time which the Devil chose to set upon him then says my Text that is in the next place after his Baptism which went before Immediately says St. Mark as soon as ever the voice from heaven had said This is my beloved Son 4. Christs manner of addressing himself to the combate He was led up of the Spirit or as St. Luke more emphatically Being full of the Holy Ghost he was led by the Spirit 5. Here are the Lists where the Combate was fought or at least begun to be fought the Wilderness Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit c. Christ put himself upon a Tentation that is the first part of the Text and the Load-star by which all is guided that pertains to the whole matter which I am to handle in this story Other things did fall out at the same time but this was the drift of our Saviour For although we read that he fasted forty days in the Wilderness yet the purpose of his going thither ultimately was not to fast but to be tempted fasting was an accessory he must fast when he was there because there was no food to be had So Moses fasted forty days in Mount Horeb yet he went not up to the Mountain to fast but to receive the Tables of the Law Therefore St. Mark says that Christ was forty days in the Wilderness tempted of Satan but he never speaks of his fasting It is true He did expose himself to both those infirmities in his body he suffered hunger in his soul tentation both at once but his purpose was not to shew how his natural body could subsist a long time without the sustenance of meats but to manifest his strength and innocency in the trial of Tentation That he might say with Davids words and St. Austin says they are his own speech and his own words Psal cxviii 13. Thou hast thrust sore at me that I might fall but the Lord helped me There are many things which will leave our wits in a maze if we cast our eye down from the top of Christs Majesty to the bottom of his infirmity the bread which came down from heaven did hunger strength it self was weak comfort it self was sad and heavy life it self did die but that purity and innocency it self in which no unrighteousness could be found should be instigated over and over to most horrid sins raiseth one point of admiration more than any thing else Magnum fuit facinus Deum conspui alapis caedi verum haec omnia ad malum paenae spectant c. It is a mystery of humility that God himself would be spit upon and beaten and be crown'd with thorns it was very much and yet these at the very worst were but the evils of punishment to be sollicited to distrust in his Fathers providence to be ambitious to be an Idolater these are far more incompetent to the Son of God because they are the evils of sin Let me search it therefore very diligently through all the causes which may be useful to your learning and instruction why Christ would be tempted of the Devil First He yielded himself to be assaulted with strong provocations of evil that he might pity us the more because he knew in his own case and trial what hard encounters we had with the enemy As if a General of a field would lie perdew take his rest on the bare ground assign a place unto himself in battel where he knew there was the greatest danger that he might the better understand and commiserate the distress of the common Souldier St. Paul comforts his brethren the Hebrews with a double consolation First That Christ our High Priest is gone into heaven to make intercession for us there Secondly That he bore all our afflictions upon earth and knows our infirmities here Heb. iv 14. Says he we have a great High Priest that is passed into the heavens and we have not an High Priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities but was in all Points tempted like as we are yet without sin so far as sin might not be admixed or have any place in him so far there was no kind of sorrow or tentation which we undergo but he bore his part therefore he sustain'd not the languors of feavours or sickness which are contracted usually by Luxury always by ignorance to preserve the constitution of our body in good plight both which are most unworthy of this High Priest And as for sin he suffered the outward invitement of tentation in great measure but not the inward rebellion of concupiscence to which we are obnoxious in all points tempted like as we are yet without sin Let not our hope therefore be utterly pressed down with the weight of our sins Christ will have compassion because he knows the devices of our Adversary and how feeble we are to make resistance his Spirit shall not strive with man because he is but flesh and if weak flesh be overcome sometimes by the spirit of darkness he will not be extreme to mark what is done amiss Quia fragilis est in homine conditio non eos ad aeternos servabit cruciatus says St. Hierom Every trespass wherewith our frail nature is deceived by the devil shall not be punished with eternal fire And the knowledge of God discerning of what corrupt metal we are made doth not only cause him to free us from eternal torments but also to mitigate his temporal chastisements Gen. viii 21. And the Lord said in his heart I will not again curse the ground any more for mans sake for the imagination of mans heart is evil from his youth Because the imaginations of mans heart are so evil and will lead him into disobedience therefore the Lord is merciful Once he destroyed the whole earth because all flesh had corrupted its way to satisfie his Justice but no more than once that he might not turn justice into wormwood and bitterness Sweetly St. Ambrose the Lord extended his universal revenge but once Vindicta ad timorem proficit magis quà m ad naturae commutationem quae corrigi in aliquibus potest in omnibus mutari non potest The Lord doth not reiterate his universal punishments for he knoweth that depraved nature may be corrected in some it cannot be changed in all Moses in this point is seconded by David that the discerning of our infirmities doth stir up Gods compassion Psal ciii 14. Like as a father pitieth his children so the Lord pitieth them that fear him Novit enim figmentum nostrum for he knoweth our frame he remembreth that we are dust That is no marvel indeed says Gregory to say he knows our frame and the stuff whereof we are made for there is nothing hid from his knowledge What special notice doth he take of it more than any thing else Gregory answers Figmentum nostrum scire est hoc in seipso ex pietate suscepisse He knows our frame more nearly and intimately
what delight Owls may take to separate themselves and sit alone but Vbi cadaver ibi aquilae where the body is there will the Eagles be gathered This is the fourth Pillar upon which the praise of the Rechabites is erected they were Votaries in one Vow they were joyned in an order and confederacy to serve the Lord When all other Relations will be out of date in heaven perchance quite forgotten the Title of Brotherhood among the Saints shall continue for ever Thus the Rechabites are combined Et illi dixerunt and they all said with one acclamation We will drink no Wine But since I have spoken to the allowance and good liking of such as put themselves into one link and brotherhood of Religion a thing unusual in our ears a word will not be unfitting before I proceed any farther to explain my self and let you know both whom I cast off and whom I would entertain and justifie in this Doctrine First God forbid I should allow any factious conjuration like the desperate Campe of Absolon like Theudas and his Banditi like Judas of Galilee and his Swordmen no nor every foolish Rabble that meets at Tavern must be called an Order We had of late times such as bound themselves in a League as if they had been Rechabites and they chose a name for themselves as if they had been Sheperds I will not say they did drink no wine But this I dare say if they had run riot as they began they would have left themselves as little Land to plow as the Rechabites had neither field nor vineyard The Friers and Monks of Rome they are Orders that seem devoted to the Church and so were the Pharisees Verily some were anciently allowed in the Church to profess such austerity as needed not to counterpoise the Philosophical strict life of many Heathen And as their original was not allowed from God but mans institution so in a little space they grew so bad that almost no zealous Spirit in any Age but did defie the Monasteries In our time their profession of poverty is but lazy beggary their obedience is to gain liberty against them who were made to command them and to profess thraldom to one who usurps authority their Vow of Chastity is to despise the Ordinance of Marriage and to enjoy fleshly liberty their practice is so profane that Boccace an Italian thought they spent all their study to find out this one conclusion that there was no God But the Rechabites fixed themselves so curiously upon the true Worship of God as the Star pointed in a right line to the Manger where Christ was reposed For there is but this double error in enjoying the world First To think through infidelity Deum defuturum ubi promisit that God will fail to provide for us notwithstanding his Promises So runs the Devils Tentation against our Saviour Mat. iv He must command stones to be made bread or he must starve for ever Secondly To run into presumption Deum adfuturum ubi non promisit that God would succour us in those cases where he never passed his word to do it Behold it again in the Sophistry of Satan Cast thy self down for he will give his Angels charge over thee to decline Infidelity the Rechabites commit their bodies to Tabernacles instead of houses They live among strangers instead of their own people Their Substance is the poor increase of their Flocks instead of Lands and Revenues their Diet is Parsimonious they will drink no Wine Yet to decline presumption they exercise a Calling they fill up a good employment in the Commonwealth they have Children and Families to instruct in the Lord. These are the Confederates and Votaries in whose holy life I found but three things before for your imitation 1. Their constancy against enticements 2. Their obedience and awful respects to the Laws of Jonadab 3. Their temperance and religious weaning of their bodies from the surfeited breasts of Drunkenness and Luxury now your patience may expect as it is my duty to perform the last task concerning the Vow of the Rechabites The Fountain is but one but the Head is parted into these four streams 1. What inducements they had to make this Vow 2. That their Vow being made stood upon just and lawful conditions 3. That the greater defenders of Vows the Roman Monks do not imitate the Rechabites 4. That Vows being justly made they are solemnly to be performed and then the Lord is pleased Every part shall be offered again to your remembrance as it is handled In the first place they had encouragement to take this Vow upon them for three reasons 1. As being but strangers to the true Commonwealth of Israel 2. To make the better preparation for the Captivity of Babylon 3. To draw their affections to the content of a little and the contempt of the world We love for the most part to gaze at strangers and curiosity will ask as if it were in Office about their birth and condition Their Genealogy briefly and under correction of better skill is on this wise Midian was born unto Abraham of Ketura Gen. xxv Jethro the Father of Zipporah the Wife of Moses came of that stock being Priest and Son of Midian Exod. ii Hemath is the next in knowledge of that Race and of Hemath came the Kenites 1 Chron. ii 55. Now the Kenites were the Children of Moses's Father-in-Law this is the very Text. Judg. i. 16. They went up out of the City of Palm trees with the Israelites and dwelt among them in the Wilderness and feared the Lord. But the Kenites were voluntary adjoyners not of the Covenant and Inheritance they had none in Canaan no not a foot of ground God having mightily blessed them with a little only by keeping Sheep as their Father Jethro and his Daughters did Rechab and Jonadab provided assurance for their Children among the Israelites for ever And whereas strangers should cast about for two things especially that is neither to be burdensom to the place they live in and eat out the Inhabitants nor to be unprofitable as superfluous parts of the Kingdom So did these men they were bound to plant no Vineyards to till no ground or build houses and who could say they robbed the Country of any Commodity But they fed Flocks and attended their charge in the field least Israel should say we have no need of you Happy men who left the pleasant Country where they were born and followed the Tabernacle into a strange Land where they might be born again by the grace of God As Tully said when he fled from Rome to Pompey Exilium in Pompeii causâ est tanquam patria he that was banished for so good a man was better than at home So resolve we every one to follow the true Church wheresoever it is tossed about in the World there is no banishment to a Christian but to be far from God Earth is our Pilgrimage and Heaven our Country Christus
for the Function What you will say was not Christ first published by poor lay Shepherds and afterward preached unto the world by Fisher-men and then his Resurrection testified by Mary Magdalen and other Women why do we debar them of that now which Christ vouchsaf'd them before I answer Relation is one thing Revelation is another to teach a Doctrine is one thing to testifie an act is another if Christ be born if he be risen again to declare this fact and story honest plain dealing Shepherds and silly Women were fittest instruments and most unlikely to deceive but in matters of Revelation yea or in matter of Doctrine it is otherwise Moses was a Shepherd but never undertook to teach Israel until God mark'd him out for the business and inspired him David was a Shepherd but undertook not to teach divine Psalms and instruct the Church until God instructed him The Apostles were Fishermen but never made the Doctors of the world until the Spirit lighted on them And they that can shew either lawful calling or revelation that the Spirit hath pointed them out let them prosper in the work that they undertake otherwise I must say for the instance of these Shepherds in my Text that they were but faithful relators and witnesses of what they had heard and seen but not Ministers of the Gospel of Christ Of their personality thus far now of their plurality that they were Pastores Shepherds in the Plural at least more than one As some Fathers compute the number of the Wisemen that came out of the East that they were three neither more nor less because three gifts were presented to the Child in his Cradle Gold Myrrhe and Frankincense so these audacious Textmen are bold to say that there were three Shepherds to whom the Angel came neither more nor less and what conjecture moves them to this opinion but because that heavenly Carol which was sung this day from above consists of three parts Glory to God Peace on Earth Good will towards men but whether two or whether twenty it is known only to the Holy Ghost This we read and no more Pastores in eadem regione they were Shepherds in the same Countrey It is a point of care indeed very circumspectly observed in the birth of Kings to have witnesses of good credit and report in the place Ne quis falsus pro vero Rege supponatur lest a supposititious Child should be jugled in for the Heir of the Crown So Shepherds were called to come to the place where they should find Mary and the Babe that the testimony of good men without exception might stand firm against all those that should oppose it And what testimony could be more valid and strong in every part let the Jews cavil as they will they which talk of that which is done afar off may easily be mistaken but these came from the nearest parts to Bethlehem even in the same Country 2. Active and experienced men are more dangerous to trust but the Education of Shepherds is without guile or devices 3. Do not tax their report that it was a sleepy apparition or a dream for my Text avoucheth they were watching over their flocks 4. Lest all the credit of the tidings should lean upon one mans voice Pastores many Shepherds and many Tongues would bear record that they saw in the City of David a Saviour which was Christ the Lord. Now began the Vine that is the Church to stretch forth her branches and all the Husbandmen that could be hir'd were called to labour in the Vineyard the time was when one single Dove returned into the Ark. One David sate alone like a Sparrow upon the house top One Elias that was zealous for the Lord wandred solitary by himself in the Wilderness now they did increase into troops and into multitudes Many wise men drew to Bethlehem to adore the Lord many Shepherds to visit him Peter and Andrew Philip and Nathanael James and John were called together the Church brought forth no less than twins at once to shew her fruitfulness a true sign that they belonged to the Land of Canaan when they hang together full and thick like the Grapes of Eschol in their clusters A lesson for them that affect singularity and think they are in tune when they sing discord flat against all the world He that is one by himself is little better than one beside himself and hath no more cause to boast then a Leper had who dwelt alone and was cast out of the Congregation of Israel Esto gutta in imbre grandinis make a drop in a shower that poures down from Heaven Christ accepts not of the testimony of one alone but of many Vni testi ne Catoni quidem standum a shaft divided from the Quiver may be knapt in sunder when it is in the bundel it is not easily broken I have done with their pluralities now I come to the two last circumstances concerning their office and diligence they watcht that 's not all but they watcht over their flocks that is the sum of all There are two sorts of persons noted for finding out Christ more eminently than others the Shepherds before all others after he was born and Mary Magdalen the first of all men and women as far as we read after his Resurrection The Shepherds were vouchsafed their blessing because they watcht by night Vigilaverunt multum a hard task if you consider the time of the year and Mary was so prosperous because she rose very early in the morning to seek her Lord Vigilavit multum It is hard to say whether ever she slept one wink for care and grief since the Passion of our Saviour and God knows who shall be the first that finds him at his second coming in Glory when he shall come also like a thief in the night but whosoever he be this I am sure of Vigilabit multum he must be none of them that sleep in gluttony that are heavy with surfeiting and drunkenness with chambering and wantonness he must watch or be fit to waken to find the Lord. The enemies of our soul are mighty and many in number our temptations steal upon us as closely as they that come to rob in a mist or in the dark of the night David you know chid with Abner because he watcht no better about Saul his Master The thing is not good that thou hast done as the Lord liveth you are worthy to die because you have not kept your Master the Lords anointed So shall we be rebuk'd if we do not set watch and guard about our soul we deserve to die because we neglected to sence our soul from the incursion of those evil thoughts that will destroy it Slothfulness and idleness are all one as if you took your ease and slept upon your bed it is Vigilantia somno similima a kind of watching that is no better than if you snorted like a sluggard He that will not waken
the same end to make us magnifie God for his Wisdom Goodness and Justice Nay I add compare the Law of Works imposed upon Adam and the Law of Faith imposed upon Christians and both of them are possible to be done For the first man according to the integrity wherein he was created and by the virtue of supernatural Grace bestowed upon him might have obeyed the Commandement given if he had not turned to disobedience and by the Divine help of the same grace we to whom God hath preached the glad tidings of his Son are endewed with power to believe that we may be saved Now in a word let us lay the difference of these two one against another God gave the Law in Paradise as a King in his Justice but he gave the Gospel in Sion as a Father of Grace and Mercy according to that Law the reward had been given ex debito by debt and due say the Schoolmen but to him that believes the reward is given by mere Grace which excludes boasting He that disobey'd that Law was to look for the most strict severity of Justice so condemnation belongs likewise to the unbeliever according to Justice but perhaps it shall be temper'd with some moderation for Christs sake Finally this is the main disagreement the first Covenant made with Adam did exclude all hope of remission of sins but the second Covenant made in Christ runs in this tenour to them that live by Faith your sins shall be blotted out and your iniquities forgotten After you have understood the first point how there was a Law imposed upon Adam when he was created and endewed with original Justice you must now give ear to the next thing in order what heavy and astonishing matter is contained in that Law which was given by Moses to the Children of Israel and remember that I consider the Law deliver'd in the two Tables at Mount Sinai Seorsim and by it self separated from all the promises contained in the Prophets and in the Psalms of David These then are the remarkable differences between the Covenant written in Tables of stone and this Covenant of the New Testament in the Blood of Christ First God gave the Law at Sinai being wrath with our sins for whereas we had lost both the wisdom of our understanding and the loyal obedience of our will by the transgression of our first parent yet God impos'd his Commandement upon us and exacts such measure of holiness which we are not able to perform Therefore that Law was given in the barren Wilderness because it is not able to bring one soul unto God likewise it was delivered with signs full of wrath thunder and lightning and a dreadful noise to shew that God was full of indignation when he laid it upon us On the contrary he made the new Covenant of peace being reconciled to them that were lost or at least proffering reconciliation in his beloved Son Read this Doctrine Heb. xii from the 18. to the 24. verse Ye are not come to the Mount that might not be touched and that burnt with fire nor unto blackness and darkness and tempest and the sound of a trumpet and the voice of words which they that heard entreated they might hear it no more They could not endure that which was commanded And so terrible was the sight that Moses said I exceedingly fear and quake but ye are come to Mount Sion and to the City of the living God c. Wherefore the Gospel was presented with manifest tokens of love and benevolence Ecce Evangelizo behold I bring you good tidings 2. There 's a difference arising between the first Testament and the last from the several Mediators that came between God and the people Moses was a servant faithful in the Family and he was the Mediator of the Old Testament Christ is the Son and Heir of all he was the Mediator of the New The Law was given by Moses Grace and Truth came by Jesus Christ 3. The old Covenant was ratified with the blood of Beasts but loe the New Covenant doth much surpass it which was ratified with the precious Blood of that immaculate Lamb which took away the sins of the world which is therefore called the Blood of the New Testament 4. The old Law in St. Paul's phrase contained poor and beggerly rudiments not able to bring to life It was a killing letter the ministry of death and condemnation it worketh wrath it entred that sin might abound it is like Hagar which gendreth children unto bondage Gal. iv 24. The Gospel is the power of salvation to every one that believeth a quickening Spirit it purgeth us from our sins it speaketh better things than the blood of Abel 5. That which Moses brought was an heavy burden which neither the Fathers nor the Children could bear but of the Gospel Christ saith his yoke is easie and his burden is light and in it you shall find rest for your souls Lastly the Old Testament endured unto Christ and no longer wherefore because it passed away it is called the Old the New Testament remaineth for ever so says St. Paul of our Blessed Saviour taking flesh who is not made after the Law of a carnal Commandment but after the power of an endless life No passage or comparison can be made between them but the Law given at Mount Sinai will appear to be an harsh and most unwelcome injunction and that which doth clear us from the curse thereof is Evangelium the best tidings that ever arriv'd at the ear of man Hitherto I have consider'd the Old Testament in no respect but as it contains the killing letter of the Law but you must not mistake that the Holy Spirit hath interlaced many fast-holdings of Faith and promises Evangelical almost every where in the Prophets and in the Psalms of David Nay the Old Testament is rather Promise than Law yet it was fit the rigour of the Law should be repeated that it might more appear how necessary the promise of Grace was that we could not live without it and that every man being convicted in his conscience by the sentence of the Law we might more ardently fly to Grace for the end of the Moral Law is double to set us a rule what we should endeavour to do and to discover our own impotency unto us what we are not able to do that we may seek a remedy in the satisfaction of Christ But this I say that the darkness and obscurity of the Old Testament was enlightned with many excellent promises that the believing Israelites might be partakers of Faith and of everlasting life they had the same Gospel which we have the same Christ the same Faith the same Spirit sealing the truth of promise unto them Where is then the priviledge you will say that the tidings are better to us then unto them or far surpassing on our side every way Israel that believed in the promised seed was an heir but under age
perfume the sweetness overcomes our sence Here 's one line for a copy and enough to be taken out at one time Vnto you is born this day c. The Text cannot be divided into equal parts for here is one word among them which not only in this place but wheresoever you find it it is like Saul higher by head and shoulders then all the rest As Painters and Guilders write the names of God in glass or upon the walls with many rays and flaming beams to beautifie it round about so the name of Saviour is the great word in my Text and all that is added beside in other circumstances is a trail of golden beams to beautifie it First then with reverend lips and circumcised ears let us begin with the joyful tidings of a Saviour 2. Here 's our participation of him in his Nature natus he is born and made like unto us 3. It is honourable to be made like us but it is beneficial to be made for us and natus vobis unto you is born a Saviour 4. Is not the use of his Birth superannuated the virtue of it long since expir'd no 't is fresh and new as a man is most active when he begins first to run hodie natus he is born this day 5. Is he not like the King in the Gospel who journeyed into a far Country extra orbem solisque vias quite out of the way in another world no the circumstance of place points his dwelling to be near in civitate David he is born in the City of David 6. Perhaps to make him man is to quite unmake him shall we find him able to subdue our enemies and save us since he hath taken upon him the condition of humane fragility yes the last words speak his excellency and power for he is Christus Dominus such a Saviour as is Christ the Lord for unto you is born this day in the City of David c. The beginning of our days work is from that word which magnifies him that is the word of God above all things for he is a Saviour Time was when the children of Israel had rather Moses should speak unto them than God Speak thou with us and we will hear but let not God speak with us lest we dye Exod. xx 19. Now let Israel say let not Moses speak with us nor the Law for then we shall surely die Above all tongues let the Angel speak with us that proclaims a Saviour and we shall surely live If all comfort in the world were forgotten nothing but darkness and weeping and captivity over all the earth yet here 's a word which is enough to turn all that sorrow into gladness yea to turn Hell it self into Heaven This day is born unto you a Saviour it comprehends all other names of Grace and blessing as Manna is said to have all kind of sapors in it to please the taste When you have call'd him the glass in which we see all truth the fountain in which we taste all sweetness the ark in which all precious things are laid up the pearl which is worth all other riches the flower of Jesse which hath the savour of life unto life the bread that satisfieth all hunger the medicine that healeth all sickness the light that dispelleth all darkness when you have run over all these and as many more glorious titles as you can lay on this one word is above them and you may pick them all out of these syllables a Saviour which is Christ the Lord. Abraham could endure to live in a strange Land nay he could endure to want his only Son Isaac if God pleas'd Elias could want his bodily sustenance for forty days John Baptist could want the comfort of all society in the Wilderness Peter could leave all he had and want his substance Paul could live in bonds and want his liberty Paphnutius could want his eyes yea the Martyrs for Christs sake could want their lives but they could not be without the redemption of their soul they could not want a Saviour The Prophet Isaiah hath foretold that the heaven and earth should joyn their strength together to make a Saviour Isa xlv 8. Drop down the heavens from above and let the earth open and let them bring forth salvation that 's the effect and the 15. verse speaks of the person O God of Israel the Saviour The heavens must drop down from above and the earth must open and concur beneath the whole universe must be put together the Divine Nature and the Humane tantae molis erat to make a Saviour To confuse the Jews with this place I have read of a learned Scribe of theirs one Rabbi Accados who wrote thus before the coming of Christ that the Messias should come into the world to save men and the Gentiles should call him Jesus or the Saviour of the world Indeed the Gentiles did not only do so after our Saviours ascension into Heaven being taught unto it by the Apostolical preaching but in the time of Idolatry which is very strange Tully says in the 4. Oration against Verres that he saw an Image at Syracuse in Sicily with this Inscription upon it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a Saviour and he admires at the strong significancy of the word Hoc quantum est magnum est ut latine exprimi uno verbo non possit to give salvation or to be a Saviour is such an appellative that all the Latine tongue was not furnished with a word to set it forth But what if their language could have fit it that 's nothing unless the soul do unite it to it self and write it upon the tables of the heart But that the name may not be an empty sound to us as it was to them consider these three things 1. With what honour it was impos'd 2. What excellency it includes 3. What reverence it deserves For the first of these an honour in the imposition of a name will ever stick by the person and the origen hereof came from the chiefest that is above all Phil. ii 9. Wherefore God hath highly exalted him and given him a name which is above every name It was ever of old in the right of the Father to give a name unto his child Zachary when he could not speak call'd for writing tables to appoint the name of John the Baptist therefore Christ having no Father on earth his Father gave him a name from Heaven His Father gave it but he did commit it to the trust of an Angel to bring it for the Angel was the first that ever mention'd it to Joseph the husband of Mary in a dream Thou shalt call his name Jesus for he shall save his people from their sins Matth. i. 21. God gave it the Angel brought it and men did assign it the eighth day when he was circumcised his name was called Jesus which was so named of the Angel before he was conceived in the Womb. Hereupon Bernard casts in
be to God on high because he hath made peace on earth Lord let me not be at war with my own heart though all the world should defie me and set themselves against me As a continual dripping of humors upon the lungs consumes the body so a continual disquieting of mind as if viols of anger from heaven were ready to be poured upon it breeds such an anxiety in the whole man that he will wish his whole substance were dissolved into nothing O thrice happy when God sends that serenity of favour into our thoughts and cogitations to make us truly say with David Turn again unto thy rest O my soul Psal cxvi 7. This is that peace which the world cannot give This is St. Paul's confidence against all opposers Who is he that condemneth it is Christ that justifieth When the Wise men askt Where is he that is born King of the Jews Herod was troubled and all Jerusalem with him So sore troubled that he would not spare poor inoffensive babes who could not offend him no not his own babes as some say who were the pillars of his family when he thrust his sword into them he digged into his own bowels No man is able to express what a discomfortable mutiny this wretch had within himself No plague like a wounded disturbed spirit whereas old Simeon that saw death at the door that felt one foot in the Grave was exhilerated for all that through the joy which he had in Christ and warbled that Swan-like Dirge over his own Grave Lord now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace Wherefore if there be any of you which have a conscience sorely wounded with horror and even tempted to despair which God forbid chide it with David out of that dreadful moode Why art thou so sad O my soul and why art thou so disquieted within me Hath not Christ said there is peace between God and thee and dost thou say there is enmity foolish heart shall I not rather believe the tidings which an Angel brings than that which thou dost suggest and doth not he say Peace on earth Whosoever will not be cheared up will not be comforted will not be established with hope from this sweet proclamation which the Ministers of Heaven sang unto the Shepherds it had been better for him that he had never been born nay I speak it with reverence to God and condemnation to such a one it had been better for him that Christ had never been born because he receives not the Son of God into his heart neither believes in his Redemption Many flagitious sins do make men as execrable before God as the devil himself but he that despairs of Gods mercies as if Christ would not keep his Covenant of peace with him I may truly pronounce it against him that he is even possessed with a devil O cast forth that evil Spirit and be resolved the Lord would never have sent his Angel to sing the Hymn of peace unto men but to revive our souls and to raise them up from dust and despair because he is gracious and favourable to all penitent sinners And thus you have heard that upon the occasion of this blessed Nativity of Christs the Angels have congratulated both heaven and earth as David foretold it Psal xcvi 11. Let the heavens rejoyce and let the earth be glad The congratulation to men on earth hath been unfolded in two members that there is peace above us which passeth all understanding and peace within us such as the world cannot give Thirdly It follows they sing and rejoyce for our sakes that there is peace without us and on every side a good way laid open to take away all Schisms strifes divisions debates and as Solomon says in his mystical Song the voice of the Turtle is heard in our land What a hurly burly was in the world before Christ made his Church one body out of all Languages and Nations They that professed the Law of Moses you know had no communication with those millions of millions that knew no Schoolmaster to teach them but the law of nature Among those few that were zealous of the Law the Jew forsook them of Israel of the ten Tribes for Rebels and Idolaters Among the Jews the Pharisee condemned the Sadducce for an Heretick Then the Samaritan had an antipathy both against Jew and Israelite and all these accounted of the Gentiles no other ways than as bond-slaves of the Devil Here was nothing but hate and defiance between one Sect and another over all the world until Christ broke down the wall of separation made of two one invited them all to embrace and to greet one another with an holy kiss Thus the Prophet Isaiah upon it Chap. xix 23. in his stately but dark eloquence In that day shall there be a high-way out of Egypt to Assyria and the Assyrians shall come into Egypt and the Egyptian into Assyria and in that day shall Israel be the third with Egypt and Assyria that is there shall be traffique and friendship and conversation together from one Nation to another over all the earth And indeed National feuds are the more odious and unchristian by how much Christ hath called all people to the sprinkling of the same water and to alike participation of his Body and Blood at the same table And it was well apprehended of one that God hath given unto men more excellent gifts in the skill of Navigation since his Son is born than ever they had before that he might shew the way how all the Kingdoms of the earth should be sociable together for Christ hath breathed his peace upon all the Kingdoms of the world Then I descend from generals to specials The Angels did not only see that our Saviour had built a wall of Charity as it were about the whole earth and made it one but that his Gospel is the love knot and band of agreement between one member and another in all particular persons It turns the hearts of the Fathers unto the Children and of the Children unto the Fathers it makes peace conjugal between man and wife for Marriage is a Mystery of Christ and his Church and the instance which the Apostle lays before us is how Christ loved his Church and laid down his life for it It attones variances between Neighbour and Neighbour for it calls upon us to forgive and put up injuries it non-suits many actions of trespass between man and man with St. Pauls sweet proposition to the Corinthians Why do ye not rather suffer wrong That jangling fellow in the Gospel that came to Jesus to give him authority for his contention Dic fratri ut mecum dividat Master bid my brother that he divide the inheritance with me our Lord put him off and would hear of no division Such motions did jar in the ear of him that was the God of reconciliation The Law of Moses either was or did seem to be vindicative an eye for an eye
Blessed is the Womb that bare thee and the Paps whcih thou hast sucked But he said Yea rather blessed are they that hear the word of God and keep it THis is the Sons day and not the Mothers This is Christs own day and not Maries Therefore it is not for the Wombs sake but for the Fruit of the Womb not for the Paps of a mortal woman but for the Infants sake an immortal God that I have chosen this Text. A good Israelitess she was that magnified Christ on this manner though she was not spoken to yet her heart was full and she must speak for her joy would have stifled her if she had not uttered it If you mark the Context of the Chapter immediately before these words our Saviour had taught his Disciples to pray most divinely he had cast out devils most triumphantly he had answered the Calumniations of the Pharisees most rationally he had put on glorious apparel as the Psalmist says and girded himself with strength While these wonderful works were fresh in memory the Lord from on high could have sent Legions of Angels to magnifie his Son and to praise him with celestial Canticles But to strike the greater shame into the Pharisees that had blasphemed him he stirs up a woman a nameless one a poor Plebeian one not admitted near him she stood afar off and was fain to speak aloud to be heard Blessed is the Womb that bare thee and the Paps which thou hast sucked It was a free acclamation a sudden start a passion that came from her spirit ex tempore and that I may give Christ his full honour and attribute no more to the woman than is truth she prophesied in this saying of greater things than at that time she understood The Holy Ghost gave her the priviledge to be the tongue that delivered this Congratulation but it remains to us to lend it an heart that we may truly conceive it For the inward sense of it is the gladsom contents of this day blessed be the Father of all mercies for the Incarnation of his Son that he was made of a woman for our sakes and blessed are all mankind that he hath taken flesh of our flesh and that he is made partaker of our humane nature But because it would not prove our benefit that he was born for us unless he be born in us likewise by faith and obedience it follows to make our joy and crown complete yea rather blessed are they that hear c. The parts are as manifestly two as the two hands wherewith we handle First Blessedness offered to us in Christs Incarnation Secondly Blessedness made complete in our own application The woman begins the Text in the first part Christ finished in the second She said well for his Incarnation Blessed is the Womb that bare thee He makes it much better by stirrig us up to the use and fruit of it yea rather c. She blesseth Christ and Christ blesseth us she would have all felicity to rest in him he would have a share of felicity to be derived to us A pretty strife between a devout Creature and a merciful Creator between an humble Servant and a bountiful Master between a true faith that heaps all honour upon God and between a gracious God that heaps the treasures of his riches upon a true faith To begin with that which the woman said it must be considered two ways in a Litteral sense such as flesh and bloud revealed to her And in a Prophetical sense above her understanding such as the Spirit of God hath revealed to us Blessed is the Womb that bare thee And so it was indeed according to the Latitude of this womans natural understanding For first she knew at large that it was a blessed thing to be an Instrument or conveyance of any great good unto others Blessed above women shall Jael the wife of Heber be blessed shall she be above women in the Tent Judg. v. 24. Shee had done her part to work deliverance for Israel And when Judith had sped in her adventure to cut off the head of Holofernes says Oziah Blessed art thou of the most high God above all the women upon earth Judith xiii 18. A good Messenger is called an happy and the feet of those are pronounced beautiful that bring glad tidings of peace It is a narrow and an abject conceit of some that think themselves fortunate and at the best when they receive and take in all that can be heapt upon them These men measure felicity backward for beatius est dare quam accipere it is more blessed to give than to receive Though that Maxim be not extant in any of the Evangelists St. Paul tells us upon his credit it was our Saviours The souls of them that are converted to true holiness shall bless the lips of the Priest the poor shall bless the liberal after Ages shall bless publick Spirits that do famous things and are provident for Posterity A Cistern that contains the waters poured into it is much inferiour to a Fountain that sends them forth It is nothing so laudible to be wrought upon as to work that which is honourable Even the Parents that have enricht the world with such as are ornaments unto it benediction reflects upon them for it because they are Conduit pipes of publick felicity Yet all those that have made others happy by their gifts and qualities had been for ever unhappy themselves if the Child that was born this day had not suckt the breasts of a Virgin O happy Parent whose Womb contained all the treasure that maintains the whole earth Somewhat she collineated at this meaning that said unto our Saviour Blessed c. And each Parent partakes in this reason that it is joy and honour to them to have a renowned Son and it may be this woman was partial to her own Sex that contented her self to speak of no more than the womb of the Mother In strict Divinity indeed her words are admirable for Christ had no Father according to the flesh but that is more than I collect out of St. Luke that she mentioned not his Father for that reason But in all humane births that prove successful and glorious the loyns of the Father are blessed as well as the womb of the Mother and the glory of children are their Fathers Prov. xvii 6. Yet in the next construction of mere natural capacity it was proper to say for his sake blessed is the womb because barrenness was a curse and fruitfulness of children a blessing They that propagate a faithful seed upon earth give the means to replenish heaven with Saints it is that wherein we exceed Angels to beget Sons and Daughters in our own likeness and to continue a Generation like our selves makes mankind by succession as incorruptible as the Angels God blessed all living Creatures mark that God blessed them and said unto them be fruitful and multiply Gen. i. 28. Though the Lord said
was to be feared that he was to be admired for his excellency that he was increate immortal eternal and not like the Idols of the Heathen there was Grace and Religion other Nations knew not him therefore he puts them by as if he knew not them he is the God of Israel Secondly This whole World is made for no other end but that Christ may exalt his Dominion in it and therefore the Nation of whom he was to come according to the Flesh that is spoken of as if it belonged to God alone and all other People were quite forgotten Well therefore might Zachary say O thou God of Israel for upon the Nativity of Christ now it was fulfilled why long since he was called the God of Israel His Incarnation as old Simeon said it was the glory of his people Israel his conversation among them was their temporal protection that their enemies should not devour them while he was with them upon earth his word confirmed it that the children of the Bride-chamber should not mourn while the Bridegroom was with them Finally His appearance among them in the Flesh was their spiritual exaltation for he preacht to none other but to the lost sheep of the house of Israel But Israel doth now no longer stand for those that according to the Flesh descended out of the Loyns of Abraham as St. Paul says he is a Jew that is one inwardly Rom. ii 29. So he is an Israelite that is a true man like Nathanael that hath no guile in him he that believeth in Christ that visited and redeemed Israel And that you may know the term stands now for the Church of the Faithful and Elect St. Paul calls them that walk according to the rule of Jesus Christ the Israel of God Gal. vi 16. You know that Jacob wrestled with an Angel of God at Peniel and thereupon the Angel changed his name and called him Israel because as a Prince he had power with God and men and had prevailed Gen. xxxii 28. he prevailed over men that is over his Persecutors Esau and Laban He prevailed with God by tears and supplications and this is the exact description of all those that belong to the Church of Christ that is of the Israel of God Their outward foes shall be subdued unto them when God shall think it time to put an end to their sufferings they must overcome their spiritual Foes that is get the victory over the passions and lusts of their own flesh vanquish the Devil overcome the attractive delights of the world and then they shall be no more Jacob but Israel they shall prevail with God It is well noted by one that when the Church in holy Scripture speaks of her infirmity she is called Jacob when she speaks of her happiness she is called Israel Isa xli 14. Fear not thou worm Jacob and Amos vii 2. by whom shall Jacob arise for he is small but in a thousand places ye shall find thus saith the Lord God the King of Israel and never was the Church in more prosperity then when Christ came among us in the likeness of man then it was not Jacob the worm but it grew mighty indeed it prevailed with him that sits on high then it was fit the Song should run in the best title Blessed be the Lord God of Israel You have received the first part of the Text entirely in every particle the solemn praise of the Divine goodness now follows the reason in two most glorious acts why the God of Israel deserveth this praise For he hath visited and redeemed his people Blessed be his name for he hath visited blessed be the Lord for he hath done marvellous things We want not many of these fo rs when we ascribe excellency to the King of Heaven Fame is a good companion for Virtue I love to see them fast together let there want no praise if there be a quia visitavit a good reason for it a deserving action to advance it but to spend our good word upon them that have no merit to speak good of the covetous as David saith whom God abhorreth to cry up Absalom among the people for a little out-side formality such praise is most fulsom that 's broacht either by flattery or ignorance When renown is so ill bestowed upon the wicked it makes the righteous that they do not regard it But the object of Zachary's benediction is so gracious so full of perfection that when we say all we can in the honour thereof we shall say too little for he hath visited for he hath redeemed his people The first of these is that which makes this the double double Holy day above all the Feasts of the year visitavit he visited and it is once again repeated in this Hymn of Zachary's the day-spring from on high hath visited us ver 78. Some there be that collect the three capital works of Christs dispensation out of my Text and the verse that follows for that he visited us say they it denotes his Incarnation that he redeemed us it betokens his Death and Passion that the horn of salvation was raised up in the house of his servant David it implies his Resurrection I think these things are minc'd asunder that should not be divided but all agree that to visit is a word so proper to Christmas-day as none more namely to take flesh and to dwell among us Doth the same fountain says S. James send forth sweet waters and bitter why that 's no such marvail for this very word to visit is so diverse in holy Scripture that sometimes it relisheth as sweet as mercy can make it sometimes it is as bitter as the very gall of his anger can temper it Visitat quando flagellat quando miseretur says S. Austin God visiteth when he punisheth and he visits when he pittieth In the first acception nothing is better known than that of the Decalogue Visiting the sins of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me And again I will visit their offences with the rod and their sins with scourges and in the Latin Translation Jer. xxvii 8. That Nation will I visit with sword with famine and with pestilence And Psal lix 5. Thou Lord of Hosts awake and visit the Heathen and be not merciful to any wicked transgressors From hence we have drawn it into our common phrase that we call the infliction of the contagious Pestilence the visitation of the Lord. God is ever present with us but when he shews himself to be present by some exterior and notable work bringing his Judgment or his Mercy in a conspicuous manner to our City or even to the doors of our own house then he is said to visit us And if it be a visitation of vengeance yet refrain not to say Blessed be the Lord God of Israel whether he send his Angel with a Sword to smite us or with a Song as at Christs Nativity
being before ever time began But take him with the stile he had from his very birth and then every thing must draw towards him that will not wilfully loose it self for he is Iesus natus a Saviour born A man that is like to perish is willing to catch hold of any thing to save himself whole Kingdoms and Empires when they are in distress are ready to put their trust in any man that hath courage to defend them Alas these are Salvatores facti Saviours made and deliverers by accident sometimes they help a little sometimes they quite fail great expectations are often raised of them and of a sudden all hopes are chilled like Augustus his Marcellus full of great promises but Hunc tantum terris ostendunt fata neque ultra esse sinunt after a little while snatcht away and when the breath of man goes forth then all his thoughts and our expectations perish but he that is Iesus natus a Saviour from his birth yea and before his birth he is a Saviour from everlasting and his deliverances shall never fail This indeed was worth all the pains the Wise-men could take though they had run through fire and water to see that Redeemer who could make it good as soon as ever he was born to all that believed in him this day is Salvation come unto your house whose birth from the womb was as the dew of the morning which watered all the earth Beloved I draw the Point to this instruction Christus quotidie nascitur sapientibus though there be but one Christmass day in the year yet Christ is every day born unto them that are wise in faith So often as with all due circumstances of Piety you importune the Lord to be reconciled unto you and to blot out the hand-writing of enmities which is against you so often a Saviour is born unto you Move towards him continually Non pedibus sed affectibus not with bodily paces but with spiritual affections by love by obedience by prayer by visiting his holy Temple by drawing near to his most holy Table by desiring to be dissolved to be out of the body that you may be in bliss with him for ever If you guide not the Compass of your Voyage towards him which way can you go and not wander dangerously If he be absent far from you O run out to seek him and when ye are yet far off he will run to meet you so did the Father in the Parable to his reclaimed prodigal Child Wise Virgins will go forth to meet the Bridegroom Wise-men will leave the ease and sweetness of their own Country to find out and worship their Saviour all other joggings about the more they keep off from this the more they incline to folly Go therefore to find out Christ this day or any day and Christ is born unto you And so much for the occasion both of their doings and of their sayings reduced to the best of all occasions Now when Jesus was born And this birth hath two circumstances of great consideration the former is of the place in Bethlehem of Judea A place recorded in Scripture not for any dignity that Christ had by it to be brought forth there every man thinks well of his native soil as Paul could not refrain to set forth his Tarsus of Cilicia with honourable mention that he was a Citizen of no ignoble City but it is but small lustre that the place can cast upon any man wheresoever it is his lot to be teemed the name of Bethlehem stands not here upon any such regard but to shew that all things were come to pass which the Prophets had foretold concerning the days of Christ for because our Saviour was laid in his Cradle and did not speak for himself here are five Prophesies in my Text that speak for him First That Bethlehem was the seat of his first infancy the Scribes themselves confess that the Prophet Micah said it should be so Chap. v. 2. But thou Bethlehem Ephratah though thou be little among the thousands of Judah yet out of thee shall come forth unto me he that is to be Ruler in Israel Secondly The time in the days of Herod the King falls out as Jacob prophesied Gen. xlix The Scepter shall not depart from Judah nor a Law-giver from between his feet until Shiloh come and unto him shall the gathering of the people be This misery was now come to pass in the days of Herod a stranger of the Gentiles ruled over them and the like was never before excepting the little space of the Babylonish Captivity since the time they came out of Egypt Thirdly The apparition of the Star was anciently mentioned There shall come a Star out of Jacob and a Scepter shall rise out of Israel It is Balaams Parable but the Spirit of God compelled him to utter it Num. xxiv 17. Fourthly The coming of these Wise-men is a Prophetical Prediction Isa lx 3. The Gentiles shall come to thy light and Kings to the brightness of thy rising Fifthly Their Presents and the Treasures which they offered up are spoken of in a noted Psalm The Kings of Tarsis and of the Isles shall give gifts the Kings of Arabia and Saba shall bring Presents In two verses an allusion to five Prophesies and all scattered in several Prophets and all fulfilled together in one concurrency I do not remember where the like is to be found but the wisdom of God which disposeth all things so sweetly is wonderful in our eyes But among all these particulars foretold by the Spirit of God in the present Point I labour to illustrate no more but that our Saviour was a Bethlehemite The whole Convocation of chief Priests and Scribes resolved Herod that Christ must be born there in three verses after my Text. The Jews both of old and even to this day as I read in credible Authors teach their Children by way of Catechism all the Prophesies that concern the Messias it is likely it was so of old for every body could speak of this place at the first hearing if you did but name the Messias It is true that the usual abode of his Parents was Nazareth in Galilee this did stumble divers good men that were willing to believe Says Nathanael Can any good come out of Nazareth His meaning is could the chief good come out of Nazareth that should bring redemption to Israel And in the seventh of S. John others that took him for a Prophet objected Shall Christ come out of Galilee Hath not the Scripture said that Christ cometh of the Seed of David and out of the Town of Bethlehem where David was Now the perverse Jews at this day with whom the holy Evangelists and their relations are in no credit prevaricate with the Prophesie of Micah that it was verified in Zorobabel So they cavilled in St. Chrysostoms and Theodorets days but admitting that Zorobabel was a Bethlehemite it is past their skill to make those words of the
that Herod had a Son born who was heir to the Crown they could not mean it for then they would never have made a question where he was born but have gone directly to his Fathers Palace Where should he be born else Besides all Herods Sons were grown to manly stature beside none of his children were born to any right of succession for in those days the Kingdom of Judaea was appointed to them who were most in favour with the Court of Rome But the meaning must be Where is that King of the Jews that is born That King of whom we have been told that all Nations shall worship and obey him For else what had they to do with the King of another Kingdom as St. Austin says Nisi â—am agnoscerent regem Judaeorum qui rex est etiam seculorum but that they acknowledge though Jury gave him birth yet all the world and all Ages should do him homage They do not say they came to see him upon his fame or upon any exploit that he ever yet did but upon the presages of that glorious Kingdom which should be his in time to come O the wonderful working of the Lord and O the power of his grace where he gives it an effectual blessing Some relations or traditions these Magi had had perhaps from no better hand than Balaams and his Successors with these poor means and with the help of the Star what Mysteries they pickt out of it God knows they make a better confession of their faith than the Jews did with the helps of all the Prophets Illi consitentur alienum regem isti proprium non agnoscunt yet these strangers did confess a foraign King as it were the Jews denied him though most principally he was their own They were angry to the death at Herod a stranger that he was their King now God opens them a royal way that they may have a King of their own if they will and yet they refuse him It is an argument of no small force to beat down infidelity that the heathen in most parts of the world did speak of an extraordinary King that was to come in that age and some of them directly pointed out Judea for the place Suetonius says that it stirred up the Jews to rebellion because there was a constant saying in all the Eastern Countries Perâ—rebuit in oriente toto vetus constans opinio mark it for these Wise-mens sakes Esse in fatis ut eo tempore Judaeâ profecti rerum potirentur That it was destined that about that time some should come out of Judea that should reign over all the world And that grave Author Cicero says a certain fellow whom he was angry at interpreted Sibyls verses that he whom we had or must have to be our King Appellandum esse regem si salviesse vellemus We must call him a King if we would be saved But he was no such King as Tully feared that would erect a Monarchy and destroy the liberty of the Senate I have been copious before you but lately that Christ was possessed of no temporal soveraignty in refutation that Satan shewed him all the Kingdoms of the world and said All these things will I give thee The Jews were angry with him that he would not meddle with temporal things but they themselves have lost all their temporalties for refusing him Christ was born a King as the world gave testimony in my Text and died a King as Pilate gave testimony in the title upon his Cross Jesus of Nazareth the King of the Jews Nor was he simply a King allotting him a spiritual Kingdom as I have lately discoursed upon it but a King of Kings anointed with the oyl of gladness above his fellows I will make him my first-born higher than the Kings of the earth Psal lxxxix 28. His Kingly Office is part of his Mediatorship by which he reconciles us to God and saves us from our sins and cloaths us with righteousness And to understand that point of faith clearly these are qualities of his Kingly Office 1. To choose out his own Subjects that is the members of his Church 2. To give them Laws to keep 3. To provide for their peace and to keep the enemy from them 4. To call all the world before him in the last and universal Judgment But that legislation the appointing of Laws to his Subjects is the most conspicuous part of that Office in this life and believe the Prophet Ezech. for it Chap. xxxvii 24. David my servant shall be King over them and they shall all have one shepherd they shall also walk in my judgments and observe my Statutes to do them You see wherein the Kingdom of the Son of David consists to give us Statutes and Judgments to do them He commands the heavens above as it seems by this Star and who are we that should not obey him Quis est iste rex tam parvus tam magnus nondum in terris loquens in coelis edicta proponens What King is this says St. Austin so little for he is but new born and yet so great an Infant that hath not yet spoken and yet his Edicts are kept in heaven We are willing and content at his Priestly office that he should die for us on the Cross and intercede for us to his Father we are willing he should be our Prophet to teach us and will you make his Kingly Office stand for a Cypher Shall he not give us Law and bind us to his Commandments That Office stands for all the rest and the Wise-men ask about it instead of all beside Where is be that is born King of the Jews So I have done with their Question And I have need to make haste to the first of their Assertions which is very copious in the contents Vidimus enim stellam ejus in oriente for we have seen his Star in the East The particulars to be inquired into are 1. What was the substance of this Star 2. How it appeared in the East 3. What aptitude there was in such a sign or miracle to bring them to Christ 4. Why it is appropriatively called his Star 5. Whether there were no secret illumination an invisible but a better star than this which made them true believers These sayings of the Wise-men troubled all Jerusalem says the next verse and no marvel for they have troubled the whole common-wealth of Learning ever since what this Star should be All Authors meet in one consent that this could be no star fix'd and remaining in the Firmament aloft for how can it be imagined that any of those heavenly lights so remote could point to one Country more than another to a little Village in that Country nay to a Stable in that Village 2. Natural Creatures are no convenient presages of the supernatural works of God Moreover they that swallow it down without mistrust that the Star went along with the Wise-men all the way from the
so notorious that all heathen Histories which toucht upon those times would have spoken of it Secondly At the ninth verse of this Chapter we read Lo the Star which they saw in the East not low the Star which ushered them through all their journey And thirdly When they came to Judea they took in at Jerusalem to seek Christ there but what probability is there that the light of God could carry them to a wrong place Thus far upon one opinion You shall now hair what some say and almost all of the best antiquity for the other conclusion Namely that the Star was their constant companion all their journey and that it rested over all places where they rested till they came to Jerusalem First As the manner of the Fathers is to illustrate the New Testament with the Old they consider that the Pillar of the cloud went along with the Children of Israel wheresoever they removed and rested in the place where they pitched their Camps but this Star attended the Gospel as thaâ— Cloud attended the Law and God was as constant in his favour to the one as to the other And some go further that an Angel of the Lord did always remove the Cloud with his motion when the Israelites marched away mine Angel shall go before thee and bring thee into the Land of the Amorites and Hittites Exod. xxiii So an Angel did move this Star from the East to Jerusalem for says St. Austin Mark how that light vanisht not away till they took in at Jerusalem Hoc non cogit motus sideris sed virtus plena rationis I will never say an inanimate Star could so guide it self but by Angelical vertue No bright Star did shine upon that City where the Scribes and stiff-necked Jews were congregated for their hearts were blind and their understanding did not see the Nativity of Christ So at his Passion there was thick darkness over all the Land of Judah for they resisted the truth and would neither know the mysteries of his Death nor of his Incarnation If this were portended it was an intelligent Star that went with the Magi all the way till they were housed in Jerusalem as the Cloud passed on before the Tribes of Israel from Mount Sinah till they came to Canaan Thus far upon collation between the Old Testament and New there are other reasons assayed to be drawn out of the Text that the Star kept way with them to their journeys end as at the ninth verse of this Chapter Loe the Star which they saw in the East went before them till it came and stood over where the Child was If it marshall'd them which way to go from Jerusalem to Bethlehem why not also from their own Country to Jerusalem At the next verse When they saw the Star they rejoyced with exceeding great joy The Scribes had told them where they should find Christ why then should they rejoyce so much to see the Star again but because it was a new thing to have it vanish Moreover the Star vanishing when they went into Jerusalem they suspected Christ might be there and askt for him but if their Leader had forsaken them as soon as ever it first shined they would have askt in many other places And by what art could they collect that a Star glaring in their eyes in the East and wagging no further should notifie unto them the Land of Judea rather than any other neighbouring Country And what skills it that all Histories are silent and take no notice that there was such a wonder in the World Though many holy things were common in those days and well known yet the Lord chose not the heathen to be witnesses of his glory and so they over-pass'd them Or perhaps the Star was visible to these Wise-men and the eyes of others were held that they should not see it John Baptist saw the Spirit of God descending like a Dove upon Christ He saw it says the Text Mat. iii. 16. it is uncertain if any beside did see it Paul heard a voice from heaven but they that were with him heard it not Acts xxii 9. Or be it so that many others might behold this Star yet they knew not to what end it was sent but made some constructions of humane reason upon it wide mistakes upon heavenly tokens as when God answered Christs Prayer from heaven that He had both glorified his name and would glorifie it the people said it thundred Not to be long in this point because faith is bound to neither opinion this is sure the Star hid it self away for a time but they recovered sight of it again before their journeys end so the Spirit may draw back his comfort and illumination for a time from those that are graciously called to come to Christ their sins deserve it and God will make them more careful to stand sure because they have stumbled but at last before their journey be done before they end their days the light shall be renewed again to guide their feet into the land of the living The third question of enquiry is what aptitude there was in such a sign or miracle to bring the Wise men unto Christ Outward aptitude is not always discerned in the means of a mans Conversion nay sometimes the means used seem most repugnant to bring that end to pass Who would have imagined that the way to make a Publican a Disciple had been to call him from the receipt of Custom and quite to give over his traffique yet this wrought well with St. Matthew or that the Woman of Samaria would the sooner have believed Christ to be the Messias because she was upbraided to be a Concubine He whom thou now hast is not thy Husband yet this way did take with her These are courses to pose natural reason in the work of Regeneration But with sundry other persons the Lord did descend in a familiar way to their capacity and drew them to heaven by things that were obvious to their notion Baptism or washing often was a thing most ordinary with the Jews the more ordinary the sooner did Christ use it to be the initial Sacrament that should bring them unto life Fishermen were put into admiration of Christs power by a mighty draught of fish and the Text whereupon St. Paul preach'd to the Athenians was their own Altar of the unknown God So the Eastern Philosophers who were skilful in the Sphere and in the course of the Stars are attracted by a wonderful Star to the first taste of Christianity Vt per Christum materia erroris fieret occasiâ— salutis says St. Austin That contemplation of Stars which lead them out of the way of truth doth now bring them to him who is the way the truth and the life You see what aptitude there was in a Star to be an instrument of the conversion of these Wise-men There are other apt proportions in it which Piety and good Meditation hath framed First to shew that God
eldest Fathers that some may go out of the world without this Sacrament by unavoidable necessity and their faith shall suffice to save them as if they had been baptized his saying is very memorable Sola interdum sides sufficit ad salutem fine ipsâ nihil sufficit Sometimes faith alone is enough to bring salvation to a man and without it nothing is enough Valentinian the Emperour having given battel to the Sarmatians and other Scythian Rebels broke a vein with out-cries to his Captains and eager encouragement to his Souldiers and soon after died in his Tent unbaptized yet St. Ambrose comforts his Subjects in a Funeral Oration that their Emperours soul was with God because his life was religious and his heart desired the benediction of that Sacrament St. Austin enrolls all Martyrs in the Catalogue of the Saints of heaven albeit Persecution snatcht them away suddenly before they could be baptized And that God will remit their sins who lay down their lives for his sake Quantùm si sacro fonte abluerentur as if they had been washed at the sacred Font. Why this was well and charitably concluded not as if Martyrdom did equal the vertue of Baptism but because it was joyned with an eminent faith Now God may see as much faith in one dying as if he were to suffer Martyrdom Fides idonea martyrio licet non interrogata martyrio says Bernard Therefore that faith shall stand them in as much stead as if they had actually been brought to Martyrdom Finally Whereas John Baptist may seem to desire this Sacrament in my Text saying I have need to be baptized it appears not whatsoever some Apocryphal Stories say that Christ did baptize him in water but the Learned say the willingness of this confession and his Martydom which he suffered under Herod did supply the want thereof and his faith did save him A fourth Proposition follows that we have good reason to hope for the salvation of such Infants being born within a believing Church as were deprived of life before the outward Element could conveniently be applied unto them to wash them from their sins because some have gone too far in doubting against this take my reasons in order First It is never questioned in the old Law but that the Male children of the Jews were blessed in the Lord which died before the eighth day having not received the Seal of Circumcision I will not urge that Circumcision was omitted for forty years all the while they travelled in the Wilderness it was with Gods especial dispensation so that no detriment redounded to any soul because of Circumcision I instance in Davids child the first he begat of Bathsheba it died the seventh day and yet the King who doubted not to enjoy the Crown of a better life comforts himself and expects that his soul should rest with the Child after death I shall go to him but he shall not return to me Secondly We have no Promise for the Seed of Infidels but we have express testimony from the Spirit that the Seed of faithful Parentage is holy from the birth and if the root be holy so are the branches Rom. xi 16. Nay albeit one Parent be an unbeliever yet if either Father or Mother make but one believer the Children are sanctified and for that ones sake they are not unclean but holy It is true that we are all in our selves born children of wrath from our Mothers womb But God is gracious to the thousand Generations of them that fear him much more to their very next Generation and because their Infants are his Childrens Children the guilt of their sin is blotted out and he is pleased to give them adoption of Sons What else is the fruit of that Promise that the off-spring of the Faithful are in the same Covenant with the Fathers The Promise is made to you and to your Sons and to them that are far off Acts ii 39. The constancy of the eternal Covenant made to the Posterity of the Just appeared says one in those extraordinary motions of Jacob when he wrestled with Esa◠of John Baptist when he congratulated the coming of Christ into the world the spiritual extasies of both these before they were born Therefore it is no unjudicious opinion to say that Infants are brought to Baptism not to take them into the Covenant of Grace but being of the Covenant before to seal it unto them If any man make a Scruple whether the Covenant be made to the Infants of Christian Parents as fast and firm as to the Jews and their Children let him not doubt nay assuredly the Covenant is made unto us much stronger For Christ came into the World to confirm the Promise made from the beginning of the World and to turn over Gods mercies in a more ample manner unto the Gentiles Of his fulness we have received and grace for grace that is to say plenty of grace and benediction This was the second Reason thus I propound the third I have formerly proved and delivered this Doctrine that to such of riper years as desired Baptism and were unawares prevented the willingness of their faith was reputed to them for Baptism Why this shall also comfort us for the tender fruit of the womb which died without the Sacrament as soon as it yaun'd the first breath for when they are baptized the faith of the Church and of those that present them at the Font is by God reputed to be their own So if they be cut short before they be outwardly ingrafted into the Congregation of Christ the willingness and desire of the same Church and of their Parents shall be imputed by our merciful Father to be theirs also Lastly I will pawn the practice of the best Churches in the world to prove it when they were in their ancient purity It was a Ceremony both among the Greeks and Latines to appoint but two solemn times of the year for the Baptism of Infants Easter and Whitsontide Indeed leave was given to dispense with this Ceremony if Passengers unbaptized were like to be cast away at Sea If War Pestilence or Persecutipn threatned their imminent ruine if Infants did dangerously languish But I pray you how often do Infants die away in the turning of an hand before it can be perceived Therefore the Sacrament had not been deferred unto those two solemn times if either Greeks or Latines had thought that Infants deprived of the Laver of Regeneration should eternally be deprived of the glory of God The fifth Proposition dispatcheth the long discourse upon this Point It is thus We are to hope well of the safety of Infants not baptized yet we cannot be so confident of their welfare as when the Church hath prai'd for them and given them the blessing of the Sacrament Let the worst come that our children pass'd away without the sprinkling of water it is fit to be prevented in a due course as much as may
of Adam the Sacrament of waters had not been ordained as if we were refined with Fullers Sope. There are but two Baptisms spoke of in the New Testament the one of Water the other of Fire and both are put together for the use of our impurities that all defilement may be driven out Molliora per aquam duriora metalla igne expurgantur If there be spots in Linnen or in any thing that is soft and supple we take them out in water if it be dross in stubborn Metals we decoct it and scum it off in a furnace of fire So our nature is most soft and supple to contract every kind of iniquity as easily as a cloath is stain'd And our heart is hard like iron stubborn and refractory to forsake iniquity therefore God applies Water and Fire to purge us to the bottom Water in the outward Laver Fire in the inward Spirit so by Christs humility who vouchsafed to dip himself in such water as we do he merited of his Father that we should be baptized with the Holy Ghost and with fire Non mundari voluit sed mundare Jordanem says St. Ambrose he came not to be cleansed but to cleanse the River Jordan and all other waters for the mystical washing away of sin Unus mersit sed lavit omnes unus descendit ut ascenderemus omnes One Jesus dived into the River that we might all rise up from the death of sin one man descended into the Pool in great humility that we might all ascend up into glory Therefore if any man ask why he that was whole in every part would step into Bethesda as if he were diseased why the immaculate Son of God would wash with sinners Let him take this answer That he was brought to Baptism even as the Spirit came down upon him anon after from heaven in the shape of a Dove It was not for want of the Spirit before or that any thing could be added to that plentiful grace which did inhabit in him but to call for the Holy Ghost that it might rest upon his Church So it was not for want of cleanness that he suffered such a Ceremony at Jordan to be done unto him as belongs to them that are impure but to make the Sacrament vertuous and powerful for them that should take it after him Pro nobis Christus lavit imò nos in corpore suo lavit all our defilements if we repent and believe are wash'd away upon his body There were certain legal cleansings with water in the Statutes of Moses Figures of things to come and ordained to satisfie for pollutions that hapned through chance and ignorance but Christ submitted himself to the Ordinance of the New Testament and avoided them For 1. They were Figures what should he do with such things that was the very truth 2. They appertained to the polluted What reference could they have to him that is immaculate 3. They were appointed for trespasses of ignorance What application could they have to him who knows all things in heaven and earth and under the earth And lest he should be mistaken for one in the rank of sinful men as if he came to be baptized for the same end that we do John pronounceth him holy after the strictest manner in another Gospel not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 says St. Chrysostom behold him that is without sin but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 behold him that taketh away the sin of the whole world his soul must needs consist of nothing but untainted righteousness He did communicate in his Last Supper with his Disciples and this was his difference from them he took the Bread when he had blessed it Ad spirituale solatium non ad augmentum gratiae not to augment grace and charity as we do but for the delight of his Spirit So it delighted him to sanctifie the waters of our new Birth to the washing away of our sins Vnde ista vertus aquae St. Austin speaks like one astonisht Whence comes it that the poor Element toucheth the skin and mundifieth the heart But even from him whose hem of his garment an impotent woman took in her hand and Christ perceived that vertue was gone out of him and as you must not conceive any Physical inherent vertue was in his cloaths to stop an issue of bloud as there is in some stones and herbs which in their substance are medicinal so you must not mistake as if Christ had sanctified all Rivers that a strange hidden vertue is infused into such water as is blessed to baptize whereby ex opere operato by the meer aspersion the soul should become unpolluted but by this act of our Saviours it was ordained and instituted to be the matter of that Sacrament which should sanctifie the Children of God Neither doth the Doctrine of this reason stretch so far as if God could not have caused Jordan and all other Fountains to take away pollution though Christ had never been washed in his own Person for that immortal Laver is the medicine of our souls because the vertue of the Holy Ghost is upon it Spiritus novit locum suum as many of the Fathers when the world was first made the Spirit moved upon the waters and he keeps the same place in our New Birth when we are made again children I mean by adoption and grace and so far of the second reason Thirdly It appears from hence what the Prophet Isaiah foretold Chap. liii 6. The Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all because he hath received our sins upon him and offered himself as bail for us to his Father to discharge us from malediction therefore he was baptized in the form of a sinner and was reckoned among those that had need to be wash'd for their sins In all things it behov'd him to be made like unto his brethren that he might be a merciful and a faithful High Priest Heb. ii 17. Nazianzen makes all things consist in these three Points man may be said to be born thrice 1. A miserable Infant from his mothers womb 2. He is regenerate and born again by water and the holy Spirit 3. He is brought to life again at the last day when the Grave shall give up the dead in every one of these Christ was made like unto man by his Nativity by his Baptism by his Resurrection But to be made like unto us in Baptism was more against his dignity than both the rest in some comparisons His Mother brought him forth indeed in the form of a poor helpless Infant yet you will grant that to be an Infant is the order of nature and not a misery He did overcome death at his Resurrection nothing was ever done more triumphantly he did overcome such enemies which to that time had been unvanquishable but he came to Baptism in the person of many sinners that as he had honoured our nature in his Birth so he might purifie it in Baptism to be made sin
in domo charitatis in a charitable Hospital family every man hastened to a good work as if he had flown like a Dove Was not Paul a brave wing'd Apostle that traversed much of Asia and preacht the Gospel in every place from Jerusalem to Illyricum Seventhly The Doves eyes are fixt upon the Rivers of waters Cant. v. 12. some say out of vigilancy to espy therein the gliding of the Kite that flies above and to save it self So the spiritual man looks backward to the first waters wherein he was dipt to the Vow which he made in Baptism There he remembers his Garment was made white and he must not stain it for 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is not only to wash away filth but to give tincture or colour to that which is died So in Baptism the foul spots of iniquity are taken forth and by sanctification a clear gloss is set upon our soul It was the exhortation of old at Baptism Accipe vestem candidam immaculatam c. Take this white garment pure and undefiled it was their Ceremony to put on such and keep it undefiled against the day of the Lord. Et grege de niveo gaudia pastor habet says Lactantius The Shepherd rejoyceth to see the fleeces of his Lambs fair and unspotted These are pennae deargentatae as the Psalmist says the Doves wings are silver wings and if they be bright Silver here it will be changed into a better Metal hereafter a Crown of Gold whose wings are silver wings and the feathers of Gold Lastly As it was toucht before in the days of Noah the Dove was a presager of a better world to come and in this Text likewise it is Nuncia futuri seculi the happy annuntiate that there is a better world to come when these evil days of sin and misery are ended So we are sealed with the holy Spirit of Promise which is the earnest of our inheritance the Spirit is a pledge of that possession which is purchased for us in the Kingdom of heaven whither he bring us c. THE SIXTH SERMON UPON THE Baptism of our Saviour MAT. iii. 17. And loe a voice from heaven saying This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased SPeak O Heaven and hearken O Earth unto the word of the Lord. The Earth must keep silence and give ear when God is his own Orator himself and utters his pleasure with his own voice As it is usual when some great Palace is raising fron the Foundation that the Master of the Possession will lay the first stone with his own hands So the Church being to be built up again in the New Testament not upon the foundation of Works but upon Faith not upon Moses but upon Jesus Christ Loe the mighty God publisheth the first tidings of reconciliation from his own mouth and himself in the Prophet Isaiahs Phrase doth lay in Sion a chief corner stone elect and precious for the Foundation which sustains the whole body of the Saints is no other but such as is contained in that brief Proclamation which I have read unto you This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased Some of the Fathers very aptly call the Text Gods ample testimonial given to his Son that the world might receive him gladly being about to preach the glad tidings of salvation Moses you know would not offer himself to the Children of Israel to be the means that should release them from Pharaohs bondage before he had a token of Credence who did send him to the People and the Lord said unto him Thou shalt say I am hath sent me unto you So our High Priest and anointed Saviour would keep that form to have a clear testificate to commend him to the World Now a Dove was but a dumb shew and might be interpreted many ways wherefore an articulate and a majestical voice was heard from heaven which would pierce the ears of all that were gathered together and could not be mistaken In that nature therefore as a Testimonial given to him that was now about to be the great Preacher of righteousness I will divide the Text 1. The Person that did bear witness it is the Father 2. The manner how he testified to the honour of his Son by a voice Loe a voice 3. The authority of that voice which was every way to be accepted because it was from heaven 4. The Person to whom the witness is born to a Son This is my Son 5. What is witnessed of him in respect of himself that he was beloved This is my beloved 6. What is witnessed of him in respect of our consolation that he is filius complacentiae in whom and through whom the Father is well pleased That is to say not only beloved in himself but procures us to be beloved likewise for his sake for all that by Baptism have put on Christ are unto God as Christ himself is Filii dilecti complacentes Sons beloved well pleasing So the Text is our Saviours Testimonial and our own Consolation And loe a voice c. The Father is become a witness to glorifie his Son that is the first consideration to be made upon my Text. The Spirit hath done his part before now the voice the Father is come to perfect this great solemnity and so the justice of God agrees with his own Law Ex ore duorum aut trium testium Out of the mouth of two or three witnesses every word shall be established was ever any truth so strongly confirmed so undeniably maintained that the Father which made all things should ratifie it sensibly in the audience of men Never was it heard of but only in this case which is the top of all truth that Jesus was the Son of God Other truths we are well perswaded of which come from the light of reason or from the testimony of man yet reason may be blind and man may err but it is impossible that God should lie Heb. vi And admit it to be good for who can controul it that the Prophets and Apostles were inspired from God so that the contents which they have written are certain and infallible then his divine wisdom which gave them that instinct whatsoever he utters immediately from himself it may well stand upon comparisons that it is much more infallible So St. Hierom distinguisheth between that truth which is increate and which is infused and participate that the truth of the Saints is called a lie in respect of that verity which abideth in the Father Yea let God be true and every man a liar in which words says he it is implied that God alone is true even as he alone is said to have immortality for although he hath communicated immortality to Angels and to the souls of men yet it is not their own immortality but his love and favour to give it to them So the Prophets and holy men were inspired with true knowledge yet it was not their own truth
the witness is born the Eternal Father witnesseth to his Eternal Son Thou art my Son The best way to know so much concerning the eternal Generation of Christ as sufficeth for a good Christian is to speak little of it Among the Gods there is none like unto thee O Lord says David among the Sons of God none like unto that Son who is the only begotten Son in the bosom of the Father Joh. i. 18. Other Sons I will declare by and by are adopted by his grace Sons not begotten but by denomination of good liking as it is Mat. v. 9. Blessed are the peace-makers for they shall be called the children of God but Christ is the only begotten being of the same substance with the Father for surely that doth rightly explicate the Phrase to be in the bosom of the Father not as the Arians would evade it that to be in the bosom was to be the well-beloved of the Father God loved the world and most dearly such as believed yet where do ye read that such are said to be in his bosom It is a word by St. Chrysostoms exposition which agrees to Christ alone wrapping up much sense as it were in a Syllable that he is of the same substance the same power the same knowledge with his Father lying in his bosom and participant of all his secrets Sinus est divinitatis arcanum in quo est filius That bosom is the secret essence of the Father by which he made all things and knows all things and there is the Son To be called a Father after the manner of men rests upon three things 1. That the Son have his being from part of his substance that begets him then a Picture cannot be said to be the Son but the work of him that draws it 2. Father and Son must be of the same nature and species then the Heaven is not the Father of Flies and Gnats though the heat of the Sun begets them 3. It must be a living thing that begets another living thing in its own likeness then fire is not the father of fire though one spark kindles another But God begets a Son without these conditions and exceptions for his Son is not such another but consubstantial Not a part divided from the Fathers substance to make him but of the same substance with the Father Yet there is another ground of difference laid down by St. Austin that among us it hapneth to a man to be a Father and is contingent But in God it is no hapning accidental thing The Father was always a Father and the Son was always a Son And though he be a Father by a relative notion and not according to his substance yet nothing is said to be in God by accident as if he were mutable That peculiarity of a Son in Christ distinguisht from us is best set down by St. Paul with least curiosity Rom. viii 32. God spared not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Filio proprio non pepercit we read he spared not his own Son That Translation doth not altogether satisfie me for at the third verse of the same Chapter we read God sent 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 his own Son in the similitude of sinful flesh but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is more emphatical he spared not his own proper Son Therefore though we be truly called Sons yet not so properly as Christ But David would be any thing though it were but a door-keeper to be in the house of the Lord so let us be stiled which way soever the Sons of God and it sufficeth Behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us that we should be called the Sons of God And tu es Filius say the Fathers upon my Text comports that the captivity and servitude of the Old Law is changed into the liberty of Sons Adoptio est similitudo filiationis naturalis Adoption makes him that was not born a Son be taken into the similitude of a Son And we have not received the Spirit of bondage again to fear that was the condition of the Law but ye have received the Spirit of Adoption whereby we cry Abba Father What an Ocean of comfort breaks into our soul upon this Meditation Five thousand Cubits higher than all the comforts of this world as the waters in the time of Noah are said to be fifteen Cubits higher than the tallest Mountains For first If we be Sons of God Christ will not refuse us to call us Brethren Yea when he was risen from the dead in his glory he sent Mary Magdalen to his Disciples saying Go tell my Brethren Secondly To be exalted to be a Son doth enfranchise us to take the inheritance of the Kingdom of heaven For if Sons then heirs heirs of God and joynt heirs with Christ Rom. viii 17. Thirdly If Sons it is a great word but I speak it by authority of Scripture then we are Gods Psal lxxxii 6. I have said ye are Gods and ye all are children of the most highest For God made his Son participant of our infirmity that by the merit of his humiliation we might be made participants of his Divinity And besides Consolation great names are great Engagements O what a strict exercise of holiness and obedience lies upon his soul that will be called the child of God Noli degenerare a praecelsis cogitationibus filiorum Dei Degenerate in nothing beneath that high cogitation how thou art become the Son of the most high Should I that am made partaker of divine Parentage surfet my body with meats and drunkenness Why it is loathsom in a Swine Should I satisfie my lust promiscuously against the bond of Matrimony Why it is odious in a Dog Or should the Sons of light lay snares in the dark to malice and despite the innocent O it is detestable in the Devil Be not a foolish Son to dishonour your heavenly Father It is observed in many of the noble Romans Cato Scaurus Cicero Antoninus how they were unhappy in nothing so much as that they had Posterity for their vicious branches blemish'd the glory of the root from which they sprung So a dissolute Christian makes that venerable name of Father come into contempt and reproach Mallem videre de malis editum quà m de bonis lapsum as Cassianus said It were better for a Reprobate that his Father were an Amorite and his Mother an Hittite than to be a stain to the heavenly Parentage when he is called to be a Son of God It was the motive which St. Austin pressed from the example of the Heathen if Varro was not ashamed to encourage valiant men to think themselves descended from Jupiter and Hercules or some other heathen Puppit though they belied their knowledge that the fancy of coming from such Progenitors might provoke them to great Atchievements Then a Christian is engaged to all manner of Divine and very Heroical works of godliness when his heart shall
us that we may be condemned and Christ upbraided on this wise See these Servants of yours see those Children of men how full of all iniquity they are for whom you have shed your precious bloud These slanders and foul detractions of his though we do not hear them yet I have satisfied you so far herein out of my Text because his name imports them But we do feel it to our hurt and molestation that he is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Tempter as it is in the third verse of this Chapter The word it self I would not have you think it is altogether evil for even God is said to tempt man Non ut ipse sed ut ij quos tentat se cognoscant says St. Austin not that he may bring any thing to light which was unmanifested to him but that our own effects may be known to our selves and to all the world as Deut. xiii 3. The Lord your God proveth you to know whether you love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul but the vulgar Latin reads it Vt palam fiat to make it known that you love him Again one man may tempt another to find what excellency is in him as the Queen of Sheba came to prove Solomon with hard questions besides there is a good Tentation wherein a man is bound to prove and to try himself Examine your selves whether ye be in the faith prove your own selves 2 Cor. xiii 5. In all these acceptions the Word is innocent but there is an abusive Phrase for man to tempt God as if we had not good experiment of his power and goodness but would search it further but let not us tempt Christ as some of them tempted and were destroyed of Serpents 1 Cor. x. 9. Lastly the word Tentation taken for allurement and provocation to sin is proper to Satan and to Satans instruments Among military rules this is one in all Authors it brings some advantage with it to study the nature and condition of our enemy I will beat a little upon that advice I have met with some who have humm'd and haw'd at it whether there were any Devils or no as if it were a thing that were disputable Perchance these give credit to nothing further than their outward senses apprehend after the manner of beasts or like the Sadduces that held there was neither Spirit nor Angel because they could see none If you ask them if Christ did not cast out divers Devils from those that were possessed their evasion is perhaps those might be enormous sins But could sins which are no substance but qualities cry out and tear a man and run into the Swine and confess Christ This is such an opinion says a late Writer Ac si oves putarent fabulam esse de lupis as if the Sheep should think Wolves were but a tale there were no such creatures that sought to devour them St. Austin brings in such an unbeliever objecting How should I overcome Satan How should I repel him whom I cannot see or perceive Well enough says the Father Facile habent remedium se ipsos interius vincant de illo foris triumphant overcome the instigations of evil motions within and you triumph over the Devil without None hath described the puissance of our ghostly enemies more tragically than St. Paul Eph. vi 12. We wrastle not against flesh and bloud but against principalities against powers against the rulers of the darkness of this world against spiritual wickednesses in high places Every word of this description is Vae vae Woe be to them that are not strong to resist Our Adversaries in their essence are Spirits in their form invisible in their designs wicked in their power rulers of this world in their subtilties dealers in darkness in their place they have the higher ground much above our reach they hover in the air in high places The Prophet Isaiah demonstrated the weakness of the Egyptians That their horses were flesh and not Spirit Isa xxxi 3. The odds are the more against us that our adversaries are Spirit and not Flesh Daemonum tanto major nequitia quantò natura nobilior says Aquinas The more noble is the nature of hellish Fiends the more dangerous is their wickedness The more fleshly is our nature the more weak our resistance An Epicuraean will say perhaps that gives himself over to all licentiousness it is not in me to withstand the assaults of the Devil why should I go about it since I am made of a corruptible Elementary substance which cannot hold out against a spiritual wickedness But to make all such sinners inexcusable God hath made us a recompence and we have as good help on our side to say the least of it as they have of theirs partly by the help of his assisting grace partly by the Ministry of good Angels Some there are likewise that cry out man is unequally dealt withal because the Princes of darkness have that odds of us in their multitude they boast that their name is Legion Dionysius called the Areopagite as I read it in Aquinas reduceth the damnation of all sinners to this Multitudo Daemonum est causa omnium malorum the world is so over-laid with numbers of Devils that from thence ariseth all damnation I would not set so much by that single authority if St. Hierom had not said Communis est doctorum opinio this is the common received opinion of the Doctors Aer iste coelum terram medio dividens plenus est contrariis fortitudinibus The whole Element of the Air between heaven and earth is full of Diabolical troops that rise up against our soul and oppose our Salvation Howsoever this is but opinion and I am sure the Scripture doth no where put us in the perplexity of such a terror And that of Anthony the Eremite is confessed to be but a dream that he saw all the space between heaven and earth full of Satans snares to catch the souls of men Against these dreams and opinions I set the saying of Elisha on the one hand There are more that be with us than against us And the promise of our heavenly Father to the Children of Israel on the other hand One of you shall chase a thousand and two of you shall put ten thousand to flight Howsoever in all distress of tentation here is our refuge in this or the like Prayer Wilt thou suffer the destroyer O Lord to prevail against me Wilt thou permit him to say there there we have devoured him God spake once and twice that power belongeth unto God Semel atque iterum ob firmitatem once and twice because that truth is strongly established He that hath said unto the proud waves of the Sea hitherto shall ye go and no further He doth say unto Satan Hitherto shalt thou tempt and no farther It is not for the Devils deserving but for the wicked mans undeservings that God doth give him his
is a false humility which makes us doubt of the faithfulness of Gods Promises So to be humbled is a fearful sin and perhaps a greater sin than any for which a man is humbled If we stay more upon our selves than upon God we shall distrust if more upon God than upon our selves we shall believe If you say you cannot believe because of your own unaptness and unworthiness I instance with St. Paul So did not Abraham Rom. iv 19. Being not weak in faith he considered not his own body now dead when he was about an hundreed years old nor the deadness of Sarahs womb Therefore keep your humility you speak of and lose it not yet rule it by this oppose not any difficulty in your self as if it could make frustrate the power and goodness of God The fifth Conclusion is a true and I suppose a very comfortable farewel to this Point no mortified humble Christian must despair or afflict his heart though he cannot attain to a strong confidence or assurance in Christs mercies he that can proceed but to a conjectural hope or some beginnings of gracious comfort shall receive the reward for Christ will not break a bruised reed or quench the smoaking flax Every may is bound to assent to the Promise of the Gospel upon pain of damnation for that is it which is called justifying Faith but it is no where threatned be thou certified of thy Salvation in particular or thou shalt perish everlastingly Whosoever doth truly believe shall not perish but have everlasting life Joh. iii. 6. It is not said Whosoever hath not examined himself in the reflexed act and knows not that he believes shall endure the wrath of God Let every man pray for it labour for it not shut his ears against good comfort let a weak Christian at the weakest estate believe his sins may be remitted let him desire remission and he shall receive forgiveness though he have a conjectural hope only and no infallible assurance It is not necessary in a true justifying Faith that all dubitation should be quite excluded it is well if at last it be overcome especially in the last enlightning before death Let such as have the drawings-back of infirmity chear up their spirit that many are undoubtedly received into glory who can say no more but I suppose the fruits of my faith though they were imperfect are without hypocrisie I suppose I believe therefore I suppose I shall be saved When we talk of Certitude and Assurance of Salvation in this life I am afraid the Ignorant extend the word so far as if they must be as secure and perswaded as that we see one another with our eyes Whereas indeed the word may well import no more than 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 spei as a learned Prelate of this Church did stile it a full comprehension by hope And mark how in two several Points much must be abated from that which we call a plain sensible evidence For first The Key which opens to all is to believe the Evangelical Promise made in Christ to all that believe And this we are certain of But how As we speak by the certainty of adherence not by the certainty of evidence Now that doth argue an imperfection in our faith Secondly A good Christian applies the general Promise to himself by a reflexed act and examining how he hath served the Lord with zeal and sincerity Now the circumstances of particular actions have much uncertainty in them howsoever this application being not pure Scripture is no way so certain and indubitable as the Articles of the Creed Therefore such sauciness is to be controuled if any say I know I shall be saved as certainly as I know Christ died for the sins of the World That Article of faith is immediately and totally revealed in Scripture this other Collection riseth out of the observation of a mans own qualities and actions Catharinus says That the Tridentine Council doth not gainsay but a man may know by faith that he is in the state of grace but it denieth only that this can be known by the certainty of faith And he that depends upon Christ for his mercies towards him by a lively comfortable hope may undoubtedly be said to depend upon his mercies by faith for all good graces grow from faith and Faith is called the substance of hope that is of things hoped for Heb. xi 1. Now I will take up and conclude Assurance or Affiance that we are born of the Spirit and are the Sons of God is that which we must labour which we must pray for which we must hope which we must believe Distrust and despair is the Devils engine to subvert this true Consolation and Rock of our Salvation therefore he did insinuate this mistruct or scruple to our Saviour If thou be the Son of God But From all evil and mischief from sin from the crafts and assaults of the Devil good Lord deliver us AMEN THE EIGHTH SERMON UPON Our Saviours Tentation MAT. iv 3. If thou be the Son of God command that these stones be made bread A Roman Orator in the days of Tiberius the Emperour Afer by name had so often taken in hand the worst part of every Plea to defend it that at last his credit was prejudicated and it was enough to say Afer pleads on this side therefore the justice of the cause is on the other side So all that Satan can propound or alledge I damn it every syllable all that he exhorts unto is impiety all that he counsels is treachery if he say the Son of God should command that stones be made bread I say the contradictory is true and he should not And this I have proved before by discovering that this motion contained two great sins in it Gluttonny and Infidelity Gluttony obliquely Infidelity manifestly And already I have replied against this distrustful voice If thou be the Son of God and have proved that we must all labour for a fiducial assurance that God is our Father and we are his Children by adoption and grace that we must apply Christ unto our selves without suspicions and hesitations without the Devils I F If thou be the Son of God But as the later the night grows the darker it is so the further I go on to reveal the sinful mystery of this saying the blacker is the tentation and the more deformed It is either known unto you already or will appear manifestly unto you when this hour comes about that there are two opinions of which carnal men do especially surfeit Epidemical diseases which slay as many souls as any two vices you can name you may smell them in my Text out of the strong breath of the Devil First that every Son of God is always provided of bread and hath sufficiency if not satiety of all worldly necessaries and therefore if any man be in distress and want let him take it to heart that God hath cast him off he is none of
his Sons for he provides not for him Secondly Whosoever wants bread let him never aske God for it but fetch it out of the hard stones get it by any stratagem or device let him remember to furnish himself with the slight of his own wits since God hath forgot him These are the upper and the nether Milstone by which Beelzebub grounds despair and worldly sorrow out of one principle and all manner of injustice and wrong dealing out of the other I called them lately the two Tables of the Devils Law unto which it is easie to reduce the most common sins that reign these two I make the parts of my Text which being throughly traversed will be sufficient to take up my discourse and your attention The first of those false rules which the Tempter teacheth is this that we must measure our filiation that God is our Father and tenders us as his Children by this note namely by our portion in this life if we have a full supply of worldly blessings then call him Father if you be pincht with sharp necessity then never call your self his Son a rule fitter for a beast to know his Master by than for a Christian to know his God by A Dog will wait upon him that gives him Crums under his Table the Oxe by this sign knoweth his Owner the Ass though a stupid Creature knows his Masters Crib by the allowance of his Provender But Brethren will you depend upon such a carnal mark to know the Lord and make your selves fit to be compared with the beasts that perish Fides est rerum invisibilium Faith hath an eye upon invisible things it is the evidence of things not seen But the Devil in his Catechism contradicts the Scripture and says Fides est rerum visibilium If you have not a competency of these things which you see why will you believe you shall be partaker of those things which you do not see Thus the Flesh is so partial in its own behalf that unless it have provision it will not suffer the Spirit to say Thou God carest for me and wilt never forsake me There is a passage well wrought into a Fable that shews the true disposition of a natural man Chremes casts off his Son Clitipho for attempting a Marriage without the consent of his Parents the refractary young man knew not how to revenge himself but pretending suspicion before his mother that he was none of her true Child but some exposed Brat or Changeling whom they had fostered for a time Alienus sum subditus volo parentes meos ut commonstres mihi So the Devil would whisper into our ear if God cast us off and gives us not relief and nourishment it is fit we should disavow him for our Father and especially he thought this a good motive among the Jews who had all temporary blessings promised unto them in great abundance That Promise made them so touchy that they quarrelled yea and denied the Lord which had done so great things for them if their desire were not satisfied At Massa and Meribah when they wanted water Is the Lord among us or no Exod. xvii 7. Upon the pressure of their Enemies the Angel could not make Gideon believe at first that the Most High was the Watchman of Israel that overlook'd them If the Lord be with us why then is all this faln upon us Judg. vi 13. In the Psalms of David it were without end to instance how the Prophet expostulates Awake why sleepest thou Why dost thou turn away thy face Why dost thou not see our misery and trouble And at last seeing Gods enemies have the upper-hand of his Servants in these external blessings my feet were well-nigh moved when I saw the ungodly in such prosperity In this common Theme I take it as I light upon it you shall hear my reasons which flatly check Satans rule that there are and have been divers opprest with necessity and want of bread and yet God doth not cease to be their Father and they must retain the consolation that they are his Sons First and before any thing attend to this consideration If every good Christian were satisfied at all times with temporal blessings we should appear to serve God for our own profit that we might lack nothing which concerned this transitory life But Abraham flies his Country and hath not a foot of ground to dwell upon Jacob and the Patriarchs have no food in Canaan unless they go into Egypt for it Peter and John have not a mite of Silver and Gold no not for the use of Charity that the World may see there are some that serve the Lord for pure zeal and not for the wages of Fortune as we call it The Devil in whom it is proper to calumniate vertue he gasht at Job with his Tusk and slighted his integrity as if he were a mercenary friend of God Doth Job serve God for naught His substance is increased in the Land And therefore to confute Satan the Lord put him to the utmost trial and took away almost all he had It is good humility to say unto out Father with the Prodigal Make me as one of thy hired servants that is Put me into thy Family though I be in the lowest rank a door-keepr in thy house as David said Put me to any drudgery and labour but it is not the meaning he would be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 an hireling one that would do his Father just so much service as he was paid for Of such a one the Orator said Non est amicitia sed utilitatis mercatura So in our Dialect we may say It is not to glorifie God but to merchandise Religion Like that saying 1 Sam. ii 36. Put me into one of the Priests Offices that I may eat a piece of bread It is pity he should eat that would not be a Priest to serve at Gods Altar unless he might eat by his Office St. Thomas the Disciple had not yet taken out the true lesson of faith when he required to put his finger into the print of the nails and to thrust his hand into Christ else he would not believe but they are further off than he that will not believe unless they may finger their gains and thrust their hand into the commodity of the world I and perhaps look for honour to boot bare riches will not content them Many Sons of perdition even in the ancient and pure times of the Church started away to rank Atheism and renounced their Baptism upon discontent that some promotion did not fall upon them Ammianus Marcellinus could sâ—y in his time it would encourage a man to be a Christian if he might be chosen Bishop of Rome and so flow with wealth and dignity Gratis poenitet esse bonum O base earthly mind that would be an Infidel unless he might be a rich believer Every man is a friend to him that giveth gifts says Solomon But he that loves God for his
is in his own house and may lurk there safe and secure but when he departs this life and comes out of doors Vae capiti woe be to him then his torment was deferred to be increased When Hagar and Ismael had spent their bottle of water and were ready to give up the Ghost for thirst was not this a good time to remember how injuriously Sarah had been despised and Isaac mocked And that both he and she were the root and fruit of fornication He that in the distress of scarcity will smite his hand upon his breast and examine his secret faults and say I have sinned against the Lord this man hath made great gain of his poverty Quisque optat cum sanâ mente lamentari quà m cum insanâ perpetuò ridere says Gregory Who had not rather with the enjoying of his wits be weak than with the loss of his wits be strong and merry So who had not rather feel the Famine and misery of the world and repent than flow in the satiety of all things never feel the sting of his sins and die impenitent As one said that good Fathers sometimes have wicked Children lest vertue should seem to descend by natural inheritance and again wicked Fathers have sometimes vertuous Children that wickedness may not run on in a perpetual propagation so riches and abundance lest they should be thought to be no blessings at all now and then fall upon the best And yet lest you should think them the best of all things now and then they fall upon the worst men Or as another draws out the line of justice very well no man is absolutely good or absolutely evil but as the best have some evil in them so the worst have some good some talent of nature which serves for the use of Common-wealths encrease of Arts publick peace or some ornament of the Universe therefore the good of the worst men is rewarded with a gift of outward fortune and the evil of the best men is punished with scarcity no wonder therefore if he that is the Son of God do sometimes pine for lack of bread Fourthly Though a good man labour and watch and cannot earn the bread of his carefulness yet he shall fill his bosom with better fruits for occasion is given hereby to the righteous to exercise these three spiritual graces Prayer and Patience and Charity Prayer comes after trouble and necessity as Resurrection comes after death Even the very Philistins were driven to repentance to restitution to send back the Ark of God into his own Land when the Lord smote them with Emerauds and diseases If such fruits grew from an evil stock when a vengeance and calamity was in their Land then much better fruits of sighs and prayer will bud from them who are planted by the rivers of waters who weep and lament that their iniquities have deserved such great chastisement The Beasts and Fowls of the air do lack and suffer hunger that by the voice of nature they may call upon the Lord to be replenished then the young Ravens do call upon him and the Lions roaring after their prey do seek their meat of God He is the door which opens to let forth all blessings spiritual and temporal Quam nemo nisi ebrius ignorat as one says ' None but a reeling drunkard can miss the door into which he should pass David seems to utter a Paradox Psal xxxvii 25. I never saw the righteous forsaken nor his seed beg their bread Surely experience is opposite to this and the Posterity of many have been in great want whose memory is blessed for their righteous conversation Some have very well turn'd the Verb beg into a Participle begging and then the construction is fair I never saw the righteous forsaken nor his seed forsaken begging their bread for they are not forsaken to whom the Lord gives patience in the inward man though they be destitute and forsaken Let God wrestle as he will and cast us down yet we must pray and suffer and not let him go until he bless us But abundance of all things is a great slur unto devotion In Egypt where the River Nilus over-flows their grounds constantly instead of rain and where the heaven is clear continually above nemo oratorum coelos aspicit the heathen could say so God had fewer Prayers made unto him there than in any place of the world Therefore lay the beginning of this Point unto the end is not the soul better than the body Is not the spirit of Prayer better than a full barn Is not a little holiness better than all the Vintage of Abiezer Moreover we are commanded patience we promise patience and I hope we resolve patience now that we may draw this good motion out of the secret corners of our heart distress and penury will put it in practice This is it which St. Austin calls Gods great allowance above thousands of Gold and Silver Patrimonium fidei patientiae in corde Christ makes the righteous sole Executors and Administrators of his patience Be not tormented with emulation though you see another shine like a bigger Planet than your self though you see the most vicious man set over you in advancement Dabo huic novissimo sicut tibi The Owner of all the Earth may do what he will with his own he will give unto him that is last in his favour as unto thee nay more than unto thee in this life yet I cannot call it more if you will balance those light wares with the talent of your Patience When God took all from Job yet says Gregory Patientiae munere coronabatur He was crowned like a Saint in heaven with the victorious Crown of patience upon earth Is it not better to suffer in the present because we had not these things to use than suffer because we had them and did abuse them It is a saying attributed to the supposed Dionysius Divinae justitiae est non emollire optimorum fortitudinem materialium donationibus It suits well with the Divine Justice and Providence not to make the fortitude of his Saints effeminate with abundance And if they had always their Salary of earthly blessings here as upon compact their Religion would be more weighed down with Avarice than confirmed with patience The last spiritual exercise which is caused by the need and want of Gods beloved is this that merciful minded men may fill the bellies of the hungry with the bread of their charity God hath suffered his fire to wast away the habitation of the poor man that your contribution may build him up again a covering for his head and those good works shall receive you into the everlasting Mansions The waves of the Sea swallow up the substance of our brethren that our collections may restore it again and this is it which Solomon calls Casting our bread upon the waters Jacob and the Patriarches were well-nigh famished in the Land of Canaan that Pharaoh might relieve them
up an whole loaf every day when Anthony the Eremite came to keep him company If this were alledged as some stick not to do it to illustrate the Verse which Christ quoated I think Satan would rejoyn Where had you this tale This is a Legend of mine own fiction There are other examples which I rank'd in order before like a file of Souldiers to conquer the Devil and the richest and newest which was at our Saviours hand was that of John the Baptist who found a good diet in the Wilderness to make him temperate and serve God out of Locusts and wild honey The motion which the Tempter made being thus examined in the true Explication of Christs answer proves to be as unreasonably sensual as Esaus urging for Jacobs Pottage he would seek no further for any meat that he must have though it cost him dear like Philoxenus in Aelian that could not pass by the steam of a Cooks shop but he must take a bait where his sent did lead him So Satan to our Lord go not into the Towns or Villages near at hand satiate your appetite just at this present and without delay even where you stand Command that these stones be made bread And should not man wait Gods leisure and time when he wants bread since the beasts of the Forrest when hunger rouzeth them out of their Dens know not readily where to get their meat and yet are content to seek it of God the Fowls of the air have no barns to lay up store not a grain of Corn before hand yet they flutter out and pick up and down and at last return home contented Not unusefully therefore doth one change the words of this first Proposition into this Paraphrase Man lives not by bread alone Non cibo parato vivit homo sed qui sponte se offert Man shall not live alone by that which is artificially cook'd and provided but even by that which nature suppeditates as John Baptist lived by Locusts and wild honey and so the Patriarchs before the floud lived altogether upon fruits and herbage and upon the voluntary offrings of the Springs and Mountains Si ad naturam vivitur tam superfluus est coquus quà m miles says Seneca If Nation would not rise up against Nation what use were there of Souldiers and if men would give their body but just as much as would content nature there were no use of Cookery Yet God doth suffer our nature to exceed in the use of his blessings that we may abound with thankfulness but if the Patriarchs did praise and bless Gods name more for a few Sallets than we do for all the luxuriant store that the Fields and the Sea afford then their Temperance should judge our Gluttony and their Thanksgiving shall condemn our Unthankfulness But so far of the first Proposition Man shall not live by bread alone that is man is not necessarily bound to ordinary sustenance The second follows in this sense and interpretation God can nourish man by every word that proceedeth out of his mouth every way that it liketh and pleaseth him Whatsoever the Constitution and Decree of the Lord is that is called his Word Verbum appellat quia verbo omnia creavit dixit facta sunt He that spake the word and all things were made a word and a deed to him is all one And therefore the Shepherds in the Eclogue which they had together about going to Bethlem to find Christ use this speech Let us go see 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 This thing which is come to pass is very right sense but in the Greek it is this word which is come to pass Gods words are not faithless nor full of vain ostentation as mens are his words were as those were which Daniel says were written with a hand upon the wall for his hand doth hold his word to execute and bring it to pass To make you a little further acquainted with the Phrase of Scripture Egressus est sermo ex ore is an Hebraism to signifie the resolute pleasure both of God and man The thing proceedeth from the Lord says Laban We cannot speak unto thee bad or good Gen. xxiv 50. A Domino egressus est sermo the word proceedeth from the Lord that is he hath decreed it and we cannot withstand it In like manner the Idolaters contest with Jeremy Chap. xliv 17. We will certainly do whatsoever thing goeth forth out of our own mouth to burn Incense to the Queen of heaven that is after the swing of desperate sinners they would do what they list The insisting upon this Phrase is not in vain but the very key to open the plain effect of Christs answer which very profitably leaves us to make use of it in a double construction First says Tolet Verbum quod procedit ex ore Dei est res quam Deus in victum hominis destinavit Man shall live by every word that goes out of the mouth of the Lord that is by every thing that he will bless and appoint for the use of sustenance unto him And so Abulensis doth instance and exaggerate it the Lord is not that Father who if his Child should ask him bread would give him a stone but if he would infuse the vertue of nourishment into boards into stones yea into the flesh of Serpents we should prosper with them better than with all the Cullesses and Electuaries in the world How unsearchable are the ways of the Almighty how the Infant from the first conception is nourisht in the Mothers Womb When Philosophy hath spoken what it can the chief part must be left to Divinity to say it is fed by the word which proceedeth out of the mouth of God such things as would poyson one Creature are delicate dainties to fatten another It is as God hath allowed every thing for man and beast in their own kind that we might allow him his glory Secondly Man shall live by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord that is by all his Promises and by every Vocation which he hath sanctified to relieve us And this agrees most aptly with Christ himself in the dispensation of his Mediatorship and with the instance of the Children of Israel who were fed with Manna in the Wilderness This is the prime rule which leads every man into some hope of prosperity that manageth an honest Calling That every one shall live and thrive who holds him to that way which God hath appointed him The Israelites journeyed from Egypt into the Wilderness not of their own head and will but by Gods Ordinance why it was impossible they should famish doing as he commanded them So Christ went not rashly into the Desart but he was led by the Spirit he did as the Lord would have him do this was his Vocation therefore though he could not make stones become bread God would find him sustenance some other way No conscionable man will set his servants to
these did foully err and hold that a man being conscious to himself of some sin that was worthy death might put himself to death that it was an act of justice yea and a Martyrdom and upon this ground whether shouId I say more foolish or more impious they Canonized Judas for a Martyr But St. Austin shews that their Argument jars against two common principles Nemo potest esse judex reus It is incompetible that the same man should be both the guilty person and the Judge 2. Nocentem hominem privata potestate occidere non licet It is murder for any private man not authorized by a lawful Magistrate to execute death upon a Malefactor Judam execramur quamvis sceleratum hominem occidit Judas was a Malefactor and could not kill a worse man than himself yet that sin alone without the rest was damnation 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the slaying of himself Remember the Commandment Thou shalt not kill Whom not Neither your self nor your neighbour for you have no more power to hurt your self than another the body is Gods and the Temple of the Holy Ghost And who gave you leave to pluck down a Temple Nature inclines a man to the conservation of himself and what a detestable thing it is to violate the chief Maxime of Nature Which is this in St. Pauls words No man hates his own flesh but loves and cherisheth it No man indeed but he that makes hast to be no man that he might the sooner be a Devil The Heathen went thus far that a man is put into this world as a Souldier is put into some File or some place of the Watch from that station he must not stir till his General calls him Et majori supplicio afficiendus est desertor vitae quà m desertor militia And is not he more worthy of punishment that leaves the place where God did put him before he was summoned than he that comes off from the Watch before the General calls him If the love of your soul the dreadful expectation of Hell-fire will make you decline a sin take heed of this for Gods sake above all others All other sins when they are committed have yet some leasure to beg mercy and at what time soever a sinner c. but how can the Lord put such a sin out of his remembrance where it is impossible there should be time to repent Vt laqueo respiratio it a prohibetur desperatione spiritus sanctus as Bedae said of Judas they stop their own breath and with that desperate act exclude the Holy Ghost from inspiring any sanctified cogitation into them What can befal a man in this world to defie Heaven and Earth at once And to die the death of the damned without redemption Bethink your selves judiciously it cannot be want torture or calamity for though these be very sharp especially to those that are impatient yet they are not so smartful as the stinging of a Bee nor the biting of a Flea compared with the Lake of Brimstone into which they irrecoverably send their own soul that let out of the body with their own violent hand Nor should it irke a man to stay Gods leasure till he be dissolved for any reproach or ignominy that he hath incurred for so your former dishonour is not forgotten but ten times more divulged and increased See how publick shame which followed such desperate persons after their death did work with some of Miletum as Plutarch reports it Many of the Milesian Virgins through the perswasions of some Diabolical Philosophers hanged themselves To stop this unnatural fury when no reason would revoke them the Magistrates made a Law that the bodies of all such should be left naked in the open Market-place for ten days and the fear of that worldly shame did for ever after rectifie those who were living that they held their hands from violence But what other impulsive cause can be named Can the remorse of sins past breed such a destructive melancholy in any mans disposition God forbid This is to cast Mountains upon Mountains and to make all worse Sins are not covered by heaping one upon another but blessed is the man whose unrighteousness is forgiven and whose sin is covered There is another life given to expiate your iniquities and not your own even the bloud of Christ Repent you seriously and be merciful unto your self and then God will be merciful unto you Yet Achitophel with all his politick reach could not make use of these plain notions but confounded himself partly with the guiltiness of his rebellion partly with the fear of his reputation For it is very likely he shuffled his Game thus If Absalon overcome King David Hushai hath given the better counsel and so I shall live in disgrace If David prevail which is very likely he will take away my life because of the pernicious Plots which I have laid against him See how this witty Wretch could forget that David was a merciful Prince and did not execute one of his enemies in cold bloud But God lets the wits of the wisest turn addle who meditate to be Authors of their own ruine and to cast themselves down from a Pinacle upon the Devils suggestion But God keeps all those from this sin whom he means to have converted and be saved The Jaylor took out his Sword and was ready to have faln upon it but Paul cried out at the instant Do thy self no hurt and soon after he was baptized and believed he and his house Paul may loath this world and desire to be dissolved but he must wait the Lords leisure and not hasten his dissolution It was the blessing of the Lord upon mankind Increase and multiply To replenish the world is a Benediction to take one of Gods Servants away unless by the hand of justice and that the Magistrate doth in the person of God is a Malediction What spirit was in the Tridentine Fathers to make the second book of Machabees Canonical Wherein Razias is commended in most fluent phrases that killed himself I know St. Austin says Razii mors narratur non laudatur it is but a narration of the fact not an Encomium Let any child read Chap. xiv toward the end of it and judge if he be not extolled for it with most artificial commendation The same Father is more Orthodox in another place that pious reason is to be preferred before examples Quae tantò dig niora sunt imitatione quantò excellentiora pietate which are no further worthy of imitation than they excel in Piety And again I may say Why did the Roman Martyrology Canonize the Virgins of Aquileia Who drowned themselves to avoid certain barbarous Ravishers For as Aquinas treats upon the fact 1. Fornication were a less sin than violent murder 2. If they had not refused that carnal sin as much as they could yet Repentance might have wash'd away the spot of that crime in the other act of unnatural
that Psalm they that are just and faithful in their sayings he that speaks the truth from his heart v. 2. he that hath used no deceit in his tongue v. 3. he that sweareth to his neighbour and disappointeth him not though it were to his own hinderance v. 5. David desired to know by some sign whether he should come into the presence of Saul or fly from him Why Jonathan kept his word with David Jonathan desired that David would be merciful to his Posterity after him David sware unto him and kept his word with Jonathan But be you just in your promises to your brother and God will make good unto you the promise of eternal life the Lord is faithful in all his sayings and holy in all his works The next collection from hence shall be this that the Devil would not offer less than all he had to win a Soul he would not offer a trifle for that which he knew was the most precious thing upon earth And it is a little excuse though far from a good answer when a man is fetcht into a sin for a great bewitching recompence pretio octuplicis stipendii illectus as that famous Renego pleaded for himself that he was enticed back to the Church of Rome with a stipend eight times greater than he had in England but to be enticed from our heavenly Father like a Child with toyes of no estimation it accuseth us that we do not value our own soul at so good a rate as the Devil doth What a narrow mean reward was that for which the lying Prophets did change the service of God Ye pollute me among my people for handfuls of barley and for pieces of bread Ezek. xiii 19. What will you give me sayes Judas and I will betray him And you do not find that he did drive the Market with the Priests and Elders but took the first sum that they appointed him Anima lucri cupida etiam pro exiguo perire non metuit sayes Leo. A greedy covetous mind will damn both body and soul for a little money What could Esau have taken less than a mess of pottage especially made of lentiles the meanest pittance of relief that a beggar looks for at every door and what had Esau in this world to exchange for it so precious and valuable as his Birthright the Law shews the dignity thereof that all the first-born were peculiarly consecrated and given unto God Exod. xxii 29. they were next in honor to their Parents they had a double portion of their Fathers goods Until the Law was given the first-born administred the Priesthood in the Family that was a sacred thing and yet more sacred he was a type of Christ for Christ is called the first-born among many brethren Rom. viii 29. Moreover and above it was a type of our adoption and being heirs of the Kingdom of Heaven See what a vile exchange Esau did make for all this heavenly dignity that the Holy Ghost for good cause calls him a prophane person who for one meals meat and for such a course meal sold his birthright Heb. xii 16. If we will prostitute our selves so cheaply to the Prince of darkness and ask less than for shame he can offer to put our selves into the bondage of iniquity mark what will follow the Lord will debase us as we have debased our selves thou sellest thy people for nought and takest no money for them sayes the sweet Singer of Israel or as Moses told the Israelites if they sold themselves to commit iniquity they should be sold for slaves and no man would buy them Deut. xxviii 68. But for all this I must give you to know in my next admonition though Satan offer'd all that is in this world yet he did not offer enough for that which he would gain namely to win a soul every thing under the Sun comes short of that appretiation much more in this case it is to be considered that if our Lord Jesus could have been supplanted which was impossible all mankind had perisht for upon his righteousness and upon his perfect obedience did depend our Crown and our Salvation if therefore one soul is worth the whole world and more what could be valued against all the souls in the world But I will instance upon this for our use there is nothing so valuable that should bribe a man to commit the least sin against our Heavenly Father You will smile at the Indian Savages that part with gold and spices and amber for glass beads and saffron brouches yet whosoever sins for the mammons of iniquity barters for a far more unequal merchandise you change immortality for death eternal joy for continual care a certain treasure for uncertain riches the most happy fruition of the Creator for less than the felicity of a dream aut transeunt nobis viventibus aut dimittuntur nobis dormientibus the living may lose all they have got by injustice but for certain the dead cannot keep it What is a man advantaged if he gain the whole world and lose himself or be cast away Luke ix 25. if he lose himself the word following is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the vulgar read it detrimentum sui faciat from whence a good Expositor sayes there is no comparison in the purchasing of earthly things non solùm cum damnatione aeternâ sed etiam cum jacturâ gratiae Dei though damnation and hell fire were not incurr'd to suffer the loss of the Holy Spirit and of the Grace of God Wherefore all that Satan could shew and let him shew as many worlds as Alexander could wish all is not worth such a cringe as he would have the Son of God to make to bow down and commit Idolatry We read of one Apostle so abounding in charity to his own Nation that he could be content to lose his part of heaven cupio anathema esse pro fratribus it was St. Paul who was willing to be anathema for his brethren that God might be glorified in all the people of Israel but he would not exchange the least degree of his sanctity and faith in Christ for all the muck in the world Joseph had rather lose that was comfortable to him in this life liberty good name yea the garments from his back then be defil'd with lust I have no instance fit to come after that of Moses Hebr. xi 24. who by faith refused to be called the son of Pharaohs daughter choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season Philo sayes of him that Thermut the only child and daughter of Pharaoh being long married and quite barren wanting issue to succeed fained her self big and at last to be delivered of Moses whom she found in an ark of bulrushes exposed to be drown'd him she brought up for her adopted child to inherit all the Kingdoms of Egypt But because Idolatry reigned in that place he could not
and confer it upon our Saviour I will look back no farther upon that which I have deliver'd already but the other half of his gift to which now I must proceed smels more rank of boasting for if it please you he will turn all the Kingdoms of the world into one Monarchy and settle it upon Christ all this power will I give thee and the glory of them This will bring his ends to pass indeed or nothing he that will not be bought with honors no not with great advancements no not with Princely Royalties to swarve from righteousness you may turn him loose against all the enticements of Hell for a Christian that is unvanquishable But the Tempter hath sound out by long experience that such pure matter is rarely to be found in the dross of this world he sees that men do seldom deny him any thing if he can accomplish the desires of their aspiring thoughts He makes good bargains of his petty promotions how much more of his greatest There are enough and too many that for a little command a vulgar title for a mean remove will turn their backs to God and their faces to Satan There are undergrowing ambitions which shall not need to be carried to the top of a mountain and have Kingdoms shewn unto them let them be lifted but to the lowest Steeple in a Diocess and they will commit Simony and forswear it To be a Ruler over thousands will shake an ambitious mans honesty very far to compass it nay to be a Ruler over ten which is the lag end of all honor some will violate their conscience rather than go without it what if it were to be but Doeg the chief Heardsman of Saul to have the greatest superiority over beasts Why Doeg was both a promoter and a blood-sucker for that contemptible promotion The twelve Disciples Christ himself walking just before them fell out among themselves into hot words and contention quis esset major which of them should be the greater If one had been the greatest as in very good sense they were all equal what should he have got by it to be the chief over eleven that had left all and were worth nothing If the Tempter be aware of this as our infirmities are not hid from him that men will tread virtue under foot to crawle up to a petty advancement then he would easily think this provocation in my Text were irresistable all this power and glory will I give thee and all the Kingdoms of the world If Balaac will say to some I will promote you to great honor as he did to Balaam all the Angels of heaven should not hinder them from going to it ambitious persons will break through the hedg of all honesty for a title of high preeminence and when their indirect courses carry them down to the deep their fancie flatters them that they go up like Elias in a whirl-wind to heaven There was nothing hanging with Christ upon his Cross except a title over his head Jesus of Nazareth the King of the Jews And why a great title crucified with him though he deserved that Inscription and a far greater than Pilat or all the world could invent yet above all the sins of men ambition and great titles which too often are obtained by crooked courses they deserve to be crucified Mans thoughts fly upward like the sparks from the fire Core and Dathan cannot endure to be less than the greatest Every man would be a Moses in the Common-wealth every man an Aaron in the Church Brethren forget brethren in way of Soveraignty as Joseph's brethren did consent to kill him or sell him away rather than bow unto him Absolon a Son and Subject abjures his duty to his Father and his Prince Athaliah defrauds her own child to get the supreme authority in her own hand This strugling for greatness especially for a Crown and Scepter hath occasion'd more iniquity more flagrant sins than any one storm that ever was rais'd Si violandum est jus regni causâ violandum sayes C. Caesar he would do no body wrong for less than to gain a Kingdom but he thought it impossible for a man to temper himself in that tentation that had opportunity And why should the appetite of supreme honor bewitch a man sooner than any thing else from the fear of God and draw him from it because power and glory are two such specious and attractive things which are intrinsecal to the dignity of Princes and Satan I warrant you did not forget to cast those two words in Christs way All this power will I give thee and the glory of them There is power in Princes as well to advance where they like as to punish offendors and reason good they should be serv'd with all humble reverence and have the highest glory on earth ascrib'd unto them because they are set over us for our good to maintain publick peace and true religion The power which Pharaoh had oh how it pleaseth an hauty spirit he tels Joseph what he would do for him in this phrase without thee shall no man lift up his hand or his foot in all Egypt Gen. xli 44. or that majestical terror which Nebuchadonosor put upon all that were under him nothing more greedily sought for Says Daniel to Belsbazzar The most high God gave Nebuchadonosor thy Father a Kingdom and glory and honor whom he would he slew and whom he would he kept alive whom he would he set up and whom he would he put down Dan. v. 19. Satan knew that to manage such power as this is a whetstone able to set akeen edg upon any mortal appetite But if any one love to govern with a soft hand and affect not the execution of that awful power to put terror upon inferiours yet the glory with which Soveraignty is bespangled will rob a man of his heart and steal it from him Who would refuse to be a Solomon his Palace was beyond all buildings his Throne so costly that there was not the like made in any Kingdom the Meat of his Table the Attendance of his Ministers and their Apparel the Queen of Sheba had never seen or heard of the like Such pomp as this would make a man believe he had built his nest in the stars Satan thought his tentation struck home when he promised such glory as this unto our Saviour How much more was this motion most perswasive when he beleaguer'd him with this offer to pluck the fairest feather out of every Monarchy and invest him with it where there was any power or any glory fit for his wish it should be cast upon him David had a Kingdom of much power yet of little glory for his reign was full of trouble and rebellion Hezekiah had a Kingdom of much glory great treasures great magnificence in his house yet it was of small power for he was an Homager and a Tributary to the King of Assyria and he sent him word that
fullonicant ingeniis suis says Origen Hereticks set a bright gloss upon their false opinions they in his construction are those Fullers upon earth that would make their doctrine if it were possible as white as truth but if you pattern it with the Scripture you shall see it colours not with that spiritual light which comes from Christ That Doctrine which hath the simplicity of the Spirit without the knotty entanglements of mans wit that which says let God have the glory but to us belongs shame and confusion of face That which impresseth humility into the thoughts zeal and devotion into the heart all manner of vertue into the practice This is that true light which comes from heaven no Fuller upon earth none that sit in the pestilent Chair of deceitful tongues can make a thing so white and every one that is of the truth loveth the light and hateth darkness And so far upon this admirable vision His countenance was altered and his rayment white and glistering These were res mirae strange and uncouth things the next general part of the Text doth handle personas miras strange persons whom a man would not expect in that place and at that time Behold there talked with him two men which were Moses and Elias If any of the people had been by that took him to be Elias or Jeremias or one of the old Prophets they should have seen a difference in this Vision between the head and the feet between the Lord and his Servants For surely some of the old Prophets two for all and those whom the Jews did most admire came upon this Theater to be seen that Christs glory might appear the more Let the eyes of Peter look upon them together and see if Christs glory be not far exalted above all the Saints Quantùm lenta solent inter viburna cupressi Among the Gods there is none like unto thee O Lord Psal lxxxvi 8. Non in Angelis coelestibus seu in altissimis says the Chaldee Paraphrase not among the Angels nor among any of the blessed souls that live in the highest places Was this such a business to be taught will some men say to bring the dead out of their graves Can any mistake that the honour of Christ is far exalted above all his Servants For to which of the Angels did the Father say at any time Sit thou on my right hand untill I make thine enemies thy footstool Beloved are there none that keep the festival days of the Saints with more devotion and observance then the first day of the week for ever to be sanctified because Christ rose from the dead on that day Do they not make more Pilgrimages and Vows to some Patrons of their own invention who have been but men Are not there more Temples erected in their name More costly Ornaments bestowed upon their Images More Prayers poured out unto them than to Christ himself And had I not need to remember you that two men who were now glorified talked with Christ upon Mount Tabor that they might appear like little stars obscured before the greatest Planet Moses did but verifie in person what he had taught in a Song before Who is like unto thee O Lord among the Gods Who is like unto thee Exod. xv 11. I adjudge it for another reason that two men beatified came to talk with him because he would not seem to ingross the light of glory to himself without derivation to others It is not a treasure to be reserved unto himself but a communicable donative The glory which thou gavest me I have given them Joh. xvii 22. As a seed-corn is fruitless unless it die and bring forth stalks of Wheat so Christ compares himself to such a grain of Wheat which must die to bring forth much fruit or else it abideth alone as if all were marred unless we were accommodated by his fruitfulness The Kings honour is in the multitude of his people the joy of the Father is in the Olive branches round about his Table The glory of the woman is for the children to grow up and call the mother blessed The felicity of these consists herein to have some that are partners of their felicity But God is all-sufficient to contemplate his own glory though he had never made the world he did not make man to praise him as if he wanted voices to magnifie his name and make him God Yet he is pleased to express his love so far that his honour should be alone unless the goodly fellowship of Saints and Prophets were round about him Except a seed-corn fall into the ground and die it abideth alone Joh. xii 24. Lord why dost thou esteem thy self alone and heaven to be solitary without us But O man how canst thou be without him in thy heart on earth that would not be alone without thee in heaven Behold when he brought down heaven upon earth in his own body two of the Elect brought down their glory to the Mountain to assist him His own Disciples were yet but earth and corruption and therefore incapable of such illuminated brightness till the time should come to be translated out of the prison of mortality And Angels were not fit to be his Compeers at this bout because he manifested the glorification of the flesh which pertains not to Angels but to Men. None of the living would serve the turn to appear with him in Majesty they were not supernaturalized to undergo it nor any of the Angelical Order they were not of the right Predicament two men came down unto him who had been exalted into Heaven and now I will shew with what great congruity these two men who were Moses and Elias But to omit nothing which is fit to be observ'd I will make three general heads of this matter 1. Whether all Elias and all Moses did appear both body and soul 2. From whence they came to be Parties at the celebration of this great Miracle And 3. If I can reach so far Why they became the representative persons for the whole Body of the Saints in Heaven To the first that these two Witnesses presented themselves in bodily shapes there is no wit so scrupulous I think that can make a question of it for S. Matthew says 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 these men were seen of Peter James and John Then they were heard talking and by their talk discover'd to be those grand Prophets as I will shew hereafter They talked as men to men vocally not in an intellectual fashion as spirits do And the Apostles in their extasie mentioned the making of Tabernacles to shrowd them in but a Tabernacle is a Coverture for a Body and not for a Spirit The controversie doth not consist in this therefore I pass it over That which hath caused diversities of judgments to arise is herein what manner of Bodies these were wherewith Moses and Elias were cloathed to attend the Transfiguration of Christ I will make bold to remove
Pilate that when he found no cause of dislike among all the slanderous tongues in Jerusalem he alone would speak well of Christ It was a word better placed than that of Phocion who praised a lewd person with this excuse that good men did not need commendation The Devil was a murderer from the beginning for indeed in the beginning of time he was a Slanderer Non qui ferro sed qui verbo malefico interficit homicida est says St. Austin He that takes away a mans good name is a Man-slayer as he that takes away my life This same 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to bear true witness of all mens actions I wonder it is no more in request it is the thriftiest vertue that you can entertain In rewards of Gold and Silver what we give away we want our selves but in giving good words and in making good report of other mens deeds we do not diminish our own fame but increase it To come nearer to the cause in hand How did our Saviours righteousness appear unto Pilate that such good words came out of the mouth of a Roman who was a stranger to Christ There is scarce any talk of him in the Gospel before this Chapter Why surely you will say for a Prisoner to justifie himself the way is to clear his Enditement and accusations before the Magistrate Now the Adversary did cast in four Crimes against the life of Jesus One before Caiaphas Mar. xxvi that he would destroy the Temple 2. That they found him perverting the Nation 3. That he forbad to give tribute unto Caesar 4. That he said openly he was Christ a King These three Allegations are together Luk. xxiii 2. and none but those three brought before Pilate You know now the Bill of Enditement What satisfaction did the Prisoner give I pray you Did you ever read of his Answer No not a word came out of his lips Silentium habuit pro advocato Bare silence was his Advocate Fortè verebuntur filium says the King in the Gospel Fortè peradventure What doth any such word of doubting make in the mouth of God But the Lord would not seem to determine that any would be so malicious to kill filium complacentiae the innocent Son in whom he was well pleased His slanders were so notorious that he held his peace and was pronounced innocent Now you are not afraid I am sure that I should hold you too long with multiplying many words in our Saviours behalf Christ thought it needless to say oft and therefore I may spare much pains in that Point in so Christian an Auditory For method sake and the direction of your memory thus I will proceed first to lay down two reasons why our Saviour would stand dumb in the question of his integrity Secondly I will draw a short defence against the four calumniations of the Jews not that our Saviour needs it For I tell you he would not move his lips to make an Apology but for your use and instruction For the first of these The silence of Christ in a matter that concerned his life it was not well interpreted by any man for want of the illumination of the holy Spirit Is he beside himself thinks Peter standing in the High Priests Hall Can he say nothing to his Accusers And because he spoke so little Peter would speak too much thrice he denied him and forswore him And is this the great Prophet of Galilee Thinks Herod who preacheth in every Synagogue not like the Scribes and Pharisees but with power and authority Surely he may teach Fishermen but when he comes before Tetrachs and Princes he is quite daunted and out of countenance But as the Fathers do Comment ingeniously upon the place he dropt a word or two before Caiaphas and Pilate but he did utterly seal up his lips before Herod Quia vocem ejus abstulerat How should he speak before him who had taken away his voice For what was John Baptist but the voice of Christ Doth he despise my Authority thinks Pilate Doth he esteem me not fit to command in the Seat of Justice that he doth reply to no Interrogatory but such as like him Vbi respondet pastor est ubi tacet agnus When he did lift up his heavenly voice then he took upon him the person of a Shepherd that fed his flock when he held his peace then he carried himself as that Ecce agnus that remarkable Lamb of the Flock which stood dumb before the Shearers Thus Peter and Herod and Pilate all were scandalized therefore I come prepared to contest against the World by a double reason how expedient it was for this just Person to hold his peace The first is this Ambiunt defendi qui timent vinci Let them defend themselves who can be convicted his life could not be tainted with any suspicion his works were clear from all imperfection Then what need an Advocate Susanna tacuit vicit Susanna stood impeached between the two lascivious Elders that had tempted her she did not beat the Tribunal and call to heaven and earth for witness of her innocency this had not become her Virgin modesty but standing dumb in her righteousness God did plead her cause by the mouth of Daniel The very Romans gave that respect to an approved man Q. Metellus that the whole Bench forbad him to take his oath in a controversie to be debated lest they should seem to distrust so reverend a Citizen So for these crimes wherewith our Saviour was impleaded Non confirmat tacendo sed despicit non refellendo says the Gloss His silence was not a sign of consent but an argument of untainted integrity And Pilate himself did peep into this mystery For as it hapned to a Client of Rhodes in Plutarch that the Advocate of the contrary side spared not to defame him and cast out his Cause as unworthy of the Court but the Judge all the while sate still and said nothing Non refert quid ille loquatur sed quid ille taceat says the Rhodian It makes not against my Cause that the Advocate rails but it makes much for me that the Judge holds his peace So Pilate did not weigh objections by the malicious out-cries of the Jews but by the generous and inoffensive silence of the Son of God Sophocles in his elder years was accused by his Sons for doating and mispending his goods to the impoverishment of their Inheritance What defence doth the Father make Contest before the Areopagites with his own Children Nothing less he knew the awful authority of a Father and would not stoop so low as to prove and send a cause with those whom he had begotten but sends his Tragedy called Oedipus Colinaeus the work of his gray hairs to be read over before the Judges Hoc non est opus delirantis hominis that was not the work of a doating man there was but that one acclamation heard and so he was absolved In like manner our Lord
Altar you see the strength and mightiness of his power in the Goats that he bore the similitude of sinful flesh in the Ram his Principality that he governed the Flock in the Lamb his meekness and innocency but before the Law this in my Text is the first by name which the Fathers took notice of as a type of the Sacrifice upon the Cross Quis in ariete figuratus nisi Christus spinis Judaicis coronatus of this Type St. Austin is bold to say this Ram in the Thicket was but a rellish and pregustation of him that was compelled to weare a Crown of thorns It is the first praise that Pliny gives to this harmless Creature Magna huic pecori gratia in placamentis Deorum among other attonements it was very gracious to please and pacifie the divine powers how could Idolaters confess so much unless with Caiaphas they prophesied and knew not what they said Indeed we can say omnis huic pecori gratia in placamentis Domini All our attonement all our reconciliation all our pardon it rests upon the head of this Oblation the principal of the Flock Who can think upon the innocence of the Sheep and not remember this spotless Sacrifice without sin Who did no sin neither was guile found in his mouth 1 Pet. ii 22. Non Petrus erat qui haec dixit adulatus Magistro sed Esaias praedixit says Cyril Peter did not say this of himself to flatter his Master he had it from an Evangelical Prophet Isaiah foretold it under the name of an innocent sheep led unto the slaughter The Pharisees called him Carpenter in disgrace but they could not call him Sinner Clamant habet damonium non Clamant habet peccatum they cry out he had a Devil and yet their tongue would not let them say there was a fault in him Our Saviour proclaimes it Quis vestrum Which amongst you doth accuse me of sin Again who can think upon the meekness of the sheep and not remember this Sacrifice that was led dumb before the Shearer Moses was meek yet he commanded that the Adulteress should be put to death Christ was meeker his sentence was clemency every jot Joh. viii Go and sin no more Moses was meek yet he brought Mandatum lapideum a stony Law to the People Christ was meeker and turned those stones into bread at his last Supper he set before them Mandatum triticeum Take and eat in remembrance of me At his Baptism a Dove sat upon his head Columba super agnum a Dove upon a Lamb meekness upon meekness What heart could be more intenerated and mollified than that which prayed for his Persecutors Yet once more let me speak who can think upon the profitableness of the Sheep and not remember this Sacrifice that did yield commodity both in life and death He liv'd in innocency of life for our imitation he suffered in the bitterness of death for our redemption ut afferret remedium in passione mortis ut praeberet exemplum in innoecntiâ vitae says Leo Innoceny Meekness Utility all do correspond that the Angel should take one of the Flock rather than any other Beast to prefigure the Sufferings of Christ And we must not omit that among all the Flock the Ram was cull'd out to be substituted for Isaac propter masculam virtutem never was there more need of a masculine courage and a spirit heroick than to tolerate and endure so much as our Saviour did this day stripes and strokes blasphemies and buffetings thorns and nails to drink up all the bitterness of the Cup to fight with God himself and his wrath in that Agony in the Garden every vein of the body vented bloud quia de toto corpore id est de Ecclesiâ emanaturae sunt passiones martyrum says Prosper because the Martyrs should suffer in every part of his Body which is the Church Such a Samson we had need of that could break the green wit hs and snap the cords in sunder Such a Lion we had need of sprung from the Tribe of Judah and it falls out I know not whether by art or by arbitrary imposition that the Latin word Aries for a Ram comes from the Hebrew word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which signifies a Lion come to his growth and vigour I am sure he that is the Ram in my Text is likewise the strong Lion of the Tribe of Judah Very appertinent is that which I find related in Ortelius concerning the Christian King of the Abyssens that he gives for his Crest a Lion holding a Cross in his paw notifying that Christ stuck to his Passion and his Cross with that power and fortitude like a Lion that no tentation nor Devil nor infirmity could pluck him from it An Angel came to strengthen him says St. Luke I pray you did the Ram give back then was the Lion frighted did weakness creep upon him not so but because in the very gall of affliction he had strength and courage therefore he did merit to be strengthened by the ministery of Angels For example in this Militant state of the Church they that couragiously endure their trial at length shall not want Divine consolation This Exposition likes me best which ascribes all masculine courage to the Ram which was caught in the Thicket Ecce aries behold a Ram why John Baptist makes him younger above a thousand years after Ecce Agnus Dei behold the Lamb of God Nay in one mystical verse Gen. xlix 9. Judah is called a Lions Whelp and a strong Lion and an old Lion great diversity of age in so few words I must say of these places as St. Austin did reconciling the Prophesies of Esay and Jeremiah To us a Child is born says Esay Mulier circumdabit virum says Jeremiah A woman shall compass a man and both speak of Christ Why time says the Father doth not make him older than he was before the beginning of the world sed insinuant ei nunquam defuisse virtutem but if the Child be call'd a man it is to insinuate that full strength and perfection was alwayes in him Now you have seen the thing which was bestowed upon Abraham The Wife of Manoah could say if the Lord were pleased to kill them he would not accept a Burnt-offering at their hands neither would he have told them of a Son to be born much more may I say if the Lord were not pleased with Abraham and his Seed he would not have given us a Burnt-offering nor told us of him that was to come in the ends of the World as it is in the first mark which is upon this Ram He is Aries post eum Abraham saw a Ram behind him For long it was indeed long after Abrahams days that the manifestation of this Shadow was revealed in the death of Christ My father says Isaac in the 7. verse of this Chapter behold the Fire and the Wood but where is the Lamb Isaac spake of no more than the present
the Gospel could do no good for it was but one Talent upon the return but one single Petition will fructifie like a grain of Wheat into stalks and handfuls For as it is said of the nine Muses 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 call but upon one by name and all her Sisters beside will assist the invocation so call but for one blessing piously and though you ask but for a drop much abundance of waters of comfort will gush out when the spout is opened Fear not Zachary says Gabriel when he came to tell him of the birth of John for thy prayers are heard Luk. i. 13. Why surely says St. Austin he prayed for the whole Congregation at that time and not for Children Not for Children for his Wife was old and barren he despaired of Issue What of that He prayed for the publick good and God gave him joy in particular he prayed for the Congregation as it was fit for the Father of a Flock and God made him the Father of a Son Such notice was taken of this solemn Prayer which our Saviour made for Lazarus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 says St. Chrysostome a Church was built from the ground in that place where the Monument of Lazarus had been before For who would not flock to pray in that place where Jesus had prayed unto his Father It was na Oratory wherby the Prelates of the highest state might learn to officiate by Christs example and execute in their place Alas of too much contempt to pray in the Congregation The proud Emperors of Rome did so perswade themselves Vt sibi viderentur Principes esse desinere si quid facerent tanquam Senatores They thought it did derogate from the Magnificence of a Prince to employ their pains toward the publick good like Senators So to mutter Mass once a year is enough for the Roman Bishop to bless the people with so much breath as to pray for them by the Book O it is too mean a Function for a dignified person What And was it a disparagement to the Son of God to pray among the people when he raised Lazarus The Arrians indeed did object against Christs Divinity in this place for making a Petition in the behalf of Lazarus Where was the vertue of his own Godhead Where was his Omnipotency Say those graceless Hereticks is it not a token of infirmity to ask that of another which we are not able to do by our own efficacy And doth this offend them that Christ should pray that he might conjoyn with us in our infirmities But to give a larger resolution to the doubt Says Martha in the 21 22 verses before Lord if thou hadst been here my brother had not died but I know even now whatsoever thou dost ask of God God will give it thee Christ then had no need to pray for Lazarus to support his own power but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to satisfie the desire and weakness of Martha he betook him to a prayer Says the Centurion Lord only say the word and my servant shall be healed Be it so says Christ and he went no further O says another Come and heal my daughter vouchsafe your presence to the sick person Why Christ came and healed her Could they ask any more Not only the diseases were remedied but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 it was done in what fashion or circumstance they pleased Will Martha have her brother raised with a formal supplication before She hath her will and Jesus prayed unto the Father It was not done then for Lazarus his sake it needed not not for Martha's sake only but for the people that stood by nay that 's not all not for them alone but for us and for as many as shall hear the Gospel preached to the ends of the world For as the beating of the wings and the crowing of the Cock raised up Peter when he was buried in the sins of the High Priests Hall so the knocking of the breast and the voice which cries unto the Lord before the morning watch is that which must raise us up from the luxurious beds of sensuality Some Orders of Mendicant Friers wander about and present themselves to the eyes of men but say not a word for an Alms to make themselves known to the ear of the charitable This is rather sharking than begging for benevolence Let them bear the badge of St. Francis but we the badge of Christ ask and pray for a quickning spirit if you would be raised up to newness of life Hezekiah having emptied his heart of some words which were well disgusted out an as if he had opened a vein in each eye to let out tears by that means saw fifteen years more after a desperate sickness Ahaziah's Child perchance had gained twice fifteen years if the Father had done as much but it lived not fifteen hours after the King had sent for Physick to the God of Ekron Like Coriolanus whom the people thought worthy of any favour if his proud heart would have stoopt and asked for favour Not long before the destruction of Jerusalem the great Gate toward the East fast barr'd and lock'd opened of its own accord says Eusebius This is good luck said the more confident Priests Deus aperuit nobis portam bonorum God hath opened unto us a gate of good fortune of his own accord Nay said the more wise Hostibus introitum patefecit He hath opened a gap for the enemy to come in and that proved to be the truest Divination Dearly Beloved if a blessing fall into your lap when you were dissolute irreligious and never thought of God to give it the gates of your heart being barr'd and fastned do you dream like the foolish people of Jerusalem that a gate of good fortune is opened of its own accord No no beware the after-clap It may be pleasant it may be rich which comes without a Prayer to usher it into the world but like a base-born child it is seldom prosperous Me thinks I should be very much afraid if God had sent me any blessing for which either in special or in general I had not earnestly prayed Whatsoever good thing you possesse and never pray'd for it I pity your title you came to it by robbery And so much for the first dignity of this work it had the preparation of a Prayer Jesus first cast up his eyes and opened his lips to heaven before he stoopt to the Corps beneath and opened the Monument before he cried with a loud voice Lazarus come forth He cried with a loud voice and that is the dignity of the publication When our Saviour issued out of the Grave the third day it was done early in the morning the stone was rolled away and no noise was heard that which was done was done with wonderful silence Why doth Lazarus come out with a loud voice Nay why shall the Angel at the Great Day call the dead out of the earth with the blast
the Spirit of grace and strive to put off the incomprehensible work of God with a jest These men are full of new Wine So that as soon as God sent firy Tongues from heaven upon his Apostles the Devil likewise raised up firy Tongues from Hell and put them in the mouth of his Apostles Envy and despitefulness cares not what reproach it puts upon good men though there be neither sense nor probability to make it credible That is right 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the word which is here used to vent any thing against the credit of holy persons whether it be right or wrong It was impossible they should perswade it in any one that they were overtaken with new Wine for there is no such liquor to be had in May not till September at the soonest But slanders use to rove at random And new wine say the Greeks will sooner intoxicate than old 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 But what sign was there to make the objection credible that the Apostles were drunken Did their tongues falter Were their eyes red Was the Gesture foolish I know no man but Carthusian who goes about to invent a sign which should put the Jews into that unlikely suspicion that as the face of Steven when he was full of the Holy Ghost did shine with brightness so the countenances of the Disciples had a splendour and ruddiness in them with the fire of the tongues which sate upon their heads which made the rash Gazers conceive that they were inflamed with drink As the countenances of many that are most sober being red with the heat of the Liver make the uncharitable surmise that they are intemperate so I remember a story that Cassius Bishop of Narnia was despised by King Toteila because he was high coloured whereas Cassius was most abstemious but high coloured by natural infirmity Another thing concurred that it was the Feast day of Pentecost wherein the Jews were wont to rejoyce yet it was not their wont to solemnize the day with Feasting till the morning Sacrifice was offered up and that time was not yet come Therefore St. Peter answers That these men were not drunken for it was but the third hour of the day They that are scandalous in the sin of drunkenness use not to be gone so soon They that are drunken are drunken in the night says St. Paul that is most usual Although some do spend the whole night in quaffing untill the morning In lucem semper Acerra bibit Some prevent the rising of the Sun and are scarce sober one hour of the day whose souls lie under the Prophets woe Woe unto them that rise up early in the morning to follow strong drink Isa v. 11. But Peter did not strive to make an invincible refutation of their slander because their scurrility was so improbable and ridiculous and a defence which is over-anxious makes a good cause suspicious Had the accusation been true it had deserved a scorn as Noah was derided when he was drunken The drunkard makes himself an Ape for Boys to sport with his brutishness a natural fool is not such an object for derision and laughter So that passively it is true what Solomon says Wine is a mocker Prov. xx 1. It exposeth it self to the flouting of vain persons here and shall reap the scorn of God hereafter But says St. Cyril the wickedness of man shall turn to the praise of God and this slander of the Jews shall expound some Prophesies of Scripture and the mystery of the Holy Ghost It is granted says the Father the Apostles on this day were full of new Wine Novum verè erat illud vinum novi Testamenti gratia that is it is the grace of the New Testament which makes glad the heart of man Inebriabuntur pinguedine domus â—uae the Vulgar Latine keeps that word Psal xxxvi 8. we read They shall be abundantly satisfied with the fatness of thy house and thou shalt make them drink of the river of thy pleasures And again Cant. v. 1. I have drunk my wine with my milk meaning both the comfort and the nourishment of the Gospel O friends drink yea drink abundantly O beloved To this pertains another Psalm of David xxv 5. Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies thou anointest my head with oyl my Cup runneth over Here is the oyl of the Spirit here is the Table of the Lord here is the Cup of Christs bloud an overflowing Cup sufficient to save a thousand worlds This Cup is that which ravisheth our Souls and carries up our Spirit to Heaven to partake of the body and bloud of Christ when we come to his holy Table this is Sobria ebrietas non madens vino sed ardens Deo This is a sober drunkenness an inflammation not with Wine but with the love of the Lord Jesus Happy were these Apostles that were drunken with drinking of him who says I am the Vine and ye are the branches But here is the difference between the meaning of these Scoffers and the meaning of those that make it an heavenly mystery he that is drunken with Wine looks like an incarnate Devil he that is drunken with the Spirit looks like an incarnate Angel I will stay a little while more not very long to shew how the mighty gifts poured out upon the Apostles on this day was a spiritual drunkenness First excess of Wine procures forgetfulness of things past so the Mission of the Holy Ghost made them that were converted to Christ forget the Ceremonial Law of Moses saving that little that was tolerated for a time to satisfie the weakness of the Jews it was laid aside as if it were quite dead and out of remembrance Thus St. Paul doth as it were make his Shears to pass between the Old and the New Law forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forth unto those things which are before Phil. iii. 13. Upon that accident that there wanted Wine at the Marriage in Cana the Gloss says Vetus legis vinum defecerat in nuptiis Ecclesiae none of the Wine of the Law remained at the Marriage of the Christian Church it was tilted and spent Secondly He that is giddy with wine makes no distinction of persons knows not his Friends from his Foes So he that is full of the Spirit renounceth all friendship affinity parentage in respect of the engagements of holiness and Religion Per calcatum perge patrem If thy Mother hold out her Breasts to entice thee from God if thy Father stop thy way shut thine eyes against the one tread upon the other make no respect of persons in that cause It is the praise and a most magnificent one which Moses gives to Levi Deut. xxxiii 9. Who said unto his Father and to his Mother I have not seen him neither did he acknowledge his brethren nor knew his own children Thus the mighty working of God works an extasie in his Servants that they care not for
Father Vasarenes as Agathias reports the Soothsayers foretold that his Mother should bring forth a Male child and he was crowned in her Womb his honour began the soonest I ever read of any and his guiltiness of sin and obligement to Gods wrath began as soon as the soul did inform the body If ever there were a Paradox in the world which Turks and Infidels hitherto have shamed to maintain it is the contrary to this doctrine that some iniquity is not the cause of perishing before the wrath of God Peribit in iniquitate it was ever good Divinity before Mariana and some Jesuits have perswaded desperate cast-aways to be saved by iniquity Saved did they say And for working abomination O are not the tender mercies of the wicked cruel St. Paul comforted our Mothers in their travel that the woman should be saved by bearing Children into the world they teach Reprobates to purchase a Saintship by murdering such whom the world is not worthy of Slaughter and bloudshed says our Philosopher Rhet. 1. lib. are not fit to make a question for discourse because it was never disputed by some either to be lawful or tolerable Nay in the second Eth. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 nothing can make Murder a good action much less Treason But this was the pity of a Philosopher and Alexanders Courtier not the stomach of a Jesuit and a grand Inquisitor If all the Saints should appear before God with the Instruments of their Piety Moses with the two Tables Aaron with his Rod David with his Psaltery Dorcas with the Garments of her Charity would you look for a Priest among them girded with a bloudy knife Or a Villain provided with fire and Gunpowder Who would look for it Except as when the Sons of God stood before the Lord Job i and Satan also was among them Nay heaven and earth shall pass away before Peribit in iniquitate become Apocryphal before the Wormwood of sin become the Palm of immortality Thus much for the cause in general but what offence his iniquity did give the sin of Achan will ask a peculiar and a larger trial You are deceived if you think it was but Larceny or greedy pilfering if a Thief steal he shall restore fourfold says the Law or seven fold says Solomon when stealing grew worse and worse that was the most of it But God saw more pernicious faults in Achan for his justice is not fidelis in minimo sharpest against small offences like the Popes Decretals which enjoyn a Priest forty days penance if he spill one drop of the Cup of the Lords Table and but seven days penance for Fornication But hainous was the fact of Achan first in scandal that an Israelite preserved so long in the Wilderness one that fought the Lords Battels and came always home with victory that he should be the first that trespassed among the Canaanites the heathen that would blaspheme the living God Secondly In disobedience that Joshuah his noble General made the head of all the Tribes by Gods appointment and Moses good liking and Eleazars Unction could not command to be obeyed Thirdly In faithless covetousness That since Manna did fall no more from heaven about their Tents the Lord did heed his people no longer every man must catch what come to his hands so Achan took the accursed c. Here is scandal to them that were without within themselves contempt of the Lord and his servant Joshuah in his own heart an inordinate desire to grow rich and sumptuous I do not make Achans fault the greater that Gods vengeance may be more plausible as St Austin spake of disgracing Cacus to honour Hercules the more Nisi nimis accusaretur Cacus parum Hercules laudaretur but remember my scope is all one with S. Pauls Interrogatories With whom was he grieved And to whom did he swear in his wrath that they should not enter into his rest If there be any delight in comparing sins as the Prophets use to dash the Idols of Jerusalem with the Idols of Samaria me thinks the first transgression of the Garden of Eden and the pleasant Land of Canaan almost another Eden are very semblable Eve walking in Paradise saw the fruits and her eye enticed her to take that which was forbidden and then she hid her self out of Gods sight So Achan treading upon the soil of Canaan saw a Babylonish Garment and his eye enticed him and he took it when it was forbidden and accursed and hid both the Garment and his sin from the sight of Joshuah But those are impudent crimes like the forehead of an Harlot that leave their memory to the evil world to be the first examples of transgressions cursed be that sin for it festers into scandal and unhappy shall be their end that fly from the Lord till they be left as a Beacon on the top of a Mountain and as an Ensign on a Hill says the Prophet Isaiah Many offences had never been committed or else brought forth by a worse Generation long after unless an evil Author had made the way known and easie for our corrupt nature therefore the first that gathered sticks and broke the Sabbath the Shilonites Son the first that cursed impious Gehazi the first that took sinful wages for the gift of God Ananias and Saphira the first dissemblers in the Primitive Church Achan the first Malefactor in the Land of Canaan these had their portion suddenly and drunk the Cup of Gods fury unto the dregs thereof I know not how fatal it is but since the small trenches of Rome were filled with too much bloud of Rhemus anon after they were digg'd massacres and persecutions have never departed from that unlucky building As the heavens are spread above us and seem to speak like the Statue of the King of Egypt In me quis intuens pius esto So the ground whereon we tread sometimes quakes and seems to be too holy to be defiled But if ever there were an 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or incongruity of place to say unto sin exiforas this is no ground for sinners was it not the Land of Promise A small sin in Canaan was greater than a fornication in Egypt a trespass in Jerusalem is worse than an Idol in Samaria Had this deed been done in the Wilderness or in the paths of the Red Sea it had been more tolerable as one speaks of Pompeys obscure death in Egypt a thousand Leagues from Rome Procul hoc ut in orbe remoto abscondat fortuna nefas the offence had not been so notorious But the Angels themselves do wonder in a field of choice Wheat Vnde zizania Lord whence come Tares Will you resolve the Prophet Jeremy the same question He makes very strange fidelis civitas How is the faithful City become an Harlot To use the Lords own Sacrifice with the Sons of Eli for Riot and Extortion his own Supper for drunkenness with the bad Corinthians to employ the soyl of his own
and comes a fresh to view and mend with a second or third fancy what the first did mistake So if we could lay aside our selves and then resume our substance again we might spy out faults which now we discern not nor acknowledge As who should say lay down your body in the dust take it up again in the Resurrection like a Picture cast aside then I know we shall learn where the fault lies But self love must not be the judge whether God doth punish one man for anothers iniquity Secondly The superstition of the Heathen encreased this error There was a bloudy opinion among them called Succidaneum sacrificium if you have heard of it wherein one may lay down his life unto the Gods to redeem the danger of another Antinous the great Minion to Hadrian the Emperour cut off the remaining days of his own youth to recover Adrian from a desperate feaver And Philumena passing the love of women spent her heart bloud as a Cordial Julap to recover her husband Aristides Now upon what presumption did they stand A Principle they had for it but manifestly against God and the Gospel that every man was Lord of his own life to employ where he would for himself or for another Vitam approbare aliis quisque debet sed mortem sibi Let us live to have the good liking of other men but let us die as we like it our selves And this made them esteem what a conscionable thing God had given man when he gave him life Hoc est unum quare de vitâ queri non possum neminem tenet No man need keep it longer than he would quite contrary not only to Gods Law but the good Philosophy of Plato It is better to die than to live says he but love not thy sell so well to do thy self that benefit 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 stay till some other do so good a turn for you But O fools and slow of heart to believe all that the Prophets have spoken ought not Christ alone to suffer for the sins of others The just for the unjust The plowers plowed upon my back and made long furrows Here is plowing and making furrows as if there were seeds sown in the wounds of Christ of which we may reap thirty sixty and an hundred fold according to the measure of our faith So then the Doctrine of the heathen is both against Nature and against the Sacrifice of Christ Wherefore these must not be our judges whether God doth punish one mans person for anothers iniquity But Ventum est ad Triarios the third rank of Adversaries are the School Divines left-handed Benjamites able to cast a distinction at an hairs breadth Whose Doctrine when it is good is like the Moon at the Full light and entire but perchance spotted But when their Doctrine is false it is like the Moon in the Wain full of horns and distinctions Give me leave to make proof of it in this cause which I have in hand First Say they iniquity is visited upon those Generations which did not commit the fault Si communitas favet unius delicto minimè verò si ignorat If many concur to favour the sin of one man that man shall not perish alone in his iniquity It is true and God hath spoken Lev. xx If the people do not punish the man that giveth his seed to Molech c. But what was this to Achan Did he reveal hâ—s fault to thirty six Souldiers or to his Children Very unlikely that a close sin should be known to so many Very likely that among his Children some were Infants that knew not what it was to sin and yet he perished not alone c. Durandus divides the case thus One is liable to judgment for the trespass of another in divino judicio non in humano Man must not adjudge man to condemnation for the trespass of another but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 according to Gods good will it may be done Doth Durandus say so But so doth not Ezekiel The soul of the Son is mine as the soul of the Father that soul which sinneth shall die Ezek. xviii 4. Mark what the Prophet says Before his judgment every soul shall escape that is innocent before his judgment that made the soul meaning God and not the Magistrate In Verse 25. Are not my ways equal Nay are not your ways unequal My ways you hear the Text. God is defended from this injustice and not the Magistrate Thirdly Some deliver their opinion in this distinction In temporali paenâ non in aeternâ A modern affliction which lasts but for a time may chastise the Son for the Fathers iniquity but not an eternal condemnation For although our bodies may answer for our Parents being the fruit of their Loyns yet my soul is not engaged to any but to God alone Besides the wounds of the body in this life are like the cutting of the bark of the tree to inoculate a Bud which may bring forth fruit But In inferno nemo te Laudat Domine there is no repentance no remorse in Hell So that the Christian use of Gods chastisements is lost in eternal torments but not in temporal O take heed of this opinion to put a draught of gall and vinegar to our Saviours mouth when his lips upon the Cross were full of mercy My meaning is do not impeach 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the gentleness of Christ to say he doth exact a momentary punishment upon a guiltless person For this were to say that Adam was not only the Root and publick person of all mankind but that all other Parents have the same state of prerogative That which Pelagius did impudently deny in original sin is true in actual sins Qui remisit Tibi peccata tua non imputabit aliena Fear not to bear the burden of thy Fathers sin when if thou come unto Christ he will refresh thee of thine own A fourth refuge is on this wise Affliction doth befall a man sometimes Ex antecedenti pro alieno peccato formaliter pro suo Take an instance to understand it by a Minister neglects his Flock a Father the education of his Children Now the mischief of this neglect may redound to the hurt of God knows whom So that though the Ministers fault went before their destruction yet ignorance and blindness in their own neart is the proper cause of the curse which lies upon them which is all that I labour for in this present controversie The last assault made by the Schoolmen deserves your observation for the Authors sake it is Aquinas And his opinion is like fluctus decumanus the tenth wave and more troublesome than all the rest Vnus punitur pro altero modo medicinali non paenali As who should say the Arrows of God are shot from heaven as out of a well-drawn bow against the capital sinner Some that stand in the way are wounded with the Arrows head yet not out of purpose
to wound them but to heal them I have learnt a distinction in another place from the same man sufficient to refute him It is this Every affliction that gainsays the pleasure and content of nature is first a punishment then it is a medicine or salve to cure you as you use it Do you not see the error that Aquinas draws upon himself If to punish one man for anothers trespass is unjust and wrongful except it be like the Acrimony of some preventing Physick then God doth evil that good may be gained from it O says Abraham God forbid that the Judge of all the world should do unjustly Now do you understand how these cunning Benjamites the Schoolmen have cast their distinctions at the truth just like Mnestheus in Virgil who shot at the Dove and mist it but cut the string in twain by which it was tied fast before Ast ipsam miserandus avem contingere ferro Non valuit nodos vincula linea rupit Now the harvest is ripe and it is time to give in the right Verdict upon the Controversie And as the Alabaster Box of Oyntment which was broken in the Gospel was burst for the honour of our Saviour but the sweet smell did refresh all the Disciples which were about it So my conclusion shall be dedicated to Gods honour and to your instruction I have many Theorems to propound unto you but all shall end in this Doctrine That excepting the first Adam the root of our corrupt nature and excepting the second Adam who being without spot or sin gave himself to the death of the Cross for the sins of all the world these two excepted every man dies propter peccatum suum for his own iniquity First I do presume that you will consent unto me that the heart of man is only evil continually And that we may call it as Theodorus did revile Tiberius Lutum saenguine maceratum mud tempered with pollution As one said of the High Court of Judges in Athens 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 you could not miss of a righteous man among them though you pickt in the dark But I say we cannot find out a good man though we sought him carefully at noon-day For the Lord himself hath looked down from heaven and we are all become abominable usque ad unum and that one is Jesus Christ Then it is confessed that the wages of sin is death Seriùs ocyùs sometimes before we were born but as suddenly as God shall call upon us to pay the common debt of nature Nemo nisi suo die moritur says Seneca My day to die was every day since I had an hour to live Silly soul do you think it an injury to die a babe To die an Ignorant of misery Did you ever hear an Infant complain of short life Nay rather did not Moses weep because he was preserved in the Ark of Bulrushes and had his misery prolonged We have heard many old men that would cry rather than sing at Nunc Dimittis when they put from shore for ever But come death quickly come heaven the sooner let all the world change in the twinkling of an eye and then come Resurrection come Lord Jesus Are the shortest Livers unkindly dealt with Non magis queri debes de repentinâ morte quam qui citò navigavit Do complain that wind and tide have brought you too quickly to your haven Give me your credit but to one thing more You are bound to answer to as painful and severe death as Gods vengeance shall inflict upon you I think I might have seen in the days of Herod when Rachel mourned for her Children one little Saints soul pincht out of the body as a cherry stone spirted between the fingers a most calm deliverance and another babe Lacerum crudeliter ora ora manusque ambas cut in pieces with a wound bigger than the body How comes this to pass for both were Infants Not because the one smarted for his Fathers Usury and Sacriledge more than the other but because God said no more Gen. iii. then man shall die But whether by fire or water peaceable or tyrannous it is free in the Lords appointment from the sixth day of the Creation to the worlds end Now let us see if we can find any thing in that which we have caught to pay Tribute unto God You cannot deny but Death and Diseases and Poverty Laethumque labosque are due to every sinner and all these in such a time as God likes best whether it be at Noontide or at Evening or in the Dawning of the day and with such measure and quantity as God hath prepared the Viols of his wrath Then why art thou disquieted O my soul and why should I fear to pay the price of those sins which are not mine The poor Subjects have lost their lives in the Kings iniquity witness David and Israel The Children for the Fathers witness Sodom and Gomorrah The Family with the Master as it was with Core and his accomplices Lastly some of all sorts did drink the same cup with Achan in his iniquity ay dearly beloved at this time God called upon them all to die who were bound to die for their own sins at any time Now let me raise you up from the long consideration of this Point as the Angel did Elias under the Juniper tree and you shall find a Cake upon the coals some few Meditations from hence that God makes the sin of one man an occasion to destroy a multitude First If the disobedience of one sinner is enough to consume many persons Lord whither will a multitude of iniquity send one man headlong Sufficient are our evil days wherein we have walked too much before after the vanity of our mind Secondly As the greatest unity of the Triumphant Church above doth consist in the glory which they enjoy together in the sight of God So our unity of the militant Church below is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to suffer and die together Poterant nec morte râ—velli It is that which must combine the souls of Christians Thirdly Shall not this make me as careful to prevent every mans sins as mine own Shall I not offer my self to be my brothers keeper Like watchmen that compass the Câ—ty in the night not only for the safety of their own house but lest any Mansion take fire about them But especially who is a Father of Children that will not consider his sins may be as ready to destroy as his Loyns have been fruitful to bring Sons into the world Can you revile the King of Moab that sacrificed his Son Do you detest their abominations that made their Children pass through the fire to Molech Is it good in you to declaim against the severity of Brutus and Torquatus and such cruel Fathers But spare them O child of pollution or accuse thy self Are not your sins murderers as well as theirs You gave life by nature and you destroy it by iniquity When God
from godly sorrow and repentance It knows not the way to sit down and to be dejected to the earth and yet to none else but such will our Saviour say Friend go up higher Another observation on this Point is that when sorrows came hudling upon Nehemiah and fell as thick as hail he sate down which is an evidence of patience that he submitted himself under the hand of the Lord. It is our modern phrase to express the humour of a man who struggles to repel an injury that he will not sit down by it But this servant of the Lord in my Text had no quarrel against the providence of his Maker let the cup of judgment be never so bitter which he was to drink he was quiet and sate down He knew we are all as clay in the hand of the Potter and shall the Vessel say to him that framed it what makest thou Gods judgments are wonderful and unsearchable sometimes they are never unjust And what fruit can the stubborn reap by endeavouring to break their chains What hath it ever profited them to challenge the Lord in the bitterness of their discontent What have they got by cursing murmuring and repining no other than to make the furnace of tribulation seven times hotter As it is best for the Child and for the Mother when the birth stays the due time before it be born So let us not struggle and toss about to ease our selves in a time of infelicity our redress will be most facile and fair when the Lord bringeth it to pass at his good pleasure If you think to be delivered sooner by quarrelling violence commotion it will prove an abortive remedy If you long to have things better when they are ill tarry for the Lord sit down and mourn be humble obedient keep a good conscience girt Nehemiahs patience unto you sit down and be still A third instruction upon this Point is that to sit down is to muse and to consider sadly of that which is brought before us So Nehemiah sate down to call his soul to counsel he intermitted all worldly business and composed himself to think of the Judgments of God It is well that the Royal Piety hath called us together to day upon so good an occasion Here is a Senate of Gods Servants gathered together in this holy place and in all other houses of God throughout this Realm Now we are set to it to call our ways to remembrance to revolve in our mind both every one a part how far we have corrupted our ways And likewise have taken this pause of time and sequestred our selves from all secular affairs to take a considerate view upon the sins of the Kingdom how near we are in all likelihood to relapse into some great troubles because the fear of the Lord is not much conspicuous among any sorts of men Are our Peers and Nobles renowned for their advancement and protection of true honour and vertue as their great Ancestors have been Sit down and think upon it The Reverend Sages of the Law are their minds set upon righteousness And do they judge the thing that is right with courage and integrity Sit down and think upon it The portion and Tribe of God the holy Clergy do they remember or can they forget how they were lately trodden down reviled and cast out of all they had for twenty years And doth it stir us up to be burning and shining lights more than ever And to double our diligence now in Prayer in Preaching and administring the holy Sacraments Sit down and think upon it For the Gentry are they not addicted to waste and riot Do they not crowd themselves into our enlarged Suburbs where they have no Calling but to emulate one another in excess of feminine Pride and rude debauchery Sit down and think upon it As for what concerns the great City not to rub it with salt and Satyrs is it not as palpable as Gods light that it did poison the whole Land with Rebellion and still infects it with Gaudiness Gluttony Whoredoms and Falshoods Sit down and think upon it Do the Country Villages deserve the old commendations of simplicity and innocency But how ignorant are they in the knowledge of Salvation How unthankful to God in all seasons How hath Satan bewitched them of late years into dissolute lives and drunkenness Sit down and think upon it I pass over many things in silence as not fit for publication Now though I have shewn you an Ocean of ungodliness breaking in upon us who almost unless such an extraordinary day as this doth spur them on who doth consider it and muse upon it with a leisurable sorrow The most will shake their heads at it and give it a shrug and then they are at their furthest There is all the regard they have when the sins of an whole Nation look as if they were white for harvest It is too tedious for them to sit down to cast up a sollicitous account to survey the parcels of our crimes to cast them up into a total sum as much as is possible This is too long labour for them who are very busie a doing nothing They will sit down as the Israelites did to eat and to drink and rise up to play Whereas the beginning of true repentance is to allot some time day by day for considering our own works seriously and the criminal faults of the whole Land Grant some good hours for the serious understanding of those things and run not away lightly from such holy thoughts but possess Nehemiahs room sit down and ponder the Judgments of the Lord. It follows in the second branch of his penitential carriage that the sins and desolation of Jerusalem wrought upon him so far that he wept Perhaps some sturdy spirit will say Mulier quid ploras Woman what ailest thou to weep A manly courage thinks shame of it Nay Infans quid ploras It is childish as some conceive to put the finger into the eye Indeed Quid potest infans nisi plorare How can a Child help it self when it is offended but by crying But when our heavenly Father is offended it is a sweet sign of grace to demean our selves like Children and cry Except you become as little children you cannot enter into the Kingdom of heaven Mat. xviii 3. Nay says David I have brought my soul low like a weaned Child Psal cxxxi 2. and yet he no coward He became as a Child and not such a one as hath the breast and is still but a weaned Child taken from the comforts and lullabies of the Nurse and then you know it will burst into tears True repentance you see abhors all stubbornness and obstinate resolutions it abates its fortitude it melts in the sight of God Is not this much more religious than to have Nerves of Adamant and an heart of brass A stomach that is insensible of the divine wrath is a symptome of madness and not of courage There is
are the words of Calvin To call a Publick Fast is to draw a solemn profession from the tongues of all men in the behalf of all men So do we for those who out of stubbornness and frivolous exceptions against our Liturgy will not joyn with us in this Church duty So we do for those who out of blindness in a superstitious breeding had rather mutter they know not what in an unknown Tongue than pray with us in that Language wherein they may be comforted and edified So we do for those who out of profaneness and Atheism think not of these things and have no affection to bear a part in common Supplications We fast for all these to day as for our selves desiring God as it is in our Litany that he will have mercy upon all men The sick that desire to joyn with us in Prayer and cannot come Infants and Sucklings whose tongues are not yet framed to magnifie the Lord we represent all these and include them in our faithful and charitable Supplications for our selves and for all these we pray to our heavenly Father that as we spread not our Table this Noon so he will fit us against Night to eat our meal with a good conscience with confidence and comfort that he hath restored us to all his blessings again And though we have been Prodigal Children yet we shall be brought into our Fathers house to eat the bread of life and the fatted Calf even Jesus Christ A Fast is commonly the Eve before some Holy-day and I pray to God that this Publick Fast may be such the Eve or forerunning day to joyful times to come and so it will be if as sure as this is a Fast the time to come be observed with all diligence as holy to the Lord. And now in the conclusion of all that you may know that Nebemiah fulfilled all righteousness for Jerusalems sake when so many exercises of humiliation had gone before in the upshot he prayed before the God of heaven Weeping and Mourning and Fasting are about Prayer like prickles about a Rose But as no sweet Rose is without prickles so no powerful Prayer is without these or some of these But this is the Rose this is the flower of Religion this is the Odour of sweet Incense that ascends up before the Lord. Ibi nuntius noster oratio mandatum per agit quò caro pervenire non potest says St. Austin It delivers our Message like an Embassadour in the Sanctuary of God whither corruptible flesh and bloud cannot enter For as the Winds and Air have free access unto those places which are immured and watcht that no foot of man can approach unto them So though a Cherubim brandish a flaming Sword before Paradise that the Seed of mortal man cannot come to it without destruction yet our Prayers are Spirits and Angels that fly upon the wings of the wind and come boldly to that place where God is wonderful in light inaccessible A poor whelp hath found out a way by nature to lick it self whole with its tongue when it is bitten or wounded So when we are oppressed with any evil of sin or of punishment our tongue is our instrument to lick the sore Call upon the Lord in the time of trouble and he will hear thee and help thee Yet very much goes to it to make Prayer speeding and effectual Go unto the House of the Lord as often as you can and joyn in humble Petition with the Spirit of the whole Church with the Congregation of Saints and bring your mind with you as well as your body your zeal as well as your voice Observe your constant times of private Prayer at least every Morning and every Evening if oftener the better Cast your self upon your knees with a resolved preparation to be a faithful a penitent an earnest Supplicant Intermit not this practice for any worldly avocation either to serve your self or to serve your friends and I can tell you this will bring such admirable effects to pass when you have got the habit and perseverance of that vertue as I durst not name but that the Spirit of God hath got assurance of it It will give you knowledge of divine things when you will wonder how you learnt them It will pick the thorns of Concupiscence out of your flesh when you will marvel how you were rid of them It will give you courage in dangers when there is small hope to escape And content when desire is not obtained And chearfulness when every thing that should procure joy is far from you It is grace and peace health and wealth and every good thing that concerns this life and a better Only ask seek and knock ask with confidence seek with diligence knocb with perseverance No Father if his Child ask him bread will give him a stone or if he ask a fish will give him a Scorpion If they that are evil give good things how much more will your heavenly Father If we ask him Victory he will not give us a Defeat If we ask him Peace he will not give us continuance of War If we ask him for Justice he will not give us Oppression If we ask him for the continuance of true Religion he will not give us Idolatry and Superstition But ask zealously faithfully devoutly with love unfeigned with a clean heart as becometh Saints For if you ask amiss you shall go without Look towards the pattern of Nehemiah he was one of great integrity and uprightness and therefore fit to carry the Petitions of all the people in his lips to God He prayed before God not like an Hypocrite to be seen of men He set God always before him assured that he was present to hear his words and to see his ways But they that have the itch of the Pharisees to draw the eyes of men upon them the Lord will turn away his face and reject their Prayers He prayed before the God of heaven he did not pray to the Saints in heaven No says Friar Walden we confess that none of the just men in the Old Testament did ever pray to any Saint departed partly because the souls of the righteous were not admitted unto the Vision of God in heaven before Christ by his Ascension did open the Kingdom of heaven to all believers Even as much then as now for ought he knows and how much or how little either then or now it is hard for him or us to know But his second reason is that the Jews were kept from the custom of praying to Saints least they should run into Idolatry I thank him for that caution for that mis led practice of praying to Saints is a symptome of Idolatry Let us direct our Petitions to the Lord alone in whom we have assurance that he doth hear us and will help us I have said unto the Lord thou art my God hear the voice of my Prayer O Lord Psal xl 6. Is there any Precept in Scripture
an Ordinance but the Laws of the Lord are pure and just like Silver purged seven times in the fire without dross or corruption yet Jonadab is obeyed and God despised 2. Where was Jonadab now composed in the Grave of silence dust to dust the end of all men The Lord liveth for ever and there is no end of his dayes Yet Jonadab preacheth being buried and the words of the Lord are like a Dream which he that waketh hath forgotten 3. Jonadab was austere and his yoke exceeding heavy to dwell in no Houses but Shades and Tents not to till the ground the happiness of Cain above his younger Brother To live in poverty in Canaan where it was easie for all to be rich but Israel that I may not run into many particulars had but ten Commandments to keep and ten thousand Blessings for their Guerdon Et merces ab eo qui jubere potest vim necessitatis affert sayes Tacitus the days work may be well done when the Bondman is made an hired Servant Yet Jonadab finds duty in his Children and God finds rebellion in Israel Lastly was there any thing to give advantage to the Rechabites in the way of godliness more than Israel had did they want the snare of a delicious Table to make them wanton read what a Banquet Jeremy spread before them in the former verses But they said c. St. Austin says of the Syrophaenecian Woman who was both hardly spoken of by out Saviour at first and anon commended highly before her face quae contumeliam maximam sine dolore pertulit etiam laudationem perferret sine superbiâ she that took not her reproach in scorn would not wax arrogant upon her commendation so these Rechabites who lived with good content in a life full of neglect may the better endure to have their good deeds scanned without fear of begetting ostentation And therefore I will branch out my Text into these four parts in every of which they will justly deserve our praise and in some our imitation First when the Prophet Jeremy did try them with this tentation whether they would feast it and drink wine they make him a resolute denial a Prophet could draw them to no inconvenient act nolumus we will not 2. Very dutiful and religious was their obedience to the Orders of their Father Jonadab ask them if they will rebel and transgress no for obedience sake nolumus we will not do it 3. Junquets and banquetting were provided for them but they had weaned their Bodies from the Paps of luxury and thus says Temperance nolumus we will drink no wine 4. Here is stedfastness in their Vow made unto God For this is more than a frugal Diet it is the Vow of Sobriety nolumus in aeternum say the last words of this verse We have said for ever c. Some are good men of themselves but easily drawn aside by allurements such are not the Rechabites Some will lead well but they cannot follow good Masters but bad Servants all for freedom and nothing for obedience So are not the Rechabites Some are sober in their Diet but will not endure the Laws to interdict meats for a season and enjoyn Fasts and Abstinence such were not the Rechabites Some will protest unto God and oblige themselves to many performances which are instantly dissolved into wind and air such were not the Rechabites Resist Enticements love Obedience follow Temperance promise unto God and perform your Vows These are the praises of the Rechabites these are the four Distributions of my Text and of these in order I begin with Nolumus Jeremy hath no answer but they will not It is a hard case in earnest and the World will never run otherwise a Prophet must be acquainted with nolumus and look to be denied Do you speak for God and for his Altar Practise patience with that old Philosopher that solemnly begged alms among the Statues and Images in Athens and thus he tried how to bear with hard fortune when living men should refuse him Nolumus we will not Is this all the account may some man say of a Prophets words Our Saviour might excuse the Woman of Samaria a weak Vessel like the Pitcher wherewith she drew her water Hadst thou known who it is that asked of thee then thou wouldest have granted it but the Rechabites could not plead ignorance that they knew not Jeremy who was set up for a Sign against Judah and Benjamin Again our Saviour did commend St. Peters judgment that there might be many worse men than the churlish Son that said He would not to his Father yet he turned his mind and did as he would have him But with these men non is as much as nunquam they will never do it repentance is hid from their eyes Resolve we therefore that this is such a request where the Petitioner sued for nolumus and to be said nay is the fairest courtesie For that which Jeremy propounded it was not petitio beneficii but probatio fidei So Christ asked Philip for bread to feed the Multitude in Philippo non desideravit panem sed fidem he did it to prove his faith This is the Doctrin Let not thy Soul consent to be enticed unto folly When Syrens and Allurers come with honey in their mouths be you as wise as they were that had wax in their ears Like a sure Musician maintain your part and though some be out of tune be not carried away with their discords to offend against good harmony Vt rupes immota c. says the Poet let a wave dash against you and a billow break it self in twain and fome but for thy part give no ground unto the Tempter Jeremy nor any man alive must look to obtein more than the Servants of Naaman thought fit to be granted si magnum if the Prophet ask a great thing it must be done for the Prophets sake si malum if it be an unlawful thing si per amicitiam patris atque suam the highest Power upon earth hath not power to command it O what an excellent Court did King Saul keep not one of his Servants no not one about him would slay the Priests of God for the Kings Command Turn and slay the Priests of God says Saul unto his Guard 1 Sam. xxii they durst not do it those mighty men of volour durst not draw a sword in a bad Cause because they feared the Lord. Then Doeg is called for from among the Beasts a Herdsman more brutish than the Flocks he kept and he slew that day 85 persons that did wear a Linnen Ephod Such another was that Tribune of the Roman Army that had rather worship Idols with Gallienus the Emperor than serve the true God with Fructuosus the Martyr Jussum est Caesaris ore Gallieni quod princeps colit haec colamus omnes But Amram the Father of Moses is recounted among St. Pauls Saints Heb. 11. because he hid the Child three months and would
not consent to Pharaoh's tyranny He that will sin to please another makes his Friend either to be a God that shall rule him or a Devil that shall tempt him Three things says Aristotle do preserve the life of friendship 1. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to answer love with like affection 2. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 some similitude and likeness of condition 3. But above either 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 neither to sin our selves nor for our sakes to lay the charge of sin upon our familiars No he is too prodigal of his kindness that giveth his Friend both his heart and his conscience I may not forget how Agesilaus his Son behaved himself in this point toward his own Father the cause was corrupt wherein his Father did sollicit the Son answers him with this modesty Your Education taught me from a Child to keep the Laws and my youth is so inured to your former Discipline that I cannot skill the latter Here let Rhetoricians declaim whether this were duty or disobedience But let us examin the case by Philosophy I am sure that no mans reason is so nearly conjoyned to my soul as my own appetite although my appetite be meerly sensitive And must I oftentimes resist my own appetite and enthral it as a civil Rebel and have I not power much more to oppose any mans reason that perswades me unto evil his reason being but a stranger unto me and not of the secret Council of my Soul Yes out of question Remember what Herodias asked when the Kings oath was passed to deny her nothing St. Paul put in a caution that his Galatians should beware of them that came to pervert their faith in the shape of Angels Licet Angelus What could he say more for it is not the Angel of Smirna and Thiatira they had their faults not the Angel of Millain and Hippona the noble Army of the Church they might have their faults But if an Angel from Heaven preach another Gospel unto you than we have preached what then dare we say nolumus nay but anathema let him be accursed How it pitties me to hear some men say that they could live as soberly as chastly as Saintlike as the best if it were not for Company Fie upon such weakness what Simeon and Levy Brethren in iniquity let such a one be a Proverb and a By-word like Milo the Wrestler whose strength was so great that no Champion in Greece could wring a Pomegranet out of his hand but some lascivious Mistress some painted Harlot could make him let go his hold with a kiss Quid refert utrum in matre an in uxore dummodo Eva in omni muliere caveatur says St. Austin If thy Mother speak thee fair if the Wife of thy Bosom tempt thy heart beware of Eve and think of Adam The Serpent was a wise creature Gen. iii. and Eve could not but take his word in good manners Fond Mother of Mankind so ready to believe the Devil that her posterity ever since have been slow to believe God This is the weakness of our Times and to use holy Nazianzens words 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to overwhelm sobriety with Wine in sweet courtesie and Healths as if every tipsie Friend were a Physician I doubt not but the men of Sodom that perished with fulness of bread even they how uncivil soever would have shewn enough of this kindness unto Lot and the Angels But is not this against nature says St. Basil to invite Acquaintants to a Feast for the sustenance of their lives and to endeavour to carry them out of doors like dead men Do you not pity the old Prophet that threatned Jeroboams Altar and made the ashes to tremble by the mighty power of his Message but yet was allured foolishly to turn in and eat when God forbad him He could not say non bibam and stand to it but a Lion out of the Forest did rend the morsels out of his belly before they were digested Beloved never can there be a better season for nolumus for every Christian to be a Rechabite then when any man reacheth out a Cup of intemperance unto us to say boldly we will not drink it And what if I should put you in mind of a more pernicious Cup than that which begets the surfeit of drunkenness it is called the Golden Cup of abominations and the Jesuits are the Cupbearers God give you grace to refuse it when it is reached out unto you and these are the days of trial when swarms of Romanists buz about to pervert the innocent What can they say unto you Beloved are they so meek and humble as we are who built their Popedom above Kings and made their Cardinals the Princes of the Earth Is their life more holy than ours tell me why Stews are maintained why they do sell Indulgences for sins Are they so merciful Who knows not Duke d'Alva's bloudy days Queen Maries Bonfires and the torments of Inquisitions Are they so loyal-hearted alass woe for the loss of so many Princes by their Treasons and Conspiracies But is Christ more magnified by them Why do they interfere upon his Intercession by praying to Saints upon his Mediation by their own Merits Is their Worship of God more spiritual wherefore do I see their Images Are Gods Ordinances so strictly observed in Rome why do some marry incestuously why are some forbidden Marriage Can they prove their Doctrin by so good a foundation as we do wherefore do they urge Traditions Finally Is their Religion more ancient no more than Abrahams Idolatry at Vr in Chaldaea was ancienter than the Worship of the living God Wherefore as our Saviour said to Peter Thou art Simon Bar Jona but thou shalt be called Peter Jonah signifies a Pigeon and Peter an hard Stone as who should say quem inveni timidum ut columbam efficiam lapidem So God confirm the feeble such as tremble on both sides and are fearful as Doves that they may be as the Rock against which the Gates of Hell cannot prevail that you may hold fast your Profession and say against that Cup as the Rechabites did to this non bibemus we will drink no poison Now I proceed to the second part of my Text which hath a strong connexion with the former for why did they resist these enticements and disavow the Prophet Jeremy because says the eighth verse of this Chapter They will obey the voice of Jonadab the Son of Rechab in all things that he hath charged them all the days of their life Their obedience is the second part of their Encomium They will obey the voice of Jonadab their Father The name of Father was that wherewith God was pleased to mollify our stony hearts and bring them into the subjection of the fifth Commandment Illa enim superioritas maximé amabilis est minimè invidiosa says Calvin we cannot envy the superiority of a Father every man being likely to succeed in the same dignity Festus reports
Gregory frames this clear Meditation upon it Persecutionis tempore ponenda est anima pacis tempore frangenda sunt desideria In the time of persecution lose your life that you may gain Christ that Lesson God be praised is out of date with us in the time of peace lose your vast concupiscence that you may gain content Here comes in our part who have leisure to gather great store and peaceable security to enjoy and increase it for that we may lay our desires level with a moderate fortune it is fit above all things to know that you shall never measure these earthly things to the bottom and you cannot measure the joys of heaven to the top so said our Saviour to the Samaritan as I have read it unto you c. Now to bring on the division of the Text I lay this ground Man is a most desiring and a wishing creature his heart doth reach it self forth so much to get and gain that it resembles nothing better than an house with a deep Mote round about it but for the most part the mote is full of puddle water if that were cast out which is the first part to be handled a water which makes us always thirst there is a sluce to let in better which is contained in the second For these two shall be the general heads to which I will refer all that I shall speak the lading out of bad waters from our soul and the letting in of better I will not venture beyond the former of these two at this time Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again And St. Austin preaching upon those words did thus divide them Et verum est secundum hanc aquam verum est secundum quod significat haec aqua It is true being spoken upon those waters drawn out of Jacobs well and upon any other water and it is true being spoken upon that unto which the Element of water did allude that is the riches and glory of this world according to the very waters which our Saviour lookt upon when he preacht I will speak to these three points 1. That all the refection of our body is commended in the phrase of drinking waters 2. Heat consumes our moisture and makes us thirst which is the punishment of our nature 3. We thirst and thirst again which is the punishment of our sensual appetite According to the water unto which our Saviour alluded I have three things more to observe 1. That all these worldly things are compared to waters which slide away 2. Here is the greediness of our heart to be filled with them we would pour them in and drink them down 3. Here 's their emptiness they will never fill us for drink both much and often yet whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again And first a few words litterally of that outward Element which the Woman of Samaria came to draw in her Pitcher upon which this is the former observation that all the refection of our body especially that which cools our thirst is delivered in the phrase of drinking waters Indeed before temperance was perverted this phrase was well understood of all men to drink waters From the Creation to the Floud above sixteen hundred years it is affirmed by divers scarce denied by any that the World knew not what belonged to Wine or to any artificial liquor the great Rivers of the Earth were all their Sellarage and they filled their Cup from thence without cost or labour Therefore in the first of Genesis God stinted our first Parents and their Posterity what they should eat namely the fruits of several Trees all but one and the Herbs of the Field but they were not stinted what they should drink because their nature was inclined to nothing but to the Fountain Element And Noah having never perceived the malignity and headiness of too much Wine neither in himself nor any other person surely not out of intemperance we may well excuse him that but out of ignorance he became drunken It is too much perhaps to look back so far as before the Deluge now we are sure that every Creature of God is sanctified by Prayer and Thanksgiving to them that use it well it is the Lord that makes the Vine to swell with comfortable juyce that men may take it for infirmity of health and upon occasions of chearfulness yet the good Patriarchs would never lay down the primitive sobriety of the World I will go no further to shew it than the verse before my Text. Says the Woman Art thou greater than our Father Jacob who drank himself of this Well and his Children and his Cattle The Flocks and Herds quenched their thirst with no worse than their Master did according to which simplicity of diet God in the beginning allotted the same food for the Beasts that he made for Man Gen. i. 30. I have given you says He to Adam every herb bearing seed which is upon the face of all the earth c. and to every beast of the earth and to every foul of the air and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth wherein there is life I have given every green herb for meat and it was so We and the Cattle you see had once the same allowance or there was very little to choose between our Pasture and theirs I will wind about no longer the scope is to let you see the difference between the frugal institutions of nature and the monstrous inventions of that luxury which at this time prevails among us Why doth the Scripture express all manner of Beverage in forty places by the name of water but to insinuate sobriety Why doth Gods word in an hundred places call the whole repast of the belly by the name of bread but to insinuate frugality The Scripture makes but two words of that whereof affected gluttony hath made twenty thousand The Apostles did break bread from house to house and eat their meat with gladness Acts 2.46 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 alimentum non delicias says St. Chrysostom plain necessary nourishment is meant which nature earns for and cannot want not piled dishes one upon another to the intolerable scorn of God Almighty's first Laws as if you did not set but build a Banquet Our Saviour will condemn you out of your own mouth if you pray his Prayer as you ought Give us this day our daily bread if the word be a Synechdoche one part of sustenance for all Gods gifts I know it is so yet it circumscribes our desires to ask a little and no excess and if you pray with Christs words and not with Christs meaning God will not bless but curse your supplications As the Fable goes of Dido that she asked no more Land than an Ox Hide would compass but she cut that Hide into small thongs and took in as much ground as to build a City so it is a cheat to ask God for bread and water and to mean all
humour into devotion and Prayer Is your Temperature Sanguine and chearful I can tell what that will do if this living water feed it the mind will be bountiful easie to remit injuries glad of reconciliation comfortable to the distressed always rejoycing in the Lord. If a man be Phlegmatick and fearful there is a trial likewise what God can bring forth from such a nature How wary will the Conscience be to give no offence How pitiful How penitent How ready to weep over its own transgressions Finally in every Age of the life old or young in every condition of fortune regal honourable or servile this living water where God pleaseth incorporates it self into it and makes it grow and fructifie according to that use and purpose for which it was planted It is water then which doth increase and vegetate every Plant which our heavenly Father hath planted but with much disparity from our common waters as you may apprehend by divers instances For first pour all that you can draw from your fountain upon a tree that is quite dead and your labour is lost it will never spring again but most wretched were the state of man if the water which Christ gives did not bring us to live again when we were quite dead in corruption And you being dead in your sins hath he quickned c. having forgiven you all your trespasses Col ii 13. All the Sons of Adam beside our earthly mortality are under the infliction of a double death by nature it is a spiritual death to be bereft of grace It is an eternal death to be guilty of hell fire We are St. Judes fruitless trees bis mortuae once were enough but we are twice dead pluckt up from the root yet if the light of Gods countenance shine upon us we shall sprout again and wax green like a Cedar in Libanus What a sapless tree was Zachaeus before the Holy Ghost the Lord and giver of life as we do well call him in the Nicene Creed did bring salvation to his house You might as soon have squeezed water from a Pummy stone as charity from a Publican before his conversion yet though he were dead in covetousness as soon as He began to live in him he scattered abroad and gave unto the poor As the Father said of his Prodigal Child being now come home into his bosom This thy brother was dead and is alive again So let every penitent soul confess my root was dried up how should it come to spring again but by some influence from heaven I was a withered tree that cumbered the ground how am I exalted like Aarons Rod to bring forth Buds and Almonds I was a sensless stone and God hath raised me from thence to be a Child of Abraham Take another instance of diversity in every Plant that lives water is the means to make it bear but in every Plant it makes it bear such fruit and no other as was first grafted upon it it causeth a Fig-tree to bring forth Figs and a Vine to be laden with Grapes But if the fruit were sowre and unpleasant by nature water it while your arms ake it will never help it But this water in my Text which is so worthy of our Saviours praise it will make you gather Grapes of Thorns and Figs of Thistles Indeed it should do so but our Preaching is no better with many than River water gushing upon a Crab-tree the more we teach the more you are laden with your own natural fruit Pride Luxury Intemperance Faction Malice and Incontinency are as rife as ever they were nothing grows upon the stock for all the labour that is spent but sowre Wildings that set the teeth on edge it seems the chief ingredient is wanting the blessing from above you mind other things and then the chief pipe of all will be stopt by which the Spirit should enter into our soul There are some and I would they were but few that put in Bill and Answer as it were against Gods plea they urge their personal infirmities and natural inclinations and think that God can ask no more I am dull of understanding says one and what I am taught I cannot bear it away I am suddenly transported with indignation and I cannot suffer I am retentive of a wrong and cannot easily be reconciled All these are in the same tune with those ill manner'd Guests in the Gospel we cannot come I pray you have us excused Humilitas sonat in ore superbia in actione To plead excuse is a form of humility but in effect it is an open arrogancy Spend this breath of excuse in Prayer and Supplication and cry out often and affectionately drop down upon this heart O Lord drop down upon it and it shall bring forth fruit quite against the grain of your custom quite against the bias of nature The high-minded shall be humble as a Lamb The implacable shall forgive his brother seventy times seven times The Impostor shall make restitution the Bravaries of the time shall confess and amend their vanity Loe this is an alteration which nothing can produce but living water from natural sterility of good to supernatural fruitfulness Origen confounds Celsus with this Argument that the Christian Religion must needs be the power of God and not of man For in all Kingdoms where it had success it did civilize the most barbarous Nations It did mollifie and intenerate the most stony hearts It brought in Justice and good Laws among them that lived by Rapine and Robbery A strange fruit to be found upon such wild Plants Could it otherwise come to pass than because they were watered from above I think you will like this Doctrine best in the Prophet Isaiahs expression Chap. xi 6. under the Kingdom of Christ so it goes before The Wolf shall dwell with the Lamb and the Leopard shall lie down with the Kid. The Calf and the young Lâ—on and the Fatling shall feed together and a young Child shall lead them All that place is noted by Eusebius for a Prophesie to be meant of the conversion of the Gentiles whose brutishness and savage life was changed into good nurture and sweet conversation Ye were darkness but now ye are light in the Lord. O blessed are ye when that which is natural and inbred to our disposition drops off and grows no more Then if ye be planted by the River of God ye shall bring forth your fruit in due season and look whatsoever you do it shall prosper Take a third instance of diversity Our Elementary water helps a Plant to bring forth one kind fruit at one season of the year and this is a blessing of Gods left hand to fill us with the plenty of the earth but the water which is the blessing of his right hand hath this excellency to make the same tree bear all manner of spiritual fruit and at all times and seasons never unfurnisht never empty A moral temperate man may be unjust A
Church 3. That such as were baptized in the Name of the Lord Jesus should be called Christians I could acquiesce in this conjecture if it ascended higher that the Synod Apostolical confirmed it because it came from God I confess I have neither read nor heard that either Christ did leave the Tradition that it should be so with some of his Disciples or that an Angel proclaimed out of the clouds from Heaven or that it was imparted either by dream or revelation sent to any of the Prophets but since no man can challenge that he was the Founder of it I think it surpâ—sseth mortal Authority and therefore I leave the original of it to God It was only in the right of the Father in those times to give a name to his Child Zachary the Priest when he could not speak called for Writing-tables to give the name to John the Baptist and Christ himself having no Father on earth his Father gave him a name from Heaven Then why should not the Father of all that is called Father give that universal Name which belongs to his Children whom he hath regenerated by the Holy Ghost Put the Prophet Isaiah's authority to this reason and who can gainsay it Isa lxii 2. his scope is to extol Sion or the Church Evangelical says he The Gentiles shall see thy righteousness and all Kings thy glory and thou shalt be called by a new name which the mouth of the Lord shall name It were endless to rehearse how many Authors apply this to the Nomenclature of Christian And again Isa xliii 1. I have redeemed thee certainly that 's the voice of Christ I have called thee by my name thou art mine Who will doubt now but that I have reduced our Title to the true original Our Godfather is the Lord above Let me reduce it likewise to the exact time when it began it will be no lost labour This is granted at all hands it did not happen so soon as ever Christ ascended up we were not crowned in our Cradle Pamelius takes advantage at a place in Tertullian to hold that the word Christian began to spread abroad in the fifth year after our Saviours Ascension that is in the very latter end of the Reign of Tiberius but I had rather say that his Author Tertullian mentions it too early for this will quite confound the History of the Scripture The Centurion Cornelius was not converted till two years of that there must be a competent space of time for those tidings to come to Antioch and for the work of the Ministry after that to gain a great number of the Gentiles for Barnabas to be sent for to undertake for a better increase it follows after all this the most successful St. Paul was brought thither and he and Barnabas assembled themselves a whole year with the Church this is plain in the Context before and then the Disciples were first called Christians in Antioch I like not Pamelius his supputation then he is too forward Genebrard in his Chronology runs as much backward and allows sixteen years to be run out since the death of our Lord before the faithful had the honor to get this memorable Title he takes his aim at the Synod which Turrian speaks of that the Apostles could be assembled no sooner in a sacred Council at Antioch whereas Turrian claims no more for his Synod but that the Apostles established that which was illustrious long before during the pains that Paul and Barnabas did spend at Antioch Therefore I suppose that the most judicious Baronius is but a little under or over that it fell out in the tenth year after the Ascension the Believers at Antioch being Decimae Domini the Tyth of the Lord those that were gained to the Faith in the tenth year being a selected Portion and a peculiar Benediction fell upon them Yet I am content to let that pass rather than you should think that there is some necessary efficacy in the number I look more sted fastly upon another great occurrency in those days which made this tenth year the fulness of time and the Disciples so ripe to receive this name that it could not well be deferred any longer For when the Gentiles were made partakers of the common salvation as well as the Jews who had been strangers together so many Ages before there was still a distance between them or at least no perfect conjunction and it grew an hard Task to piece them because the Jews either out of weakness did still affect the Ceremonies of Moses or having been so long familiar with them did desire to dismiss them reverently at their parting but the Gentiles loved all inoffensive liberty which was not contrary to nature and chiefly could not endure to refrain from meats which in themselves were lawful This quarrel was not decided till the Apostles at a full Council took a course with it in the fifteenth chapter of this Book Nay Clemens in the 7. lib. Const c. 48. says That they of the Circumcision had one Bishop over them to wit Evodius in this very City of Antioch they of the Uncircumcision in the same place at the same time another Bishop over them Ignatius this is his report though Ignatius himself say no such matter but gives the preeminence to Evodius alone next after the Apostles some variance and unkindness there was that 's certain and the first means to unite both sides in a perfect peace was that the one should not have this name and the other that name but to denominate them all from our Saviour and to call them Christians Quis nominum reatus quae accusatio vocabulorum says Tertullian names are guilty of no crime you cannot accuse them of any harm With the pardon of that Holy Father it is far otherwise for it is never seen but that men are stiff in opposition and almost irreconcilable when they please themselves to be distinguished from others by the names of those Doctors whose opinions they cleave unto If it once grow to a difference of Titles that which was but friendly disquisition of argument at first it turns to Emulation Emulations improve to be Factions and Factions that would soon have broke up like a mist many Ages cannot dissolve them If you know any that have mens persons in admiration and love to be denominated from them as the Captains of the Lords Host they are no better than Felons in Divinity that have set fire on the Becons to put all in tumult and combustion whereas except themselves there are no Enemies in arms within the Church of God That impartiality and indifferency to truth which this happy Church of England hath maintained not turning the Scale either this way or that way for Luther or Calvin's sake or whomsoever else it hath given us the advantage to be most comely in Discipline most retentive of good antiquity most certain of fundamental truth and of all Churches in the World to have least disagreement
against him Qui meretricibus voluptatibus inservit non liber est sed servus To be under pleasure is to be under tyranny and therefore the Statue of a Strumpet did better resemble servitude But happy are thy servants O Lord that stand before thee Deo parere libertas est you may think that Seneca had conferred with St. Paul when he learnt that Lesson that the service of God is perfect freedom who hath made us a Royal Priesthood and holy Nation Says Leo in the second Anniversary Sermon upon his own Assumption to the Papacy nothing so Kingly as a mind subject to God and Ruler of his own passions nothing so Priestly as to offer up the sacrifice of a pure conscience and the oblation of a broken heart There were ancient Ceremonies in Baptism as if the party to be baptized came to be inaugurated to a Kingdom when he professed himself a Disciple of the Gospel For it appears in some Rituals that they put a Crown of flowers upon the head of the Neophyte to which the Collect then used doth testifie We beseech thee O King of heaven for this dissoluble Crown to give him a Crown of justice and good works The same was figured by these Ceremonies in confirmation that is by the unction of their forehead and by the fascia which bound about their temples as a Diadem All these customs do border upon this phrase that our Jerusalem is every where in the Gospel called the Kingdom of heaven God is such a King whom none but Kings do serve none but Melchisedechs who are free from sin and at once both Servants of righteousness and Kings of righteousness Dignitate Domini honorata sit conditio servi He is so great a Lord that it is a Lordship nay a Kingdom to serve him In a word remember that our freedom is a strict obligation to all excellent vertue that being delivered from the hands of our enemies we may serve him without fear in righteousness and holiness all the days of our life Lord keep thy Jerusalem free from the bondage of sin that we may not be cast into the prison of utter darkness AMEN THE THIRD SERMON UPON GAL. iv 26. Jerusalem which is above is free which is the Mother of us all HAving drawn out the description of the Church in sundry lines of beauty that it is a Jerusalem a visible and glorious City for the external Communion a Jerusalem from above for her internal Graces a Jerusalem that is free for her Redemption through the bloud of Christ every man I suppose will attest thus unto it nihil addi potest huic bono nisi ut sit perpetuum O that it would last thus unto the worlds end by continual propagation for nothing can be added unto that which is so completely good but that it should be perpetual Lo I shall land you now upon that Shore and represent the Church unto you as a Mother that brings forth and is never barren whose fruitfulness continues her praise and happiness for ever she is the Mother of us all and of all those Generations after us that live by the faith of the Son of God as long as the World endures We are not in the condition of Xerxes who had as goodly a Train of Souldiers as ever marched into the Field but it drew tears from his eyes to think that in less than the space of an hundred years not one of all those thousands should remain alive They had not a Mother which brought forth uncessantly to repair their mortality That good which will not continue breeds great discomfort upon certain expectation of mutability But our Jerusalem shall never wain nor consume it is sown with the seeds of immortality If we were all included in one Isaac and he were slain upon the Altar for a Sacrifice yet Abraham were sure that God would restore him again being dead Jacob might faint and fear lest his Sons should miscarry one after another and he remain childless his despair was grounded upon the sadness of humane events if I be bereaved of my Children I am bereaved Gen. xliii 14. But the Church shall see her Childrens Children grow up by succession without end of dayes Christ should be put to death again and rise no more which is most impossible if she should quite disappear The root of the Tree of Life should die which cannot be imagined if her branches should all wither But this is a Lamp which is nourished with fresh oil from Heaven and shall never be put out it is the chiefest of all that is called good upon Earth and a constant perpetual good Therefore let the Children rise up and call this Mother blessed And as the Church hath taken upon it the proper name of Jerusalem yet without any Contract to the local and material building of Jerusalem so she hath taken up the appellation of a Mother yet without any respect to nature no way bending to natural causes or natural affections For not only our Parents in the flesh but the whole World hath quite lost us in this word As Moses remembred the great devotion of Levi that he said of his Father and Mother I have not seen them or I respect them not and of his Brethren I do not acknowledg them Deut. xxxiii 9. So by deriving our selves from this Mother we cast our fleshly Parentage aside and we say to her who did give us to suck from her Breasts as our Saviour did to the Blessed Virgin Mulier quid mihi tecum Woman what have I to do with thee Jerusalem is ours and we are hers Jerusalem which is above is free c. This remainder of the verse which is the dispatch of the whole Text requires our inspection into three particulars First To know our Mother that we may not be ignorant either of her fruitfulness or our own obedience He is a wise Son says Telemachus in Homer that knows his Father but he is a foolish Son that doth not know his Mother Secondly Note the unity and indivision of the Children of this Mother They are a cluster of Grapes hanging upon one Stalk a Brood of Chickens clockt under the wings of one Hen there is but one Steâ— and one Progeny one Nostrum in relation to this Parent Mater nostrum the Mother of us The third and last part puts us to observe that the note of Universality was large in Pauls days but now much more amplified than in those times mater nostrum omnium the Mother of us all First A Mother gives a being to those whom she brings forth and that which is brought forth owes a great duty to the Mother upon these two hinges this main part of the Text is turned the one is the Fruitfulness of the Mother the other is the Obedience of the Children And what being is that which Jerusalem above doth contribute unto us that she is called our Mother It challengeth no part in our specifical essence or the
the old Greek Proverb goes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as in every Pomgranat there are some corrupt kernels so there are some wicked ones in every Church 4. As the seeds of the Pomegranat are of a bloudy colour so the Robes of the Apostles and others the best kernels of the Church were red in the bloud of Martyrdom but made white in the bloud of the Lamb. The sum is in the whole Pomgranat in the lump we are the Body of Christ but take us one by one and consider us as sometimes we were darkness and now light in the Lord and that this fire was kindled in us all from the Altar of Christ Jesus and by them that minister at it so Jerusalem which is above is the Mother of us all For the most proper work of a Mother is to bring forth Children and the most proper work of a good Mother is to bring them up And because of these two Solomon in the same Canticle hath used this appellation which my Text doth I will bring thee into the House of my Mother that is the Church And though he were the greatest King one of them that ever the Earth saw yet it is no disparagement to him to call that his Mother which God calls his Spouse I will betroth thee unto me for ever yea I will betroth thee unto me in righteousness and faithfulness Hos ii 19. The Bridegroom hath taken this Bride unto him and their Offspring are multiplied and happy are those and none but they who are the legitimate Children of this sacred Marriage The Font of Baptism is the Womb of the Church the Spirit that moves upon the waters to sanctify them is the Father and from these two are brought forth the Sons of the Most High that shall dwell in glory for evermore And because of this indissoluble connexion between the Holy Ghost and this Spouse who is always present with it St. Austin notes that she must not only be a fruitful Mother in abundance of issue but also a pure Virgin because she knows none other Husband Ecclesia virgo est parit Mariam imitatur quae Dominum peperit the Church is both a Virgin and a Mother like the Mother of our Lord although a Mother yet of unquestioned virginity St. Ambrose runs more division upon the same string on this sort Sancta Ecclesia immaculata coit◠foecunda part◠virgo est castitate mater prole the holy Catholick Church keeps her Bed immaculate and yet her Offspring is innumerous a Mother by perpetual propagation and yet a Virgin by perpetual chastity Parit nos non dolore membrorum sed gaudio Angelorum nutrit nos non corporis lacte sed Apostolorum she is delivered of us with no pain or sorrow but with the joy of the Angels in Heaven she feeds us not with the breasts of a woman but the Milk of the Apostles which is better than Nectar to the Soul and the Manna that comes down from Heaven It is yet more admirable what God hath wrought upon this Jerusalem by demonstration of the Spirit and of power We are the dispersions of the Gentiles that are now the People of the Lord we were as a Strumpet that went a whoring after Idols and God hath betrothed this Church unto him and made it an unpolluted Virgin I deny not but lament it that there are some Christian stations affected towards Idolatry which renews the infamy of our ancient whoredoms But whatsoever our Mother is now our Grandmother was chaste and pure in Hegesippus dayes Take it in that sincerity of practice and Doctrin and then you may see the mighty works of Christ to turn an Harlot into a Virgin and a Virgin into a Mother Magna est sponsae singularis dignitas meretricem invenit virginem fecit says St. Austin this is the great and singular dignity of the Bride which hath prepared her self to meet the Bridegroom that comes from Heaven he hath changed her whoredom into virginity and multiplied her virginity into foecundity that she is the Mother of us all You see the Mother through whose Ministery every Christian is born again of water and of the Holy Spirt neque parcit unigenito pro sic genito the Father did not spare his only begotten Son that we might be thus begotten But is there no more that belongs to a Mother than to bring forth yes says Clemens Alexandrinus and I quote him because he speaks of the Church every thing that brings forth is obliged by nature to supply nourishment unto that which it brings forth I am not so rigid but I will grant that in cases of weakness and divers accidental indispositions that which nature doth ordinarily urge and provide for may be dispensed but this rule is born with every Female that which is so fruitful as to be a Mother should be so careful as to be a Nurse And so is the Church Not only Moses the Law-giver carried the People of Promise as a nursing Father carrieth his Child Num. xi 12. by tenderness by ordering their steps by breeding them in good Precepts and Laws but the Apostles were much more laborious to feed the Christian Proselytes with the Word of life that they might grow up from grace to grace unto the stature of perfect righteousness I have fed you with Milk says St. Paul to the newly converted Corinthians 1 Cor. iii. 2. and he suppeditated stronger meat to them that could digest it And for all manner of sweetness and forbearance he behaved himself gently among the Thessalonians as a Nurse cherisheth her Children 1 Thes ii 7. Every Rule and Doctrin which is delivered sincerely and in truth is Milk to those that thirst to drink of the Well of salvation Honey and Milk are under thy tongue says Solomon speaking of this Mother and Nurse Cant. iv xi Milk is a pleasant food so is the Gospel to them that have a spiritual taste there is no Aloes or bitterness in it but to them that have a carnal palat It is Antalcidas his answer in Plutarch to one that asked how he might speak that which might be accepted says he Si loquaris jucundissima praestes utilissima if you will deliver that which is most pleasant and season it with that which is most profitable so that which is sucked from the Breasts of this Parent arrides the taste with sweetness and it is as profitable as sweet and called Milk because it is a most growing nourishment 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 among the Naturalists as they were accounted plain and innocent above all other People so they did excel for health and magnitude of body Be admonished therefore that such Christians as wax not better and better take some other thing for their nourishment than the Milk of the Church which doth not prosper in them If you do not grow and add virtue to virtue you have chosen a Nurse with dry breasts and whose complexion is diverse
from your holy Mothers Lacte gypsum miscet as the old Proverb is the World is a Stepmother whose Milk is infected with poison no redress for such but as it was said of the Shunamites Child when he complained of his head Take the Child unto his Mother as St. Peter exhorts desire the sincere Milk of the Word that ye may grow thereby the end of it is to grow and encrease not to stand at a stay true Piety never thinks so well of it self as if it needed no augmentation that 's Pharisaical hypocrisie He that gets nothing loseth much he that doth not add to his talent will forfeit it and lose it Says Bernard did not all the Angels which Jacob saw upon the Ladder that reached up to Heaven either ascend or descend Inter ascensum descensum inter profectum defectum nullum est medium There is no medium between proficiency deficiency between going backward or forward Either you are continually mending in all parts of Religion by the fatness of this milk or you will consume away like a shriveled Changeling But the Nurse will not be wanting in suppeditating milk if you are not wanting to your self in the wholsom concoction And now to end this Point I pronounce unto you that you can expect no greater miricle from God than to have such a Mother and such a Nurse First Were you not dead in Adam and then this Mother took you into her womb and brought you forth alive most stupendious Nay must you not die unto sin and be crucified to the world before you could be born again Quid difficilius cognitione quà m ut homo nascatur moriendo says St. Austin And what is the effect of her nourishment but continually to draw you from death to life Et amplius est suscitare semper victurum quà m suscitare iterum moriturum says he Was it miraculous in Elias or in the Apostles to raise the dead unto life that should die again How much greater is it to raise them unto life that shall never This benefit begins with the Church as our Mother and continues with us through her Ministry as our Nurse This is that Jerusalem whis is the Mother of us all Thus far I have drawn out before you the blessing of the Mother upon those whom she brings forth now while this benefit is fresh in our memory it is good time to shew what obedience the Children do owe to this Mother That is to her Laws to her Censures to her Determinations To her Laws of outward Order to her Censures of Discipline to her Determinations of Faith For the first to tread lightly in their steps that have gone before me Prudence and Reason find out what is fit for the well reigling and comly demeanour of them that are knit together in any body And when authority is joyned unto it and imposeth it it is a Law There must be an Order agreed upon touching our manner of union and living together in Commonwealths And grave and well-governed men are most nice to see those fashions of order inviolably observed And is not this equally to be heeded nay much more in our Ecclesiastical Oeconomy For the persons to whom we associate our selves in the Church are not only holy men but God and Angels Shall we not have Laws of agreement to go all one way and to do the same thing in Rites and Ceremonies Can there be such that would not be ashamed to see distraction and confusion in the holy Sanctuary Is there any possibility of drawing a Congregation together without Rules and Advertisements to proceed thus and thus in the administration of the Lords Service And for those Rites which are in force among us hath not this Church proceeded with most sanctified moderation to ease Christian people of that superfluity whereof they complained at the extirpation of Popery and to retain such only as were most expedient and carry no shadow of scandal but to them that are hot and contentious Since we must have Orders of Decency his wits are broken that thinks otherwise why not these which are established and to which your consent is included by reason of them that were Agents in your behalf and present at their confirmation for we were alive in our Predecessors and our Successors shall live in us It skills not what Vtopia some have framed in their own heads In positive Laws mens private fancies must give way to the higher judgment of the Church which is in authority a Mother over them And do not say you are an obedient Child since you do that which your heavenly Father requires why not also what your spiritual Mother requires Since the one bids nothing repugnant to the other I hope there is none in this Climate but explodes the Anabaptists opinion that all Christian Liberty is lost if any Laws be imposed upon the people but the Gospel of Jesus Christ Beside what is required for order and good carriage in the Church God hath given the power to settle it What is done is done by his leave and by that light of Nature and Reason given to frame such Constitutions and therefore do not prevaricate as if God were not disobeyed in that obstinacy which conforms not It is commendable and necessary for every man single to profess the substance of true Religion contained in the Scriptures But it is also required at their hands to observe the Circumstances and Decencies of it comprehended in positive Laws when they are in society with others It was in a Circumstance and a Ceremony that St. Paul checks the Corinthians What despise ye the Church of God 1 Cor. xi 22. You cannot call Jerusalem your Mother with a sober reverence if you decline her Piety and Authority in Constitutions indifferent Secondly The power and the wisdom of the Church meeting together must use the rod though unwillingly towards them that must be made examples to others by shame and punishment For such as will not be softned with love and the Spirit of meekness Shall I come to you with a rod says the Apostle Dread the anger of your Mother provoke not her displeasure to smite you with Abstentions Anathemaes Excommunications Remember how the incestuous person was swallowed up with desperation when her Censure was upon him If Esau lift up his voice and wept when he had not the blessing of his Father what sorrow will it beget in a Child that is not past feeling or leadenly stupid to have the curse of his Mother The ancient forms of humble Penants used by the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 are so disused that their custom will seem strange to be repeated When they were sequestred from the Prayers and Sacraments of the holy Church for scandalous and flagitious actions they cast themselves down before the entrance of the Church groveled upon the ground full of tears and lamentations and besought every Christian that passed by
sakes But Cornelius à Lapide the Jesuit puts the infamy of an Anabaptist upon Calvin as if he had taught that the soul departed had no sense or taste at all of the glory of God Why did he not censure Ambrose and Bernard Why did he not spit his venom upon Pope John the XXII There was good reason for that if we may believe Gerson a most grave Author of their own part But Calvin was the first that ever I met withall who writ a voluminous Treatise to prove that the souls of good men after this life have their quartering and Mansion in Heaven that they are not insensible of their state or benummed in sleep or fettered with darkness but that they praise the Lord continually and Christ that redeemed them which is consonant to this Point of my Text that John saw the souls under the Altar Yet I like not their way who are so careful to teach the people that the souls deceased do not sleep that they keep themselves waking with a thousand Fictions and Impostures there is scarce one leaf written of any Saint in the Church of Rome especially of the modern ones but you shall meet with two or three sprinklings in it how his soul appeared in this or that manner to his friends upon earth their posthumous miracles after their death exceed the number of those which they did when they were living And if any thing be out of order it is straitway rectified with an apparition And from whence think you the Elf or Goblin comes that appears From a place where I am sure this good Apostle saw no souls from the correction house of Purgatory Their Larvae or night-walking souls are their best Doctors for the confirmation of that opinion Ask Gregory the Great else who could urge little beside to gain credit to his opinion for the temporary chastisements of the faithful after this life but as the dead came and made relation to their surviving acquaintance Some silly men were first affrighted out of their wits with a gastly Vision and then guess you who it was that taught them points of Religion But four ages ran out after Gregories time before this cousenage grew trivial and common Gregory the Fourth in the year 835. decreed that a Solemn Feast should be held over all the Church to the memory of all the Saints in heaven that whatsoever was not fully performed in the Feasts and Vigils of particular Saints might be consummated on that day this was nothing to the puling souls detained in the prison of temporary castigation But almost two hundred years after Odilo the Abot of Cluni in commiseration to them that were departed in his own Monastery dedicated a day for the relief of their souls not yet admitted into heaven And Pope Jo. XVIII anno 1007 taking light from Odilo commanded the Feast of all Souls to be general in all places The Devil wanted nothing but the opening of this door to beat down all opposites with apparitions And let the Readers mark it that from that Age not a Book was written not a Chapter of a Book but it relates what Nocturnal Mercuries appeared to bring tidings from Purgatory Some Jangler will catch at this and say Belike you reject all Apparitions of the dead for lies or Demoniacal Impostures If I should I had Tertullian to abet me Omnem mortuorum exhibitionem incorporalem praestigias judices All incorporeal Phantosms of the dead are juglings and delusions And if any point of doctrine depend upon the sleeveless Errands that the souls departed bring I do renounce them for delusions We have Moses and the Prophets and we are certain their Spirits are ever to be preferred before any Spirit that comes from the dead For the living to go to the dead says the Prophet Isaiah none of that but to the Law and to the Testimony Isa viii 19. Rabbi Maimon says that some superstitious Jews would burn Incense among the graves that the dead might come and talk with them And therefore God said that man should be cut off from among the people that sought the truth among the dead Deut. xviii 11. Yet I deny it not but that the divine power hath sometimes presented the Saints departed to communicate with the living as they that appeared in the holy City to testifie our Saviours Resurrection Mat. xxvii Likewise in the 2. of Mach. Chap. ult Onius who once had been High Priest he was exhibited being dead to Judas Machabaeus that is another instance if you have any stomack to that Historian But the upshot is that Souls have been seen in heaven that was the Vision of St. John so Souls may be sent from Heaven but not from Purgatory Through fire I confess these souls had passed which the Apostle saw yet not through that subterraneous fire which they imagine but through the fire of Martyrdom and persecution He saw the Souls of them that were slain for the Word of God and for the Testimony which they held And if it be true as none of the worst Expositors conjecture that the computation of the fifth Seal opened immediately before the words of my Text is rightly calculated at what time Dioclesian did cease to make havock in the Church it was a very fit time to see souls in heaven slain for the Word of God it was thwackt with Martyrs like an hive with Bees For burning of Churches for massacring of Christians for Proscription of Innocents no Persecution was ever like it It lasted ten whole years without ceasing and in the first year of his Reign in Egypt only an hundred forty and four thousand Christians were put to death beside seventy thousand that were banisht insomuch says Scaliger that the Epocha of Dioclesian is called the Epocha of the Martyrs in Chronology Who would have thought that the Posterity of Cham a Generation branded with dark and unlovely visages should have afforded so many sacrifices to be offered up unto the glory of Jesus Christ Well might the Church of Aethiopia sing the Canticle of Solomon I am black but comely O ye Daughters of Jerusalem And not only these but exceeding great numbers of Bishops Priests and People in all quarters of the habitable world a long bedroll of faithful men and women in this Island did taste of the bitter Cup under the same Tyrant Fathers lost their Children Children lack'd their Parents the Wife missed her Husband and one friend another whom St. John hath found altogether making up one Chorus of blessed Spirits and while Rachel the Church below mourneth for her Children Jerusalem which is above the Mother of us all rejoyceth for them Martyrdom is the way to sublimate death into a Cordial which was a poyson the means to make that a blessing which was a curse upon our nature A Traffick proper to none but to the Citizens of the supernal City to secure our whole adventure not by assuring but by losing their life It is not only the
it of the Gaulish Priests among the Romans that at first they were made Eunuchs only to punish their stubbornness against their Parents that they being a generation of disobedient Children might never beget Children that should obey them And therefore it is pitty that the same justice was not executed upon Pope Gregory the VII to cast him out for ever being called a Father of the Church who made the Emperor Henry the Fourth take arms against his own Father and depose him And that proud title of Rabbi should never have been given to the Pharisees rather to the vilest Begger in the Street because it was their Tradition to swear by the Gift upon the Altar never to relieve the wants of their distressed Parents Surely as a Parricide that killed his Father was to have no burial upon the Earth but sewed in an Ox Hide and cast headlong into the Sea so he that despiseth his Father deserves not to hold any place of dignity above others but to be a Slave to all men For what are we but Coin that hath our Fathers Image stampt upon it and we receive our current value from them to be called Sons of Men. And yet the more commendable was the obedience of the Rechabites that their Father Jonadab being dead his Law was in as good force as if he had been living It was a great mourning which Joseph and his Brethren did celebrate for their Father Jacob Gen. the last But that was the least honour done unto him When his Sons did carry his Body as he commanded them to be buried in Canaan in the Field of Mamre which Abraham bought for a Possession that was the best Solemnity in the Funerals of Jacob. It is an effeminate tenderness of heart says Tacitus prosequi defunctum ignavo fletu to weep and lament over the dead obsequi verò in iis quae jusserit to execute the will of the Dead that is the truest honour we can do them and a faithful expression that we reverence their memory Licurgus knew right well what great benefit Lacedaemon received by his Laws yet doubting the peoples inconstancy and foreseeing that when he was dead good Laws might be cancelled and bad Manners survive He took a long Journey and swore the Citizens to the observation of his Laws until he returned in safety but that was never And some short time they remembred their own Oath who on a sudden would have forgot his Laws and his Memory Very often is it seen in this dissolute Age of ours that which old Mitio said Dum id rescitum iri credunt tantisper cavent young Heirs forget their godly Education as soon as their Parents have breathed their last then they run riot and morgage their Temperance to Taverns their Chastity to Dens of uncleanness and their Lands to the Usurer What a rare example now is this of the Rechabites custode remoto being now in their own power and government to remember the Life and Doctrin of their Father Jonadab and to profess his austerity Non bibemus c. Concerning this Virtue of Obedience let us extend our discourse a little further and yet tread upon our own ground Obedience is used in a large sense for a Condition or Modus as the School calls it annexed unto all Vertues As the Magistrate may execute justice dutifully under his Prince the Souldier may perform a valiant exploit dutifully under his Captain but strictly and according to the pattern of the Rechabites Obedientia est sola virtus per se cum res jubentur adiaphorae ad praestandum says Aquinas It is one peculiar and entire virtue whereby we oblige our selves for Authorities sake to do things indifferent to be done or omitted for sometimes that which is evil may be hurtful prohibito to the party forbidden as the Laws forbid a man to murder himself sometimes a thing is evil prohibenâ—i so Treasons Adulteries and Thefts are interdicted but sometimes the thing is no way in it self pernicious to any but only propounded to make trial of our duty and allegeance as when Adam was forbid to eat the Apple and this is true obedience not to obey for the necessity of the thing commanded but out of conscience and subjection to just Authority Such obedience and nothing else is that which hath made the little Common-wealth of Bees so famous for are they not at appointment who should dispose the work at home and who should gather honey in the fields they flinch not from their Task and no Creature under the Sun hath so brave an instinct of sagacity Wherefore Epiphanius was wont to compare the godly Monks that undertook their Office by the appointment of their Superior some to labour with their hands some to pray and meditate I say he likened them to Bees that hum about and make honey together So some of these toil for the use of men some sing Psalms unto God thymum hymnum proferunt You shall hear an hundred boast of their great stomach and of a spirit that could not be kept under Brethren as St. Paul said your boasting is not good But almost I never heard of any that professed themselves of a spirit which was subject to all obedience One indeed I have read of Nicolaus of Crete how well it did become him who was subject to Theodorus his Prelate 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as if he had no will of his own full of reason and understanding but utterly void of will and wilfulness What a pleasure was this both to him and his Disciple what a sight was this worth the seeing as the Angels says Aristotle are never weary of moving the Heavens and the Heavens are never weary of turning round Such is the harmony between the Prelate and the demure Obedient where Wisdom is the Sun and Duty is the Dial upon which it shines How near came this mans Soul to Adams in the state of Innocency whose original purity the Shoolmen call by an elegant Title aureum froenum a golden Bridle For the Appetite had a Bridle to be checkt under Reason Reason had a Bridle to make it follow the supreme Will of the Creator the very Beasts had a Bridle cast into their jaws to make them Homagers unto Man which now would raven upon our Carkasses Now there is nothing abroad or at home but bellum servile Zimri riseth up against his Master Nothing hath more carried the World aside than those glorious words of Liberty Power and Prerogative Among the Romans oppression and cruelty did not make a Tyrant but the very name of Soveraignty Nec clementes Dominos ferre poterant says Tacitus Masters though they were meek did offend as long as they were called Masters Angustum annulum ne gesta says Pythagoras as if all subjection unto Discipline were like a strait Ring that pincht the finger Plutarch coins a Fable that the Tail of the Serpent grudged at the Head because it went always foremost The Head indeed had the