divers other Christian duties concerning the use of our Callings I will but touch at them and conclude The first is contentednesse that we neither repine at the meannesse of our own nor envy at the eminence of anothers Calling Art thou called being a servant care not for it saith this Apostle but a little before my Text. All men cannot have rich or easie or honourable Callings the
decree He spake the word and they were made he commanded and they were Created So in all their operations in actu secundo when they do at any time exercise those natural faculties and doe those Offices for which they were created all this is still done by the same powerfull word and decree of God He upholdeth all things by the word of his power As we read of bread so we often read in the Scriptures of the staff of bread God sometimes threatneth he will break the staff of bread What is that Bread indeed is the staff of our strength it is the very stay and prop of our lives if God break this staff and deny us bread we are gone But that is not all bread is our staff but what is the staff of bread Verily the Word of God blessing our bread and commanding it to feed us is the staff of this staff sustaining that vertue in the bread whereby it sustaineth us If God break this staff of bread if he withdraw his blessing from the bread if by his countermaund he inhibit or restrain the vertue of the bread we are as far to seek with bread as without it If sanctified with Gods word of blessing a little pulse and water hard and homely fare shall feed Daniel as fresh and fat and fair as the Kings dainties shall his Companions a cake and a cruse of water shall suffice Eliah nourishment enough to walk in the strength thereof forty daies and nights a few barly loaves and small fishes shall multiply to the satisfying of many thousands eat while they will But if Gods Word and Blessing be wanting the lean Kine may eat up the Fat and be as thin and hollow and ill-liking as before and we may as the Prophet Haggai speaketh eat much and not have enough drink our fills and not be filled This first degree of the Creatures sanctification by the word of God is a common and ordinary blessing upon the Creatures whereof as of the light and dew of Heaven the wicked partake as well as the godly and the thankless as the thankfull But there is a second degree also beyond this which is proper and peculiar to the Godly And that is when God not only by the word of his Power bestoweth a blessing upon the Creature but also causeth the Echo of that word to sound in our hearts by the voyce of his Holy spirit and giveth us a sensible taste of his goodness to us therein filling our 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 countenance 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 as that a dinner of green herbs with love and kindness is better entertainment than a stalled Oxe 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 oyle 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 later 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 wherin 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 Faithfull 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 foulely 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 found 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 Saint 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 powerfull 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
which was not in that measure afforded them when they were tempted And from whom can we think that restraint 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 goodnesse 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 withheld thee from sinning against me And as to the third point in the Observation it is not much lesse 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 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 in as much 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 pronenesse in nature to desire a restraint much lesse 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 Saint Chrysostome 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 his observation be sound it may then well passe for a double Mercy of God to a sinner if he both respite his destruction and withall restrain him from sin for by the one he giveth him so much longer time for repentance which is one Mercy and by the other he preventeth so much of the increase of his sin which is another Mercy Thirdly it may be called Grace in respect of other men For in restraining men from doing evil God intendeth as principally his own glory so withall the good of mankinde especially of his Church in the preservation of humane society which could not subsist an hour if every man should be left to the wildenesse of his own nature to do what mischief the Devill and his own heart would put him upon without restraint So that the restraining of mens corrupt purposes and affections proceedeth from that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as the Apostle somewhere calleth it that love of GOD to mankinde whereby he willeth their preservation and might therefore in that respect bear the name of Grace though there should be no good at all intended thereby to the person so restrained Just as those 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 those spiritual gifts which God hath distributed in a wonderful variety for the edifying of his Church though they often-times bring no good to the receiver are yet stiled graces in the Scriptures because the distribution of them proceedeth from the gracious love and favour of God to his Church whose benefit he intendeth therein God here restrained Abimelech as elsewhere he did Laban and Esau and Balaam and others not so much for their own sakes though perhaps sometimes that also as for their sakes whom they should have injured by their sins if they had acted them As here Abimelech for his chosen Abrahams sake and Laban and Esau for his servant Iacobs sake and Balaam for his people Israels sake As it is said in Psal. 105. and that with special reference as I conceive it to this very story of Abraham He suffered no man to do them wrong but reproved even Kings for their sakes saying Touch not mine anointed and do my Prophets no harm He reproved even Kings by restraining their power as here Abimelech but it was for their sakes still that so Sarah his anointed might not be touched nor his Prophet Abraham sustain any harm We see now the Observation proved in all the points of it 1. Men do not alwaies commit those evils they would and might do 2. That they do not it is from Gods restraint who with-holdeth them 3. That restraint is an act of his merciful providence and may therefore bear the name of Grace in respect of God who freely giveth it of them whose sins and stripes are the fewer for it of others who are preserved from harmes the better by it The Inferences we are to raise from the premises for our Christian practise and comfort are of two sorts for so much as they may arise from the consideration of Gods Restraining Grace either as it may lye upon other men or as it may lye upon our selves First from the consideration of Gods restraint upon others the Church and children and servants of God may learn to whom they owe their preservation even to the power and goodnesse of their God in restraining the fury of his and their enemies We live among Scorpions and as sheep in the midst of Wolves and they that hate us without a cause and are mad against us are more in number than the hairs of our heads And yet as many and as malicious as they are by the Mercy of God still we are and we live and we prosper in some measure in despite of them all Is it any thanks to them None at all The seed of the Serpent beareth a natural and an immortal hatred against God and all good men and if they had hornes to their curstnesse and power answerable to their wils we should not breath a minute
Hell into one band to do us any harm in our souls in our bodies in our children in our friends in our goods no not so much as our very Pigs or any small thing that we have without the special leave and sufferance of our good God He must have his Dedimus potestatem from him or he can do nothing Fourthly since this restraint is an act of Gods mercy whom we should strive to resemble in nothing more than in shewing mercy let every one of us in imitation of our Heavenly Father and in compassion to the souls of our brethren and for our own good and the good of humane society endeavour our selves faithfully the best we can to restrain and withhold and keep back others from sinning The Magistrate the Minister the Housholder every other man in his place and calling should do their best by rewards punishments rebukes incouragements admonitions perswasions good example and other like means to suppress vice and restrain disorders in those that may any way come within their charge Our first desire should be and for that we should bend our utmost endeavours that if it be possible their hearts might be seasoned with grace and the true fear of God but as in other things where we cannot attain to the full of our first aims Pulchrum est as he saith in secundis tertiisve consistere so here we may take some contentment in it as some fruit of our labours in our Callings if we can but wean them from gross disorders and reduce them from extremely debaucht courses to some good measure of Civility It ought not to be it is not our desire to make men Hypocrites and a meer Civil man is no better yet to us that cannot judge but by the outward behaviour it is less grief when men are Hypocrites than when they are Profane Our first aim is to make you good yet some rejoycing it is to us if we can but make you less evil Our aim is to make you of Natural holy and Spiritual men but we are glad if of dissolute we can but make you good Moral men if in stead of planting Grace we can but root out Vice if in stead of the power of Godliness in the reformation of the inner-man we can but bring you to some tolerable stayedness in the conformity of the outward-man If we can do but this though we are to strive for that our labour is not altogether in vain in the Lord. For hereby first mens sins are both less and fewer and that secondly abateth somewhat both of the number and weight of their stripes and maketh their punishment the easier and thirdly there is less scandal done to Religion which receiveth not so much soil and dis-reputation by close hypocrisie as by lewd and open prophaneness Fourthly the Kingdome of Satan is diminished though not directly in the strength for he loseth never a Subject by it yet somewhat in the glory thereof 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 Mastiffe 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 wilde corruption can either actually or but virtually 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 Egge may be hatched into a Bird and a kirnel sprowt and grow into a tree far be it from us to harbour any such Pelagian conceipts 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 extream 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 wholesome 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 practises 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 cursing and blaspheming they may in time by his good grace be brought to fear an Oath If we restrain them from grosse 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 behinde 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 passe 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 evill wherein we seem to excell our brother is not from nature but from grace not from our selves but from God And here a little let me close with
vernaculum a meer device such as was that of Iezebels instruments against Naboth which cost him his life and that of Zibah against Mephibosheth which had almost cost him all he had This first kind of Report is false as devoyd of Truth The second way which was so frequently used among the Roman Accusers that Custome had made it not onely excusable but allowable and is at this day of too frequent use both in private and publick calumniations is when upon some small ground of truth we run descant at pleasure in our own informations interweaving many untruths among or perverting the speeches actions of our adversaries to make their matters ill when they are not or otherwise aggravating them to make them seem worse than they are As tidings came to David when Amnon only was slain that Absalom had killed all the Kings sons It is an easie and a common thing by misconstruction to deprave whatsoever is most innocently done or spoken The Ammonitish Courtiers dealt so with David when he sent Ambassadors to Hanun in kindness they informed the King as if he had sent Spies to discover the strength of the City and Land And the Iews enemies dealt so with those that of devotion repaired the Temple the Wall of Ierusalem advertising the State as if their purpose had been to fortifie themselves for a Rebellion Yea and the malicious Iewes dealt so with Christ himself taking hold of some words of his about the destroying and building of the Temple which he understood of the temple of his body and so wresting them to the fabrick of the Materiall Temple as to make them serve to give colour to one of the strongest accusations they had against him This second kind of Report is false as devoid of Ingenuity The third way is when taking advantage of the Law we prosecute the extremity thereof against our brother who perhaps hath done something contrary to the letter of the Law but not violated the intent of the Lawgiver or offended either against common Equity which ought to be the measure of just Lawes or against the common good which is in some sort the measure of Equity In that multitude of Lawes which for the repressing of disorders and for the maintenance of peace and tranquillity among men must needs be in every well-governed Common-wealth it â—annot be avoided but that honest men especially if they have much dealings in the world may have sometimes just and necessary cause to do that which in regard of the thing done may bring them within the compasse of some Statute or branch of a statute yet such as circumstances duly considered no wise and indifferent man but would well approve of Now if in such câ—ses alwaies rigour should be used Lawes intended for the benefit should by such hard construction become the bane of humane society As Solomon saith Qui torquet nasum elicit sanguinem He that wringeth the nose too hard forceth blood Guilty this way are not onely those contentious spirits whereof there are too many in the world with whom there is no more adoe but a Word and an Action a Trespasse and a Processe But most of our common Informers withall Sycophâ—nts you may call them for that was their old name like Verres his blood-hounds in Tully that lye in the wind for game and if they can but trip any man upon any breach of a penall Statute there they fasten their teeth and tugge him into the Courts without helpe unlesse he will dare offam Cerbero for that is it they look for give them a sop and then they are charmed for that time Zacheus besides that he was a Publicane was it seemeth such a kind of Informer 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is the word Luk. 19. If I have played the Sycophant with any man if I have wronged any man by forged cavillation or wrung any thing from him by false accusation A report of this third kind is false as devoid of equity But it may be thought I injure these men in making them raisers of false reports and am my selfe a false accuser of them whilst I seek to make them false accusers of others when as they dare appeale to the world they report not any thing but what is most true and what they shall be well able to prove so to be At once to answer them and clear my self know that in Gods estimation and to common intendment in the language of Scripture it is all one to speak an untruth and to speak a truth in undue time and place and manner and with undue circumstances One instance shall make all this most cleer Doeg the Edomite one of the servants of the house of Saul saw when David went into the house of Ahimelech the Priest and how Ahimelech there entertained him and what kindnesse he did for him of all which he afterwards gave Saul particular information in every point according to what he had seen Wherein though he spake no more than what was true and what he had seen with his own eyes yet because he did it with an intent to bring mischief upon Ahimelech who had done nothing but what well became an honest man to do David chargeth him with telling of lyes and telleth him he had a false tongue of his own for it Psal. 53. Thy tongue imagineth wickednesse and with lyes thou cuttest like a sharp rasour Thou hast loved unrighteousnesse more then goodnesse and to talk of lyes more then righteousnesse thou hast loved all words that may do hurt O thou false tongue Conclude hence he that telleth the truth where it may do hurt but especially if he tell it with that purpose and to that end that it may do hurt he hath a false tongue and he telleth a false lye and he must pardon us if we take him for no better than the raiser of a false report We see what it is to raise a false report let us now see what a fault it is The first Accuser that ever was in the world was a false Accuser and that was the Devil Who as he began betimes for he was a liar from the beginning so he began aloft for the first false report he raised was of the most High Unjustly accusing God himself unto our mother Eve in a few words of no fewer than three great crimes at once Falshood Tyranny and Envy He was then a slanderous accuser of his Maker and he hath continued ever since a malicious accuser of his Brethren Sathan 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. he hath his name from it in most languages Slanderers and Backbiters and false Accusers may here hence learn to take knowledge of the rock whence they were hewn here they may behold the top of their pedigree We may not deny them the ancienty of their descent though they have small cause to boast of it semen