Bishops did so too and in the highest detestation of their follies thought they might wisely enough imitate their innocent customes and Priestly ornaments and hoped they might better reconcile their mindes to the Christian Religion by compliance in ceremonials then exasperate them by rejecting their ancient and innocent ceremonies for so the Apostles invited and inticed Judaisme into Christianity And Tertullian complains of the Devils craft who by imitating the Christian rites reconciled mens mindes with that compliance to a more charitable opinion of the Gentile superstition The Devill intending to draw the professors of truth to his own portion or to preserve his own in the same fetters he first put upon them imitates the rites of our religion adopting them into his superstition He baptizes some of his disciples and when he initiates them to the worship of Mithra promiseth them pardon of sins by that rite he signes his souldiers in their forehead he represents the oblation of bread and introduces representments of the resurrection and laboriously gets martyrs to his cause His Priests marry but once he hath his virgins and his abstemious and continent followers that what Christians love and the world commends in them being adopted into the rituals of Idolatry may allure some with the beauty and fair imagery and abuse others with colour and phantastick faces And thus also all wise men that intended to perswade others to their religion did it by retaining as much as they innocently could of the other that the change might not be too violent and the persons be more endeared by common rites and the relation and charity of likenesse and imitation Thus did the Church and the Synagogue thus did the Gentiles both to the Jews and to the Christians and all wise men did so The Gentiles offered first fruits to their Gods and their tithes to Hercules kept vigils and anniversaries forbad marriages without the consent of Parents and clandestine contracts these were observed with some variety according as the people were civill or learned and according to the degree of the tradition or as the thing was reasonable so these customes were more or lesse universall But when all wise people nay when absolutely all the world have consented upon a rite it cannot derive from a fountain lower then the current but it must either be a command which God hath given to all the world and so Socrates in Xenophon Quod ab omnibus gentibus observatum est id non nisi à Deo sancitum esse dicendum est or a tradition or a law descending from our common parents or a reason derived from the nature of things there cannot in the world be any thing great enough to take away such a rite except an expresse divine commandement and a man by the same reason may marry his nearest relative as he may deny to worship God by the recitation of his prayses and excellencies because reason and a very common tradition have made almost all the world consent in these two things that we must abstain from the mixtures of our nearest kindred and that we must worship God by recounting and declaring excellent things concerning him I have instanced in two things in which I am sure to finde the fewest adversaries I said the fewest for there are some men which have lost all humanity but these two great instances are not attested with so universall a tradition and practise of the world as this that is now in question For in some nations they have married their sisters so did the Magi among the Persians 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 says Tatianus in Clemens Alexandrinus and Bardisanes Syrus in Eusebius And the Greeks worshipped Hercules by railing and Mercury by throwing stones at him But there was never any people but had their Priests and Presidents of religious rites and kept holy things within a mure that the people might not approach to handle the mysteries and therefore besides that it is a recession from the customes of mankinde and charges us with the disrespect of all the world which is an incuriousnesse next to infinite it is also a doing against that which all the reason of all the wise men of the world have chosen antecedently or ex post facto and he must have a strange understanding who is not perswaded by that which hath determined all the world For religion cannot be at all in communities of men without some to guide to minister to preserve and to prescribe the offices and ministeries What can profane holy things but that which makes them common and what can make them common more then when common persons handle them when there is no distinction of Persons in their ministration For although places are good accessories to religion yet in all religions they were so accidentall to it that a sacrifice might hallow the place but the place unlesse it were naturally impure could not desecrate the sacrifice and therefore Jacob worshipped upon a stone offered upon a turfe and the Arke rested in Obed-Edoms house and was holy in Dagons Temple and hils and groves fields and orchards according to the severall customes of the nations were the places of addresse But a common person ministring was so near a circumstance and was so mingled with the action that since the materiall part and exteriour actions of Religion could be acted and personated by any man there was scarce any thing left to make it religious but the attrectation of the rites by a holy person A Holy place is something a separate time is something a prescript form of words is more separate and solemn actions are more yet but all these are made common by a cōmon person therfore without a distinction of persons have not a natural and reasonable distinction of solemnity exterior religion And indeed it were a great disreputation to religion that all great and publique things and every artifice or profitable science should in all the societies of men be distinguished by professors artists and proper ministers and onely religion should lie in common apt to be bruised by the hard hand of mechanicks and sullied by the ruder touch of undiscerning and undistinguished persons for although the light of it shines to all and so farre every mans interest is concerned in religion yet it were not handsome that every man should take the taper in his hand and religion is no more to be handled by all men then the laws are to be dispensed by all by whom they are to be obeyed though both in religion and the laws all men have a common interest For since all meanes must have some equality or proportion towards their end that they may of their own being or by institution be symbolicall it is but reasonable that by elevated and sublimed instruments we should be promoted towards an end supernaturall and divine now besides that of all the instruments of distinction the
person fit to be trusted and though it cannot be expected men should be kinder to their friend or their Prince or their honour then to God and to their own souls and to their own bodies yet when men are not moved by what is sensible and materiall by that which smarts and shames presently they are beyond the cure of Religion and the hopes of Reason and therefore they must lie in hell like sheep death gnawing upon them and the righteous shall have domination over them in the morning of the resurrection Seras tutior ibis ad lucernas Haec hora non est tua cam furit Lyaeus Cùm regnant rosae cùm madent capilli Much safer it is to go to the severities of a watchfull and a sober life for all that time of life is lost when wine and rage and pleasure and folly steale away the heart of a man and make him goe singing to his grave I end with the saying of a wise man He is fit to sit at the table of the Lord and to feast with Saints who moderately uses the creatures which God hath given him But he that despises even lawfull pleasures 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 shall not onely sit and feast with God but reign together with him and partake of his glorious Kingdome Sermon XVII THE MARRIAGE RING OR THE Mysteriousnesse and Duties of Marriage Part I. Ephes. 5. 32 33. This is a great mysterie But I speak concerning Christ and the Church Neverthelesse let every one of you in particular so love his Wife even as himself and the Wife see that shee reverence her Husband THe first blessing God gave to man was society and that society was a Marriage and that Marriage was confederate by God himself and hallowed by a blessing and at the same time and for very many descending ages not only by the instinct of Nature but by a superadded forwardnesse God himself inspiring the desire the world was most desirous of children impatient of barrennesse accounting single life a curse and a childlesse person hated by God The world was rich and empty and able to provide for a more numerous posterity then it it had 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 You that are rich Numenius you may multiply your family poor men are not so fond of children but when a family could drive their heards and set their children upon camels and lead them till they saw a fat soil watered with rivers and there sit down without paying rent they thought of nothing but to have great families that their own relations might swell up to a Patriarchat and their children be enough to possesse all the regions that they saw and their grand-children become Princes and themselves build cities and call them by the name of a childe and become the fountain of a Nation This was the consequent of the first blessing Increase and multiply The next blessing was the promise of the Messias and that also increased in men and women a wonderfull desire of marriage for as soon as God had chosen the family of Abraham to be the blessed line from whence the worlds Redeemer should descend according to the flesh every of his daughters hoped to have the honour to be his Mother or his Grand-mother or something of his kindred and to be childelesse in Israel was a sorrow to the Hebrew women great as the slavery of Egypt or their dishonours in the land of their captivity But when the Messias was come and his doctrine was published and his Ministers but few and the Disciples were to suffer persecution and to be of an unsetled dwelling and the Nation of the Jews in the bosome and society of which the Church especially did dwell were to be scattered and broken all in pieces with fierce calamities and the world was apt to calumniate and to suspect and dishonour Christians upon pretences and unreasonable jealousies and that to all these purposes the state of marriage brought many inconveniences it pleased God in this new creation to inspire into the hearts of his servants a disposition and strong desires to live a single life left the state of marriage should in that conjunction of things become an accidentall impediment to the dissemination of the Gospell which cal'd men from a confinement in their domestick charges to travell and flight and poverty and difficulty and Martyrdome upon this necessity the Apostles and Apostolicall men published Doctrines declaring the advantages of single life not by any commandement of the Lord but by the spirit of prudence 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for the present and then incumbent necessities and in order to the advantages which did accrew to the publick ministeries and private piety There are some said our blessed Lord who make themselves Eunuchs for the Kingdome of Heaven that is for the advantages and the ministery of the Gospell non ad vitae bonae meritum as St. Austin in the like case not that it is a better service of God in it self but that it is usefull to the first circumstances of the Gospell and the infancy of the Kingdome because the unmarryed person does 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is apt to spirituall and Ecclesiasticall imployments first 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and then 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 holy in his own person and then sanctified to publick ministeries and it was also of ease to the Christians themselves because as then it was when they were to flie and to flie for ought they knew in winter and they were persecuted to the four winds of heaven and the nurses and the women with childe were to suffer a heavier load of sorrow because of the imminent persecutions and above all because of the great fatality of ruine upon the whole nation of the Jewes well it might be said by St. Paul 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Such shall have trouble in the flesh that is they that are marryed shall and so at that time they had and therefore it was an act of charity to the Christians to give that counsell 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 I do this to spare you and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for when the case was alter'd and that storm was over and the first necessities of the Gospel served and the sound was gone out into all nations in very many persons it was wholly changed and not the marryed but the unmarryed had 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 trouble in the flesh and the state of marriage returned to its first blessing non non erat bonum homini esse solitarium and it was not good for man to be alone But in this first intervall the publick necessity and the private zeal mingling together did sometimes over-act their love of single life even to the disparagement of marriage and to the scandall of Religion which was increased by the occasion of some pious persons renouncing their contract of marriage not consummate with unbeleevers For when Flavia Domitilla being converted by
as Churches use to remove the accursed thing from sticking to the communities of the faithful and the sins of Christians from being required of the whole Congregation by excommunicating and censuring the delinquent persons so the Heires and sons of families are to 〈◊〉 from their house the curse descending from their Fathers 〈◊〉 by 1. Acts of disavowing the sins of their Ancestors 2. By praying for pardon 3. by being humbled for them 4. By renouncing the example and 5. Quitting the affection to the crimes 6. By not imitaing the actions in Kinde or in semblance and similitude and lastly 7. By refusing to rejoyce in the ungodly purchases in which their Fathers did amisse and dealt wickedly Secondly But after all this many cases do occur in which we finde that innocent sons are pâ—â—istied The remedies I have already discoursed of are for such children who have in some manner or other contracted and derived the sin upon themselves But if we inquire how those sons who have no 〈◊〉 or affinity with their fathers sins or whose fathers sins were so transient that no benefit or effect did passe upon their posterity how they may prevent or take off the curse that lyes upon the family for their Fathers faults this will have some distinct considerations 1. The pious children of evil Parents are to stand firme upon the confidence of the Divine grace and mercy and upon that persuasion to begin to work upon a new stock For it is as certain that he may derive a blessing upon his Posterity as that this Parents could transmit a curse and if any man by piety shall procure Gods favour to his Relatives and children it is certain that he hath done more then to escape the punishment of his Fathers follies If sin doth abound and evils by sin are derived from his Parents much more shall grace super abound and mercy by grace If he was in danger from the crimes of others much rather shall he be secured by his own piety For if God punishes the sins of the fathers to four generations yet he rewards the piety of fathers to ten to hundreds and to thousands Many of the Ancestors of Abraham were persons not noted for religion but suffered in the publike impiety and almost universal idolatry of their ages and yet all the evils that could thence descend upon the family were wiped off and God began to reckon with Abraham upon a new stock of blessings and piety and he was under God the Original of so great a blessing that his family for 1500. years together had from him a title to many favours and what ever evils did chance to them in the descending ages were but single evils in respect of that treasure of mercies which the fathers piety had obtained to the whole nation And it is remarkable to observe how blessings did stick to them for their fathers sakes even whether they would or no. For first his Grand-childe Esau proved a naughty man and he lost the great blessing which was in tailed upon the family but he got not a curse but a lesse blessing and yet because he lost the greater blessing God excluded him from being reckoned in the elder time for God foreseeing the event so ordered it that he should first lose his birth-right and then lose the blessing for it was to be certain the family must be reckoned for prosperous in the proper line and yet God blessed Esau into a great Nation and made him the Father of many Princes Now the line of blessing being reckoned in Jacob God blessed his family strangely and by miracle for almost five generations he brought them from Egypt by mighty signes and wonders and when for sin they all died in their way to Canaan two onely excepted God so ordered it that they were all reckoned as single deaths the Nation still descending like a river whose waters were drunk up for the beauvrage of an army but still it keeps its name and current and the waters are supplied by showers and springs and providence After this iniquity still increased and then God struck deeper and spread curses upon whole families he translated the Priesthood from line to line he removed the Kingome from one family to another and still they sinned worse and then we read that God smote almost a whole tribe the tribe of Benjmin was almost extinguished about the matter of the Levites Concubine but still God remembred his promise which he made with their forefathers and that breach was made up After this we finde a greater rupture made and ten tribes fell into idolatry and ten tribes were carried captives into Assyria and never came again But still God remembred his covenant with Abraham and left two Tribes but they were restlesse in their provocation of the God of Abraham and they also were carried captive But still God was the God of their fathers and brought them back and placed them safe and they grew again into a Kingdom and should have remained for ever but that they killed one that was greater then Abraham even the Messias and then they were rooted out and the old covenant cast off and God delighted no more to be called the God of Abraham but the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. As long as God kept that relation so long for the fathers sakes they had a title and an inheritance to a blessing for so saith Saint Paul As touching the election they are beloved for the Fathers sakes I did insist the longer upon this instance that I might remonstrate how great and how sure and how persevering mercies a pious Father of a family may derive upon his succeeding generations And if we do but tread in the footsteps of our Father Abraham we shall inherit as certain blessings But then I pray adde these considerations 1. If a great impiety and a clamorous wickednesse hath stained the honour of a family and discomposed its title to the Divine mercies and protection it is not an ordinary piety that can restore this family An ordinary even course of life full of sweetnesse and innocency will secure every single person in his own eternal interest but that piety which must be a spring of blessings and communicative to others that must plead against the sins of their Ancestors and begin a new bank of mercies for the Relatives that must be a great and excellent a very religious state of life A smal pension will maintain a single person but he that hath a numerous family and many to provide for needs a greater providence of God and a bigger provision for their maintenance and a small revenue will not keep up the dignity of a great house especially if it be charged with a great debt And this is the very state of the present question That piety that must be instrumental to take off the curse imminent upon a family to blesse a numerous posterity to secure a fair condition to many ages and to pay the
to a taverne not to refresh their needs of nature or for ends of a tolerable civility or innocent purposes but like the condemned persons among the Levantines they tasted wine freely that they might die and be insensible I could easily reprove such persons with an old Greek proverb mentioned by Plutarch 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 You shall ill be cured of the knotted Gout if you have nothing else but a wide shoe But this reproof is too gentle for so great a madnesse it is not onely an incompetent cure to apply the plaister of a sin or vanity to cure the smart of a divine judgement but it is a great increaser of the misery by swelling the cause to bigger and monstrous proportions It is just as if an impatient fool feeling the smart of his medicine shall tear his wounds open and throw away the instruments of his cure because they bring him health at the charge of a little pain 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 He that is full of stripes and troubles and decked round about with thorns he is neer to God But he that because he sits uneasily when he sits neer the King that was crowned with thorns shall remove thence or strew flowers roses and Jessamine the downe of thistles and the softest Gossamere that he may die without pain die quietly and like a lamb sink to the bottom of hell without noise this man is a fool because he accepts death if it arrest him in civil language is content to die by the sentence of an eloquent Judge and prefers a quiet passage to hell before going to heaven in a storm That Italian Gentleman was certainly a great lover of his sleep who was angry with the lizard that wak't him when a viper was creeping into his mouth when the Devil is entring into us to poison our spirits and steal our souls away while we are sleeping in the lethargy of sin God sends his sharp messages to awaken us and we call that the enemy and use arts to cure the remedy not to cure the disease There are some persons that will never be cured not because the sicknesse is incurable but because they have ill stomacks and cannot keep the medicine Iust so is his case that so despises Gods method of curing him by these instances of long-sufferance that he uses all the arts he can to be quit of his Physitian and to spill his physick and to take cordials as soon as his vomit begins to work There is no more to be said in this affair but to read the poor wretches sentence and to declare his condition As at first when he despised the first great mercies God sent him sharpnesses and sad accidents to ensober his spirits So now that he despises this mercy also the mercy of the rod God will take it away from him and then I hope all is well Miserable man that thou art this is thy undoing if God ceases to strike thee because thou wilt not mend thou art sealed up to ruine and reprobation for ever The Physitian hath giv◠thee over he hath no kindnesse for thee This was the desperate estate of Judah Ah sinfull nation a people laden with iniquity they have forsaken the Lord they have provoked the Holy One of Israel why should ye be stricken any more This is the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the most bitter curse the greatest excommunication when the delinquent is become a heathen and a publicane without the covenant out of the pale of the Church the Church hath nothing to do with them for what have I to do with them that are without said Saint Paul It was not lawfull for the Church any more to punish them and this court Christian is an imitation and paralell of the justice of the court of heaven When a sinner is not mended by judgements at long running God cuts him off from his inheritance and the lot of sons he will chastise him no more but let him take his course and spend his portion of prosperity such as shall be allowed him in the great Oeconomy of the world Thus God did to his Vineyard which he took such pains to fence to plant to manure to dig to cut and to prune and when after all it brought forth wilde grapes the last and worst of Gods anger was this Auferam sepem ejus God had fenced it with a hedge of thorns and God would take away all that hedge he would not leave a thorn standing not one judgement to reprove or admonish them but all the wilde beasts and wilder and more beastly lusts may come and devour it and trample it down in scorn And now what shall I say but those words quoted by Saint Peter in his Sermon Behold ye despisers and wonder and perish perish in your own folly by stubbornesse and ingratitude For it is a huge contradiction to the nature and designes of God God calls us we refuse to hear he invites us with fair promises we hear and consider not he gives us blessings we take them and understand not his meaning we take out the token but read not the letter then he threatens us and we regard not he strikes our neighbours and we are not concerned then he strikes us gently but we feel it not then he does like the Physitian in the Greek Epigram who being to cure a man of a Lethargy locked him into the same room with a mad-man that he by dry beating him might make him at least sensible of blows but this makes us instead of running to God to trust in unskilfull Physitians or like Saul to run to a Pythonisse we run for cure to a crime we take sanctuary in a pleasant sin just as if a man to cure his melancholy should desire to be stung with a Tarantula that at least he may die merily what is there more to be done that God hath not yet done he is forced at last to break off with a Curavimus Babylonem non est sanata we dressed and tended Babylon but she was incurable there is no help but such persons must die in their sins and lie down in eternall sorrow Sermon XIV Of Growth in Grace 2 Pet. 3. 18. But grow in grace and in the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ to whom be glory both now and for ever Amen WHen Christianity like the day spring from the East with a new light did not onely inlighten the world but amazed the mindes of men and entertained their curiosities and seized upon their warmer and more pregnant affections it was no wonder that whole Nations were converted at a Sermon and multitudes were instantly professed and their understandings followed their affections and their wills followed their understandings and they were convinced by miracle and overcome by grace and passionate with zeal and wisely governed by their Guides and ravished with the sanctity of the Doctrine and the holinesse of their examples And this was not onely their duty but a great
when the box is newly broken but the want of it is no trouble we are well enough without it but vertue is like hunger and thirst it must be satisfied or we die and when we feel great longings after religion and faintings for want of holy nutriment when a famine of the word and sacraments is more intolerable and we think our selves really most miserable when the Church doors are shut against us or like the Christians in the persecution of the Vandals who thought it worse then death that there Bishops were taken from them If we understand excommunication or Church censures abating the disreputation and secular appendages in the sense of the spirit to be a misery next to hell it self then we have made a good progresse in the Charity and grace of God till then we are but pretenders or infants or imperfect in the same degree in which our affections are cold and our desires remisse For a constant and prudent zeal is the best testimony of our masculine and vigorous heats and an houre of fervour is more pleasing to God then a moneth of luke-warmnesse and indifferency 9 But as some are active onely in the presence of a good object but remisse and carelesse for the want of it so on the other side an infant grace is safe in the absence of a temptation but falls easily when it is in presence He therefore that would understand if he be grown in grace may consider if his safety consists onely in peace or in the strength of the spirit It is good that we will not seek out opportunities to sin but are not we too apprehensive of it when it is presented or do we not sink under when it presses us can we hold our tapers neer the flames and not suck it in greedily like Naphtha or prepared Nitre or can we like the children of the captivity walk in the midst of flames and not be scorched or consumed Many men will not like Judah go into high wayes and untie the girdles of harlots But can you reject the importunity of a beautious and an imperious Lady as Joseph did we had need pray that we be not led into temptation that is not onely into the possession but not into the allurements and neighbour-hood of it least by little and little our strongest resolutions be untwist and crack in sunder like an easie cord severed into single threds but if we by the necessity of our lives and manner of living dwell where a temptation will assault us then to resist is the signe of a great grace but such a signe that without it the grace turns into wantonnesse and the man into a beast and an angel into a Devil R. Moses will not allow a man to be a true penitent untill he hath left all his sin and in all the like circumstances refuses those temptations under which formerly he sinned and died and indeed it may happen that such a trial onely can secure our judgement concerning our selves and although to be tried in all the same accidents be not safe nor alwayes contingent and in such cases it is sufficient to resist all the temptations we have and avoid the rest and decree against all yet if it please God we are tempted as David was by his eyes or the Martyrs by tortures or Joseph by his wanton Mistris then to stand sure and to ride upon the temptation like a ship upon a wave or to stand like a rock in an impetuous storm that 's the signe of a great grace and of a well-grown Christian 10. No man is grown in grace but he that is ready for every work that chooses not his employment that refuses no imposition from God or his superiour a ready hand an obedient heart and a willing cheerful soul in all the work of God and in every office of religion is a great index of a good proficient in the wayes of Godlinesse The heart of a man is like a wounded hand or arme which if it be so cured that it can onely move one way and cannot turn to all postures and natural uses it is but imperfect and still half in health and half wounded so is our spirit if it be apt for prayer and close sifted in almes if it be sound in faith and dead in charity if it be religious to God and unjust to our neighbour there wants some integral part or there is a lamenesse and the deficiency in any one duty implyes the guilt of all said Saint James and bonum exintegrâ causâ malum exquâlibet particulari every fault spoils a grace But one grace alone cannot make a good man But as to be universal in our obedience is necessary to the being in the state of grace so readily to change imployment from the better to the worse from the honorable to the poor from usefull to seemingly unprofitable is a good Character of a well grown Christian if he takes the worst part with indifferency and a spirit equally choosing all the events of the divine providence Can you be content to descend from ruling of a province to the keeping of a herd from the work of an Apostle to be confined into a prison from disputing before Princes to a conversation with Shepherds can you be willing to all that God is willing and suffer all that he chooses as willingly as if you had chosen your own fortune In the same degree in which you can conform to God in the same you have approached towards that perfection whether we must by degrees arrive in our journey towards heaven This is not to be expected of beginners for they must be enticed with apt imployments and it may be their office and work so fits their spirits that it makes them first in love with it and then with God for giving it and many a man goes to heaven in the dayes of peace whose faith and hopes and patience would have been dashed in pieces if he had fallen into a storm or persecution Oppression will make a wise man mad saith Solomon there are some usages that will put a sober person out of all patience such which are besides the customes of this life and contrary to all his hopes and unworthy of a person of his quality and when Nero durst not die yet when his servants told him that the Senators had condemned him to be put to death more Majorum that is by scourging like a slave he was forced into a preternatural confidence and fel upon his own sword but when God so changes thy estate that thou art fallen into accidents to which thou art no otherwise disposed but by grace and a holy spirit and yet thou canst passe through them with quietnesse and do the work of suffering as well as the works of a prosperous imployment this is an argument of a great grace and an extraordinary spirit For many persons in a change of fortune perish who if they had still been prosperous had gone to heaven being tempted
build our duty upon our own bottoms as supported with the grace of God there is no vice but may finde a Patron and no age or relation or state of life but will be an engagement to sin And we shall think it necessary to be lustfull in our youth and revengefull in our man hood and covetous in our old age and we shall perceive that every state of men and every trade and profession lives upon the vices of others or upon their miseries and therefore they will think it necessary to promote or to wish it If men were temperate Physitians would be poor and unlesse some Princes were ambitious or others injurious there would be no imployment for souldiers The Vintners retail supports the Merchants trade and it is a vice that supports the Vintners retail and if all men were wise and sober persons we should have fewer beggers and fewer rich and if our Law-givers should imitate Demades of Athens who condemned a man that lived by selling things belonging to funeralls as supposing he could not choose but wish the death of men by whose dying he got his living we should finde most men accounted criminalls because vice is so involved in the affairs of the world that it is made the support of many trades and the businesse of great multitudes of men Certainly from hence it is that iniquity does so much abound and unlesse we state our questions right and perceive the evil to be designed onely from our selves and that no such pretence shall keep off the punishment or the shame from our selves we shall fall into a state which is onely capable of compassion because it is irrecoverable and then we shall be infinitely miserable when we can onely receive an uselesse and ineffective pity Whatsoever is necessary cannot be avoided He therefore that shall say he cannot avoid his sin is out of the mercies of this Text they who are appointed Guides Physitians of souls cannot to any purpose do their offices of pity It is necessary that we serve God and do our duty and secure the interest of our souls and be as carefull to preserve our relations to God as to our friend or Prince But if it can be necessary for any man in any condition to sin it is also necessary for that man to perish Sermon XVII The severall states and degrees of Sinners WITH The manner how they are to be treated Part II. 4. THe last sort of them that sin and yet are to be treated with compassion is of them that interrupt the course of an honest life with single acts of sin stepping aside and starting like a broken bowe whose resolution stands fair and their hearts are towards God and they sojourn in religion or rather dwell there but that like evil husbands they go abroad and enter into places of dishonour and unthriftinesse Such as these all stories remember with a sad character and every narrative concerning David which would end in honour and fair report is sullied with the remembrances of Bathsheba and the Holy Ghost hath called him a man after Gods own heart save in the matter of Uriah there indeed he was a man after his own heart even then when his reason was stolne from him by passion and his religion was sullied by the beauties of a fair woman I wish we lived in an age in which the people were to be treated with concerning renouncing the single actions of sin and the seldome interruptions of piety Men are taught to say that every man sins in every action he does and this is one of the doctrines for the beleeving of which he shall be accounted a good man and upon this ground it is easie for men to allow themselves some sins when in all cases and in every action it is unavoidable I shall say nothing of the Question save that the Scripture reckons otherwise * and in the accounts of Davids life reckon but one great sin * and in Zachary and Elizabeth gave a testimony of an unblameable conversation * and Hezekiah did not make his confession when he prayed to God in his sicknesse and said he had walked uprightly before God * and therefore Saint Paul after his conversion designed and laboured hard therefore certainly with hopes to accomplish it that he might keep his conscience void of offence both towards God and towards man * and one of Christs great purposes is to present his whole Church pure and spotlesse to the throne of grace and* Saint John the Baptist offended none but Herod * and no pious Christian brought a bill of accusation against the holy Virgin Mother * certain it is that God hath given us precepts of such a holinesse and such a purity such a meeknesse and such humility as hath no pattern but Christ no precedent but the purities of God and therefore it is intended we should live with a life whose actions are not checker'd with white and black half sin and half vertue Gods sheep are not like Jacobs flock streaked and spotted it is an intire holinesse that God requires and will not endure to have a holy course interrupted by the dishonour of a base and ignoble action I do not mean that a mans life can be as pure as the Sun or the rayes of celestial Jerusalem but like the Moon in which there are spots but they are no deformity a lessening onely and an abatement of light no cloud to hinder and draw a vail before its face but sometimes it is not so serene and bright as at other times Every man hath his indiscretions and infirmities his arrests and sudden incursions his neighbourhoods and semblances of sin his little vidences to reason and peevish melancholy and humorous Phantastick discourses unaptnesses to a devout prayer his fondnesses to judge favourably in his own cases little deceptions and voluntary and involuntary cousenages ignorances and inadvertencies carelesse hours and unwatchful seasons but no good man ever commits one act of adultery no godly man wil at any time be drunk or if he be he ceases to be a godly man and is run into the confines of death and is sick at heart and may die of the sicknesse die eternally This happens more frequently in persons of an infant piety when the vertue is not corroborated by a long abode and a confirmed resolution and an usual victory and a triumphant grace and the longer we are accustomed to piety the more imfrequent will be the little breaches of folly and a returning sin But as the needle of a compasse when it is directed to its beloved star at the first addresses waves on either side and seems indifferent in his courtship of the rising or declining sun and when it seems first determined to the North stands a while trembling as if it suffered inconvenience in the first fruition of its desires and stands not still in a full enjoyment till after first a great variety of motion and then an
to our short lived memories or to the broken records and fragments of story lest after the inundation of barbarisme and war and change of Kingdoms and corruption of Authors but by its relation to the fountain of our truths and the birth of our religion under our Fathers in Christ the holy Apostles and Disciples a Camel was a new thing to them that saw it in the fable But yet it was created as soon as a cow or the domestick creatures and some people are apt to call every thing new which they never heard of before as if all religion were to be measured by the standards of their observation or country customs Whatsoever was not taught by Christ or his Apostles though it came in by Papias or Dionysius by Arius or Liberius is certainly new as to our account and whatsoever is taught to us by the Doctors of the present age if it can shew its test from the beginning of our period for revelaltion is not to be called new though it be pressed with a new zeal and discoursed of by unheard of arguments that is though men be ignorant and need to learn it yet it is not therefore new or unnecessary 2. Some would have false teachers sufficiently signified by a name or the owning of a private Appellative as of Papist Lutheran Calvenists Zuinglian Socinian think it is enough to denominat them not of Christ if they are called by the name of a man And indeed the thing is in it self ill but then if by this mark we shall esteem false teachers sufficiently signified we must follow no man no Church nor no communion for all are by their adversaries marked with an appellative of separation and singularity and yet themselves are tenacious of a good name such as they choose or such as is permitted to them by fame and the people and a natural necessity of making a distinction Thus the Donatist called themselves the flock of God and the Novatians called the Catholicks traditors and the Eustathians called themselves Catholikes and the worshippers of images made Iconoclast to be a name of scorn and men made names as they listed or as the fate of the market went And if a Doctor preaches a doctrine which another man likes not but preaches the contradictory he that consents and he that refuses have each of them a teacher by whose name if they please to wrangle they may be signified It was so in the Corinthian Church with this onely difference that they divided themselves by names which signified the same religion I am of Paul and I of Apollo and I am of Peter and I of Christ these Apostles were ministers of Christ and so does every teacher new or old among the Christians pretend himself to be Let that therefore be examined if he ministers to the truth of Christ and the religion of his master let him be entertained as a servant of his Lord but if an appellative be taken from his name there is a faction commenced in it and there is a fault in the men if there be none in the doctrine but that the doctrine be true or false to be received or to be rejected because of the name is accidental and extrinsecall and therefore not to be determined by this signe 3. Amongst some men a sect is sufficiently thought to be reproved if it subdivides and breaks into little fractions or changes its own opinions indeed if it declines its own doctrine no man hath reason to beleeve them upon their word or to take them upon the stock of reputation which themselves being judges they have forfeited and renounced in the changing that which at first they obtruded passionately And therefore in this case there is nothing to be done but to beleeve the men so farre as they have reason to beleeve themselves that is to consider when they prove what they say and they that are able to do so are not persons in danger to be seduced by a bare authority unlesse they list themselves for others that sink under an unavoidable prejudice God will take care for them if they be good people and their case shall be considered by and by But for the other part of the signe when men fall out among themselves for other interests or opinions it is no argument that they are in an errour concerning that doctrine which they all unitedly teach or condemn respectively but it hath in it some probability that their union is a testimony of truth as certainly as that their fractions are a testimony of their zeal or honesty or weaknesse as it happens and if we Christians be too decretory in this instance it will be hard for any of us to keep a Jew from making use of it against the whole religion which from the dayes of the Apostles hath been rent into innumerable sects and under-sects springing from mistake or interest from the arts of the Devil or the weaknesse of man But from hence we may make an advantage in the way of prudence and become sure that all that doctrine is certainly true in which the generality of Christians who are divided in many things yet do constantly agree and that that doctrine is also sufficient since it is certain that because in all Communions and Churches there are some very good men that do all their duty to the getting of truth God will not fail in any thing that is necessary to them that honestly and heartily desire to obtain it and therefore if they rest in the heartinesse of that and live accordingly and superinduce nothing to the destruction of that they have nothing to do but to rely upon Gods goodnesse and if they perish it is certain they cannot help it and that is demonstration enough that they cannot perish considering the justice and goodnesse of our Lord and Judge 4. Whoever break the bands of a Society or Communion and go out from that Congregation in whose Confession they are baptized do an intolerable scandal to their doctrine and persons and give suspicious men reason to decline their Assemblies and not to choose them at all for any thing of their authority or outward circumstances and Saint Paul bids the Romans to mark them that cause divisions and offences But the following words make their caution prudent and practicable contrary to the doctrine which ye have learned and avoid them they that recede from the doctrine which they have learned they cause the offence and if they also obtrude this upon their congregations they also make the division For it is certain if we receive any doctrine contrary to what Christ gave and the Apostles taught for the authority of any man then we call men Masters and leave our Master which is in heaven and in that case we must separate from the Congregation and adhere to Christ but this is not to be done unlesse the case be evident and notorious But as it is hard that the publike doctrine of a Church should be rifled
give us these gifts and when he hath finished the prayers and thanksgiving all the people that is present with a joyfull acclamation say Amen Which when it is done by the Presidents and people those which amongst us are called Deacons and Ministers distribute to every one that is present that they may partake of him in whom the thanks were presented the Eucharist bread wine and water and may beare it to the absent Moreover this nourishment is by us called the Eucharist which it is lawfull for none to partake but to him who beleeves our doctrine true and is washed in the Laver for the remission of sins and regeneration and that lives so as Christ delivered For we doe not take it as common bread common drink but as by the word of God Jesus Christ the Saviour of the world was made flesh and for our salvation sake had flesh and bloud after the same manner also we are taught that this nourishment in which by the prayers of his word which is from him the food in which thanks are given or the consecrated food by which our flesh bloud by mutation or change are nourished is the flesh bloud of the incarnate Jesus For the Apostles in their commentaries which they wrote which are called the Gospells so delivered that Jesus commanded For when he had given thanks and taken bread he said Doe this in remembrance of me This is my body And likewise taking the Chalice and having given thanks he said This is my bloud and that he gave it to them alone This one testimony I reckon as sufficient who please to see more may observe the tradition full testified and intire in Ignatius Clemens Romanus or who ever wrote the Apostolicall constitutions in his name Tertullian S. Cyprian S. Athanasius Epiphanius S. Basil S. Chrysostome almost every where S. Hierome S. Augustine and indeed we cannot look in vain into any of the old writers The summe of whose doctrine in this particular I shall represent in the words of the most ancient of them S. Ignatius saying that he is worse then an infidell that offers to officiate about the holy Altar unlesse he be a Bishop or a Priest And certainly he could upon no pretence have challenged the Appellative of Christian who had dared either himselfe to invade the holy rites within the Cancels or had denyed the power of celebrating this dreadfull mystery to belong onely to sacerdotall ministration For either it is said to be but common bread and wine and then if that were true indeed any body may minister it but then they that say so are blasphemous they count the bloud of the Lord 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as S. Paul calls it in imitation of the words of institution The bloud of the Covenant or new Testament a profane or common thing they discerne not the Lords body they know not that the bread that is broken is the communication of Christs body But if it be a holy separate or divine and mysterious thing who can make it ministerially I mean and consecrate or sublime it from common and ordinary bread but a consecrate separate and sublimed person It is to be done either by a naturall power or by a supernaturall A naturall cannot hallow a thing in order to God and they onely have a supernaturall who have derived it from God in order to this ministration who can show that they are taken up into the lot of that Deacon-ship which is the type and representment of that excellent ministery of the true Tabernacle where Jesus himselfe does the same thing in a higher and a more excellent manner This is the great secret of the kingdome to which in the Primitive Church many who yet had given up their names to Christ by designation or solemnity were not admitted so much as to the participation as the Catechumens the Audientes the Poenitentes Neophytes and Children and the ministery of it was not onely reserved for sacred persons but also performed with so much mysterious secrecy that many were not permitted so much as to see This is that rite in which the Priest intercedes for and blesses the people offering in their behalfe not onely their prayers but applying the sacrifice of Christ to their prayers and representing them with glorious advantages and tithes of acceptation which because it was so excellent celestiall sacred mysticall and supernaturall it raised up the persons too that the ministeriall Priesthood in the Church might according to the nature of all great imployments passe an excellency and a value upon the ministers And therefore according to the naturall reason of religion and the devotion of all the world the Christians because they had the greatest reason so to doe did honour their Clergy with the greatest veneration and esteem It is without a Metaphor regale sacerdotium a royall Priesthood so S. Peter which although it be spoken in generall of the Christian Church and in an improper large sense is verified of the people yet it is so to be expounded as that parallel place of the books of Moses from whence the expression is borrowed Yee shall be a kingdome of Priests and an Holy Nation which plainly by the sense and Analogy of the Mosaick law signifies a nation blessed by God with rites and ceremonies of a separate religion a kingdome in which Priests are appointed by God a kingdome in which nothing is more honourable then the Priesthood for it is certain the nation was famous in all the world for an honorable Priesthood and yet the people were not Priests in any sense but of a violent Metaphor And therefore the Christian ministery having greater privileges and being honoured with attrectation of the body and bloud of Christ and offices serving to a better Covenant may with greater argument be accounted excellent honorable and royall and all the Church be called a royall Priesthood the denomination being given to the whole from the most excellent part because they altogether make one body under Christ the head the medium of the union being the Priests the collectors of the Church and instrument of adunation and reddendo singula singulis dividing to each his portion of the expression the people is a peculiar people the Clergy a holy Priesthood and all in conjunction and for severall excellencies a chosen Nation so that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is the same with 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Priesthood of the kingdome that is the ministery of the Gospell for in the new Testament the kingdome signifies the Gospell and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is the same with 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Kingly is of or belonging to the Gospell for therefore it is observable it is not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 not well rendred by the vulgar Latine regale sacerdotium as if Kingly were the Appellative or Epithete of this Priesthood it