1000 The infection grew hotter and hotter in Rome their may came to a must those things which were done before de facto came at last to be articles of Faith and de jure must be beleeved and practised upon salvation They chide us for going away and they drove us away If we abstained from communicating with their poysons being now growen to that height they excommunicated us They gave us no room amongst them but the fire and they were so forward to burne Heretiques that they called it heresie not to stay to be burnt Yet we went not upon their driving but upon Gods calling As the whole prophecy of the deliverance of Israel from Babylon belongs to the Christian Church both to the Primitive Church at first and to the Reformed since so doth that voice spoken to them reach unto us Egredimini de Babylone Goe ye out of Babylon with a voice of singing declare show to the ends of the earth that the Lord hath redeemed his servant Iacob For that Rome is not Babylon they have but that one half-comfort that one of their own authors hath ministred that Romae regulariter male agitur that Babylon is Confusion disorder but at Rome all sinnes are committed in order by the book and they know the price and therefore Rome is not Babylon And since that many of their authors confesse that Rome was Babylon in the time of the persecuting Emperours and that Rome shall be Babylon againe in the time of Antichrist how they will hedge in a Ierusalem a holy City between these two Babylons is a cunning peece of Architecture From this Babylon then were our Fathers called by God not onely by that whispering sibilation of the holy Ghost sibilabâ— populum I will hisse for my people and so gather them for I have redeemed them and they shall increase not onely by private inspirations but by generall acclamations every where principall writers and preachers and Princes too as much as could stand with their safety crying out against them before Luther howsoever they will needs doe him that honour to have been the first mover in this blessed revolution They reproach to us our going from them when they drove us and God drew us and they discharge themselves for all by this one evasion That all that we complain of is the fault of the Court of Rome and not of the Church of the extortion in the practise of their Officers not of error in the doctrine of their Teachers Let that be true as in a great part it is for almost all their errors proceed from their covetousness and love of money this is that that we complain most of and in this especially lies the conformity of the Iewish Priests in the Chaldean Babylon and these Prelates in the Roman Babylon that the Court and the Church joined in the oppression But since the Court of Rome and the Church of Rome are united in one head I see no use of this distinction Court and Church If the Church of Rome be above the Court the Church is able to amend these corruptions in the Court If the Court be got above the Church the Church hath lost or sold away her supremacy To oppresse us and ease themselves now when we are gone from them they require Miracles at out hands when indeed it was miracle enough how we got from them But magnum charitatis argumentum credere absque pignoribus miraculorum He loves God but a little that will not beleeve him without a miracle Miracles are for the establishing of new religions All the miracles of and from Christ and his Apostles are ours because their Religion is ours Indeed it behooves our adversaries to provide new miracles every day because they make new articles of Faith every day As Esop therefore answered in the Market when he that sold him was asked what he could do that he could do nothing because his fellow had said that he could do all so we say we can do no miracles because they do all all ordinary cures of Agues and tooth-ach being done by miracle amongst them We confesse that we have no such tye upon the Triumphant Church to make the Saints there do those anniversary miracles which they do by their reliques here upon their own holy days ten days sooner every year then they did before the new computation We pretend not to raise the dead but to cure the sick and that but by the ordinary Physique the Word and Sacraments and therefore need no miracles And we remember them of their own authors who do not onely say that themselves do no miracles in these latter times but assigne diligently strong reasons why it is that they doe none If all this will not serve we must tell them that we have a greater miracle then any that they produce that is that in so few years they that forsook Rome were become equall even in number to them that adhered to her We say with Saint Augustine That if we had no other miracle hoc unum stupendum potentissimum miraculum esse that this alone were the most powerfull and most a mazing miracle ad hanc religionem totius orbis amplitudinem sine miraculis subjugatam that so great a part of the Christian world should become Protestants of Papists without any miracles They pursue us still being departed from them and they aske us How can ye pretend to have left Babylon confusion Dissention when you have such dissentions confusions amongst your selves But neither are our differences in so fundamental points as theirs are for a principall author of their own who was employed by Clement the eight to reconcile the differences between the Iesuits and the Dominicans about the concurrence of the grace of God and the free will of man confesses that the principall articles and foundations of faith were shaken between them between the Iesuits and Dominicans neither shall we finde such heat and animosity and passion between any persons amongst us as between the greatest amongst them The succeeding Pope mangling the body of his predecessor casting them into the river for buriall disannulling all their decrees and ordinations their Ordinations so that no man could be sure who was a Priest nor whether he had truely received any Sacrament or no. Howsoever as in the narrowest way there is most justling the Roman Church going that broad way to beleeve as the Church beleeves may scape some particular differences which we that goe the narrower way to try every thing by the exact word of God may fall into Saint Augustine tells us of a City in Mauritania Caesarea in which they had a custome that in one day in the year not onely Citizens of other parishes but even neighbours yea brethren yea Fathers did fling stones dangerously and furiously at one another in the streets and this they so solemnized as a custome received from their
ancestors which was a licentious kind of Carnavall If any amongst us have fallen into that disease to cast stones or dirt at his friends it is an infection from his own distemper not from our doctrine for if any man list to be contentious we have no such custome neither the Church of God We departed not from them then till it was come to a hot plague in a necessity of professing old opinions to be new articles of Faith not till we were driven by them and drawn by the voice of God in the learnedest men of all nations when they could not discharge themselves by the distinction of the Court of Rome and the Church of Rome because if the abuses had been but in the Court it was the greatest abuse of all for that Church which is so much above that Court not to mend it Nor can they require Miracles at our hands who doe none themselves and yet need them because they induce new articles of Religion neither can they reproach to us our Dissentions amongst our selves because they are neither in so fundamentall points nor pursued with so much uncharitablenesse as theirs So we justifie our secession from them but all this justifies in no part the secession of those distempered men who have separated themselves from us which is our next and our last consideration When the Apostle says study to be quiet 1 Thes. 4. 11. me thinks he intimates something towards this that the lesse we study for our Sermons the more danger is there to disquiet the auditory extemporall unpremeditated Sermons that serve the popular care vent for the most part doctrines that disquiet the Church Study for them and they will be quiet consider ancient and fundamentall doctrines and this will quiet and settle the understanding and the Conscience Many of these extemporall men have gone away from us and vainly said that they have as good cause to separate from us as we from Rome But can they call our Church a Babylon Confusion disorder All that offends them is that we have too much order too much regularity too much binding to the orderly and uniforme service of God in Church It affects all the body when any member is cut off Cum dolore amputatur etiam quae putruit pars corporis and they cut off themselves and feel it not when we lose but a mysticall limbe and they lose a spirituall life we feel it and they doe not When that is pronounced sit tibi sicut ethnicus if he hear not the Church let him be to thee as a Heathen gravius est quà m si gladio feriretur flammis absumeretur feris subigeretur it is a heavier sentence then to be beheaded to be burnt or devoured with wild beasts and yet these men before any such sentence pronounced by us excommunicate themselves Of all distempers Calvin falls oftenest upon the reproof of that which he calls Morositatem a certain peevish frowardnesse which as he calls in one place deterrimam pestem the most infectious pestilence that can fall upon a man so in another he gives the reason why it is so semper nimia morositas est ambitiosa that this peevish frowardnesse is always accompanied with a pride and a singularity and an ambition to have his opinions preferred before all other men and to condemn all that differ from him A civill man will depart with his opinion at a Table at a Councell table rather then hold up an argument to the vexation of the Company so will a peaceable man doe in the Church in questions that are not fundamentall That reverend man whom we mentioned before who did so much in the establishing of Geneva professes that it was his own opinion that the Sacrament might be administred in prisons and in private houses but because he found the Church of Geneva of another opinion and another practise before he came he applied himself to them and departed in practise from his own opinion even in so important a point as the ministration of the Sacrament Which I present to consideration the rather both because thereby it appears that greater matters then are now thought fundamentall were then thought but indifferent and arbitrary for surely if Calvin had thought this a fundamentall thing he would never have suffered any custome to have prevailed against his conscience and also because divers of those men who trouble the Church now about things of lesse importance and this of private Sacraments in particular will needs make themselves beleeve that they are his Disciples and always conclude that whatsoever is practised at Geneva was Calvins opinion Saint Augustine saith excellently and appliably to a holy Virgin who was ready to leave the Church for the ill life of Church-men Christus nobis imperavit Congregationem sibi servavit separationem Christ Jesus hath commanded us to gather together and recommended to us the Congregation as for the separation he hath reserved it to himself to declare at the last day who are Sheep and who are Goats And hee wrought that separation which our Fathers made from Rome by his expresse written Word and by that which is one word of God too Vox populi The invitation and acclamation of Doctors and People and Princes but have our Separatists any such publique and concurrent authorising of that which they doe since of all that part from us scarse a dozen meet together in one confession When you have heard the Prophet say Can two walke togeâ—her except they be agreed when you have heard the Apostle say I beseech you brethren by the name of our Lord Iesus Christ that ye all speake the same things and that there be no divisions among you for if preachers speake one one way another another there will be divisions among the people And then it is not onely that in obedience to authority they speake the same things But Be perfectly joyned in the same mind and in the same judgement you had need make haste to this union this pacification for when we are come thither to agree among our selves we are not come to our journeys end Our life is a warfare other wars in a great part end in mariages Ours in a divorce in a divorce of body and soule in death Till then though God have brought us from the First Babylon the darknesse of the Gentiles and from the Second Babylon the superstitions of Rome and from the third Babylon the confusion of tongues in bitter speaking against one another after all this every man shall finde a fourth Babylon enough to exercise all his forces The civill warre the rebellious disorder the intestine confusion of his own Concupiscencies This is a transmigration a transportation layd upon us all by Adams rebellion from Jerusalem to Babylon from our innocent State in our Creation to this confusion of our corrupt nature God would have his children first brought to Babylon before he would be glorifyed in
bed that he in the name of the dead man might answer to all the questions usually asked in administring of Baptisme But this was a corrupt effect of pure and sincere doctrine which doctrine is That Baptisme is so necessary as that God hath placed no other ordinary scale nor conveyance of his graces in his Church to them that have not received that then buptisme And they who doe not provide duly for the Baptisme of their children if their children die have a heavier accompt to make to God for that child then if they had not provided a Nurse and suffered the child to starve God can preserve the child without Milke and he can save the child without a sacrament but as that mother that throwes out and forsakes her child in the field or wood is guilty before God of the Temporall murder of that child though the child die not so are those parents of a spirituall murder if their children by their fault die unbaptized though God preserve that child out of his abundant and miraculous mercy from spirituall destruction When the custome of the Christian Church was to baptize but twice in the year at Easter and Whiâ—sontide for the greater solemnity of that action yea when that ill custome was grown as it was even in the Primitive Church that upon an opinion that all sins were absolutely forgiven in Baptisme Men did defer their Baptisme till their death-bed as we see the Ecclesiasticall histories full of such examples even in some of the Christian Emperors and according to this ill custome we see Tertullian chides away young children for comming so soon to Baptisme quid festinat innocens aetas ad remâ—ssionem peccatorum why should this child that as yet hath done no sinne make such hast to be washed from sinnce which opinion had got so much strength that Saint Basil was faine to oppose it in the Easterne Church and both the Gregories Nazianzen and Nissen and Saint Ambrose in the Western yet in the height of both their customes of seldome baptizing and of late baptizing the case of insants that might be in danger of dying without baptisme was ever excepted So that none of those old customes though some of them were extreamly ill went ever so farre as to an opinion that it were all one whether the child were baptized or no. I speake not this as though the state of children that died without baptisme were desperate God forbid for who shall shorten the Arme of the Lord God is able to raine downe Manna and Quailes into the soules of these children though negligent parents turne them out into the wildernesse and put God to that extraordinary work They may have Manna and Quailes but they have not the Milke and Hony of the Land of promise They may have salvation from God but they have not those graces so sealed and so testified to them as God hath promised they should be in his Sacraments When God in spirituall offences makes Inquisition of bloud he proceeds not as Man proceeds for we till there appear a Man to be dead never inquire who killed him but in the spirituall Murder of an unbaptized child though there be no child spiritually dead though Gods mercy have preserved the child from that yet God imputes this as such a murder to them who endangered the child as farre as they could by neglecting his ordinance of baptisme This is then the necessity of this Sacrament not absolutely necessary but necessary by Gods ordinary institution and as it is always necessary so is it always certaine whosoever is baptized according to Christs institution receives the Sacrament of baptisme and the truth is always infallibly annexed with the signe Nec fieri potest visio hominis ut non sit Sacramentum quod figurat Though the wicked may feele no working by the Sacrament yet the Sacrament doth offer and present grace as well to the unworthy as to the worthy Receiver Nec fallaciter promittit The wicked may be a cause that the Sacrament shall doe them no good but that the Sacrament become no Sacrament or that God should be false in his promises and offer no grace where he pretends to offer it this the wicked cannot doe baptisme doth truly and without collusion offer grace to all and nothing but baptisme by an ordinary institution and as an ordinary meanes doth so for when baptisme is called a figure yet both that figure is said there to save us The figure that now saveth us baptisme and it is a figure of the Arke it hath relation to it to that Arke which did save the world when it is called a figure So it may be a figure but if we speake of reall salvation by it baptisme is more then a figure Now as our putting on of Christ was double by faith and by sanctification so by this Sacrament also we are baptized in Nomen Christi into the Name of Christ and in mortem Christi into the death of Christ we are not therefore baptized into his Name because names are imposed upon us in our baptisme for that was not always permanently accustomed in the Christian Church to give a name at baptisme To men who were of years and well known in the world already by their nameâ— if they were converted to the Christian faith the Church did not use to give new names at their baptisme neither to Children alwayes but sometimes as an indifferent thing they left them to the custome of that country or of that family from which they were derived When Saint Augustine sayes that he came to Milan to S. Ambrose at that time quâ— dari nomina oportuit when Names were to be given it is true that he speaks of a time when Baptisme was to be administred but that phrase of Giving of Names was not a receiving of Names at Baptisme for neither Ambrose nor Augustine received any new name at their Baptisme but it was a giving up of their Names a Registring a Matriculating of their Names in the book of the profession of the Christian Religion and a publique declaration of that profession To be baptized therefore into the name of Christ is to be translated into his Family by this spirituall adoption in which adoption when it was legall as they that were adopted had also the name of the family into which they were adopted as of octavius Octavianus and the rest so are we so baptized into his name that we are of Christus Christiani and therefore to become truly Christians to live Christianly this is truly to be baptized into his name No other name is given under heaven whereby we can be saved nor must any other name accompany the name of God in our Baptisme When therefore they teach in the Romane Church that it is a good Baptisme which is administred in this forme I baptize thee in the name of the Father and Sonne and holy Ghost and the virgin Mary if he which baptizes so
the Church is his standing house there are his offices fixed there are his provisions which fat the Soule of Man as with marrow and with fatnesse his precious bloud and body there work his seales there beats his Mint there is absolution and pardon for past sinnes there is grace for prevention of future in his Sacraments But the Church is not onely Domus Dei but Basilica not onely his house but his Court he doth not onely dwell there but reigne there which multiplies the joy of his houshold servants The Lord reigneth let all the earth rejoyce yea let the multitude of the Islands be glad thereof That the Church was usually called Martyrium that is a place of Confession where we open our wounds and receive our remedy That it was called Oratorium where we might come and aske necessary things at Gods hands all these teach us our severall duties in that place and they adde to their spirituall comfort who have been Gods instruments for providing such places as God may be glorified in and the godly benefited in all these ways But of all Names which were then usually given to the Church the name of Temple seems to be most large and significant as they derive it à Tuendo for Tueri signifies both our beholding and contemplating God in the Church and it signifies Gods protecting and defending those that are his in his Church Tueri embraces both And therefore though in the very beginning of the Primitive Church to depart from the custome and language and phrase of the Iews and Gentiles as farre as they could they did much abstain from this name of Temple and of Priest so that till Ireneus time some hundred eighty years after Christ we shall not so often find those words Temple or Priest yet when that danger was overcome when the Christian Church and doctrine was established from that time downward all the Fathers did freely and safely call the Church the Temple and the Ministers in the Church Priests as names of a religious and pious signification where before out of a loathnesse to doe or say any thing like the Iews or Gentiles where a concurrence with them might have been misinterpretable and of ill consequence they had called the Church by all those other names which we passed through before and they called their Priests by the name of Elders Presbyteros but after they resumed the use of the word Temple againe as the Apostle had given a good patterne who to expresse the principall holinesse of the Saints of God he chooses to doe it in that word ye are the Temples of the holy Ghost which should encline us to that moderation that when the danger of these ceremonies which corrupt times had corrupted is taken away we should returne to a love of that Antiquity which did purely and harmelesly induce them when there is no danger of abuse there should be no difference for the use of things in themselves indifferent made necessary by the just commandement of lawfull authority Thus then you see as farre as the narrownesse of the time will give us leave to expresse it the generall manner of the best times to declare devotion towards God to have been in appropriating certaine places to his worship And since it is so in this particular history of Iacobs proceeding in my text I may be hold to invert these words of David Nisi Deus aedificaverit domum unlesse the Lord doe build the house in vaine doe the labourers work thus much as to say Nisi Domino aedificaveritis domum except thou build a house for the Lord in vaine dost thou goe about any other buildings or any other businesse in this world I speake not meerly literally of building Materiall Chappell 's yet I would speake also to further that but I speake principally of building such a Church as every man may build in himselfe for whensoever we present our prayers and devotions deliberately and advisedly to God there we consecrate that place there we build a Church And therefore beloved since every master of a family who is a Bishop in his house should call his family together to humble and powre out their soules to God let him consider that when he comes to kneele at the side of his table to pray he comes to build a Church there and therefore should sanctifie that place with a due and penitent consideration how voluptuously he hath formerly abused Gods blessings at that place how superstitiously and idolatrously he hath flatter'd and humour'd some great and usefull ghests invited by him to that place how expensively he hath served his owne ostentation and vain-glory by excessive feasts at that place whilest Lazarus hath lien panting and gasping at the gate and let him consider what a dangerous Mockery this is to Christ Iesus if he pretend by kneeling at that table fashionally to build Christ a Church by that solemnity at the table side and then crucifie Christ again by these sinnes when he is sat at the table When thou kneelest down at thy bed side to shut up the day at night or to beginne it in the morning thy servants thy children thy little flock about thee there thou buildest a Church too And therefore sanctifie that place wash it with thy tears and with a repentant consideration That in that bed thy children were conceived in sinne that in that bed thou hast turned mariage which God afforded thee for remedy and physique to voluptuosnesse and licenciousnesse That thou hast made that bed which God gave thee for rest and for reparation of thy weary body to be as thy dwelling and delight and the bed of idlenesse and stupidity Briefly you that are Masters continue in this building of Churches that is in drawing your families to pray and praise God and sanctifie those severall places of bed and board with a right use of them And for you that are servants you have also foundations of Churches in you if you dedicate all your actions consecrate all your services principally to God and respectively to them whom God hath placed over you But principally let all of all sorts who present themselves at this table consider that in that receiving his body and his bloud every one doth as it were conceive Christ Jesus anew Christ Jesus hath in every one of them as it were a new incarnation by uniting himselfe to them in these visible signes And therefore let no Man come hither without a search and a privy search without a consideration and re-consideration of his conscience Let him that beganne to think of it but this morning stay till the next When Moses pulled his hand first out of his bosome it was white as snow but it was leprous when he pulled it the second time it was of the color of flesh but it was sound When thou examinest thy conscience but once but flightly it may appear white as snow innocent but examine it againe and it
vestruâ—â— it is not for you to know times and seasons Before in his state of mortality 〈…〉 ignor antibus he pretended to know no more of this then they that knew nothing After when he had invested immortality per sui exceptionem says that Father he excepts none but himselfe all the rest even the Apostles were left ignorant thereof For this non est vestrum it is not for you is part of the last sentence that ever Christ spake to them If it be a convenient answer to say Christ knew it not as man how bold is that man that will pretend to know it And if it be a convenient interpretation of Christs words that he knew it not that is knew it not so as that he might tell it them how indiscreet are they who though they may seem to know it will publish it For thereby they fill other men with scruples and vexations and they open themselves to scorne and reproach when their predictions prove false as Saint Augustine observed in his time and every age hath given examples since of confident men that have failed in these conjectures It is a poore pretence to say this intimation this impression of a certaine time prepares men with better dispositions For they have so often been found false that it rather weakens the credit of the thing it selfe In the old world they knew exactly the time of the destruction of the world that there should be an hundred twenty years before the flood came And yet upon how few did that prediction though from the mouth of God himselfe work to repentance Naâ—â— found grace in Gods eyes but it was not because he mended his life upon that prediction but he was grations in Gods sight before At the day of our death we write Pridiâ—râ—surrâ—ctioniâ— the day before the resurrection It is Vigilia resurectionis Our Easter Eve Adveniat regnum tuum possesse my soule of thy kingdome then And Fiâ—â— voluntas tua my body shall arise after but how soon after or how late after thy will bee done then by thy selfe and thy will bee knowne till then to thy selfe We passe on As in Massa damnata the whole lump of mankind is under the condemnation of Adams sinne and yet the good purpose of God severs some men from that condemnation so at the resurrection all shall rise but not all to glory But amongst them that doe Ego says Iob I shall I as I am the same man made up of the samebody and the same soule Shall I imagine a difficulty in my body because I have lost an Arme in the East and a leg in the West because I have left some bloud in the North and some bones in the South Doe but remember with what ease you have sate in the chaire casting an account and made a shilling on one hand a pound on the other or five shillings below ten above because all these lay easily within your reach Consider how much lesse all this earth is to him that sits in heaven and spans all this world and reunites in an instant armes and legs bloud and bones in what corners so ever they be scattered The greater work may seem to be in reducing the soul That that soule which sped so ill in that body last time it came to it as that it contracted Originall sinne then and was put to the slavery to serve that body and to serve it in the ways of sinne not for an Apprentiship of seven but seventy years after that that soul after it hath once got loose by death and liv'd God knows how many thousands of years free from that body that abus'd it so before and in the sight and fruition of that God where it was in no danger should willingly nay desirously ambitiously seek this scuttered body this Eastern and Western and Northern and Southern body this is the most inconsiderable consideration and yet Ego I I the same body and the same soul shall be recompact again and be identically numerically individually the same man The same integrity of body and soul and the same integrity in the Organs of my body and in the faculties of my soul too I shall be all there my body and my soul all my body all my soul I am not all here I am here now preaching upon this text and I am at home in my Library considering whether S. Gregory or S. Hierome have said best of this text before I am here speaking to you and yet I consider by the way in the same instant what it is likely you will say to one another when I have done you are not all here neither you are here now hearing me and yet you are thinking that you have heard a better Sermon somewhere else of this text before you are here and yet you think you could have heard some other doctrine of down-right Predestinations and Reprobation roundly delivered somewhere else with more edification to youâ— you are here and you remember your selves that now yee think of it This had been the fittest time now when every body else is at Church to have made such and such a private visit and because you would bee there you are there I cannot say you cannot say so perfectly so entirely now as at the Resurrection Ego I am here I body and soul I soul and faculties as Christ sayd to Peter Noli timere Ego sum Fear nothing it is I so I say to my selfe Noli timere My soul why art thou so sad my body why dost thou languish Ego I body and soul soul and faculties shall say to Christ Jesus Ego sum Lord it is I and hee shall not say Nescio te I know thee not but avow me and place me at his right hand Ego sum I am the man that hath seen affliction by the rod of his wrath Ego sum and I the same man shall receive the crown of glory which shall not fade Ego I the same person Ego videbo I shall see I have had no looking-glasse in my grave to see how my body looks in the dissolution I know not how I have had no houre-glasse in my grave to see how my time passes I know not when for when my eylids are closed in my death-bed the Angel hath said to me that time shall be no more Till I see eternity the ancient of days I shall see no more but then I shall Now why is Iob gladder of the use of this sense of seeing then of any of the other He is not He is glad of seeing but not of the sense but of the Object It is true that is said in the School Viciniùs se habent potentiae sensitivae ad animam quà m corpus Our sensitive faculties have more relation to the soul then to the body but yet to some purpose and in some measure all the senses shall be in our glorifyed bodies In actu or in potentiâ
infirmer voice rise together in this resurrection of grace Let him that hath been buried sixty years forty years twenty years in covetousnesse in uncleannesse in indevotion rise now now this minute and then as Adam that dyed five thousand before shall be no sooner in heaven in his body then you so Abel that dyed for God so long before you shall be no better that is no fuller of the glory of heaven then you that dye in God when it shall be his pleasure to take you to him SERMON XVI Preached at Lincolns Inne COLOS. 1. 24. Who now rejoyce in my sufferings for you and fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh for his bodies sake which is the Church WE are now to enter into the handling of the doctrine of Evangelicall counsailes And these words have been ordinarily used by the writers of the Roman Church for the defence of a point in controversie between them and us which is a preparatory to that which hereafter is to be more fully handled upon another Text. Out of these words they labour to establish works of supererogation in which they say men doe or suffer more then was necessary for their owne salvation and then the superfluity of those accrues to the Treasury of the Church and by the Stewardship and dispensation of the Church may be applied to other men living here or suffering in Purgatory by way of satisfaction to Gods justice But this is a doctrine which I have had occasion heretofore in this place to handle And a doctrine which indeed deserves not the dignity to be too diligently disputed against And as we will not stop upon the disproving of the doctrine so we need not stay long nor insist upon the vindicating of these words from that wresting and detortion of theirs in using them for the proofe of that doctrine Because though at first they presented them with great eagernesse and vehemence and assurance Quicquid haeretici obstrepunt illustris hic locus say the Heretiques what they can this is a clear and evident place for that doctrine yet another after him is a little more cautelous and reserv'd Negari non potest quin ita expeni possint it cannot be denied but that these words may admit such an exposition And then another more modified then both says Primò propriè non id intendit Apostolus the Apostle had no such purpose in his first and proper intention to prove that doctrine in these words Sed innuitur ille sensus qui et si non genuinus tamen à pari deduci potest some such sense says that author may be implied and intimated because though it be not the true and naturall sense yet by way of comparison and convenience such a meaning may be deduced Generally their difference in having any patronage for that corrupt doctrine out of these words appeares best in this that if we consider their authors who have written in controversies we shall see that most of them have laid hold upon these words for this doctrine because they are destitute of all Scriptures and glad of any that appear to any any whit that way inclinable But if we consider those authors who by way of commentary and exposition either before or since the controversies have been stirred have handled these words we shall find none of their owne authors of that kind which by way of exposition of these words doth deliver this to be the meaning of them that satisfaction may be made to the justice of God by the works of supererogation one man for another To come then to the words themselves in their true sense and interpretation we shall find in them two generall considerations First that to him that is become a new creature a true Christian all old things are done away and all things are made new As he hath a new birth as he hath put on a new man as he is going towards a new Ierusalem so hath he a new Philosophy a new production and generation of effects out of other causes then before he finds light out of darknesse fire out of water life out of death joy out of afflictions Nunc gaâ—deâ— now I rejoyce in my sufferings c. And then in a second consideration he finds that this is not by miracle that he should hope for it but once but he finds an expresse and certaine and constant reason why it must necessarily be so because I still up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ c. It is strange that I should conceive joy out of affliction but when I come to see the reason that by that affliction I fill up the sufferings of Christ c. it is not strange it cannot chuse but be so The parts then will be but two a proposition and a reason But in the first part it will be sit to consider first the person not meerely who it is but in what capacity the Apostle conceives this joy And secondly the season Now for joy is not always seasonable there is a time of mourning but now rejoycing And then in a third place we shall come to the affection it selfe Joy which when it is true and truly placed is the nearest representation of heaven it selfe to this world From thence we shall descend to the production of this joy from whence it is derived and that is out of sufferings for this phrase in passionibus in my sufferings is not in the middest oâ— my sufferings it is not that I have joy and comfort though I suffer but in passionibus is so in suffering as that the very suffering is the subject of my joy I had no joy no occasion of joy if I did not suffer But then these sufferings which must occasion this joy are thus conditioned thus qualified in our text That first it be passio mea my suffering and not a suffering cast by my occasion upon the whole Church or upon other men mea it is determined and limited in my selfe and mea but not prome not for my selfe not for mine owne transgressions and violating of the law but it is for others pro vobis says the Apostle for out of that root springs the whole second part why there appertaines a joy to such sufferings which is that the suffering of Christ being yet not unperfect but unperfected Christ having not yet suffered all which he is to suffer to this purpose for the gathering of his Church I fill up that which remaines undone And that in Carne not onely in spirit and disposition but really in my flesh And all this not only for making sure of mine own salvation but for the establishing and edifying a Church but yet his Church for men seduced and seducers of men have their Churches too and suffer for those Churches but this is for his Church and that Church of his which is properly his body and that is the visible Church and
these will be the particular branches of our two generall parts the proposition Gaudeo in afflictionibus c. And the reason Quiae adimpleo c. To beginne then with the first branch of the first part The person we are sure it was Sainâ— Paul who we are sure was an Apostle for so he tells the Coloâ—sians in the beginning of the Epistle Paul an Apostle of Iesus Christ by the will of God but yet he was not properly peculiarly their Apostle he was theirs as he was the Apostle of the Gentiles but he was not theirs as he was the Apostle of the Corinthians If I be not an Apostle to others says he yet doubtlesse I am to you for amongst the Corinthians he had laid the foundations of a Church Are ye not my worke in the Lord says he there but for the Colossians he had never preached to them never seen them Epaphras had laid the foundation amongst them And Archippus was working now at the writing of this Epistle upon the upper buildings as we may see in the Epistle it selfe Epaphras had planted and Archippus watered How entred Paul First as an Apostle he had a generall jurisdiction and superintendency over them and over all the Gentiles and over all the Church And then as a man whose miraculous conversion and religious conversation whose incessant preaching and whose constant suffering had made famous and reverend over the whole Church of God all that proceeded from him had much authority and power in all places to which it was directed As himselfe says of Andronicas and Iunia his kinsmen that they were Nobiles in Apostolis Nobly spoken of amongst the Apostles so Saint Paul himselfe was Nobilis Apostolus in Discipulis reverendly esteemed amongst all the Disciples for a laborious Apostle Saint Augustine joyned his desire to have heard Saint Paul preach with his other two wishes to have seen Christ in the flesh and to have seen Rome in her glory And Saint Chrysostome admires Rome so much admired for other things for this principally that she had heard Saint Paul preach And that Siâ—utâ—orpus magnum validum ita duos haberet illustres oculos as she was a great and glorious body so she had two great and glorious eyes The presence and the memories of Saint Peter and Saint Paul he writes not to them then meerely as an Apostle not in that capacity for he joines Timothy with himselfe at the beginning of the Epistle who was no Apostle properly though upon that occasion of Pauls writing in his owne and in Timothies name Saint Chrysostame say in a larger sense Ergo Timotheâ—s Apostolus if Timothy be in commission with Paul Timothy is an Apostle too But Saint Paul by his â—ame and estimation having justly got a power and interest in them he cherishes that by this salutation and he binds them the more to accept his instructions by giving them a part in all his persecutions and by letting them see how much they were in his care even in that distance A servile application of himselfe to the humors of others becomes not thâ— ministers of God It becomes him not to depart from his ingenuity and freedome to a servile humoring but to be negligent of their opinion of him with whom he is to converse and upon whose conscience he is to worke becomes him not neither It is his doctrine that must beare him out But if his discretion doe not make him acceptable too his doctrine will have the weaker root when Saint Paul and the Colossians thought well of one another the work of God was likely to goe forward amongst them And where it is not so the work prospers not This was then the person Paul as he had a calling and an authority by the Apostleship and Paul as he had made his calling and authority and Apostleship acceptable to them by his wisedome and descreet behaviour towards them and the whole Church The season followes next when he presents this doctrine to them Nunc Gaudeo now I rejoyce and there is a Nunc illi and a Nunc illis to be considered one time it hath relation to Saint Paul himselfe and another that hath relation to the Colossians His time the Nunc illis was nunc in vinculis now when he was in prison at Rome for from thence he writ this Epistle Ordinarily a prisoner is the lesse to be beleeved for his being in prison and in fetters if he speak such things as conduce to his discharge of those fetters or his deliverance from that imprisonment it is likely enough that a prisoner will lye for such an advantage But when Saint Paul being now a prisoner for the preaching of the Gospell speaks still for the advancement of the Gospell that he suffers for and finds out another way of preaching it by letters and by epistles when he opens himselfe to more danger to open to them more doctrine then that was very credible which he spake though in prison There is in all his epistles impetus Spiritus Christi as Irenaeus says a vehemence of the holy Ghost but yet amplius habent quae è vinculis says Chrisostome Those epistles which Saint Paul writ in prison have more of this vehemency in them a sentence written with a cole upon a wall by a close prisoner affects us when we come to read it Stolne letters by which a prisoner adventers the losse of that liberty which he had come therefore the more welcome if they come It is not always a bold and veliement reprehension of great persons that is argument enough of a good and a rectified zeale for an intemperate use of the liberty of the Gospell and sometimes the impotency of a satyricall humor makes men preach freely and over-freely offensively scandalously and so exasperate the magistrate God forbid that a man should build a reputation of zeale for having been called in question for preaching of a Sermon And then to think it wisdome redimere se quo queat minimo to sinke againe and get off as good cheape as he can But when the malignity of others hath slandred his doctrine or their galled consciences make them kicke at his doctrine then to proceed with a Christian magnanimity and a spirituall Nobility in the maintenance of that doctrine to preferre then before the greatnesse of the their persons and the greatnesse of his owne danger the greatnesse of the glory of God and the greatnesse of the losse which Gods Church should suffer by his lenity and prevarication To edifie others by his constancy then when this building in apparence and likelyhood must be raised upon his owne ruine then was Saint Pauls Nunc concerning himselfe then was his season to plant and convey this doctrine to these Colossians when it was most dangerous for him to doe so Now to consider this season and fitnesse as it concerned them The Nunc illis It was then
when Epaphras had declrared unto him their love and when upon so good testimony of their disposition he had a desire that they might be fulfilled with knowledge of Gods will in all wisdome and spirituall understanding as he says verse 9. when he knew how farre they had proceeded in mysteries of the Christian Religion and that they had a spirituall hunger of more then it was seasonable to present to them this great point that Christ had suffered throughly sufficiently aboundantly for the reconciliation of the whole world and yet that there remained some sufferings and those of Christ too to be fulfilled by us That all was done and yet there remained more to be done that after Christs consummatum est which was all the text there should be an Adimplendum est interlined that after Christ had fulfilled the Law and the Prophets by his sufferings Saint Paul must fulfill the residue of Christs sufferings was a doctrin unseasonably taught till they had learnt much and shewed a desire to learn more In the Primitive Church men of ripe understandings were content to think two or three yeares well spent in learning of Catechisms and rudiments of Christian Religion and the greatest Bishops were content to think that they discharged their duties well if they caâ—echized ignorant men in such rudiments for we know from Gennaâ—dius an Ecclesiasticall author that the Bishops of Greece and of the Eastern Church did use to con S. Cyrils sermons made at Easter and some other Festivals without book and preached over those Sermons of his making to Congregations of strong understanding and so had more time for their Caâ—echizing of others Optatus thinks that when Saint Paul says Ego plantavi Apollos rigavit I planted the faith and Apollos watered he intended in those words Ego de pagano feci catechumenum ille de catechumeno Christianum That Saint Paul took ignorant persons into his charge to catechize them at first and when they were instructed by him Apollos watered them with the water of Baptism Tertullian thought hee did young beginners in Christianity no wrong when he called them catulos infantiae reâ—entis nec perfectis luminibus reptantes Young whelps which are not yet come to a perfect use of their eyes in the mysteries of Religion Now God hath delivered us in a great measure from this weaknesse in seeing because we are catechized from our craâ—â—â—s and from this penury in preaching we need not preach others Sermons nor feed upon cold meat in Homilies but wee are fallen upon such times too as that men doe not thinke themselves Christians except they can tell what God meant to doe with them before he meant they should bee Christians for we can be intended to be Christians but from Christ and wee must needs seek a Predestination without any relation to Christ a decree in God for salvation and damnation before any decree for the reparation of mankind by Christ every Common-placer will adventure to â—each and every artificer will pretend to understand the purpose yea and the order too and method of Gods eternall and unrevealed decree Saint Paul required a great deal more knowledge then these men use to bring before he presented to them a great deal a lesse point of Doctrin then these men use to aske This was then the Nunc illis their season when they had humbly received so much of the knowledge of the fundamentall points of Religion Saint Paul was willing to communicate more and more stronger and stronger meat unto them That which he presents here is that which may seem least to appertain to a Christian that is loy because a Christian is a person that hath surrendred himself over to a sad and serious and a severe examination of all his actions that all bee done to the glory of God but for all this this joy true joy is truly properly onely belonging to a Christian because this joy is the Testimony of a good conscience that wee have received God so as God hath manifested himself in Christ and worshipt God so God hath ordained In a true Church there are many tesserae externae outward badges and marks by which others may judge and pronounce mee to bee a true Christian But the tessera internaâ— the inward badge and marke by which I know this in my selfe is joy The blessednesse of heaven it selfe Salvation and the fruits of Paradise that Paradise which cannot be expressed cannot be comprehended have yet got no other name in the subtilty of the Schools nor in the fulnesse of the Scriptures but to be called the joys of heaven Essentiall blessednesse is called so Enter into thy Masters joy that is into the Kingdome of heaven and accidentall happinesse added to that essentiall happinesse is called so too There is joy in heaven at the conversion of a sinner and so in the Revelaâ—ion Rejoyce ye heavens and yee that dwell in them for the aâ—câ—ser of our brethren is cast downâ— There is now joy even in heaven which was not there before Certainly as that man shall never see the Father of Lights after this to whom the day never breaks in this life As that man must never look to walk with the Lamb wheresoever he goes in heaven that ranne away from the Lamb whensoever he came towards him in this life so he shall never possesse the joyes of heaven hereafter that feels no joy here There must be joy here which Tanquam Cellulae mellis as Saint Bernard says in his mellifluous language as the honey-comb walles in and prepares and preserves the honey and is as a shell to that kernell so there must bee a joy here which must prepare and preserve the joys of heaven it self and be as a shell of those joys For heaven and salvation is not a Creation but a Multiplication it begins not when wee dye but it increases and dilates it self infinitely then Christ himself when he was pleased to feed all that people in the wildernesse he asks first Quot panes habetis how many loafes have you and then multiplyed them abundantly as conduced most to his glory but some there was before When thou goest to eat that bread of which whosoever eates shall never dye the bread of life in the Land of life Christ shall consider what joy thou broughtest with thee out of this world and he shall extend and multiply that joy unexpressibly but if thou carry none from hence thou shalt find none there Hee that were to travell into a far country would study before somewhat the map and the manners and the language of the Country Hee that looks for the fulnesse of the joyes of heaven hereafter will have a taste an insight in them before he goe And as it is not enough for him that would travail to study any language indifferently were it not an impertinent thing for him that went to lye in France to study Dutch So if wee pretend to make the joys
they had torne skin and flesh with their former scourges and had left nothing but bones to wound But it is not onely that the repeating of the same sin often but it is the multiplicity of divers kinds of sins that is here lamented in all our behalfes It is not when the conscience is tender and afraid of every sin and every appearance of sin When Naaman desired pardon of God by the Prophet for sustaining the King upon his knees in the house of Rimmon the Idol and the Prophet bad him goe in peace it is not that he allows him any peace under the conscience and guiltinesse of a sin That was indispensable Neither is their any dispensation in Naamans case but onely a rectifying of a tender and timoruos conscience that thought that to be a sin which was not if it went no further but to the exhibiting of a Civill duty to his Master in what place soever Religious or prophane that service of kneeling were to be done Naamans service was truely no sin but it had been a sin in him to have done it when he thought it to be a sin And therefore the Prophets phrase Goe in peace may well be interpreted so set thy minde at rest◠for all that that thou requirest may be done without sin Now that tendernesse of conscience is not in our case in the Text. He that proceeds so to examine all his actions may meet scruples all the way that may give him some anxiety and vexation but he shall never come to that overflowing of sin intended in this plurality and multiplicity here For this plurality this multiplicity of sin hath found first a spunginesse in the soul an aptnesse to receive any liquor to embrace any sin that is offered to it and after a while a hunger and thirst in the soul to hunt and pant and draw after a tentation and not to be able to endure any vacuum any discontinuance or intermission of sinne and hee will come to think it a melancholique thing still to stand in fear of Hell a sordid a yeomanly thing still to be plowing and weeding and worming a conscience mechanicall thing still to be removing logs or filing iron still to be busied in removing occasions of tentation or filing and clearing particular actions and at last he will come to that case which S. Augustine out of an abundant ingenuity and tendernesse and compunction confesses of himself Ne vituperarer vitiosior fiebam I was fain to sin left I should lose my credit and be under-valued Et ubi non suberat quo admisso aquarer perditis when I had no means to doe some sins whereby I might be equall to my fellow Fingebam me fecisse quod non feceram ne viderer abjectior quo innocentior I would bely my self and say I had done that which I never did lest I should be under-valued for not having done it Audiebam eos exaltantes flagitia sayes that tender blessed Father I saw it was thought wit to make Sonnets of their own sinnes Et libebat facere non libidine facti sed libidine laudis I sinn'd not for the pleasure I had in the sin but for the pride that I had to write feelingly of it O what a Leviathan is sin how vast how immense a body And then what a spawner how numerous Between these two the denying of sins which we have done and the bragging of sins which we have not done what a space what a compasse is there for millions of millions of sins And so have you the nature of sin which was our first The propriety of sin which was our second and the plurality the multiplicity of sin which was our third branch And follows next the exaltation thereof supergressae sunt My sins are gone over my head They are that is they are already got above us for in that case we consider this plurall this manifold sinner that he hath slipt his time of preventing or resisting his sins His habits of sins are got already got above him Elisha bids his man look towards the Sea and he saw nothing He bids him look again and again to a seventh time and he saw nothing After all he sees but a little cloud like a mans hand and yet upon that little appearance the Prophet warns the King to get him into his Chariot and make good hast away lest the rain stopp'd his passage for instantly the heaven was black with clouds and rain The sinner will see nothing till he can see nothing and when he sees any thing as to the blindest conscience something will appear he thinks it but a little cloud but a melancholique fit and in an instant for 7 years make but an instant to that man that thinks of himself but once in 7 years Supergresae sunt his sins are got above him and his way out is stopp'd The Sun is got over us now though we saw none of his motions and so are our sins though we saw not their steps You know how confident our adversaries are in that argument Why doe ye oppugne our doctrine of prayer for the dead or of Invocation of Saints or of the fire of Purgatory since you cannot assigne us a time when these doctrines came into the Church or that they were opposed or contradicted when they entred When a conscience comes to that inquisition to an iniquitates supergressae to consider that our sins are gone over our head in any of those ways w ch we have spoken of if we offer to awaken that conscience farther it startles it answers us drowsily or frowardly like a new wak'd man Can you remember when you sin'd this sin first or did you resist it then or since whence comes this troublesome singularity now pray let me sleep still says this startled conscience Beloved if we fear not the wetting of our foot in sin it will be too late when we are over head and ears Gods deliverance of his children was sicco pede hee made the sea dry land and they wet not their foot At first in the creation subjecit omnia sub pedibus God put all things under their feet In mans wayes in this world his Angels beare us up in their hands why Ne impingamus pedem that we should not hurt our foot against a stone but have a care of every step we make If thou have defiled thy feet strayed into any unclean ways wash them again and stop there and that will bring thee to the consideration of the Spouse I have washed my feet how shall I then defile thē again I have found mercy for my former sins how shal I dare to provoke God w th more stil God appoints us a permanēt means to tread sin under our feet here in this life The woman that is the Church hath the Moon that is all transitory things so all tentatiōs under her feet As Christ himself expressed his care of Peter to consist in
Though mine iniquities be got over my head as a wall of separation yet in Christo omnia possum In Christ I can doe all things Mine iniquities are got over my head but my head is Christ and in him I can doe whatsoever hee hath done by applying his sufferings to my soule for all my sins are his and all his merit is mine And all my sins shall no more hinder my ascending into heaven nor my sitting at the right hand of God in mine own person then they hindered him who bore them all in his person mine onely Lord and Saviour Christ Jesus blessed for ever SERMON XXIV Preached at White-Hall EZEK 34. 19. And as for my flock they eate that which yee have troen with your feet and they drink that which yee have foulded with your feet THose four Prophets whom the Church hath called the great Prophets Esay and Ieremy Ezekiel and Daniel are not onely therefore called great because they writ more then the lesser Prophets did for Zecbary who is amongst the lesser writ more then Daniel who is amongst the greater but because their Prophecies are of a larger comprehension and extent and for the most part speake more of the comming of Christ and the establishing of the Christian Church then the lesser Prophets doe who were more conversant about the temporall deliverance of Israel from Babylon though there be aspersions of Christ and his future government in those Prophets too though more thinly shed Amongst the four great ones our Prophet Ezekiel is the greatest I compare not their extraction and race for though Ezekiel were de genere sacerdotali of the Leviticall and Priestly race And as Philo Iudâ—us notes all nations having some markes of Gentry some calling that ennobled the professors thereof in some Armes and Merchandize in some and the Arts in others amongst the Iews that was Priesthood Priesthood was Gentry though Ezekiel were of this race Esay was of a higher for he was of the extraction of their Kings of the bloud royall But the extraordinary greatnesse of Ezekiel is in his extraordinary depth and mysteriousnesse for this is one of those parts of Scripture as the beginning of Genesis and the Canticles of Solomon also are which are forbid to be read amongst the Iews till they come to be thirty years old which was the Canonicall age to be made Priests In so much that Saint Gregory says when he comes to expound any part of this Prophet Noctunum iter ago that he travelled by night and did but ghesse at his way But besides that many of the obscure places of the Prophets are more open to us then they were to the ancients because many of those prophecies are now fulfilled and so that which was Prophecy to them is History to us in this place which we have now undertaken there never was darknesse not difficulty neither in the first emanation of the light thereof nor in the reflection neither in the Literall nor in the Figurative sense thereof for the literall sense is plainly that that amongst the manifold oppressions under which the Children of Israel languished in Babylon this was the heaviest that their own Priests joyned with the State against them and infused pestilent doctrines into them that so themselves might enjoy the favour of the State and the people committed to their charge might slacken their obedience to God and surrender themselves to all commandements of all men This was their oppression the Church joyned with the Court to oppresse them Their own Priests gave these sheep grasse which they had troden with their feet doctrines not as God gave them to them but as they had tampered and tempered them and accommodated them to serve turnes and fit their ends whose servants they had made themselves more then Gods And they gave them water to drink which they had troubled with their feet that is doctrines mudded with other ends then the glory of God And that therefore God would take his sheep into his own care and reduce them from that double oppression of that Court and that Church those Tyrannous officers and those over-obsequious Priests This is the literall sense of our text and context evident enough in the letter thereof And then the figurative and Mysticall sense is of the same oppressions and the same deliverance over againe in the times of Christ and of the Christian Church for that 's more then figurative fully literall soon after the Text I will set up one shepheard my servant David And I will raise up for them a plant of renoune which is the same that Esay had called A rod out of the stem of Iesse and Ieremy had called A righteous brâ—nch a King thus should raigne and prosper This prophecy then comprehending the kingdome of Christ it comprehends the whole kingdome of Christ not onely the oppressions and deliverances of our forefathers from the Heathen and the Heretiques in the Primitive Church but that also which touches us more nearly the oppressions and deliverance of our Fathers in the Reformation of Religion and the shaking off of the yoak of Rome that Italian Babylon as heavy as the Chaldâ—an We shall therefore at this time fix our meditations upon that accommodation of the Text the oppression that the Israel of God was under then when he delivered them by that way the Reformation of Religion and consider how these metaphors of the holy Ghost The treading with their feet the grasse that the sheep were to eae and the troubling with their feet the water that the sheep were to drink doe answer and set out the oppressions of the Roman Church then as lively as they did in the other Babylon And so having said enough of the primary sense of these words as they concern Gods Israel in the first Babylon and something by way of commemoration and thankfulnesse for Gods deliverance of his Israel from the persecutions in the Primitive Church insist we now upon the severall metaphors of the Text as the holy Ghost continues them to the whole reigne of Christ and so to the Reformation First the greatest calamity of those sheep in Babylon was that their own shepherds concurred to their oppression In Babylon they were a part but in Rome they were all In Babylon they joyned with the State but in Rome they were the State Saint Hierome notes out of a Tradition of the Iews that those loafes which their priests were to offer to the Lord were to be of such corne as those Priests had sowed and reaped and threshed and ground and baked all with their own hands But they were so farre from that at Babylon and at Rome as that they ploughed iniquity and sowed wickednesse and reaped the same and as God himselfe complaines trod his portion under foot That is first neglected his people for Gods people are his portion And then whatsoever pious men had given to the Church is his portion too and that portion
serve God at home to Church they must come and there all their grasse was troden and all their water troubled What should they doe God never brings us to a perplexity so as that we must necessarily do one sinne to avoyd another Neverâ— It seemes that the Apostles had been traduced and insimulated of teaching this Doctrine That in some cases evill might be done that good might follow and therefore doth S. Paul with so much diligence discharge himself of it And yet long after this when those men who attempted the Reformation whom they called Pauperes de Lugduno taught that Doctrine That no lesse sinne might he done to escape a greater this was imputed to them then by the Roman Church for an Heresie That that was Orthodox in Saint Paul was Heresie in them that â—studyed a Reformation But the Doctrine stands like a rocke against all waves That nothing that is naturally ill intrinsecally sinne may upon any pretence be done not though our lifes nor the lifes of all the Princes in the world though the frame and beeing of the whole world though the salvation of our souls lay upon it no sinne naturally intrinsecally sinne might be done for any respect Christus peccatum factus est sed non fesit peccatum Though Christ pursued our redemption with hunger and thirst yet he would have left us unredeemed rather then have committed any sinne Of this kinde therefore naturally intrinsecally sinne and so known to be to them that did it certainely our Fathers coming to the superstitious service in the Church of Rome was not for had it been naturally sinne and so known to them when they did it they could not have been saved otherwise then by repentance after which we cannot presume in their behalfe for there are not testimonies of it If any of them had invested at any time a scruple a doubt whether they did well or no alasse how should they devest and overcome that scruple To whom durst they communicate that doubt They were under an invincible ignorance and sometimes under an indevestible scruple They had heard that Christ commanded to beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadduces and so of the Herodians that is of the doctrines of those particular sects of affirming Fate and Destiny and Stoicall necessity with the Pharisees of denying Spirits and Resurrection with the Sadduces of mis-applying the prophesies concerning the Messias to the person of Herod or any earthly King But yet after all this he commands them to observe and performe the doctrine of the Pharisees because they sate in Moses chaire Though with much vehemence and bitternesse he call them Hypocrites though with many ingeminations upon every occasion he reiterate that name though he aggravate that name with other names of equall reproach Fools blinde guides painted tombes and the like yet he commands to obey them and which is most remarkable this is sayd not onely to the common sort but even to his own disciples too Christ had begunne his work of establishing a Church which should empty their Synagogues but because that worke was not yet perfected he would not withdraw the people from their Synagogues for there wrought Gods Ordinance though corrupted by the workmen which Ordinance was that the law should be publiquely expounded to the people and so it was there There God was present And though the Devill by their corruption were there too yet the Devill came in at the window God at the dore the Devill by stealth God by his declared Ordinance and Covenant And this was the case of our Fathers in the Roman Church They must know that all that hath passed between God and man hath passed Ex pacto by way of contact and covenant The best works of the best man have no proportion with the kingdome of heaven for I give God but his own But I have it Ex pacto God hath covenanted so Fac hoc vives Doe this and thou shalt live and at the last judgement Christ shall ground his Venite benedicti Come ye blessed and his Ite maledicti Goe ye accursed upon the Quia and upon the Quia non Because you have and Because you have not done this and this Faith that is of infinite value above works hath yet no proportion to the kingdome of heaven Faith saves mee as my hand feeds mee It reaches the food but it is not the food but faith saves Ex pacto by vertue of that Covenant which Christ hath made Tantummodo crede Onely beleeve To carry it to the highest the merit of Christ Iesus himselfe though it bee infinite so as that it might have redeemed infinite worlds yet the working thereof is safeliest considered in the School to be Ex pacto by vertue of that contract which had passed between the Father and him that all things should thus and thus be transacted by Christ and so man should be saved for if we shall place it meerely onely in the infinitenesse of the merit Christs death would not have needed for his first drops of bloud in his Circumcision nay his very Incarnation that God was made man and every act of his humiliation after being taken singly yet in that person God and man were of infinite merit and also if it wrought meerly by the infinitnesse of the merit it must have wrought not onely upon all men but to the salvation of the Devill for certainely there is more merit in Christ then there is sinne in the Devill But the proceeding was Ex pacto according to the contract made and to the conditions given Ipse conteret caput tuum That the Messias should bruise the Serpents head for us included our redemption That the Serpents head should be bruised excluded the Serpent himselfe This contract then between God and man as it was able to put the nature of a great fault in a small offence if we consider onely the eating of an apple and so to make even a Trespass High-Treason because it was so contracted so does this contract the Ordinance of God infuse a great vertue efficacie in the instruments of our reconciliation how mean in gifts or how corrupt in manners soever they be Circumcision in it self a low thing yea obscene subject to mis-interpretation yet by reason of the covenant He that is not circumcised that person shall be cut off from my people So also Baptism considered in it selfe a vulgar and a familiar thing yet except a man be born of water and of the Spirit he cannot enter into the Kingdome of heaven The Sacrament of the body and blood of Christ a domestique a dayly thing if we consider onely the breaking of the bread and participation of the Cup but if we ascend up to the contract in the institution it is to every worthy receiver the seale and the Conduit of all the merits of Christ to his soule God threw down the walls of Jericho with
Reformation by way of example though not by Doctrine have so much prevailed upon them as that they have now twenty Sermons in that Church for one that they had before Luther yet if a man could heare six Sermons a day all the days of his life he might die without having heard all the Scriptures explicated in Sermons But when men have a Christian liberty afforded to them to read the Scriptures at home and then are remembred of those things at Church and there taught to use that liberty modestly to establish their faith upon places of Scripture that are plain and to suspend their judgment upon obscurer places till they may by due meanes preaching or conference receive farther satisfaction therein from them who are thereunto authorized by God in his Church there certainly is this Rule of our Saviours Take heed what you hear preach all that you have received from me likelyer to be observed then there where the body of the conveyance the Scripture it self is locked up from us and the soule of the conveyance the sense and interpretation of the Scriptures is locked into one mans brest and the Great Seal of that conveyance the Sacrament of our Reconciliation is broken and mutilated and given us but by halfe But they do not onely stray on that hand in not giving all that the Scripture gives They doe not give the liberty of meates nor the liberty of mariage which the Scripture gives Nay they doe not give the liberty of trying whether the Scripture give it or no for they doe not give the liberty of reading the Scriptures But on the other hand they stray too and further That they deliver more then the Scriptures doe and make other Rules and Canons equall to Scriptures In which excesse they doe not onely make the Apocryphall Books Books that have alwaies had a favourable aspect and benigne countenance from the Church of God equall to Canonicall Scriptures But they make their decretall Epistles of their Popes and of their Extravagants as they call them and their occasionall Bulls nay their Bull-baitings their Buls fighting and crossing and contradicting one another equall to Canonicall Scripture So that these men have put the salvation of the world upon another science upon another profession It is not the Divine that is the Minister of salvation but the Canonist I must not determine my beleef in the Apostles Creed nor in Athanasius nor in that of the Nicen Fathers not onely not the Scriptures but not the Councels nor Fathers must give the Materials and Elements of my faith but the Canon law for so they rule it Gratian that hath collected the sentences of Fathers and Councels and digested them into heads of Divinity he is no rule of our beleef because say they he is no part of the body of the Canon law But they that first compiled the Decretals and the Extravagants and they who have since recompiled more Decretals and more Extravagants the Clementins and the Sextins and of late yeares the Septims with those of Iohn the 22. these make up the body of the Canon law and these must be our Rule what to beleeve How long Till they fall out with some State with whom they are friends yet or grown friends with some State that they are fallen out with now and then upon a new Decretall a new Extravagant I must contract a new or enlarge or restrain my old beleef Certainly as in naturall things the assiduity takes off the admiration The rising and the setting of the sunne would be a miracle to him that should see it but once and as in civill things the profusenesse and the communication and the indifferency takes off the Dignity for as gold is gold still the heaviest metall of all yet if it be beat into leaf gold I can blow it away so Honour is honour still the worthyest object of the worthyest spirits and the noblest reward of the greatest Princes yet the more have it the lesse every one hath of it So in the Roman Church they have not found a better way to justify their blasphemy of the insufficiency of the Scriptures then by making contemptible writings as sufficient as Scriptures equall to Scripture If they could make me beleeve the Scriptures were no more sufficient then their Decretals and Extravagants I should easily confesse there were no Scriptures sufficient for salvation And farther we presse not this evidence how farre they depart from this rule Take heed what you heare How much lesse and how much more then Christ gave they give but passe to the third acceptation of these words as in a fair accommodation they are spoken to you who are now as the Apostles were then Hearers Take heed what you heare And into this part I enter with such a protestation as perchance may not become me That this is the first time in all my life I date my life from my Ministery for I received mercy as I received the ministery as the Apostle speaks this is the first time that in the exercise of my Ministery I wished the King away That ever I had any kinde of loathnesse that the King should hear all that I sayd Here for a little while it will be a little otherwise because in this branch I am led to speak of some particular duties of subjects and in my poor way I have thought it somewhat an Eccentrique motion and off of the naturall Poles to speake of the Duties of subjects before the King or of the duties of Kings in publike and popular Congregations As every man is a world in himself so every man hath a Church in himself and as Christ referred the Church for hearing to the Scriptures so every man hath Scriptures in his own heart to hearken to Obedience to Superiours and charity to others are In-nate Scriptures Obedience and Charity are the Naturall mans the Civill mans the Morall mans Old and New Testament Take heed that is observe what you heare from them and they will direct you well And first Take heed what you heare is take heed that you hear That you do hearken to them whom you should hear Our Saviour saith He that is of God heareth his words ye therefore hear them not because you are not his Transferre this to a civill application to obedience to Superiors Christ makes account that he hath argued safely so If you heare him not you are none of his If you heare him not in his Lawes heare him not in his Proclamations heare him not in the Declarations of his wants and necessities you are none of his that is you had rather you were none of his There is a Nolumus hunc regnare smothered in our breasts if we will not hear and we had rather we might devest our Allegeance rather we might be no subjects By the Law he that was willing to continue in the service of his Master was willing to bee boared in the eare willing to testify a
company in the reformation of Religion A miracle scarce lesse then the first propagation thereof in the primitive Church In how few yeares did God make the number of learned â—riters the number of persons of all qualities the number of Kings in whose Dominions the reformed Religion was exercised equall to the number of them who adhered to the Roman Church And yet thou must not depart from this contemplation till thou have made thy self an argument of all this till thou have concluded out of this that God hath made love to thy soule thy weake soule thy sick and foule and sinfull soule That he hath written to thee in all his Scriptures sent Ambassage to thee in all his preachers presented thee in all his temporall and spirituall blessings That he hath come to thee even in actions of uncle annesse in actions of unfaithfulnesse towards men in actions of distrustfulnesse towards God and hath checked thy conscience and delivered thee from some sins even then when thou wast ready to commit them as all the rest That that God who is but one in himselfe is yet three persons That those three who were all-sufficient to themselves would yet make more make Angels make man make a Christ make him a Spouse a Church and first propagate that by so weake men in so hard a doctrine and in so short a space over all the world and then reforme that Church againe so soone to such a heighth as these I say are to all the world so be thou thy self and Gods exceeding goodnesse to thee an argument That that God who hath shewed himself so loath to lose thee is certainly loath to lose any other soule but as he communicates himself to us all here so he would have us all partake of his joy and glory hereafter he that fils his Militant Church thus would not have his Triumphant Church empty So far we consider the accessiblenesse the communicablenesse the conversation of our good and gracious God to us in the generall There is a more speciall manner intimated even in the first word of our Text After this After what After he had seene the servants of God sealed sealed This seale seales the contract betweene God and Man And then consider how generall this seale is First God sealed us in imprinting his Image in our soules and in the powers thereof at our creation and so every man hath this seale and he hath it as soone as he hath a soule The wax the matter is in his conception the seale the forme is in his quickning in his inanimation as in Adam the waxe was that red earth which he was made of the seale was that soule that breath of life which God breathed into him Where the Organs of the body are so indisposed as that this soule cannot exercise her faculties in that man as in naturall Idiots or otherwise there there is a curtaine drawn over this Image but yet there this Image is the Image of God is in the most naturall Idiot as well as in the wisest of men worldly men draw other pictures over this picture other images over this image The wanton man may paint beauty the ambitious may paint honour the covetous wealth and so deface this image but yet there this image is and even in hell it selfe it will be in him that goes down into hell uri potest in gehenna non exuri sayes St. Bernard The image of God may burne in hell but as long as the soule remaines that image remaines there too And then thou who wouldest not burne their picture that loved thee wilt thou betray the picture of the Maker thy Saviour thy Sanctifier to the torments of hell Amongst the manifold and perpetuall interpretations of that article He descended into hell this is a new one that thou senâ—est him to hell in thy soule Christ had his Consummatum est from the Iewes he was able to say at last All is finished concerning them shall he never have a Consummatum est from thee never be at an end with thee Never if his Image must burne eternally in thy soule when thou art dead for everlasting generations Thus then we were sealed all sealed all had his image in our creation in the faculties of our soules But then we were all sealed againe sealed in our very flesh our mortall flesh when the image of the invisible God Christ Iesus the onely Sonne of God tooke our nature for as the Tyrant wished that all mankinde were but one body that he might behead all mankinde at a blow so God tooke into his mercie all mankinde in one person As intirely as all mankinde was in Adam all mankinde was in Christ and as the seale of the Serpent is in all by originall sinne so the seale of God Christ Iesus is on us all by his assuming our nature Christ Jesus tooke our souls and our bodies our whole nature and as no Leper no person how infectiously soever he be diseased in his body can say surely Christ never tooke this body this Leprosie this pestilence this rottennesse so no Leprous soule must say Christ never tooke this pride this adultery this murder upon himself he sealed us all in soule and body when he tooke both and though both dye the soule in sin daily the body in sicknesse perchance this day yet he shall afford a resurrection to both to the soule here to the body hereafter for his seale is upon both These two seales then hath God set upon us all his Image in our soules at our making his Image that is his Sonne upon our bodies and soules in his incarnation And both these seales he hath set upon us then when neither we our selves nor any body else knew of it He sets another seale upon us when though we know not of it yet the world the congregation does in the Sacrament of Baptisme when the seale of his Crosse is a testimony not that Christ was borne as the former seale was but that also he dyed for us there we receive that seale upon the forehead that we should conforme our selves to him who is so sealed to us And after all these seales he offers us another and another seale Set me as a seale upon thy heart and as a seale upon thine arme says Christ to all us in the person of the spouse in the Heart by a constant faith in the Arme by a declaratory works for then are we sealed and delivered and witnessed that 's our full evidence then have we made sure our salvation when the works of a holy life doe daily refresh the contract made with God there at our Baptisme and testifie to the Church that we doe carefully remember what the Church promised in our behalfe at that time for otherwise beloved without this seale upon the arme that is a stedfast proceeding in the works of a holy life we may have received many of the other seales and yet deface
what ground he sayes or does or suffers that which he suffers and does and sayes Howsoever he pretend the honour of God in his testimony yet if the thing be materially false false in it self though true in his opinion or formally false true in it self but not known to be so to him that testifies it both ways he is an incompetent witnesse And this takes away the honour of having been witnesses for Christ and the consolation and style of Martyrs both from them who upon such evidence as can give no assurance that is traedi tions of men have grounded their faith in God and from them who take their light in corners and conventicles and not from the City set upon the top of a hill the Church of God Those Roman Priests who have given their lives those Separatists which have taken a voluntary banishment are not competent witnesses for the glory of God for a witnesse must know and qui testatur de scientia testetur de modo scientiae sayes the Law He that will prove any thing by his knowledge must prove how he came by that knowledge The Papist hath not the knowledge of his Doctrine from any Scripture the Separatist hath not the knowledge of his Discipline from any precedent any example in the primitive Church How farre then is that wretched and sinfull man from giving any testimony or glory to Christ in his life who never comes to the knowledge and consideration why he was sent into this life who is so farre from doing his errand that he knowes not what his errand was not whether he received any errand or no. But as though that God who for infinite millions of ages delighted himself in himself and was sufficient in himself and yet at last did bestow six dayes labour for the creation and provision of man as though that God who when man was sowr'd in the lumpe poysoned in the fountaine withered in the roote in the loins of Adam would then ingage his Sonne his beloved Sonne his onely Sonne to be man by a temporary life and to be no man by a violent and a shamefull death as though that God who when he was pleased to come to a creation might have left out thee amongst privations amongst nothings or might have shut thee up in the close prison of a bare being and no more as he hath done earth and stones or if he would have given thee life might have left thee a Toad or if he would have given thee a humane soule might have left thee a heathen without any knowledge of God or if he had afforded thee a Religion might have left thee a Iew or though he had made thee a Christian might have left thee a Papist as though that God that hath done so much more in breeding thee in his true Church had done all this for nothing thou passest thorough this world like a flash like a lightning whose beginning or end no body knowes like an Ignis fatuus in the aire which does not onely not give light for any use but not so much as portend or signifie any thing and thou passest out of the world as thy hand passes out of a basin of water which may bee somewhat the fouler for thy washing in it but retaines no other impression of thy having been there and so does the world for thy life in it When God placed Adam in the world he bad him fill it and subdue it and rule it and when he placed him in paradise he bad him dresse and keepe paradise and when he sent his children into the over-flowing Laud of promise he bad them fight and destroy the Idolaters to every body some task some errand for his glory And thou comest from him into this world as though he had said nothing unto thee but Go and do as you see cause Go and do as you see other men do Thou knowest not that is considerest not what thou wast sent to doe what thou shouldest have done but thou knowest much lesse what thou hast done The light of nature hath taught thee to hide thy sinnes from other men and thou hast been so diligent in that as that thou hast hid them from thy self and canst not finde them in thine owne conscience if at any time the Spirit of God would burne them up or the blood of Christ Jesus wash them out thou canst not finde them out so as that a Sermon or Sacrament can work upon them Perchance thou canst tell when was the first time or where was the first place that thou didst commit such or such a sinne but as a man can remember when he began to spell but not when he began to reade perfectly when he began to joyne his letters but not when he began to write perfectly so thou remembrest when thou wentest timorously and bashfully about sinne at first and now perchance art ashamed of that shamefastnesse and sorry thou beganst no sooner Poore bankrupt that hast sinned out thy soule so profusely so lavishly that thou darest not cast up thine accounts thou darest not aske thy selfe whether thou have any soule left how farre art thou from giving any testimony to Christ that darest not testifie to thy selfe nor heare thy conscience take knowledge of thy transgressions but haddest rather sleepe out thy daies or drinke out thy daies then leave one minute for compunction to lay hold on and doest not sinne alwaies for the love of that sinne but for feare of a holy sorrow if thou shouldest not fill up thy time with that sinne God cannot be mocked saith the Apostle nor God cannot be blinded He seeth all the way and at thy last gaspe he will make thee see too through the multiplying Glasse the Spectacle of Desperation Canst thou hope that that God that seeth this darke Earth through all the vaults and arches of the severall spheares of Heaven that seeth thy body through all thy stone walls and seeth thy soul through that which is darker then all those thy corrupt flesh canst thou hope that that God can be blinded with drawing a curtain between thy sinne and him when he is all eye canst thou hope to put out that eye with putting out a candle when he hath planted legions of Angels about thee canst thou hope that thou hast taken away all Intelligence if thou have corrupted or silenced or sent away a servant O bestow as much labour as thou hast done to finde corners for sin to finde out those sinnes in those corners where thou hast hid them As Princes giveâ— pardons by their own hands but send Judges to execute Justice come to him for mercy in the acknowledgement of thy sinnes and stay not till his Justice come to thee when he makes inquisition for blood and doe not think that if thou feel now at this presentâ— a little tendernesse in thy heart a little melting in thy bowels a little dew in thine eyes that if thou beest come to know that thou art a
Circumcision in the flesh after the spirituall Circumcision in the heart is established by the Gospell their end is not Circumcision but Concision they pretend Reformation but they intend Destruction a tearing a renting a wounding the body and frame and peace of the Church and by all means and in all cases Videte Concisionem Beware of Concision First then we shall from these words consider the lothnesse of God to lose us For first he leaves us not without a Law he bids and he forbids and then he does not surprise us with obsolete laws he leaves not his laws without proclamations he refreshes to our memories and represents to us our duties with such commonefactions as these in our Text Videte Cavete this and this I have commanded you Videte see that ye do it this and this will hinder you Cavete beware ye do it not Beware of Concision And this thus derived and digested into these three branches first Gods lothnesse to lose us and then his way of drawing us to him by manifestation of his will in a law and lastly his way of holding us with him by making that law effectuall upon us by these his frequent commonefactions Videte Cavete looke to it beware of it this will be our first part And then our second will be the thing it self that falls under this inhibition and caution which is Concision that is a tearing a renting a shredding in peeces that which should be intire In which second part we shall also have as we had in the former three branches for we shall consider first Concisionem corporis the shredding of the body of Christ into fragments by unnecessary wrangling in Doctrinall points and then Concisionem vestis the shredding of the garment of Christ into rags by unnecessary wrangling in matter of Discipline and ceremoniall points and lastly Concisionem spiritus which will follow upon the former two the concision of thine owne spirit and heart and minde and soule and conscience into perplexities and into sandy and incoherent doubts and scruples and jealousies and suspitions of Gods purpose upon thee so as that thou shalt not be able to recollect thy self nor reconsolidate thy self upon any assurance and peace with God which is onely to be had in Christ and by his Church Videte Concisionem beware of tearing the body the Doctrine beware of tearing the Garment the Discipline beware of tearing thine owne spirit and conscience from her adhaesion her agglutination her cleaving to God in a holy tranquillity and acquiescence in his promise and mercy in the merits of his Sonne applyed by the holy Ghost in the Ministry of the Church For our first consideration of Gods lothnesse to lose us this is argument enoughâ— That we are here now now at the participation of that grace which God alwayes offers to al such Congregations as these gathered in his name For I pray God there stand any one amongst us here now that hath not done something since yesterday that made him unworthy of being here to day and who if he had been left under the damp and mist of yesterdayes sinne without the light of new grace would never have found way hither of himself If God be weary of me and would faine be rid of me he needs not repent that he wrapped me up in the Covenant and derived me of Christian parents though he gave me a great help in that nor repent that he bred me in a true Church though he afforded me a great assistance in that nor repent that he hath brought me hither now to the participation of his Ordinances though thereby also I have a great advantage for if God be weary of me and would be rid of me he may finde enough in me now and here to let me perish A present levity in me that speake a present formality in you that heare a present Hypocrisie spread over us all would justifie God if now and here he should forsake us When our blessed Saviour sayes When the Son of man comes shall he finde faith upon earth we need not limit that question so if he come to a Westminster to an Exchange to an Army to a Court shall he finde faith there but if he come to a Church if he come hither shall he finde faith here If as Christ speaks in another sense That Iudgement should begin at his owne house the great and generall judgement should begin now at this his house and that the first that should be taken up in the clouds to meet the Lord Jesus should be we that are met now in this his house would we be glad of that acceleration or would we thank him for that haste Men of little faith I feare we would not There was a day when the Sonnes of God presented themselves before the Lord and Satan came also amongst them one Satan amongst many Sonnes of God Blessed Lord is not our case far otherwise do not we we who as we are but we are all the Sonnes of Satan present our selves before thee and yet thou Lord art amongst us Is not the spirit of slumber and wearinesse upon one and the spirit of detraction and mis-interpretation upon another upon one the spirit of impenitence for former sinnes and the spirit of recidivation into old or of facility and opennesse to admit tentations into new upon another We as we are but we are all the Sonnes of Satan and thou Lord the onely Sonne of God onely amongst us If thou Lord wert weary of me and wouldest be rid of me may many a soule here say Lord thou knowest and I know many a midnight when thou mightest have been rid of me if thou hadst left me to my selfe then But vigilavit Doninus the Lord vouchsafed to watch over me and deliciae ejus the delight of the Lord was to be with me And what is there in me but his mercy but then what is there in his mercy that that may not reach to all as well as to me The Lord is loth to lose any the Lord would not the death of any not of any sinner much lesse if he do not see him nor consider him so the Lord would not lose him though a sinner much lesse make him a sinner that he might be lost Vult omnes the Lord would have all men come unto him and be saved which was our first consideration and we have done with that and our second is The way by which he leads us to him that he declares and manifests his will unto us in a Law he bids and he forbids The laborers in the Vine-yard took it ill at the Stewards hand and at his Masters too that those which came late to the labour were made equall with them who had borne the heate and the burden of the day But if the Steward or the Master had never meant or actually never had given any thing at all to them that had borne the heate and the
into shreds and fragments such as the Prophet speaks of The breaking of a Potters vessell that cannot be made up again Concision is at best Solutio Continui The severing of that which should be kept intire In the State the aliening of the head from the body or of the body from the head is Concision and videte it is a fearefull thing to be guilty of that In the Church which Church is not a Monarchy otherwise then as she is united in her head Christ Jesus to constitute a Monarchy an universall head of the Church to the dis-inherison and to the tearing of the Crownes of Princes who are heads of the Churches in their Dominions this is Concision and videte it is a fearefull thing to be guilty of that to advance a forein Prelate In the family where God hath made man and wife one to divide with others is Concision and videte it is a fearefull thing to be guilty of that Generally the tearing of that in peeces which God intended should be kept intire is this Concision and falls under this Commonefaction which implies an increpation videte beware But because thus Concision would receive a concision into infinite branches we determined this consideration at first into these three first Concisio Corporis the concision of the body dis-union in Doctrinall things and Concisio vestis the Concision of the garment dis-union in Ceremoniall things and then Concisio Spiritus the Concision of the Spirit dis-union irresolution unsetlednesse diffidence and distrust in thine owne minde and conscience First for this Concision of the body of the body of Divinity in Doctrinall things since still Concision is Solutio continui the breaking of that which should be intire consider we first what this Continuum this that should be kept intire is and it is sayes the Apostle Iesus himself Omnis spiritus qui solvit Iesum so the Antients reade that place Every spirit which dissolveth Iesus that breakes Jesus in peeces that makes Religion serve turnes that admits so much Gospell as may promove and advance present businesses every such spirit is not of God Not to professe the whole Gospell Totum Iesum not to beleeve all the Articles of faith this is Solutio continui a breaking of that which should be intire and this is truly concision Now with concision in this kinde our greatest adversaries they of the Romane heresie and mis-perswasion do not charge us They do not charge us that we deny any article of any antient Creed nor may they deny that there is not enough for salvation in those antient Creeds This is Continuitas universalis a continuity an intirenesse that goes through the whole Church a skin that covers the whole body the whole Church is bound to beleeve all the articles of faith But then there is Continuitas particularis Continuitas modi a continuity a harmony an intirenesse that does not go through the whole Church the whole Church does not alwaies agree in the manner of explication of all the articles of faith but this may be a skin that covers some particular limbe of the body and not another one Church may expound an article thus and some other some other way as in particular the Lutheran Church expounds the article of Christs descent into hell one way and the Calvinist another Now in cases where neither exposition destroyes the article in the substance thereof it is Concision that is Solutio continui a breaking of that which should be kept intire for any man to breake the peace of that Church in which he hath received his baptisme and hath his station by advancing the exposition of any other Church in that And as this is Concision Solutio continui a breaking of that which is intire to break the peace of the Church where we were baptized by teaching otherwise then that Church teaches in these things De modo of the manner of expounding such or such articles of faith so is there another dangerous Concision too For to inoculate a forein bud or to engraffe a forein bough is concision as well as the cutting off an arme from the tree to inoculate cleaves the rinde the bark and to engraffe cleaves the tree it severs that which should be entire So when a particular Church in a holy and discreet modesty hath abstained from declaring her self in the exposition of some particular Articles or of some Doctrines by faire consequence deducible from those Articles and contented her self with those generall things which are necessary to salvation As the Church of England hath in the Article of Christs descent into Hell it is Concision it is solution Continui a breaking of that which should be intire to inoculate a new sense or engraffe a new exposition which howsoever it may be true in it selfe it cannot be truly said to be the sense of that Church not perchance because that Church was not of that mind but because that Church finding the thing it self to be no fundamentall thing thought it unnecessary to descend to particular declarations when as in such declarations she must have departed from some other Church of the Reformation that thought otherwise and in keeping her self within those generall termes that were necessary and sufficient with a good conscience she conserved peace and unity with all David in the person of every member of the Church submits himself to that increpation Let my right hand forget her cunning and let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth if I prefer not Ierusalem before my chiefest joy Our chiefest joy is for the most part our own opinions especially when they concur with other learned and good men too But then Ierusalem is our love of the peace of the Church and in such things as do not violate foundations let us prefer Ierusalem before our chiefest Joy love of peace before our own opinions though concurrent with others For this is that that hath misled many men that the common opinion in the Church is necessarily the opinion of the Church It is not so not so in the Romane Church There the cōmon opinion is That the blessed Virgin Mary was conceived without originall sin But cannot be said to be the opinion of that Church nor may it be safely concluded in any Church Most Writers in the Church have declared themselves this way therefore the Church hath declared her self for the declarations of the Church are done publiquely orderly and at once And when a Church hath declared her self so in all things necessary and sufficient let us possess our souls in peace and not say that that Church hath or presse that that Church would proceed to further declarations in lesse necessary particulars When we are sure we have beleeved practised all that the Church hath recōmended to us in these generals then and not till then let us call for more declarations but in the mean time prefer Ierusalem before our chiefest joy love of peace
all the spirituall parts of the Indulgence be performed by the poore sinner yet if he give not that money though he be not worth that money though that Merchant of those Indulgencies doe out of his charity give him one of those Indulgencies yet all this doth that man no good in these cases they are indeed Rei suae Legati Ambassadours to serve their own turns and do their owne businesse When that Bishop sends out his Legatos à latere Ambassadours from his own chair and bosome into forain Nations to exhaust their treasures to alien their Subjects to infect their Religion these are Rei suae Legati Ambassadours that have businesses depending in those places and therefore come upon their own errand Nor can that Church excuse it self though it use to do so upon the mis-behaviour of those officers when they are imployed for they are imployed to that purpose And Tibi imputae quicquid pateris ab eo qui sine te nihil potest facere Since he might mend the fault it is his fault that it is done he cannot excuse himself if they be guilty and with his privity for as the same devout man saith to Eugenius then Pope Ne te dixeris sanum dolentem latera If thy sides ake if thy Legats à latere be corrupt call not thy self well nec bonum malis innitentem nor call thy self good if thou rely upon the counsell of those that are ill They those Legats à latere are as they use to expresse it incorporated in the Pope and therefore they are Rei sui Legati Ambassadours that ly to doe their own businesse But when we seek to raise no other warre in you but to arme the spirit against the flesh when we present to you no other holy water but the teares of Christ Jesus no other reliques but the commemoration of his Passion in the Sacrament no other Indulgencies and acquittances but the application of his Merits to your souls when we offer all this without silver and without gold when we offer you that Seal which he hath committed to us in Absolution without extortion or fees wherein are we Rei nostrae Legati Ambassadours in our own behalfs or advancers of our owne ends And as we are not so so neither are we in the second danger to come sine Principali Mandato without Commission from our Master Christ himselfe would not come of himselfe but acknowledged and testified his Mission The Father which sent me he gave me commandment what I should say and what I should speake Those whom he imployed produced their Commissions Neither received I it of man neither was I taught it but by the revelation of Iesus Christ. How should they preach except they be sent is a question which Saint Paul intended for a conclusive question that none could answer till in the Romane Church they excepted Cardinals Quibus sine literis creditur propter personarum solennitatem who for the dignity inherent in their persons must be received though they have no Commission When our adversaries do so violently so impetuously cry out that we have no Church no Sacrament no Priesthood because none are sent that is none have a right calling for Internall calling who are called by the Spirit of God they can be no Judges and for Externall calling we admit them for Judges and are content to be tried by their own Canons and their own evidences for our Mission and vocation or sending and our calling to the Ministery If they require a necessity of lawfull Ministers to the constitution of a Church we require it with as much earnestnesse as they Ecclesia non est quae now habet sacerdotem we professe with Saint Hierome It is no Church that hath no Priest If they require that this spirituall power be received from them who have the same power in themselves we professe it too Nemo dat quod non habet no man can confer other power upon another then he hath himself If they require Imposition of hands in conferring Orders we joyn hands with them If they will have it a Sacrament men may be content to let us be as liberall of that name of Sacrament as Calvin is and he says of it Institut l. 4. c. 14. § 20. Non invitus patior vocari Sacramentum it a inter ordinaria Sacramenta non numero I am not loth it should be called a Sacrament so it be not made an ordinary that is a generall Sacrament and how ill hath this been taken at some of our mens hands to speak of more such Sacraments when indeed they have learnt this manner of speech and difference of Sacraments not onely from the ancient Fathers but from Calvin himself who always spoke with a holy warinesse and discretion Whatsoever their own authors their own Schools their own Canons doe require to be essentially and necessarily requisite in this Mission in this function we for our parts and as much as concerns our Church of England admit it too and professe to have it And whatsoever they can say for their Church that from their first Conversion they have had an orderly derivation of power from one to another we can as justly and truly say of our Church that ever since her first being of such a Church to this day she hath conserved the same order and ever hath had and hath now those Ambassadours sent with the same Commission and by the same means that they pretend to have in their Church And being herein convinced by the evidence of undeniable Record which have been therefore shewed to some of their Priests not being able to deny that such a Succession and Ordination we have had from the hands of such as were made Bishops according to their Canons now they pursue their common beaten way That as in our Doctrine they confesse we affirm no Heresie but that we deny some Truths so in our Ordination and sending and Calling when they cannot deny but that from such a person who is by their own Canons able to confer Orders we in taking our Orders after their own manner receive the Holy Ghost and the power of binding and loosing yet say they we receive not the full power of Priests for we receive onely a power in Corpus mysticum upon the mysticall body of Christ that is the persons that constitute the visible Church but we should receive it in Corpus verum a power upon the very naturall body a power of Consecration by way of Transubstantiation They may be pleased to pardon this rather Modesty then Defect in us who so we may work fruitfully and effectually upon the mysticall body of Christ can be content that his reall and true body work upon us Not that we have no interest to work upon the reall body of Christ since he hath made us Dispensers even of that to the faithfull in the Sacrament but for such a power as exceeds the Holy Ghost who in the incarnation
might get into that feast without his wedding garment so a man may get into the Church to bee a visible part of a Christian Congregation without this acceptation of reconciliation that is the particular apprehension and application of Christ but hee is still subject to a remove and to that question of confusion Quomodo intrasti How came you in That man in the Gospell could have answered to that question directly I came in by the invitation and conduct of thy servants I was called in I was led in So they that come hither without this wedding garment they may answer to Christs Quomodo intrasti How camest thou in I came in by faithfull parents to whom and their seed thou hast sealed a Covenant I was admitted by thy Servants and Ministers in Baptisme and have been led along by them by comming to hear them preach thy word and doing the other externall offices of a Christian. But there is more in this question Quomodo intrasti is not onely how didst thou come in but how durst thou come in If thou camest to my feast without any purpose to eate and so to discredit to accuse either my meat or the dressing of it to quarrell at the Doctrine or at the Discipline of my Church Quomodo intrasti How didst thou how durst thou come in If thou camest with a purpose to poison my meat that it might infect others with a determination to goe forward in thy sinne whatsoever the Preacher say and so to encourage others by thy example Quomodo intrasti How durst thou come in If thou camest in with thine own provision in thy pocket and didst not relie upon mine and think that thou canst be saved without Sermons or Sacraments Qvmodo intrasti How durst thou come in Him that came in there without this Wedding garment the Master of the Feast cals Friend but scornfully Friend how camest thou in But he cast him out God may call us Friends that is admit and allow us the estimation and credit of being of his Church but at one time or other hee shall minister that Interrogatory Friend how came you in and for want of that Wedding garment and for want of wearing it in the sight of men for it is not said that that man had no such Wedding garment at home in his Wardrobe but that hee had none on for want of Sanctification in a holy life God shall deliver us over to the execution of our own consciences and eternall condemnation But be ye reconciled to God embrace this reconciliation in making your use of those means and this reconciliation shall work thus it shall restore you to that state that Adam had in Paradise What would a soule oppressed with the sense of sin give that she were in that state of Innocency that she had in Baptisme Be reconciled to God and you have that and an elder Innocency then that the Innocency of Paradise Go home and if you finde an over-burden of children negligence in servants crosses in your tradings narrownesse penury in your estate yet this penurious and this encumbred house shall be your Paradise Go forth into the Country and if you finde unseasonablenesse in the weather rots in your sheep murrains in your cattell worms in your corn backwardnesse in your rents oppression in your Landlord yet this field of thorns and brambles shall be your Paradise Lock thy selfe up in thy selfe in thine own bosome and though thou finde every roome covered with the â—oot of former sins and shaked with that Devill whose name is Legion some such sin as many sins depend upon and are induced by yet this prison this rack this hell in thine own conscience shall be thy Paradise And as in Paradise Adam at first needed no Saviour so when by this reconciliation in apprehending thy Saviour thou art restored to this Paradise thou shalt need no sub-Saviour no joint-Saviour but Caetera adjicientur no other Angel but the Angel of the greas Councell no other Saint but the Holy One of Israel he who hath wrought this reconciliation for thee and brought it to thee shall establish it in thee For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son much more being reconciled shall we be saved by his life This is the summe and the end of all That when God sends humble and laborious Pastors to souple and appliable Congregations That we pray and you receive us in Christs stead we shall not onely finde rest in God but as it is said of Noâ—hs sacrifice God shall finde the savour of rest in us God shall finde a Sabbath to himself in us and rest from his jealousies and anger towards us and we shall have a Sabbatary life here in the rest and peace of conscience and a life of one everlasting Sabbath hereafter where to our Rest there shall be added Ioy and to our Ioy Glory and this Rest and Ioy and Glory superinvested with that which crownes them all Eternity SERMON XLI Preached at Saint Pauls Crosse. 6 May. 1627. HOSEA 3. 4. For the Children of Israel shall abide many dayes without a King and without a Prince and without a Sacrifice and without an Image and without an Ephod and without Teraphim SOme Cosmographers have said That there is no land so placed in the world but that from that land a man may see other land I dispute it not I defend it not I accept it and I apply it there is scarce any mercy expressed in the Scriptures but that from that mercy you may see another mercy Christ sets up a candle now here onely to lighten that one roome but as he is lumen de lumine light of light so he would have more lights lighted at every light of his and make every former mercy an argument an earnest a conveyance of more Between land and land you may see seas and seas enraged with tempests but still say they some other land too Between mercy and mercy you may finde Comminations and Judgements but still more mercy For this discovery let this text be our Mappe First we see land we see mercy in that gracious compellation Children the Children of Israel Then we see sea then comes a Commination â— Judgement that shall last some time many days shall the Children of Israel suffer But there they may see land too another mercy even this time of Judgement shall be a day they shall not be benighted not left in darkenesse in their Judgement many dayes all the while it shall bee day Then the text opens into a deep Ocean a spreading Sea They shall bee without a King and without a Prince and without a Sacrifice and without an Image and without an Ephod and without Teraphim But even from this Sea this vast Sea this Sea of devastation wee see land for in the next verse followes another mercy The Children of Israel shall returne and shall seeke the Lord their God and David their King and
Oppresse not that soule by violence by Fraud nor by Scorne which was the other signification of this word Oppression Hoc nos perdit quod divina quoque eloquia in facetias in dicteria vertamus Damnation is a serious thing and this aggravates it that we slight and make jests at that which should save us the Scriptures and the Ordinances of God For by this oppression of thy poore soule by this Violence this Fraud this Scorne thou wilt come to Reproach thy Maker to impute that losse of thy soule which thou hast incurred by often breach of Lawes evidently manifested to thee to his secret purpose and un-revealed will then which thou canst not put a greater Reproach a greater Contumely a greater Blasphemy upon God For God cannot bee God if hee bee not innocent nor innocent if hee draw bloud of mee for his owne Act. But if thou show mercy to this soule mercy in that signification of the word as it denotes an actuall performance of those things that are necessary for the making sure of thy salvation or if thou canst not yet attaine to those degrees of Sanctification mercy in that signification of the word as the word denotes hearty and earnest Prayer that thou couldest Lord I beleeve Lord help mine unbeliefe Lord I stand yet yet Lord raise mee when I fall Honorabis Deum thou shalt honour God in the sense of the word in this Text thou shalt enlarge God amplifie dilate God that is the Body of God the Church both here and hereafter For thou shalt adde a figure to the number of his Saints and there shall bee a Saint the more for thee Thou shalt adde a Theme of Joy to the Exultation of the Angels They shall have one occasion of rejoycing the more from thee Thou shalt adde a pause a stop to that Vsquequo of the Martyrs under the Altar who solicite God for the Resurrection for Thou shalt adde a step to the Resurrection it selfe by having brought it so much nearer as to have done thy part for the filling up of the number of the Saints upon which fulnesse the Resurrection shall follow And thou shalt adde a Voyce to that Old and ever-new Song that Catholique Hymne in which both Churches Militant and Triumphant shall joyne Blessing Honour Glory and Power bee unto him that sitteth upon the Throne and to the Lambe for ever and ever Amen SERMON XLIII A Sermon upon the fist of Novemb. 1622. being the Anniversary celebration of our Deliverance from the Powder Treason Intended for Pauls Crosse but by reason of the weather Preached in the Church LAMENT 4. 20. The breath of our nostrils the Anointed of the Lord was taken in their pits The Prayer before the Sermon O LORD open thou my lips and my mouth shall shew forth thy praise for thou O Lord didst make haste to help us Thou O Lord didst make speed to save us Thou that sittest in heaven didst not onely looke down to see what was done upon the Earth but what was done in the Earth and when the bowels of the Earth were with a key of fire ready to open and swallow us the bowels of thy compassion were with a key of love opened to succour us This is the day and these are the houres wherein that should have been acted In this our Day and in these houres We praise thee O God we acknowledge thee to bee the Lord All our Earth doth worship thee The holy Church throughout all this Land doth knowledge thee with commemorations of that great mercy now in these houres Now in these houres it is thus commemorated in the Kings House where the Head and Members praise thee Thus in that place where it should have been perpetrated where the Reverend Judges of the Land doe now praise thee Thus in the Universities where the tender youth of this Land is brought up to praise thee in a detestation of their Doctrines that plotted this Thus it is commemorated in many severall Societies in many severall Parishes and thus here in this Mother Church in this great Congregation of thy Children where all of all sorts from the Lievtenant of thy Lievtenant to the meanest sonne of thy sonne in this Assembly come with hearts and lippes full of thankesgiving Thou Lord openest their lippes that their mouth may shew forth thy prayse for Thou O Lord diddest make haste to helpe them Thou diddest make speede to save them Accept O Lord this Sacrifice to which thy Spirit giveth fire This of Praise for thy great Mercies already afforded to us and this of Prayer for the continuance and enlargement of them upon the Catholick Church by them who pretend themselves the onely sonnes thereof dishonoured this Day upon these Churches of England Scotland and Ireland shaked and threatned dangerously this Day upon thy servant our Soveraigne for his Defence of the true Faith designed to ruine this day upon the Prince and others derived from the same roote some but Infants some not yet Infants enwrapped in dust and annihilation this day upon all the deliberations of the Counsell That in all their Consultations they may have before their eyes the Record and Registers of this Day upon all the Clergie That all their Preaching and their Governement may preclude in their severall Iurisdictions all re-entrances of that Religion which by the Confession of the Actours themselves was the onely ground of the Treason of this day upon the whole Nobilitie and Commons all involved in one Common Destruction this Day upon both our Universities which though they lacke no Arguments out of thy Word against the Enemies of thy Truth shall never leave out this Argument out of thy Works The Historie of this Day And upon all those who are any wayes afflicted That our afflictions bee not multiplyed upon us by seeing them multiplyed amongst us who would have diminished thee and annihilated us this Day And lastly upon this Auditory assembled here That till they turne to ashes in the Grave they may remember that thou tookest them as fire-brands out of the fire this Day Heare us O Lord and hearken to us Receive our Prayers and returne them with Effect for his sake in whose Name and words wee make them Our Father which art c. The SERMON OF the Authour of this Booke I thinke there was never doubt made but yet that is scarce safely done which the Councell of Trent doth in that Canon which numbers the Books of Canonicall Scriptures to leave out this Book of Lamentations For though I make no doubt but that they had a purpose to comprehend and involve it in the name of Ieremy yet that was not enough for so they might have comprehended and involved Genesis and Deuteronomie and all between those two in one name of Moses and so they might have comprehended and involved the Apocalypse and some Epistles in the name of Iohn and have left out the Book it selfe in the number But one of their
God would give or at other times then God would give them is displeasing to him Use his meanes and stay his leisure But yet though God were displeased with them he executed his own purpose he was angry with their manner of asking a King but yet he gave them a King Howsoever God be displeased with them who prevaricate in his cause who should sustaine it and doe not Gods cause shall be sustained though they doe it not We may distinguish the period of the Jewish State well enough thus that they had Infantiam or pueritiam their infancy their minority in Adam and the first Patriarchs till the flood that they had Adolescentiam A growing time from Noah through the other Patriarchs till Moses and that they had Iuventuâ—em a youth and strength from Moses through the Judges to Saul but then they had Virilitatom virilem atatem their established vigor under their Kings and after them they fell in sâ—nectutem into a wretched and miserable decay of old age and decrepitnesse their kingdome was their best State and so much God in the Prophet intimates pregnantly when refreshing to their memories in a particular Inventory and Catalogue all his former benefits to them how he clothed Ierusalem how he fed her how he adorned her he summed up all in this one profecisti in regnum I have advanced thee to be a kingdome there was the Tropique there was the Solstice farther then that in this world we know not how God could goe a kingdome was really the best State upon Earth and Symbolically the best figure and Type of Heaven And therefore when the Prophet Ieremy historically beheld the declination of this kingdome in the death of Iâ—osiah and prophetically foresaw the ruines thereof in the transportition of Zedekiah or if he had seen that historically too yet prophetically he foresaw the utter devastation and depopulation and extermination which scattered that nation soon after Christ to this day and God and no man knows for how long when they who were a kingdome are now no where a village and they who had such Kings have now no where a Constable of their owne historically prophetically Ieremy had just cause of lamentation for the danger of that kingdome We had so also for this our kingdome this day God hath given us a kingdome not as other kingdomes made up of divers Cities but of divers kingdomes and all those kingdomes were destined to desolation in one minute It was not onely the destruction of the persons present but of the kingdomâ— for to submit the kingdome to the government of a forein Prelate was to destroy the Monarchy to annihilate the Supremacy to ruine the very forme of a kingdome a kingdome under another head besides the King is not a kingdome as ours is The oath that the Emperour takes to the Pope is by their authours called Iuramentum Sidelitatis an oath of Allegiance and if they had brought our Kings to take an oath of Allegiance so this were no kingdome Pope Nicolas the second went about to create two kingdomes that of Tuscan and that of Lombardy his successors have gone about to destroy more for to make it depend upon him were to destroy our kingdome That they have attempted historically and as long as these Axiomes and Aphorismes remaine in their Authors that one shall say that De jurs by right all Christian kingdomes doe hold of the Pope and De facto are forfeited to the Hope and another shall say that Christendome would be better governed if the Pope would take the forfeiture and so bring all these Royall farmes into his owne demesne we see also their propheticall desire their propheticall intention against this kingdome what they would doe In their Actions we have their history in their Axioms we have their prophecy Ieremy lamented the desolation of the kingdome but that expressed in the death and destruction of the King Hee did not divide the King and the kingdome as if the kingdome could do well and the King in distresse Umnipotentia Dei Asylum haeresicâ—rum it is well said by more then one of the ancients that the Omnipotence of God is the Sanctuary of Heretiques when they would establish any heresie they flye to Gods Almightinesse God can doe All therefore he can doe this So in the Roman Church they establish their heresie of Transubstantiation And so their deliverance of soules not from Purgatory onely but from Hell it selfe They think to stop all mouths with that God can do it no man dares deny that when as if that were granted which in such things as naturally imply contradiction in themselves or contradiction to Gods word cannot be granted for God cannot do that God cannot lye yet though God can do it concludes not that God will do it or hath done it Omnipotentiâ— Dei Asylum haereticorum The omnipotency of God is the Sanctuary of Heretiques and so Salus Regni is Asylum proditorum Greater Treasons and Seditions and Rebellions have never been set on foote then upon colour and pretence of a care of the State and of the good of the Kingdome Every where the King is Sponsus Regni the husband of the Kingdome and to make love to the Kings wife and undervalue him must necessarily make any King jealous The King is Anima Regni The soule of the Kingdome and to provide for the health of the body with the detriment of the soule is perverse physick The King is Caput Regni The head of the Kingdome and to cure a Member by cutting off the head is ill surgery Man and wife soule and body head and members God hath joyned and those whom God hath joyned let no man sever Salus Regni Asylum Proditorum To pretend to uphold the Kingdome and overthrow the King hath ever been the tentation before and the excuse after in the greatest Treasons In that action of the Iews which we insisted upon before in their pressing for a King The Elders of Israel were gathered together and so far they were in their way for this was no popular no seditious Assembly of light and turbulent men but The Elders And then they came to Samuel And so farre they were in their right way too for they held no counsels apart but came to the right place for redresse of grievances to their then highest Governour to Samuel When they were thus lawfully met they forbeare not to lay open unto him the injustice of his greatest Officers though it concerned the very Sonnes of Samuel and thus farre they kept within their convenient limits But when they would presse Samuel to a new way of remedy to an inconvenient way to a present way to their own way and referre nothing to him what care soever they pretended of the good of the State it is evident that they had no good opinion of Samuel himself and even that displeased God That they were ill affected to that person whom he had set over
them To sever the King and the Kingdome and pretend the weale of the one without the other is to shake and discompose Gods building Historically this was the Jewes case when Ieremy lamented here if he lamented the declination of the State in the death of the King Iosiah And if he lamented the transportation of Zedekiah and that that crosse were not yet come upon them Or if he lamented the future devastation of that Nation occasioned by the death of the King of Kings Christ Jesus when he came into the world this was their case prophetically Either way historically or prophetically Ieremy looks upon the Kingdome but yet through that glasse through the King The duty of the Day and the order of the Text invites us to an application of this branch too Our adversaries did not come to say to themselves Nolumus Regnum hoc we will not have this Kingdome stand the materiall Kingdome the plenty of the Land they would have been content to have but the formall Kingdome that is This forme of Government by a Soveraigne King that depends upon none but God they would not have So that they came implicitely 〈◊〉 Nolumus Regnum hoc we will not have this Kingdome governed thus and they came explicitely to a Nolumus Regem hunc as the Jewes were resolved of Christ We will not have this King to governe at all Non hunc Will you not have him you were at your Nolumus hanc long before Her whom God had set over you before him you would not have Your not Anniversary but Hebdomadary Treasons cast upon her a necessity of drawing blood often and so your Nolumus hâ—nc your desire that she were gone might have some kinde of ground or colour But for your Nolumus hunc for this King who had made no Inquisition for blood who had forborne your very pecuniary penalties who had as himself witnesses of himself made you partakers with his Subjects of his own Religion in matters of grace and in reall benefits and in Titles of Honour Quare fremuerant Why did these men rage and imagine a vaine thing What they did historically we know They made that house which is the hive of the Kingdome from whence all her honey comes that house where Iustice her self is conceived in their preparing of Laws and inanimated and quickned and borne by the Royall Assent there given they made that whole house one Murdring peece and charged that peece with Peers with People with Princes with the King and meant to discharge it upward at the face of heaven to shoot God at the face of God Him of whom God hath said Dii estis You are Gods at the face of God that had said so as though they would have reproached the God of heaven and not have been beholden to him for such a King but shoot him up to him and bid him take his King again with a nolumus hunc regnare we will not have this King to reign over us This was our case Historically and what it is Prophetically as long as that remains to bee their doctrine which he against whom that attempt was principally made found by their examination to be their doctrine That they and no Sect in the world but they did make Treason an article of Religion That their Religion bound them to those attempts so long they are never at an end Till they dis-avow those Doctrines that conduce to that prophetically they wish prophetically they hope for better successe in as ill attempts It is then the kingdome that Ieremy laments but his nearest object is the King Hee laments him First let it be as with S. Hierome many of the Ancients and with them many of the later Rabbins will have it for Josiah for a good King in whose death the honour and the strength of the kingdome took that deadly wound to become tributary to a forain Prince for to this lamentation they refer those words of the Prophet which describe a great sorrow In that day shall there be a great mourning in Ierusalem as the mourning of Hadadrimmon in the valley of Megiddon which was the place where Iosiah was slain There shall be such a lamentation says the Prophet in this interpretation as was for the death of Iosiah This then was for him for a good King Wherein have we his goodnesse expressed Abundantly Hee did that which was right in Gods fight And whose Eye need he fear that is right in the Eye of God But how long did he so To the end for Nero who had his Quinquennium and was a good Emperour for his first five years was one of the worst of all Hee that is ill all the way is but a Tyran Hee that is good at first and after ill an Angels face and a Serpents taile make him a Monster Iosiah began well and persevered so He turned not aside to the right â—and nor to the left That is if we apply it to the Iosiah of our times neither to the fugitive that leaves our Church and goes to the Roman nor to the Separatist that leaves our Church and goes to none In the eighteenth year of his reign Iosiah undertook the reparation of Gods house If we apply this to the Iosiah of our times I think in that year of his reign he visited this Church and these wals and meditated and perswaded the reparation thereof In one word Like unto Iosiah there was no King before nor after And therefore there was just cause of lamentation for this King for Iosiah historically for the very loss of his person prophetically for the misery of the State after his death Our errand is to day to apply all these branches to the day Those men who intended us this cause of lamentation this day in the destruction of our Iosiah spared him not because he was so because so because he was a Iosiah because he was good no not because he was good to them his benefits to them had not mollified them towards him for that is not their way Both the French Henries were their own and good to them but did that rescue either of them from the knife And was not that Emperour whom they poisoned in the Sacrament their own and good to them and yet was that any Antidote against their poison To so reprobate a sense hath God given them over herein as that though in their Books they ly heaviest upon Princes of our Religion yet truly they have destroyed more of their own then of ours Thus it is Historically in their proceedings past And Prophetically it can be but thus since no King is good in their sense if he agree not to all points of Doctrine with them And when that is done not good yet except he agree in all points of Iurisdiction too and that no King can doe that will not be their Farmer of his Kingdome Their Authours have disputed Auferibilitatem Papae whether the Church of God might not be
a widow Nubat in Domino saith the Apostle In Gods name let her marry But the former husband must be dead The husbands absence makes not the wife a widow nor doth the necessary and lawfull absence of the Pastor make the Church vacant The sicknesse of the husband makes not a widow The bodily weaknesse nay the spirituall weaknes of the Pastor in case that his parts and abilities and faculties be grown but weak do not make his Church vacant If the Pastor be suspended or otherwise censured this is but as a separation or as a divorce and as the wife is not a widow upon a divorce so neither is the Church vacant upon such censures And therefore for them that take advantages upon the weaknesses or upon the disgrace or upon the povertie of any such incumbent and so insinuate themselves into his Church this is intrusion this is spirituall adultery for the husband is not dead though he be sick Nay if they would remove him by way of preferment yet that is a supplantation when Iacob had Esau by the heel whether he kept him in till he might be strong enough to goe out before him or whether he pushed him out before he would have gone Iacob was a supplanter Some few cases are put when a wife becomes as a widow her husband living but regularly it is by death In some few cases Churches may otherwise be vacant but regularly it is by death And then Esto vidua in Domâ— Patris saith Iudah to Thamar Remain a widow at thy fathers house Then the Church remaineth in the house in the hands of her Father the Bishop of that Diâ—ces till a new husband be lawfully tendred unto her And till that time as our Saviour Christ recommended his most blessed Mother to Saint Iohn but not as a wife so that Bishop delivers that Church to the care and administration of some other during her widowhood till by due course she become the wife of another Thus our calling is a mariage It should have honour It must have labour and it is a lawfull mariage upon a just and equitable vacancy of the place without any supplantation upon death And then it is upon death of a brother If brethren dwell together and one of them die and have no childe the wife c. Aswell Saint Gregory as Saint Augustine before interpret this of our elder our eldest brother Christ Iesus That hee being dead we mary his wife the Church and become husbands to her But Christ in that capacity as he is head of the Church cannot die That to which the application of this law leads us is That predecessor and successor bee brethren of the same faith and the same profession of faith The Sadduces put a case to Christ of a woman maried successively to seven men let seven signifie infinite still those seven were brethren How often soever any wife change her husband any Church her Pastor God sends us still a succession of brethren sincere and unfeigned Preachers of the same truth sonnes of the same father Who is that father God is our Father Have we not all one Father says the Prophet Yes we have and so a worme and we are brethren by the same father and mother the same God the same Earth Hath not the raine a father The raine hath and the same that wee have More narrowly and yet very largely Christ is our father One of his names is The everlasting Father And then after these after God after Christ the King is our father See my father the skirt of thy robe in my hand says David to his King Saul Now if any husband should be offered to any widow any Pastor to any vacant Church who were not our brother by all these fathers in a right beliefe in God the Father of all men in a right profession of Christ Iesus the Father of all Christians in a right affection and allegiance to the King the Father of all Subjects Any that should incline to a forain father an imaginary universall father he of whom his Vice-fathers his Junior fathers the Iesuites for all the Jesuits are Fathers says That the Fathers of the Church are but sons and not fathers to him They that say to a stock to the Image of the beast Thou art my father who not in a sense of humiliation as Iob speaks the words but of pride say to corruption Thou art my father that is that prostrate themselves to all the corruptions of a prostitute Church If any so inclined of himself or so inclinable if occasion should invite him or rather tempt him be offered for husband to any widow for a Pastor to any vacant Church he is not within the accommodation of this law hee is not our brother by the whole bloud who hath not a brotherhood rooted in the same religion and in the allegiance to the same Soveraign He must be a brother and Frater Cohabitans a brother dwelling with the former brother As he is a brother we consider the unity of faith As he dwels in the same house we consider the unity of discipline That as he beleeves and professes the same articles of faith so by his own obedience and by his instructing of others hee establish the same government A Schismatique is no more a brother to this purpose then an Heretique If we look well we shall see that Christ provided better for his garments then for his flesh he suffered his flesh to be torn but not his seamlesse garment There may bee in many cases more mischief in disobeying the uniformity of the discipline of the Church then in mistaking in opinion some doctrine of the Church Wee see in Gods institution of his first Church whom he called brethren Those who were instructed and cunning in the songs of the Church they are called brethren To oppose the orders of the Church solemnly ordained or customarily admitted for the advancement of Gods glory and the devotion of the Congregation forfeits this brotherhood or at least discontinues the purpose and use of it for howsoever they may bee in a kinde brothers if they succeed in the profession of the same faith yet wee see where the blessednesse is settled Blessed are they that dwell in thy house And we see where the goodnesse and the pleasantnesse is settled Behold how good and how pleasant a thing it is for brethren to dwell together in unity So that if they be not brothers in the same faith and brothers in the same houshold of the faithfull and brothers in the same allegiance If they advance not the truth of the Church and the peace of the Church and the head of the Church fomentors of Error and of Schisme and Sedition are not husbands for these widows Pastors for these Churches Hee must bee a brother A brother dwelling in the same house of Christ and then brother to one
dead without children as Tertullian expresses it in his particular elegancy Illiberis that is content to be his brother in that sense in that capacity to claime no children no spirituall children of his own begetting not to attribute to himself that holy generation of the Saints of God as though his learning or his wit or his labour had saved them but to content himselfe to have been the foster father and to have nursed those children whom the Spirit of God by over-shadowing the Church hath begot upon her for though it be with the word of truth in our preaching yet of his own will begot he us though by the word says the Apostle Saint Paul might say to the Corinthians Though you have tenne thousand instructors in Christ yet have yee not many fathers for in Christ Iesus I have begotten you through the Gospel And hee might say of his spirituall sonne Onesimus That he begot him in his bonds Those to whom he first of any presented the Gospel That had not heard of a Christ nor a holy Ghost before They into whom he infused a new religion new to them might well enough bee called his children and hee their father But we have no new doctrine to present no new opinion to infuse or miracles to amaze as in the Romane Church they are full of all these wee have no children to beget of our own Paul was not crucified for you nor were you baptized in the name of Paul sayes Paul himself as he sayes again who is Paul but a Minister by whom ye beleeved and that also not by him but as the Lord gave to every man Not as Paul preached to every man for he preached alike to every man but as the Lord gave to every man I have planted says he it is true but he that planteth is nothing says he also Only they that proceed as they proceed in the Romane Church Ex opere operato to tye the grace of God to the action of the man will venter to call Gods children their children in that sense My prayer shal be against that commination That God will not give us a miscarrying womb nor dry breasts that you may always suck pure milk from us and then not cast it up but digest it to your spirituall growth And I shall call upon God with a holy passion as vehement as Rachels to Iacob Da mihi liberos give me children or I die That God would give me children but his children that he by his Spirit may give you an inward regeneration as I by his ordinance shall present to you the outward means that so being begot by himselfe the father of life and of light you may be nursed and brought up in his service by me That so not attributing the work to any man but to Gods Ordinances you doe not tye the power of God nor the breath of life to any one mans lips as though there were no regeneration no begetting but by him but acknowledging the other to be but an instrument and the weakest to be that you may remember also That though a man can cut deeper with an Axe then with a knife with a heavy then with a lighter instrument yet God can pierce as far into a conscience by a plain as by an exquisite speaker Now this widow being thus maried This Church thus undertaken He must perform the duty of a husbands brother First it is a personall office he must doe it himself When Christ shall say at the Judgement I was naked and ye cloathed me not sick and ye visited me not it shall be no excuse to say When saw we thee naked when saw we thee sick for wee might have seen it wee should have seen it When we shall come to our accompt and see them whose salvation was committed to us perish because they were uninstructed and ignorant dare we say then we never saw them show their ignorance wee never heard of it That is the greatest part of our fault the heaviest weight upon our condemnation that we saw so little heard so little conversed so little amongst them because we were made watchmen and bound to see and bound to hear and bound to be heard not by others but by our selves My sheep may be saved by others but I save them not that are save so nor shall I my self be saved by their labour where mine was necessarily required The office is personall I must doe it and it is perpetuall I must perform it sayes the text goe through with it Lots wife looked backe and God never gave her leave to look forward again That man who hath put his hand to the plow and looks back Christ disables him for the kingdome of God The Galatians who had begun in the spirit and then relapsed before whose eyes Christ Iesus had been evidently set forth as the Apostle speaks fall under that reproach of the Apostle to bee called and called againe fooles and men bewitched If I beginne to preach amongst you and proceed not I shall fall under that heavy increpation from my God you beganne that you might for your owne glory shew that you were in some measure able to serve the Church and when you had done enough for your own glory you gave over my glory and the salvation of their souls to whom I sent you God hath set our eyes in our foreheads to look forward not backward not to be proud of that which we have done but diligent in that which we are to doe In the Creation if God had given over his worke the third or fift day where had man been If I give over my prayers due to the Church of God as long as God enables me to doe it service I lose my thanks nay I lose the testimony of mine own conscience for all My office is personall and it is perpetuall and then it is a duty He must perform the duty of a husbands brother unto her It is not of curtesie that we preach but it is a duty it is not a bounty given but it is a debt paid for though I preach the Gospel I have nothing to glory of for a necessity is laid upon me sayes Saint Paul himself It is true that as there is Vae si non Wo be unto mee if I doe not preach the Gospel so there is an Euge bone serve Well done good and faithfull servant to them that doe But the Vae is of Iustice the Euge is of Mercy If doe it not I deserve condemnation from God but if I doe it I deserve not thanks from him Nay it is a debt not onely to God but to Gods people to you and indeed there is more due to you then you can claime or can take knowledge of For the people can claime but according to the laws of that State and the Canons of that Church in which God hath placed them such preaching as those Laws and