that pull'd out by thy powerfull Redeemer how can it now hurt thee It may possibly hiss at but it cannot bite thee Look upon the Serpent lifted up for thee on the Cross and this Serpent's sting if it has any to wound it can have none to kill thee If thy Saviour has not quite destroy'd this thine enemy at least he has brought it under and made it subject like the Gibeonites if not banished 't is enslaved and made now instrumental to Christ's Kingdom Loose thou then the bands of thine iniquity and those of death which Christ has broken shall no more be able to hold thee than they could doe him Death in its most affrighting shapes to thee is but a scare-crow 't is but the shadow of death while God is with thee Nay 't is but an 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a going out a departing in peace to a Holy Simeon 'T was no more between God and Moses but go up and dye as 't was said to another Prophet up and eat Ever since our Lord has swallow'd death up in victory our Tombs become Death's Graves more than ours Sepulchrum non jam mortuum sed mortem devorat says a Father Our Bodies are not lost in the Earth but laid up to be improved like Porcellane-dishes which the ground does not consume but refine In the Transfiguration that body of Moses which was hid in the valley of Moab appeared glorious in the Mount of Tabor And though we appear now like Aaron's dry rod yet that dry rod shall at last bud and bring forth fruit unto glory The Israelites garments indeed in the Wilderness waxed not worse for wearing but though our Bodies which are the garments of our Souls doe so and are rent and torn by afflictions and death yet God can and will mend them Nay when these Temples of the Holy Ghost we carry about us are dissolved he will so build them up that as it was said of the first and second Jewish Temples Haggai 2. 9. the glory of our latter houses shall be greater than that of the former Diruta stante Major Troja fuit God will bless us as he did Job more at our latter end than at our beginning and Exalt us as he did Christ by our Sufferings If with him we drink of the brook in the way tast of his Cup he will lift up our heads too We shall be like him as now He is A golden Head and Members of Clay suit not well together This is our great comfort that Christ is risen for if the Head be above water the Body is safe Joseph is alive said Jacob and that news revived the drooping Patriarch So when we hear that Christ our elder Brother the first-begotten from the dead is alive too let us take courage go and find him out seek him not in the Grave He is not there he is risen and why should we seek the living among the dead but in Heaven where he now is and set our affections on things above and not on things below It befits us not to lye in our Beds of ease and pleasure to lye sleeping there when Christ is up such a spiritual Lethargy does not suit with a Resurrection How are we conformable to Him if when He is risen up we remain still in the Grave of our Corruptions How are we Limbs of his Body if while He hath perfect dominion over death death hath dominion over us if while he is alive and glorious we lye rotting in the dust of death O let us then rouse our selves up this day with the Lion of the Tribe of Judah Let this be our Resurrection-day too and that it may be so let it be our Passion-day also as it is our Lord's For as he rose this day for us so does he now this day dye for us too And although St. Paul tells us Rom. 6. 9. That Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more and that death hath no more dominion over him or to speak in the Language of the Text that he be not holden of it yet in regard of the constant vertue and benefit of his Death and Passion he may be said to dye daily for us who receive him worthily in the Blessed Sacrament Let me then bespeak you in the words of St. Thomas utter'd upon another occasion Joh. 11. 16. Let us also go and dye with him Dye with him unto sin that we may live unto God through him Rom. 6. 9 10. Let us feed on him by Faith flock like true Eagles to his Holy Carcass and eat thereof that we may live This is the way to be raised to glory Whoso eateth my flesh and drinketh my bloud hath Eternal life is even now in possession of it and I will raise him up at the last day says Christ himself Joh. 6. 54. The very touch of the Prophet Elias's bones Ecclesiasticus 48. 5. could raise up a dead Man to a Temporal and shall not the sense and application of Christ crucified be able to quicken us who are dead in trespasses and sins to a spiritual and immortal Life O let us then be planted with him in the likeness of his Death that we may be also in the likeness of his Resurrection Rom. 6. 5. Now the God of peace that brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus that great Shepherd of the Sheep through the bloud of the Everlasting Covenant make you perfect in every good work to doe his Will working in you that which is well-pleasing in his sight through Jesus Christ To whom with the Father c. Amen Soli Deo gloria in aeternum A SERMON Preached on Whit-sunday JOHN XVI 7. Nevertheless I tell you the truth it is expedient for you that I go away for if I go not away the Comforter will not come unto you but if I depart I will send him unto you WE find the Disciples here in a very sad and disconsolate Condition Christ had told them that He was going his way to Him that sent Him V. 5. and thereupon Sorrow had filled their hearts V. 6. And no marvel for they were to be separated from one who hitherto had been their only comfort and support Had we been under the same circumstances we should no doubt have equally resented that loss They had had the happy advantage of beholding his glorious Miracles wrought by his All-powerfull Voice in the cure of Diseases in the confusion of Devils and the raising of the Dead They had heard those his ravishing Discourses which forc'd his most implacable Enemies in spight of all their prejudice against Him to confess That never Man spake as He did They had been Eye-witnesses of that Eminent Holiness that pure and unspotted Innocence which gave beauty and lustre to all his actions and of that glory too which discovered Him to be the only Son of God full of Grace and Truth And now unless we can suppose them void of all natural affection and
wrought before us How should we be ravished at a second Transfiguration and say with the Apostles who beheld it It is good for us to be here Should Christ ascend up again into Heaven in our sight as he did in that of his disciples and followers should we not need an Angel as they did to check us for our too much gazing And yet let me tell you that such a prospect as that would not be more glorious than of a Christ nailed to his Cross nor yet perhaps so usefull It would rather raise our curiosity than inflame our affections rather amaze and astonish than benefit us The Text therefore gives us a more advantageous one of Him It bids us look on him as pierced and pierced even for us who pierced him It bids us view this Sun of Righteousness more glorious in himself more benign to us in his Setting than in his Rising More beautifull in his Eclipse than in his full Lustre To look unto Jesus the Author and Finisher of our Faith who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross and despised the shame and to consider him who endured such contradiction of sinners against himself This was the aim of all St. Paul's preaching We preach Christ crucified 1 Cor. 1. 23. This the top of his Knowledge I determined not to know any thing among you save Jesus Christ and him crucified 1 Cor. 2. 2. This his only Glory God forbid that I should glory save in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ Gal. 6. 14. And here to our joy and comfort may we view him Redeeming us from the curse of the Law Gal. 3. 10. Abolishing in his flesh the Enmity the Law of Commandments Ephes. 2. 14 15. Blotting out the hand-writing of Ordinances that was against us and nailing it to his Cross Col. 2. 14. Reconciling the World to Himself making our peace expiating our offences satisfying the Justice of an offended God repairing our loss and restoring us to a better condition than we had forfeited by our Transgression In a word vanquishing Hell and opening Heaven for us And ought not this to be matter of glorying to us Can any sight be more worthy our beholding Any object more deserve to be lookt on than such a one as this At this time especially when the Church solemnly invites us to this Spectacle When as St. Paul speaks Gal. 3. 1. Jesus Christ is evidently set forth crucified among us This the Text prophetically tells us Christ's crucifiers should doe and indeed All that expect to have their part in the Merit of his Death and Passion must doe that is by a serious and often-repeated Meditation have Christ crucified always before their eyes For we are not to look upon the words of my Text only as a Prophecy but as a necessary Duty obliging us to fix our eyes constantly on this object Christ pierced for us and that we may the better doe it let us take a more particular and exact view of Him and consider Him as pierced both in his Body and in his Soul In every Member of That in every Faculty of This the better to estimate his Sufferings and raise our Devotion and Admiration Consider we then Christ as pierced 1. In his Body Let us behold the Man as Pilate exposed him to the eyes of the Jews all in Bloud all as it were one Wound pierced in every part of his Body His Head torn with thorns his Face bruised with buffetings his Shoulders crusht with the weight of that Cross which he first bare before it bare Him His Back plowed up with Whips his Feet and Hands bored with Nails and his very Heart pierced with the point of the Spear I am not able to paint out those dire Sufferings Christ endured in his Body but must draw a Veil over them and leave them to your own Meditations And yet this is but the least part of what our Lord suffered for us that which our bodily eye can discern All this is but the outward piercing and but as it were skin-deep in comparison of the piercing of his 2. Soul For what is the pain of the Body to that of the Soul And this had its piercing too What Simeon said of the Mother by way of Prophecy That a Sword should go through her Soul Luke 2. 35. was more signally verified of the Son of God The Arrows of the Almighty did not only stick in his Flesh but pierced his very Soul through That Bloud which streamed from him in his Agony was not so much the Bloud of his Body as of his very Soul And 't was this piercing which drew that sad and lamentable complaint from Him Matth. 26. 38. My Soul is exceeding sorrowfull even unto death Surely it was the apprehension of somewhat more horrible than either Pain or Death that made him so heavy and sorrowfull of Soul Evils are wont to crucifie the Mind in the expectation rather than in the suffering It is a double misery both to fear and undergo it God hath mercifully provided this ease for our Souls in the often ignorance of things that happen that they streighten not our Thoughts ere they load our Backs Who of us embraceth not Pain before Perplexity How often doe we groan and cry for a ready dispatch in our lingerings Defiring rather to dye than to feel or fear death and live Yet was our Saviour both terrified and crucified Terrified in the apprehension of Wrath and in the perpession of Death crucified Not only the sorrows of Death but the very pains of Hell came about him and God's dereliction was that which made up the greatest part of those pains Mat. 27. 46. My God my God why hast thou forsaken me was That which most tortured Him Christ's Enemies had now mocked scourged pierced Him so that from head to foot every Member was deformed and dislocated yet He opened not his mouth He is silent and patient at all the violence Man offered him He only complains of the absence of his God He bewails not what He feels but what He misses and could have endured any misery that could not abide to want his God And what a loss think we was this to want the presence and favour of God though but for a moment which where it is perpetual does in the judgment of Divines make up the greatest part of Hell But you will say How could God forsake Christ unless Christ forsook Himself Certainly God and Man were so unchangeably so inseperably combined in Him that so strict an Union could not possibly suffer the least Divulsion or Desertion True indeed And therefore the Godhead at this time denied the Manhood not his Person but his Patronage not his Presence but his Protection Divinity here winks and withdraws it self from Humanity that our Lord might now be bereft of all comfort and favour who took upon Him to sustain the wrath of all Well then might his Soul be heavy unto death
thereof and yet all this still dull and flat till he quickens it with an active Verb 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which he wrought in Christ when he raised him up from the dead An act proper to God the Father who is entitled to it ver 33. and by St. Paul too Gal. 1. 1. Yet so as that he has communicated this Power to his own Son Joh. 10. 17 18. and 5. 21 26. As the Father raiseth up the dead and quickneth them even so the Son quickneth whom he will who had a Power to lay down his life and to take it again to dissolve the Temple of his Body and in three days to raise it up so that Christ here did as much rise as was raised up and this the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in St. Luke imports a Verb of an active signification implying a Power in himself to rise and in that respect a certain argument of his being the co-essential and con-substantial Son of God as the Apostle concludes him hence to be Rom. 1. 4. in spight of all those his adversaries who by denying him this Power prove themselves worse enemies to him than the Jews were who robb'd him of his Life whereas these of his Divinity also as far as in them lyes III. The principal and sole Agent then in this great Work was God the Father and the Son And such an Agent was necessary since the task was so difficult the knot which Death had tied being so hard required no less than a God to unloose it Now by Death here is meant not only a seperation of Soul and Body though that be the most natural import of the word but all those sad things that preceded as so many Prologues to his last Tragedy styled Propassiones All those ingredients in the bitter cup he drank of Such as were Christ's natural apprehensions of the terrors of Death the curse of the Law the load of our Sins upon him and a lively sense of God's wrath due to those Sins which put him into an Agony and made him sweat great drops of bloud and to close up all the bitter pangs of that cruel death he underwent to satisfie God's Justice All which are compar'd here to the Pangs of a Woman in travail from which God at last freed him by raising him up to a life uncapable of pain or sorrow making him forget his former Sufferings as a Woman does her Pains when delivered of her Child Joh. 16. 21. This is implied in the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 But because to loose the Pains seems a hard expression and unloosing properly denoting the untying of some knot and so supposing some chain or cord wherewith Christ was bound and which God dissolved which the following word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 seems to make good some conceive it better to interpret the word Pains by Bonds as the Syriack does calling them Funes Sepulchri those adamantina mortis vincula in the Poet And the rather because the Psalmist promiscuously useth these words Psal. 116. 3. The snares of Death compassed me round about and the pains of Hell gat hold upon me Both of them signifie no more but the power of death those Shackles and Manacles which the Angel of the Covenant struck off from himself and then from us which could no more hold him than the withy bands could Sampson herein a Type of Christ being but as Flax and Tow to him who was the Power of God and though he might suffer himself to be entangled yet could not possibly be holden of them And that 1. In respect of the Truth of God's Word viz. those many Predictions and Types of Christ's Resurrection which else must have been voided The Predictions are many and clear relating to this point That of Esay 53. 8. That Christ should be taken from his prison That of Hosea 6. 2. After two days will he revive us and in the third day he will raise us up and we shall live in his sight see Esay 26. 19. But most expresly that of the Prophet David Psal. 16. 10 11. That his flesh should rest in hope and that God would not suffer his Holy One to see Corruption which Prophecy could not be apply'd to David himself as St. Peter here in the Verses immediately following tells his Auditors because he did see Corruption but only to Christ who did not and who did rise the third day according to the Scriptures Luk. 18. 33. As for those Types too which shadow forth Christ's Resurrection they are many and exactly representative of it As Adam's awaking from sleep a Type of the second Adam's from death Sarah's conceiving when old Isaac's being sacrificed and yet living Gen. 22. 12. An express figure of Christ's Resurrection Heb. 11. 14 17 Joseph's being taken out of the Pit and lifted up out of the Dungeon as Jeremy was too and Daniel out of the Den of the Lions Dan. 6. 23. And more clearly by Christ's own application Jonah's being taken out of the belly of the Whale Mat. 12. 40. All which Types would be meer shadows without their substance and insignificant Types if they had wanted their Anti-types and should not exactly have answer'd them which they could not doe if Christ could have been holden by the pains or cords of death 2. Not possible by reason of that indissoluble tye of Christ's Personal Union so strait that Christ's Body even in the Grave was inseparably united to the Deity which drew it to it For although Death could dissolve his Natural yet not his Personal Union and therefore necessary it was that his Body and Soul should be re-united that so he might become a perfect Man which could not be without his rising 3. Not possible in respect of God's immutable Decree so determining it which being still of force nothing could render ineffectual God had anointed his Son from all Eternity as to be a Prophet and a Priest so a King to accomplish the work of Man's Redemption none of which Offices could be fully executed but upon supposition of his rising from the dead 1. The preaching of the Gospel was to follow that Luk. 24. 47. 2. As was also the preaching of Repentance and Remission of sins through his bloud the Expiation whereof as well as our Justification the not imputing our Sins to us was an effect of his Resurrection Rom. 4. 25. Who was delivered for our Offences and raised again for our Justification God having declared by raising his Son from the dead that he had accepted of his Death as of a sufficient ransome for our Sins For if Christ had remained still under the power of Death his satisfaction could not have been perfect neither could he have applied the Vertue thereof to us And in like manner was Christ's Resurrection our Justification For Christ being our true pledge after he had satisfied for us by his Death returning unto Life gives us a clear Evidence and affords us a
sure Argument that God was fully reconciled and Life purchased for us Which assurance we could not have had if Christ our pledge had still remained under the power of death for as much as his continuance in his payment would ever have argued the imperfection of it The summ of all is this That our Justification was begun in Christ's Death but was perfected by his Resurrection That we have Redemption by his abasement and Application of it by his advancement 3. Again The pacification of our Consciences the confirmation of our Faith and the support of our Hope depended all upon the Exercise of his Regal Office which was mainly to triumph over his and our Enemies the last of them especially Death which he could never be said to have done while he still remained under its Dominion For then he had never ransomed Men from the power of the Grave nor redeemed them from Death but as it followeth in Hosea 13. 14. Death had been his Plague and the Grave his Destruction and so ours too So far should he then have been from swallowing it up in victory or leading captivity captive that himself should have been a slave and a captive to them so far from spoiling Principalities and Powers or making a shew of them openly triumphing over them that the gates of Hell should have prevailed against Himself and consequently against his Church contrary to his express Word and Promise Mat. 16. 18. 4. Not possible as the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 implies an unsuitableness or incongruity as well as an absolute impossibility for id possumus quod jure possumus And according to this notion of the word 't was impossible that is 't was altogether unsuitable and unbecoming as I may so say God to suffer Christ to be under the power and dominion of Death It did not become his Love thus to forsake his only beloved Son nor his Justice to suffer his Holy One to see Corruption to leave his Soul in Hell i. e. the Grave who had done no violence neither was guile found in his mouth or to let him go without his reward who by his active and passive Obedience the Sufferings in his Life and Obedience at his Death had merited Heaven for himself and us It being most unfit that he should remain any longer in Death's prison who had paid his own and our debt even to the discharging of the very uttermost farthing And to conclude this point How unbeseeming the Power of God was it also even in the judgment of Reason That he that looseth the bands of Orion should not be able to break Death's cords That that Death which God never made a meer privation should fetter him who made all things and that nothing command Omnipotency its self That the Devil should be said to have the power of death and the Prince of life be under that power Such Chains of darkness suit well with that roaring Lion who goes about seeking whom he may devour but not at all with the Lion of the Tribe of Judah who was to rescue the prey out of his jaws Certainly He that had the keys of Hell and Death could open the gates of Death to himself as well as to all believers The Grave to him was no other than a Womb which soon grew weary of its load and 't was as natural for Christ to force his passage out thence as for the Child now ripe for the Birth to drop from his Mother 's Womb. If the Creature groans to be delivered from the bondage of her Corruption it is but reasonable to imagine that the Earth could not chuse but be in pain so long as she became an Instrument of her Creator's captivity and 't was as absolutely necessary for those Iron gates of death to let out the Lord of life as it was for those Everlasting ones to be lifted up to receive the King of Glory into Heaven And into that place whereinto his Resurrection has made a way for Himself we hope one day to enter that where the Head is there the Members may be also We have ground for this Hope from St. Paul 1 Cor. 6. 14. God hath both raised up the Lord and will also raise up us by his own power He can for he did raise up others before he raised himself Jairus Daughter the Widow's Son Lazarus after four days rotting in the Grave are all pregnant instances of his Power Et ab esse ad posse valet consequentia What he has done he can still doe unless we shall fancy his Arme shortned or that the Ancient of days has lost his strength And that he will we have his own Word for it Joh. 6. 40. Whosoever believeth in me may have everlasting life and I will raise him up at the last day If he can and will why should we doubt of it Who hath resisted his Will Or what can tie up his Hands Death we see could not her Cords were too weak to Manacle him and why should we think they can now hold us He that could break them off from himself can he not dissolve ours too Let me then put St. Paul's question to the most doubting Sceptick Act. 26. 8. Why should it be thought an impossible thing that God should raise the dead Since we see he has effectually done it in the Person of Christ and every day does it in Nature For what is Nature its self but a continual Resurrection We may see it every Day in a perpetual orderly Succession of Nights and Days in the Setting and Rising of the Sun in Winter and Spring The Serpent's casting off his old Skin the Eagle's renewing his strength with his Beak not to mention the Phoenix rising from her Ashes which yet some of the Fathers as Clement and Tertullian use as an argument to prove the Resurrection the Seed corrupted in the Earth and thence springing up into a full Ear our Lord's and St. Paul's instances all Emblems or rather Demonstrations of it Our very Bodies to go no farther than our selves even in our life-time are continually altered and those we now carry about us are not the same they were a few years past so that we may change the Tense and reade not that we all shall be but that we are continually changed Our sleep what is it but a shorter death and our awaking thence but a return to life What are Church-yards but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Sleeping-houses from whose Graves as from so many Beds we are one day to be raised up by the sound of the last trump And as Nature so Art shadows forth a Resurrection That Art whereby a little rude piece of Earth is refin'd into pure Metal whereby a Chymist can raise a flower out of ashes at least to shape and colour And shall not God be able to change our vile Bodies and make them like unto his glorious Body And when he has
in the Council of Nice but killing and treading down each other in that of Ephesus What would he have said had he lived to behold those fatal Tragedies which have been acted since on the Theatre of the World upon the score of Men's different persuasions How have they put one another out of their Synaguoges cast them out of their Churches by Excommunications and by worrying them to death turned them out of the World too and so as much as in them lay destroyed peoples Souls as well as their Bodies I dare say that Jews and Heathens put together have not spilt so much Christian bloud as Christians themselves have done For proof whereof I might appeal to Massacres foreign and domestick Croysades Persecutions raised and carried on against Men with the utmost rage and violence merely for not being able to bring their Judgments to the same pitch and level with that of their Persecutors not to mention the bloudy design of this Day which had it taken effect would at once have blown up a Church and a State And all this with the same pretences of holy zeal and pious intentions that Jews and Heathens had and with as equal ignorance too For however they thought hereby to doe God service yet God Himself we see does not think so nor Christ neither who chargeth all such Zealots with utter ignorance both of the Nature of God the Father and of Himself also These things will they doe unto you says He because they have not known the Father nor Me. Which leads me to the second Head of my Discourse to wit Our Lord's Judgment of or rather Sentence of Condemnation past here upon all such persons and their practices They have not known the Father nor Me. I know not what good opinion some may have of Ignorance in matter of Devotion so as to make it the Mother thereof I am sure the Scripture all along makes it the source of all impiety of atheism oppression cruelty and of all that confusion that is in the World Have they no knowledge that they are all such workers of mischief eating up my people as it were bread Psal. 14. 8. It was this Ignorance that crucified Christ Had they known it they would not have crucified the Lord of Glory says St. Paul 1 Cor. 2. 8. And he thanks his ignorance for his persecuting and blaspheming 1 Tim. 1. 13. They are the dark places of the earth that are full of the habitations of cruelty Psal. 74. 20. And when men walk on still in darkness all the foundations of the earth are out of course Ps. 82. 5. That is There is nothing then but confusion in the world They proceed from evil to evil because they know not me saith the Lord Jerem. 9. 3. And here we see that Christ Himself chargeth all the cruelty that should be exercised on his Servants upon men's not knowing the Father nor Himself But wherein did this their Ignorance consist It consisted I say in these two Things 1. In that they thought that such violent courses as they took to bring men in to them as their putting them out of their Synagogues and their killing them could be an acceptable Service to God 2. That their pious Intentions Their thinking thereby to doe God service could be able to bear them out and justifie this their way of proceeding 1. I say first That they were grosly mistaken in thinking that those violent courses they took could possibly please God This was their 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 their First grand mistake For there was nothing in the Divine Law to shew God's approbation of any such thing Nor do we find that the ancient Jews who alone worshipping the true God and being his peculiar People might in that regard have had some colourable pretence to persecute all that were out of God's Covenant as enemies to Him did notwithstanding use any rigorous much less barbarous and cruel ways to compell men to come into their Church The Law indeed required the life of an Apostate to Idolatry whether 't were a single Person or a City Deut. 13. And therefore to prevent the Jews running into Idolatry to which they were so prone Death which was the only proper restraint in that case was put into the Law by God who was Himself then the Supreme Magistrate in that Theocracy against whom it was exact Rebellion and Treason to take another God and therefore was by Him punished with Death But this Law concerned those only who were within the Pale of the Jewish Church nor do we find that any who were without were forcibly compelled to come into it This was wholly left to their own choice and they were suffered to go on in their own way without being obliged to receive the Mosaical Law It was never God's method this to drag men to his Service nor otherwise to work on their understandings than by rational convictions He might have made use of his great Power to confound but he hath always pleaded with men by way of Argument a Way most suitable to the nature of reasonable Creatures and to his own abhorring all manner of cruelty and by his forbearance long-suffering and goodness seeking to lead men to repentance And therefore they who have any other apprehensions of a Divine Being measure Him by their own fierce and inhumane Temper thinking wickedly that he is such a one as themselves and be they who they will They know not the Father Nor do they know the Son neither I say Whosoever employ any violent ways or means to force men's consciences in matter of Religion do not know Christ. Let me not here be mistaken as if I were against all manner of legal compulsion I deny not Magistrates the power of constraining them to outward acts of Justice Honesty and Religion too who are destitute of the inward Vertues such acts falling within their Jurisdiction serving to preserve Civil Societies of whom Magistrates are properly Lords and who do obtain their ends if the outward acts be done There are two Swords among Christians the spiritual and the temporal and both these have their due office and place in the maintenance of Religion But we may not take up Mahomet's Sword or like unto it that is We must not propagate Religion by sanguinary Persecutions nor force consciences so long as men's opinions destroy not faith or morality that they keep them to themselves and do not spread them to the ruine of the established Religion and Government For when they doe so as some Peoples very Religion is treasonable the Treason not the Religion is then punished by the Magistrate But setting a-side this case I say That as all outward compulsion to oblige men to quit their present Persuasion without any rational conviction is directly contrary to the Will of God the Father as I have already shown you so to that of his Son Jesus Christ as will appear upon these three following accounts 1. Because it
our Apostle here is so earnest and so concerned in asserting the necessity of a Resurrection which Heathens and Sadduces utterly denyed and many weak and seduced Christians scarce believed some affirming it already past others turning it into a mere Allegory The former he labours to convince by reasons fetch'd from nature The latter here in the Text by an argument ad hominem drawn from the particular interest of Christians who of all others should most suffer if their hopes should determine with this life A sad and uncomfortable Consequence would then follow to All but a most absurd one also to these Others should then be miserable but these of all others most miserable For If in this life c. we Christians we Apostles especially and Ministers of Christ should be of all men most miserable In which words you may observe 1. A false hope a hope in Christ in this life only with its effect misery and greater misery to Christians than to thers who upon such a supposition are pronounc'd of all men most miserable 2. A true hope a hope in Christ not in this life only with its effect also Happiness For if the other make its owners miserable and most miserable Then this by the Law of contraries happy and most happy Happy in this world as well as in the other Though there most because there is most happiness yet here too because here is some The first hope and its effects are more plainly exprest the second and its effects as necessarily imply'd and both of them together make up the full contents of the Text. I shall not consider the Parts so minutely as I have proposed them but draw out the substance of them into these three following Propositions which naturally result from the Text. 1. That they who have no other hope but what this life affords them are miserable 2. That upon supposition of no better hope all good Christians but the Ministers of Christ especially should be not only miserable but of all other men most miserable 3. That there is another Life to come the expectation whereof makes them who have it most happy both here and hereafter Of these in their order And first That they who have no other hope but And indeed how can they be otherwise since this life is so Our early tears prognosticate our future unhappiness and we come into this world with as much sadness as we go out of it with horror Some have curst the day of their birth with Job others have not thought fit to allow that Title but to those days wherein Martyrs have suffered Some Philosophers have affirmed that man's chiefest happiness had been not to have been born at all his next to have dyed as soon as born Nay the Scripture it self represents our Blessed Saviour groaning when he raised up Lazarus from the dead for this reason say some because he saw himself as it were oblig'd by his Sisters tears to fetch him back from the happiness of the other to the miseries of this wretched life Nor can I much wonder at their fancy who have conceited that our Souls were thrust into these our Bodies as into so many prisons since those which are most conveniently are but ill lodg'd there our Bodies at best being but so many hospitals if our Souls be any better for as diseases plague the one so passions and lusts as much torment the other And here should I declame on the miseries of humane life the common beaten theam even of those who know no other 't were easie to be Eloquent But not to speak of those accidents which befall it we need not charge our Miseries on our Fortune we owe them to our very Nature Every man is a several Enoch miserable by his very frame and make and 't were needless to borrow arguments from any thing but himself to prove him such or go about to demonstrate what he feels His own Experience shows him wretched in what he suffers and Reason will so even in what he enjoys The Evil he endures sadly afflicts him and the Good he possesses does not much affect him His Sorrows are many and great and his Joys but few and small Those come unmixt These at best but alloyed so that Man is wholly miserable and but half happy I shall not trouble my self to prove that he is miserable in what he suffers for he finds himself so but which I conceive more proper to my present purpose endeavour to demonstrate that the things of this life were they as high as fancied could never create any true satisfaction and consequently must leave a Man to misery even in that condition wherein he takes himself to be most happy And this will appear upon a threefold account 1. Because they are unsatisfactory 2. Because not lasting 3. Because upon supposition of no other life the continual fear of death would render the enjoyments of them most imperfect 1. Because they are unsatisfactory as not 1. bearing any proportion or fitness to the Soul They are material and This spiritual The Soul of Man being a substance of unbounded Desires can never be pleas'd but with what is infinite 2. And this dissatisfaction we receive from things here below appears then most when we come to a trial Our Enjoyment best confutes our Opinion of them then 't is we find that they are bigger in our eye than in themselves in our desire than in our review of them and that our expectations are far larger than our fruitions These Apples of Sodom shew fair and beautifull but the least touch turns them into dust and presently discovers all their painted beauty to be but Appearance and Illusion 3. Add we to this that there can be no surer mark of the dissatisfaction we find in the things of this life than that they presently cloy us Our continued enjoyment of the best of them tires us out as Happiness is said to have done Polycrates and Fortune Galba We must be beholding to their variety for their comfort nay to some evil to make us relish any good in them This is that which Heathens themselves have express'd in those Metamorphoses of their Gods thereby intimating that great Persons tired out with their own Happiness have been forc'd to descend to the Actions of their Inferiors to disguise themselves sometimes to ease themselves of the very burthen of their Honours and lay aside that Grandeur which importun'd them so that the perpetual presence of the same objects is scarce to be endured though they tire us no otherwise than as they are always the same And now let Philosophy tell us there is no vacuity in Nature Divinity and our own experience will assure us that there is nothing else in the things of it 2. But then secondly Were the things of this life never so full in themselves and satisfactory yet being not lasting all the satisfaction we find in them can be but as they are short and
which had such a load as the sins of Mankind and God's wrath due to those sins hanging upon it These were the Arrows of the Almighty that went through his Soul This The poyson thereof that drank up his Spirit These The Terrors of God that did set themselves in Array against Him to use Job's expression The spirit of a Man may well bear his infirmities but a wounded spirit a spirit so wounded as his was by the hand and stroke of an omnipotent God who could bear but He that was God's equal and yet even He complains who yet did bear it How easily could He have vanquished the malice of Hell who stoops at the power and anger of God If any thing could add to this affliction to this piercing of his Soul on Man's part it must have been those bitter taunts those cutting reproaches he suffered from the ungratefull Jews or rather those despights He foresaw Sinners should doe Him who should make a mock of Him and of those Sins which pierced Him or at least so slender a reckoning of all his piercings as to have no sense at all of them and as if they were a matter not worth looking on should never bestow so much as one Thought upon them nay by their constant sinning and that without any remorse should crucifie afresh the Son of God and put him to an open shame treading him under foot and counting the bloud of the Covenant whereby they were sanctified an unholy thing All this and more than our faint apprehensions can reach to our Lord had in his prospect and which pierced his very Heart by that foresight He had of it and so brings us Christians within the compass of those that pierced Him Indeed the Text literally points to the Jews and their Assistants the Roman Souldiers as the Authors of Christ's crucifixion and the immediate Executioners thereof And it cannot be denied but that All of them had a hand or head in this Act. They brought him to they stretcht Him on his Cross They pierced his hands and his feet they stood staring and looking upon Him says the Psalmist Psal. 22. 17. All of them in their several degrees were guilty of the Fact some as procuring his Death as the whole Nation of the Jews some as commanding the Execution as Pilate others as doing it as the Gentile Souldiers And we are ready and not without good cause too to condemn their cruelty But this is only to mind the Evil they did not what Evil Christ suffered This is to be angry with them but not to justifie our selves who pierced him as well as they and some of us more deeply than many of them did Let us not mistake our selves It was their Sin that did practise but it was ours that procured our Lord's Death We would fain shift our Sin on the Jews and Heathens who were but the Instrumental causes here whereas we are the Principals 'T is not the Executioner that properly kills the Man nor yet the Judge Solum peccatum homicida est Sin only is the Murtherer and every Sinner the Executioner of a Saviour All Men are the Meritorious causes for whose Transgressions He was pierced The Lord hath laid on Him the Iniquity of us All says the Prophet Esay 53. 6. It was the Hypocrisie of our Hearts that mocked Him It was the Bribery of our Hands that buffeted Him The Oaths of our Mouths that spat in his Face We betrayed Him with our wanton kisses We whipt Him with the cords of our Oppression We gave Him Gall and Vinegar to drink by our luxurious Intemperance Our Pride in vain Apparel and Ornaments platted a Crown of Thorns upon his head and stript him of his garments In a word our mighty Sins were the Nails which pierced his hands and his feet and the Spear that was thrust into his side The glory of the Lord was brought to shame for our shamefull lives The Lord of life was put to death for our deadly sins and the word became speechless for our crying Ones So that I may justly bring this home to every Man in this Congregation with the Prophet Nathan's Tu es homo Thou art the Man that piercedst Christ and every one of us were that question put to us seriously which was once to him scoffingly Matth. 26. 8. Prophecy who smote thee may without the gift of Prophesying return the answer It is We that smote Him We have now found out the Piercers here And who but They ought to be the Spectators of that Tragedy which themselves have occasioned Indeed all Mankind are the They in the Text that have pierced and therefore must look upon him But what is it to look upon him Is it only to gaze upon a Crucifix with the superstitious Papist and have our Minds look one way while our Eyes look another Is it to look upon Him with dry Eyes and unrelenting Hearts Or only to look and no more To afford him a passing glance of our Eye and then fix it perhaps on some vain and sinfull Object Surely the looking here implies more than so it requires the Exercise of all our Senses and Faculties in the judgment of the Hebrew Doctors as Grotius on this place observes out of Exod. 20. 18. and Jer. 2. 31. It requires our Memory to recall our Understanding often to reflect and ruminate on Christ's Passion and engages all our Affections about it It exacts our most serious Attention and our often-repeated Meditations We must so look upon as to look into Christ pierced for us so look on as never to look off Him That by frequent viewing the dimensions of his Cross we may be able to comprehend what is the breadth and length and depth and height thereof and to know the love of Christ there dying for us which passeth knowledge St. Peter speaking of the sufferings of Christ and the glory that should follow 1 Pet. 1. 12. tells us ver 13. that the Angels desire to look or as the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 there imports curiously to pry into them and the more we doe so the greater benefit shall we reap by it For at every our looking here some new sight will offer it self to us to raise our admiration and exercise our affections It will make us love Him who was pierced for us and it will pierce us through with sorrow for having pierced Him It will move our Pity raise our Faith and exalt our Hopes to their highest pitch That we may then look upon Christ pierced to our benefit and comfort let us doe it these five ways With an eye of Pity and Compassion of Sorrow and Regret of Love Faith and Joy 1. With an eye of Pity and Compassion And this is no more than what we commonly doe to all afflicted persons The misery of Sufferers be they who they will naturally attracts our Eyes and turns our Bowels towards them At least we are apt to pity if not so