of all And if there should be no other bodies in heaven then his yet yet now he is Lord of all as he is Head of the Church Aske of me sayes his Father and I will give thee the heathen for thine inheritance Psal 2.8 and the utter most parts of the Earth for thy possession And as it is added ver 6. I have set my King upon my holy hill of Sion So he hath made him Lord Head of the Jews and of the Gentiles too of Sion and of the Nations also Hee hath consecrated his person raised his humane nature to the glorious region of blessed Spirits to Heaven and he hath dignified him with an office made him Lord Head of the Church not only of Jews and Gentiles upon earth but of the Militant and Triumphant Church too Our two generall parts were Scientia 2. Part. modus what we must all know and by what we must know it Our knowledge is this Exaltation of Jesus and our meanes is implied in the first word of the Text Therefore Therefore Therefore because he is raised from the Dead for to that Resurrection expressed in three or foure severall phrases before the Text is this Text and this Exaltation referred Christ was delivered for our sins raised for our justification and upon that depends all Christs descending into hell and his Resurrection in our Creed make but one Article and in our Creed we beleeve them both alike Quis nisi Infidelis negaverit apud inferos fuisse Christum saies S. Augustine Who but an Infidell will deny Christs descending into hell And if he beleeve that to be a limme of the article of the Resurrection His descent into hell must rather be an inchoation of his triumph then a consummation of his Exinanition The first step of his Exaltation there rather then the last step of his Passion upon the Crosse But the Declaration the Manifestation that which admits no disputation was his Resurrection Factus id est declaratus per Resurrectionem saies S. Cyrill He was made Christ and Lord that is declared evidently to be so 1 Cor. 1.20 by his Resurrection As there is the like phrase in S. Paul God hath made the wisdome of this world foolishnesse that is declared it to be so And therefore it is imputed to be a crucifying of the Lord Jesus againe Heb. 6.6 Non credere eum post mortem immortalem Not to beleeve that now after his having overcome death in his Resurrection he is in an immortall and in a glorious state in heaven For when the Apostle argues thus 1 Cor. 15.14 If Christ be not risen then is our preaching in vaine and your faith in vaine he implies the contrary too If you beleeve the Resurrection we have preached to good purpose Mortuum esse Christum August pagani credunt resurrexisse propria fides Christianorum The Heathen confesse Christs death To beleeve his Resurrection is the proper character of a Christian for the first stone of the Christian faith was laid in this article of the Resurrection In the Resurrection onely was the first promise performed Ipse conteret He shall bruise the Serpents head for in this he triumphed over Death and Hell And the last stone of our faith is laid in the same article too that is the day of Judgement of a day of Judgement God hath given an assurance unto all men saies S. Paul at Athens In that he hath raised Christ Iesus from the dead Acts 17.31 In this Christ makes up his circle in this he is truly Alpha and Omega His comming in Paradise in a promise his comming to Judgement in the clouds are tied together in the Resurrection And therefore all the Gospell all our preaching is contracted to that one text To beare witnesse of the Resurrection onely for that Acts 1.22 was there need of a new Apostle There was a necessity of one to be chosen in Iudas roome to be a witnesse of the Resurrection Non ait caeterorum sed tantùm Resurrectionis saies S. Chrysostome He does not say to beare witnesse of the other articles but onely of the Resurrection he charges him with no more instructions he needs no more in his Commission but to preach the Resurrection Athan. for in that Trophaeum de morte excitavit indubitatum reddidit corruptionem deletam Here is a retreat from the whole warfare here is a Trophee erected upon the last enemy The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death and here is the death of that enemy in the Resurrection And therefore to all those who importuned him for a signe Christ still turnes upon the Resurrection Iohn 2.38 Mat. 12.38 The Jewes pressed him in generall Quod signum What signe showest thou unto us and he answers Destroy this Temple this body and in three dayes I will raise it In another place the Scribes and the Pharisees joyne Master we would see a signe from thee and he tels them There shall be no signe but the signe of the Prophet Ionas who was a type of the Resurrection And then the Pharisees and Sadduces joyn now they were bitter enemies to one another but as Tertullian saies Semper inter duos latrones crucifixus Christus It was alwaies Christs case to be crucified betweene two Thieves So these though enemies joyne in this vexation They aske a signe as the rest and as to the rest Christ gives that answer of Ionas So that Christ himselfe determines all summes up all in this one Article the Resurrection Now Nos if the Resurrection of this Jesus have made him not onely Christ Anointed and consecrated in Heaven in his owne person but made him Lord then he hath Subjects upon whom that dominion and that power works and so we have assurance of a resurrection in him too That he is made Lord of us by his Resurrection is rooted in prophecie It pleased the Lord to bruise him saies the Prophet Esay But he shall see his seed Esay 53.10 and he shall prolong his daies that is he shall see those that are regenerate in him live with him forever It is rooted in prophecy and it spreads forth in the Gospell To this end saies the Apostle Christ died and rose that he might be Lord of the dead and of the living Now Rom. 14.9 Gregor what kinde of Lord if he had no subjects Cum videmus caput super aquas when the head is above water will any imagine the body to be drowned What a perverse consideration were it to imagine a live head and dead members Or consider our bodies in our selves and Our bodies are Temples of the Holy Ghost and shall the Temples of the holy Ghost lye for ever for ever buried in their rubbidge They shall not for the day of Judgement is the day of Regeneration as it is called in the Gospell Mat. 19.28 August Quia caro nostra ita generabitur per
spirituall calamities being in our absence from Gods Church where onely the outward meanes of happinesse are ministred unto us certainely there is much tendernesse and deliberation to be used before the Church doores be shut against any man If I would not direct a prayer to God to excommunicate any man from the Triumphant Church which were to damne him I would not oyle the key I would not make the way too slippery for excommunications in the Militant Church For that is to endanger him I know how distastfull a sin to God contumacy and contempt and disobedience to Order and Authority is And I know and all men that choose not ignorance may know that our Excommunications though calumniators impute them to small things because many times the first complaint is of some small matter never issue but upon contumacies contempts disobediences to the Church But they are reall contumacies not interpretative apparant contumacies not presumptive that excommunicate a man in Heaven And much circumspection is required and I am far from doubting it exercised in those cases upon earth for though every Excommunication upon earth be not sealed in Heaven though it damne not the man yet it dammes up that mans way by shutting him out of that Church through which he must goe to the other which being so great a danger let every man take heed of Excommunicating himselfe The imperswasible Recusant does so The negligent Libertin does so The fantastique Separatist does so The halfe-present man he whose body is here and minde away does so And he whose body is but halfe here his limbes are here upon a cushion but his eyes his eares are not here does so All these are are selfe-Excommunicators and keepe themselves from hence Onely he enjoyes that blessing the want whereof David deplores that is here intirely and is glad he is here and glad to finde this kinde of service here that he does and wishes no other And so we have done with our first Part Davids aspect his present condition and his danger of falling into spirituall miseries because his persecution and banishment amounted to an Excommunication to an excluding of him from the service of God in the Church And we passe in our Order proposed at first to the second his retrospect the Consideration what God had done for him before Because thou hast beene my helpe Through this second part we shall passe by these three steps First 2 Part. That it behoves us in all our purposes and actions to propose to our selves a copy to write by a patterne to worke by a rule or an example to proceed by Because it hath beene thus heretofore sayes David I will resolve upon this course for the future And secondly That the copy the patterne the precedent which we are to propose to our selves is The observation of Gods former wayes and proceedings upon us Because God hath already gone this way this way I will awaite his going still And then thirdly and lastly in this second part The way that God had formerly gone with David which was That he had been his helpe Because thou hast beene my helpe First then from the meanest artificer through the wisest Philosopher to God himselfe Ideae all that is well done or wisely undertaken is undertaken and done according to pre-conceptions fore-imaginations designes and patterns proposed to our selves beforehand A Carpenter builds not a house but that he first sets up a frame in his owne minde what kinde of house he will build The little great Philosopher Epictetus would undertake no action but he would first propose to himselfe what Socrates or Plato what a wise man would do in that case and according to that he would proceed Of God himselfe it is safely resolved in the Schoole that he never did any thing in any part of time of which he had not an eternall pre-conception an eternall Idea in himselfe before Of which Ideaes that is pre-conceptions pre-determinations in God S. Augustine pronounces Tanta vis in Ideis constituitur There is so much truth August and so much power in these Ideaes as that without acknowledging them no man can acknowledge God for he does not allow God Counsaile and Wisdome and deliberation in his Actions but sets God on worke before he have thought what he will doe And therefore he and others of the Fathers read that place Ioh. 1.3 4. which we read otherwise Quod factum est in ipso vita erat that is in all their Expositions whatsoever is made in time was alive in God before it was made that is in that eternall Idea and patterne which was in him So also doe divers of those Fathers read those words to the Hebrews Heb. 11.3 which we read The things that are seene are not made of things that doe appeare Ex invisibilibus visibilia facta sunt Things formerly invisible were made visible that is we see them not till now till they are made but they had an invisible being in that Idea in that pre-notion in that purpose of God before for ever before Of all things in Heaven and earth but of himselfe God had an Idea a patterne in himselfe before he made it And therefore let him be our patterne for that to worke after patternes To propose to our selves Rules and Examples for all our actions and the more the more immediately the more directly our actions concerne the service of God If I aske God by what Idea he made me God produces his Faciamus hominem ad Imaginem nostram That there was a concurrence of the whole Trinity to make me in Adam according to that Image which they were and according to that Idea which they had pre-determined If I pretend to serve God and he aske me for my Idea How I meane to serve him shall I bee able to produce none If he aske me an Idea of my Religion and my opinions shall I not be able to say It is that which thy word and thy Catholique Church hath imprinted in me If he aske me an Idea of my prayers shall I not be able to say It is that which my particular necessities that which the forme prescribed by thy Son that which the care and piety of the Church in conceiving fit prayers hath imprinted in me If he aske me an Idea of my Sermons shall I not be able to say It is that which the Analogy of Faith the edification of the Congregation the zeale of thy worke the meditations of my heart have imprinted in me But if I come to pray or to preach without this kind of Idea if I come to extemporall prayer and extemporall preaching I shall come to an extemporall faith and extemporall religion and then I must looke for an extemporall Heaven a Heaven to be made for me for to that Heaven which belongs to the Catholique Church I shall never come except I go by the way of the Catholique Church by former Idea's former examples former
see by the light of this glory shed upon me there In this place and at this time the glory of God is but we lack that light to see it by When my soule and body are glorified in heaven by that light of glory in me I shall see the glory of God But then what must that glory of the Essence of God be which I shall see thorough the light of Gods own glory I must have the light of glory upon me to see the glory of God and then by his glory I shall see his Essence Rom. 11.33 When S. Paul cryes out upon the bottomlesse depth of the riches of his Attributes O the depth of the riches both of the wisedome and knowledge of God! how glorious how bottomlesse is the riches of his Essence If I cannot look upon him in his glasse 1 Cor. 13.12 1 Joh. 3.2 in the body of the Sunne how shall I looke upon him face to face And if I be dazeled to see him as he works how shall I see him Sicutiest as he is and in his Essence But it may be some ease to our spirits which cannot endure the search of this glory of heaven which shall shew us the very Essence of God to take this word of our Text as our first translation of all tooke it for one beame of this glory that is Praise Consider we therefore this everlasting future onely so How the upright in heart shall be praised in heaven First The Militant Church shall transmit me to the Triumphant with her recommendation That I lived in the obedience of the Church of God That I dyed in the faith of the Sonne of God That I departed and went away from them in the company and conduct of the Spirit of God into whose hands they heard me they saw me recommend my spirit 1 Cor. 6.19 And that I left my body which was the Temple of the Holy Ghost to them and that they have placed it in Gods treasury in his consecrated earth to attend the Resurrection which they shall beseech him to hasten for my sake and to make it joyfull and glorious to me and them when it comes So the Militant Church shall transmit me to the Triumphant with this praise this testimony this recommendation And then if I have done any good to any of Gods servants or to any that hath not been Gods servant for Gods sake If I have but fed a hungry man If I have but clothed a naked childe If I have but comforted a sad soule or instructed an ignorant soule If I have but preached a Sermon and then printed that Sermon that is first preached it and then lived according to it for the subsequent life is the best printing and the most usefull and profitable publishing of a Sermon All those things that I have done for Gods glory shall follow me shall accompany me shall be in heaven before me and meet me with their testimony That as I did not serve God for nothing God gave me his blessings with a large hand and in overflowing measures so I did not nothing for the service of God Though it be as it ought to be nothing in mine own eyes nothing in respect of my duty yet to them who have received any good by it it must not seeme nothing for then they are unthankfull to God who gave it by whose hand soever This shall be my praise to Heaven my recommendation thither And then my praise in Heaven shall be my preferment in Heaven That those blessed Angels that rejoyced at my Conversion before shall praise my perseverance in that profession and admit me to a part in all their Hymns and Hosannaes and Hallelujahs which Hallelujah is a word produced from the very word of this Text Halal My Hallelujah shall be my Halal my praising of God shall be my praise And from this testimony I shall come to the accomplishment of all to receive from my Saviours own mouth that glorious that victorious that harmonious praise that Dissolving and that Recollecting testimony that shall melt my bowels and yet fix me powre me out and yet gather me into his bosome that Euge bone serve Mat. 25.21 Well done good and faithfull servant enter into thy Masters joy And when he hath sealed me with his Euge and accepted my service who shall stamp a Vae quod non upon me who shall say Woe be unto thee that thou didst not preach this or that day in this or that place When he shall have styled me Bone fidelis Good and faithfull servant who shall upbraid me with a late undertaking this Calling or a slack pursuing or a lazy intermitting the function thereof When he shall have entred me into my Masters joy what fortune what sin can cast any Cloud of sadnesse upon me This is that that makes Heaven Heaven That this Retribution which is future now shall be present then and when it is then present it shall be future againe and present and future for ever ever enjoyed and expected ever The upright in heart shall have whatsoever all Translations can enlarge and extend themselves unto They shall Rejoyce they shall Glory they shall Praise and they shall bee praised and all these in an everlasting future for ever Which everlastingnesse is such a Terme as God himselfe cannot enlarge As God cannot make himselfe a better God then he is because hee is infinitely good infinite goodnesse already so God himselfe cannot make our Terme in heaven longer then it is for it is infinite everlastingnesse infinite eternity That that wee are to beg of him is that as that state shall never end so he will be pleased to hasten the beginning thereof that so we may be numbred with his Saints in Glory everlasting Amen SERM. LXVIII The fourth of my Prebend Sermons upon my five Psalmes Preached at S. Pauls 28. Ianuary 1626. PSAL. 65.5 By terrible things in righteousnesse wilt thou answer us O God of our salvation who art the confidence of all the ends of the earth and of them that are a far off upon the Sea GOd makes nothing of nothing now God eased himselfe of that incomprehensible worke and ended it in the first Sabbath But God makes great things of little still And in that kinde hee works most upon the Sabbath 1 Cor. 1.21 when by the foolishnesse of Preaching hee infatuates the wisedome of the world and by the word in the mouth of a weake man he enfeebles the power of sinne and Satan in the world and by but so much breath as blows out an houre-glasse gathers three thousand soules at a Sermon and five thousand soules at a Sermon as upon Peters preaching in the second and in the fourth of the Acts. And this worke of his to make much of little and to doe much by little is most properly a Miracle For the Creation which was a production of all out of nothing was not properly a miracle A miracle is a thing done
thinke to gild and enamell deceit and falshood with the additions of good deceit good falshood before they will make deceit good will make God bad For even in the Law an action De Dolo will not lie against a Father nor against a Master and shall we emplead God De Dolo In the last forraine Synod which our Divines assisted with what a blessed sobriety they delivered their sentence Art 2. ad Thes 3. That all men are truly and in earnest called to eternall life by Gods Minister And that whatsoever is promised or offered out of the Gospel by the Minister is to the same men and in the same manner promised and offered by the Author of the Gospel by God himselfe They knew whose breasts they had sucked and that that Church Art 〈◊〉 our Church had declared That we must receive Gods promises so as they be generally set forth to us in the Scriptures And that for our actions and manners for our life and conversation we follow that will of God which is expresly declared to us in his Word And that is That conditionall salvation is so far offered to every man as that no man may preclude himselfe from a possibility of such a performance of those Conditions which God requires at his hands as God will accept at his hands if either he doe sincerely endevour the performing or sincerely repent the not performing of them For all this is fayrly implyed in this proposition Si quo minus If it were not so I would have told you That all that is necessary to salvation is comprehended in the Scriptures which was our first branch And then That all that is in the Scriptures is intended so as it is proposed which was our second And these two constitute our first part The generall Rule of Doctrines and farther we enlarge not that part but descend to the other The particular Doctrine which Christ gives to his Disciples in the other Proposition In domo patris In my Fathers house there are many Mansions This second part 2 Part. you may also be pleased to remember derives it selfe into two branches first to inquire whether this proposition assist that Doctrine of Disparity and Degrees of Glory in the Saints in heaven And then the right use which is to be made of the right sense of these words In domo patris In my Fathers house there are many Mansions The occasion of the words will be the foundation of all Our Saviour Christ had said to his Disciples in the Chapter before Ver. 33. That he was to stay with them but a little while That when he was gone they should seeke him and not finde him And that whither he went they could not follow And when upon that Peter who was alwayes forwardest Ver. 36. and soonest scandalized had pressed him with that question Lord whither goest thou and received that answer whither I goe thou canst not follow me now but hereafter thou shalt follow me lest the rest of the Disciples who were troubled with that which was formerly said should be more affected with this to heare that Peter should come whither none of them might to establish them all as well as Peter he sayes to them all in the first verse of this Chapter Let not your hearts be troubled for And here enters this proposition of our Text for their generall establishment In my Fathers house are many Mansions So that that these are words of Consolation is certaine but whether the consolation be placed in the disparity and difference of degrees of Glory in Heaven or no is not so certaine That there are degrees of Glory in the Saints in heaven scarce any ever denied Non negatur Heaven is a Kingdome and Christ a King and a popular parity agrees not with that State with a Monarchy Heaven is a Church and Christ a High-Priest and such a parity agrees as ill with the Triumphant as with the Militant Church In the Primitive Church Iovinian denied this difference and degrees of glory and S. Hierome was so incensed so inflamed for this as if foundations had beene shaken and the common cause endangered Indeed it was thus farre the common cause that all the Fathers followed this chase if wee may use that Metaphor and were never at a default No one of the Fathers whom I have observed to touch upon this point did ever deny this difference of degrees of Glory And therefore as in the Primitive Church when that one man Iovinian came to deny it S. Hierome was vehement upon him so when in the Reformation one man for I never found more then that one one Schoufeldius denies it too I wonder the lesse Gerard. that another of the Reformation also growes somewhat sharpe towards him We deny not then this difference of degrees of glory in Heaven But that frame Modus in Eccles Rom. negatur and that scale of these degrees which they have set up in the Romane Church we do deny We must continue and returne often to that complaint against them That they shake and endanger things neere foundations by their enormous super-edifications by their incommodious upper-buildings That many things which might bee well enough accepted and would bee agreed by all become justly suspicious and really dangerous to the Church by their manifold consequences which they super-induce upon them That many things which in the sincerity of their beginning and institution were pious and conduced to the exaltation of Devotion by their additions are become impious and destroy Devotion so farre as to divert it upon a wrong object In this point which we have in hand it is so In these degrees of glory in Heaven That Church which treads all soveraigne Crownes in this world under her feet pretends to impart and distribute Crownes in Heaven also of her owne making Wee find Coronam auream a Crowne of gold upon the head of that Sonne of Man who is also the Sonne of God Christ Jesus Revel 14.14 in the Revelation And wee find Coronas aureas particular Crownes of gold upon the heads of all the Saints that stand about the Throne in the same Booke And these Crownes upon the Saints are the emanations and effluences of that Crowne which is upon Christ The glory of the Saints is the communication of his glory But then because in their Translation in the vulgat Edition of the Roman Church Exod. 25.25 they find in Exodus that word Aureolam Facies Coronam aureolam Thou shalt make a lesser Crowne of gold out of this diminutive and mistaken word they have established a Doctrine that besides those Coronae aureae Those Crownes of gold which are communicated to all the Saints from the Crown of Christ some Saints have made to themselves and produced out of their owne extraordinary merits certaine Aureolas certaine lesser Crownes of their own whereas indeed the word in the Originall in that place of Exodus is Zer zehab
if we consider those who are in heaven and have been so from the first minute of their creation Angels why have they or how have they any reconciliation How needed they any and then how is this of Christ applyed unto them They needed a confirmation for the Angels were created in blessednesse but not in perfect blessednesse They might fall they did fall To those that fell can appertaine no reconciliation no more then to those that die in their sins for Quod homini mors Angelis casus August The fall of the Angels wrought upon them as the death of a man does upon him They are both equally incapable of change to better But to those Angels that stood their standing being of grace and their confirmation being not one transient act in God done at once but a continuall succession and emanation of daily grace belongs this reconciliation by Christ because all matter of grace and where any deficiency is to be supplyed whether by way of reparation as in man or by way of confirmation as in Angels proceeds from the Crosse from the Merits of Christ They are so reconciled then as that they are extra lapsus periculum out of the danger of falling but yet this stability this infallibility is not yet indelibly imprinted in their natures yet the Angels might fall if this reconciler did not sustain them for if those words reperit in Angelis iniquitatem that God found folly Job 4.18 weaknesse infirmity in his Angels be to be understood of the good Angels that stand confirmed as procul dubio de diabolo intelligi non potest Calvin without all doubt they cannot be understood of the ill Angels the best service of the best Angels devested of that successive grace that supports them if God should exacta rigorous account of it could not be acceptable in the sight of God So the Angels have a pacification and a reconciliation lest they should fall Thus things in heaven are reconciled to God by Christ and things on earth too In terra First the creature as S. Paul speakes that is other creatures then men For at the generall resurrection which is rooted in the resurrection of Christ and so hath relation to him the creature shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption Rom. 8.21 into the glorious liberty of the children of God for which the whole creation groanes and travailes in paine yet This deliverance then from this bondage the whole creature hath by Christ and that is their reconciliation And then are we reconciled by the blood of his Crosse when having crucified our selves by a true repentance we receive the seale of reconciliation in his blood in the Sacrament But the most proper and most litterall sense of these words is that all things in heaven and earth be reconciled to God that is to his glory to a fitter disposition to glorifie him by being reconciled to another in Christ that in him as head of the Church they in heaven and we upon earth be united together as one body in the Communion of Saints For this text hath a conformity and a harmony with that to the Ephesians and in sense as well as in words is the same Ephes 1.10 That God might gather together in one all things in Christ both which are in heaven and which are on earth even in him where the word which we translate to gather doth properly signifie recapitulare to bring all things to their first head to Gods first purpose which was that Angels and men united in Christ Jesus might glorifie him eternally in the Kingdome of heaven Then are things in heaven restored and reconciled sayes S. Augustine Cum quod ex Angelis lapsum est ex hominibus redditur when good men have repaired the ruine of the bad Angels and filled their places And then are things on earth restored and reconciled Cum praedestinati à corruptionis vetustate renovantur when Gods elect children are delivered from the corruptions of this world to which even they are subject here Gregor Cum humiliati homines redeunt unde Apostatae superbiendo ceciderunt when men by humility are exalted to those places from which Angels fell by pride then are all things in heaven and earth reconciled in Christ The blood of the sacrifices was brought by the high priest Tostat in Levit 16. in sanctum sanctorum into the place of greatest holinesse but it was brought but once in festo expiationis in the feast of expiation but in the other parts of the Temple it was sprinkled every day The blood of the Crosse of Christ Jesus hath had his effect in sancto sanctorum even in the highest heavens in supplying their places that fell in confirming them that stood and in uniting us and them in himselfe as Head of all In the other parts of the Temple it is to be sprinkled daily Here in the militant Church upon earth there is still a reconciliation to be made not only toward one another in the band of charity but in our selves In our selves we may finde things in heaven and things on earth to reconcile There is a heavenly zeale but if it be not reconciled to discretion there is a heavenly purity but if it be not reconciled to the bearing of one anothers infirmities there is a heavenly liberty but if it be not reconciled to a care for the prevention of scandall All things in our heaven and our earth are not reconciled in Christ In a word till the flesh and the spirit be reconciled this reconciliation is not accomplished For neither spirit nor flesh must be destroyed in us a spirituall man is not all spirit he is a man still But then is flesh and spirit reconciled in Christ when in all the faculties of the soule and all the organs of the body we glorifie him in this world for then in the next world wee shall be glorified by him and with him in soule and in body too where we shall bee thoroughly reconciled to one another no suits no controversies and thoroughly to the Angels Mat. 22.30 Luc. 20.36 when we shall not only be sieut Angeli as the Angels in some one property but aequales Angelis equall to the Angels in all for Non erunt duae societates Angelorum hominum Men and Angels shall not make two companies sed omnium beatitudo erit uni adhaerere Deo August this shall be the blessednesse of them both to be united in one head Christ Jesus And these reconcilings are reconcilings enow for these are all that are in heaven and earth If you will reconcile things in heaven and earth with things in hell that is a reconciling out of this Text. If you will mingle the service of God and the service of this world there is no reconciling of God and Mammon in this Text. If you will mingle a true religion and a false religion there is no reconciling of God and
City and save it for mine own sake 2 Reg. 19.34 and for my servant Davids sake Quantus murus Patriae vir justus is a holy exclamation of S. Ambrose What a Wall to any Towne what a Sea to any Iland what a Navy to any Sea what an Admirall to any Navy is a good man Apply thy selfe therefore and make thy conversation with good men and get their love and that shall be an armour of proofe to thee When Saint Augustines Mother lamented the ill courses that her sonne tooke in his youth still that Priest to whom she imparted her sorrowes said Filius istarum lacrymarum non potest perire That Son for whom so good a Mother hath shed so many teares cannot perish He put it not upon that issue filius Dci the elect child of God the son of predestination cannot perish for at that time that name was either no name or would scarce have seemed to have belonged to S. Augustine but the child of these teares of this devotion cannot be lost Mat. 8.13 Christ said to the Centurion fiat sicut credidisti Goe thy way and as thou beleevest so be it done unto thee and his servant was healed in the selfe-same houre The master beleeved and the servant was healed Little knowest thou what thou hast received at Gods hands by the prayers of the Saints in heaven that enwrap thee in their generall prayers for the Militant Church Little knowest thou what the publique prayers of the Congregation what the private prayers of particular devout friends that lament thy carelesnesse and negligence in praying for thy selfe have wrung and extorted out of Gods hands in their charitable importunity for thee And therfore at last make thy selfe fit to doe for others that which others when thou wast unfit to doe thy selfe that office have done for thee in assisting thee with their prayers If thou meet thine enemies Oxe Exod. 23 4 5. or Asse going astray sayes the Law thou shalt surely bring it back to him again If thou see the Asse of him that hateth thee lying under his burden and wouldest forbeare to help him thou shalt surely help him Estnè Deo cura de Bobus is the Apostles question Hath God care of Oxen of other mens Oxen How much more of his owne Sheep And therefore if thon see one of his Sheep one of thy fellow Christians strayed into sins of infirmity and negligent of himselfe joyne him with thine owne soule in thy prayers to God Relieve him if that be that which he needs with thy prayers for him and relieve him if his wants be of another kinde according to his prayers to thee Cur apud te homo Collega non valeat sayes S. Ambrose why should not he that is thy Colleague thy fellow-man as good a man that is as much a man as thou made of the same bloud and redeemed with the same bloud as thou art why should not he prevaile with thee so farre as to the obtaining of an almes Cum apud Deum servus interveniendi meritum jus habe at impetrandi when some fellow-servant of thine hath had that interest in God as by his intercession and prayers to advance thy salvation wilt not thou save the life of another man that prayes to thee when perchance thy soule hath been saved by another man that prayed for thee Well then Ejus Christ had respect to their faith that brought this sick man to him Consuetudo est miserecordis Dei It is Gods ordinary way sayes S. Chysost hunc honorem dare servis suis ut propter eos salventur alii to afford this honour to his servants that for their sakes he saves others But neither this which we say now out of S. Crhysostome nor that which we said before out of S. Ambrose nor all that we might multiply out of the other Fathers doth exclude the faith of that particular man who is to be saved It is true that in this particular case S. Hierome sayes Non vidit fidem ejus qui offer ebatur sed corum qui offerebant That Christ did not respect his faith that was brought but onely theirs that brought him but except S. Hierome be to be understood so that Christ did not first respect his faith but theirs we must depart from him to S. Chrysostome Neque enim se portari sustinuisset He would neither have put himselfe nor them to so many difficulties as he did if he had not had a faith that is a constant assurance in this meanes of his recovery And therefore the Rule may be best given thus That God gives worldly blessings bodily health deliverance from dangers and the like to some men in contemplation of others though themselves never thought of it all the examples which we have touched upon convince abundantly That God gives spirituall blessings to Infants presented according to his Ordinance in Baptisme in Contemplation of the faith of their Parents or of the Church or of their sureties without any actuall faith in the Infant is probable enough credible enough But take it as our case is de adultis in a man who is come to the use of his own reason and discretion so God never saves any man for the faith of another otherwise then thus that the faithfull man may pray for the conversion of an unfaithfull who does not know nor if he did would be content to be prayed for and God for his sake that prayes may be pleased to work upon the other but before that man comes to the Dimittuntur peccata that his sinnes are forgiven that man comes to have faith in himselfe Iustus in fide sua vivit there is no life without faith nor In fide aliena Habak 2.4 no such life as constitutes Righteousnesse without a personall faith of our owne So that this fides illorum in our Text this that is called their faith hath reference to the sick man himselfe as well as to them that brought him And then in Him and in Them it was fides visa faith which by an ouvert act Visae was declared and made evident For Christ who was now to convay into that company the knowledge that he was the Messias which Messias was to be God and Man as afterwards for their conviction who would not beleeve him to be God he shewed that he knew their inward thoughts and did some other things which none but God could doe so here for the better edification of men he required such a faith as might be evident to men For though Christ could have seene their faith by looking into their hearts yet to think that here he saw it by that power of his Divinity nimis coactum videtur It is too narrow and too forced an interpretation of the place sayes Calvin They then that is all they declared their faith their assurance that Christ could and would help him It was good evidence of a strength of faith in him that
consideration upon David or upon the Jews Thereupon doe the Father truly I think more generally more unanimely then in any other place of Scripture take that place of Ezekile which we spake of before to be primarily intended of the last resurrection but secundarily of the Jews restitution But Gasper Sanctius a learned Jesuit that is not so rare but an ingenuous Jesuit too though he be bound by the Councel Trent to interpret Scriptures according to the Fathers yet he here ackowledges the whole truth that Gods purpose was to prove by that which they did know which was the generall resurrection that which they knew not their temporall restitution Tertullian is vehement at first but after more supple Allegoricae Scripturae saies he resurrectionem subradiant aliae aliae determinant Some figurative places of Scripture doe intimate a resurrection and some manifest it and of those manifest places he takes this vision of Ezekiel to be one But he comes after to this Sit corporum rerum meánihilinterest let it sighnifie a temporall resurrection so it may signifie the generall resurrection of our bodies too saies he and I am well satisfied and then the truth satisfies him for it doth signifie both It is true that Tertullian sayes De vacuo similitudo non competit If the vision be but a comparison if there were no such thing as a resurrection the comparison did not hold De nullo par abola non convenit saies he and truly If there were no resurrection to which that Parable might have relation it were no Parable All that is true but there was a resurrection alwaies knowne to them alwaies beleeved by them and that made their present resurrection from that calamity the more easie the more intelligible the more credible the more discernable to them Let therefore Gods method be thy method fixe thy self firmly upon that beliefe of the penerall resurrection and thou wilt never doubt of either of the particular resurrections either from sin by Gods grace or from worldly calamities by Gods power For that last resurrection is the ground of all By that Verévicta mors saies Irenaeus this Last enemy death is truly destroyed because his last spoile the body is taken out of his hands The same body eadem ovis as the same Father notes Christ did not fetch another sheep to the flock in the place of that which was lost but the same sheep God shall not give me another abetter body at the resurrection but the same body made better for Sinon haberet caro salvari neutiquam verbum Dei caro factum fuisset If the flesh of man were not to be saved Idem the Anchor of salvation would never have taken the flesh of man upon him The punishment that God laid upon Adam In dolore in sudore In sweat and in sorrow sbalt thou eate thy bread is but Donecreverteris till man returne to dust but when Man is returned to dust Gen. 3.17 God returnes to the remembrance of that promise Awake and sing yethat dwell in the dust A mercy already exhibited to us in the person of our Saviour Christ Jesus Esay 26.19 in whom Per primitias benedixit campo saies S. Chrysostome as God by taking a handfull for the first Fruits gave ablessing to the wholw field so he hath sealed the bodies of all mankind to his glory by pre-assuming the body of Christ to that glory For by that there is now Commercium inter Coelum terram there is a Trade driven a Staple established betweene Heaven and earth Bernard Ibi caronostra hic Spiritus ejus Thither have we sent our flest and hither hath he sent his Spirti This is the last abolition of this enemy Death for after this the bodies of the Saints he cannot touch the bodes of the damned he cannot kill and if he could hee were not therein their enemy but their friend This is that blessed and glorious State of which when all the Apostles met to make the Creed they could say no more but Credo Resurrectionem I heleeve the Resurrection of the body and when those two Reverend Fathers to whom it belongs shall come to speake of it upon the day proper for it in this place and if all the Bishops that ever met in Councels should meet them here they could but second the Apostles Credo with their Anathema We beleeve and woe be unto them that doe not beleeve the Resurrection of the body but in gong about to expresse it the lips of an Angell would be uncircumcised lips and the tongue of an Archangell would stammer I offer not therefore at it but in respect of and with relation to that blessed State according to the doctrine and practise of our Church we doe pray for the dead for the militant Church upon earth and the trimphant Church in Heaven and the whole Catholique Church in Heaveen and earth we doe pray that God will be pleased to hasten that Kingdome that we with all others departed in the true Faith of his holy Name may have this perfect consummation both of body and soule in his everlasting glory Amen SERMON XVI preached at VVhite-hall the first Friday in Lent 1622. JOHN 11.35 Iesus wept I Am now but upon the Compassion of Christ There is much difference between his Compassion and his Passion as much as between the men that are to handle them here But Lacryma pass ionis Chrisi est vicaria August A great personage may speake of his Passion of his blood My vicargae is to speake of his Compassion and his teares Let me chafe the wax and melt your soules in a bath of his Teares now Let him set to the great Seale of his effectuall passion in his blood then It is a Common place I know to speake of teares I would you knew as well it were a common practise to shed them Though it be not so yet bring S. Bernards patience Libenter audiam qui non sibi plausum sed mihi planctum moveat be willing to heare him that seeks not your acclamation to himselfe but your humiliation to his and your God not to make you praise with them that praise but to make you weepe with them that weepe And Iesus wept The Masorites the Masorites are the Critiques upon the Hebrew Bible the Old Testament cnnot tell us who divided the Chapters of the Old Testament into verses Neither can any other tell us who did it in the New Testament Whoever did it seemes to have stopped in an amazement in this Text and by making an intire verse of these two words Iesus wept and no more to intimate that there needs no more for the exalting of our devotion to a competent heighth then to consider how and where and when and why Iesus wept There is not a shorter verse in the Bible not a larger Text. There is another as short Semper gaudete Rejoyce evermore and of that holy Joy
Fundamentall point the Resurrection of the dead and then an instruction for manners arising out of that That they mourn not intemperately for the dead as they do saith he which have no hope of seeing them again who are gone For we know that they which are gone are gone but into another room of the same house this world and the next do but make up God a house they are gone but into another Pue of the same Church the Militant and the Triumphant do but make up God a Church Ver. 14. If we beleeve that Iesus dyed and rose again sayes our Apostle even so them also which sleep in Iesus will God bring with him with him For howsoever they have lien ingloriously in the dust all this while all this while they have been with God and he shall bring them with him But the Thessalonians were not so hard in beleeving the Resurrection 1 Cor. 15.35 as curious in enquiring the order of the Resurrection And as among the Corinthians some inquired de modo How are the dead raised and with what body do they come So among the Thessalonians some inquired de Ordine in what order for precedency shall the last scean of this last act of man be transacted What difference between them that were dead thousands of yeares before and them whom Christ shall finde alive at his second comming Them the Apostle satisfies We that are alive shall not prevent them that are asleep we shall not enter into heaven before them The dead in Christ shall first rise sayes he and then then enters our Text Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meete the Lord in the ayre and so shall be ever with the Lord. Then Divisie When This Then in our text is an apprehensive and a comprehensive word It reaches to and layes hold upon that which the Apostle sayes before the text in the fifteenth and sixteenth verses Then when the dead in Christ are first risen and risen by Christs comming down from heaven in clamore in a shout in the voice of the Archangel and in the Trumpet of God Then when that is done We that are alive and remain shall bee wrought upon and all being joyned in one body They and we together shall be caught up in the clouds to meet the Lord in the ayre and so shall we be ever with the Lord. So that in these words we shall have three things to consider which will constitute three parts in this exercise First the raising of those that were dead before Secondly the changing of them who are alive then And lastly our union in our exaltation and possession of the kingdome of God We together with them shall be caught up Neither of these three parts will be swallowed down in a generality There must passe a Mastication a re-division into more particular branches upon them all For in the first which the first word of our Text Then induces which is the raising of them who were dead before we shall consider first That the dead are not forgotten though they have dwelt long in the house of forgetfulnesse nor lost though they have lyen long in the dust of dispersion nor neglected nor deferred that others might be preferred before them which shall be alive then for sayes the Apostle We shall not prevent them but they shall rise first How shall they rise For that is also a second consideration induced by our first word Then Then when they shal be raised in virtute Christi in the power of Christ for sayes the Text The Lord himself shall descend from heaven to raise them And how shall he exercise how shall he execute and declare his power in their raising It shall be In clamore with a shout and in the voyce of the Arch-angel and the Trumpet of God And in these three Branches That the dead shall rise first That they shall rise in the power of Christ That that power shall be thus expressed In a shout in the voyce of the Arch-angell in the Trumpet of God we shall determine that first Part. When that is done and done so we shall be wrought upon We that are alive and remain then where we shall first see that some shall be alive and remain then when Christ comes And then consider their state and condition how they being then cloathed with bodies of corruption shall be capable of that present entrance into glory and in that disquisition we shall end our second Part. And then in our third and last part The glorious Union of these two Armies Those which were dead and those which are alive we shall consider first That here is no mention at all of any Resurrection of the wicked but onely of them that sleep in Christ They shall rise And then those that are to partake of this glory are thus proceeded with They are caught up Rapiuntur Caught up in the Clouds In Nubibus Exalted into the Ayre In Aera There to meet the Lord Obviam Domino And so to be with the Lord for ever We shall be and be with the Lord and be with the Lord for ever which are blessed and glorious gradations if we may have time to insist upon them which we may best hope for this day of all others for this day we have two dayes in one This day both Gods Sons arose The Sun of his Firmament and the Son of his bosome And if one Sun doe set upon us the other will stay as long as our devotion last God went not from Abraham till Abraham had no more to say Gen. 18. ult No more will Christ from us First then for our first Branch of our first part the rising of the dead 1 Part. the first man that was laid in the dust of the earth Abel loses nothing by lying so long there He loses nothing that men of later ages gain For if we live to the comming of Christ to Judgement we shall not prevent them we shall have no precedency of them that were dead ages before No man is superannuated in the grave that he is too old to enter into heaven where the Master of the house is The ancient of dayes No man is bed-rid with age in the grave that he cannot rise It is not with God as it is with man we doe but God does not forget the dead and as long as God is with them they are with him Psal 56.9 As he puts all thy teares into his bottles so he puts all the graines of thy dust into his Cabinet and the windes that scatter the waters that wash them away carry them not out of his sight He remembers that we are but dust but dust then when we lie in the grave Psal 103.14 and yet he remembers us But his memory goes farther then so He remembers that we were but dust alive at our best They dye sayes David and they returne to their
years after the Donation of the Emperour Constantine by which the Bishops of Rome pretend all that to be theirs surely they could not finde this Patent this Record this Donation of Constantine then when Boniface begd this Temple in Rome this Pantheon of the Emperour And this Temple formerly the Temple of all their gods that Bishop consecrated to the honour of all the Martyrs of all the Saints of that kinde But after him another Bishop of the same sea enlarged the consecration and accompanied it with this festivall which we celebrate to day in honour of the Trinity and Angels and Apostles and Martyrs and Confessors and Saints and all the elect children of God So that it is truly a festivall grounded upon that Article of the Creed The Communion of Saints and unites in our devout contemplation The Head of the Church God himselfe and those two noble constitutive parts thereof The Triumphant and the Militant And accordingly hath the Church applied this part of Scripture to be read for the Epistle of this day to shew that All-Saints day hath relation to all Saints both living and dead for those servants of God which are here in this text sealed in their foreheads are such without all question as receive that Seale here here in the militant Church And therefore as these words so this festivall in their intendiment that applied these words to this festivall is also of Saints upon Earth This day being then the day of the Communion of Saints and this Scripture being received for the Epistle of this universall day that exposition will best befit it which makes it most universall And therefore with very good authority such as the expositions of this booke of the Revelation can receive of which booke no man will undertake to the Church that he hath found the certaine and the literall sense as yet nor is sure to do it Irenaeus till the prophecies of this booke be accomplished for prophetiae ingenium ut in obscuro delitescat donec impleatur It is the nature of prophecy to be secret till it be fulfilled Dan. 12.4 And therefore Daniel was bid to shut up the words and to seale the booke even to the time of the end that is to the end of the prophecy with good authority I say we take that number of the servants of God which are said to be sealed in the fourth verse of this Chapter which is one hundred forty foure thousand and that multitude which none could number of all Nations which are mentioned in the ninth verse to be intended of one and the same company both these expressions denote the same persons In the fourth verse of the fourteenth Chapter this number of one hundred forty foure thousand is applied to Virgins but is intended of all Gods Saints for every holy soule is a virgin And then this name of Israel which is mentioned in the fourth verse of this Chapter That there were so many sealed of the house of Israel is often in Scriptures applied to spirituall Israelites to Beleevers for every faithfull soule is an Israelite so that this number of one hundred forty foure thousand Virgins and one hundred forty foure thousand Israelites which is not a certaine number but a number expressing a numberlesse multitude this number and that numberlesse multitude spoken of after of all Nations which none could number is all one and both making up the great and glorious body of all Saints import and present thus much in generall That howsoever God inflict great and heavy calamities in this world to the shaking of the best morall and Christianly constancies and consciences yet all his Saints being eternally knowne by him shall be sealed by him that is so assured of his assistance by a good using of those helps which he shall afford them in the Christian Church intended in this sealing on the forehead that those afflictions shall never separate them from him nor frustrate his determination nor disappoint his gracious purpose upon them all them this multitude which no man could number To come then to the words themselves Divisio we see the safety and protection of the Saints of God and his children in the person and proceeding of our Protector in that it is in the hands of an Angel I saw another Angel And an Angel of that place that came from the East The East that is the fountaine of all light and glory I saw another Angel come from the East And as the Word doth naturally signifie and is so rendred in this last Translation Ascending from the East that is growing and encreasing in strength After that we shall consider our assurance in the commission and power of this Angel He had the seaele of the living God And then in the execution of this Commission In which we shall see first who our enemies were They were also Angels This Angel cryed to other Angels able to do much by nature because Angels Then we shall see their number they were foure Angels made stronger by joyning This Angel cryed to those foure Angels And besides their malignant nature and united concord two shrewd disadvantages mischievous and many They had a power a particular an extraordinary power given them at that time to do hurt foure Angels to whom power was given to hurt And to do generall universall hurt power to hurt the Earth and the Sea After all this we shall see this Protector against these enemies and their Commission execute his first by declaring and publishing it He cryed with a loud voyce And then lastly what his Commission was It was to stay those foure Angels for all their Commission from hurting the Earth and the Sea and the Trees But yet this is not for ever It is but till the servants of God were sealed in the forehead that is till God had afforded them such helpes as that by a good use of them they might subsist which if they did not for all their sealing in the forehead this Angel will deliver them over to the other foure destroying Angels Of which sealing that is conferring of Grace and helps against those spirituall enemies there is a pregnant intimation that it is done by the benefit of the Church in the power of the Church which is no singular person in that upon the sudden the person and the number is varied in our text and this Angel which when he is said to ascend from the East and to cry with a loud voyce is still a singular Angel one Angel yet when he comes to the act of sealing in the forehead to the dispensing of Sacraments and sacramentall assistances he does that as a plurall person he represents more the whole Church and therefore sayes here Stay hurt nothing Till we we have sealed the servants of our our God in their foreheads And by all these steps must we passe through this garden of flowers this orchard of fruits this abundant Text. First then Man being compassed with
possesse immortality and impossibility of dying onely in a continuall dying when as a Cabinet whose key were lost must be broken up and torne in pieces before the Jewell that was laid up in it can be taken out so thy body the Cabinet of thy soule must be shaked and shivered by violent sicknesse before that soule can goe out And when it is thus gone out must answer for all the imperfections of that body which body polluted it And yet though this soule be such a loser by that body it is not perfectly well nor fully satisfied till it be reunited to that body againe when thou remembrest Mat. 26.36 and oh never forget it that Christ himselfe was heavy in his soule unto Death Mat. 26.39 That Christ himselfe came to a Si possibile If it be possible let this Cup passe That he came to a Quare dereliquisti Mat. 27.46 a bitter sense of Gods dereliction and forsaking of him when thou considerest all this compose thy selfe for death but thinke it not a light matter to dye Death made the Lyon of Judah to roare and doe not thou thinke that that which we call going away like a Lambe doth more testifie a conformity with Christ then a strong sense and bitter agony and colluctation with death doth Christ gave us the Rule in the Example He taught us what we should doe by his doing it And he pre-admitted a fearfull apprehension of death A Lambe is a Hieroglyphique of Patience but not of stupidity And death was Christs Consummatum est All ended in death yet he had sense of death How much more doth a sad sense of our transmigration belong to us to whom death is no Consummatum est but an In principio our account and our everlasting state begins but then Apud te propitiatio Psal 130.4 ut timearis In this knot we tie up all With thee there is mercy that thou mightest be feared There is a holy feare that does not onely consist with an assurance of mercy Pro. 21.15 but induces constitutes that assurance Pavor operantibus iniquitatem sayes Solomon Pavor horror and servile feare jealousie and suspition of God diffidence and distrust in his mercy and a bosome-prophecy of self-destruction Destruction it selfe so we translate it be upon the workers of iniquity Pavor operantibus iniquitatem And yet sayes that wise King Pro. 28.14 Beatus qui semper Pavidus Blessed is that man that alwayes fears who though he alwayes hope and beleeve the good that God will shew him yet also feares the evills that God might justly multiply upon him Blessed is he that looks upon God with assurance but upon himselfe with feare For though God have given us light by which we may see him even in Nature for He is the confidence of all the ends of the Earth and of them that are a far of upon the Sea Though God have given us a clearer light in the Law and experience of his providence upon his people throughout the Old Testament Though God have abundantly infinitely multiplied these lights and these helpes to us in the Christian Church where he is the God of salvation yet as he answers us by terrible things in that first acceptation of the words which I proposed to you that is Gives us assurances by miraculous testimonies in our behalfe that he will answer our patient expectation by terrible Judgements and Revenges upon our enemies In his Righteousnesse that is In his faithfulnesse according to his Promises and according to his performances of those Promises to his former people So in the words considered the other way In his Holinesse that is in his wayes of imprinting Holinesse in us He answers us by terrible things in all those particulars which we have presented unto you By infusing faith but with that terrible addition Damnabitur He that beleeveth not shall be damned He answers us by composing our manners and rectifying our life and conversation but with terrible additions of censures and Excommunications and tearings off from his own body which is a death to us and a wound to him He answers us by enabling us to speake to him in Prayer but with terrible additions for the matter for the manner for the measure of our Prayer which being neglected our very Prayer is turned to sin He answers us in Preaching but with that terrible commination that even his word may be the savor of death unto death He answers us in the Sacrament but with that terrible perplexity and distraction that he that seemes to be a Iohn or a Peter a Loving or a Beloved Disciple may be a Iudas and he that seems to have received the seale of his reconciliation may have eat and drunke his own Damnation And he answers us at the houre of death but with this terrible obligation That even then I make sure my salvation with feare and trembling That so we imagine not a God of wax whom we can melt and mold when and how we will That we make not the Church a Market That an over-homelines and familiarity with God in the acts of Religion bring us not to an irreverence nor indifferency of places But that as the Militant Church is the porch of the Triumphant so our reverence here may have some proportion to that reverence which is exhibited there Revel 4.10 where the Elders cast their Crownes before the Throne and continue in that holy and reverend acclamation Thou art worthy O Lord to receive Glory and Honor and Power for as we may adde from this Text By terrible things O God of our salvation doest thou answer us in righteousnesse SERM. LXIX The fifth of my Prebend Sermons upon my five Psalmes Preached at S. Pauls PSAL. 66.3 Say unto God How terrible art thou in thy works Through the greatnesse of thy Power shall thine Enemies submit themselves unto thee IT is well said so well as that more then one of the Fathers seeme to have delighted themselves in having said it Titulus Clavis The Title of the Psalme is the Key of the Psalme the Title opens the whole Psalme The Church of Rome will needs keepe the Key of heaven and the key to that Key the Scriptures wrapped up in that Translation which in no case must be departed from There the key of this Psalm the Title thereof hath one bar wrested that is made otherwise then he that made the Key the Holy Ghost intended it And another bat inserted that is one clause added which the Holy Ghost added not Where we reade in the Title Victori To the chiefe Musician they reade In finem A Psalme directed upon the end I think they meane upon the later times because it is in a great part a Propheticall Psame of the calling of the Gentiles But after this change they also adde Resurrectionis A Psalme concerning the Resurrection and that is not in the Hebrew nor any thing in the place thereof And after one Author
same thing againe I beleeve in the Holy Ghost but doe not finde him if I seeke him onely in private prayer But in Ecclesia when I goe to meet him in the Church when I seeke him where hee hath promised to bee found when I seeke him in the execution of that Commission which is proposed to our faith in this Text in his Ordinances and meanes of salvation in his Church instantly the savour of this Myrrhe is exalted and multiplied to me not a dew but a shower is powred out upon me and presently followes Communio Sanctorum The Communion of Saints the assistance of Militant and Triumphant Church in my behalfe And presently followes Remissio peceatorum The remission of sins the purifying of my conscience in that water which is his blood Baptisme and in that wine which is his blood the other Sacrament and presently followes Carnis resurrectio A resurrection of my body My body becomes no burthen to me my body is better now then my soule was before and even here I have Goshen in my Egypt incorruption in the midst of my dunghill spirit in the midst of my flesh heaven upon earth and presently followes Vita aeterna Life everlasting this life of my body shall not last ever nay the life of my soul in heaven is not such as it is at the first For that soule there even in heaven shall receive an addition and accesse of Joy and Glory in the resurrection of our bodies in the consummation When a winde brings the River to any low part of the banke instantly it overflowes the whole Meadow when that winde which blowes where he will The Holy Ghost leads an humble soule to the Article of the Church to lay hold upon God as God hath exhibited himselfe in his Ordinances instantly he is surrounded under the blood of Christ Jesus and all the benefits thereof The communion of Saints the remission of sins the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting are poured out upon him And therefore of this great worke which God hath done for man in applying himselfe to man in the Ordinances of his Church S. Augustine sayes Obscuriùs dixerunt Prophetae de Christo August quà m de Ecclesia The Prophets have not spoken so clearely of the person of Christ as they have of the Church of Christ Hieron for though S. Hierom interpret aright those words of Adam and Eve Erunt duo in carnem unam They two shall be one flesh to be applyable to the union which is betweene Christ and his Church Ephes 5. for so S. Paul himselfe applies them that Christ and his Church are all one as man and wife are all one yet the wife is or at least it had wont to be so easilier found at home then the husband wee can come to Christs Church but we cannot come to him The Church is a Hill and that is conspicuous naturally but the Church is such a Hill as may be seene every where August S. Augustine askes his Auditory in one of his Sermons doe any of you know the Hill Olympus and himselfe sayes in their behalfe none of you know it no more sayes he do those that dwell at Olympus know Giddabam vestram some Hill which was about them trouble not thy selfe to know the formes and fashions of forraine particular Churches neither of a Church in the lake nor a Church upon seven hils but since God hath planted thee in a Church where all things necessary for salvation are administred to thee and where no erronious doctrine even in the confession of our Adversaries is affirmed and held that is the Hill and that is the Catholique Church and there is this Commission in this text meanes of salvation sincerely executed So then such a Commission there is and it is in the Article of the Creed that is the ubi We are now come in our order to the third circumstantiall branch the Vnde Vnde from whence and when this Commission issued in which we consider that since we receive a deepe impression from the words which our friends spake at the time of their death much more would it worke upon us if they could come and speake to us after their death You know what Dives said Si quis ex mortuis Luke 16. If one from the dead might goe to my Brethren he might bring them to any thing Now Primitiae mortuorum The Lord of life and yet the first borne of the dead Christ Jesus returnes againe after his death to establish this Commission upon his Apostles It hath therefore all the formalities of a strong and valid Commission Christ gives it Ex mero motu meerely out of his owne goodnesse He foresaw no merit in us that moved him neither was he moved by any mans solicitations for could it ever have fallen into a mans heart to have prayed to the Father that his Son might take our Nature and dye and rise again and settle a course upon earth for our salvation if this had not first risen in the purpose of God himself Would any man ever have solicited or prayed him to proceed thus It was Ex mero motu out of his owne goodnesse and it was Ex certa scientia He was not deceived in his grant he knew what he did he knew this Commission should be executed in despight of all Heretiques and Tyrans that should oppose it And as it was out of his owne Will and with his owne knowledge so it was Ex plenitudine potestatis He exceeded not his Power for Christ made this Commission then Mat. 28.18 when as it is expressed in the other Euangelist he produced that evidence Data est mihi All power is given to me in Heaven and in earth where Christ speakes not of that Power which he had by his eternall generation though even that power were given him for he was Deus de Deo God of God nor he speakes not of that Power which was given him as Man which was great but all that he had in the first minute of his conception in the first union of the two Natures Divine and Humane together but that Power from which he derives this Commission is that which he had purchased by his blood and came to by conquest Ego vici mundum sayes Christ I have conquered the world and comming in by conquest I may establish what forme of Government I will and my will is to governe my Kingdome by this Commission and by these Commissioners to the Worlds end to establish these meanes upon earth for the salvation of the world And as it hath all these formalities of a due Commission made without suite made without error made without defect of power so had it this also that it was duely and authentically testified for though this Euangelist name but the eleven Apostles to have beene present and they in this case might be thought Testes domestici Witnesses that witnesse to their owne
pacto thus the contract led it to this he was obedient obedient unto death and unto the death of the Crosse Phil. 2.8 By bloud and not onely by comming into this world and assuming our nature which humiliation was an act of infinite value and not by the bloud of his Circumcision or Agony but bloud to death and by no gentler nor nobler death then the death of the Crosse was this peace to be made by him Though then one drop of his bloud had beene enough to have redeemed infinite worlds if it had beene so contracted and so applyed yet he gave us a morning showre of his bloud in his Circumcision and an evening showre at his passion and a showre after Sunset in the piercing of his side And though any death had beene an incomprehensible ransome for the Lord of life to have given for the children of death yet he refused not the death of the Crosse The Crosse to which a bitter curse was nayled by Moses Deut. 21 23. from the beginning he that is hanged is not onely accursed of God as our Translation hath it but he is the curse of God as it is in the Originall not accursed but a curse not a simple curse but the curse of God And by the Crosse which besides the Infamy was so painfull a death as that many men languished many dayes upon it before they dyed And by his bloud of this torture and this shame this painfull and this ignominious death was this peace made In our great work of crucifying our selves to the world too it is not enough to bleed the drops of a Circumcision that is to cut off some excessive and notorious practice of sin nor to bleed the drops of an Agony to enter into a conflict and colluctation of the flesh and the spirit whether we were not better trust in Gods mercy for our continuance in that sin then lose all that pleasure and profit which that sin brings us nor enough to bleed the drops of scourging to be lashed with viperous and venemous tongues by contumelies and slanders nor to bleed the drops of Thornes to have Thornes and scruples enter into our consciences with spirituall afflictions but we must be content to bleed the streames of naylings to those Crosses to continue in them all our lives if God see that necessary for our confirmation and if men will pierce and wound us after our deaths in our good name yea if they will slander our Resurrection as they did Christs if they will say that it is impossible God should have mercy upon such a man impossible that a man of so bad life and so sad and comfortlesse a death should have a joyfull Resurrection here is our comfort as that piercing of Christs side was after the Consummatum est after his passion ended and therefore put him to no paine as that slander of his Resurrection was after that glorious triumph He was risen and had shewed himselfe before and therefore it diminished not his power so all these posthume wounds and slanders after my death after my God and my Soule shall have passed that Dialogue Veni Domine Iesu and euge bone serve That I shall have said upon my death-bed Come Lord Jesu come quickly and he shall have said Well done good and faithfull servant enter into thy Masters joy when I shall have said to him In manus tuas Domine Into thy hands O Lord I commend my spirit And he to me Hodie mecum eris in paradiso This day this minute thou shalt be now thou art with me in Paradise when this shall be my state God shall heare their slanders and maledictions and write them all downe but not in my booke but in theirs and there they shall meet them at Judgement amongst their owne sinnes to their everlasting confusion and finde me in possession of that peace made by bloud made by his bloud made by the bloud of his Crosse which were all the peeces laid out for this second part with which we have done and passe from the qualification of the person It pleased the Father that in him all fulnesse should dwell which was our first part and the Pacification and the way thereof by the bloud of his Crosse to make peace which was our second to the Reconciliation it selfe and the Application thereof to all to whom that Reconciliation appertaines That all things whether they be things in earth or things in heaven might be reconciled unto him All this was done 3. Part. He in whom it pleased the Father that this fulnesse should dwell had made this peace by the bloud of his Crosse and yet after all this the Apostle comes upon that Ambassage 2 Cor. 5.20 We pray ye in Christs stead that ye be reconciled to God So that this Reconciliation in the Text is a subsequent thing to this peace The generall peace is made by Christs death as a generall pardon is given at the Kings comming The Application of this peace is in the Church as the suing out of the pardon is in the Office Ioab made Absaloms peace with his Father Bring the young man againe sayes David to Ioab 2 Sam. 14.22.2.28.24.16 but yet he was not reconciled to him so as that he saw his face in two yeare God hath sounded a Retreat to the Battle As I live saith the Lord I would not the death of a sinner He hath said to the destroyer It is enough stay now thy hand He is pacified in Christ and he hath bound the enemy in chaines Now let us labour for our Reconciliation for all things are reconciled to him in Christ that is offered a way of reconciliation All things in heaven and earth sayes the Apostle And that is so large as that Origen needed not to have extended it to Hell too Origen and conceive out of this place a possibility that the Devils themselves shall come to a Reconciliation with God But to all in Heaven and Earth it appertaines Consider we how First then there is a reconciliation of them in heaven to God In coelis and then of them on earth to God and then of them in heaven and them in earth to one another by the blood of his Crosse If we consider them in heaven to be those who are gone up to heaven from this world by death they had the same reconciliation as we Animae either by reaching the hand of faith forward to lay hold upon Christ before he came which was the case of all under the Law or by reaching back that hand to lay hold upon all that hee had done and suffered when he was come which is the case of those that are dead before us in the profession of the Gospell All that are in heaven and were upon earth are reconciled one way by application of Christ in the Church so that though they be now in heaven yet they had their reconciliation here upon earth But
not Christ meerly as the Son of God but the Son of Mary too And that generation the Holy Ghost hath told us was in the fulnesse of time When the fulnesse of time was come God sent forth c. In which words Divisio we have these three considerations First the time of Christs comming and that was the fulnesse of time And then the maner of his comming which is expressed in two degrees of humiliation one that he was made of a woman the other that he was made under the Law And then the third part is the purpose of his comming which also was twofold for first he came to redeem them who were under the Law All And secondly he came that we we the elect of God in him might receive adoption When the fulnesse of time was come c. For the full consideration of this fulnesse of time 〈◊〉 we shall first consider this fulnesse in respect of the Jews and then in respect of all Nations and lastly in respect of our selves The Jews might have seen the fulnesse of time the Gentiles did in some measure see it and we must if we will have any benefit by it see it too It is an observation of S. Cyril That none of the Saints of God nor such as were noted to be exemplarily religious and sanctified men did ever celebrate with any festivall solemnity their own birth-day Pharaoh celebrated his own Nativity 〈◊〉 40.22 but who would make Pharaoh his example and besides he polluted that festivall with the bloud of one of his servants Herod celebrated his Nativity but who would think it an honor to be like Herod and besides he polluted that festivall with the blood of Iohn Baptist But the just contemplation of the miseries and calamities of this life into which our birth-day is the doore and the entrance is so far from giving any just occasion of a festivall as it hath often transported the best disposed Saints and servants of God to a distemper to a malediction and cursing of their birth-day 〈…〉 Cursed be the day wherein I was born and let not that day wherein my mother bare me be blessed Let the day perish wherein I was born let that day be darknesse Job 3. and let not God regard it from above How much misery is presaged to us when we come so generally weeping into the world that perchance in the whole body of history we reade but of one childe Zoroaster that laughed at his birth What miserable revolutions and changes what downfals what break-necks and precipitations may we justly think our selves ordained to if we consider that in our comming into this world out of our mothers womb we doe not make account that a childe comes right except it come with the head forward and thereby prefigure that headlong falling into calamities which it must suffer after Though therefore the dayes of the Martyrs which are for our example celebrated in the Christian Church be ordinarily called natalitia Martyrum the birth-day of the Martyrs yet that is not intended of their birth in this world but of their birth in the next when by death their soules were new delivered of their prisons here and they newly born into the kingdome of heaven that day upon that reason the day of their death was called their birth-day and celebrated in the Church by that name Onely to Christ Jesus the fulnesse of time was at his birth not because he also had not a painfull life to passe through but because the work of our redemption was an intire work and all that Christ said or did or suffered concurred to our salvation as well his mothers swathing him in little clouts as Iosephs shrowding him in a funerall sheete as well his cold lying in the Manger as his cold dying upon the Crosse as well the puer natus as the consummatum est as well his birth as his death is said to have been the fulnesse of time First we consider it to have been so to the Jews for this was that fulnesse Indeic in which all the prophecies concerning the Messias were exactly fulfilled Dan. 2. Hagg. 2. Mich. 5. Esay 7. That he must come whilest the Monarchy of Rome flourished And before the Temple of Jerusalem was destroyed That he must be born in Bethlem That he must be born of a Virgin His person his actions his passion so distinctly prophecyed so exactly accomplished as no word being left unfulfilled this must necessarily be a fulnesse of time So fully was the time of the Messias comming come that though some of the Jews say now that there is no certain time revealed in the Scriptures when the Messias shall come and others of them say that there was a time determined and revealed and that this time was the time but by reason of their great sins he did not come at his time yet when they examine their own supputations they are so convinced with that evidence that this was that fulnesse of time that now they expresse a kinde of conditionall acknowledgement of it by this barbarous and inhumane custome of theirs that they alwayes keep in readinesse the blood of some Christian with which they anoint the body of any that dyes amongst them with these words if Jesus Christ were the Messias then may the blood of this Christian availe thee to salvation So that by their doubt and their implyed consent in this action this was the fulnesse of time when Christ Jesus did come that the Messias should come It was so to the Jews and it was so to the Gentiles too Gontibus It filled those wise men which dwelt so far in the East that they followed the star from thence to Jerusalem Herod was so full of it that he filled the Countrey with streames of innocent bloud and lest he should spare that one innocent childe killed all The two Emperours of Rome Vespasian and Domitian were so full of it that in jealousie of a Messias to come then from that race they took speciall care for the destruction of all of the posterity of David All the whole people were so full of it that divers false-Messiahs Barcocab and Moses of Crete and others rose up and drew and deceived the people as if they had been the Messiah because that was ordinarily knowne and received to be the time of his comming And the Devill himself was so full of it as that in his Oracles he gave that answer That an Hebrew childe should be God over all gods and brought the Emperour to erect an Altar to this Messiah Christ Jesus though he knew not what he did This was the fulnesse that filled Jew and Gentile Kings and Philosophers strangers and inhabitants counterfaits and devils to the expectation of a Messiah and when comes this fulnesse of time to us that we feele this Messiah born in our selves In this fulnesse in this comming of our Saviour into us Nobis we should
Hast thou found me out O mine enemy when an unrepented sinne comes to thy memory then be not thou sorry that thou remembrest it then nor doe not say I would this sin had not troubled me now I would I had not remembred it till to morrow For in that action first in Thesi for the Rule thou art a Preacher to thy selfe 1 Cor. 11.20 and thou hast thy Text in St. Paul He that eateth and drinketh unworthily eateth and drinketh damnation to himselfe And then in Hypothesi for the application to the particular case thou art a Prophet to thy selfe Thou that knowest in thy selfe what thou doest then canst say to thy selfe what thou shalt suffer after if thou doe ill There are more Elements in the making up of this man many more He waited saies his story Expectavit He gave God his leisure Simeon had informed himselfe out of Daniel and the other Prophets that the time of the Messias comming was neare As Daniel had informed himselfe out of Ieremy and the other Prophets that the time of the Deliverance from Babylon was neare Both waited patiently and yet both prayed for the accelerating of that which they waited for Daniel for the Deliverance Simeon for the Epiphany Those consist well enough patiently to attend Gods time and yet earnestly to solicite the hastning of that time for that time is Gods time to which our prayers have brought God as that price was Gods price for Sodome to which Abrahams solicitation brought God Esay 45.9 and not the first fifty That Prophet that sayes Woe unto him that striveth with his Maker that is that presses God before his time saies also for all that Oh that thou wouldest rent the heavens Esay 64.1 and come downe When thou commest to this seale of thy peace the Sacrament pray that God will give thee that light that may direct and establish thee in necessary and fundamentall things that is the light of faith to see that the Body and Bloud of Christ is applied to thee in that action But for the manner how the Body and Bloud of Christ is there wait his leisure if he have not yet manifested that to thee Grieve not at that wonder not at that presse not for that for hee hath not manifested that not the way not the manner of his presence in the Sacrament to the Church A peremptory prejudice upon other mens opinions that no opinion but thine can be true in the doctrine of the Sacrament and an un charitable condemning of other men or other Churches that may be of another perswasion then thou art in the matter of the Sacrament may frustrate and disappoint thee of all that benefit which thou mightst have by an humble receiving thereof if thou wouldest excercise thy faith onely here and leave thy passion at home and referre thy reason and disputation to the Schoole He waited saies the story And he waited for the consolation of Israel Israel It is not an appropriating of hopes or possessions of those hopes to himselfe but a charitable desire of a communication of this consolation upon all the Israel of God Therefore is the Sacrament a Communion Therefore is the Church which is built of us 1. Pet. 2.5 Gregor Built of lively stones And in such buildings as stones doe Vnusquisque portat alterum portatur ab altero Every stone is supported by another and supports another As thou wouldest be well interpreted by others interpret others well and as when thou commest to heaven the joy and the glory of every soule shall bee thy glory and thy joy so when thou commest to the porch of the Triumphant Church the doore of heaven the Communion table desire that that joy which thou feelest in thy soule then may then be communicated to every communicant there To this purpose to testifie his devotion to the communion of Saints Templum Simeon came into the Temple saies the story to doe a holy worke in a holy place When we say that God is no accepter of persons we doe not meane but that they which are within his Covenant and they that have preserved the seales of his grace are more acceptable to him then they which are not or have not When we say that God is not tied to places we must not meane but that God is otherwise present and workes otherwise in places consecrated to his service then in every prophane place When I pray in my chamber I build a Temple there that houre And that minute when I cast out a prayer in the street I build a Temple there And when my soule prayes without any voyce my very body is then a Temple And God who knowes what I am doing in these actions erecting these Temples he comes to them and prospers and blesses my devotions and shall not I come to his Temple where he is alwaies resident My chamber were no Temple my body were no Temple except God came to it but whether I come hither or no this will be Gods Temple I may lose by my absence He gaines nothing by my comming He that hath a cause to be heard will not goe to Smithfield nor he that hath cattaile to buy or sell to Westminster He that hath bargaines to make or newes to tell should not come to doe that at Church nor he that hath prayers to make walke in the fields for his devotions If I have a great friend though in cases of necessity as sicknesse or other restraints hee will vouchsafe to visit me yet I must make my fuits to him at home at his owne house In cases of necessity Christ in the Sacrament vouchsafes to come home to me And the Court is where the King is his blessings are with his Ordinances wheresoever But the place to which he hath invited me is his house Hee that made the great Supper in the Gospel called in new guests but he sent out no meat to them who had been invited and might have come and came not Chamber-prayers single or with your family Chamber-Sermons Sermons read over there and Chamber-Sacraments administred in necessity there are blessed assistants and supplements they are as the almes at the gate but the feast is within they are as a cock of water without but the Cistern is within habenti dabitur he that hath a handfull of devotion at home shall have his devotion multiplyed to a Gomer here for when he is become a part of the Congregation he is joynt-tenant with them and the devotion of all the Congregation and the blessings upon all the Congregation are his blessings and his devotions He came to a holy place and he came by a holy motion by the Spirit In Spiritu saies his Evidence without holinesse no man shall see God not so well without holinesse of the place but not there neither if he trust onely to the holinesse of the place and bring no holinesse with him Betweene that fearefull occasion
is done sayes the Apostle So that here is the case if the naturall man say alas they are but dark notions of God which I have in nature if the Jew say alas they are but remote and ambiguous things which I have of Christ in the Prophets If the slack and historicall Christian say alas they are but generall things done for the whole world indifferently and not applyed to me which I reade in the Gospell to this naturall man to this Jew to this slack Christian we present an established Church a Church endowed with a power to open the wounds of Christ Jesus to receive every wounded soule to spread the balme of his blood upon every bleeding heart A Church that makes this generall Christ particular to every Christian that makes the Saviour of the world thy Saviour and my Saviour that offers the originall sinner Baptisme for that and the actuall sinner the body and blood of Christ Jesus for that a Church that mollifies and entenders and shivers the presumptuous sinner with denouncing the judgements of God and then consolidates and establishes the diffident soule with the promises of his Gospell a Church in contemplation whereof God may say Quid potui Vineae what could I doe more for my people then I have done first to send mine only Son to die for the whole world and then to spread a Church over the whole world by which that death of his might be life to every soule This we preach this we propose according to that commission put into our hands Ite praedicate Goe and preach the Gospell to every creature and yet Domine quis credidit Lord who hath beleeved our report In this then the Apostle and this Text places the inflexible the incorrigible stiffenesse of mans disobedience in this he seales up his inexcusablenesse his irrecoverablenesse first that he is not afraid of future judgements because they are remote then that he does not beleeve present judgements to be judgements because he can make shift to call them by a milder name accidents and not judgements and can assigne some naturall or morall or casuall reason for them But especially in this that he does not beleeve a perpetuall presence of Christ in his Church he does not beleeve an Ordinance of meanes by which all burdens of bodily infirmities of crosses in fortune of dejection of spirit and of the primary cause of all these that is sin it selfe may be taken off or made easie unto him he does not beleeve a Church Now as in our former part we were bound to know Gods hand and then bound to reade it to acknowledge a judgement to be a judgement and then to consider what God intended in that judgement so here we are bound to know the true Church and then to know what the true Church proposes to us The true Church is that where the word is truely preached and the Sacraments duly administred But it is the Word the Word inspired by the holy Ghost not Apocryphall not Decretall not Traditionall not Additionall supplements and it is the Sacraments Sacraments instituted by Christ himself and not those super-numerary sacraments those posthume post-nati sacramēts that have been multiplyed after and then that which the true Church proposes is all that is truly necessary to salvation and nothing but that in that quality as necessary So that Problematical points of which either side may be true in which neither side is fundamentally necessary to salvation those marginal interlineary notes that are not of the body of the text opinions raised out of singularity in some one man and then maintained out of partiality and affection to that man these problematicall things should not be called the Doctrine of the Church nor lay obligations upon mens consciences They should not disturb the general peace they should not extinguish particular charity towards one another The Act then that God requires of us is to beleeve so the words carry it in all the three places The Object the next the nearest Object of this Belief is made the Church that is to beleeve that God hath established means for the application of Christs death to all in all Christian Congregations All things are possible to him that beleeveth Mar. 9 23. saith our Saviour In the Word and Sacraments there is Salvation to every soule that beleeves there is so As on the other side we have from the same mouth and the same pen He that beleeveth not is damned Faith then being the root of all Mar. 16.16 and God having vouchsafed to plant this root this faith here in his terrestriall paradise and not in heaven in the manifest ministery of the Gospell and not in a secret and unrevealed purpose for faith comes by hearing and hearing by preaching which are things executed and transacted here in the Church be thou content with those meanes which God hath ordained and take thy faith in those meanes and beleeve it to be influxus suasorius that it is an influence from God but an influence that works in thee by way of perswasion and not of compulsion It convinces thee but it doth not constraine thee It is as S. Augustine sayes excellently Vocatio congrua it is the voice of God to thee but his voice then when thou art fit to heare and answer that voice not fitted by any exaltation of thine own naturall faculties before the cōming of grace nor fitted by a good husbanding of Gods former grace so as in rigor of justice to merit an increase of grace but fitted by his preventing his auxiliant his concomitant grace grace exhibited to thee at that time when he calls thee for so saies that Father Sic eum vocat quo modo seit ei congruere ut vocantē non respuat God calls him then when he knows he wil not resist his calling But he doth not say then when he cānot resist that needs not be said But as there is podus glcriae as the Apostle speaks an eternall weight of glory which mans understanding cannot cōprehend so there is Pondus gratiae a certain weight of grace that God layes upon that soule which shall be his under which that soule shall not easily bend it self any way from God This then is the summe of this whole Catechisme which these words in these three places doe constitute First that we be truely affected with Gods fore-warnings and say there Domine credo Lord I beleeve that report I beleeve that judgement to be denounced against my sin And then that we be duely affected with present changes and say there Domine credo Lord I beleeve that report I beleeve this judgement to come from thee and to be a letter of thy hand Lord enlighten others to interpret it aright for thy more publique glory and me for my particular reformation And then lastly to be sincerely and seriously affected with the Ordinances of his Church and to rest in them for the means of our salvation and to
qui jam invocamus te deliver us O Lord who do now call upon thee Et libera eos qui nondum invocant ut invocent te liberes eos and deliver them who do not yet call upon thee that they may call upon thee and be farther delivered by thee But it is time to passe from this first part the consideration of the Persons Ille Illis that God who is infinitely more then All would come to man who is infinitely lesse then nothing that God who is the God of peace would come to man his professed enemy that God the only Son of God would come to the reliefe of man of all men to our second generall part the action it self so far as it is enwrapped in this word Veni I came I came that they might have life Through this second part veni I came we must passe apace because upon the third 2 Part. the end of his comming that they might have life we must necessarily insist sometime In this therefore wee make but two steps And this the first that that God who is omnipresent alwayes every where in love to man studyed a new way of comming of communicating himselfe to man veni I came novo modo so as I was never with man before The rule is worth the repeating lex loquitur linguam filiorum hominum God speakes mans language that is so as that he would be understood by man Therefore to God who alwayes fills all places are there divers Positions and Motions and Transitions ascribed in Scriptures In divers places is God said to sit Sedet Rex The Lord sitteth King for ever Howsoever the Kings of the earth be troubled and raysed Psal 29.10 and throwne downe againe and troubled and raised and throwne downe by him yet the Lord sitteth King for ever Habitat in Coelis sayes David Psal 102.13 and yet sedet in circulis terrae sayes Esay The Lord dwelleth in the heavens and yet hee sits upon the compasse of this earth Where no earth-quake shakes his seat Esay 40.22 for sedet in confusione as one Translation reads that place Psal 29.10 The Lord sitteth upon the flood so wee reade it what confusions soever disorder the world what floods soever surround and overflow the world the Lord sits safe Other phrases there are of like denotation Esay 26.21 Exit de loco Behold the Lord commeth out of his place that is he produces and brings to light things which he kept secret before And so Revertar ad locum I will goe Hose 5.15 and returne to my place that is I will withdraw the light of my countenance my presence my providence from them So that heaven is his place and then is he said to come to us when he manifests himself unto us in any new manner of working In such a sense was God come to us when he said I lift up my hands to heaven and say I live for ever Deut. 52.40 Where was God when he lifted up his hands to heaven Here here upon earth with us in his Church for our assurance and our establishment making that protestation denoted in the lifting up of his hands to heaven that he lived for ever that he was the everliving God and that therefore we need feare nothing God is so omnipresent as that the Ubiquitary will needs have the body of God every where so omnipresent as that the Stancarist will needs have God not only to be in every thing but to be every thing that God is an Angelin an Angel and a stone in a stone and a straw in a straw But God is truly so omnipresent as that he is with us before he comes to us Qâ—id peto ut venias in me August qui non essem si non esses in me why doe I pray that thou wouldst come into me who could not only not pray but could not bee if thou wert not in me before But his comming in this Text is a new act of particular mercy and therefore a new way of comming What way by assuming our nature in the blessed Virgin That that Paradoxa virgo as Amelberga the wife of one of the Earls of Flanders who lived continently even in mariage and is therfore called Paradoxa virgo a Virgin beyond opinion that this most blessed Virgin Mary should not only have a Son for Manes the Patriarch of that great Sect of Heretiques the Manichees boasted himselfe to be the son of a Virgin and some casuists in the Romane Church have ventured to say that by the practice and intervention of the devill there may be a childe and yet both parents father and mother remain Virgins But that this Son of this blessed Virgin should also be the Son of the eternall God this is such a comming of him who was here before as that if it had not arisen in his own goodnesse no man would ever have thought of it no man might ever have wished or prayed for such a comming that the only Son of God should come to die for all the sons of men August For Aliud est hîc esse aliud hîc tibi esse It is one thing for God to be here in the world another thing to be come hither for thy sake born of a woman for thy salvation And this is the first act of his mercy wrapped up in this word Veni I came I who was alwayes present studied a new way of comming I who never went from thee came again to thee The other act of his mercy enwrapped in this word Veni actu veni I came is this that he that came to the old world but in promises and prophecies and figures is actually really personally and presentially come to us of which difference that man will have the best sense who languishes under the heavy expectation of a reversion in office or inheritance or hath felt the joy of comming to the actuall possession of such a reversion Christ was the Lamb slain from the beginning of the world appointed for a Sacrifice from that first promise of a Messias in Paradise long before that from all eternity For whensoever the election of the elect was date it when you will Christ was at that election and not only as the second person in the Trinity as God but Christ considered as man and as the propitiation and sacrifice for man for whosoever was elected was elected in Christ Christ was alwayes come in Gods purpose and early come in Gods promise and continually comming in the succession of the Prophets with such a confidence as that one of them sayes Esay 9.6 Puer datus filius natus A childe is given unto us a Son is born unto us Born and given already because the purpose of God in which he was born cannot be disappointed the promise of God by which he was given cannot be frustrated the Prophets of God by whom he was presented cannot be mistaken But yet
be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost yet we see out of the formes of the Heretiques themselves still so farre as they conceived the Godhead to extend so farre they extended Glory in that holy acclamation those who beleeved not the Son to be God or the Holy Ghost not to be God left out Glory when they came to their Persons but to him that is God in all confessions Glory appertains Now Glory is Clara cum laude notitia sayes S. Ambrose It is an evident knowledge and acknowledgement of God by which others come to know him too which acknowledgement is well called a recognition for it is a second a ruminated a reflected knowledge Beasts doe remember but they doe not remember that they remember they doe not reflect upon it which is that that constitutes memory Every carnall and naturall man knowes God but the acknowledgement the recognition the manifestation of the greatnesse and goodnesse of God accompanied with praise of him for that this appertaines to the godly man and this constitutes glory If God have delivered me from a sicknesse and I doe not glorifie him for that that is make others know his goodnesse to me my sicknesse is but changed to a spirituall apoplexy to a lethargy to a stupefaction If God have delivered us from destruction in the bowels of the Sea in an Invasion and from destruction in the bowels of the earth in the Powder-treason and we grow faint in the publication of our thanks for this deliverance our punishment is but aggravated for we shall be destroyed both for those old sins which induced those attempts of those destructions and for this later and greater sin of forgetting those deliverances God requires nothing else but he requires that Glory and Praise And that booke of the Scriptures of which S. Basil sayes That if all the other parts of Scripture could perish yet out of that booke alone we might have enough for all uses for Catechizing for Preaching for Disputing That whole Booke which containes all subjects that appertaine to Religion is called altogether Sepher Tehillim The Booke of praises for all our Religion is Praise And of that Book every particular Psalme is appointed by the Church and continued at least for a thousand and two hundred yeares to be shut up with that humble and glorious acclamation Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost O that men would therefore praise the Lord and declare the wonderfull works that he doth for the sons of men Nil quisquam debet nisi quod turpe est non reddere sayes the Law It is Turpe an infamous and ignominious thing not to pay debt And infamous and ignominious are heavy and reproachfull words in the Law and the Gospell would adde to that Turpe Impium It is not onely an infamous but an impious an irreligious thing not to pay debts As in debts the State and the Judge is my security they undertake I shall be paid or they execute Judgement so consider our selves as Christians God is my security and he will punish where I am defrauded Either thou owest God nothing And then if thou owe him nothing from whom or from what hath shestollen that face that is faire or he that estate that is rich or that office that commands others or that learning and those orders and commission that preaches to others or they their soules that understand me now If you owe nothing from whom had you all these all this Or if thou dost owe Turpe est Impium est It is an unworthy it is an unhonest it is an irreligious thing not to pay him in that money which his owne Spirit mints and coynes in thee and of his owne bullion too praise and thanksgiving Not to pay him then when he himselfe gives thee the money that must pay him the Spirit of Thankfulnesse falls under all the reproaches that Law or Gospell can inflict in any names How many men have we seene molder and crumble away great estates and yet pay no debts It is all our cases What Poems and what Orations we make how industrious and witty we are to over-praise men and never give God his due praise Nay how often is the Pulpit it selfe made the shop and the Theatre of praise upon present men and God left out How often is that called a Sermon that speakes more of Great men Psal 148.2 then of our great God Laudate eum omnes Augeli ejus laudate eum omnes virtutes ejus David calls upon the Angels and all the Host of Heaven to praise God and in the Romane Church they will employ willingly all their praise upon the Angels and the Host of Heaven it selfe and this is not reddere debitum here is mony enough spent but no debt paid praise enough given but not to the true God Ver. 10. Laudate eum ligna fructifera universa pecora volucres pennatae sayes David there David calls upon fruits and fowle and cattle to praise God and we praise and set forth our lands and fruits and fowle and cattle with all Hyperbolicall praises and this is not reddere debitum no paiment of a debt where it is due Laudate eum juvenes senes virgines sayes David too He calls upon old men and young men and virgins to praise the Lord and we spend all our praises upon young men which are growing up in favour or upon old men who have the government in their hands or upon maidens towards whom our affections have transported us and all this is no paiment of the debt of praise Laudate eum Reges terrae Principes omnes Iudices V. 11. He calls upon Kings and Judges and Magistrates to praise God and we employ all our praise upon the actions of those persons themselves Beloved God cannot be flattered he cannot be over-praised we can speake nothing Hyperbolically of God But he cannot be mocked neither He will not be told I have praised thee in praising thy creature which is thine Image would that discharge any of my debt to a Merchant to tell him that I had bestowed as much or more mony then my debt upon his picture Though Princes and Judges and Magistrates be pictures and Images of God though beauty and riches and honour and power and favour be in a proportion so too yet as I bought not that Merchants picture because it was his or for love of him but because it was a good peece and of a good Masters hand and a good house-ornament so though I spend my nights and dayes and thoughts and spirits and words and preaching and writing upon Princes and Judges and Magistrates and persons of estimation and their praise yet my intention determines in that use which I have of their favour and respects not the glory of God in them and when I have spent my selfe to the last farthing my lungs to the last breath my wit
to the last Metaphore my tongue to the last syllable I have not paid a farthing of my debt to God I have not praised him but I have praised them till not only my selfe but even they whom I have so mispraised are the worse in the sight of God for my over-praising I have flattered them and they have taken occasion by that to thinke that their faults are not discerned and so they have proceeded in them This is then our first debt to God glory and praise which is as we said out of S. Ambrose a manifestation of Gods blessing to us for it is not towards God as it is towards great persons under whom we have risen that we should be afraid to let the world know how rich we are lest they that raised us should borrow of us or draw us into bands for them God requires nothing but the glory the manifestation that by knowing what he hath done for thee others may know what to hope and what to pray for at his hands In our debts to God the noverint universi is the quietus est our publishing of them to his praise and glory is his acquittance and discharge for them Our other debt to God is Prayer for that also is due to him and him onely For Oratio August Si quod petendum est petis sed non à quo petendum est impius es If we direct our prayers to any even for temporall things as to the Authors of those benefits we may poure out as many prayers as would have paid that debt if they had been rightly placed but yet by such a paiment our debt is growne a debt of a higher nature a sin This is a circumstance nay an essentiall difference peculiar to our debts to God that we doe not pay them except we contract more we grow best out of debt by growing farther in debt by praying for more we pay our former debt Domus med Domus Orationis my house saies God is a house of prayer for this use and purpose he built himselfe a house upon earth He had praise and glory in heaven before but for Prayer he erected a house here his Church All the world is his Exchequer he gives in all from every creature from Heaven and Sea and Land and all the inhabitants of all them wereceive benefits But the Church is his Court of Requests there he receives our petitions there we receive his answers It is true that neither is that house onely for prayer nor prayer onely for that house Christ in his person consecrated that place the Temple by Preaching too And for prayer elsewhere Christ did much accustome himselfe to private prayer But in him who was truly Head of the Church the whole Church was Christ alone was a Congregation he was the Catholique Church But when we meet in Gods house though by occasion there be no Sermon yet if we meet to pray we pay our debt we doe our duty so doe we not if we meet at a Sermon without prayer The Church is the house of prayer so as that upon occasion preaching may be left out but never a house of preaching so as that Prayer may be left out And for the debt of prayer God will not be paid with money of our owne coyning with sudden extemporall inconsiderate prayer but with currant money that beares the Kings Image and inscription The Church of God by his Ordinance hath fet his stampe upon a Liturgie and Service for his house Audit Deus in corde cogitantis quod nec ipse audit qui cogitat sayes S. Bernard God heares the very first motions of a mans heart which that man till he proceed to a farther consideration doth not heare not feele not deprehend in himselfe That soule that is accustomed to direct her selfe to God upon every occasion that as a flowre at Sun-rising conceives a sense of God in every beame of his and spreads and dilates it selfe towards him in a thankfulnesse in every small blessing that he sheds upon her that soule that as a flowre at the Suns declining contracts and gathers in and shuts up her selfe as though she had received a blow when soever she heares her Saviour wounded by a oath or blasphemy or execration that soule who whatsoever string be strucken in her base or treble her high or her low estate is ever tun'd toward God that soule prayes sometimes when it does not know that it prayes I heare that man name God and aske him what said you and perchance he cannot tell but I remember that he casts forth some of those ejaculationes animae as S. August calls them some of those darts of a devout soule which though they have not particular deliberations and be not formall prayers yet they are the indicia pregnant evidences and blessed fruits of a religious custome much more is it true which S. Bernard saies there of them Deus audit God heares that voice of the heart which the heart it selfe heares not that is at first considers not Those occasionall and transitory prayers and those fixed and stationary prayers for which many times we binde our selves to private prayer at such a time are payments of this debt in such peeces and in such summes as God no doubt accepts at our hands But yet the solemne dayes of payment are the Sabbaths of the Lord and the place of this payment is the house of the Lord where as Tertullian expresses it Agmine facto we muster our forces together and besiege God that is not taking up every tatter'd fellow every sudden ragge or fragment of speech that rises from our tongue or our affections but mustering up those words which the Church hath levied for that service in the Confessions and Absolutions and Collects and Litanies of the Church we pay this debt and we receive our acquittance First we must be sure to pray where we may be sure to speed and onely God can give It is a strange thing saies Iustin Martyr to pray to Esculapius or to Apollo for health as Gods thereof Qui apud Chironem medicinā didicerunt when they who pray to them may know to whom those gods were beholden for all their medicines and of whom they learnt all their physick why should they not rather pray to their Masters then to them why should Apollo Chiroes scholar and not Chiro Apollo's Master be the god of physick why should I pray to S. George for victory when I may goe to the Lord of Hosts Almighty God himselfe or consult with a Seargeant or Corporall when I may goe to the Generall Or to another Saint for peace when I may goe to the Prince of peace Christ Jesus Why should I pray to Saint Nicolas for a faire passage at Sea when he that rebuked the storme is nearer me then S. Nicolas why should I pray to S. Antony for my hoggs when he that gave the devill leave to drowne the Gergesens whole heard of hoggs did not do that
in the grant But I am not here to deale upon affections but consciences and but so far upon them in this point as they finde themselves in a rectified and well examined conscience to have beene enemies to the publique by having defrauded that by any meanes of that which was truly due to it And to bring that into consideration which is little considered that as it is a greater sinne to defraud the publique then to defraud any private person so doth the assisting of the publique lay a greater obligation upon us then the assisting of any other by private almes The other debt from us to men Ceremonialis and of them to Superiours and of them principally to the Soveraigne we called ceremoniall And the Apostle in that which followes in this verse referres chiefely to that in those words Feare and Honour for it consists especially in those things wherein by outward reverence we contribute to the maintenance and upholding of the dignity of the Prince and of these outward ceremoniall things hath God alwaies professed himselfe to be most jealous And if I mistake not as I may easily doe in things so far removed out of my way when in your judiciall proceedings in criminall causes you make the greatest offences to be against the Crowne and Dignity in the first the Crowne you intend the essentiall part and in the other the Dignity the ceremoniall the Honour and Reverence and Reputation of the Prince God gave his very Essence to his Son he was very God of very God But when this Son of his became man that which God sayes in generall my Honour will I give to no man reaches so far to the Son of God himselfe as that the honour due to God is not to be given to the body not to the manhood of Christ Jesus himselfe How very great a part of the Law of God was ceremoniall and how very heavy punishments were ordained for the breakers even of those Ceremonies Colos 2.17 Melancton The Sabbaths themselves S. Paul puts amongst Ceremonies And that man who assisted the Reformation of Religion with as much learning and modesty as any defines the Commandment of the Sabbath well to be Morale praeceptum de Ceremoniali That though the Commandment be morall and binde all men for ever yet that which is commanded in that morall Commandement is in it selfe Ceremoniall for indeed all that which we call by the generall name of Religion as it is the outward worship of God is Ceremoniall and there is nothing more morall then that some ceremoniall things there must be Now as these Ceremoniall things are due to God himselfe so are they to them to whom God hath imparted his name in saying they are Gods Wee shall not read in any secular or prophane story of greater humility and reverence in subjects to their Princes then in the booke of God to the Kings there What phrases of abjecting themselves in respect of the Prince can exceed Davids humble expressing of himselfe to Saul Or Daniels magnifying the King when he cals him King of Kings And certainly some of the best and most religious of Christian Emperors tooke to themselves so great Titles in their stile as can be excused no other way but because their Predecessors had done so there lay a necessity upon them to keepe this ceremoniall respect and dignity at the same heighth because upon the Ceremoniall much of the Essentiall depends too And therefore God pierces to the roote to the heart when he forbids an irreverent or unrespective thought of the Prince Eccles 10.20 for saies he Those that have wings shall declare the matter God imployes so many Informers as Angels It is not an office unworthy of the Angels of Heaven much lesse of any other Angels of the Church no not though it be delivered by way of confession to discover any disloyall purposes though in other cases by our owne Canons that seale of Confession lay justly a strong obligation upon us and God gives Angels an ability a faculty which in their nature they have not that is to know thoughts for this purpose for the discovery of such irreverent and disloyall hearts Angels doe not know thoughts naturally yet to this purpose they shall know thoughts saies God Morall men should not discover the secrets of friends we should not discover the things we receive in confession but when it comes to matter of disloyalty all morall seales and all Ecclesiasticall seales lose their obligation The foote of this account the totall summe of this Ceremoniall debt to Superiors is that due respect be given to every man in his place for when young men thinke it the onely argument of a good spirit to behave themselves fellowly and frowardly to great persons those greater persons in time take away their respect from Princes and at last for in the chain of order every link depends upon one another God loses the respect and honour due to him private men lessen their respect of Magistrates and Magistrates of Princes and Princes and all of God And therefore that which S. Chrysostome sayes of the highest rank Non putes Christian a philosophiae dignitatem laedi reaches to all sorts Let no man think that he departs from the dignity of a Christian in attributing to every man that which appertains to the dignity of his place I speak not all this as though a man should lose the substance for the ceremony that that man whose place it is to advise and counsell should be so ceremonious with his superiour as to concurre with him in the allowance of all his errors Caput meum conquassatum est it is an expostulation of S. Bernards My head is bruised corrupted putrified he speakes it of his head his superiour a Bishop Et jam sanguine ebulliente putaverim esse tegendum now my head runs downe with blood can I think to cover it Quicquid apposuero cruentabitur whatsoever I lay to it will be bloody too if I dissemble or cover his faults his blood will fall upon me and I shall have part of his sins Every wife hath a superiour at home so hath every childe and every servant and every man a superjour some where in some respect that is in a spirituall respect for so not only the King but the highest spirituall person hath a superiour for absolution And to this superiour respectively every man owes a ceremoniall respect as a debt though this debt be not so far as to accompany him or to encourage him in his ill purposes for that is too high a ceremony and too transcendent a complement to be damned for his sake by concurring with my superiour in his sins And then they whose office it is to direct even their superiours by their counsell as that office may in cases belong to a wife to a childe to a servant as Iob professes it was in his family have also a ceremoniall duty in that duty which is to doe even
whole parishes whom thou hast depopulated thy soule may goe confidently home too if thou bribe God then with an Hospitall or a Fellowship in a Colledge or a Legacy to any pious use in apparance and in the eye of the world Pay thy selfe therefore this debt that is make up thine account all the way for when that voyce comes Luk. 16.2 Redde rationem Give up an account of thy Stewardship it is not goe home now and make up thy account perfect but now now deliver up thine account if it be perfect it is well if it be not here is no longer day for Iam non poteris villicare now thou canst be no lenger Steward Esay 38.1 now thou hast no more to doe with thy selfe Here the voyce is not in the word to Ezekiah Dispone domui put thy house in order for morieris thou shalt die For there God had a gracious purpose to give him a longer terme but here it is foole this night repetunt not they shall but they doe fetch away thy soule and then what is become of that To morrow which thou hadst imagined and promised to thy selfe for the paiment of this debt of this repentance Be just therefore to thy selfe all the way pay thy selfe and take acquittances of thy selfe all the way which is onely done under the seale and in the testimony of a rectified conscience Let thine owne conscience be thine evidence and thy Rolls and not the opinion of others Non tutum planè sed stultum ibi thesaurum tuum recondere ubi non vales resumere cum volueris sayes Saint Bernard It is not providently done to lock thy treasure in a chest of which thou hast no key and to which thou hast no accesse Si ponis in os meum jam non in tua sed mea potestate est ut te laudare vel tibi derogare possim If thou build thy reputation upon my report it is now in my power not in thine whether thou shalt be good or bad honourable or infamous Sanum vas inconcussum conscientia a good conscience is a sweet vessell and a strong Quicquid in ea reposueris servabit vivo defuncto restituet Whatsoever thou laiest up in that shall serve thee all thy life and after and that shall be thine acquittance and discharge atthy last paiment in manustuas when thou returnest thy spirit into his hands that gave it And then reddidisti debita omnibus thou shalt have rendred to all their dues when thou hast given the King Honour the poore almes thy selfe peace and God thy soule SERMON X. Preached upon Candlemas Day ROM 12.20 Therefore if thine enemy hunger feed him if he thirst give him drink for in so doing thou shalt heap coales of fire on his head IT falls out I know not how but I take it from the instinct of the Holy Ghost and from the Propheticall spirit residing in the Church of God that those Scriptures which are appointed to be read in the Church all these dayes for I take no other this Terme doe evermore afford and offer us Texts that direct us to patience as though these times had especial need of those instructions And truly so they have for though God have so farre spared us as yet as to give us no exercise of patience in any afflictions inflicted upon our selves yet as the heart akes if the head doe nay if the foote ake the heart akes too so all that professe the name of Christ Jesus aright making up but one body we are but dead members of that body if we be not affected with the distempers of the most remote parts thereof That man sayes but faintly that he is heart-whole that is macerated with the Gout or lacerated with the Stone It is not a heart but a stone growne into that forme that feeles no paine till the paine seize the very substance thereof How much and how often S. Paul delights himselfe with that sociable syllable Syn Con Conregnare and Convificare and Consedere of Raigning together 2 Tim. 2.12 Eph. 2.1 6. and living and quickning together As much also doth God delight in it from us when we expresse it in a Conformity and Compunction and Compassion and Condolency and as it is but a little before the Text in weeping with them that weepe Our patience therefore being actually exercised in the miseries of our brethren round about us and probably threatned in the aimes and plots of our adversaries upon us though I hunt not after them yet I decline not such Texts as may direct our thoughts upon duties of that kinde This Text does so for the circle of this Epistle of S. Paul this precious ring being made of that golden Doctrine That Justification is by faith and being enameled with that beautifull Doctrine of good works too in which enameled Ring as a precious stone in the midst thereof there is set the glorious Doctrine of our Election by Gods eternall Predestination our Text falls in that part which concernes obedience holy life good works which when both the Doctrines that of Justification by faith and that of Predestination have suffered controversie hath been by all sides embraced and accepted that there is no faith which the Angels in heaven or the Church upon earth or our own consciences can take knowledge of without good works Of which good works and the degrees of obedience of patience it is a great one and a hard one that is enjoyned in this Text for whereas S. Augustine observes sixe degrees sixe steps in our behaviour towards our enemies whereof the first is nolle laedere to be loth to hurt any man by way of provocation not to begin And a second nolle amplius quam laesus laedere That if another provoke him yet what power soever he have he would returne no more upon his enemy then his enemy had cast upon him he would not exceed in his revenge And a third velle minus not to doe so much as he suffered but in a lesse proportion onely to shew some sense of the injury And then another is nolle laedere licet laesus to returne no revenge at all though he have been provoked by an injury And a higher then that par atum se exhibere ut amplius laedatur to turne the other cheeke when he is smitten and open himselfe to farther injuries That which is in this Text is the sixt step and the highest of all laedenti benefacere to doe good to him of whom we have received evill If thine enemy hunger to feed him if he thirst to give him drinke for in so c. The Text is a building of stone and that bound in with barres of Iron Divisio fundamentall Doctrine in point of manners in it selfe and yet buttressed and established with reasons too therefore and for Therefore feed thine enemy For in so doing thou shalt heape coales This therefore confirmes the precedent Doctrine and this For confirmes
And even God himselfe who had that omni-sufficiency in himselfe conceived a conveniency for his glory to draw a Circumference about that Center Creatures about himselfe and to shed forth lines of love upon all them and not to love himselfe alone Selfe-love in man sinks deep but yet you see the Apostle in his order casts the other sin lower that is into a worse place To be without naturall affections S. Augustine extends these naturall affections to Religious affections because they are naturall to a supernaturall man to a regenerate man who naturally loves those that are of the houshold of the faithfull that professe the same truth of Religion and not to be affected with their distresses when Religion it selfe is distressed in them is impietie He extends these affections to Morall affections the love of Eminent and Heroicall vertues in any man we ought to be affected with the fall of such men And he extends them to civill affections the love of friends not to be moved in their behalfe is argument enough that we doe not much love them For our case in the Text These men whom Jesus found weeping and wept with them were none of his kindred They were Neighbours and Christ had had a conversation and contracted a friendship in that Family V. 5. He loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus saies the Storie and he would let the world see that he loved them for so the Jewes argued that saw him weepe V. 36. Behold how he loved them without outward declarations who can conclude an inward love to assure that Iesus wept To an inordinatenesse of affections it never came to a naturall tendernesse it did and so far as to teares Laerymae and then who needs be ashamed of weeping Look away far from me for I will weep bitterly sayes Hierusalem in Esay But look upon me sayes Christ in the Lamentations Behold and see if ever there were any sorrow any teares like mine Not like his in value but in the roote as they proceeded from naturall affection they were teares of imitation and we may we must weepe teares like his teares They scourged him they crowned him they nailed him they pierced him and then blood came but he shed teares voluntarily and without violence The blood came from their ill but the teares from his owne good nature The blood was drawne the teares were given We call it a childish thing to weepe and a womanish and perchance we meane worse in that then in the childish for therein we may meane falshood to be mingled with weaknesse Christ made it an argument of his being man to weepe for though the lineaments of mans bodie eyes and eares hands and feet be ascribed to God in the Scriptures though the affections of mans mind be ascribed to him even sorrow nay Repentance it selfe is attributed to God I doe not remember that ever God is said to have wept It is for man And when God shall come to that last Act in the glorifying of Man when he promises to wipe all teares from his eyes what shall God have to doe with that eye that never wept He wept out of a nuturall tendernesse in generall and he wept now out of a particular occasion What was that Quia mortuus because Lazarus was dead We stride over many steps at once waive many such considerable circumstances as these Lazarus his friend was dead therefore he wept Lazarus the staffe and sustentatio of that family was dead he upon whom his Sisters relied was dead therefore he wept But I stop onely upon this one step Quia mortuus that he was dead Now a good man is not the worse for dying that is true and capable of a good sense because he is established in a better world but yet when he is gone out of this world he is none of us he is no longer a man The stronger opinion in the Schoole is That Christ himselfe when he lay dead in the grave was no man Though the God head never departed from the Carcasse there was no divorce of that Hypostaticall union yet because the Humane soule was departed from it he was no man Hugo de S. Victor who thinks otherwise that Christ was a man then thinkes so upon a weak ground He thinkes that because the soule is the form of man the soul is man and that therefore the soul remaining the man remaines But it is not the soule but the union of the soul that makes the man The Master of the Sentences Peter Lombard that thinks so too that Christ was then a man thinkes so upon as weak a ground He thinkes that it is enough to constitute a man that there be a soul and body though that soul and body be not united but still it is the union that makes the man And therefore when he is disunited dead he is none of us he is no man and therefore we weep how well soever he be Abraham was loath to let go his wife though the King had her A man hath a naturall lothnesse to let go his friend though God take him to him S. Augustine sayes that he knew well enough that his mother was in heaven and S. Ambrose that he knew wel enough that his master Theodosius the emperor was in heaven but because they saw not in what state they were they thought that something might be asked at Gods hands in their behalf and so out of a humane and pious officiousnesse in a devotion perchance indigested uncocted and retaining yet some crudities some irresolutions they strayed into prayers for them after they were dead Lazarus his sisters made no doubt of their brothers salvation they beleeved his soul to be in a good estate And for his body they told Christ Lord we know that he shall rise at the last day And yet they wept Here in this world we who stay lack those who are gone out of it we know they shall never come to us and when we shall go to them whether we shall know them or no we dispute They who think that it conduces to the perfection of happinesse in heaven that we should know one another think piously if they think we shall For as for the maintenance of publique peace States and Churches may think diversly in points of Religion that are not fundamentall and yet both be true and Orthodoxall Churches so for the exaltation of private devotion in points that are not fundamentall divers men may think diversly and both be equally good Christians Whether we shall know them there or no is problematicall and equall that we shall not till then is dogmaticall and certain Therefore we weep I know there are Philosophers that will not let us weep nor lament the death of any And I know that in the Scriptures there are rules and that there are instructions convayed in that example that David left mourning as soon as the childe was dead And I know that there are Authors of a
trina immer sio that threefold dipping which was used in the Primitive Church in baptisme And in this baptisme thou takest a new Christian name thou who wast but a Christian art now a regenerate Christian and as Naaman the Leper came cleaner out of Jordan then he was before his leprosie for his flesh came as the flesh of a child so there shall be better evidence in this baptisme of thy repentance then in thy first baptisme better in thy self for then thou hadst no sense of thy own estate in this thou hast And thou shalt have better evidence from others too for howsoever some others will dispute whether all children which dye after Baptisme be certainly saved or no it never fell into doubt or disputation whether all that die truely repentant be saved or no. Weep these teares truly and God shall performe to thee first that promise which he makes in Esay The Lord shall wipe all teares from thy face Esay 25. all that are fallen by any occasion of calamity here in the militant Church and he shall performe that promise which he makes in the Revelation Revel 7.17 The Lord shall wipe all teares from thine eyes that is dry up the fountaine of teares remove all occasion of teares hereafter in the triumphant Church SERMON XVII Preached at VVhite-hall March 4. 1624. MAT. 19.17 And he said unto him Why callest thou me Good There is none Good but One that is God THat which God commanded by his Word to be done at some times that we should humble our soules by fasting the same God tommands by his Church to be done now In the Scriptures you have Praeceptum The thing it self What In the Church you have the Nunt The time When. The Scriptures are Gods Voyce The Church is his Eccho a redoubling a repeating of some particular syllables and accents of the same voice And as we harken with some earnestnesse and some admiration at an Eccho when perchance we doe not understand the voice that occasioned that Eccho so doe the obedient children of God apply themselves to the Eccho of his Church when perchance otherwise they would lesse understand the voice of God in his Scriptures if that voice were not so redoubled unto them This fasting then thus enjoyned by God for the generall in his Word and thus limited to this Time for the particular in his Church is indeed but a continuation of a great Feast Where the first course that which we begin to serve in now is Manna food of Angels plentifull frequent preaching but the second course is the very body and blood of Christ Jesus shed for us and given to us in that blessed Sacrament of which himselfe makes us worthy receivers at that time Now as the end of all bodily eating is Assimilation that after all other concoctions that meat may be made Idem corpus the same body that I am so the end of all spirituall eating is Assimilation too That after all Hearing and all Receiving I may be made Idem spiritus cum Domino the same spirit that my God is for though it be good to Heare good to Receive good to Meditate yet if we speake effectually and consummatively why call we these good there is nothing good but One that is Assimilation to God In which perfect and consummative sense Christ saies to this Man in this Text Why callest thou me good there is none good but one that is God The words are part of a Dialogue of a Conference betweene Christ Divisio and a man who proposed a question to him to whom Christ makes an answer by way of another question Why callest thou me good c. In the words and by occasion of them we consider the Text the Context and the Pretext Not as three equall parts of the Building but the Context as the situation and Prospect of the house The Pretext as the Accesse and entrance to the house And then the Text it selfe as the House it selfe as the body of the building In a word In the Text the Words In the Context the Occasion of the words In the Pretext the Pretence the purpose the disposition of him who gave the occasion We begin with the Context 1 Part. Context the situation the prospect how it stands how it is butted how it is bounded to what it relates with what it is connected And in that we are no farther curious but onely to note this that the Text stands in that Story where a man comes to Christ inquires the way to Heaven beleeves himselfe to be in that way already and when he heares of nothing but keeping the Commandements beleeves himselfe to be fargone in that way But when he is told also that there belongs to it a departing with his Riches his beloved Riches he breakes off the conference he separates himselfe from Christ for saies the Story This Man had great possessions And to this purpose to separate us from Christ the poorest amongst us hath great possessions He corners of the streets as well as he that sits upon carpets in the Region of perfumes he that is ground and trod to durt with obloquie and contempt as well as he that is built up every day a story and story higher with additions of Honour Every man hath some such possessions as possesse him some such affections as weigh downe Christ Jesus and separate him from Him rather then from those affections those possessions Scarce any sinner but comes sometimes to Christ in the language of the man in this Text Good Master what good thing shall I do that I may have eternall life And if Christ would go no farther with such men but to say to the Adulterer Do not thou give thy money to usury no more to the penurious Usurer but Do not thou wast thy selfe in superfluous and expensive feasting If Christ would proceed no farther but to say to the needy person that had no money Do not thou buy preferment or to the ambitious person that soares up after all Do not thou forsake thy selfe deject thy selfe undervalue thy selfe In all these cases the Adulterer and the Usurer The needy and the ambitious man would all say with the man in the Text All these things have we done from our youth But when Christ proceeds to a Vade vende to depart with their possessions that which they possesse that which possesses them this changes the case There are some sins so rooted so riveted in men so incorporated so consubstantiated in the soule by habituall custome as that those sins have contracted the nature of Ancient possessions As men call Manners by their names so sins have taken names from men and from places Simon Magus gave the name to a sin and so did gehazi and Sodom did so There are sins that run in Names in Families in Blood Hereditary sins entailed sins and men do almost prove their Gentry by those sins and are scarce beleeved to be rightly borne if
these houres they may heare if they will and till they doe heare they are dead Sin is the root of death the body of death and then it is the fruit of death August S. Augustine confesses of himselfe that he was Allisus intra parietes in celebritate solemnitatum tuarum that in great meetings upon solemne dayes in the Church there within the walls of Gods house Egit negotium procurandi fructus mortis he was not buying and selling doves but buying and selling soules by wanton lookes cheapning and making the bargaine of the fruits of death as himselfe expresses it Sin is the root and the tree and the fruit of death The mother of death death it selfe and the daughter of death and from this death this threefold death death past in our past sins present death in our present in sensiblenesse of sin future death in those sins with which sins God will punish our former and present sins if he proceed meerly in justice God affords us this first resurrection How Resurrectio Thus. Death is the Divorce of body and soule Resurrection is the Re-union of body and soule And in this spirituall death and resurrection which we consider now and which is all determined in the soule it selfe Grace is the soule of the soule and so the departing of grace is the death and the returning of grace is the resurrection of this sinfull soule But how By what way what meanes Consider Adam Adam was made to enjoy an immortality in his body He induced death upon himselfe And then as God having made Marriage for a remedy against uncleannesse intemperate men make even Marriage it selfe an occasion of more uncleannesse then if they had never married so man having induced and created death by sin God takes death and makes it a means of the glorifying of his body in heaven God did not induce death death was not in his purpose Cyril Alex. but veluti medium opportunum quo vas confractum rursus fingeretur As a means whereby a broken vessell might be made up againe God tooke death and made it serve for that purpose That men by the grave might be translated to heaven So then to the resurrection of the body there is an ordinary way The grave To the resurrection of the soule there is an ordinary way too The Church In the grave the body that must be there prepared for the last resurrection hath wormes that eat upon it In the Church the soule that comes to this first resurrection must have wormes The worme the sting the remorse the compunction of Conscience In those that have no part in this first resurrection the worme of conscience shall never die but gnaw on to desperation but those that have not this worme of conscience this remorse this compunction shall never live In the grave which is the furnace which ripens the body for the last resurrection there is a putrefaction of the body and an ill savour In the Church the wombe where my soule must be mellowed for this first resurrection my soul which hath the savour of death in it as it is leavened throughout with sin must stink in my nostrils and I come to a detestation of all those sins which have putrified her And I must not be afraid to accuse my selfe to condemne my selfe to humble my selfe lest I become a scorne to men Augusâ— Nemo me derideat ab eo medico aegrum sanari à quo sibi praestitum est ne aegrotaret Let no man despise me or wonder at me that I am so humbled under the hand of God or that I fly to God as to my Physitian when I am sick since the same God that hath recovered me as my Physitian when I was sick hath been his Physitian too and kept him from being sick who but for that Physitian had been as ill as I was At least he must be his Physitian if ever he come to be sick and come to know that he is sick and come to a right desire to be well Spirituall death was before bodily sinne before the wages of sin God hath provided a resurrection for both deaths but first for the first This is the first resurrection Reconciliation to God and the returning of the soule of our soule Grace in his Church by his Word and his seales there Now every repentance is not a resurrection It is rather a waking out of a dreame then a rising to a new life Nay it is rather a startling in our sleep then any awaking at all Ephes 5.14 Esay â—0 1 to have a sudden remorse a sudden flash and no constant perseverance Awake thou that sleepest sayes the Apostle out of the Prophet First awake come to a sense of thy state and then arise from the dead sayes he from the practise of dead works and then Christ shall give thee light life and strength to walk in new wayes It is a long work and hath many steps Awake arise and walke and therefore set out betimes At the last day in those which shall be found alive upon the earth we say there shall be a sudden death and a sudden resurrection In raptu in transitu in ictu oculi In an instant in the twinckling of an eye but do not thou trust to have this first Resurrection In raptu in transitu in ictu oculi In thy last passage upon thy death-bed when the twinckling of the eye must be the closing of thine eyes But as we assign to glorified bodies after the last Resurrection certaine Dotes as we call them in the Schoole certaine Endowments so labour thou to finde those endowments in thy soule here if thou beest come to this first Resurrection Amongst those Endowments we assigne Subtilitatem Agilitatem The glorified bodie is become more subtile more nimble not encumbred not disable for any motion that it would make So hath that soule which is come to this first Resurrection by grace a spirituall agility a holy nimblenesse in it that it can slide by tentations and passe through tentations and never be polluted follow a calling without taking infection by the ordinary tentations of that calling So have those glorified bodies Claritatem a brightnesse upon them from the face of God and so have these soules which are come to this first resurrection a sun in themselves an inherent light by which they can presently distinguish betweene action and action what must what may what must not bee done But of all the endowments of the glorified body we consider most Impassibilitatem That that body shall suffer nothing and is sure that it shall suffer nothing And that which answers that endowment of the body most in this soule that is come to this first resurrection is as the Apostle speaks That neither persecution sicknesse nor death Rom. 8. shall separate her from Christ Iesus In Heaven we doe not say that our bodies shall devest their mortality so as that naturally they could not dye
the Laver in the Tabernacle of the looking glasses of women Exod. 38.8 Scarce can you imagine a vainer thing except you will except the vaine lookers on in that action then the looking-glasses of women and yet Moses brought the looking-glasses of women to a religious use to shew them that came in the spots of dirt which they had taken by the way that they might wash themselves cleane before they passed any farther There is not so poore a creature but may be thy glasse to see God in The greatest slat glasse that can be made cannot represent any thing greater then it is If every gnat that flies were an Arch-angell all that could but tell me that there is a God and the poorest worme that creeps tells me that If I should aske the Basilisk how camest thou by those killing eyes he would tell me Thy God made me so And if I should aske the Slow-worme how camest thou to be without eyes he would tell me Thy God made me so The Cedar is no better a glasse to see God in then the Hyssope upon the wall all things that are are equally removed from being nothing and whatsoever hath any beeing is by that very beeing a glasse in which we see God who is the roote and the fountaine of all beeing The whole frame of nature is the Theatre the whole Volume of creatures is the glasse and the light of nature reason is our light which is another Circumstance Of those words Iohn 1.9 That was the true light Lux rationiâ— that lighteth every man that commeth into the World the slackest sense that they can admit gives light enough to see God by If we spare S. Chrysostomes sense That that light is the light of the Gospel and of Grace and that that light considered in it self and without opposition in us does enlighten that is would enlighten every man if that man did not wink at that light If we forbear S. Augustines sense That light enlightens every man that is every man that is enlightned is enlightned by that light If we take but S. Cyrils sense that this light is the light of naturall Reason which without all question enlightneth every man that comes into the world yet have we light enough to see God by that light in the Theatre of Nature and in the glasse of Creatures God affords no man the comfort the false comfort of Atheism He will not allow a pretending Atheist the power to flatter himself so far as seriously to thinke there is no God He must pull out his own eyes and see no creature before he can say he sees no God He must be no man and quench his reasonable soule before he can say to himselfe there is no God The difference betweene the Reason of man and the Instinct of the beast is this That the beast does but know but the man knows that he knows The bestiall Atheist will pretend that he knows there is no God but he cannot say that hee knows that he knows it for his knowledge will not stand the battery of an argument from another nor of a ratiocination from himselfe He dares not aske himselfe who is it that I pray to in a sudden danger if there be no God Nay he dares not aske who is it that I sweare by in a sudden passion if there be no God Whom do I tremble at and sweat under at midnight and whom do I curse by next morning if there be no God It is safely said in the Schoole Media perfecta ad quae ordinantur How weak soever those meanes which are ordained by God seeme to be and be indeed in themselves yet they are strong enough to those ends and purposes for which God ordained them And so for such a sight of God as we take the Apostle to intend here which is to see that there is a God The frame of Nature the whole World is our Theatre the book of Creatures is our Medium our glasse and naturall reason is light enough But then for the other degree the other notification of God which is The knowing of God though that also be first to be considered in this world the meanes is of a higher nature then served for the sight of God and yet whilst we are in this World it is but In aenigmate in an obscure Riddle a representation darkly and in part as we translate it As the glasse which we spoke of before was proposed to the sense Scientia Dei and so we might see God that is see that there is a God This anigma that is spoken of now this darke similitude and comparison is proposed to our faith and so far we know God that is Beleeve in God in this life but by aenigmaes by darke representations and allusions Therefore saies S. Augustine that Moses saw God in that conversation which he had with him in the Mount Sevocatus ab omni corporis sensu Removed from all benefit and assistance of bodily senses He needed not that Glasse the helpe of the Creature And more then so Ab omni significativo aenigmate Spiritus Removed from all allusions or similitudes or representations of God which might bring God to the understanding and so to the beliefe Moses knew God by a more immediate working then either sense or understanding or faith Therefore saies that Father Per speculum aenigma by this which the Apostle cals a glasse and this which he cals aenigma a dark representation Intelliguntur omnia accommodata ad notificandum Deum He understands all things by which God hath notified himselfe to man By the Glasse to his Reason by the aenigma to his faith And so for this knowing of God by way of Beleeving in him as for seeing him our Theatre was the world the Creature was our glasse and Reason was our light Our Academy to learne this knowledge is the Church our Medium is the Ordinance and Institution of Christ in his Church and our light is the light of faith in the application of those Ordinances in that Church This place then where we take our degrees in this knowledge of God our Academy our University for that Academia Ecclesia is the Church for though as there may be some few examples given of men that have growne learned who never studied at University so there may be some examples of men enlightned by God and yet not within that covenant which constitutes the Church yet the ordinary place for Degrees is the University and the ordinary place for Illumination in the knowledge of God is the Church There fore did God who ever intended to have his Kingdome of Heaven well peopled so powerfully so miraculously enlarge his way to it The Church that it prospered as a wood which no felling no stubbing could destroy We finde in the Acts of the Church five thousand Martyrs executed in a day Acts 4.4 And we finde in the Acts of the Apostles five thousand brought
walk by faith and not by sight we are absent from the Lord. 2 Cor. 5.6 Faith is a blessed presence but compared with heavenly vision it is but an absence though it create and constitute in us a possibility a probability a kinde of certainty of salvation yet that faith which the best Christian hath is not so far beyond that sight of God which the naturall man hath as that sight of God which I shall have in heaven is above that faith which we have now in the highest exaltation Therefore there belongs a consideration to that which is added by our Apostle here That the knowledge which I have of God here even by faith through the ordinances of the Church is but a knowledge in part Now I know in part That which we call in part the Syriack translates Modicum ex multis Ex parte Though we know by faith yet for all that faith it is but a little of a great deale that we know yet because though faith be good evidence yet faith is but the evidence of things not seen Heb. 11.1 And there is better evidence of them when they are seen For if we consider the object we cannot beleeve so much of God nor of our happinesse in him as we shall see then For when it is said that the heart comprehends it not certainly faith comprehends it not neither And if we consider the manner faith it self is but darknesse in respect of the vision of God in heaven For those words of the Prophet I will search Ierusalem with Candles are spoken of the times of the Christian Church Zeph. 1.12 and of the best men in the Christian Church yet they shall be searched with Candles some darknesse shall be found in them To the Galatians well instructed and well established Gal. 4.9 the Apostle sayes Now after ye have knowen God or rather are knowen of God The best knowledge that we have of God here even by faith is rather that he knows us then that we know him And in this Text it is in his own person that the Apostle puts the instance Now I I an Apostle taught by Christ himselfe know but in part And therefore as S. Augustine saith Sunt quasi cunabula charitatis Dei quibus diligimus proximum The love which we beare to our neighbour is but as the Infancy but as the Cradle of that love which we beare to God so that sight of God which we have In speculo in the Glasse that is in nature is but Cunabula fidei but the infancy but the cradle of that knowledge which we have in faith and yet that knowledge which we have in faith is but Cunabula visionis the infancy and cradle of that knowledge which we shall have when we come to see God face to face Faith is infinitely above nature infinitely above works even above those works which faith it self produces as parents are to children the tree to the fruit But yet faith is as much below vision and seeing God face to face And therefore though we ascribe willingly to faith more then we can expresse yet let no man think himself so infallibly safe because he finds that he beleeves in God as he shall be when he sees God The faithfullest man in the Church must say Domine adauge Lord increase my faith He that is least in the kingdome of heaven shal never be put to that All the world is but Speculum a glasse in which we see God The Church it self and that which the Ordinance of the Church begets in us faith it self is but aenigma a dark representation of God to us till we come to that state To see God face to face and to know as also we are knowen Now Calum Sphaera as for the sight of God here our Theatre was the world our Medium and glasse was the creature and our light was reason And then for our knowledge of God here our Academy was the Church our Medium the Ordinances of the Church and our Light the light of faith so we consider the same Termes first for the sight of God and then for the knowledge of God in the next life First the Sphear the place where we shall see him is heaven He that asks me what heaven is meanes not to heare me but to silence me He knows I cannot tell him When I meet him there I shall be able to tell him and then he will be as able to tell me yet then we shall be but able to tell one another This this that we enjoy is heaven but the tongues of Angels the tongues of glorified Saints shall not be able to expresse what that heaven is for even in heaven our faculties shall be finite Heaven is not a place that was created for all place that was created shall be dissolved God did not plant a Paradise for himself and remove to that as he planted a Paradise for Adam and removed him to that But God is still where he was before the world was made And in that place where there are more Suns then there are Stars in the Firmament for all the Saints are Suns And more light in another Sun The Sun of righteousnesse the Son of Glory the Son of God then in all them in that illustration that emanation that effusion of beams of glory which began not to shine 6000. yeares ago but 6000. millions of millions ago had been 6000. millions of millions before that in those eternall in those uncreated heavens shall we see God This is our Spheare Medium Revelatio sui and that which we are fain to call our place and then our Medium our way to see him is Patefactio sui Gods laying himself open his manifestation his revelation his evisceration and embowelling of himselfe to us there Doth God never afford this patefaction this manifestation of himself in his Essence to any in this life We cannot answer yea nor no without offending a great part in the Schoole so many affirm so many deny that God hath been seen in his Essence in this life There are that say That it is fere de fide little lesse then an article of faith that it hath been done And Aquinas denies it so absolutely as that his Followers interpret him de absoluta potentia That God by his absolute power cannot make a man remaining a mortall man and under the definition of a mortall man capable of seeing his Essence as we may truly say that God cannot make a beast remaining in that nature capable of grace or glory S. Augustine speaking of discourses that passed between his mother and him not long before her death sayes Perambulavimus cuncta mortalia ipsum coelum We talked our selves above this earth and above all the heavens Venimus in mentes nostras transcendimus eas We came to the consideration of our owne mindes and our owne soules and we got above our own soules that is to
is risen indeed risen of himself as the word sounds yet that phrase and expression He is risen if there were no more in it but that expression and that phrase would not conclude Christs rising to have been in virtute propria in his own power For of Dorcas who was raised from the dead Aâ—â— 9 4◠〈◊〉 11. it is said Resedit she sate up and of Lazarus Prodiit he came forth and yet these actions thus ascribed to themselves were done in virtute aliena in the power of another Christs Resurrection was not so In virtute aliena in the power of another if you consider his whole person God and Man but it was aliena à filio Mariae Christ as the Son of Mary rose not by his own power It was by his own but his own because he was God as well as man Nor could all the Magick in the world have raised him sooner then by that his power his as God he that is that person God and man was pleased to rise So sits he now at the right hand of his Father in heaven nor can all the Consecrations of the Romane Priests either remove him from thence or multiply him to a bodily being any where else till his time of comming to Judgment come Then and not till then The Lord himself shall descend from heaven in clamore sayes the Text in a shout with the voyce of the Arch-angell and with the Trumpet of God which circumstances constitute our third and last Branch of this first Part The dead shall rise first They shall rise in the power of Christ therefore Christ is God for Christ himself rose in the power of God and that power shall be thus declared In a shout in the voyce of the Arch-Angell in the Trumpet of God The dead heare not Thunder nor feele they an Earth quake In clamore If the Canon batter that Church walls in which they lye buryed it wakes not them nor does it shake or affect them if that dust which they are be thrown out but yet there is a voyce which the dead shall heare The dead shall heare the voyce of the Son of God Iohn 5.25 sayes the Son of God himself and they that heare shall live And that is the voyce of our Text. It is here called a clamour a vociferation a shout and varied by our Translators and Expositors according to the origination of the word to be clamor hortatorius and suasorius and jussorins A voyce that carries with it a penetration all shall heare it and a perswasion all shall beleeve it and be glad of it and a power a command all shall obey it Since that voyce at the Creation Fiat Let there be a world was never heard such a voyce as this Surgite mortui Arise ye dead That was spoken to that that was meerely nothing and this to them who in themselves shall have no cooperation no concurrence to the hearing or answering this voyce The power of this voyce is exalted in that it is said to be the voyce of the Archangel In voce Archangeli Though legions of Angels millions of Angels shall be employed about the Resurrection to recollect their scattered dust and recompact their ruined bodies yet those bodies so recompact shall not be able to heare a voyce They shall be then but such bodies as they were when they were laid downe in the grave when though they were intire bodies they could not heare the voice of the mourner But this voyce of the Archangel shall enable them to heare The Archangel shall re-infuse the severall soules into their bodies and so they shall heare that voyce Surgite mortui Arise ye that were dead and they shall arise And here we are eased of that disputation whether there be many Archangels or no for if there be but one yet this in our text is he for it is not said In the voyce of An Archangell but of The Archangell if not the Onely yet he who comprehends them all Colos 1.16 and in whom they all consist Christ Jesus And then the power of this voyce is exalted to the highest in the last word that it is Tuba Dei Tuba Dei The Trumpet of God For that is an Hebraisme and in that language it constitutes a superlative to adde the name of God to any thing As in Sauls case when David surprised him in his dead sleepe it is said that Sopor Domini 2 Sam. 26.12 The sleepe of the Lord was upon him that is the heaviest the deadest sleepe that could be imagined so here The Trumpet of God is the loudest voice that we conceive God to speake in All these pieces that it is In clamore In a cry in a shout that it is In the voyce of the Archangell that it is In the Trumpet of God make up this Conclusion That all Resurrections from the dead must be from the voice of God and from his loud voice In clamore It must be so even in thy first Resurrection thy resurrection from sin by grace here here thou needest the voice of God and his loud voyce And therefore though thou thinke thou heare sometimes Gods sibilations as the Prophet Zechary speaks Gods soft and whispering voyce in ward remorses of thine owne and motions of the Spirit of God to thy spirit yet thinke not thy spirituall resurrection accomplished till in this place thou heare his loud voyce Till thou heare Christ descending from Heaven as the text sayes that is working in his Church Till thou heare him In clamore in this cry in this shout in this voyce of Penetration of perswasion of power that is till thou feele in thy selfe in this place a liquefaction a colliquation a melting of thy bowels under the commination of the Judgements of God upon thy sin and the application of his mercy to thy Repentance And then In voce Archangeli this thou must heare In voce Archangeli In the voice of the Archangel S. Iohn in the beginning of the Revelation cals every Governour of a Church an Angel And much respect and reverence much faith and credit behoves it thee to give to thine Angell to the Pastour of that Church in which God hath given thee thy station for he is thine Angel Mal. 2.7 thy Tutelar thy guardian Angell Men should seeke the Law at the mouth of the Priest saies God in Malachi of that Priest that is set over him For the lips of the Priest of every Priest to whom the soules of others are committed should preserve knowledge should be able to instruct and rectifie his flock Quia Angelus Domini Exercituum because every such Priest is the Angell of the Lord of Hosts Hearken thou therefore to that Angel thine Angel But here thou art directed above thine Angell to the Archangell Acts 20.28 Ephes 5.23 Now not the governour of any particular Church but he Who hath purchased the whole Church with his blood
committed their first sin to the time that they were cast down into hell they whom we call the more subtile part of the Schoole say That In illa moâ—â— la during that space between their falling into their sin and their expulsion from heaven the Angels might have repented and been restored for so long say they those Angels were but in statu viatorum in the state and condition of persons as yet upon their way as all men are as long as they are alive and not In termino in their last and determined station And that which is so often cited out of Damascen concerning the fall of Angels Quod hominibus mors est Angelis casus That as death works upon man and concludes him and makes him impenitible for ever so works the fall upon the Angels and concludes them for ever too they interpret to have been intended by Damascen not of the Angels fall in heaven but their fall from heaven for till then they were not say they Intermino in their last state and so not impenitible Apoc. 12.7 And those Ancients which expound that battle in heaven between Michael and the Dragon and their severall Angels to have been fought at that time after their fall and between Lucifers rebellion and his expulsion as the Ancients abound much in that sense of that place argue rationally That that battle what kinde of battle soever it were must necessarily have spent some time They conceive it to have been a battle of Disputation of Argumentation of Perswasion and that those good Angels which are so glad of our Conversion would have been infinitely glad to have reduced their rebellious brethren to their obedience And during that time which could not be a sudden instant they were not Inadeptivi gratiae Hiesolom incapable of repentance and of mercy S. Cyril comes towards it comes neare it nay if it be well observed goes beyond it Of Gods longanimity and patience toward man sayes he we have in part spoken Quanta ille Angelis condonaverit nescimus how great transgressions he hath forgiven in the Angels we know not only this we know sayes he Solus qui peccdre non possit Iesus est There is none impeccable none that cannot sin Man nor Angel but only Christ Jesus Nay after the expulsion of the Angels Angels lapsi in Infernum not onely after their fall in Heaven but their fall from Heaven many of the Ancients seeme loath to exclude all wayes of Gods mercy even from hell it selfe De statu moti sed non irremediabiliter moti saies Origen The Angels are fallen fallen even into hell but not so irrecoverably fallen Vt Institutionibus bonorum Angelorum non possint restitui But that by the counsaile and labour of the good Angels they may be restored againe Origen is thought to be single singular in this doctrine Eph. 3.10 but he is not Even S. Ambrose interpreting that place That S. Paul saies He was made a Minister of the Gospel Vt innotesceret to the intent that the wisdome of God might by the Church be made knowne to Powers and Principalities interprets it of fallen Angels That they the fallen Angels might receive benefit by the preaching of the Gospell in the Church Prudentius saies not so but this he does say That upon this day when our blessed Saviour arose from hell Poenarum celebres sub Styge feriae And Suppliciis mitibus Nee forvent solito flumina sulphure Some relaxation some ease in their torments at some time some very good men have imagined even in hell And more then that they have not absolutely cryed downe for so much it deserves that fable of Traian That after that Emperour had beene some time in hell yet upon the prayers of Pope Gregory he was removed to Heaven 〈…〉 Nay more then that for that was but of one man But an Author of our age and much esteemed in the Roman Church delivers as his owne opinion and thinks he hath the subtiler part of the Schoole on his side That that which is so often said from hell there is no redemption is only to be understood of them whom God sends to hell as to their last place to them certainely there is no redemption But saies he God may send soules of the heathen who had not the benefit of any Christian Church and yet were good morall men to burne out certaine errors or ignorances or sins in hell and then remove them to Heaven for for so long time they are but Viatores they are but in their way and not concluded Beloved that we might have something in the balance to weigh downe the curelty and the petulancy and the pertinacy of those men who in these later times have so attenuated the mercy of God as that they have almost brought it to nothing for there is no mercy where there is no misery and they place all mercy to have beene given at once and that before man was fallen into misery by sin or before man was made and have pronounced that God never meant to shew mercy to all them nor but to a very few of them to whom he pretended to offer it that we might have something in the balance to weigh against these unmercifull men I have staid thus long upon these over-mercifull men that have carried mercy upon the Saints of God in temporall abundances after the Resurrection and upon the Heathen who never heard Gospell preached and upon the Angels fallen in Heaven and upon those Angels fallen from Heaven into hell and upon the soules of men there not onely in the ease of their torments but in their translation from thence to Heaven That so our later men might see that the Ancients thought God so far from beginning at Hate That God should first for his glory hate some and then make them that he might execute his hate upon them as that they thought god implacable inexorable irreconciliable to none therfore to these unmercifull have we opposed these overmercifull men But yet to them wee must say Numquid Deus indiget mendacio vestro Iob 13.7 ut pro eo Ioquamini dolos Shall wee lye for God or speake deceitfully for him deceive your soules with over-extending his mercy wee may derive mercy from hell though wee carry not mercy to hell Gehenna non solum eorum qui puniendi causa facta Origen sed eorum qui salvandi Hell was not onely made for their sakes who were to suffer in it but for theirs who were to be warned by it and so there is mercy in hell Cooperatur regno saies S. Chrysostome elegantly Hell hath a co-operation with Heaven Chrysost It works upon us in the advancement of our Salvation as well as Heaven Nec saevitiaeres est sed misericordiae Hell is not a monument of Gods cruelty but of his mercy Et nisi fuisset intentata gehenna in gehennam omnes cecidissemus If we were not told of hell we
concealing which were the pieces that constitute our first Part in the second Part which is the time when this Legacy accrues to us is to be given us In die illo at that day At that day shall yee know c. It is the illumination the illustration of our hearts and therefore well referred to the Day The word it selfe affords cheerefulnesse For when God inflicted that great plague to kill all the first-borne in Aegypt Exod. 12. Luke 20. that was done at Midnight And when God would intimate both deaths at once spirituall and temporall he sayes O foole this night they will fetch away thy soule Against all supply of knowledge he cals him foole and against all sense of comfort in the day he threatens night It was In die Illo and In die illo in the day and at a certaine day and at a short day For after Christ had made his Will at this supper given strength to his Will by his death and proved his Will by his Resurrection and left the Church possest of his estate by his Ascension within ten dayes after that he poured out this Legacy of knowledge For though some take this day mentioned in the Text Calvin to be Tanqnam unius diei tenor à dato Spiritu ad Resurrectionem from the first giving of the Holy Ghost to the Resurrection And others take this day Osiand to bee from his Resurrection to the end of his second Conversation upon earth till his Ascension and S. Augustine referre it Ad perfectam visionem in Coelis to the perfect fruition of the sight of God in Heaven yet the most usefull and best followed acceptation is This Day of the comming of the Holy Ghost That day we celebrate this day and we can never finde the Christian Church so farre as we can judge by the evidence of Story to have been without this festivall day The reason of all Festivals in the Church was and is Ne volumine temporum ingrata subrepat oblivio August Lest after many ages involved and wrapped up in one another Gods particular benefits should bee involved and wrapped up in unthankfulnesse And the benefits received this day were such as should never be forgotten for without this day all the rest had been evacuated and uneffectuall If the Apostles by the comming of the Holy Ghost had not been established in an infallibility in themselves and in an ability to deale with all Nations by the benefit of tongues the benefit of Christs passion had not been derived upon all Nations And therefore to This day and to Easter-day all publike Baptismes in the Primitive Church were reserved None were baptized except in cases of necessity but upon one of these two dayes for as there is an Exaltation a Resurrection given us in Baptisme represented by Easter so there belongs to us a confirmation an establishing of grace and the increase thereof represented in Pentecost in the comming of the Holy Ghost As the Jews had an Easter in the memory of their deliverance from Aegypt and a Pentecost in the memory of the Law given at Mout Sinai So at Easter we celebrate the memory of that glorious Passeover when Christ passed from the grave and hell in his Resurrection and at this Feast of Pentecost we celebrate his giving of the Law to all Nations and his investing and possessing himselfe of his Kingdome the Church for this is Festum Adoptionis as S. Chrysostome cals it The cheerefull feast of our Adoption in which the Holy Ghost convaying the Son of God to us enables us to be the Sons of God and to cry Abba Father This then is that day Acts 2. when the Apostles being with one accord and in one place that is in one faith and in one profession of that faith not onely without Heresie but without Schisme too the Holy Ghost as a mighty winde filled them all and gave them utterance As a winde to note a powerfull working And he filled them to note the abundance And he gave them utterance to inferre that which we spoke of before The Communication of that knowledge which they had received to others This was that Spirit whom it concerned the Apostles so much to have as that Christ himselfe must goe from them to send him to them If I goe not away sayes Christ the Comforter will not come to you How great a comfort must this necessarily be which must so abundantly recompence the losse of such a comfort as the presence of Christ was This is that Spirit who though hee were to be sent by the Father and sent by the Son yet he comes not as a Messenger from a Superiour for hee was alwaies equall to Father and Son But the Father sent him and the Son sent him as a tree sends forth blossomes and as those blossomes send forth a sweet smell and as the Sun sends forth beames by an emanation from it selfe He is Spiritus quem nemo interpretari potest sayes S. Chrysostome hee hath him not that doth not see he hath him nor is any man without him who in a rectified conscience thinks he hath him Illo Prophetae illustrantur Illo idiotae condiuntur sayes the same Father The Prophets as high as their calling was saw nothing without this Spirit and with this Spirit a simple man understands the Prophets And therefore doth S. Basil attribute that to the Holy Ghost which seemes to be peculiar to the Son he cals him Verbum Dei because sayes he Spiritus interpres Filii sicut Filius Patris As the Son hath revealed to us the will of the Father and so is the Word of God to us so the Holy Ghost applies the promises and the merits of the Son to us and so is the Word of God to us too and enables us to come to God in that voyce of his blessed Servant S. Augustine O Deus secretissime patentissime Though nothing be more mysterious then the knowledge of God in the Trinity yet nothing is more manifest unto us then by the light of this person the Holy Ghost so much of both the other Persons as is necessary for our Salvation is Now it is not onely to the Apostles that the Holy Ghost is descended this day but as S. Chrysostom saies of the Annunciation Non ad unam tantùm animam It is not onely to one Person that the Angel said then The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee and overshadow thee but sayes he that Holy Ghost hath said Super omnem Ioel 2. I will poure out my selfe upon all men so I say of this day This day if you be all in this place concentred united here in one Faith and one Religion If you be of one accord that is in perfect charity The Holy Ghost shall fill you all according to your measure and his purpose and give you utterance in your lives and conversations Qui ita vacat orationibus Origen ut dignus fiat illo
Church of God celebrates this day the third Person of the Holy Blessed and Glorious Trinity The Holy Ghost The Holy Ghost is the God the Spirit of Comfort A Comforter not one amongst others but the Comforter not the principall but the intire the onely Comforter and more then all that The Comfort it selfe That is an attribute of the Holy Ghost Comfort And then the office of the Holy Ghost is to gather to establish to illumine to governe that Church which the Son of God from whom together with the Father the Holy Ghost proceeds hath purchased with his blood So that as the Holy Ghost is the Comforter so is this Comfort exhibited by him to us and exercised by him upon us in this especially that he hath gathered us established us illumined us and does governe us as members of that body of which Christ Jesus is the Head that he hath brought us and bred us and fed us with the meanes of salvation in his application of the merits of Christ to our soules in the Ordinances of the Church In this Text is the first mention of this Third Person of the Trinity And it is the first mention of any distinct Person in the God-head In the first verse there is an intimation of the Trinity in that Bara Elohim That Gods Gods in the plurall are said to have made heaven and earth And then as the Church after having celebrated the memory of All Saints together in that one day which we call All Saints day begins in the celebration of particular Saints first with Saint Andrew who first of any applied himself to Christ out of Saint Iohn Baptists Schoole after Christs Baptisme so Moses having given us an intimation of God and the three Persons altogether in that Bara Eloim before gives us first notice of this Person the Holy Ghost in particular because he applies to us the Mercies of the Father and the Merits of the Son and moves upon the face of the waters and actuates and fecundates our soules and generates that knowledge and that comfort which we have in the knowledge of God Now the moving of the Holy Ghost upon the face of the waters in this Text cannot be literally understood of his working upon man for man was not yet made but when man is made that is made the man of God in Christ there in that new Creation the Holy Ghost begins again with a new moving upon the face of the waters in the Sacrament of Baptisme which is the Conception of a Christian in the wombe of the Church Therefore we shall consider these words And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters first literally in the first and then spiritually in the second Creation first how the Holy Ghost moved upon the face of the Waters in making this world for us And then how he moves upon the face of the Waters againe in making us for the other world In which two severall parts we shall consider these three termes in our Text both in the Macrocosme and Microcosme the Great and the Lesser world man extended in the world and the world contracted and abridged into man first Quid Spiritus Dei what this Power or this Person which is here called the Spirit of God is for whether it be a Power or a Person hath been diversly disputed And secondly Quid ferebatur what this Action which is here called a Moving was for whether a Motion or a Rest an Agitation or an Incubation of that Power or that Person hath been disputed too And lastly Quid super faciem aquarum what the subject of this Action the face of the waters was for whether it were a stirring and an awakening of a power that was naturally in those waters to produce creatures or whether it were an infusing a new power which till then those waters had not hath likewise beene disputed And in these three the Person the Action the Subject considered twice over in the Creation first and in our regeneration in the Christian Church after we shall determine all that is necessary for the literall and for the spirituall sense of these words And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters First then 1 Part. Aug Con. 11.2 undertaking the consideration of the literall sense and after of the spirituall we joyne with S. Augustine Sint castae deliciae meae Scripturae tuae Lord I love to be conversant in thy Scriptures let my conversation with thy Scriptures be a chast conversation that I discover no nakednesse therein offer not to touch any thing in thy Scriptures but that that thou hast vouchsafed to unmask and manifest unto me Nec fallar in eis nec fallam ex eis Lord let not me mistake the meaning of thy Scriptures nor mis-lead others Ibid. by imputing a false sense to them Non frustra scribuntur sayes he Lord thou hast writ nothing to no purpose thou wouldst be understood in all But not in all by all men at all times Confiteor tibi quicquid invenero in libris tuis Lord I acknowledge that I receive from thee whatsoever I understand in thy word for else I doe not understand it This that blessed Father meditates upon the word of God he speakes of this beginning of the Book of Genesis and he speaks lamenting Scripsit Moses abiit a little Moses hath said C. 3. and alas he is gone Si hic esset tonerem eum per te rogarem If Moses were here I would hold him here and begge of him for thy sake to tell me thy meaning in his words of this Creation But sayes he since I cannot speake with Moses Te quo plenus vera dixit Veritas rogo I begge of thee who art Truth it selfe as thou enabledst him to utter it enable me to understand what he hath said So difficult a thing seemed it to that intelligent Father to understand this history this mystery of the Creation But yet though he found that divers senses offered themselves he did not doubt of finding the Truth C. 18. For Deus meus lumen oculorum meorum in occulto sayes he O my God the light of mine eyes in this dark inquisition since divers senses arise out of these words and all true Quid mihi obest si alindego sensero quam sensit alius eum sensisse qui scripsit What hurt followes though I follow another sense then some other man takes to be Moses sense for his may be a true fense and so may mine and neither be Moses his C. 30. Hee passes from prayer and protestation to counsell and direction In diversitate sententiarum verarum concordiam pariat ipsa veritas Where divers senses arise and all true that is that none of them oppose the truth let truth agree them But what is Truth God And what is God Charity Therefore let Charity reconcile such differences 1.12 C. 30. Legitimè lege ut amur sayes he let us
therefore proposed it to the Senate that so that honour which Jesus should have might bee derived from him And when the Senate had an inclination of themselves to have done Christ that honour but yet forbore it because the intimation came not from themselves but from the Emperour who still wrought and gained upon their priviledges neither of these though they meant collaterally and obliquely to doe Christ an honour neither of them did say Iesum Dominum that is professe Jesus so as is intended here for they had their owne ends and their own honors principally in Contemplation There is first an open profession of the tongue required And therefore the Holy Ghost descended in fiery tongues Et lingua propria Spiritui Sancto sayes S. Gregory The tongue is the fittest Instrument for the Holy Ghost to worke upon and to worke by Qui magnam habet cognationem cum Verbo sayes he The Son of God is the Word and the Holy Ghost proceeds from him And because that faith that unites us to God is expressed in the tongue howsoever the heart be the center in which the Holy Ghost rests the tongue is the Spheare in which he moves And therefore sayes S. Cyril as God set the Cherubim with a fiery sword to keep us out of Paradise so he hath set the Holy Ghost in fiery tongues to let us in againe As long as Iohn Baptist was unborne Zachary was dumbe when hee was borne Zachary spoke Christ is not borne in us we are not regenerate in him if we delight not to speake of his wondrous mercyes and infinite goodnesse to the sons of men as soone as he is borne in us his Spirit speakes in us and by us in which our first profession is Iesum esse That Jesus is That there is a Jesus This is to professe with Esay Iesus Esay 4.2 That he is Germen Iehovae The Bud of the Lord The Blossome of God himselfe for this Profession is a two-edged sword for it wounds the Arians on one side That Jesus is Jehovah because that is the name that signifies the very Essence of God And then it wounds the Jews on the other side because if Jesus be Germen Iehovae The Bud the Blossome the Off-spring of God then there is a plurality of Persons Father and Son in the God-head So that it is a Compendiary and Summary Abridgement and Catechisme of all our Religion to professe that Jesus is for that is a profession of his everlasting Essence that is his God-head It hath been denyed that he was such as he was pretended to be that is borne of a Virgin for the first Heretiques of all Gerinthus and Ebion who occasioned S. Iohns Gospel affirmed him to be a meere man made by ordinary generation between Ioseph and Mary It hath been denyed that he was such a man as those Heretiques allowed him to bee for Apelles his Heresie was That he made himselfe a Body out of the Elements as hee came downe from Heaven through them It hath been denyed that he had any Body at all Cerdon and Marcion said That he lived and dyed but in Phantasmate in apparance and onely in a forme and shape of a Body assumed but in truth no Body that did live or dye but did onely appeare and vanish It hath beene denyed that that Body which hee had though a true and a naturall Body did suffer for Basilides said That when he was led to Execution and that on the way the Crosse was laid upon Simon of Cyren Christ cast a mist before their eyes by which they tooke Simon for him and crucified Simon Christ having withdrawne himselfe invisibly from them as at other times he had done It hath been denyed though he had a true Body and suffered truly therein that he hath any Body now in Heaven or shall returne with any for hee that said hee made his Body of the Elements as hee came downe from Heaven sayes also that hee resolved that Body into those Elements againe at his returne It hath beene denyed That hee was That he is That he shall be but this Profession that Jesus is includes all for He of whom that is alwayes true Est He is He is Eternall and He that is Eternall is God This is therefore a Profession of the God-head of Christ Jesus Now Dominus A Lord. in the next as we professe him to be Dominus A Lord we professe him to be God and man we behold him as he is a mixt person and so made fit to be the Messias the Anointed high Priest King of that Church which he hath purchased with his blood And the anointed King of that Kingdome which he hath conquered with his Crosse As he is Germen Iehovae The off-spring of Jehovah so he must necessarily be Jehovah that is the name which is evermore translated The Lord So also as he is Jehovah which is the fountaine of all Essence and of all Beeing so he is Lord by his interest and his concurrence in our Creation It is a devoute exercise of the soule to consider how absolute a Lord he is by this Title of Creation If the King give a man a Creation by a new Title the King found before in that man some vertuous and fit disposition some preparation some object some subject of his favour The King gives Creations to men whom the Universities or other Societies had prepared They Created persons whom other lower Schooles had prepared At lowest he that deales upon him first finds a man begotten and prepared by Parents upon whom he may worke But remember thy Creator that called thee when thou wast not as though thou hadst beene and brought thee out of nothing which is a condition if we may call it a condition to be nothing not to be farther removed from Heaven then hell it selfe Who is the Lord of life and breathed this life into thee and sweares by that eternall life which he is that he would have this life of thine immortall As I live saith the Lord I would not the death of a sinner This Contemplation of Jesus as a Lord by Creating us is a devout and an humble Contemplation but to contemplate him as Lord by Redeeming us and breeding us in a Church where that Redemption is applied to us this is a devout and a glorious Contemplation As he is Lord over that which his Father gave him his Father gave him all power in Heaven and in earth and Omne Iudicium His Father put all Judgement into his hands all judiciary and all military power was his He was Lord Judge and Lord of Hosts As he is Lord over his owne purchase Quod acquisivit sanguine Acts 20.28 That Church which he purchased with his owne blood So he is more then the Heretiques of our time have made him That he was but sent as a principall Prophet to explaine the Law and make that cleare to us in a Gospel Or as a Priest to sacrifice
himselfe but not for a Ransome not for a Satisfaction but onely for a lively example thereby to incline us to suffer for Gods glory and for the edification of one another If we call him Dominum A Lord we call him Messiam Vnctum Regem anointed with the oyle of gladnesse by the Holy Ghost to bee a cheerefull conquerour of the world and the grave and sin and hell and anointed in his owne blood to be a Lord in the administration of that Church which he hath so purchased This is to say that Jesus is a Lord To professe that he is a person so qualified in his being composed of God and Man that he was able to give sufficient for the whole world and did give it and so is Lord of it When we say Iesus est That Jesus is There we confesse his eternity and therein Dominus The Lord. his Godhead when we say Iesus Dominus that he is a Lord therein we confesse a dominion which he hath purchased And when we say Iesum Dominum so as that we professe him to be the Lord Then we confesse a vigilancy a superintendency a residence and a permanency of Christ in his Dominion in his Church to the worlds end If he be the Lord in his Church there is no other that rules with him there is no other that rules for him The temporall Magistrate is not so Lord as that Christ and he are Collegues or fellow-Consuls that if he command against Christ he should be as soone obeyed as Christ for a Magistrate is a Lord and Christ is the Lord a Magistrate is a Lord to us but Christ is the Lord to him and to us and to all None rules with him none rules for him Christ needs no Vicar he is no non-resident He is nearer to all particular Churches at Gods right hand then the Bishop of Rome at his left Direct lines direct beames does alwaies warme better and produce their effects more powerfully then oblique beames doe The influence of Christ Jesus directly from Heaven upon the Church hath a truer operation then the oblique and collaterall reflections from Rome Christ is not so far off by being above the Clouds as the Bishop of Rome is by being beyond the Hils Dicimus Dominum Iesum we say that Jesus is the Lord and we refuse all power upon earth that will be Lord with him as though he needed a Coadjutor or Lord for him as though he were absent from us To conclude this second part To say that Iesus is the Lord is to confesse him to bee God from everlasting and to have beene made man in the fulnesse of time and to governe still that Church which he hath purchased with his blood and that therefore hee lookes that we direct all our particular actions to his glory For this voice wherein thou saiest Dominus Iesus The Lord Iesus must be as the voyce of the Seraphim in Esay Esay 6.2 thrice repeated Sanctus sanctus sanctus Holy holy holy our hearts must say it and our tongue and our hands too or else we have not said it For when a man will make Jesus his companion and be sometimes with him and sometimes with the world and not direct all things principally towards him when he will make Jesus his servant that is proceed in all things upon the strength of his outward profession upon the colour and pretence and advantage of Religion and devotion would this man be thought to have said Iesum Dominum Luke 6.46 That Iesus is the Lord Why call ye me Lord Lord and doe not the things I speake to you saies Christ Christ places a tongue in the hands Actions speake and Omni tuba clarior per opera Demonstratio sayes S. Chrysostome There is not onely a tongue but a Trumpet in every good worke When Christ sees a disposition in his hearers to doe according unto their professing Iohn 13.14 then only he gives allowance to that that they say Dicitis me Dominum bene dicitis You call me Lord and you doe well in doing so doe ye therefore as I have done to you To call him Lord is to contemplate his Kingdome of power to feele his Kingdome of grace to wish his Kingdome of glory It is not a Domine usque quò Iohn 11.21 Lord how long before the Consummation come as though we were weary of our warfare It not a Domine si fuisses Lord if thou hadst beene here our brother had not died as Martha said of Lazarus as though as soon as we suffer any worldly calamity we should thinke Christ to be absent from us in his power or in his care of us It is not a Domine vis mandemus Luke 9.54 Lord wilt thou that we command fire from Heaven to consume these Samaritans as though we would serve the Lord no longer then he would revenge his owne and our quarrel for that we may come to our last part to that fiery question of the Apostles Christ answered You know not of what spirit you are It is not the Spirit of God it is not the Holy Ghost which makes you call Jesus the Lord onely to serve your own ends and purposes and No man can say that Iesus is the Lord but by the Holy Ghost For this Part 3 Part. Difficultas we proposed onely two Considerations first that this But excluding all meanes but one that one must therefore necessarily be difficult and secondly that that But admitting one meanes that one must therefore necessarily be possible so that there is a difficulty but yet a possibility in having this working by the Holy Ghost For the first of those hereticall words of Fanstus the Manichaean That in the Trinity the Father dwelt In illa luce inaccessibili In that light which none can attaine to And the Son of God dwelt in this created light whose fountaine and roote is the Planet of the Sun And the Holy Ghost dwelt in the Aire and other parts illumined by the Sun we may make this good use that for the knowledge of the Holy Ghost wee have not so present so evident light in reason as for the knowledge of the other blessed Persons of the glorious Trinity For for the Son because he assumed our nature and lived and dyed with us we conceive certaine bodily impressions and notions of him and then naturally and necessarily as soon as we heare of a Son we conceive a Father too But the knowledge of the Holy Ghost is not so evident neither doe we bend our thoughts upon the consideration of the Holy Ghost so much as we ought to doe The Arians enwrapped him in double clouds of darknesse when they called him Creaturam Creaturae That Christ himselfe from whom say they the Holy Ghost had his Creation was but a Creature and not God and so the Holy Ghost the Creature of a Creature And Maximus ille Gigas as Saint Bernard cals Plato That Giant in all kinde of
dereliction on Gods part he cals not upon him by this name not My Father but My God my God why hast thou forsaken me Mat. 27.37 But when he would incline him to mercy mercy to others mercy to enemies he comes in that name wherein he could be denied nothing Father Father forgive them they know not what they doe He is the Lord of Hosts Luke 23.24 There hee scatters us in thunder transports us in tempests enwraps us in confusion astonishes us with stupefaction and consternation The Lord of Hosts but yet the Father of mercies There he receives us into his own bowels fills our emptinesse with the blood of his own Son and incorporates us in him The Lord of Hosts but the Father of mercy Sometimes our naturall Fathers die before they can gather any state to leave us but he is the immortall Father and all things that are as soone as they were were his Sometimes our naturall Fathers live to waste and dissipate that state which was left them to be left us but this is the Father out of whose hands and possession nothing can be removed and who gives inestimably and yet remaines inexhaustible Sometimes our naturall Fathers live to need us and to live upon us but this is that Father whom we need every minute and requires nothing of us but that poore rent of Benedictus sit Blessed praised glorified be this Father This Father of mercies of mercies in the plurall David calls God Miserationum Psal 59.17 Numb 14.19 Psal 51.1 Misericordiam suam His mercy all at once God is the God of my mercy God is all ours and all mercy Pardon this people sayes Moses Secundùm magnitudinem misericordiae According to the greatnesse of thy mercy Pardon me sayes David Have mercy upon me Secùndum multitudinem misericordiarum According to the multitude of thy mercies His mercy in largenesse in number extends over all It was his mercy that we were made and it is his mercy that we are not consumed David calls his mercy Multiplicatam and Mirificatam Psal 17.7 Psal 31.22 It is manifold and it is marvellous miraculous Shew thy marvellous loving kindnesse and therefore David in severall places carries it Super judicium above his judgements Super Coelos above the heavens Super omnia opera above all his works And for the multitude of his mercies for we are now upon the consideration of the plurality thereof Pater miserationum Father of mercies put together that which David sayes Psal 89.50 Vbi misericordiae tuae antiquae Where are thy ancient mercies His mercy is as Ancient as the Ancient of dayes who is God himselfe And that which another Prophet sayes Omni mane His mercies are new every morning And put betweene these two betweene Gods former and his future mercies his present mercy in bringing thee this minute to the consideration of them and thou hast found Multiplicatam and Mirificatam manifold and wondrous mercy But carry thy thoughts upon these three Branches of his mercy and it will be enough First that upon Adams fall and all ours in him he himselfe would think of such a way of mercy as from Adam to that man whom Christ shall finde alive at the last day no man would ever have thought of that is that to shew mercy to his enemies he would deliver his owne his onely his beloved Son to shame to torments to death That hee would plant Germen Iehovae in semine mulieris The blossome the branch of God in the seed of the woman This mercy in that first promise of that Messias was such a mercy as not onely none could have undertaken but none could have imagined but God himselfe And in this promise we were conceived In visceribus Patris In the bowels of this Father of mercies In these bowels in the womb of this promise we lay foure thousand yeares The blood with which we were fed then was the blood of the Sacrifices and the quickning which we had there was an inanimation by the often refreshing of this promise of that Messias in the Prophets But in the fulnesse of time that infallible promise came to an actuall performance Christ came in the flesh and so Venimus ad partum In his birth we were borne and that was the second mercy in the promise in the performance he is Pater miserationum Father of mercies And then there is a third mercy as great That he having sent his Son and having re-assumed him into heaven againe he hath sent his Holy Spirit to governe his Church and so becomes a Father to us in that Adoption in the application of Christ to us by the Holy Ghost and this as that which is intended in the last word Deus totius Consolationis The God of all Comfort I may know that there is a Messias promised and yet be without comfort Consolatio in a fruitlesse expectation The Jews are so in their dispersion When the Jews will still post-date the commings of Christ when some of them say There was no certaine time of his comming designed by the Prophets And others There was a time but God for their sins prorogued it And others againe God kept his word the Messiah did come when it was promised he should come but for their sins he conceales himselfe from Manifestation when the Jews will postdate his first comming and the Papists will antidate his second comming in a comming that cannot become him That he comes even to his Saints in torment before he comes in glory That when he comes to them at their dissolution at their death he comes not to take them to Heaven but to cast them into one part of hell That the best comfort which a good man can have at his death is but Purgatory Miserable comforters are they all How faire a beame of the joyes of Heaven is true comfort in this life If I know the mercies of God exhibited to others and feele them not in my self I am not of Davids Church Psal 59.1 not of his Quire I cannot sing of the mercies of God I may see them and I may sigh to see the mercies of God determined in others and not extended to me but I cannot sing of the mercies of God if I find no mercy But when I come to that Psal 94.19 Consolationes tuae laetificaverunt In the multitude of my thoughts within me thy comforts delight my soule then the true Comforter is descended upon me and the Holy Ghost hath over-shadowed me Mat. 5.4 and all that shall be borne of me and proceed from me shall be holy Blessed are they that mourne sayes Christ But the blessednesse is not in the mourning but because they shall be comforted Blessed am I in the sense of my sins and in the sorrow for them but blessed therefore because this sorrow leads me to my reconciliation to God and the consolation of his Spirit Whereas if I sinke in this sorrow in this dejection
the father of Musique And so Horace calls Ennius the father of one kind of Poeme how absolutely is God our Father who may I say invented us made us found us out in the depth and darknesse of nothing at all He is Pater and Pater luminum Father and Father of lights of all kinds of lights Lux lucifica Iam. 1.17 as S. Augustine expresses it The light from which all the lights which we have whether of nature or grace or glory have their emanation Take these Lights of which God is said to be the Father to be the Angels so some of the Fathers take it and so S. Paul calls them Angels of light And so Nazianzen calls them Secundos splendores primi splendoris administros 2 Cor. 11.14 second lights that serve the first light Or take these Lights of which God is said to be the Father to be the Ministers of the Gospel the Angels of the Church so some Fathers take them too and so Christ sayes to them in the Apostles Mat. 5.14 You are the light of the world Or take these Lights to be those faithfull servants of God who have received an illustration in themselves and a coruscation towards others who by having lived in the presence of God in the houshold of his faithfull in the true Church are become as Iohn Baptist was burning and shining lamps as S. Paul sayes of the faithfull Phil. 2.15 You shine as lights in this world And as Moses had contracted a glorious shining in his face by his conversation with God Or take this light to be a fainter light then that and yet that which S. Iames doth most literally intend in that place The light of naturall understanding That which Plinie calls serenitatem animi when the mind of man dis-encumbred of all Eclipses and all clouds of passion or inordinate love of earthly things is enlightned so far as to discerne God in nature Or take this light to be but the light of a shadow for umbrae non sunt tenebrae sed densior lux shadows are not darknesses shadows are but a grosser kind of light Take it to be that shadow that designe that delineation that obumbration of God which the creatures of God exhibit to us that which Plinie calls Coelilaetitiam when the heavens and all that they imbrace in an opennesse and cheerefulnesse of countenance manifest God unto us Take these Lights of which S. Iames speaks in any apprehension any way Angels of heaven who are ministring spirits Angels of the Church who are spirituall Ministers Take it for the light of faith from hearing the light of reason from discoursing or the light flowing from the creature to us by contemplation and observation of nature Every way by every light we see that he is Pater luminum the Father of lights all these lights are from him and by all these lights we see that he is A Father and Our Father So that as the Apostle uses this phrase in another place Si opertum Euangelium 2 Cor. 4.3 If the Gospel be hid with wonder and admiration Is it possible can it be that this Gospel should be hid So it is here Si invocatis If ye call God Father that is as it is certaine you doe as it is impossible but you should because you cannot ascribe to any but him your Being your preservation in that Being your exaltation in that Being to a well-Being in the possession of all temporall and spirituall conveniencies And then there is thus much more force in this particle Si If which is as you have seene Si concessionis non dubitationis an If that implyes a confession and acknowledgement not a hesitation or a doubt That it is also Si progressionis Si conclusionis an If that carryes you farther and that concludes you at last If you doe it that is Since you do it Since you do call God Father since you have passed that act of Recognition since not onely by having been produced by nature but by having beene regenerated by the Gospel you confesse God to bee your Father and your Father in his Son in Christ Jesus Since you make that profession Of his owne will begate he us Iames 1.18 with the word of Truth If you call him Father since you call him Father thus goe on farther Timete Feare him If yee call him Father feare him c. Now Timete for this feare of God which is the beginning of wisedome and the end of wisedome too we are a little too wise at least too subtile sometimes in distinguishing too narrowly between a filiall feare and a servile feare as though this filiall feare were nothing but a reverend love of God as he is good and not a doubt and suspition of incurring those evils Prov. 8.13 that are punishments or that produce punishments The feare of the Lord is to hate evill It is a holy detestation of that evill which is Malum culpae The evill of sin and it is a holy trembling under a tender apprehension of that other evill which we call Malum poenae The evill of punishment for sin God presents to us the joyes of heaven often to draw us Origen and as often the torments of hell to avert us Origen sayes aright As Abraham had two sons one of a Bond-woman another of a Free but yet both sons of Abraham so God is served by two feares and the later feare the feare of future torment is not the perfect feare but yet even that feare is the servant and instrument of God too Quis tam insensatus Chrysost Who can so absolutely devest all sense Qui non fluctuante Civitate imminente naufragio But that when the whole City is in a combustion and commotion or when the Ship that he is in strikes desperately and irrecoverably upon a rock hee is otherwise affected toward God then then when every day in a quietnesse and calme of holy affections he heares a Sermon Gehennae timor sayes the same Father regni nos affert coronam Gen. 15.12 Exod. 3.6 Even the feare of hell gets us heaven Upon Abraham there fell A horrour of great darknesse And Moses hid his face for he was afraid to look upon God And that way towards that dejected look does God bend his countenance Vpon this man will I look Esay 66.12 even to him that is poore and of a contrite spirit and trembleth at my word As there are both impressions in security vitious and vertuous good and bad so there are both in feare also There is a wicked security in the wicked by which they make shift to put off all Providence in God and to think God like themselves indifferent what becomes of this world There is an ill security in the godly when for the time in their prosperity they grow ill husbands of Gods graces and negligent of his mercies In my prosperity sayes David himself Psal 30.6 of
occasion to prove the Deity of Christ this text hath been cited and therefore I take it now when in my course proposed I am to speak of the second Person in the Trinity but as I said of the first Person the Father not as in the Schoole but in the Church not in a Chaire but in a Pulpit not to a Congregation that required proofe in a thing doubted but edification upon a foundation received not as though any of us would dispute whether Jesus Christ were the Lord but that all of us would joyne in that Excommunication If any man love not the Lord Iesus Christ let him be c. Let this then be the frame that this exercise shall stand upon We have three parts The person upon whom our Religious worship is to be directed The Lord Iesus Christ And secondly we have the expression and the limitation of that worship as farre as it is expressed here Love the Lord Iesus Christ And lastly we have the imprecation upon them that doe not If any man doe not let him be Anathema Maranatha In the first we have Verbum naturale verbum innatum As he is the essentiall word The Lord a name proper only to God And then Verbum conceptum verbum illatum Gods Decree upon consideration of mans misery that Christ should be a Redeemer for to that intent he is Christus Anointed to that purpose And lastly Verbum prolatum verbum manifestatum That this Christ becomes Iesus That this Decree is executed that this person thus anointed for this office is become an actuall Saviour So the Lord is made Christ and Christ is made Iesus In the second Part we shall finde another argument for his Deity for there is such a love required towards the Lord Iesus Christ as appertaines to God onely And lastly we shall have the indeterminable and indispensable excommunication of them who though they pretend to love the Lord God in an universall notion yet doe not love the Lord Iesus Christ God in this apprehension of a Saviour and If any man love not c. First then in the first branch of the first part in that name of our Saviour The Lord 1 Part. Dominus we apprehend the eternall Word of God the Son of God the second Person in the Trinity for He is Persona producta Begotten by another and therefore cannot be the first And he is Persona spirans a Person out of whom with the Father another Person that is the Holy Ghost proceeds and therefore cannot be the last Person and there are but three Nazian and so he necessarily the second Shall we hope to comprehend this by reason Quid magni haberet Dei generatio si angusti is intellectus tui comprehenderetur How small a thing were this mystery of Heaven if it could be shut in in so narrow a piece of the earth Idem as thy heart Qui tuam ipsius generationē vel in totum nescis vel dicere sit pudor Thou that knowest nothing of thine owne begetting or art ashamed to speake that little that thou doest know of it wilt not thou be ashamed to offer to expresse the eternall generation of the Son of God It is true De modo How it was done our reason cannot but De facto that it was done our reason may be satisfied We beleeve nothing with a morall faith till something have wrought upon our reason and vanquished that and made it assent and subscribe Our divine faith requires evidence too and hath it abundantly for the works of God are not so good evidence to my reason as the Word of God is to my faith The Sun shining is not so good a proofe that it is day as the Word of God the Scripture is that that which is commanded there is a duty The roote of our beliefe that Christ is God is in the Scriptures but wee consider it spread into three branches 1 The evident Word it selfe that Christ is God 2 The reall declaration thereof in his manifold Miracles 3 The conclusions that arise to our understanding thus illumined by the Scriptures thus established by his miracles In every mouth Ex Scripturis in every pen of the Scriptures that delivers any truth the Holy Ghost speaks and therefore whatsoever is said by any there is the testimony of the Holy Ghost for the Deity of Christ And from the Father we have this testimony that he is his Son Mat. 3. ult Heb. 1.8 This is my beloved Son And this testimony that his Son is God Vnto his Son he saith Thy Throne O God is for ever and ever The Holy Ghost testifies and his Father and himselfe Apoc. 1.8 and his testimony is true I am Alpha and Omega the beginning and the ending saith the Lord which is which was and which is to come the Almighty Hee testifies with his Father Apoc. 22.16 and then their Angels and his Apostles testifie with him I Iesus have sent mine Angels to testifie unto you these things in the Church That I am the Roote and the Off-spring of David not the off-spring onely but the roote too and therefore was before David God and his Angels in Heaven testifie it And visible Angels upon earth his Apostles Acts 20.28 God hath purchased his Church with his owne blood sayes S. Paul He who shed his blood for his Church was God and no false God no mortall God as the gods of the Nations were 1 Iohn 5.20 Tit. 2.13 but This is the true God and cternall life and then no small God no particular God as the Gods of the Nations were too but We looke for the glorious appearing of our great God our Saviour Christ Iesus God that is God in all the Persons Angels that is Angels in all their acceptations Angels of Heaven Angels of the Church Angels excommunicate from both the fallen Angels Devils themselves testifie his Godhead Mar. 3.11 Vncleane Spirits fell downe before him and cryed Thou art the Sonne of God This is the testimony of his Word Miracula the testimony of his Works are his Miracles That his Apostles did Miracles in his name Acts 3.16 was a testimony of his Deity His name through faith in his Name hath made this man strong sayes S. Peter at the raysing of the Creeple But that he did Miracles in his own Name by his own Power is a nearer testimony Belssed be the Lord God of Israel Psal 72.18 sayes David Qui facit Mirabilia solus Which doth his Miracles alone without deriving power from any other or without using an other instrument for his Power Epipha For Mutare naturam nisi qui Dominus naturae est non potest Whosoever is able to change the course of nature is the Lord of nature And he that is so made it he that made it Tertul. that created it is God Nay Plus est it is more to change the course of Nature
The naturall and essentiall word of God He hath his first name in the text He is the Lord As he is verbum illatum and Conceptum A person upon whom there is a Decree and a Commission that he shall be a person capable to redeem Man by death he hath this second name in the text He is Christ As he is The Lord he cannot die As he is Christ under the Decree he cannot chuse but die But as he is Iesus He is dead already and that is his other his third his last name in this Text If any man love not c. We have inverted a little the order of these names or titles in the Text Iesus because the Name of Christ is in the order of nature before the name of Iesus as the Commission is before the Execution of the Commission And in other places of Scripture to let us see how both the capacity of doing it and the actuall doing of it belongs onely to this person the Holy Ghost seems to convey a spirituall delight to us in turning and transposing the Names every way sometimes Iesus alone and Christ alone sometimes Iesus Christ and sometimes Christ Iesus that every way we might be sure of him Now we consider him as Iesus a reall an actuall Saviour And this was his Name The Angel said to his Mother Thou shalt call his name Iesus for he shall save his people And we say to you Call upon this name Iesus for he hath saved his people for Rom. 8.1 Now there is no condemnation to them that are in Christ Iesus As he was verbum conceptum and illatum The word which the Trinity uttered amongst themselves so he was decreed to come in that place The Lord of the vineyard that is Almighty God seeing the misery of Man Luk. 20.13 to be otherwise irremediable The Lord of the vineyard said what shall I doe I will send my beloved Sonne it may be they will reverence him when they see him But did they reverence him when they saw him This sending made him Christ a person whom though the Sonne of God they might see They did see him but then says that Gospell they drew him out and killed him And this he knew before he came and yet came and herein was Iesus a reall an actuall a zealous Saviour even of them that slew him And in this with piety and reverence we may be bold to say that even the Son of God was filius prodigus that powred out his blood even for his Enemies but rather in that acclamation of the prodigall childs Father This my sonne was dead and is alive againe he was lost and is found For but for this desire of our salvation why should he who was the Lord be ambitious of that Name the name of Iesus which was not Tam expectabile apud Iudaeos nomen Tertull. no such name as was in any especiall estimation amongst the Iews for we see in Ioscphus divers men of that name of no great honour of no good conversation But because the name implyes salvation Iosua who had another name before Idem Cum in hujus sacramenti imagine parabatur when he was prepared as a Type of this Iesus to be a Saviour a Deliverer of the people Etiam nominis Dominici inaugur atus est figurae Iesus cognominatus then he was canonized with that name of salvation and called Iosuae which is Iesus The Lord then the Son of God had a Sitio in heaven as well as upon the Crosse He thirsted our salvation there and in the midst of the fellowship of the Father from whom he came and of the Holy Ghost who came from him and the Father and all the Angels who came by a lower way from them all he desired the conversation of Man for Mans sake He that was God The Lord became Christ a man and he that was Christ became Iesus no man a dead man to save man To save man all wayes in all his parts And to save all men in all parts of the world To save his soule from hell where we should have felt pains and yet been dead then when we felt them and seen horrid spectacles and yet been in darknes and blindnes then when we saw them And suffered unsufferable torments yet have told over innumerable ages in suffering them To save this soule from that hell and to fill that capacity which it hath and give it a capacity which it hath not to comprehend the joyes and glory of Heaven this Christ became Iesus To save this body from the condemnation of everlasting corruption where the wormes that we breed are our betters because they have a life where the dust of dead Kings is blowne into the street and the dust of the street blowne into the River and the muddy River tumbled into the Sea and the Sea remaunded into all the veynes and channels of the earth to save this body from everlasting dissolution dispersion dissipation and to make it in a glorious Resurrection not onely a Temple of the holy Ghost but a Companion of the holy Ghost in the kingdome of heaven This Christ became this Iesus To save this man body and soule together from the punishments due to his former sinnes and to save him from falling into future sinnes by the assistance of his Word preached and his Sacrrments administred in the Church which he purchased by his bloud is this person The Lord the Christ become this Iesus this Saviour To save so All wayes In soule in body in both And also to save all men For to exclude others from that Kingdome is a tyrannie an usurpation and to exclude thy selfe is a sinfull and a rebellious melancholy But as melancholy in the body is the hardest humour to be purged so is the melancholy in the soule the distrust of thy salvation too Flashes of presumption a calamity will quench but clouds of desperation calamities thicken upon us But even in this inordinate dejection thou exaltest thy self above God and makest thy worst better then his best thy sins larger then his mercy Christ hath a Greek name and an Hebrew name Christ is Greeke Iesus is Hebrew He had commission to save all nations and he hath saved all Thou givest him another Hebrew name and another Greek Apoc. 9.11 when thou makest his name Abaddon and Apollyon a Destroyer when thou wilt not apprehend him as a Saviour and love him so which is our second Part in our order proposed at first If any man love not c. In the former part 2 Part. we found it to be one argument for the Deitie of Christ That he was Iehovah The Lord we have another here That this great branch nay this very root of all divine worship due to God is required to be exhibited to this person That is Love Cicero If any man love not c. If any man could see Vertue with his eye he would be
so but it is also to declare that there is none just and righteous Jerem. 5.1 Run to and fro through the streets of Ierusalem sayes God in the Prophet and seeke in the broad places If yee can finde a man if there be any that executeth Iudgement that seeketh Truth and I will pardon it Where God does not intimate that he were unjust if he did not spare those that were unjust but he declares the generall flood and inundation of unrighteousnesse upon Earth That upon Earth there is not a righteous man to be found If God had gone no farther in his promise to man then that if there were one righteous man he would save all this in effect had been nothing for there was never any man righteous in that sense and acceptation He promised and sent one who was absolutely righteous and for his sake hath saved us To collect all Conclusio and bind up all in one bundle and bring it home to your own bosomes remember That though he appeared in men it was God that appeared to Abraham Though men preach though men remit sins though men absolve God himself speakes and God works and God seales in those men Remember that nothing appeared to Abrahams apprehension but men yet Angels were in his presence Though we binde you not to a necessity of beleeving that every man hath a particular Angel to assist him enjoy your Christian liberty in that and think in that point so as you shall find your devotion most exalted by thinking that it is or is not so yet know that you do all that you doe in the presence of Gods Angels And though it be in it selfe and should be so to us a stronger bridle to consider that we doe all in the presence of God who sees clearer then they for he sees secret thoughts and can strike immediately which they cannot do without commission from him yet since the presence of a Magistrate or a Preacher or a father or a husband keeps men often from ill actions let this prevaile something with thee to that purpose That the Angels of God are alwayes present though thou discerne them not Remember that though Christ himself were not amongst the three Angels yet Abraham apprehended a greater dignity and gave a greater respect to one then to the rest but yet without neglecting the rest too Apply thy selfe to such Ministers of God and such Physitians of thy soule as thine owne conscience tels thee doe most good upon thee but yet let no particular affection to one defraud another in his duties nor empaire another in his estimation And remember too That though Gods appearing thus in three persons be no irrefragable argument to prove the Trinity against the Jews yet it is a convenient illustration of the Trinity to thee that art a Christian And therefore be not too curious in searching reasons and demonstrations of the Trinity but yet accustome thy selfe to meditations upon the Trinity in all occasions and finde impressions of the Trinity in the three faculties of thine owne soule Thy Reason thy Will and thy Memory and seeke a reparation of that thy Trinity by a new Trinity by faith in Christ Jesus by hope of him and by a charitable delivering him to others in a holy and exemplar life Descend thou into thy selfe as Abraham ascended to God and admit thine owne expostulations as God did his Let thine own conscience tell thee not onely thy open and evident rebellions against God but even the immoralities and incivilities that thou dost towards men in scandalizing them by thy sins And the absurdities that thou committest against thy selfe in sinning against thine owne reason And the uncleannesses and consequently the treachery that thou committest against thine owne body and thou shalt see that thou hadst been not onely in better peace but in better state and better health and in better reputation a better friend and better company if thou hadst finned lesse because some of thy sins have been such as have violated the band of friendship and some such as have made thy company and conversation dangerous either for tentation or at least for defamation Tell thy selfe that thou art the Judge as Abraham told God that he was and that if thou wilt judge thy selfe thou shalt scape a severer judgement He told God that he was Judge of all the earth Judge all that earth that thou art Judge both thy kingdomes thy soule and thy body Judge all the Provinces of both kingdomes all the senses of thy body and all the faculties of thy soule and thou shalt leave nothing for the last Judgement Mingle not the just and the unjust together God did not so Doe not thinke good and bad all one Doe not think alike of thy sins and of thy good deeds as though when Gods grace had quickned them still thy good works were nothing thy prayers nothing thine almes nothing in the sight and acceptation of God But yet spare not the wicked for the just continue not in thy beloved sin because thou makest God amends some other way And when all is done as in God towards Abraham his mercy was above all so after all Miserere animae tuae Be inercifull to thine owne soule And when the effectuall Spirit of God hath spoken peace and comfort and sealed a reconciliation to God to thy soule rest in that blessed peace and enter into no such new judgement with thy selfe againe as should overcome thine own Mercy with new distractions or new suspitions that thy Repentance was not accepted or God not fully reconciled unto thee God because he judges all the earth cannot doe wrong If thou judge thy earth and earthly affections so as that thou examine clearly and judge truly thou dost not doe right if thou extend not Mercy to thy selfe if thou receive not and apply not cheerfully and confidently to thy soul that pardon and remission of all thy sins which the holy Ghost in that blessed state hath given thee commission to pronounce to thine owne soul and to seale with his seale SERM. XLIII Preached at S. Dunstans upon Trinity-Sunday 1624. MAT. 3.17 And lo A voyce came from heaven saying This is my beloved Sonne in whom I am well pleased IT hath been the custome of the Christian Church to appropriate certaine Scriptures to certaine Dayes for the celebrating of certaine Mysteries of God or the commemorating of certaine benefits from God They who consider the age of the Christian Church too high or too low too soone or too late either in the cradle as it is exhibited in the Acts of the Apostles or bed-rid in the corruptions of Rome either before it was come to any growth when Persecutions nipped it or when it was so over-growne as that prosperity and outward splendor swelled it They that consider the Church so will never finde a good measure to direct our religious worship of God by for the outward Liturgies and Ceremonies of the Church But as
power Via miraculorum Miracles no man may ground his beliefe upon that which seems a Miracle to him Moses wrought Miracles and Pharaohs instruments wrought the like we know theirs were no true Miracles and we know Moses were but how do we know this By another voyce by the Word of God who cannot lie for for those upon whom those Miracles were to worke on both sides Moses and they too seemed to the beholders diversly disposed to do Miracles One Rule in discerning and judging a Miracle is to consider whether it be done in confirmation of a necessary Truth otherwise it is rather to be suspected for an Illusion then accepted for a Miracle The Rule is intimated in Deuteronomy where Deut. 13. though a Prophets prophecy do come to passe yet if his end be to draw to other gods he must be slaine What Miracles soever are pretended in confirmation of the inventions of Men are to be neglected God hath not carried us so low for our knowledge as to Creatures to Nature nor so high as to Miracles but by a middle way By a voyce But it is Vox de Coelis A voyce from heaven S. Basil applying indeed with some wresting and derorting those words in the 29 Psalme vers 3. De Coelis The voyce of the Lord is upon the waters the God of glory maketh it to thunder to this Baptisme of Christ he sayes Vox super aquas Ioannes The words of Iohn at Christs Baptisme were this voyce that David intends And then that manifestation which God gave of the Trinity whatsoever it were altogether that was the Thunder of his Majesty so this Thunder then was vox de Coelis A voyce from heaven And in this voyce the person of the Father was manifested as he was in the same voyce at his Transfiguration Since this voyce then is from Heaven and is the Fathers voyce we must looke for all our knowledge of the Trinity from thence For to speake of one of those persons Mat. 11.27 of Christ no man knoweth the Sonne but the Father Who then but he can make us know him If any knew it yet it is an unexpressible mystery no man could reveale it Mat. 16.17 Flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee but my Father which is in heaven If any could reveale it to us yet none could draw us to beleeve it No man can come to me except the Father draw him Iohn 6.44 So that all our voyce of Direction must be from thence De Coelis from Heaven We have had Voces de Inferis voyces from Hell in the blasphemies of Heretiques De Inferis That the Trinity was but Cera extensa but as a Rolle of Wax spread or a Dough Cake rolled out and so divided unto persons That the Trinity was but a nest of Boxes a lesser in a greater and not equall to one another And then that the Trinity was not onely three persons but three Gods too So far from the truth and so far from one another have Heretiques gone in the matter of the Trinity and Cerinthus so far in that one person in Christ as to say That Jesus and Christ were two distinct persons and that into Jesus who sayes he was the sonne of Ioseph Christ who was the Spirit of God descended here at his Baptisme and was not in him before and withdrew himselfe from him againe at the time of his Passion and was not in him then so that he was not borne Christ nor suffered not being Christ but was onely Christ in his preaching and in his Miracles and in all the rest he was but Jesus sayes Cerinthus We have had Voces de Inferis de profundis from the depth of hell De Medio in the malice of Heretiques And we have had Voces de medio voyces from amongst us Inventions of men to expresse and to make us understand the Trinity in pictures and in Comparisons All which to contract this point are apt to fall into that abuse which we will onely note in one At first they used ordinarily to expresse the Trinity in foure letters which had no ill purpose in it at first but was a religious ease for their memories in Catechismes The letters were 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 was 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 was 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and the two last belonged to the last person for 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 was 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 was 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and so there was Father Sonne and Holy Ghost as if we should expresse it in F and S and H and G. But this came quickly thus far into abuse as that they thought there could belong but three letters in that picture to the three persons and therefore allowing so many to Father Sonne and Holy Ghost they tooke the last letter P for Petrus and so made Peter head of the Church and equall to the Trinity So that for our knowledge in this mysterious doctrine of the Trinity let us evermore rest in voce de coelis in that voice which came from heaven But yet it is Vox dicens Dicens A voice saying speaking A voice that man is capable of and may be benefited by It is not such a voice as that was which came from heaven too when Christ prayed to God to glorifie his name Iohn 12.28 That the people should say some that it was a Thunder some that it was an Angel that spake They are the sons of Thunder and they are the Ministeriall Angels of the Church from whom we must heare this voice of heaven Nothing can speak but man No voice is understood by man but the voice of man It is not Vox dicens That voyce sayes nothing to me that speaks not And therefore howsoever the voice in the Text were miraculously formed by God to give this glory and dignity to this first manifestation of the Trinity in the person of Christ yet because he hath left it for a permanent Doctrine necessary to Salvation he hath left ordinary means for the conveying of it that is The same voice from heaven the same word of God but speaking in the ministery of man And therefore for our measure of this knowledge which is our third and last Part we are to see how Christian men whose office it hath been to interpret Scriptures that is how the Catholike Church hath understood these words Hic est Filius This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased How we are to receive the knowledge of the Trinity 3 Part. Athanasius hath expressed as far as we can goe Whosoever will be saved hee must beleeve it but the manner of it is not exposed so far as to his beliefe That question of the Prophet Quis
sayes Let us us in the plurall make man we are glad to finde such a plurall manner of expressing God by the Holy Ghost as may concurre with that which we believed before that is divers persons in one God To the same purpose also is that of the Prophet Esay where God sayes Esay 6.8 Whom shall I send or who shall goe for us There we discerne a singularity one God Whom shall I send and a plurality of persons too Who shal go for us But what man that had not been catachized in that Doctrine before would have conceived an opinion or established a faith in the Trinity upon those phrases in Moses or in Esay without other evidence Certainly it was the Divine purpose of God to reserve and keep this mystery of the Trinity unrevealed for a long time even from those who were generally to have their light and instruction from his word They had the Law and the Prophets and yet they had no very clear notions of the Trinity For this is evident that in Trismegistus and in Zoroaster and in Plato and some other Authors of that Ayre there seeme to be clearer and more literall expressings of the Trinity then are in all the Prophets of the old Testament We take the reason to be that God reserved the full Manifestation of this mystery for the dignifying and glorifying of his Gospel And therefore it is enough that we know that they of the old Testament were saved by the same faith in the Trinity that we are How God wrought that faith in them amongst whom he had established no outward meanes for the imprinting of such a faith let us not too curiously inquire Let us be content to receive our light there where God hath been pleased to give it that is in those places of the new Testament which admit no contradiction nor disputation As where Christ saies Mat. 28.19 Goe and teach all Nations baptizing in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost And where it is said There are three that beare witnesse in heaven The Father 1 Iohn 5.7 the Word and the Holy Ghost and these three are one There are Obumbrations of the Trinity in Nature and Illustrations of the Trinity in the old Testament but the Declaration the Manifestation thereof was reserved for the Gospel Now this place this Text is in both It is in the old and it is in the new Testament here and in Esay And in both places agreed by all Expositors to be a confession of the Trinity in that three-fold repetition Holy holy holy Where by the way you may have use of this note that in the first place in the Prophet Esay we have a faire intimation that that use of Subalternation in the service of God of that which we have called Antiphones and Responsaries in the Church of God when in that service some things are said or sung by one side of the Congregation and then answered by the other or said by one man and then answered by the whole Congregation that this manner of serving God hath a pattern from the practise of the Triumphant Church For there the Seraphim cryed to one another or as it is in the Originall this Seraphim to this Holy Holy Holy so that there was a voice given and an answer made and a reply returned in this service of God And as the patterne is in the Triumphant Church for this holy manner of praising God so in the practise therof the Militant prescribes for it hath been alwaies in use And therefore that religious vehemence of Damascen speaking of this kind of service in the Church in his time may be allowed us Hymnum dicemus etsi Daemones disrumpantur How much soever it anger the devil or his devilish instruments of schisme and sedition we wil serve God in this manner with holy cheerefulness with musique with Antiphones with Responsaries of which we have the patterne from the Triumphant and the practise from the Primitive Church Now as this Totality and Integrity of their Religion which they professe first with an Ingenuity openly then with an Assiduity incessantly hath as it were this dilatation this extention of God into three Persons which is the character and specification of the Christian Religion for no Religion but the Christian ever inclined to a plurality of Persons in one God so hath it also such a contracting of this infinite Power into that one God as could not agree with any other Religion then the Christian in either of those two essentiall circumstances first that that God should be Omnipotent and then that he should be Eternall The Lord God Almighty which was and is and is to come All the Heathen gods were ever subordinate to one another Omnipotens That which one god could not or would not do another would and could And this oftentimes rather to anger another god then to please the party And then there was a Surveyor a Controller over them all which none of them could resist nor intreat which was their Fatum their Destiny And so in these subsidiary gods these occasional gods there could be no Omnipotence no Almightinesse Our God is so Omnipotent Almighty so as that his Power hath no limitation but his owne Will Tertul. Nihil impossibile nisi quod non vult He can do whatsoever he will do And he can do more then that For he could have raised sons to Abraham out of stones in the street And as their gods were not Omnipotent Aeternus so neither were they Eternall They knew the history the generation the pedegree of all their gods They knew where they were born and where they went to schoole as Iustin Martyr sayes that Esculapius and Apollo their gods of Physick learnt their Physick of Chiron so that the Scholars were gods and their Masters none and they knew where their gods were buried They knew their Parents and their Uncles their Wives and their Children yea their Bastards and their Concubines so far were they from being eternall gods But if we remit and slacken this consideration of Eternity which is never to have had beginning consider only Perpetuity which is never to have end these gods were not capable of a perpetuall Honour an Honour that should never end For we see that of those three hundred several Iupiters which were worshiped in the World before Christ came though the World abound at this day with Idolatry yet there is not one of those Idols not one of those three hundred Iupiters celebrated with any solemnity no not knowne in any obscure corner of the World They were mortall before they were Gods They are dead in their Persons and they were mortall when they were Gods They are dead in their Worship In respect of Eternity which is necessary in a God Perpetuity is but Mobilis Imago as Plato cals it a faint and transitory shadow of Eternity and Pindarus makes it
stronger hand then this not in these Ministeriall and Missive Angels onely but in his that sends them yea in his that made them Col. 1.16 17. By whom and for whom they and the Thrones and Dominions and Principalities and Powers and all things were created and in whom they consist For as the name of Angel is attributed to Christ Mal. 3.1 Angelus Testamenti The Angel of the Covenant And many of those miraculous passages in the deliverances of Israel out of Egypt which were done by the second Person of the Trinity by Christ in Exodus are by Moses there and in the abridgement of that story Acts 7. by Stephen after attributed to Angels So in this Text this Angel which doth so much for Gods Saints is not inconveniently by many Expositors taken to be our Saviour Christ himselfe And will any man doubt of performance of conditions in him Will any man looke for better security then him who puts two and two such into the band Christ and Iesus An anointed King able an actuall Saviour willing to discharge not his but our debt He is a double Person God and Man He ingages a double pawn the old and the new Testament the Law and the Gospel and you may be bold to trust him that hath paid so well before since you see a performance of the Prophesies of the old Testament in the free and glorious preaching of the Gospel trust also in a performance of the promises of the Gospel in timely deliverances in this life and an infallible and eternall reposednesse in the life to come Hee tooke our nature that he might know our infirmities experimentally He brought down a better nature that he might recover us restore us powerfully effectually and that hee might be sure to accomplish his work he brought more to our reparation then to our first building The God-head wrought as much in our Redemption as in our Creation and the Man-hood more for it began but then And to take from us all doubt of his power or of his will in our deliverance he hath taken the surest way of giving satisfaction Esay 53.4 He hath payed beforehand Verè tulit He hath truly born all our infirmities He hath already And with his stripes are we healed we that are here now are healed by his stripes received sixteen hundred yeares since Apoc. 13.8 Nay he was Occisus ab origine The Lamb slaine from the beginning of the world That day that the frame of the world was fully set up in the making of man That day that the fairest piece of that frame fell down again in the fall of Adam That day that God repaired this ruine again in the promise of a Messias all which we take ordinarily to have fallen in one day the sixt day that day in that promise was this Lamb slain and all the debts not only of our fore-fathers and ours but of the last man that shall be found alive at the last day were then payed so long before-hand This security then Angelus Ecclesiae for our deliverance and protection we have in this Angel in our Text I saw an Angel as this Angel is Christ but yet we have also another security more immediate and more appliable to us As men that lend money in the course of the world have a desire to have a servant in the band with the Master not that they hope for the money from him but that they know better how to call upon him and how to take hold of him so besides this generall assistance of Angels and besides this all-sufficiency of the Angel of the Covenant Christ Jesus we have for our security in this Text I saw an Angel the servants of Christ too This Angel is the Minister of his Word the Administrer of his Sacraments the Mediator betweene Christ and Man He is this Angel as S. Iohn so often in the Revelation and the Holy Ghost in other places of Scripture styles them This Angel is indeed the whole frame and Hierarchy of the Christian Church For though this Angel be called in this text The Angel in the singular yet to make use of one note by Anticipation now though in our distribution of the Branches we reserved it to the end because it fits properly our present consideration though this Angel be named in the singular and so may seeme to be restrained to Christ alone yet we see the Office when it comes to execution after is diffused and there are more in the Commission for those phrases that Wee Wee may seale the servants of Our Our God have a plurality in them a consent a harmony and imply a Congregation and doe better agree with the Ministery of the Church then with the Person of Christ alone So then to let go none of our assistants our sureties our safety is in the Angel of the Covenant Christ Jesus radically fundamentally meritoriously It is in the ministery of the Angels of heaven invisibly but it is in the Church of God and in the power of his Ministers there manifestly sensibly discernibly Mal. 2.7 They should seek the Law at the Priests mouth They should and therefore they are to blame that do not but fly to private expositions But why should they Quia angelus domini exercituum as it follows there Because the Priest is the Angel of the Lord of Hosts Yea the Gospell which they preach is above all messages which an Angel can bring of himselfe Gal. 1.8 If an Angel from heaven preach otherwise unto you then we have preached let him be accursed The ministery of celestiall Angels is inferiour to the ministery of the Ecclesiasticall The Gospel which belongs to us is truly Euangelium the good Ministery of good Angels the best ministery of the best Angels for though we compare not with those Angels in nature we compare with them in office though our offices tend to the same end to draw you to God yet they differ in the way and though the service of those Angels enlighten your understanding and assist your belief too yet in the ministery of these Angels in the Church there is a blessed fulfilling and verification of those words Now is salvation nearer Rom. 13.11 then when we beleeved You beleeve because those celestiall Angels have wrought invisibly upon you and disperst your clouds and removed impediments You beleeve because the great Angel Christ Jesus hath left his history his action and passion written for you and that is a historicall faith But yet salvation is nearer to you in having all this applied to you by them who are like you men and there where you know how to fetch it the Church That as you beleeve by reading the Gospels at home that Christ died for the world So you may beleeve by hearing here that he dyed for you This is Gods plenteous Redemption Quòd linguam meam assumsit in opus suum Bernar. That having so great a work
to doe as the salvation of soules he would make use of my tongue And being to save the world by his word that I should speak that word Docendo vos quod per se faciliùs suaviùs posset That he calls me up hither to teach you that which he could teach you better and sooner at home by his Spirit Indulgentia ejus est non indigentia It is the largenesse of his mercy towards you not any narrownesse in his power that he needs me And so have you this Angel in our text in all the acceptations in which our Expositors have delivered him It is Christ It is the Angels of heaven It is the Ministery of the Gospel And this Angell whosoever whatsoever S. Iohn saw come from the East I saw an Angel come from the East which was our second Branch and fals next into consideration This addition is intended for a particular addition to our comfort Ab oriente it is a particular endowment or inlargement of strength and power in this Angel that he comes from the East If we take it to goe the same way that we went before first of naturall Angels even the Westerne Angels Qui habuere occasum Those Angels which have had their Sun-set their fall they came from the East too Quomodo cecidisti decoelo Lucifer filius orientis Esay 14 12. How art thou fallen from heaven O Lucifer the Son of the morning He had his begetting his Creation in the East in the light and there might have stayed for any necessity of falling that God laid upon him Take the Angel of the text to be the Angel of the Covenant Christ Jesus and his name is The East he cannot be knowne he cannot bee said to have any West Zech. 6.12 Ecce vir Oriens nomen ejus so the vulgat reads that place Behold the Man whose name is the East you can call him nothing else for so the other Zachary the Zachary of the New Testament cals him too Luke 1.78 Per viscera misericordiae Through the tender bowels of his mercy Visitavit nos Oriens The East the day spring from on high hath visited us And he was derived à Patre luminum He came from the East begotten from all eternity of the Father of lights Iohn 16.28 I came out from the Father and came into the world Take this Angel to be the Preacher of the Gospel literally really the Gospell came out of the East where Christ lived and dyed and Typically figuratively Paradise which also figured the place to which the Gospel is to carry us Heaven that also was planted in the East and therefore S. Basil assignes that for the reason why in the Church service we turne to the East when we pray Quia antiquam requirimus patriam Wee looke towards our ancient country where the Gospel of our salvation was literally acted and accomplished and where Heaven the end of the Gospel was represented in Paradise Every way the Gospel is an Angel of the East But this is that which we take to be principally intended in it That as the East is the fountaine of light so all our illumination is to be taken from the Gospell Spread we this a little thinner and we shall better see through it If the calamities of the world or the heavy consideration of thine own sins have benummed and benighted thy soule in the vale of darknesse and in the shadow of death If thou thinke to wrastle and bustle through these strong stormes and thick clouds with a strong hand If thou thinke thy money thy bribes shall conjure thee up stronger spirits then those that oppose thee If thou seek ease in thy calamities that way to shake and shipwrack thine enemies In these crosse winds in these countermines to oppresse as thou art oppressed all this is but a turning to the North to blow away and scatter these sadnesses with a false an illusory and a sinfull comfort If thou thinke to ease thy selfe in the contemplation of thine honour thine offices thy favour thy riches thy health this is but a turning to the South the Sun-shine of worldly prosperity If thou sinke under thy afflictions and canst not finde nourishment but poyson in Gods corrections nor justice but cruelty in his judgements nor mercy but slacknesse in his forbearance till now If thou suffer thy soule to set in a cloud a dark cloud of ignorance of Gods providence and proceedings or in a darker of diffidence of his performance towards thee this is a turning to the West and all these are perverse and awry But turne to the East and to the Angel that comes from thence The Ministery of the Gospel of Christ Jesus in his Church It is true thou mayst find some darke places in the Scriptures Basil and Est silentii species obscuritas To speake darkly and obscurely is a kinde of silence I were as good not be spoken to as not be made to understand that which is spoken yet fixe thy selfe upon this Angel of the East the preaching of the Word the Ordinance of God and thine understanding shall be enlightned and thy beliefe established and thy conscience thus far unburthened that though the sins which thou hast done cannot be undone yet neither shalt thou bee undone by them There where thou art afraid of them in judgement they shall never meet thee but as in the round frame of the World the farthest West is East where the West ends the East begins So in thee who art a World too thy West and thy East shall joyne and when thy Sun thy soule comes to set in thy death-bed the Son of Grace shall suck it up into glory Our Angel comes from the East Angelus Ascendens a denotation of splendor and illustration of understanding and conscience and there is more he comes Ascending I saw an Angel ascend from the East that is still growing more cleare and more powerfull upon us Take the Angel here of naturall Angels 1 Sam. 28.13 and then when the Witch of Endor though an evill Spirit appeared to her yet saw him appeare so Ascending she attributes that glory to it I see gods Ascending out of the earth Take the Angel to be Christ and then his Ascension was Foelix clausula totius itinerarii Bernar. The glorious shutting up of all his progresse and though his descending from Heaven to earth and his descending from earth to hell gave us our title his Ascending by which he carried up our flesh to the right hand of his Father gave us our possession His Descent his humiliation gave us Ius ad rem but his Ascension Ius in re But as this Angel is the Ministery of the Gospel God gave it a glorious ascent in the Primitive Church Psal 19.6 when as this Sun Exultavit ut gigas ad currendam viam ascended quickly beyond the reach of Heretiques wits and Persecutors swords and as glorious an ascent in the
shall look first how S. Paul contracted this knowledge how he knew it And secondly that the knowledge of it did not disquiet him not disorder him he takes knowledge of it with a confidence and a cheerfulnesse When he sayes I know it he seemes to say I am glad of it or at least not troubled with it And lastly that S. Paul continues here that way and method which he alwayes uses That is to proceed by the understanding to the affections and so to the conscience of those that hear him by such means of perswasion as are most appliable to them to whom he then speaks And therefore knowing the power and efficacy of a dying a departing mans words he makes that impression in them Observe recollect remember practise that which I have delivered unto you for I know that all yee shall see my face no more And so we shall bring up that circle which was begun in heaven in our last exercise upon this occasion in this place when Christ said from thence Saul Saul why persecutest thou me up into heaven againe in that Euge bone serve which Christ hath said since unto him Well done good and faithfull servant enter into thy Masters joy And our Apostle whom in our former Exercise for example of our humiliation we found faln to the Earth in this to the assistance of our Exaltation in his we shall find and leave upon the last step of Iacobs ladder that is entring into Heaven by the gate of death First then in our first Part our first Branch is 1 Part. That there is a Transivi as acceptable to God as a Requievi That God was served in S. Paul by applying his labours to many places as well as if he had resided and bestowed himselfe intirely upon any one When Christ manifested himselfe at first unto him trembling and astonished he said Act. 9.6 Lord what wilt thou have me to doe And when Christ had told him That in Damascus from Ananias he should receive his Instructions which were Ver. 15. That he should beare his name before the Gentiles and Kings and the children of Israel After this commission was exhibited by Ananias and accepted by S. Paul that Propheticall Scripture laid hold upon him by way of acclamation Psal 19.6 Exultavit ut gigas ad currendam viam He rejoyced as a strong man to run a race 1 Cor. 15.10 Rom. 15.19 He laboured more abundantly then they all He carried the Gospel from Ierusalem to Illyricum That is as S. Hierome survayes it à mari rubro ad oceanum from the Red Sea a Sea within land to the Ocean without from all within to all without the Covenant Gentiles as well as Jews Deficiente eum prius terra quà m studio praedicandi He found an end of the world but he found no end of his zeale but preached as long as he found any to preach to And as he exceeded in Action so did he in Passion too He joynes both together 2 Cor. 11.23 In labours more abundant There was his continuall preaching In stripes above measure And then In prisons more frequent In deaths often Who dyes more then once Yet he dyes often How often Death that is every other mans everlasting fast and fils him his mouth with earth was S. Pauls Panis quotidianus His daily bread I protest sayes he by your rejoycing which I have in Christ I die daily Though therefore we cannot give S. Paul a greater name then an Apostle except there be some extraordinary height of Apostleship enwrapped in that which he sayes of himselfe Gal. 1.1 Paul an Apostle not of men neither by men but by Iesus Christ That in that place he glory in a holy exultation that he was made an Apostle by Jesus Christ then when Jesus Christ was nothing but Jesus Christ then when he was glorified in heaven and not a mortall man upon earth as he was when he made his other Apostles And that in his being an Apostle there entred no such act of men as did in the election of Matthias to that office though Matthias were made after the Ascension as well as he in whose election those men presented God two names and God directed that lot upon him and so Matthias was reckoned amongst the eleven Apostles Though we need not procure to him Acts 1. ult nor imagine for him any other name then an Apostle yet S. Paul was otherwise an universall soule to the whole Church then many of the other Apostles were and had a larger liberty to communicate himselfe to all places then any of them had That is it which S. Chrysostome intends when he extends S. Pauls dignity Angelis diversae Gentes commissae To particular Angels particular Nations are committed sed nullus Angelorum sayes that Father No Angel governed his particular Nation better then S. Paul did the whole Church S. Chrysostome carryes it so high Isidore modifies it thus He brings it from the Angels of heaven to the Angels of the Church Indeed the Archangels of the Church the Apostles themselves And he sayes Apostolorum quisque regionem nactus unicam Every Apostle was designed to some particular and certaine compasse and did but that in that which S. Paul did in the whole world But S. Chrysostome and Isidore both take their ground for that which they say from that which S. Paul sayes of himselfe Besides these things which are without 2 Cor. 11.28 that which commeth upon me daily The care of all the Churches for sayes he who is weak and I am not weak That is who lacks any thing but I am ready to doe it for him who suffers any thing but I have compassion for him We receive by faire Tradition and we entertaine with a faire credulity the other Apostles to have been Bishops and thereby to have had a more certaine center to which naturally that is by the nature of their office they were to encline Not that nothing may excuse a Bishops absence from his Sea for naturall things even naturally doe depart from those places to which they are naturally designed and naturally affected for the conservation of the whole frame and course of nature for in such cases water will ascend and ayre will descend which motion is done naturally though it be a motion from that place to which they are naturally affected And so may Bishops from their particular Churches Cyprian for Episcopus in Ecclesia Ecclesia in Episcopo Every Bishop hath a superintendency and a residence in the whole Church and the whole Church a residence and a confidence in him Therefore it is that in some Decretall and some Synodall Letters Bishops are called Monarchae Monarchs not onely with relation to one Diocesse but to the whole Church not onely Regall but Imperiall Monarchs The Church of Rome makes Bishops every day of Diocesses to which they know those Bishops can never come Not onely in the Dominions of Princes
man who is not onely finite and determined in a compasse but narrow in his compasse not onely not bottomlesse but shallow in his comprehensions to this naturall this smite and narrow and shallow man no burden is so insupportable no consideration so inextrieable no secret so inscrutable no conception so incredible as to conceive One infinite God that should do all things alone without any more Gods That that power that establishes counsails that things may be carried in a constancy and yet permits Contingencies that things shall fall out casually That the God of Certainty and the God of Contingency should be all one God That that God that settles peace should yet make warres and in the day of battaile should be both upon that side that does and that side that is overcome That the conquered God and the victorious God should be both one God That that God who is all goodnesse in himselfe should yet have his hand in every ill action this the naturall man cannot digest not comprehend And therefore the naturall man eases himselfe and thinkes he cases God by diuiding the burden and laying his particular necessities upon particular Gods Hence came those enormous multiplications of Gods Hesiods thirty thousand Gods and three hundred Iupiters Hence came it that they brought their children into the world under one God and then put them to nurse and then to schoole and then to occupations and professions under other severall Gods Hence came their Vagitanus a God that must take care that children doe not burst with crying and their Fabulanus a God that must take care that children doe not stammer in speaking Hence came their Statelinus and their Potinus a God that must teach them to goe and a God that must teach them to drinke So far as that they came to make Febrem Deam To erect Temples and Altars to diseases to age to death it selfe and so all those punishments which our true God laid upon man for sin all our infirmities they made Gods So far is the naturall man from denying God as that he thus multiplies them But yet never did these naturall men the Gentiles ascribe so much to their Gods except some very few of them as they of the Romane perswasion may seeme to doe to their Saints For they limited their devotions and sacrifices and supplications in some certaine and determined things and those for the most part in this world but in the Romane Church they all aske all of all for they aske even things pertaining to the next world And as they make their Saints verier Gods then the Gentils doe theirs in asking greater things at their hands so have they more of them For if there be not yet more Saints celebrated by Name then will make up Hesiods thirty thousand yet they have more in this respect that of Hesiods thirty thousand one Nation worshiped one another another thousand In the Romane Church all worship all And howsoever it be for the number yet saith one we may live to see the number of Hesiods thirty thousand equalled and exceeded for if the Jesuit who have got two of their Order into the Consistory they have had two Cardinalls and two of their Order into heaven they have had two Saints Canonized if they could get one of their Order into the Chayre one Pope As we reade of one Generall that knighted his whole Army at once so such a Pope may Canonize his whole Order and then Hesiods thirty thousand would be literally fulfilled And that as we have done in the multiplication of their gods so in their superstition to their created gods we may also observe a congruity a conformity a concurrence between the Heathen and the Romane Religion As the Heathen east such an intimidation such an infatuation not onely upon the people but upon the Princes too as that in the Story of the Aegyptian Kings we finde that whensoever any of their Priests signified unto any of their Kings that it was the pleasure of his God that he should leave that kingdome and come up to him that King did alwayes without any contradiction any hesitation kill himselfe so are they come so neare to this in the Romane Church as that though they cannot infatuate such Princes as they are weary of to kill themselves yet when they are weary of Princes they can infatuate other men to those assassinats of which our neighbour kingdome hath felt the blow more then once and we the offer and the plotting more then many times That that I drive to in this consideration is this That since man is naturally apt to multiply Gods to himselfe we doe with all Christian diligence shut up our selves in the beliefe and worship of our one and onely God without admitting any more Mediators or Intercessors or Advocates in any of those Modifications or Distinctions with which the later men have painted and disguized the Religion of Rome to make them the more passable and without making any one step towards meeting them in their superstitious errors but adhere intirely to our onely Advocate and Mediator and Intercessor Christ Jesus for he does no more need an Assistant in any of those offices then in his office of Redeemer or Saviour and therefore as they require no fellow Redeemer no fellow-Saviour so neither let us admit any fellow-Advocate fellow-Mediator fellow-Intercessor in heaven For why may not that reason hold all the yeare which they assigne in the Romane Church for their forbearance of prayers to any Saint upon certaine dayes Upon Good-Fryday and Easter-day and Whit sunday say they we must not pray to any Saint no not to the blessed Virgin Quia Christus Spiritus Sanctus sunt tune temporis supremi unici Advocati Because upon those dayes Christ and the Holy Ghost are our principall nay upon those dayes our onely Advocares Garantus in Rubr. Missal par 1. Tit. 9. §. 8. And are Christ and the Holy Ghost out of office a weeke after Easter or after Whitsontide Since man is naturally apt to multiply Gods let us be Christianly diligent to conclude our selves in One. And then since man is also naturally apt to stray into a superstitious worship of God let us be Christianly diligent to preclude all waies that may lead us into that tentation or incline us towards superstition In which I doe not intend that we should decline all such things as had been superstitiously abused in a superstitious Church But in all such things as being in their own nature indifferent are by a just commandment of lawfull authority become more then indifferent necessary to us though not Necessitate medii yet Necessitate praecepti for though salvation consist not in Ceremonies Obedience doth and salvation consists much in Obedience That in all such things we alwayes informe our selves of the right use of those things in their first institution of their abuse with which they have been depraved in the Roman Church and of the good use which
is made of them in ours That because pictures have been adored we do not abhor a picture Nor sit at the Sacrament because Idolatry hath been committed in kneeling That Church which they call Lutheran hath retained more of these Ceremonies then ours hath done And ours more then that which they call Calvinist But both the Lutheran and ours without danger because in both places we are diligent to preach to the people the right use of these indifferent things For this is a true way of shutting out superstition Not alwayes to abolish the thing it selfe because in the right use thereof the spirituall profit and edification may exceed the danger but by preaching and all convenient wayes of instruction to deliver people out of that ignorance which possesses people in the Roman captivity From which naturall inclination of man Atheista we raise this by way of conclusion of all That since man is naturally apt to multiply Gods to himselfe and naturally apt to worship his Gods superstitiously since there is a pronenesse to many Gods and to superstition in nature There cannot be so unnaturall a thing no such Monster in nature or against nature as an Atheist that beleeves no God For when we we that are Christians have reproached this Atheist thus farre our way Canst not thou beleeve one God such a debility such a nullity in thy faith as not to beleeve one God we require no more and canst thou not doe that not one when we we that are Christians have reproached him so farre The naturall man of whose company hee will pretend to be will reproach him so much farther as to say Canst not thou beleeve one God We we who proceed by the same light that thou doest beleeve a thousand So that the naturall man is as ready readier then the Christian to excommunicate the Atheist For the Atheist that denies all Gods does much more oppose the naturall man that beleeves a thousand then the Christian that beleeves but one Poore intricated soule Riddling perplexed labyrinthicall soule Thou couldest not say that thou beleevest not in God if there were no God Thou couldest not beleeve in God if there were no God If there were no God thou couldest not speake thou couldest not thinke not a word not a thought no not against God Thou couldest not blaspheme the Name of God thou couldest not sweare if there were no God For all thy faculties how ever depraved and perverted by thee are from him and except thou canst seriously beleeve that thou art nothing thou canst not beleeve that there is no God If I should aske thee at a Tragedy where thou shouldest see him that had drawne blood lie weltring and surrounded in his owne blood Is there a God now If thou couldst answer me No These are but Inventions and Representations of men and I beleeve a God never the more for this If I should ask thee at a Sermon where thou shouldest heare the Judgements of God formerly denounced and executed re-denounced and applied to present occasions Is there a God now If thou couldest answer me No These are but Inventions of State to souple and regulate Congregations and keep people in order and I beleeve a God never the more for this Bee as confident as thou canst in company for company is the Atheists Sanctuary I respit thee not till the day of Judgement when I may see thee upon thy knees upon thy face begging of the hills that they would fall downe and cover thee from the fierce wrath of God to aske thee then Is there a God now I respit thee not till the day of thine own death when thou shalt have evidence enough that there is a God though no other evidence but to finde a Devill and evidence enough that there is a Heaven though no other evidence but to feele Hell To aske thee then Is there a God now I respit thee but a few houres but six houres but till midnight Wake then and then darke and alone Heare God aske thee then remember that I asked thee now Is there a God and if thou darest say No. And then as there is an universall Atheist an Athiest over all the world that beleeves no God so is he also an Atheist over all the Christian world that beleeves not Christ That which the Apostle sayes to the Ephesians Absque Christo absque Deo As long as you were without Christ you were without God is spoken at least to all that have heard Christ preached not to beleeve God so as God hath exhibited and manifested himselfe in his Son Christ Jesus is in S. Pauls acceptation of that word Atheisme and S. Paul and he that speaks in S. Paul is too good a Grammarian too great a Critique for thee to dispute against And then as there is an universall Atheist he that denies God And a more particular Atheist he that denies Christ so in a narrower and yet large sense of the word there is an actuall Atheist a practicall Atheist who though he doe pretend to make God and God in Christ the object of his faith yet does not make Christ and Christ in the holy Ghost that is Christ working in the Ordinances of his Church the rule and patterne of his actions but lives so as no man can beleeve that he beleeves in God This universall Atheist that beleeves no God the heavens and all the powers therein shall condemne at the last day The particular Atheist that beleeves no Christ the glorious company of the Apostles that established the Church of Christ shall condemn at that day And the practicall Atheist the ungodly liver the noble army of Martyrs that did and suffered so much for Christ shall then condemne And condemne him not onely as the most impious thing but as the most inhumane Not onely as the most ungodly but as the most unnaturall thing for an Atheist is not onely a Devil in Religion but a monster in nature not onely elemented and composed of Heresies in the Church but of paradoxes and absurdities in the world Naturall men the men of Malta even Barbarians though subject to levity and changing their minds yet make this their first act after their change to constitute a God though in another extreme yet in an evident and absolute aversenesse from Atheisme They changed their minds and said he was a God And be this enough for the Explication of the words and their Application and Complication to the celebration of the day The God of heaven rectifie in us our naturall Logique That in all his Judgements we glorifie God without uncharitable condemning other men The God of heaven sanctifie to us our naturall Religion That it be never quenched nor damped in us never blown out by Atheisme nor blowne up by an Idolatrous multiplying of false or a superstitious worship of our true God The God of heaven preserve us in safety by the power of the Father In saving knowledge by the wisdome of the Son And
32.29 Though Iacob seeme to have been rebuked for asking Gods name when he wrastled with him And so also the Angel which was to doe a miraculous worke Judg. 13.18 a worke appertaining onely to God to give a Childe to the barren because he represented God and had the person of God upon him would not permit Manoah to enquire after his name Because as he sayes there that name was secret and wonderfull And though God himselfe Exod. 23.20 to dignifie and authorize that Angel which he made his Commissioner and the Tutelar and Nationall Guide of his people sayes of that Angel to that people Feare him provoke him not for my Name is in him and yet did not tell them what that name was Yet certainly we could not so much as say God cannot be named except we could name God by some name we could not say God hath no name except God had a name for that very word God is his name God calls upon us often in the Scriptures To call upon his Name and in the Scriptures he hath manifested to us divers names by which we may call upon him Doest thou know what name to call him by when thou callest him to beare false witnesse to averre a falshood Hath God a name to sweare by Doest thou know what name to call him by when thou wouldest make him thy servant thy instrument thy executioner to plague others upon thy bitter curses and imprecations Hath God a name to curse by Canst thou wound his body exhaust his bloud teare off his flesh breake his bones excruciate his soule and all this by his right name Hath God a name to blaspheme by and hath God no name to pray by is he such a stranger to thee Dost thou know every faire house in thy way as thou travellest whose that is and dost thou not know in whose house thou standest now Beloved to know God by name and to come to him by name is to consider his particular blessings to thee to consider him in his power and how he hath protected thee there and in his wisedome and how he hath directed thee there and in his love and how he hath affected thee there and exprest all in particular mercies He is but a darke but a narrow a shallow a lazy man in nature that knows no more but that there is a heaven and an earth and a sea He that will be of use in this world comes to know the influences of the heavens the vertue of the plants and mines of the earth the course and divisions of the Sea To the naturall man God gives generall notions of himselfe a God that spreads over all as the heavens a God that sustaines all as the earth a God that transports and communicates all to all as the sea But to the Christian Church God applies himselfe in more particular notions as a Father as a Son as a holy Ghost And to every Christian soule as a Creator a Redeemer a Benefactor that I may say This I was not born to and yet this I have from my God this a potent adversary sought to evict from me but this I have recovered by my God sicknesse had enfeebled my body but I have a convalescence calumnie had defamed my reputation but I have a reparation malice in other men or improvidence in my selfe had ruined my fortune but I have a redintegration from my God And then by these which are indeed but Cognomina Dei his sir-names names of distinction names of the exercise of some particular properties and attributes of his to come to the root of all to my very Being that my present Being in this world and my eternall Being in the next is made knowne to me by his name of Iehovah which is his Essentiall name to which David had recourse in this exinanition when his affliction had even annihilated and brought him to nothing he fled to Iehovah the God of all Being which is the foundation of all his other Attributes and includes all his other names and is our next and last branch in this first Part. This name then of Iehovah that is here translated Lord Iehovah is agreed by all to be the greatest name by which God hath declared and manifested himselfe to man This is that name which the Jews falsly but peremptorily for falshood lives by peremptorinesse and feeds and armes it selfe with peremptorinesse deny ever to have been attributed to the Messias in the Scriptures This is that name in the vertue and use whereof those Calumniators of our Saviours miracles doe say that he did his miracles according to a direction and schedule for the true and right pronouncing of that name which Solomon in his time had made and Christ in his time had found and by which say they any other man might have done those miracles if he had had Solomons directions for the right sounding of this name Iehovah This is that name which out of a superstitious reverence the Jews alwayes forbore to found or utter but ever pronounced some other name either Adonai or Elohim in the place thereof wheresoever they found Iehovah But now their Rabbins will not so much as write that name but still expresse it in foure other letters So that they dare not not onely not sound it not say it but not see it How this name which we call Iehovah is truly to be sounded because in that language it is exprest in foure Consonants onely without Vowels is a perplext question we may well be content to be ignorant therein since our Saviour Christ himselfe in all those places which he cited out of the Old Testament never sounded it he never said Iehovah Nor the Apostles after him nor Origen nor Ierome all persons very intelligent in the propriety of language they never sounded this name Iehovah For though in S. Ieromes Exposition upon the 8. Psalme we finde that word Iehovah in some Editions which we have now yet it is a cleare case that in the old Copies it is not so in Ieroms mouth it was not so from Ieroms hand it came not so Neither doth it appeare to me that ever the name of Iehovah was so pronounced till so late as in our Fathers time for I think Petrus Gallatinus was the first that ever called it so But howsoever this name be to be sounded that which falls in our consideration at this time is That David in his distresses fled presently to God and to God by name that is in consideration and commemoration of his particular blessings and to a God that had that name the name of Iehovah the name of Essence and Being which name carryed a confession that all our wel-being and the very first being it selfe was and was to be derived from him David therefore comes to God In nomine totali in nomine integrali He considers God totally entirely altogether Not altogether that is confusedly but altogether that is in such a Name as
godly men have declared this lothnesse to dye Beloved waigh Life and Death one against another and the balance will be even Throw the glory of God into either balance and that turnes the scale S. Paul could not tell which to wish Life or Death There the balance was even Then comes in the glory of God the addition of his soule to that Quire that spend all their time eternity it selfe only in glorifying God and that turnes the scale and then he comes to his Cupio dissolvi To desire to be dissolved and to be with Christ But then he puts in more of the same waight in the other scale he sees that it advances Gods glory more for him to stay and labour in the building of Gods Kingdome here and so adde more soules then his owne to that state then only to enjoy that Kingdome in himself and that turnes the scale againe and so he is content to live These Saints of God then when they deprecate death and complain of the approaches of death they are at that time in a charitable extasie abstracted and withdrawne from the consideration of that particular happinesse which they in themselves might haye in heaven and they are transported and swallowed up with this sorrow that the Church here and gods kingdome upon earth should lack those meanes of advancement or assistance which God by their service was pleased to afford to his Church Whether they were good Kings good Priests or good Prophets the Church lost by their death and therefore they deprecated that death Esay 38.18 and desired to live The grave cannot praise thee death cannot celebrate thee But the living the living he shall praise thee as I doe this day sayes Hezekias He was affected with an apprehension of a future barrennesse after his death and a want of propagation of Gods truth I shall not see the Lord even the Lord sayes he He had assurance that he should see the Lord in Heaven when by death he was come thither But sayes he I shall not see him in the land of the living Well even in the land of the living even in the land of life it selfe he was to see him if by death he were to see him in Heaven But this is the losse that he laments this is the misery that he deplores with so much holy passion I shall behold man no more with the Inhabitants of the world Howsoever I shall enjoy God my selfe yet I shall be no longer a meanes an instrument of the propagation of Gods truth amongst others And till we come to that joy which the heart cannot conceive it is I thinke the greatest joy that the soule of man is capable of in this life especially where a man hath been any occasion of sinne to others to assist the salvation of others And even that consideration that he shall be able to doe Gods cause no more good here may make a good man loath to die Quid facies magno nomini tuo Jos 7.9 sayes Ioshuah in his prayer to God if the Canaanites come in and destroy us and blaspheme thee What wilt thou do unto thy mighty Name What wilt thou doe unto thy glorious Church said the Saints of God in those Deprecations if thou take those men out of the world whom thou hadst chosen enabled qualified for the edification sustentation propagation of that Church In a word David considers not here what men doe or doe not in the next world but he considers onely that in this world he was bound to propagate Gods Truth and that that he could not doe if God tooke him away by death Consider then this horrour and detestation and deprecation of death in those Saints of the old Testament with relation to their particular and then it must be Quia promissiones obscurae Because Moses had conveyed to those men all Gods future blessings all the joy and glory of Heaven onely in the types of earthly things and said little of the state of the soule after this life And therefore the promises belonging to the godly after this life were not so cleere then not so well manifested to them not so well fixt in them as that they could in contemplation of them step easily or deliver themselves confidently into the jawes of death he that is not fully satisfied of the next world makes shift to be content with this and he that cannot reach or does not feele that will be glad to keepe his hold upon this Consider their horrour and â—etestation and deprecation of death not with relation to themselves but to Gods Church and then it will be Quia operarii pauci Because God had a great harvest in hand and few labourers in it they were loath to be taken from the worke And these Reasons might at least by way of excuse and extenuation in those times of darknesse prevaile somewhat in their behalfe They saw not whither they went and therefore were loath to goe and they were loath to goe because they saw not how Gods Church would subsist when they were gone But in these times of ours when Almighty God hath given an abundant remedy to both these their excuses will not be appliable to us We have a full cleernesse of the state of the soule after this life not onely above those of the old Law but above those of the Primitive Christian Church which in some hundreds of yeares came not to a cleere understanding in that point whether the soule were immortall by nature or but by preservation whether the soule could not die or onely should not die Or because that perchance may be without any constant cleernesse yet that was not cleere to them which concernes our case neerer whether the soule came to a present fruition of the sight of God after death or no. But God having afforded us cleernesse in that and then blest our times with an established Church and plenty of able work-men for the present and plenty of Schooles and competency of endowments in Universities for the establishing of our hopes and assurances for the future since we have both the promise of Heaven after and the promise that the gates of Hell shall not prevaile against the Church here Since we can neither say Promissiones obseurae That Heaven hangs in a Cloud nor say Operarii pauci That dangers hang over the Church it is much more inexcusable in us now then it was in any of them then to be loath to die or to be too passionate in that reason of the deprecation Quia non in morte Because in death there is no remembrance of thee c. Which words being taken literally may fill our meditation and exalt our devotion thus If in death there be no remembrance of God if this remembrance perish in death certainly it decayes in the neernesse to death If there be a possession in death there is an approach in age And therefore Remember now thy Creator in the dayes of thy youth
to have beene Gods instrument for the conversion of others by the power of Preaching or by a holy and exemplar life in any calling And with this comfort David proceeds in the recommendation of this duty of Prayer Day and night I have felt thy hand upon me ver 4. I have acknowledged my sinne unto thee and thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin thus it stood with me and by my example ver 5. For this shall every one that is godly pray unto thee in a time when thou maiest be found First then the person that hath any accesse allowed him any title to pray Omnis sanctus is he that is Godly holy Now Omnis Sanctus est omnis Baptismate sanctificatus Those are the holy ones whom God will heare who are of the houshold of the faithfull of the Communion of Saints matriculated engraffed enrolled in the Church Hierom. by that initiatory Sacrament of Baptisme for the house of God into which we enter by Baptisme is the house of Prayer And as out of the Arke whosoever swam best was not saved by his swimming no more is any morall man out of the Church by his praying He that swomme in the flood swomme but into more and more water he that prayes out of the Church prayes but into more and more sin because he doth not establish his prayer in that Grant this for our Lord and Saviour Christ Jesus sake It is true then that these holy ones whose prayer is acceptable are those of the Christian Church Onely they but is it all they are all their prayers acceptable There is a second concoction necessary too Not onely to have beene sanctified by the Church in Baptisme but a sanctification in a worthy receiving of the other Sacrament too A life that pleads the first seale Baptisme and claimes the other seale The body and blood of Christ Jesus We know the Wise mans counsaile Ecclus. 5.5 concerning propitiation Be not without feare Though thou have received the propitiatory Sacrament of Baptisme be afraid that thou hast not all Will the milke that thou suckedst from a wholesome Nurse keepe thee alive now Or canst thou dine upon last yeares meat to day Hee that hath that first holinesse The holinesse of the Covenant the holinesse of Baptisme let him pray for more For Omnis Sanctus is Quantumcumque Sanctus How holy soever he be that holinesse will not defray him all the way but that holinesse is a faire letter of credit and a bill of exchange for more When canst thou thinke thy selfe holy enough when thou hast washed thy selfe in snow water In penitent teares Iob 9.30 as the best purity of this life is expressed why even then Abominabuntur te vestimenta tua Thine owne cloathes shall make thee abominable Is all well when thou thinkest all well Prov. 16.2 why All the wayes of a man are cleane in his owne eyes but the Lord weigheth the spirit If thine owne spirit thine owne conscience accuse thee of nothing 1 Cor. 3.4 Iob 4.18 nothing unrepented is all well why I know nothing by my selfe yet am I not thereby justified It is God onely that is Surveyor of thy holinesse And Behold he found no stedfastnesse in his Servants and laid folly upon his Angels how much more in them that dwell in houses of clay Gregor whose foundation is in the dust Sordet in conspectu aeterni Iudieis When that eternall Judge comes to value our transitory or imaginary our hollow and rusty and rotten holinesse Sordet quod in intentione fulget operantis Even that which had a good lustre a good speciousnesse not onely in the eyes of men that saw it who might be deceived by my hypocrisie but in the purpose of him that did it becomes base more allay then pure metall more corruption then devotion Though Iacob Gen. 31.31 when he fled from his Father in law Laban were free enough himselfe from the theft of Labans Idols yet it was dangerously pronounced of him With whomsoever thou findest thy gods let him not live For his owne Wife Rachel had stollen them August And Caro conjux Thy Wife thy flesh thy weaker part may insinuate much sin into thine actions even when thy spirit is at strongest and thou in thy best confidence Onely thus these two cases may differ Rachel was able to cover those stollen Idols from her Fathers finding with that excuse The custome of Women is come upon me But thou shalt not be able to cover thy stollen sins with saying The infirmity of man is come upon me I do but as other men do Though thou have that degree towards sanctification that thou sin not out of presumption but out of infirmity though thou mayest in a modified sense fall within Davids word Omnis sanctus A holy man yet every holy and godly man must pray that even those infirmities may be removed too Qui sanctificatur sanctificetur adhuc Apoâ— 22.11 He that is holy let him be holy still not onely so holy still but still more and more holy For beloved As in the firmament of those stars which are reduced into Constellations and into a certainty of shapes of figures and images we observe some to be of one greatnesse some of another wee observe divers magnitudes in all them but to all those other Stars which are not reduced into those formes and figures we allow no magnitude at all no proportion at all no name no consideration So for those blessed soules which are collected into their eternall dwelling in Heaven which have their immoveable possession position at the right hand of God as one Star differs from another in glory so do these Saints which are in Heaven But whilst men are upon this earth though they be stars Saints of God though they be in the firmament established in the true Church of God yet they have no magnitude no proportion no certainty no holinesse in themselves nor in any thing formerly done by God in their behalfe and declared to us but their present degrees of godlinesse give them but that qualification that they may pray acceptably for more He must be so godly before he pray and his prayer must be for more godlinesse and all directed to the right object of prayer To God Vnto Thee shall every one that is godly pray which is our next the second of our foure Considerations in this first part Ad Te Ad Te. To God because he can heare And then Ad te to God because he can give Certainely it were a strange distemper a strange singularity a strange circularity in a man that dwelt at Windsor to fetch all his water at London Bridge So is it in him that lives in Gods presence as he does that lives religiously in his Church to goe for all his necessities by Invocation to Saints David was willing bee our example for Prayer but he gives no example of scattering our prayers upon
any other then God Christ Jesus was willing to give us a Rule for Prayer but if hee had intended that his Rule should have beene deflected and declined to Saints he would have taught us to say Frater noster qui es in Coelis and not only Pater noster to pray to our Brethren which are there too and not onely to our Father which is in Heaven If any man have tasted at Court what it is to be ever welcome to the King himselfe and what it is to speake to another to speake for him he will blesse that happinesse of having an immediate accesse to God himselfe in his prayers They that come so low downe the streame as wee said before to London Bridge they will go lower and lower to Gravesend too They that come to Saints they will come to the Images and Reliques of Saints too They come to a brackish water betweene salt and fresh and they come at last to be swallowed up in that sea which hath no limit no bottome that is to direct all their devotions to such Saints as have no certainty not onely not in their ability we know not what those Saints can doe but not in their history we know not that such as they pray to are Saints nay we know not whether they ever were at all So that this may be Idolatry in the strictest acceptation of the word Idol Idolum nihil est let that be true which they say and in their sense Our Images are not Idols for an Idol is nothing represents nothing but our Images are the Images of Men that once were upon the earth But that is not throughout true for they worship Images of those who never were Christophers and other symbolicall and emblematicall Saints which never lived here but were and are yet nothing But let them be true Saints how will they make it appeare to us that those Saints can heare us What surety can we have of it Let us rather pray to him who we are sure can heare that is first and then sure he can give that we pray for that is next The prayer here is forgivenesse of sins And can Saints give that The Hosannaes Qui dant and the Allelujahs and the Gloria in Excelsis Glory in heaven peace upon earth good will amongst men these are good and cheerfull Notes in which the Quire of heaven are exercised Cherubims and Seraphims Prophets and Apostles Saints and Angels blesse God and benefit men by these But the Remittuntur peccata Thy sinnes are forgiven thee is too high a note for any creature in earth or heaven to reach to except where it is set by Gods own hand as it is by his Commission to his Minister in his Church and there onely in the absolution given by his Ordinance to every penitent sinner We see that phrase Dimittuntur peccata Thy sinnes are forgiven thee was a suspicious word even in the mouth of Christ himselfe amongst the Scribes that would not beleeve his Divinity when Christ said to him that had the Palsie My sonne be of good cheare thy sinnes are forgiven thee the Scribes cryed out he blasphemed It strikes any man to heare of forgivenesse of sins from any but God It was not a harder thing to say Fiat lux then to say Dimittuntur peccata Not harder to bring light out of darknesse by Creation then to bring a cleane thing out of uncleannesse by Conversion for who can doe that Iob 14. And therefore when the King of Aram sent Naaman to the King of Israel to take order for the curing of his bodily Leprosie the King of Israel rent his Clothes and said Am I a God 2 King 5.7 to kill and to give life The power even of temporall life and death is proper to God for as Witches thinke sometimes that they kill when they doe not and are therefore as culpable as if they did So a tyrannous persecutor so a passionate Judge so a perjured witnesse so a revengefull quarreller thinks he takes away the life of his enemy and is guilty of that murder in the eye of God though the blow be truly from God whose judgements are ever just though not ever declared Let them never say that they aske not these things temporall or spirituall at the hands of those Saints for expresly literally as the words stand and sound they do aske even those very things and if the Church have any other meaning in those prayers the mischiefe is that they never teach the people by Preaching what that their reserved meaning is but leave them to the very letter of the prayer to aske those things which if they could heare yet the Saints could not give And when the prayer is made aright directed to God himselfe yet here in our Text it is limited Propter hoc For this this that was spoken of before every one that is godly shall pray unto thee Now what is this This for that is our third Consideration Si à quo petenda sed non quae petenda petis If thou come to the right Market Propter boc August but buy unwholesome hearbs there If thou come to the Apothecaries shop and aske for nothing but poysons If thou come to God in thy prayer and aske onely temporall blessings which are blessings onely in their use and may be and are ordinarily snares and encumbrances then is this direction of Davids Propter hoc for this shall he pray transgressed For This as appeares in the words immediately before the Text is The forgivenesse of the punishment and of the iniquity of our sinne which is so inexpressible a comfort to that soule that hath wrastled with the indignation of God and is now refreshed and released as whosoever should goe about to describe it should diminish it He hath it not that thinks he can utter it It is a blessed comfort to find my soule in that state as when I last received the Sacrament with a good conscience If I enjoy that peace now that is the peace of a religious and of a wise conscience for there is a wisedome of the conscience not to run into infinite scruples and doubts but Imponere finem litibus to levy a fine in bar of all scruples and diffidences and to rest in the peace and assurednesse of remission of sinnes after due means for the obtaining thereof and therefore if I be as well now as when I received this is a blessed degree of blessednesse But yet there is one cloud in this case Ab occultis my secret sins which even mine own narrowest inquisition extends not to If I consider my selfe to be as well as I was at my Baptisme when I brought no actuall sin and had the hand of Christ to wash away the foulnesse of Originall sin can I pray for a better state then that Even in that there was a cloud too and a cloud that hath thunder and lightning in it that Fomes peccati that fuell and
and a few more and other sins in as few names In this sin of lust the sexe the quality the distance the manner and a great many other circumstances create new names to the sin and make it a sin of another kinde And as the sin is a Mule to beare all these loads so the sinner in this kind is so too and as we finde an example in the Nephew of a Pope delights to take as many loads of this sin upon him as he could to vary and to multiply the kindes of this sin in one act He would not satisfie his lust by a fornication or adultery or incest these were vulgar but upon his own sex and that not upon an ordinary person but in their account upon a Prince And he a spirituall Prince A Cardinall And all this not by solicitation but by force for thus he compiled his sins He ravished a Cardinall This is the sin in which men pack up as much sin as they can and as though it were a shame to have too little they belie their own pack they bragge of sins in this kinde which they never did as S. Augustine with a holy and penitent ingenuity confesses of himselfe This sin then though one great mischiefe in it be that for the most part it destroyes two together the Devill will have his creatures come to his Arke by couples too two and two together yet this sin we are able to commit without a companion upon our own bodies yea without bodies in the weaknesse of our bodies our mindes can sin this sin This which the Wise-man cals a pit The mouth of a strange woman is as a deep pit Prov. 22.14 he with whom the Lord is angry shall fall therein And therefore he that pursues that sin is called to a double sad consideration both that he angers the Lord in committing that sinne then And that the Lord was angry with him before for some other sinne and for a punishment of that former sin God suffered him to fall into this And it is truely a fearefull condition when God punishes sin by sin other corrections bring us to a peace with God He will not be angry for ever he will not punish twice when hee hath punished a sin he hath done But when he punishes sin by sinne wee are not thereby the nearer to a peace or reconciliation by that punishment for still there is a new sin that continues us in his displeasure Punish me O Lord with all thy scourges with poverty with sicknesse with dishonour with losse of parents and children but with that rod of wyre with that scorpion to punish sin with sinne Lord scourge me not for then how shall I enter into thy rest And this is the condition of this sinne for He with whom the Lord is angry shall fall into it 2 Sam. 12. And when he is fallen he shall not understand his state but thinke himselfe well For Nathan presents Davids sinne to him in a parable of a feast of an entertainment of a stranger He tastes no sowrnesse no bitternesse in it not because there is none but because a carkasse a man already slain cannot feele a new wound A man dead in the habit of a sinne hath no sense of it This sinne of which S. Augustin who had beene overcome by it and was afraid that his case was a common case saith in the person of all Continua pugna victoria rara In a defensive warre where we are put to a continuall resistance it is hard comming to a victory what hope then where there is no resistance no defence but a spontaneous and voluntary opening our selves to all provocations yea provoking of provocations by high diet a tempting of tentations by exposing our selves to dangerous company Gen. 19.10 when as the Angels who were safe enough in themselves yet withdrew themselves from the uncleannesse of the Sodomits This sinne will not be overcome but by a league Iob 31.1 Iobs league Pepigi foedus I have made a covenant with mine eyes why then should I think upon a maid Since I have bound my senses why should my mind be at liberty to sinne This league should bind both I have taken a promise of mine eyes that they will not betray me by wanton glaunces by carying me to dangerous objects why should not I keepe covnant with them why should my thoughts be scattered upon such tentations The league must be kept on both parts the mind and the senses wee must not entertain tentations from without we must not create them within Eloquia Domini casta The words of the Lord are chaste words Psal 12.7 pure words and so must all the talke and conversation of him that loves God be And then Castificate animas vestras you must see that you keepe your minds pure and chaste 1 Pet. 1.22 If we have not both chaste minds and chast bodies we shall have neither And then follows the excommunication S. Augustine saith That according to most probability there were no Mules in the Arke but undisputably there are no Mules in the Church in the triumphant Church none of our metaphoricall Mules there 1 Cor. 6.8 The Apostle hath put it beyond a Problem Bee not deceived neither fornicators nor adulterers nor effeminate persons shall inherit the Kingdome of heaven there is the fearefull excommunication And therefore Nolite fieri sicut Be not made like the Horse or the Mule in pride or wantonnesse especially Quia non Intellectus because then you lose your understanding and so become absolutely irrecoverable and leave God nothing to worke upon For the understanding of man is the field which God sowes and the tree in which he engraffes faith it selfe and therefore take heed of such a descent as induces the losse of the understanding and that is the case here and our next consideration Non Intellectus They have no understanding This faculty of the understanding in man is not alwayes well understood by men Intellectus The whole Psalme is a Psalme to rectifie the understanding It is in the title thereof Davids Instruction ver 8. And that office God undertakes in the verse before our Text I will instruct thee which is in some Latin Copies Faciam te intelligere I will make thee understand and in others the vulgat Intellectum tibi dabo I will give thee understanding Now though this Instruction and this Vnderstanding which is intended in the Title and specified in the former verse bee not the same Vnderstanding as this in our Text for this is but of that naturall faculty of man Ioh. 1.9 wherewith God enlightneth every man that commeth into the world till hee make himselfe like the horse or the mule the other is God superedification upon this those other super-naturall Graces which God produces out of the understanding or infuses into the understanding yet this Vnderstanding in our Text though it be but the naturall faculty is
capable of his Mercies and his Retributions as here in this Text he names onely those who are Recti corde The upright in heart They shall be considered rewarded The disposition that God proposes here in those persons Recti whom he considers is Rectitude Uprightnesse and Directnesse God hath given Man that forme in nature much more in grace that he should be upright and looke up and contemplate Heaven and God there And therefore to bend downwards upon the earth to fix our breast our heart to the earth to lick the dust of the earth with the Serpent to inhere upon the profits and pleasures of the earth and to make that which God intended for our way and our rise to heaven the blessings of this world the way to hell this is a manifest Declination from this Uprightnesse from this Rectitude Nay to goe so far towards the love of the earth as to be in love with the grave to be impatient of the calamities of this life and murmur at Gods detaining us in this prison to sinke into a sordid melancholy or irreligious dejection of spirit this is also a Declination from this Rectitude this Uprightnesse So is it too to decline towards the left hand to Modifications and Temporisings in matter or forme of Religion and to thinke all indifferent all one or to decline towards the right hand in an over-vehement zeale To pardon no errors to abate nothing of heresie if a man beleeve not all and just all that we beleeve To abate nothing of Reprobation if a man live not just as we live this is also a Diversion a Deviation a Deflection a Defection from this Rectitude this Uprightnesse For the word of this Text Iashar signifies Rectitudinem and Planiciem It signifies a direct way for the Devils way was Circular Compassing the Earth But the Angels way to heaven upon Iacobs ladder was a straight a direct way And then it signifies as a direct and straight so a plaine a smooth an even way a way that hath been beaten into a path before a way that the Fathers and the Church have walked in before and not a discovery made by our curiosity or our confidence in venturing from our selves or embracing from others new doctrines and opinions The persons then whom God proposes here to be partakers of his Retributions Recti Corde are first Recti that is both Direct men and Plaine men and then recti corde this qualification this straightnesse and smoothnesse must be in the heart All the upright in heart shall have it Upon this earth a man cannot possibly make one step in a straight and a direct line The earth it selfe being round every step wee make upon it must necessarily bee a segment an arch of a circle But yet though no piece of a circle be a straight line yet if we take any piece nay if wee take the whole circle there is no corner no angle in any piece in any intire circle A perfectt rectitude we cannot have in any wayes in this world In every Calling there are some inevitable tentations But though wee cannot make up our circle of a straight line that is impossible to humane frailty yet wee may passe on without angles and corners that is without disguises in our Religion and without the love of craft and falsehood and circumvention in our civill actions A Compasse is a necessary thing in a Ship and the helpe of that Compasse brings the Ship home safe and yet that Compasse hath some variations it doth not looke directly North Neither is that starre which we call the North-pole or by which we know the North-pole the very Pole it selfe but we call it so and we make our uses of it and our conclusions by it as if it were so because it is the neerest starre to that Pole He that comes as neere uprightnesse as infirmities admit is an upright man though he have some obliquities To God himselfe we may alwayes go in a direct line a straight a perpendicular line For God is verticall to me over my head now and verticall now to them that are in the East and West-Indies To our Antipodes to them that are under our feet God is verticall over their heads then when he is over ours To come to God there is a straight line for every man every where But this we doe not if we come not with our heart Praebe mihi fili cor tuum saith God Pro. 23.26 My sonne give me thy heart Was hee his sonne and had hee not his heart That may very well bee There is a filiation without the heart not such a filiation as shall ever make him partaker of the inheritance but yet a filiation The associating our selves to the sonnes of God in an outward profession of Religion makes us so farre the sonnes of God as that the judgement of man cannot and the judgement of God doth not distinguish them Iob 1.6 Because then when the sonnes of God stood in his presence Satan stood amongst the sons of God God doth not disavow him God doth not excommunicate him God makes his use of him and yet God knew his heart was farre from him So when God was in Councell with his Angels about Ahabs going up to Ramoth Gilead 1 King 22.22 A spirit came forth and offered his service and God refuses not his service but employes him though hee knew his heart to be farre from him So no doubt many times they to whom God hath committed supreme government and they who receive beames of this power by subordination and delegation from them they see Satan amongst the sonnes of God hypocrites and impiously disposed men come into these places of holy convocation and they suffer them nay they employ them nay they preferre them and yet they know their hearts are farre from them but as long as they stand amongst the sonnes of God that is appeare and conforme themselves in the outward acts of Religion they are not disavowed they are not ejected by us here they are not But howsoever wee date our Excommunications against them but from an overt act and apparant disobedience yet in the Records of heaven they shall meet an Excommunication and a conviction of Recusancy that shall beare date from that day when they came first to Church with that purpose to delude the Congregation to elude the lawes in that behalfe provided to advance their treacherous designes by such disguises or upon what other collaterall and indirect occasion soever men come to this place for though they bee in the right way when they are here at Church yet because they are not upright in heart therefore that right way brings not them to the right end And that is it which David lookes upon in God and desires that God should looke upon in him 2 Sam. 7.21 According to thine owne heart saith David to God hast thou done all these great things unto us For sometimes God doth give
against nature when something in the course of nature resists that worke then that worke is a miracle But in the Creation there was no reluctation no resistance no nature nothing to resist But to doe great works by small meanes to bring men to heaven by Preaching in the Church this is a miracle When Christ intended a miraculous feeding of a great multitude he askt Quot panes habetis Mark 6.38 First hee would know how many loaves they had and when hee found that they had some though they were but five he multiplied them to a sufficiency for five thousand persons This Psalme is one of my five loaves which I bring One of those five Psalms which by the Institution of our Ancestors in this Church are made mine appropriated especially to my daily meditation as there are five other Psalmes to every other person of our Church And by so poore meanes as this my speaking his Blessing upon his Ordinance may multiply to the advancement and furtherance of all your salvations He multiplies now farther then in those loaves not onely to feed you all as he did all that multitude but to feed you all three meales In this Psalme and especially in this Text God satisfies you with this threefold knowledge First what he hath done for man in the light and law of nature Then how much more he had done for his chosen people the Jewes in affording them a law And lastly what he had reserved for man after in the establishing of the Christian Church The first in this Metaphore and miracle of feeding works as a break-fast for though there bee not a full meale there is something to stay the stomach in the light of nature The second that which God did for the Jewes in their Law and Sacrifices and Types and Ceremonies is as that Dinner which was spoken of in the Gospel which was plentifully prepared but prepared for some certaine guests that were bidden and no more Better meanes then were in nature they had in the law but yet onely appropriated to them that were bidden to that Nation and no more But in the third meale Gods plentifull refection in the Christian Church and meanes of salvation there first Christ comes in the visitation of his Spirit Revel 3.20 Behold I come and knock and will sup with him Hee sups with us in the private visitation of his Spirit And then as it is added there hee invites us to sup with him hee calls us home to his house and there makes us partakers of his blessed Sacraments And by those meanes we are brought at last to that blessednesse Revel 19.9 which he proclaimes Blessed are all they which are called to the marriage Supper of the Lambe in the Kingdome of heaven For all these three meales wee say Grace in this Text By terrible things in righteousnesse wilt thou answer us O God of our salvation for all these wayes of comming to the knowledge and worship of God we blesse God in this Text Thou art the confidence of all the ends of the Earth and of them that are a farre off upon the Sea The consideration of the meanes of salvation afforded by God to the Jewes in their law inanimates the whole Psalme and is transfused thorow every part thereof and so it falls upon this Verse too as it doth upon all the rest And then for that that God had done before in nature and for all is in the later part of this Verse Who art the confidence of all the ends of the Earth and of them that are a farre off upon the Sea And lastly that that hee hath reserved for the Christian Church God hath centred and embowelled in the wombe and bosome of the Text in that compellation O God of our salvation for there the word salvation is rooted in Iashang which Iashang is the very Name of Iesus the foundation and the whole building of the Christian Church So then our three parts will bee these What God hath done in Nature what in the Law what in the Gospel And when in our Order wee shall come to that last part which is that that we drive all to The advantage which wee have in the Gospel above Nature and the Law wee shall then propose and stop upon the Holy Ghosts manner of expressing it in this place By terrible things in righteousnesse wilt thou answer us O God of our salvation But first look we a little into the other two Nature and Law First then 1 Part. Natura the last words settle us upon our first consideration What God hath done for man in Nature Hee is the confidence of all the ends of the earth and of them that are a far off upon the Sea that is of all the world all places all persons in the world All at all times every where have Declarations enow of his power Demonstrations enow of his Goodnesse to confide in him to rely upon him The Holy Ghost seemes to have delighted in the Metaphore of Building I know no figurative speech so often iterated in the Scriptures Phil. 3.20 Heb. 3.6 Psal 147.2 as the name of a House Heaven and Earth are called by that name and wee who being upon earth have our conversation in heaven are called so too Christ hath a House which House wee are And as God builds his House The Lord builds up lerusalem saith David so hee furnishes it he plants Vineyards Gardens and Orchards about it Ioh. 14.6 Matt. 7.13 Ioh. 10.7 He layes out a way to it Christ is the way He opens a gate into it Christ is the gate And when hee hath done all this built his house furnished it planted about it made it accessible and opened the gate then hee keepes house as well as builds a house he feeds us and feasts us in his house as well as he lodges us and places us in it And as Christ professes what his owne Diet was Ioh. 4.34 what he fed upon My meat is to doe the will of my Father so our meat is to know the will of the Father Every man even in nature hath that appetite that desire to know God And therefore if God have made any man and not given him meanes to know him Psal 145.15 he is but a good Builder he is no good House-keeper He gives him lodging but he gives him no meat But the eyes of all wait upon thee and thou givest them their meat in due season All not onely we wait upon God and he gives them Their meat though not our meat The Word and the Sacramenss yet Their meat such as they are able to digest and endue Even in nature He is the confidence of all the ends of the earth and of them that are a far off upon the Sea That is his daily bread which even the naturall man begs at Gods hand and God affords it him The most precious and costly dishes are alwaies reserved for the last services but yet
it a Mysterie and a great mysterie yet he cals it a mysterie without controversie Without controversie great is the mysterie of God manifested in the flesh justified in the Spirit preached to the Gentiles beleeved in the world received into glory When he presents matter of consolation he would have it without controversie To establish a disconsolate soule there is alwaies Divinity enough that was never drawne into Controversie I would pray I finde the Spirit of God to dispose my heart and my tongue and mine eyes and hands and knees to pray Doe I doubt to whom I should pray To God or to the Saints That prayer to God alone was sufficient was never drawne into controversie I would have something to rely and settle and establish my assurance upon Doe I doubt whether upon Christ or mine owne or others merits That to rely upon Christ alone was sufficient was never drawne into Controversie At this time Christ disposed himselfe to comfort his Disciples in that wherein they needed comfort now their discomfort and their feare lay not in this whether there were different degrees of glory in Heaven but their feare was that Christ being gone and having taken Peter and none but him there should be no roome for them and thereupon Christ sayes Let not that trouble you for In my Fathers house are many mansions And so we have done with the former branch of this last part That it is piously done to beleeve these degrees of glory in Heaven That they have inconsiderately extended this probleme in the Roman Church That no Scriptures are so evident as to induce a necessity in it That this Scripture conduces not at all to it and therefore we passe to our last Consideration The right use of the right sense of these words First then Christ proposes in these words Consolation A worke Consolatio then which none is more divine nor more proper to God nor to those instruments whom he sends to worke upon the soules and consciences of others Who but my selfe can conceive the sweetnesse of that salutation when the Spirit of God sayes to me in a morning Go forth to day and preach and preach consolation preach peace preach mercy And spare my people spare that people whom I have redeemed with my precious Blood and be not angry with them for ever Do not wound them doe not grinde them do not astonish them with the bitternesse with the heavinesse with the sharpnesse with the consternation of my judgements David proposes to himselfe that he would Sing of mercy Psal 101.1 and of judgement but it is of mercy first and not of judgement at all otherwise then it will come into a song as joy and consolation is compatible with it It hath falne into disputation and admitted argument whether ever God inflicted punishments by his good Angels But that the good Angels the ministeriall Angels of the Church are properly his instruments for conveying mercy peace consolation never fell into question never admitted opposition How heartily God seemes to utter and how delightfully to insist upon that which he sayes in Esay Consolamini consolamini populum meum Comfort ye comfort ye my people Esay 40.1 And Loquimini ad cor Speake to the heart of Ierusalem and tell her Thine iniquities are pardoned How glad Christ seemes that he had it for him when he gives the sick man that comfort Fili confide My son be of good comfort thy sins are forgiven thee What a Coronation is our taking of Orders by which God makes us a Royall Priesthood And what an inthronization is the comming up into a Pulpit where God invests his servants with his Ordinance as with a Cloud and then presses that Cloud with a Vaesi non woe be unto thee if thou doe not preach and then enables him to preach peace mercy consolation to the whole Congregation That God should appeare in a Cloud upon the Mercy Seat as he promises Moses he will doe That from so poore a man as stands here Levit. 16.2 wrapped up in clouds of infirmity and in clouds of iniquity God should drop raine poure downe his dew and sweeten that dew with his honey and crust that honied dew into Manna and multiply that Manna into Gomers and fill those Gomers every day and give every particular man his Gomer give every soule in the Congregation consolation by me That when I call to God for grace here God should give me grace for grace Grace in a power to derive grace upon others and that this Oyle this Balsamum should flow to the hem of the garment even upon them that stand under me That when mine eyes looke up to Heaven the eyes of all should looke up upon me and God should open my mouth to give them meat in due season That I should not onely be able to say as Christ said to that poore soule Confide fili My son be of good comfort but Fratres Patres mei My Brethren and my Fathers nay Domini mei and Rex meus My Lords and my King be of good comfort your sins are forgiven you That God should seale to me that Patent Ite praedicate omni Creaturae Goe and preach the Gospell to every Creature be that creature what he will That if God lead me into a Congregation as into his Arke where there are but eight soules but a few disposed to a sense of his mercies and all the rest as in the Arke ignobler creatures and of brutall natures and affections That if I finde a licentious Goat a supplanting Fox an usurious Wolfe an ambitious Lion yet to that creature to every creature I should preach the Gospel of peace and consolation and offer these creatures a Metamorphosis a transformation a new Creation in Christ Jesus and thereby make my Goat and my Fox and my Wolfe and my Lion to become Semen Dei The seed of God and Filium Dei The child of God and Participem Divinae Naturae Partaker of the Divine Nature it selfe This is that which Christ is essentially in himselfe This is that which ministerially and instrumentally he hath committed to me to shed his consolation upon you upon you all Not as his Almoner to drop his consolation upon one soule nor as his Treasurer to issue his consolation to a whole Congregation but as his Ophir as his Indies to derive his gold his precious consolation upon the King himselfe What would a good Judge a good natured Judge give in his Circuit what would you in whose breasts the Judgements of the Star-chamber or other criminall Courts are give that you had a warrant from the King to change the sentence of blood into a pardon where you found a Delinquent penitent How rufully do we heare the Prophets groane under that Onus visionis which they repeat so often O the burden of my vision upon Judah or upon Moab or Damascus or Babylon or any place Which is not only that that judgement would be a
Father and see him made ours in him And then a third beame of this Consolation is That in this house of his Fathers Mansiones thus by him made ours there are Mansions In which word the Consolation is not placed I doe not say that there is not truth in it but the Consolation is not placed in this That some of these Mansions are below some above staires some better seated better lighted better vaulted better fretted better furnished then others but onely in this That they are Mansions which word in the Originall and Latin and our Language signifies a Remaining and denotes the perpetuity the everlastingnesse of that state A state but of one Day because no Night shall over-take or determine it but such a Day as is not of a thousand yeares which is the longest measure in the Scriptures but of a thousand millions of millions of generations August Qui nec praeceditur hesterno nec excluditur crastino A day that hath no pridie nor postridie yesterday doth not usher it in nor to morrow shall not drive it out Methusalem with all his hundreds of yeares was but a Mushrome of a nights growth to this day And all the foure Monarchies with all their thousands of yeares And all the powerfull Kings and all the beautifull Queenes of this world were but as a bed of flowers some gathered at six some at seaven some at eight All in one Morning in respect of this Day In all the two thousand yeares of Nature before the Law given by Moses And the two thousand yeares of Law before the Gospel given by Christ And the two thousand of Grace which are running now of which last houre we have heard three quarters strike more then fifteen hundred of this last two thousand spent In all this six thousand and in all those which God may be pleased to adde In domo patris In this House of his Fathers there was never heard quarter clock to strike never seen minute glasse to turne No time lesse then it selfe would serve to expresse this time which is intended in this word Mansions which is also exalted with another beame that they are Multa In my Fathers House there are many Mansions In this Circumstance Multa an Essentiall a Substantiall Circumstance we would consider the joy of our society and conversation in heaven since society and conversation is one great element and ingredient into the joy which we have in this world We shall have an association with Christ himselfe for where he is it is his promise that we also shall be We shall have an association with the Angels and such a one as we shall be such as they We shall have an association with the Saints and not onely so to be such as they but to be they Mat. 8.11 And with all who come from the East and from the West and from the North and from the South and sit down with Abraham and Isaac and Iacob in the kingdome of heaven Where we shall be so far from being enemies to one another as that we shall not be strangers to one another And so far from envying one another as that all that every one hath shall be every others possession where all soules shall be so intirely knit together as if all were but one soule and God so intirely knit to every soule as if there were as many Gods as soules Be comforted then sayes Christ to them for This which is a House and not a Ship not subject to stormes by the way nor wrecks in the end My Fathers House not a strangers in whom I had no interest A House of Mansions a dwelling not a sojourning And of many Mansions not an Abridgement a Modell of a House not a Monastery of many Cells but an extension of many Houses into the City of the living God This house shall be yours though I depart from you Christ is nearer us when we behold him with the eyes of faith in Heaven then when we seeke him in a piece of bread or in a sacramentall box here Drive him not away from thee by wrangling and disputing how he is present with thee unnecessary doubts of his presence may induce fearfull assurances of his absence The best determination of the Reall presence is to be sure that thou be really present with him by an ascending faith Make sure thine own Reall presence and doubt not of his Thou art not the farther from him by his being gone thither before thee No nor though Peter be gone thither before thee neither which was the other point in which the Apostles needed consolation They were troubled that Christ would goe and none of them and troubled that Peter might goe and none but he What men soever God take into heaven before thee though thy Father that should give thee thy education though thy Pastor that should give thee thy instruction though these men may be such in the state and such in the Church as thou mayest thinke the Church and state cannot subsist without them Discourage not thy selfe neither admit a jealousie or suspition of the providence and good purpose of God for as God hath his panier full of Manna and of Quailes and can powre out to morrow though he have powred them out plentifully upon his friends before so God hath his Quiver full of arrows and can shoot as powerfully as heretofore upon his Enemies I forbid thee not S. Pauls wish Cupio dissolvi To desire to be dissolved therefore that thou mayest be with Christ I forbid thee not Davids sigh Hei mihi Woe is me that I must dwell so long with them that love not peace I onely enjoyne thee thy Saviours Veruntamen Yet not mine but thy will O Father be done That all thy wishes may have relation to his purposes and all thy prayers may be inanimated with that Lord manifest thy will unto me and conforme my will unto thine So shalt thou not be afrighted as though God aymed at thee when he shoots about the marke and thou seest a thousand fall at thy right hand and ten thousand at thy left Nor discouraged as though God had left out thee when thou seest him take others into garrison and leave thee in the field assume others to Triumph and leave thee in the Battell still For as Christ Jesus would have come down from heaven to have dyed for thee though there had been no soule to have been saved but thine So is he gone up to heaven to prepare a place for thee though all the soules in this world were to be saved as well as thine Trouble not thy selfe with dignity and priority and precedency in Heaven for Consolation and Devotion consist not in that and thou wilt be the lesse troubled with dignity and priority and precedency in this world for Rest and Quietnesse consist not in that SERM. LXXIV Preached at VVhite-hall the 30. Aprill 1620 PSAL. 144.15 Being the first Psalme for the day Blessed
baptized for the Dead As in the Old Testament there is no precept no precedent 2 Part no promise for prayer for the Dead So in the Old Testament they confesse there was no Purgatory no such place as could purifie a soule to that cleannesse as to deliver it up to Heaven For thither to Heaven no soule say they had accesse till after Christs ascension But as the first mention of prayer for the dead was in time of the Maccabees so much about the same time was the first stone of Purgatory laid and laid by the hands of Plato For Plato Tertul. Hareticorum Patriarchae Philosophi sayes Tertullian The Philosophers were the Patriarchs of Heretiques evermore they had recourse to them And then Plato being the Author of Purgatory we cannot deny but that the Greeke Church did acknowledge Purgatory that is that Greeke Church of which Plato is a Patriarch for for the Christian Greeke Church that never acknowledged Purgatory so as the Roman that is A place of torment from which our prayers here might deliver soules there But yet Platoes invention or his manner of expressing it Eusebius Anno 326. tooke such roote and such hold as that Eusebius when he comes to speake of Purgatory delivers it in the very words of Plato and makes Platoes words his words and Plato his Patriarch for the Greeke Church The Latin Church had Patriarchs too for this Doctrine though not Philosophers yet Poets for of that which Virgil sayes of Purgatory Virgil. Lactantius Anno 290. Lactantius sayes propemodum vera Virgil was very neere the truth Virgil was almost a Catholique but then later men say Haec prorsus vera This is absolutely true that Virgil sayes and Virgil is a perfect a downe-right Catholique for an upright Catholique in the point of Purgatory were hard to finde These then are the first Patriarchs of the Greek and Latin Church Philosophers and Poets And when it came farther to Christians it gained not much at first for the first mention of Purgatory amongst Christians hath this double ill lucke that first it is in a Booke which no side beleeves the Booke called Pastor whose Author is said to bee Hermes Hermes and he fancied to be S. Pauls Disciple And then that which is said of Purgatory in that Booke is put into an old womans mouth and so made an old wives tale she tels that she had a vision of stones fallen from a towre and then mended after they were fallen and laid in the building againe And this Towre must be the Church and these fallen stones must be soules in Purgatory and then they must be made fit to be placed in the uppermost part of the building in the Triumphant Church But to consider this plant in better grounds then Philosophers or Poets or old wives tales Clem. Alexan. or supposititious books amongst men of more waight and gravity Clement of Alexandria within little more then two hundred yeares after Christ spake doubtfully uncertainly suspiciously disputably of Purgatory And within twenty yeares after him Origen Origen who was evermore transported beyond the letter upon mysteries somewhat directly But yet when all is done Origens Purgatory is a purgatory that would do them no good for it would bring them in no money and they could be as well content that there were none as that it were nothing worth except they may have the letting and setting of Purgatory at their price they care not though it were pulled downe And Origens Purgatory is such a purgatory as the best men must come into it even Martyrs themselves that are re-baptized in their owne blood and will this purgatory serve their turnes And it is such a purgatory as the worst of all even the Devill himselfe may and shall get out of it And will this purgatory serve their turnes Neither is this an error peculiar to Origen That all soules must passe through Purgatory but common with others of the Fathers too Sive Paulus sive Petrus sayes Origen whether it be S. Paul or S. Peter Ambrose thither he must come And sive Petrus sive Iohannes sayes S. Ambrose whether it be the Disciple that loved Christ S. Peter or the Disciple whom Christ loved S. Iohn thither he must come And S. Hilary extends it farther he drawes in the blessed Virgin Mary her selfe into purgatory And that we may see cleerely that that Purgatory which the Fathers intended is not the Purgatory now erected in the Roman Church S. Ambrose consigns to his Purgatory even the Patriarchs and Prophets of the Old Testaments Igne filii Levi igne Ezekiel igne Daniel The holiest generation the Sons of Levi and the greatest of the Prophets must passe through this fire And will such a purgatory serve their turnes as was kindled in the Old Testament Well Interrogant nos They are very loath to be put to their speciall plea very loath to answer what Purgatory of the Fathers they will stand to They would not be put to answer They chuse rather to interrogate us and they ask us Since the Fathers are so pregnant so frequent in the name of Purgatory one Purgatory or other will you beleeve none None upon the strength of that argument that the Fathers mention Purgatory except they will assigne us a Purgatory in which those Fathers agree and agree it to be matter of faith to beleeve it for from how many things which passe through the Fathers by way of opinion and of discourse are they in the Romane Church departed onely upon that That the Fathers said it but said it not Dogmatically but by way of discourse or opinion But then they aske us againe Since it is cleare that they did use prayer for the dead what could they meane by those prayers but a Purgatory a place of torment where those soules needed helpe and from whence those prayers might helpe them What could they meane els Certainly we cannot tell them what they meant If they should aske them who made those prayers they could hardly tell them If a man should have surprized S. Ambrose at his prayers and stood behinde him and heard him say Non dubitamus Ambrose etiam Angelorum testimoniis credimus Lord I cannot doubt it for thou by thine Angels hast revealed it unto me Fide ablutum aeterna voluptate perfrui That my dead Master the Emperour was baptized in his faith and is now in possession of all the joyes of heaven and yet have heard S. Ambrose say sometimes to God sometimes to his dead Master Si quid preces if my prayers may prevaile with thee O God and then Oblationibus vos frequentabo I will waite upon you daily with my Oblations I will accompany you daily with my Sacrifices And for what Vt des Domine requiem That thou O Lord wouldest afford rest and peace and salvation to that soule And if this man after all this should have asked S. Ambrose What he meant to pray
afflictionis Verse 16. Studied and premeditated plots and practises swallowe mee possesse me intirely In all these dayes I shall not onely have a Zoar to flie to if I can get out of Sodom joy if I can overcome my sorrow There shall not be a Goshen bordering upon my Egypt joy if I can passe beyond or besides my sorrow but I shall have a Goshen in my Egypt nay my very Egypt shall be my Goshen I shall not onely have joy though I have sorrow but therefore my very sorrow shall be the occasion of joy I shall not onely have a Sabbath after my six dayes labor but Omnibus diebus a Sabbath shall enlighten every day and inanimate every minute of every day And as my soule is as well in my foot as in my hand though all the waight and oppression lie upon the foot and all action upon the hand so these beames of joy shall appeare as well in my pillar of cloud as in theirs of fire in my adversity as well as in their prosperity And when their Sun shall set at Noone mine shall rise at midnight they shall have damps in their glory and I joyfull exaltions in my dejections And to end with the end of all In die mortis In the day of my death and that which is beyond the end of all and without end in it selfe The day of Judgement If I have the testimony of a rectified conscience that I have accustomed my selfe to that accesse to God by prayer and such prayer as though it have had a body of supplication and desire of future things yet the soule and spirit of that prayer that is my principall intention in that prayer hath been praise and thanksgiving If I be involved in S. Chrysostoms Patent Orantes non natura sed dispensatione Angeli fiunt That those who pray so that is pray by way of praise which is the most proper office of Angels as they shall be better then Angels in the next world for they shall be glorifying spirits as the Angels are but they shall also be glorified bodies which the Angels shall never bee so in this world they they shall be as Angels because they are employed in the office of Angels to pray by way of praise If as S. Basil reads those words of that Psalme not spiritus meus but respiratio mea laudet Dominum Not onely my spirit but my very breath not my heart onely but my tongue and my hands bee accustomed to glorifie God In die mortis in the day of my death when a mist of sorrow and of sighes shall fill my chamber and a cloude exhaled and condensed from teares shall bee the curtaines of my bed when those that love me shall be sorry to see mee die and the devill himselfe that hates me sorry to see me die so in the favour of God And In die Iudicii In the day of Judgement when as all Time shall cease so all measures shall cease The joy and the sorrow that shall be then shall be eternall no end and infinite no measure no limitation when every circumstance of sinne shall aggravate the condemnation of the unrepentant sinner and the very substance of my sinne shall bee washed away in the blood of my Saviour when I shall see them who sinned for my sake perish eternally because they proceeded in that sinne and I my selfe who occasioned their sin received into glory because God upon my prayer and repentance had satisfied me early with his mercy early that is before my transmigration In omnibus diebus In all these dayes the dayes of youth and the wantonnesses of that the dayes of age and the tastlesnesse of that the dayes of mirth and the sportfulnesse of that and of inordinate melancholy and the disconsolatenesse of that the days of such miseries as astonish us with their suddennesse and of such as aggravate their owne waight with a heavy expectation In the day of Death which pieces up that circle and in that day which enters another circle that hath no pieces but is one equall everlastingnesse the day of Judgement Either I shall rejoyce be able to declare my faith and zeale to the assistance of others or at least be glad in mine owne heart in a firme hope of mine owne salvation And therefore beloved as they whom lighter affections carry to Shewes and Masks and Comedies As you your selves whom better dispositions bring to these Exercises conceive some contentment and some kinde of Joy in that you are well and commodiously placed they to see the Shew you to heare the Sermon when the time comes though your greater Joy bee reserved to the comming of that time So though the fulnesse of Joy be reserved to the last times in heaven yet rejoyce and be glad that you are well and commodiously placed in the meane time and that you sit but in expectation of the fulnesse of those future Joyes Returne to God with a joyfull thankfulnesse that he hath placed you in a Church which withholds nothing from you that is necessary to salvation whereas in another Church they lack a great part of the Word and halfe the Sacrament And which obtrudes nothing to you that is not necessary to salvation whereas in another Church the Additionall things exceed the Fundamentall the Occasionall the Originall the Collaterall the Direct And the Traditions of men the Commandements of God Maintaine and hold up this holy alacrity this religious cheerfulnesse For inordinate sadnesse is a great degree and evidence of unthankfulnesse and the departing from Joy in this world is a departing with one piece of our Evidence for the Joyes of the world to come SERM. LXXX Preached at the funerals of Sir William Cokayne Knight Alderman of London December 12. 1626. JOH 11.21 Lord if thou hadst been here my brother had not died GOd made the first Marriage and man made the first Divorce God married the Body and Soule in the Creation and man divorced the Body and Soule by death through sinne in his fall God doth not admit not justifie not authorize such Super-inductions upon such Divorces as some have imagined That the soule departing from one body should become the soule of another body in a perpetuall revolution and transmigration of soules through bodies which hath been the giddinesse of some Philosophers to think Or that the body of the dead should become the body of an evill spirit that that spirit might at his will and to his purposes informe and inanimate that dead body God allowes no such Super-inductions no such second Marriages upon such divorces by death no such disposition of soule or body after their dissolution by death But because God hath made the band of Marriage indissoluble but by death farther then man can die this divorce cannot fall upon man As farre as man is immortall man is a married man still still in possession of a soule and a body too And man is for ever immortall in both Immortall in
be preferred before that of the Body 110. C. 755. A What a Blessing the Bodily Health is 754. A. B. Hearing the Word against the neglect of it 331. A. B Against Hearing only 455. C Heart no inward part of man ascribed unto God beside the Heart 64. B Heaven the joyes of it 73. C. D. 223. A. B. C 266. A The Glory 682. A The Dotes or Endowments of the Saints of Heaven 266. B. 189. A. B. c. 824. C Heresie of the severall Heresies against the person of Christ 316. D Of that of the Photinians and Nativitarians 344. C Heretiques of severall wayes of dealing with them 355. C. D. 356. B. C. D Of History and returning the memory of man to things that are past and gone 290. B The Holy Ghost not so easily apprehended by the light of Reason as the other persons of the Trinity 318. C. D In the Procession especially ibid. E. 327. A. B. C 335. B The manner how he works upon man 322. C. D Three branches of sins against the Holy Ghost in the Schoole 349. E Refusing of lawfull Authority is sin against the Holy Ghost in St. Bernards judgement 350. B The power of the Holy Ghost in blowing where he lists 364. B. C His operations in meere morall men 365. A St. Paul beleeved of many to be the H. Ghost 461. E Holy Ghost only Dogmaticall the best men but Problematicall 658. A Hope how imperfect a Christian mans Hope is 820. A How a hatefull and a damnable Monosyllable 301. D Honour and Reputation which so many stand upon what it is 410. A Honey what is meant by it in Scripture 712. C Hospitalite the commendation and benefit of it 414. D. E. 415. A. B Houses of Progresse and standing Houses for God Heaven and the Church 747. B Humane learning how necessary to the making of a good Divine 562. A Hypocrisie the good use and benefit that may be made by it 297. E. 636. B Against the wicked practise of it 585. D I OF those Idaeas which are in God 667. E Against Idlenesse and lazinesse and taking of no Calling 45. D. 411. B Jehovah the right pronouncing of that Name the meanes whereby Christ did Miracles according to the calumniating Jewes 502. C Not pronounced till of late ibid. D Jesuites their uncharitablenesse even to their owne Authors in defaming and disgracing of them though their betters 50. A The pride of their Denomination from Jesus 687. D How boldly they depart from the Fathers and their Authority 740. B. C. 796. C D Their pride in taking upon them the name of Fathers 798. A Jesus of the name of Jesus 503. C How S. Paul delights himselfe in that Name 503. D. 688. A Jewes not one of them in all the world a Souldier 5. D Their opinion of Christs comming 21. C Their impious custome of anointing such as die with the blood of a Christian Infant ibid. Ignorance the severall Divisions and subdivisions of it in the Schoole 287. B. How full the most knowing men are of it ibid. C. D A learned Ignorance what 295. E Of the severall Imperfections in our Faith in our Hope and in our Charity 819.820 A. B. C. D Imprecations in Scripture are often only Prophecies 401. C Not allowed us D. but in some cases 555. E Against Impossibility of Falling 240. B Incarnation the mystery of it 16. C. D. 395. E. 396. A. D E Inconsideration the miseries of it 246. D. E. 247. A. 296. E. 297. B. C. D In case of Zeale the more pardonable ib. B Indignation for sinne how great it ought to be 542. C Of that Individuality wherein man is to bee considered 710. D Of that Infallibility with which the Holy Ghost proposeth his Dictates in the scripture and how farre it is from that possibility probability and verisimilitude of the Church of Rome 657. C Jnfidels of their right unto the things of this world 214. D Indulgencies the vanity the Church of Rome was growne to in preaching and extolling of them 773. B. C The multiplicity of them 788. A The Reformation arose from them ibid. D Indulgencies what they were in the Primitive Church 788. E. Against Ingratitude for mercies and Diliverances past 88. B. 577. E Why so seldome condemned in the scripture 550. A Injuries of patience in suffering them 410. A. B Innovations the difference between Innovations and Renovations 735. A Inquisition of torturing men in the Romish Inquisition and the uncertainty of such kinde of Tryalls 194.195 C. D Intentions the best mens best intentions usually misconstrued 344. E Instinct the difference between the Reason of Man and the instinct of Beast what it is and wherein it consisteth 227. B. C Inward speculations inward zeale inward prayer are not full performances of a Christian mans duty 700. B Jordan the River Jordan why so called 718. E Ioyes of Heaven of their eternity 73. C. D 223. A. B. C. 266. A. 340. D. 747. E Heaven represented in Joy and Glory 672. A Joy of the wicked which they have in this world counterfeit 635. C Of the Joy of the godly which they have in this world 671. E. 672. c. 673. A. B Cheerefulnesse and Joy commended 816. B Judging of other men condemned 128. D. 479. A In doubtfull cases we are ever to encline towards Charity 164. E There may be sinne in a charitable Iudging of some holy mens Actions 488. D Judgement of the day of Judgement and the uncertainty thereof 271. D Gods Judgements have not exactly the name of Punishments 544. C How unwilling God is to speak of or to come to Judgement 676. C Justificare to Justifie taken three severall wayes 366. C Neither Works nor Faith the cause of our Justification 367. E K KIngs the best forme of Government by Kings 51. B Our duty and debt unto them 91. C The Releiving of them more necessary than giving of Almes 92. A What Humility and Reverence in Subjects is due unto them ibid. D And afforded in the very Scripture ibid. Not only their substantiall but their circumstantiall and ceremoniall wants to be prevented by the Subjects Giving 100. E Their Crowne of Thornes 137. B Kings a particular ordinance of God and nothing resulting out of the tacite consent of the people 391. C The King to institute and order matters in the publique service of God 698. A He is Keeper of both the Tables D Against those disloyall jealousies and suspicions which the people have of the King and of his affection to Religion 699. D In matters of favour the King is one of the people saith the Law 754. C. D Kisses of their treacherous carnall and sacred uses 405.406 A. B. C Used of Kinsfolkes 407. C As a Recognition of Power D In comming and going E In religious reverence E In signe of concord 408. A Kneeling the necessitie of it in the time of prayer 72. E. 73. A Of the Kneeling at the Sacrament 115. D. 116. A. B. Knowledge of
to the Office of a Prophet 54. D. The promises of God in the Prophets how different from those in the Gospel 40. E. A This a seditious inference the Prophets did thus and thus in the Law therefore the Ministers of the Gospel should doe so likewise and why 734. A Psalmes The Booke of Psalmes the dignity and vertue of it 653. D. E They are the Manna of the Church 663. B Such forbid to bee made Priests that were not perfect in the Psalmes 813. B Singing of the Psalmes how generall and commendable in S. Hieromes times ibid. B. C Purgatorie none in the old Testament and why 783. E How derived from Poets and Philosophers to Fathers 784. A. B. C How suspitiously and doubtfully the Fathers speak of it bid specially S Augustine 786. E Bellarmine refuted about it 792.793 Q QVestions arising taken away by Silencing of both parties 42. D Against curiosity in seeking after them 57. D There is alwaies Divinity enough to save a soule that was never called into Question 745. A How peevish some Romish Authors doe detoâ—t the Scripture when they fall upon any Question or Controversie though otherwise they content themselves with the true meaning and sense of the same words 790. E. 791. A Quomodo to Question how God doth this or that dangerous 301. E. 367. C R REason not to be enquired after in all points of Faith 23. B Reasons not convincing never to be proffered for to prove Articles of Faith 205. D God useth to accompany those Duties which hee commands with Reasons to enduce us to the performance of them 593. A Reconciliation how little amongst the Papists 10. D All Nations under heaven have acknowledged some meanes of Reconciliation to their offended gods in the remission of their sinnes 564. C Religion against such as damnifie Religion by their outward profession more than if they did forsake it 757. D Every Religion had her mysteries her Reservations and in-intelligiblenesse which were not easily understood of all men 690. D And therefore Religion not to be made too homely and course a thing ibid. C Christian Religion an easie yoke a short and contracted burden 71. D All points of Religion not to bee divulged to the people 87. D Defects in Religion safer than superfluities 291. A Of peaceable conversation with men of divers Religions 310. C Wee charged to have but a negative Religion 636. A Religion how farre we may proceed in the outward declaration of our Religion 814. A Resurrection of three sorts 149. E Of that from persecution 185. B. C. D Of that from Sinne 186. D. E. c Of that from Death 189. D How a Resurrection of the soule being the soule cannot die 189. D Christ how the First Resurrection 191. B Our Resurrection a mystery 204. C Resurrection All Religions amongst the Heathens had some Impressions of it 800. E Retrospection or looking upon time past the best rule to judge of the future 668. D Reverence how much due to men of old Age 31. D What Required in Gods House 43. D Revelations wee are not to hearken after them 238 E Nor yet to binde God from them 239. A Rewards against bribery or receiving of Rewards 389. E God first proposes to himselfe persons to be Rewarded or condemned before he thinks of their condemnation or their Reward 674. B. 675. B. C Riches the cause of lesse sinne than poverty 658. D Especially considered in the highest degree and in the lowest that is abundant Riches and extreme beggerly poverty 659. D Against the perverse desire of Riches 728. C Riches S. Chrysostome calls the parents of absurdities and why 729. A The Remane Church a true Church as the Pest house is a house 606. A. 621. C Rome the Church of Rome the better for reformamation 621. B They doe charge us that we have but a negative Religion 636. A Why they so much under-value the Scripture and yet endevour to bring bookes of other Authors into that ranke as the Macchabees and such like 738. E Rome it selfe how it hath beene handled ever by Catholikes in their bloody warres 779. A Almost all the Controversies between Rome and the Christian world are matters of profit 791. A Rule and Example the two onely wayes of Teaching 571. E. 668. B The onely Rule of doctrine the Scripture and Word of God 738. E S THe Sabbath a Ceremoniall Law 92. C Sacrament how effectually Christ is present in it 19. C Of preparing our selves to the worthy receiving of it 32. A. c 33. A. c Against Superstition and Prophanesse too in the comming to it 34. A Of Christs reall presence in it 36. D. 37. B. C That which we receive in the Sacrament to bee Adored 693. B Against unworthy receiving of it 693. D. E Of both extremes about Chrsts presence in the Sacrament 821. E Saints against praying to them 90. D. 378. D. 595. A. 744. A. 757. B The Saints in heaven pray for us 106. B Why they must not pray to Saints in the Church of Rome upon good Friday Easter and Whitsunday 485. D Whether they enjoy degrees of Glory in heaven 742. E Salvation of the generall possibility of Salvation for all men 66. B. 330. A. B. 742. B. C. D. Not to be ascribed to our Workes 107. D Nor to our Faith ibid. E More that are Saved than that are damned 241. A. 259. C The impossibility of Salvation to any man before hee was a man a discomfortable doctrine 278. B Of that certaintie of Salvation which is taught of some in the Roman Church and how farre we are from it 339. D. E. 340. A. 608. C Salvation offered to all men and in earnest 742. A. B Saviour the name of Saviour attributed to others beside Christ 528. D Scriptures the most eloquent Books that are 47. E 556. E. 557. C foure Elements of the right exposition and sense of Scripture 305. B Moderation in reading of them 323. C Scripures the only rule of Doctrine 738. E Secrecy in Confession commended but in case of disloyaltie 92. E. 575. E Seeing of God in our Actions how necessary 169. E Against Selfe-Subsistence or standing of our selves 240. A. B Against Selfe-Love 156. A Sermons how loth the Fathers were to lacke company at them 48. C Of preaching the same Sermons twice 114. C 250. C The danger of hearing Sermons without practising 455. C. D Sighing for sinne the benefit of it 537. D Sight the noblest of the sences and all the sences 225. B Signe of the Crosse wherefore used in the Primative times 538. A And why by us in baptisme ibid. Signes how they may be sought after and how not 15. B. C. D Shame for sinne a good signe 557. D To be voice-proofe not afraid nor Ashamed of what the World sayes of a Man an ill signe of a Spirituall obduration in sinne 589. A Silence the severall sorts of it Silence of Reverence 575. C Silence of subjection ibid. D
Silence which is good 576. B. C Silence which is bad 577. D Good to be Silent sometimes even in good things and when 576. E Simple-men of this world why chosen for Christs Apostles 719. C Singular Gods speakes of things of grace in the Singular but of heavie things in the plurall number ever 711. A Single instances no safe concluding from them 460. E Neither in the case of the Thiefe on the Crosse nor S. Paul 461. B Singularity not ground enough to condemne every opinion 234. C Against Singularity 51. D. 177. C. 573. D. 722. B Of a Single testimony 234. B Sinne the cause of all sicknesses 109. C Little light and customarie Sinnes how dangerous 117. B. 164. C. D. 585. E All Sin is from our selves not from any thing in God 118. A. 330. D The Sin of the Heart the greatest of all Sin and why 140. D How well some Men husband their Sin 147. A That it is good for men to fall into some Sinnes 171. B. C Sinne is a fall and how 186. D. 187. C Whether it have rationem demeriti and may properly offend God 342. C Sinne not meerly nothing 342. E Not so much of any thing as of Sinne 343. C How soone Sinne is followed of Repentance 540. C How Sinne rises by little and little in us 585. C Against sitting in the time of Divine Service 72. D Socinians their monstrous opinions 317. C And nicknaming of Athanasius Sathanasius 654. D Against the growth of that pestilent Heresie of Socinianisme 821. B Sorrow for the dead how lawfull 157. C. D. E. 822. D Of the end lesse Sorrow of the wicked 632. B No communication of their Sorrow 634. D The Soule of the miseries of it in the body 190. A Of the lazinesse of the Soule in the disquisition of any Divine Truths 190. B C Of her excellency of knowledge in the next world ibid. C. D Of bending the Soule up to her proper height and putting of her home 483. D Soule and Spirit what the Fathers understand by them in Scripture 517. C Subjects how to looke upon the faults and errors of their Governors 13. C How reverent to be towards their Princes 92. D Supererogation against Workes of Supererogation and of the fondnesse of them 390. C 494. E. 495. A. 547. C. 732. E Superstition better than Prophanesse and why 69. A The danger of it to be prevented but how 485. E Supplications how they differ from Petitions or Prayers 553. E Synedrion the Originall and power of the Synedrion or Sanhedrim amongst the Jewes 491. E Herod called before it but not when hee was King 492. A T TEares against their inordinatenesse 155. A Never ascribed to God 156. D Well employed for the dead though they be at rest 157. A Of those whose constitution will afford no Teares 160. D Foure considerations that will enforce Teares 160. E. 161. A Of Teares shed for worldly losses ib. C. D. 162. A For sinne 539. B Of the effect of Teares 162. B How God is said in Scripture to heare Teares that make no sound 552. E Teares the humidum-radicale of the Soule 577. E Temporall blessings how seldome prayed for in Antiquitie 750. D. E They are blessings but blessings of the left hand 751. D Nothing permanent in them 823. D Tentations all men not alike enabled against them 310. E Whether it be lawfull to pray against all kind of Tentations 527. C One of the Divels greatest Tentations it is to make us think our selves above Tentations or Tentation-proofe that they cannot hurt us 603. E The use and necessity of them 789. C Thanksgiving the duty of thanksgiving better than that of Prayer 549. D How small it is if proportioned to the love of God unto us 550. B Thoughts of the greatnesse of sinnes of thought 140. D. 543. D Titles and bare empty Names how men are puffed up with them 734. D Torturing whether or no to be admitted in case of Religion 194. D Tongue how many it hath damned 344. B Tradition against the making of Traditions articles of Faith 779. D Transubstantiation the riddles and contradictions of it 36. E What true Transubstantiation in the Sacrament may be admitted 693. C Tribulations the benefit of them 563. B 604. A. B Spirituall Tribulations and afflictions heavier than Temporall 665. B. D. E Tribulation and affliction part of our daily bread which wee ought to pray for and how 787. B Tribute God never wrought miracle in the matter of money but onely for Tribute to Caesar 91. E Trinitie the knowledge of it not by naturall reason attained 301. B Not one of a thousand knows what himselfe meanes when he speakes of the Trinity 307. E Some obumbrations of the Trinity even in nature 379 What are illustrations of it to us Christians are no Arguments unto the Jewes 417. B Foure severall trinities 417. E. 418. A It is the onely rule of our Faith the Trinitie 426. E To be believed first of all but not last of all to be understood 428. C. D The opinions of severall Hereticks concerning it 429. D The severall wayes of expressing it by figures and letters 429. E Troubles five severall sorts of Troubles 518. D The universality and inevitablenesse of them 664. B Truth not alwaies to be spoken 576. E Turning of Gods Turning to us and of our Turning to God 524. B. C. D. 525. A. B. 526. A. B V VAgabonds and incorrigible rogues against receiving or harbouring of them 415. B. C Vaine things in themselves may be brought to a religious use 226. E Vbiquetaries 67. E Confuted by the Angels Argument 248. C Of that Vicissitude which is in all temporall things 823. D Vigils why discontinued in the Primitive Church 813. A Virginitie The dignity and prayse of it 17. C. D Three Heresies impeaching the Virginity of the blessed Lady 17. D Against vowed Virginitie 30. D Virgin Mary The errour of Tertullian about her 18. A Of the Manichees and Anabaptists 23. D Against appeales to her in heaven 46. A Borne in Originall sinne 314. A Called of the Fathers Deipara but not Christipara and why 400. D Threatned at a siege of Constantinople to bee drowned if shee did not drowne the enemy 418. E The Church onely in the Virgin Mary according to the Schoole 603. C Against Vncharitable objecting of repented sinnes 499. D Vnitie the Devils way to breake it 138. D The Vnsatiablenesse of sinne 709 C Vprightnesse what Vprightnesse is required of man in this world 677 B. C What it is to bee Vpright in heart ibid. 678. A. B. C Against Vsury 753. E. 754. A. Vulgate Edition of the Antiquity and Authority of it 542. E Not to be preferred before the originall ibid. W VVArre the miseries and incommodities of it 146. C. D Waters those of Baptisme sinne tribulation and death 309. C. c What is meant by Waters in Scripture 598. D Waiting upon Gods time how it consists with fervent Prayer 34. D Wings the severall acceptations of the Word in Scripture 671. B Winning upon God by prayer how well God likes it 513. E Wisdome of sinnes against it especially ignorance and curiosity 411. B Witnesse the credit of the Testimony dependeth much upon his credit that is the Witnesse 238. B Women our Saviour came from such as were dangerously suspected and noted in Scripture for their incontinence 24. A Never any good Angell appeared in the likenesse of a Woman 242. D Whether Women were created after Gods Image a question in S. Ambrose his Commentaries upon the Epistles that hath called those Commentaries in doubt 242. E Of Womens able in State affaires and matters of Government ibid. Powerfull in matters of Religion both on the right hand and on the left 243. A Wonder the difference between the Philosophers and the Fathers about wondering 194. A Word of God the very Angels of heaven referre themselves unto it 249. E Stronger than any reason to a Christian 394. B 815. A The onely rule of Doctrine 738. E The World is a sea and in how many respects 735. C Workes wee no enemies to good workes as the Adversarie doth traduce us 82. A. c No Faith without them 136. A We are to continue in them 554. B Workes good when to a good end 82. E To be done of what 83. A How they may be seene of men 141. B Sometimes there is good use in concealing our Workes of mortification 538. E Of those imperfections which are in the best of our Good Works 820 D. E Wounds of love how God doth so wound us that we kisse that hand that strikes us 463. A Z ZEale to be reconciled to discretion 10. A How the devill makes it his Instrument 42. B Of the Zeale we ought to have to Gods service 72. D Zeale distempered what it will doe 237. A Zeale and uncharitablenesse are two incompatible things 480. E Of Daniels Zeale in praying against the expresse Proclamation of the King 814. A. B. C Zoroastes he only laughed when he was born 21. A FINIS Errata Pag. line reade 22 39 waives 22 40 waives 22 50 waives 110 52 when he 116 40 may come 142 31 the Cato's 164 39 Manours 196 15 in indignifying 420 32 man 426 45 blown 534 35 Topicks 710 46 exorcised 751 43 or any people 782 63 Interimists In the life Pag. 15 line 12 for merit reade mercy Pag. 16. line 40. for friends reade friend