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Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
death_n	adam_n	nature_n	sin_n	8,709	5	5.4949	4	true

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ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A36308	XXVI sermons. The third volume preached by that learned and reverend divine John Donne ...	Donne, John, 1572-1631.	1661 (1661)	Wing D1873; ESTC R32773	439,670	425

every mans first-born-childe is his zeal to the Religion and Service of God As soon as we know that there is a Soul that Soul knows that there is a God and a Worship belonging to that God and this Worship is Religion And is not this first-born childe dead in many of us In him that is not stirr'd not mov'd not affected for his Religion his pulse is gone and that 's an ill sign In him that dares not speak for it not counsel not preach for it his Religion lies speechless and that 's an ill sign In him that feeds not Religion that gives nothing to the maintenance thereof his Religion is in a consumption In a word if his zeal be quenched his first-born is dead And so for these three Houses That in Egypt that at home that in our selves There is not a house in which there is not one dead Part 4. The fourth House falling under this survey is this House in which we are met now the house of God the Church and the ground wrapped up in the same consecration and in this house you have seen and seen in a lamentable abundance and seen with sad eyes that for many moneths there hath scarce been one day in which there hath not been one dead How should there be but multiplicity of deaths why should it be or be looked to be or thought to be otherwise The Master of the house Christ Jesus is dead before and now it is not so much a part of our punishment for the first Adam as an imitation of the second Adam to die death is not so much a part of our debt to Nature or Sin or Satan as a part of our conformity to him who died for us If death were in the nature of it meerly evil to us Christ would have redeemed us even from this death by his death But as the death of Christ Jesus is the Physick of mankinde so this natural death of the body is the application of that Physick to every particular man who only by death can be made capable of that glory which his death hath purchased for us This Physick all they whom God hath taken to him have taken and by his grace received life by it Their first-born is dead the body was made before the soul and that body is dead Rachel wept for her children and would not be comforted because they were not If these children and parents and friends and neighbours of ours were not if they were resolved into an absolute annihilation we could not be comforted in their behalf but Christ who says he is the Life lest we should think that to belong only to this life says also that he is the Resurrection We were contracted to Christ in our Election married to him in our Baptism in the Grave we are bedded with him and in the Resurrection estated and put into possession of his Kingdom And therefore because these words do not only affect us with that sad consideration That there is none of these houses in whieh there is not one dead but minister withall that consolation That there is none so dad but may have a Resurrection We shall pass another short survey over all these Houses Thus far we have survey'd these four Houses Egypt our families our selves and the Church as so many places of Infection so many temporal or spiritual Pesthouses into which our sins had heaped powder and Gods indignation had cast a match to kindle it But now the very phrase of the Text which is That in every house there was one dead There was invites us to a more particular consideration of Gods mercy in that howsoever it were it is not so now in which we shall look how far this beam of mercy shines out in every of these houses that it is not so now There is not one dead in every house now but the Infection Temporal and Spiritual Infection is so far ceased as that not only those that are alive do not die as before but those whom we called dead are not dead they are alive in their spirits in Abrahams bosome and they are alive in their very bodies in their contract and inherence in Christ Jesus in an infallible assurance of a joyful Resurrection Now in the survey of the first sort of houses of Egypt Egyptus herein we are interrupted Here they were dead and are dead still We see clearly enough Gods indignation upon them but we see neither of those beams of mercy either that there die no more or that we have the comfort of a joyful Resurrection in them who are dead For this fearful calamity of the death of their first-born wrought no more upon them but to bring them to that exclamation that vociferation that voice of despairful murmuring Omnes Moriemur We are all dead men v. 33. And they were mischievous Prophets upon themselves for proceeding in that sin which induc'd that calamity and the rest upon them they pursued the children of Israel through the Red-sea and perished in it and then they came not to die one in a house but as it is expressed in the Story and repeated in the Psalms Exod. 14.28 Psal 106.10 There remained not so much as one of them alive so that in their case there is no comfort in the first beam of mercy that this phrase They were dead or They did die should intimate That now they did not die now Gods correction had so wrought upon them as that God withdrew that correction from them for it pursued them and accompanied them to their final and total destruction And then for the other beam of mercy of transferring them which seemed dead in the eyes of the world to a better life by that hand of death to present happiness in their souls and to an assured resurrection to joy and glory in their bodies in the communion of Gods Saints Moses hath given us little hope in their behalf for thus he encourageth his Countreymen in that place The Egyptians whom you have seen this day Exod. 14.13 you shall see no more for ever No more in this world no more in the world to come Beloved as God empayl'd a Goshen in Egypt a place for the righteous amongst the wicked so there is an Egypt in every Goshen neasts of Snakes in the fairest Gardens and even in this City which in the sense of the Gospel we may call The Holy City as Christ called Jerusalem though she had multiplied transgressions The Holy City because she had not cast away his Law though she had disobeyed it So howsoever your sins have provoked God yet as you retain a zealous profession of the truth of his Religion I may in his name and do in the bowels of his mercy call you The Holy City even in this City no doubt but the hand of God fell upon thousands in this deadly infection who were no more affected with it then those Egyptians to cry out Omnes Moriemur We can

heare not because God speaks not loud enough but because we stop our eares nor that neyther for wee doe hear but because we do not hearken then nor consider no nor that neyther but because we doe not answere nor cooperate nor assist God in doing that which he hath made us able to doe by his grace towards our own Salvation For not to judge De iis qui foris sunt of those whom God hath left fot any thing we know in the darke and without meanes of Salvation because without manifestation of Christ we are Christians incorporated in Christ in his Church and thereby by that Title we have a new Creation and are new creatures and as wee shall have a new Jerusalem hereafter so we have a new Paradise already which is the Christian Church In this Paradise saith St. Augustine Quatuor Evangelia ligna fructifera In the books of the Gospell as they grow and as they are suplicated in the Church growes every Tree pleasant for the sight and good for meat And there sayes that Father lignum vitae Christus Christ Jesus himself as he is taught hee that gives life to all our actions and even so our faith it self which faith qualifies and dignifies those actions And then sayes from the Scriptures in the Church is the Tree of Life for it is he As Christ alone in this Paradise that is the christian Church is this Tree of life so lignum scientiae boni mali The Tree of knowledg of Good and Evill is Proprium voluntatis arbitrium the good use of our own Will after God hath enlightned us in this Paradise in the Christian Church and so restor'd our dead will again by his Grace precedent and subsequent and concommitant for without such Grace and such succession of Grace our Will is so far unable to pre-dispose it selfe to any good as that nec scipso homo nisi perniciose uti potest sayes he still we have no interest in our selves no power to doe any thing of or with our selves but to our destruction Miserable man a Toad is a bag of Poyson and a Spider is a blister of Poyson and yet a Toad and a Spider cannot poyson themselves Man hath a dram of poyson originall-Sin in an invisible corner we know not where and he cannot choose but poyson himselfe and all his actions with that we are so far from being able to begin without Grace as then where we have the first Grace we cannot proceed to the use of that without more But yet sayes Saint Augustine The Will of a Christian so rectified and so assisted the lignum scientiae the Tree of knowledge and he shall be the worse for knowing if he live not according to that knowledg we were all wrapped up in the first Adam all Mankind and we are wrapped up in the second Adam in Christ all Mankinde too but not in both alike for we are so in the first Adam as that we inherit death from him and incurre death whether we will or no before any consent of ours be actually given to any Sin we are the children of wrath and of death but we are not so in the second Adam as that we are made possessors of eternall life without the concurrence of our own Will not that our will payes one penny towards this purchase but our own will may forfeit it it cannot adopt us but it may disinherit us Now by being planted in this Paradise and received into the Christian Church we are the adopted sons of God and therefore as it is in Christ who is the naturall Son of God Qui non nascitur desinit as Origen expresses it He was not born once and no more but hath a continual because an eternall generation and is as much begotten to day as he was 100. 1000. 1000 millions of generations passed so since we are the generation and of-spring of God since Grace is our Father that Parent that begets all goodness in us In similitudine ejus sayes Origen conformable to the Pattern Christ himself Qui non nascitur desinit who hath a continuall generation Generemur Domino per singulos intellectus singula opera in all the acts of our understanding and in a ready concurrence of our Will let us every day every minute feele this new generation of spirituall children for it is a miserable short life to have been borne when the glasse was turned and dyed before it was run out to have conceived some good Motions at the beginning and to have given over all purpose of practise at the end of a Sermon Let us present our own will as a mother to the father of light and the father of life and the father of love that we may be willing to conceive by the overshadowing of the Holy Ghost and not resist his working upon our Soules but with the obedience of the blessed Virgin may say Ecce ancilla Behold the seruant of the Lord fiat mihi secundum verbum tuum Be it done unto me according to thy Word I will not stop mine eares to thy Word my heart shall not doubt of thy word my life shall expresse my having heard and harkened to thy word that word which is the Gospell that Gospell which is peace to my Conscience and reconciliation to my God and Salvation to my Soul for hearing is but the conception meditation is but the quickning purposing is but the byrth but practising is the growth of this blessed childe Fidelis The Gospell then that which is the Gospell to thee that is the assurance of the peace of Conscience is grounded in sermone upon the word not upon imaginations of thine owne not upon fancies of others nor pretended inspirations nor obtruded Miracles but upon the word and not upon a suspicious and questionable not upon an uncertain or variable word but upon this that is fidelis sermo This is a faithfull saying It is true that this Apostle seemes to use this phrase of speech as an earnest asseveration and a band for divers truths in other places He saies sometimes This is a true saying and This is a faithfull saying when he does not meane that it is the word of God but only intends to induce a morall certitude when he would have good credit to be given to that which followes he uses to say so fidelis sermo it is a true it is a faithfull saying But in all those other places where he uses this phrase he speaks only of some particular duties or of some particular point of Religion but here he speaks of the whole body of Divinity of the whol Gospell That Christ is come to save Sinners and therefore more may be intended by this phrase here then in other places When hee speaks of that particular point The Resurrection he uses this phrase It is a true saying If we be dead with him we shall also live with him 2 Tim. 2.11 when he would invite men to godlinesse

wrapped up in a decree of his coming And therefore we are not carried upon the consideration of any decree or if any means of salvation higher or precedent to the comming of Christ for that were to antidate eternity it self So then this coming in the Text is the execution of that coming in the decree which is involv'd in St. Johns In principio and it is the performance of it coming which was enwrapped in the promise in Moses In principio 10.24 it is his actual coming in our flesh that coming of which Christ said in St. Luke many Prophets and Kings 13.17 and in St. Matth. many Prophets and righteous men desired to see these things which you see and have not seen them the prophets who in their very name were videntes seen saw not this comining thus Joh. 8.56 your Father Abraham rejoyced to see my day saith Christ and he saw it and was glad All times and all Generations before time was were Christs day but yet he cals this coming in the flesh especially his day because this day was a holy Equinoctial and made the day of the Jews and the day of the Gentiles equal and Testamenta copulat saies St. Chrisostome it binds up the two Testaments into one Bible for if the Partriarks had not desired to see this day and had not seen it in the strength of faith they and we had not been of one communion We have a most sure word of the Prophet 2 Pet. 1.19 saies the Apostle and to that we do well that we take heed but how far As unto a light that shineth in a dark place until the day dawn and the day star arise in your hearts But now since this coming 1 Joh. 1.2 This light hath appeared and we have seen it and bear witness and shew it unto you Simon had an assurance in the Prophets and more immediatly then so in the vision but herein was his assurance and his peace established Lord now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace Luk. 2.19 for mine eyes have seen thy salvation The kingdom of Heaven was but a reversion to them and it is no more to us but to them it was a reversion as after a Grandfather and father two lives two comings of Christ before they would come to their state Christ must come first in the flesh and he must come again to Judgment To us and in our case one of these lives is spent Christ is come in the flesh and therefore as the earth is warmer an hour after the sun sets then it was an hour before the sun rose so let our faith and zeal be warmer now after Christ departing out of this world then theirs was before his coming into it and let us so rejoyce at this Ecce venit Rex tuus that our King our Missias is already come as that we may cherefully say veni Domine Jesu come Lord Jesu come quickly and be glad if at the going out of these dores we might meet him coming in the clouds In Mundum Thus far then he hath proceeded already venit He came and venit in mundum He came into the world it is not in mundam into so clean a woman as had no sin at all none contracted from her Parents no original sin for so Christ had placed his favours and his honors ill if he had favoured her most who had no need of him to dye for all the world and not for his mother or to dye for her when she needed not that hell is a strange imagination she was not without sin for then why should she have died for even a natural death in all that come by natural generation is of sin But certainly as she was a vessel reserved to receive Christ Jesus so she was preserved according to the best capacity of that nature from great and infections sins Mary Magdalen was a holy vessel after Christ had thrown the Divel out of her the Virgin Mary was much more so into whom no reigning power of the Devil ever entred in such an acceptation then Christ came per mundam in mundum by a clean woman into an unclean world And he came in a purpose as we do piously believe to manifest himself in the Christian Religion to all the nations of the world and therefore laetentur Insulae saies David The Lord reigneth let the Island rejoyce the Island who by reason of their situation provision and trading have most means of conveying Christ Jesus over the world He hath ca●ried us up to heaven set us at the right hand of God shal not we endeavour to carry him to those nations who have not yet heard of his name shall we still brag that we have brought our clothes and our hatchets and our knives and bread to this and this value and estimation amongst those poor ignorant Souls and shall we never glory that we have brought the name and Religion of Christ Jesus in estimation amongst them shall we stay till other nations have planted a fals Christ among them and then either continue in our sloth or take more pains in rooting out a false Christ then would have planted the true Christ is come into the world we will do little if we will not ferry him over and propagate his name as well as our own to other Nations At least be sure that he is so far come into the world as that he become into thee Thou art but a little world a world but of a few spanns in length 〈◊〉 and yet Christ was sooner carried from east to west from Jerusalem to these parts then thou canst carry him over the faculties of thy Soul and Body He hath been in a pilgrimage towards thee long coming towards thee perchance 50 perchance 60 years and how far is he got into thee yet Is he yet come to thine eye Have they made Jobs Covenant that they will not look upon a Maid yet he is not come into thine ear still thou hast an itching ear delighting in the libellous defamation of other men Is he come to thine ear Art thou rectified in that sense yet voluptousness in thy tast or inordinateness in thy other senses keep him out in those He is come into thy mouth to thy tongue but he is come thither as a diseased person is taken into a spittle to have his blood drawn to have his flesh cauterized to have his bones sawd Christ Jesus is in thy mouth but in such exrecations in such blasphemies as would he Earthquaks to us if we were earth but we are all stones and rock obdurate in a senselesnes of those wounds which are inflicted upon our God He may be come to the skirts to the borders to an outward show in thine actions and yet not be come into the land into thy heart He entred into thee at baptism He hath crept farther and farther into thee in catechisms and other infusions of his doctrine into thee He

to bear any slavish yoak had a tyrannical meaning in his words But in this Text as in one of those Tables in which by changing the station and the line you use to see two pictures you have a good picture of a good King and of a good subject for in one line you see such a subject as Loves pureness of heart and hath grace in his lips In the other line you see the King gracious yea friendly to such a subject He that loveth pureness of heart for the grace of his lips the King shall be his friend The sum of the words is that God will make an honest man acceptable to the King for some ability which he shall employ to the publike Him that proceeds sincerely in a lawful calling God will bless and prosper and he will seal this blessing to him even with that which is his own seal his own image the favor of the King He that loveth pureness of heart for the grace of his lips the King shall be his friend We will not be curious in placing these two pictures nor considering which to consider first As he that would vow a fast till he had found in nature whether the Egge or the Hen were first in the world might perchance starve himself so that King or that subject which would forbear to do their several duties Serm. 24. till they had found which of them were most necessary to one another might starve one another for King and subjects are Relatives and cannot be considered in execution of their duties but together The greatest Mystery in Earth or Heaven which is the Trinity is conveyed to our understanding no other way then so as they have reference to one another by Relation as we say in the Schools for God could not be a father without a Son nor the Holy Ghost Spiratus sine spirante As in Divinity so in Humanity too Relations constitute one another King and subject come at once and together into consideration Neither is it so pertinent a consideration which of them was made for others sake as that they were both made for Gods sake and equally bound to advance his glory Here in our Text we finde the subjects picture first Divisio And his Marks are two first Pureness of Heart That he be an honest Man And then Grace of lips that he be good for something for by this phrase Grace of lips is expressed every ability to do any office of society for the Publike good The first of these Pureness of heart he must love The other that is Grace of lips that is other Abilities he must have but he must not be in love with them nor over-value them In the Kings picture the principal marke is That he shall be friendly and gracious but gracious to him that hath this Grace of lips to him that hath endeavored in some way to be of use to the Publike And not to him neither for all the grace of his lips for all his good parts except he also love pureness of heart but He that loveth pureness of heart There 's the foundation for the grace of his lips There 's the upper-building the King shall be his friend In the first then which is this Pureness of heart we are to consider Rem sedem Modum what this Pureness is Part. 1. Puritas Then where it is to be lodged and fixed In the heart and after that the way and means by which this Pureness of heart is acquired and preserved which is implyed and notified in that Affection wherewith this pureness of heart is to be embraced and entertained which is love For Love is so noble so soveraign an Affection as that it is due to very few things and very few things worthy of it Love is a Possessory Affection it delivers over him that loves into the possession of that that he loves it is a transmutatory Affection it changes him that loves into the very nature of that that he loves and he is nothing else For the first Pureness it self It is carried to a great heighth Res. for our imitation God knows too great for our imitation when Christ bids us be perfect Mat. 5.48 even as our father which is in heaven is perfect As though it had not been perfectness enough to be perfect as the Son upon earth was perfect he carries us higher Be perfect as your Father which is in heaven is perfect The Son upon Earth Christ Jesus had all our infirmities and imperfections upon him hunger and weariness and hearty sorrow to death and that which alone is All Mortality Death it self And though he were Innocence it self and knew no sin yet there was no sin that he knew not for all our sins were his He was not onely made Man and by taking by Admitting though not by Committing our sins as well as our nature sinful Man but he was made sin for our sakes And therefore though he say of himself sicut ego John 15.10 Keep my Commandements even as I have kept my fathers Commandements yet still he refers all originally to the Father and because he was under our infirmities and our iniquities he never says though he might well have said so sicut ego Be pure be perfect as I am perfect and pure but sicut Pater be pure as your Father in heaven is pure Hand to hand with the Father Christ disclaims himself Mat. 26.39 disavows himself Non sicut ego Nevertheless not as I will but as thou wilt O Father We are not referr'd for the pattern of our purity though we might be safely to him that came from heaven The Son but to him which is in heaven The Father Nor to the Sun which is in heaven the Sun that is the pure fountain of all natural light nor to the Angels which are in heaven though they be pure in their Nature and refined by a continual emanation of the beams of glory upon them from the face of God but the Father which is in heaven is made the pattern of our purity That so when we see the exact purity which we should aim at and labor for we might the more seriously lament and the more studiously endeavor the amendment of that extreme and enormous fouleness and impurity in which we who should be pure as our Father which is in heaven is pure exceed the dog that turns to his own vomit again 2 Pet. 2.22 and the Sow that was washed to her wallowing in the mire Yet there is no foulness so foul so inexcusable in the eys of God nor that shall so much aggravate our condemnation as a false affectation and an hypocritical counterfeiting of this Purity There is a Pureness a cleanness imagin'd rather dream't of in the Romane Church by which as their words are the soul is abstracted not onely à Passionibus but â Phantasmatibus not onely from passions and perturbations but from the ordinary way of coming to

and he hath transgressed that The necessary precipitations into sudden executions to which States are forced in rebellious times we are faine to call by the name of Law Martial Law The Torrents and Inundations which invasive Armies pour upon Nations we are fain to call by the name of Law The Law of Armes No Judgement no Execution without the name the colour the pretence of Law for still men call for a Law for every Execution And shall not the Judge of all the earth doe right Shall God judge us condemn us execute us at the last day and not by a Law by something that we never saw never knew never notified never published and judge me by that and leave out the consideration of that Law which he bound me to keep 1 Cor. 1.20 I ask S. Pauls question Where is the disputer of the world Who will offer to dispute unnecessary things especially where Authority hath made it necessary to us to forbear such Disputations Blessed are the peace-makers that command and blessed are the peace-keepers that obey and accommodate themselves to peace in forbearing unnecessary and uncharitable controversies 1 Tim. 3.16 but without controversie great is the mystery of Godliness The Apostle invites us to search into no farther mysteries then such as may be without controversie the Mystery of Godlinesse is without controversie and godliness is to believe that God hath given us a Law and to live according to that Law This this godliness that is Knowledge and Obedience to the Law hath the promises of this life and the next too all referr'd to his Law for without this this godliness which is holiness no man shall see God All referr'd to a Law This is Christs Catechisme in S. John That we might know the onely true God 17.3 and Jesus Christ whom he sent A God commanding and a Christ reconciling us if we have transgressed that Commandment And this is the Holy Ghosts Catechisme in S. Paul Deus remunerator Heb. 11.6 That we believe God to be and to be a just rewarder of mans actions still all referr'd to an obedience or disobedience of a Law The Mystery of godliness is great that is great enough for our salvation and yet without controversie for though controversies have been moved about Gods first act there can be none of his last act though men have disputed of the object of Election yet of the subject of Execution there is no controversie No man can doubt but that when God delivers over any soule actually and by way of execution to eternall condemnation that he delivers over that soule to that eternal condemnation for breaking his Law In this we have no other adversary but the over-sad the despairing soule and it becomes us all to lend our hand to his succour and to pour in our Wine and our Oyle into his Wounds that lies weltring and surrounded in the blood of his own pale and exhausted soule That soule who though it can testifie to it self some endeavour in the wayes of holinesse yet upon some collateral doubts is still suspicious and jealous of God How often have we seen that a needlesse jealousie and suspition conceived without cause hath made a good body bad A needlesse jealousie and suspition of his purposes and intentions upon thee may make thy mercifull God angry too Nothing can alienate God more from thee then to think that any thing but sin can alienate him How wouldst thou have God mercifull to thee if thou wilt be unmercifull to God himself And Qui quid tyrannicum in Deo Basil He that conceives any tyrannical act in God is unjust to the God of Justice and unmercifull to the God of Mercy Therefore in the 17. of our Injunctions we are commanded to arm sad souls against Despaire by setting forth the Mercy and the Benefits and the Godliness of Almighty God as the word of the Injunction is the godliness of God for to leave God under a suspicion of dealing ill with any penitent soule were to impute ungodliness to God Therefore to that mistaking soule that discomposed that shiver'd and shrivel'd and ravel'd and ruin'd soule to that jealous and suspicious soule onely I say Let no man judge you Coloss 2.16 sayes the Apostle intruding into those things which he hath not seene Let no man make you afraid of secret purposes in God which they have not nor you have not seen for that by which you shall be judged is the Law that Law which was notified and published to you The Law alone were much too heavy if there were not a superabundant ease and alleviation in that hand that Christ Jesus reaches out to us Consider the weight and the ease and for pity to such distrustfull souls and for establishment of your owne stop your devotions a little upon this consideration There is Chyrographum a hand-writing of Ordinances against me 14. a Debt an Obligation contracted by our first Parents in their disobedience and falne upon me And even that be it but Originall sin is shrewd evidence there 's my first charge But Deletum est sayes the Apostle there that 's blotted that 's defaced that cannot be sued against me after Baptisme Nay Sublatum cruci affixum it is cancel'd it is nailed to the Crosse of Christ Jesus it is no more sin in its self it is but to me to condemnation it is not here 's my charge and my discharge for that 28.15 But yet there is a heavier evidence Pactum cum inferno as the Prophet Esay speaks I have made a covenant with death and with Hell I am at an agreement that is says S. Greg. Audacter Indesinenter peccamus diligendo amicitiam profitemur We sin constantly we sin continually and we sin confidently and we finde so much pleasure and profit in sin as that we have made a league and sworn a friendship with sin and we keep that perverse and irreligious promise over-religiously and the sins of our youth flow into other sins when age disables us for them But yet there is a Deletum est in this case too our covenant with death is disanull'd sayes that Prophet when we are made partakers of the death of Christ in the blessed Sacrament Mine actuall sins lose their act and mine habituall sins fall from me as a habit as a garment put off when I come to that there 's my charge and my discharge for that But yet there is worse evidence against me then either this Chyrographum the first hand-writing of Adams hand or then this pactum this contract of mine own hand actuall and habituall sin for of these one is wash'd out in water and the other in blood in the two Sacraments But then there is Lex in Membris sayes the Apostle Rom. 7.21 I finde a law that when I would do good evil is present with me Sin assisted by me is now become a tyrant over me and hath established a government

upon me and there is a law of sin and a law in my flesh which after the water of Baptism taken and the water of penitent teares given after the blood of Jesus Christ taken and mine own blood given that is a holy readiness at that time when I am made partaker of Christs death to die for Christ throwes me back by relapses into those repented sins This put the Apostle to that passionate exclamation O wretched man that I am And yet he found a deliverance even from the body of this death through Jesus Christ his Lord that is a free an open recourse and access to him in all oppressions of heart in all dejections of spirit Now when this Chyrographum this bond of Adams hand Original sin is cancell'd upon the Cross of Christ And this Pactum this band of mine hand actual sins washed away in the blood of Christ and this Lex in membris this disposition to relapse into repented sins which as a tide that does certainly come every day does come every day in one form or other is beaten back as a tide by a bank by a continual opposing the merits and the example of Christ Jesus and the practise of his fasting and such other medicinall disciplines as I find to prevaile against such relapses when by this blessed means the whole Law against which I am a trespasser is evacuated will God condemn me for all this and not by a Law When I have pleaded Christ and Christ and Christ Baptism and Blood and Teares will God condemn me an oblique way when he cannot by a direct way by a secret purpose when he hath no law to condemn me by Sad and disconsolate distorted and distracted soul if it be well said in the School Absurdum est disputare ex manuscriptis it is an unjust thing in Controversies and Disputations to press arguments out of Manuscripts that cannot be seen by every man it were ill said in thy conscience that God will proceed against thee ex manuscripto or condemn thee upon any thing which thou never saw'st any unrevealed purpose of his Suspicious soul ill-presaging soul Is there something else besides the day of Judgement that the Son of Man does not know Disquiet soul Does he not know the proceeding of that Judgement wherein himself is to be the Judge But that when he hath died for thy sins and so fulfilled the Law in thy behalfe thou maist be condemned without respect of that Law and upon something that shall have had no consideration no relation to any such breach of any such Law in thee Intricated intangled conscience Christ tells thee of a Judgement because thou didst not do the works of Mercy not feed not cloath the poor for those were enjoyned thee by a Law But he never tells thee of any Judgement therefore because thy name was written in a dark book of Death never unclasped never opened unto thee in thy life He sayes unto thee lovingly and indulgently Fear not for it is Gods good pleasure to give you the Kingdome But he never sayes to the wickedest in the world Live in fear dye in anxiety in suspition and suspension for his displeasure a displeasure conceived against you before you were sinners before you were men hath thrown you out of that Kingdome into utter darkness There is no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus the reason is added because the Law of the Spirit of Life hath made them free from the Law of Sin and of Death All upon all sides is still referred to Law And where there is no law against thee as there is not to him that is in Christ and he is in Christ who hath endeavoured the keeping or repented the breaking of the Law God will never proceed to execution by any secret purpose never notified never manifested Suspicious jealous scattered soule recollect thy self and give thy self that redintegration that acquiescence which the Spirit of God in the means of the Church offers thee study the Mystery of godlinesse which is without all controversie that is endeavour to keep repent the not keeping of the Law and thou art safe for that that you shall be judged by is a Law But then this Law is called here a Law of Liberty and whether that denotation that it is called a Law of Liberty import an ease to us or a heavier weight upon us is our last disquisition and conclusion of all So speak ye and so do as they that shall be judged by the Law of Liberty Lex libertatis That the Apostle here by the Law of Liberty meanes the Gospel 1.25 was never doubted He had called the Gospel so before this place Whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty and continueth therein shall be blessed in his deed that is blessed in doing so blessed in conforming himself to the Gospel But why does he call it so a Law of Liberty Not because men naturally affecting liberty might be drawn to an affection of the Gospel by proposing it in that specious name of Liberty though it were not so The Holy Ghost calls the Gospel a Pearle and a Treasure and a Kingdom and Joy and Glory not to allure men with false names but because men love these and the Gospel is truly all these a Pearle and a Treasure and a Kingdome and Joy and Glory And it is truly a Law of Liberty But of what kind and in what respect Not such a Liberty as they have established in the Roman Church where Ecclesiastical Liberty must exempt Ecclesiastical persons from participating all burdens of the State and from being Traitors though they commit treason because they are Subjects to no secular Prince nor the liberty of the Anabaptists that overthrowes Magistracy and consequently all subjection both Ecclesiastical and Laick for when upon those words Be ye not servants of men 1 Cor. 7.23 S. Chrysostome sayes this is Christian liberty Nec aliis nec sibi servire neither to be subjects to others nor to our selves that 's spoken with modification with relation to our first Allegeance our Allegeance to God not to be so subject to others or to our selves as that either for their sakes or our owne we depart from any necessary declaration of our service to God Deo First then the Gospel is a Law of Liberty in respect of the Author of the Gospel of God himself because it leaves God at his liberty Not at liberty to judge against his Gospel where he hath manifested it for a Law for he hath laid a holy necessity upon himself to judge according to that Law where he hath published that law But at liberty so as that it consists onely in his good pleasure to what Nation he will publish the Gospel or in what Nation he will continue the Gospel or upon what persons he will make this Gospel effectuall So Oecumenius who is no single witness nor speaks not alone but compiles the former Fathers places this

The knowledge of God was manifested often in the Prophets he foretold therefore he foresaw His Wisdome was manifested often in frustrating all Councels of all Achitophels against him And his power was manifested often In the water consider it at least in the Red sea and in Pharaoh if you will bring it no nearer home And in the Fire consider it at least in the fiery Furnace if you will bring it no nearer home His Knowledge his Wisdome his Power his Mercy his Justice all his Attributes are alwayes manifested in all his works But Deus in carne that the person of God God himself should be manifested and manifested in our flesh Areopag Ineffabile omni sermoni omni ignotum intelligentiae ipse Angelorum primati non agnitum And if the Primate of the Angels the highest orders of them that stand in Gods sight know it not if no understanding were able to conceive it that had all the refinings and concoction that study and speculation and zeal to be vir desideriorum as the Angel said to Daniel a man that desired to dwell upon the meditation of his God could give must not I who always come with Moses uncircumcised lips not to speak perswasively and alwayes with Jeremies defect Puer sum nescio loqui not to speak plainly come now with Zachary's dumbness not to speak at all in this Mystery But hearkning to that which he who onely knew this Mystery hath said Verbum Caro factum est The word was made flesh And Deus manifestatus in carne God was manifested in the flesh rest my self in his Word and pray you in Christs stead to doe so too in this and all Mysteries of your Religion to rest upon the onely Word of God for in this particular it is nor mis-grounded Fulgent nor mis-collected by him that sayes Omnes pene errores almost all Errours have proceeded out of this that this great Mystery that God was manifested in the flesh Aut non omnino aut non sicuti est creditum is either not at all or not aright believed The Jews believe it not at all and to them Tertullian sayes enough Tertul. Since out of their Prophets they confess that when the Messias shall be manifested they must for a time suffer many calamities in this world if their Messias should be manifested now sayes he what could they suffer They say they must suffer banishment Et ubi dispersio gentis quae jam extorris whither shall that Nation be banish'd which is already in banishment and dispersion Redde statum Judaeis let the Jews shew me a State a Kingdom a Common-wealth a Government Magistrates Judicatures Merchandise and Armies let them shew something to loose for a Messias and then let them look for a Messias The Jewes are within the non omnino they believe not this Mystery at all And then for the non sicut est for the not believing it aright as the old Valentinians are renewed in the Anabaptists for both deny that Christ took flesh of the Virgin so the old Manichaeans are not renewed but exceeded in the Transubstantiators for they said the body of Christ was left in one place in the Sun these say it is upon as many Tables and in as many Boxes as they will But whether the manifestation of God in the flesh were referred to the Incarnation of Christ or to his Declaration when the wise men of the East came to see him at Bethleem whether when it was done or when it was declared to be done hath admitted a question because the Western Church hath call'd that day of their coming to him the Epiphany and Epiphany is Manifestation Then therefore is God manifested to us when as these wise men offer'd their Myrrhe and Frankincense we offer the Sacrifice of Prayer and as they offer'd their Gold we offer our temporall wealth for the glory of Christ Jesus And when the love of him corrects in thee the intemperances of adorning thy flesh of pampering thy flesh of obeying thy flesh then especially is this Epiphany God is manifested in the flesh in thy flesh Now when he was manifested in the flesh Justificat in spirit Rom. 8.3 it behooved him to be justified in the spirit for he came in similitudinem carnis peccati they took him for a sinner and they saw him converse with sinners for any thing they could see it might have been Caro peccati sinfull flesh and they saw enough to make them sure that it was Caro mortis mortall flesh Though he were Panis de coelo Bread from Heaven yet himself was hungry and though he were fons perennis an everlasting spring yet himself was thirsty though he were Deus totius consolationis the God of all comfort 2 Cor. 13. yet his soul was heavy unto death and though he were Dominus vitae the Lord of Life yet Death had dominion over him When therefore Christ was manifested in the flesh flesh subject to Death Death which was the reward of Sin and would take upon him to forgive sins it behooved him to be extraordinarily justified extraordinarily declared to the world and so he was he was justified in Spiritu in the Spirit first in Spiritu Sancto in the Spirit in the Holy Ghost both when the Holy Ghost was sent to him and when the Holy Ghost was sent by him from him The Holy Ghost was sent to him in his Baptisme and he tarried upon him Christ was not a Christian is not justified by one accesse one visitation one approach of the Holy Ghost not by one religious act it is a permanency a perseverance that justifies that foolishness and that fascination as the Apostle calls it that Witchcraft which he imputes to the Galatians is not so worn out but that there are foolish and bewitched Galatians still that begun in the Spirit and will be made perfect in the Flesh that receiv'd their Christianity in one Church and attend a confirmation a better state in a worse Christ was justified by the Holy Ghost when the Holy Ghost came to him so he was when he came from him at Pentecost upon his Apostles and then he came in Tongues and fiery Tongues Christ was not a Christian is not justified in silence but in declarations and open professions in tongues and not in dark and ambiguous speeches nor infinite and retractable speeches but in fiery tongues fiery that is fervent fiery that is clear He was justified so a Spiritu Sancto and so he was a Spiritu suo by his own Spirit not onely in that protestation of his Who can accuse me of any sin for S. Paul could say that he was unreproachable in the sight of men and yet he could not chuse but say Quorum ego maximus that he was the greatest sinner of all men I were a miserable man if I could accuse Christ of no sin if I could not prove all my sins his I were under a heavy condemnation But

been scandaliz'd and led into tentation by them till his law have been evacuated that that use of the law which is to shew sin to our consciences be annihilated in us till such a Cry come up to him by our often and professed sinning that it concerns him in his Honour which he will give to none and in his Care of his Churches which he hath promis'd to be till the end of all to take knowledge of them Yea though this Cry be come up to his Ears though it be a lowd Cry either by the nature of the sin as heavie things make a great noise in the moving or by reason of the number of the sins and the often doing thereof for as many children will make as great a noise as a loud Cryer so will the custome of small sins Cry as loud as those which are called peccata clamantia Crying sins Though this cry be encreased by this liberty and professed sinning that as the Prophet sayes Esa 3.9 They declare their sins and hide them not as Sodom did Though the cry of the sin be increased by the cry of them that suffer oppression by that sin as well as by the sin it self as the voice of Abel's bloud cryed from earth to heaven yea Gen. 4.10 though this cry ring about Gods ears in his own bed-chamber under the Altar it self in that Usquequo Domine when the Martyrs cry out with a loud voice How long Lord holy and true Revel 6.10 dost thou not judge and avenge our bloud yet God would fain forbear his Revenge he would fain have those Martyrs rest for a little space till their fellow servants and their brethren were fulfilled God would try what Cain would say to that Interrogatory Where is thy brother Abel And though the cry of Sodom were great and their sin exceeding grievous yet says God I will go down and see whether they have done altogether according unto that cry and if not I may know God would have been glad to have found Errour in their Inditement and when he could not yet if Fifty Fourty five Thirty Twenty Ten had been found righteous he had pardoned all Adeo malum Gregory quasi cum difficultate credidit cum audivit so loth is God to believe ill of man when he doth hear it This then is his patience Sententia But why is his patience made a reason of their continuance in sins Is it because there is no sentence denounced against sin These busie and subtile Extractors of Reasons that can distil and draw Poyson out of Manna Occasions of sin out of Gods Patience will not say so That there is no sentence denounced The word that is here used Pithgam is not truly an Hebrew word And though in the Book of Job and in some other parts of the Hebrew Scriptures we finde sometimes some forreign and out-landish word deriv'd from other Nations yet in Solomons writing very rarely neither doth Solomon himself nor any other Author of any part of the Hebrew Bible use this word in any other place then this one The word is a Chaldee word and hath amongst them the same signification and largeness as Dabar in Hebrew and that includes all A verbo ad legem from a word suddenly and slightly spoken to words digested and consolidated into a Law So that though the Septuagint translate this place Quia non est facta contradictio as though the reason of this sinners obduration might have been That God had not forbidden sin and though the Chaldee Paraphrast express this place thus Quia non est factum verbum ultionis As though this sinner made himself believe that God had never spoken word of revenge against sinners yet this sinner makes not that his reason That there is no Law no Judgement no Sentence given for every Book of the Bible every Chapter every Verse almost is a particular Deuteronomy a particular renewing of the Law from Gods mouth Morte Morieris Thou shalt die the death and of that Sentence from Moses mouth Pereundo peribitis You shall surely perish and of that Judgement from the Prophets mouth Non est Pax impiis There is no peace to the wicked And if this obdurate sinner could be such a Goth and Vandal as to destroy all Records all written Laws if he could evacuate and exterminate the whole Bible yet he would finde this Law in his own heart this Sentence pronounced by his own Conscience Stipendium peccati Mors est Treason is Death and sin is Treason His reason is not That there is no Law he sees it nor that he knows no Law his heart tells it him nor that he hath kept that Law his Conscience gives judgement against him nor that he hath a Pardon for breaking that Law for he never ask'd it and besides those Pardons have in them that clause Ita quod se bene gerat Every Pardon bindes a man to the good behaviour and by Relapses into sin we forfeit our Pardons for former sins All their Reason all their Comfort is onely a Reprieve and a Respite of Execution August Distulit Securim attulit Securitatem God hath taken the Ax from their necks and they have taken Security into their hearts Sentence is not executed Executed Execution is the life of the Law but then it is the death of the Man And therefore whosoever makes quarrels against God or arguments of Obduration out of this respite of Execution would he be better pleased with God if God came to a speedy Execution But let that be true Where there is no Execution there is no reverence to the Law there is truly and in effect no Law The Law is no more a Law without Execution then a Carcase is a Man And so much certainly the word which is here rendred sententia facta doth properly signifie A Judgement perfected executed Gen. 25.25 When Esau was born hairy and so in the likeness of a grown and perfect man he was call'd by the word of this text Gnesau Esau factus perfectus And so when God had perfected all his works Gen. 1. ult that is said then that he saw that all was good that he had made where there is the same word That he had perfected So that if the judgements of God had been still without execution if all those Curses Deut. 28.15 Cursed shalt thou be in the town and cursed in the field cursed in the fruit of thy body and in the fruit of thy land and in the fruit of thy cattel cursed when thou comest in and when thou goest out The Lord shall send thee cursings and trouble and shame in all thou setst thy hand to The Lord shall make a pestilence cleave to thee and a consumption and a fever The Lord shall make the heavens above as brass and the earth under thee as iron with all those Curses and Maledictions which he flings and slings and stings the soul of

then contract them in thy self and consider Gods speedy execution upon thy soul and upon thy body and upon thy soul and body together Was not Gods judgement executed speedily enough upon thy soul when in the same instant that it was created and conceiv'd and infus'd it was put to a necessity of contracting Original sin and so submitted to the penalty of Adam's disobedience the first minute Was not Gods judgement speedily enough executed upon thy body if before it had any temporal life it had a spiritual death a sinful conception before any inanimation If hereditary diseases from thy parents Gouts and Epilepsies were in thee before the diseases of thine own purchase the effects of thy licentiousness and thy riot and that from the first minute that thou beganst to live thou beganst to die too Are not the judgements of God speedily enough executed upon thy soul and body together every day when as soon as thou commitst a sin thou art presently left to thine Impenitence to thine Insensibleness and Obduration Nay the judgement is more speedy then so for that very sin it self was a punishment of thy former sins But though God may begin speedily yet he intermits again he slacks his pace and therefore the execution is not speedy As it is said of Pharaoh often Because the plagues ceased though they had been laid upon him Ingratum est cor Pharaonis Pharaoh's heart was hardned But first we see by that punishment which is laid upon Heli That with God it is all one to begin and to consummate his judgement When I begin I will make an end 1 Sam. 3.12 And when Herod took a delight in that flattery and acclamation of the people It is the voice of God and not of man Acts 12.22 the angel of the Lord smote him immediately the worms took possession of him though if we take Josephus relation for truth he died not in five days after Howsoever if we consider the judgements of God in his purpose and decree there they are eternal And for the execution thereof though the wicked sinner dissemble his sense of his torments and as Tertullian says of a persecutor Herminianus who being tormented at his death in his violent sickness cryed out Nemo sciat ne gaudeant Christiani Let no man know of my misery lest the Christians rejoyce thereat so these sinners suppress these judgements of God from our knowledge because they would not have that God that inflicts them glorified therein by us Yet they know their damnation hath never slept nor let them sleep quietly and in Gods purpose the judgement hath been eternal and they have been damned as long as the devil and that 's an execution speedy enough But because this appears not so evidently but that they may disguise it to the world and with much ado to their own Consciences Therefore their hearts are fully set in them to do evil And so we pass to our third Part. Part III. This is that perversness which the Heathen Philosopher Epictetus apprehends and reprehends That whereas every thing is presented to us Cum duabus sausis with two handles we take it still by the wrong handle This is tortuositas serpentis The wryness the knottiness the entangling of the Serpent This is that which the Apostle takes such direct knowledge of Rom. 2.4 Despisest thou the riches of Gods bountifulness and long-suffering not knowing that it leads thee to repentance St. Chrysostome's comparison of such a sinner to a Vulture that delights onely in dead carcases that is in company dead in their sins holds best as himself notes in this particular that the Vulture perhorrescit fragrantiam unguenti He loaths and is ill affected with any sweet savour for so doth this sinner finde death in that soveraign Balm of the patience of God and he dies of Gods mercy Et quid infelicius illis qui bono odore moriuntur says S. Augustine In what worse state can any man be then to take harm of a good air But as the same Father addes Numquid quia mori voluisti malum fecisti odorem This indisposition in that particular man does not make this air an ill air and yet this abuse of the patience of God comes to be an infectious poyson and such a poyson as strikes the heart and so general as to strike the heart of the children of men and so strongly as that their hearts should be fully set in them to do evil First then what is this setting of the heart upon evil and then what is this fulness that leaves no room for a Cure When a man receives figures and images of sin into his Fancie and Imagination and leads them on to his Understanding and Discourse to his Will to his Consent to his Heart by a delightful dwelling upon the meditation of that sin yet this is not a setting of the heart upon doing evil To be surpris'd by a Tentation to be overthrown by it to be held down by it for a time is not it It is not when the devil looks in at the window to the heart by presenting occasions of tentations to the eye nor when he comes in at the door to our heart at the ear either in lascivious discourses or Satyrical and Libellous defamations of other men It is not when the devil is put to his Circuit to seek whom he may devour and how he may corrupt the King by his Council that is The Soul by the Senses But it is when by a habitual custom in sin the sin arises meerly and immediately from my self It is when the heart hath usurp'd upon the devil and upon the world too and is able and apt to sin of it self if there were no devil and if there were no outward objects of tentation when our own heart is become spontanea insania voluntarius daemon Such a wilful Madness Chrysost and such a voluntary and natural Devil to it self as that we should be ambitious though we were in an Hospital and licentious though we were in a wilderness and voluptuous though in a famine so that such a mans heart is as a land of such Gyants where the Children are born as great as the Men of other nations grow to be for those sins which in other men have their birth and their growth after their birth they begin at a Concupiscence and proceed to a Consent and grow up to Actions and swell up to Habits In this man sin begins at a stature and proportion above all this he begins at a delight in the sin and comes instantly to a defence of it and to an obduration and impenitibleness in it This is the evil of the heart by the mis-use of Gods grace to devest and lose all tenderness and remorse in sin Now for the Incurableness of this heart it consists first in this that there is a fulness It is fully set to do evil such a full heart hath no room for a

Cure as a full stomack hath no room for Physick The Mathematician could have removed the whole world with his Engine if there had been any place to have set his Engine in Any man might be cur'd of any sin if his heart were not full of it and fully set upon it which setting is indeed in a great part an unsetledness when the heart is in a perpetual motion and in a miserable indifferencie to all sins it may be fully set upon sin though it be not vehemently affected to any one sin The reason which is assign'd why the heart of man if it receive a wound is incurable is the palpitation and the continual motion of the heart for if the heart could lie still so that fit things might be applyed to it and work upon it all wounds in all parts of the heart were not necessarily mortal So if our hearts were not distracted in so many forms and so divers ways of sin it might the better be cur'd of any one St. Augustine had this apprehension when he said Audeo dicere utile esse cadere in aliquod manifestum peccatum ut sibi displiceant It is well for him that is indifferent to all sins if he fall into some such misery by some one sin as brings him to a sense of that and of the rest St. Augustine when he says this says he speaks boldly in saying so Audeo dicere but we may be so much more bold as to say further That that man had been damn'd if he had not sinn'd that sin For the heart of the indifferent sinner bayts at all that ever rises at all forms and images of sin when he sees a thief he runs with him Psal 50. and with the adulterer he hath his portion and as soon as it contracts any spiritual disease any sin it is presently not onely in morbo acuto but in morbo complicato in a sharp disease and in a manifold disease a disease multiplied in it self Therefore it is as St. Gregory notes that the Prophet proposes it as the hardest thing of all for a sinner to return to his own heart and to finde out that after it is strayed and scattered upon so several sins Redite prevaricatores ad cor says the Prophet Esa 46. and says that Father Longe eis mittit cum ad cor redire compellit God knows whither he sends them when he sends them to their own heart for since it is true which the same Father said Vix sancti inveniunt cor suum The holyest man cannot at all times finde his own heart his heart may be bent upon Religion and yet he cannot tell in which Religion and upon Preaching and yet he cannot tell which Preacher and upon Prayer and yet he shall finde strayings and deviations in his Prayer much more hardly is the various and vagabond heart of such an indifferent sinner to be found by any search If he enquire for his heart at that Chamber where he remembers it was yesterday in lascivious and lustful purposes he shall hear that it went from thence to some riotous Feasting from thence to some Blasphemous Gaming after to some Malicious Consultation of entangling one and supplanting another and he shall never trace it so close as to drive it home that is to the consideration of it self and that God that made it nay scarce to make it consist in any one particular sin That which St. Bernard fear'd in Eugenius when he came to be Pope and so to a distraction of many worldly businesses may much more be fear'd in a distraction of many sins Cave ne te trahant quo non vis Take heed lest these sins carry thee farther then thou intendest thou intendest but Pleasure or Profit but the sin will carry thee farther Quaeris quo says that Father Dost thou ask whither Ad cor durum To a senslesness a remorslesness a hardness of heart nec pergas quaerere says he quid illud sit Never ask what that hardness of heart is for if thou know it not thou hast it This then is the fulness and so the Incurableness of the heart by that reason of perpetual motion because it is in perpetual progress from sin to sin he never considers his state But there is another fulness intended here That he is come to a full point to a consideration of his sin and to a station and setledness in it out of a foundation of Reason as though it were not onely an excusable but a wise proceeding Because Gods judgements are not executed But when man becomes to be thus fully set God shall set him faster Job 14.17 Iniquitas tua in sacculo signata His transgression shall be sealed up in a bag and God shall sow up his iniquity And Quid cor hominis nisi sacculus Dei Gregor What is this bag of God but the heart of that sinner There as a bag of a wretched Misers money which shall never be opened never told till his death lies this bag of sin this frozen heart of an impenitent sinner and his sins shall never be opened never told to his own Conscience till it be done to his final condemnation God shall suffer him to settle where he hath chosen to settle himself in an unsensibleness an Inintelligibleness to use Tertullian's word of his own condition And Aug. Quid miserior misero non miserante seipsum Who can be more miserable then that man who does not commiserate his own misery How far gone is he into a pitiful estate that neither desires to be pitied by others nor pities himself nor discerns that his state needs pity Invaluerat ira tua super me nesciebam says blessed St. Augustine Thy hand lay heavie upon me and I found it not to be thy hand because the Maledictions of God are honeyed and candied over with a little crust or sweetness of worldly ease or reprieve we do not apprehend them in their true taste and right nature Obsurdueram stridore catenarum mearum says the same Father The jingling and ratling of our Chains and Fetters makes us deaf The weight of the judgement takes away the sense of the judgement This is the full setting of the heart to do evil when a man fills himself with the liberty of passing into any sin in an indifferencie and then findes no reason why he should leave that way either by the love or by the fear of God If he prosper by his sin then he findes no reason if he do not prosper by it yet he findes a wrong reason If unseasonable flouds drown his Harvest and frustrate all his labours and his hopes he never findes that his oppressing and grinding of the Poor was any cause of those waters but he looks onely how the Winde sate and how the ground lay and he concludes that if Noah and Job Ezek. 14.14 and Daniel had been there their labour must have perished and been drown'd as well as his If

a vehement Fever take hold of him he remembers where he sweat and when he took cold where he walked too fast where his Casement stood open and where he was too bold upon Fruit or meat of hard digestion but he never remembers the sinful and naked Wantonnesses the profuse and wastful Dilapidations of his own body that have made him thus obnoxious and open to all dangerous Distempers Thunder from heaven burns his Barns and he says What luck was this if it had fallen but ten foot short or over my barns had been safe whereas his former blasphemings of the Name of God drew down that Thunder upon that house as it was his and that Lightning could no more fall short or over then the Angel which was sent to Sodom could have burnt another Citie and have spar'd that or then the Plagues of Moses and of Aaron could have fallen upon Goshen and have spar'd Egypt His Gomers abound with Manna he overflows with all for necessities and with all delicacies in this life and yet he findes worms in his Manna a putrefaction and a mouldring away of this abundant state but he sees not that that is because his Manna was gathered upon the Sabbath that there were profanations of the Name and Ordinances of God mingled in his means of growing rich To end all This is the true Use that we are to make of the long-suffering and patience of God That when his patience ends ours may begin That if he forbear others rather then us 21.7 we do not expostulate as in Job Wherefore do the wicked live and become old and grow mighty in power but rather if he chastise us rather then others Psal 44.18 say with David Our heart is not turned back neither have our steps declined from thy ways though thou hast sore broken us in the place of dragons and covered us with the shadow of death And that if sentence be executed upon us we may make use of his judgement and if not we may continue and enlarge his mercies towards us AMEN A SERMON Preached at WHITE-HALL Serm. 7. Novemb. 2. 1617. SERMON VII PSAL. 55.19 Because they have no changes therefore they fear not God IN a Prison where men wither'd in a close and perpetual imprisonment In a Galley where men were chain'd to a laborious and perpetual slavery In places where any change that could come would put them in a better state then they were before this might seem a fitter Text then in a Court where every man having set his foot or plac'd his hopes upon the present happy state and blessed Government every man is rather to be presum'd to love God because there are no changes then to take occasion of murmuring at the constancie of Gods goodness towards us But because the first murmuring at their present condition the first Innovation that ever was was in Heaven The Angels kept not their first Estate Though as Princes are Gods so their well-govern'd Courts are Copies and representations of Heaven yet the Copy cannot be better then the Original And therefore as Heaven it self had so all Courts will ever have some persons that are under the Increpation of this Text That Because they have no changes therefore they fear not God At least if I shall meet with no conscience that finds in himself a guiltiness of this sin if I shall give him no occasion of repentance yet I shall give him occasion of praysing and magnifying that gracious God which hath preserv'd him from such sins as other men have fallen into though he have not For I shall let him see first The dangerous slipperiness the concurrence Divisio the co-incidence of sins that a habit and custom of sin slips easily into that dangerous degree of Obduration that men come to sin upon Reason they find a Quia a Cause a Reason why they should sin and then in a second place he shall see what perverse and frivolous reasons they assign for their sins when they are come to that even that which should avert them they make the cause of them Because they have no changes And then lastly by this perverse mistaking they come to that infatuation that dementation as that they loose the principles of all knowledge and all wisedom The fear of God is the beginning of wisedom and Because they have no changes they fear not God Part I. First then We enter into our first Part The slipperiness of habitual sin with that note of S. Gregorie Peccatum cum voce est culpa cum actione peccatum cum clamore est culpa cum libertate Sinful thougths produc'd into actions are speaking sins sinful actions continued into habits are crying sins There is a sin before these a speechless sin a whispering sin which no body hears but our own conscience which is when a sinful thought or purpose is born in our hearts first we rock it by tossing and tumbling it in our fancies and imaginations and by entertaining it with delight and consent with remembring with how much pleasure we did the like sin before and how much we should have if we could bring this to pass And as we rock it so we swathe it we cover it with some pretences some excuses some hopes of coveraling it and this is that which we call Morosam delectationem a delight to stand in the air and prospect of a sin and a loathness to let it go out of our sight Of this sin S. Gregory sayes nothing in this place but onely of actual sins which he calls speaking and of habitual which he calls crying sins And this is as far as the Schools or the Casuists do ordinarily trace sin To find out peccata Infantia speechless sins in the heart peccata vocatia speaking sins in our actions And peccata clamantia crying and importunate sins which will not suffer God to take his rest no nor to fulfil his own Oath and protestation He hath said As I live I would not the death of a sinner and they extort a death from him But besides these Here is a farther degree beyond speaking sins and crying sins beyond actual sins and habitual sins here are peccata cum ratione and cum disputatione we will reason we will debate we will dispute it out with God and we will conclude against all his Arguments that there is a Quia a Reason why we should proceed and go forward in our sin Et pudet non esse impudentes as S. Augustine heightens this sinful disposition Men grow asham'd of all holy shamefac'dness and tenderness toward sin they grow asham'd to be put off or frighted from their sinful pleasure with the ordinary terror of Gods imaginary judgements asham'd to be no wiser then S. Paul would have them to be mov'd or taken hold of by the foolishness of preaching or to be no stronger of themselves then so 1 Cor. 1.21 that we should trust to anothers taking of our infirmities Matth.

8. and bearing of our sicknesses Or to be no richer or no more provident then so To sell all and give it away Luc. 12. and make a treasure in Heaven and all this for fear of Theeves and Rust and Canker and Moths here That which is not allowable in Courts of Justice in criminal Causes To hear Evidence against the King we will admit against God we will hear Evidence against God we will hear what mans reason can say in favor of the Delinquent why he should be condemned why God should punish the soul eternally for the momentany pleasures of the body Nay we suborn witnesses against God and we make Philosophy and Reason speak against Religion and against God though indeed Omne verum omni vero consentiens whatsoever is true in Philosophy is true in Divinity too howsoever we distort it and wrest it to the contrary We hear Witnesses and we suborn Witnesses against God and we do more we proceed by Recriminations and a cross Bill with a Quia Deus because God does as he does we may do as we do Because God does not punish Sinners we need not forbear sins whilst we sin strongly by oppressing others that are weaker or craftily by circumventing others that are simple This is but Leoninum and Vulpinum that tincture of the Lyon and of the Fox that brutal nature that is in us But when we come to sin upon reason and upon discourse upon Meditation and upon plot This is Humanum to become the Man of Sin to surrender that which is the Form and Essence of man Reason and understanding to the service of sin When we come to sin wisely and learnedly to sin logically by a Quia and an Ergo that Because God does thus we may do as we do we shall come to sin through all the Arts and all our knowledge To sin Grammatically to tie sins together in construction in a Syntaxis in a chaine and dependance and coherence upon one another And to sin Historically to sin over sins of other men again to sin by precedent and to practice that which we had read And we come to sin Rhetorically perswasively powerfully and as we have found examples for our sins in History so we become examples to others by our sins to lead and encourage them in theirs when we come to employ upon sin that which is the essence of man Reason and discourse we will also employ upon it those which are the properties of man onely which are To speak and to laugh we will come to speak and talk and to boast of our sins and at last to laugh and jest at our sins and as we have made sin a Recreation so we will make a jest of our condemnation And this is the dangerous slipperiness of sin to slide by Thoughts and Actions and Habits to contemptuous obduration Part II. Now amongst the manifold perversnesses and incongruities of this artificial sinning of sinning upon Reason upon a quia and an ergo of arguing a cause for our sin this is one That we never assigne the right cause we impute our sin to our Youth to our Constitution to our Complexion and so we make our sin our Nature we impute it to our Station to our Calling to our Course of life and so we make our sin our Occupation we impute it to Necessity to Perplexity that we must necessarily do that or a worse sin and so we make our sin our Direction We see the whole world is Ecclesia malignantium Psal 26.5 a Synagogue a Church of wicked men and we think it a Schismatical thing to separate our selves from that Church and we are loth to be excommunicated in that Church and so we apply our selves to that we do as they do with the wicked we are wicked and so we make our sin our Civility And though it be some degree of injustice to impute all our particular sins to the devil himself after a habit of sin hath made us spontaneos daemones Chrysost devils to our selves yet we do come too near an imputing our sins to God himself when we place such an impossibility in his Commandments as makes us lazie that because we cannot do all therefore we will do nothing or such a manifestation and infallibility in his Decree as makes us either secure or desperate and say The Decree hath sav'd me therefore I can take no harm or The Decree hath damn'd me therefore I can do no good No man can assigne a reason in the Sun why his body casts a shadow why all the place round about him is illumin'd by the Sun the reason is in the Sun but of his shadow there is no other reason but the grosness of his own body why there is any beam of light any spark of life in my soul he that is the Lord of light and life and would not have me die in darkness is the onely cause but of the shadow of death wherein I sit there is no cause but mine own corruption And this is the cause why I do sin but why I should sin there is none at all Yet in this Text the Sinner assignes a cause and it is Quia non mutationes Because they have no Changes God hath appointed that earth which he hath given to the sons of men to rest and stand still and that heaven which he reserves for those sons of men who are also the sons of God he hath appointed to stand still too All that is between heaven and earth is in perpetual motion and vicissitude but all that is appointed for man mans possession here mans reversion hereafter earth and heaven is appointed for rest and stands still and therefore God proceeds in his own way and declares his love most where there are fewest Changes This rest of heaven he hath expressed often by the name of a Kingdom as in that Petition Thy kingdom come And that rest which is to be derived upon us here in earth he expresses in the same phrase too when having presented to the children of Israel an Inventary and Catalogue of all his former blessings he concludes all includes all in this one Et prosperata es in regnum I have advanced thee to be a kingdom which form God hath not onely still preserv'd to us but hath also united Kingdoms together and to give us a stronger body and safer from all Changes whereas he hath made up other Kingdoms of Towns and Cities he hath made us a Kingdom of Kingdoms and given us as many Kingdoms to our Kingdom as he hath done Cities to some other Gods gracious purpose then to man being Rest and a contented Reposedness in the works of their several Callings and his purpose being declared upon us in the establishing and preserving of such a Kingdom as hath the best Body best united in it self and knit together and the best Legs to stand upon Peace and Plenty and the best Soul to inanimate and direct it Truth

of our Professors themselves who as she thinks come as near to her as they dare Because she hath gained of late upon many of the weaker sex women laden with sin and of weaker fortunes men laden with debts and of weaker consciences souls laden with scruples therefore she imagines that she hath seen the worst and is at an end of her change though this be but indeed a running an ebbing back of the main River but onely a giddy and circular Eddy in some shallow places of the stream which stream God be blessed runs on still currantly and constantly and purely and intemerately as before yet because her corrections are not multiplied because her absolute Ruine is not accelerated she hath some false conceptions of a general returning towards her and she fears up her self against all sense of Truth and all tenderness of Peace and because she hath rid out one storm in Luther and his successors therefore she fears not the Lord for any other Quia non habent Because she hath no changes now Habuerunt then They have had changes and Habebunt They shall have more and greater Impii non stabunt says David The wicked shall not stand In how low ground soever they stand and in how great torment soever they stand yet they shall not stand there but sink to worse and at last non stabunt in judicio They shall not stand in judgement but fall there from whence there is no rising Non stabunt They shall not stand though they think they shall they shall counterfeit the Seals of the Holy Ghost and delude themselves with imaginary certitudes of Salvation and illusory apprehensions of Decrees of Election nay non stabunt They shall not be able to think that they shall stand that which the Apostle saith 1 Cor. 10.12 Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall belongs onely to the godly onely they can think deliberately and upon just examination of the marks and evidences of the Elect that they shall stand God shall suffer the wicked to sink down not to a godly sense of their infirmity and holy remorse of the effects thereof but yet lower then that to a diffident jealousie to a desperate acknowledgement that they cannot stand in the sight of God they shall have no true rest at last they shall not stand nay they shall not have that half that false comfort by the way they shall not be able to flatter themselves by the way with that imagination that they shall stand Now both the ungodly and godly too must have Changes in matter of Fortune changes are common to them both and then in all of all conditions Mortalitas Mutabilitas says St. Augustine even this That we must die is a continual change The very same word 14.14 which is here kalaph is in Job also All the days of my appointed time till my changing come And because this word which we translate changing is there spoken in the person of a righteous man Symma some Translators have rendred that place Donec veniat sancta nativitas mea Till I be born again the change the death of such men is a better birth And so the Chaldee Paraphrasts the first Exposition of the Bible have express'd it Quousque rursus fiam Till I be made up again by death He does not stay to call the Resurrection a making up but this death this dissolution this change is a new creation this Divorce is a new Marriage this very Parting of the soul is an Infusion of a soul and a Transmigration thereof out of my bosome into the bosom of Abraham Bernard But yet though it is all this yet it is a change Maxima mutatio est Mutabilitatis in Immutabilitatem To be changed so as that we can never be changed more is the greatest change of all All must be changed so far as to die yea those who shall in some sort escape that death those whom the last day shall surprise upon earth though they shall not die yet they shall be changed Statutum est omnibus semel mori All men must die once Heb. 9.27 we live all under that Law But statutum nemini hic mori since the promise of a Messiah there is no Law no Decree by which any man must necessarily die twice a Temporal death and a Spiritual death too It is not the Man but the Sinner that dies the second death God sees sin in that man or else that man had never seen the second death So we shall all have one change besides those which we have all had good and bad must die but the men in this text shall have two But whatsoever changes are upon others in the world whatsoever upon themselvs whatsoever they have had whatsoever they are sure to have yet Quia non habent non timent Deum Because they have none now they fear not God And so we are come to our third and last Part. They fear not God This is such a state Part III. Non timent as if a man who had been a Schoolmaster all his life and taught others to read or had been a Critick all his life and ingeniosus in alienis over-witty in other mens Writings had read an Author better then that Author meant and should come to have use of his Reading to save his life at the Bar when he had his Book for some petty Felony and then should be stricken with the spirit of stupidity and not be able to read then Such is the state of the wisest of the learnedest of the mightiest in this world If they fear not God they have forgot their first letters they have forgot the basis and foundation of all Power the reason and the purpose of all Learning the life and the soul of all Counsel and Wisdom for The fear of God is the beginning of all They are all fallen into the danger of the Law they have all sinn'd they are offer'd their Book the merciful promises of God to repentant sinners in his Word and they cannot read they cannot apply them to their comfort There is Scripture but not translated not transferr'd to them there is Gospel but not preached to them there are Epistles but not superscribed to them It is an hereditary Sentence Psal 111.10 Prov. 1.7 Ecclus 1.16 and hath pass'd from David in his Psalms to Solomon in his Proverbs and then to him that glean'd after them both the Author of Ecclesiasticus The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom All three profess all that and more then that It is Blessedness it self says the father David Blessedness it self says the son Solomon and Plenitudo Sapientiae and Omnis Sapientia says the other The fulness of wisdom and the onely wisdom Job had said it before them all Ecce timor Domini 28. ipsa est sapientia The fear of the Lord is wisdom it self And the Prophet Esai said it after of Ezechias 33.6 There

those faculties by the help of the Law And he calls it Suam their righteousness because they thought none had it but they And upon this Pelagian righteousness it thought Nature sufficient without Grace or upon this righteousness of the Cathari the Puritans in the Primitive Church that thought the Grace which they had received sufficient and that upon that stock they were safe and become impeccable and therefore left out of the Lords Prayer that Petition Dimitte nobis Forgive us our trespasses upon this Pelagian righteousness and this Puritan righteousness Christ does not work He left out the righteous not that there were any such but such as thought themselves so and he took in sinners not all effectually that were simply so but such as the sense of their sins and the miserable state that that occasioned brought to an acknowledgement that they were so Non Justos sed peccatores Peccatores Here then enters our Affirmative our Inclusive Who are called peccatores for here no man asks the Question of the former Branch there we asked Whether there were any righteous and we found none here we ask not whether there were any sinners for we can finde no others no not one He came to call sinners and only sinners that is only in that capacity in that contemplation as they were sinners for of that vain and frivolous opinion that got in and got hold in the later School That Christ had come in the flesh though Adam had stood in his innocence That though Man had nor needed Christ as a Redeemer yet he would have come to have given to man the greatest Dignity that Nature might possibly receive which was to be united to the Divine Nature of this Opinion one of those Jesuites whom we named before Maldonat who oftentimes making his use of whole sentences of Calvins says in the end This is a good Exposition but that he is an Heretick that makes it He says also of this Opinion That Christ had come though Adam had stood this is an ill Opinion but that they are Catholicks that have said it He came for sinners for sinners onely else he had not come and then he came for all kind of sinners Mat. 21.31 for upon those words of our Saviours to the High Priests and Pharisees Publicans and Harlots go into the Kingdom of Heaven before you good Expositors note that in those two Notations Publicans and Harlots many sorts of sinners are implyed in the name of Publicans all such as by their very profession and calling are led into tentations and occasions of sin to which some Callings are naturally more exposed then other such as can hardly be exercised without sin and then in the Name of Harlots and prostitute Women such as cannot at all be exercised without sin whose very profession is sin and yet for these for the worst of these for all these there is a voice gone out Christ is come to call sinners onely sinners all sinners Comes he then thus for sinners What an advantage had S. Paul then to be of this Quorum and the first of them Quorum Ego Maximus That when Christ came to save sinners he should be the greatest sinner the first in that Election If we should live to see that acted Mat. 24.41 which Christ speaks of at the last day Two in the field the one taken the other left should we not wonder to see him that were left lay hold upon him that were taken and offer to go to Heaven before him therefore because he had killed more men in the field or robbed more men upon the High-way or supplanted more in the Court or oppressed more in the City to make the multiplicity of his sins his title to Heaven Or two women grinding at the Mill one taken the other left to see her that was left offer to precede the other into Heaven therefore because she had prostituted her self to more men then the other had done Is this S. Pauls Quorum his Dignity his Prudency I must be saved because I am the greatest sinner God forbid God forbid we should presume upon salvation because we are sinners or sin therefore that we may be surer of salvation S. Pauls title to Heaven was not that he was primus peccator but primus Confessor that he first accused himself came to a sense of his miserable estate for that implies that which is our last word and the effect of Christs calling That whomsoever he calls or how or whensoever it is ad Resipiscentiam Non ad satisfactionem to repentance It is not ad satisfactionem Christ does not come to call us to make satisfaction to the justice of God he call'd us to a heavy to an impossible account if he call'd us to that If the death of Christ Jesus himself be but a satisfaction for the punishment for my sins for nothing less then that could have made that satisfaction what can a temporary Purgatory of days or hours do towards a satisfaction And if the torments of Purgatory it self sustain'd by my self be nothing towards a satisfaction what can an Evenings fast or an Ave Marie from my Executor or my Assignee after I am dead do towards such a satisfaction Canst thou satisfie the justice of God for all that blood which thou hast drawn from his Son in thy blasphemous Oaths and Execrations or for all that blood of his which thou hast spilt upon the ground upon the Dunghil in thy unworthy receiving the Sacrament Canst thou satisfie his justice for having made his Blessings the occasions and the instruments of thy sins or for the Dilapidations of his Temple in having destroyed thine own body by thine incontinency and making that the same flesh with a Harlot If he will contend with thee Job 9.9 thou canst not answer him one of a thousand Nay a thousand men could not answer one sin of one man It is not then Ad satisfactionem but it is not Ad gloriam neither Non ad Gloriam Christ does not call us to an immediate possession of glory without doing any thing between Our Glorification was in his intention as soon as our Election in God who sees all things at once both entred at once but in the Execution of his Decrees here God carries us by steps he calls us to Repentance The Farmers of this imaginary satisfaction they that fell it at their own price in their Indulgencies have done well to leave out this Repentance both in this text in S. Matthew and where the same is related by S. Mark In both places they tell us that Christ came to call sinners but they do not tell us to what as though it might be enough to call them to their market to buy their Indulgencies The Holy Ghost tells us it is to repentance Are ye to learn now what that is He that cannot define Repentance he that cannot spell it may have it and he that hath

as Nathan said to David God will panish thee in taking those children from thee ●hich were the colours of thy sin Eccles 40.13 The children of the ungodly shall not obtain many branches not extend to many generations If they do if his children be in great number the sword shall destroy them His remnant shall be buried in death and his widows shall not weep Howsoever as the words of the text stand Iob. 27.14 the Holy Ghost hath left us at our liberty to observe one degree of misery more in this corrupt man That he is said to have begot his Son after those Riches are perished He had a discomfort in evil travail and in evil affliction before he hath another now that when all is gone then he hath children the foresight of whose misery must needs be a continual affliction unto him Augustin For St. Augustin reports it not as a leading Case likely to be followed but as a singular Case likely to stand alone that when a rich man who had no childe nor hope of any had given his Estate to Auretius Bishop of Carthage and after beyond all expectation came to have children that good Bishop unconstrained by any law or intent in the donor gave him back his Estate again God when he will punish ill getting will take to himself that which was rob'd from him and then if he give Children he will not be bound to restitution But if this rich man have his riches and his Son together the Son may have come from God and the riches from the devil and God will not joyn them together Howsoever he may in his mercy provide for the son otherwise yet he will not make him heir of his fathers estate The substance of the ungodly shall be dryed up like a river Eccles 40. and they shall make a sound like a thunder in rain It shall perish and it shall be in Parabolam it shall be the wonder and the discourse of the time If they be not wasted in his own time yet he shall be an ill but a true prophet upon himself he shall have impressions and sensible apprehensions of a future wast as soon as he is gone he shall hear or he shall whisper to himself that voice O fool This night they will fetch away thy soul he must go under the imputation of a fool where the wisdome of this generation which was all the wisdome he had Luk. 12.20 will do him no good he must go like a fool His soul must be fetch'd away he hath not his In manus tuas his willing surrender of his soul ready It must be fetch'd in the night of ignorance when he knows not his own spiritual state It must be fetch'd in the night of darkness in the night of solitude no sence of the assistance of the communion of Saints in the Triumphant nor in the Militant Church in the night of disconsolatenes no comfort in that sea Absolution which by by the power committed to them Gods Ministers came to the penitent In the name of the Father the Son the holy Ghost and it must be fetched this night the night is already upon him before he thought of it All this that the soul of this fool shall be fetched away this night is presented for certain and inevitable all this admits no question but the Qua perasti cujus erunt there 's the doubt Then whose shall those things be which thou hast provided If he say they shall be his Sons God saith here In his hand shall be nothing for though God may spare him that his riches be not perished before his death though God have not discovered his iniquity by that manner of punishment yet Quod in radice celatur in ramis declara●ur God will show that in the bough which was hid in the root the iniquity of the father in the penury of the son And therefore To conclude all since riches are naturally conditioned so as that they are to the owners harm either testimonies of his former hard dealing in the world or tentation to future sins or provocations to other mens malice since that though thou may have repented the ill getting of those riches yet thou maiest have omitted restitution and so there hovers an invisible owner over thy riches which may cary them away at last since though thou maiest have repented and restored and possess thy riches that are left with a good Conscience yet as we said before from Nathans mouth the Child may die God that hath many waies of expressing his mercies may take this one way of expressing his judgment that yet thy son shall have nothing of all that in his hand put something else into his hand put a book put a sword put a ship put a plough put a trade put a course of life a calling into his hand And put something into his head the wisdome and discretion and understanding of a serpent necessary for those courses and callings But principally put something into his heart a religious fear and reverence of his Maker a religious apprehension and application of his Saviour a religious sense and acceptation of the comforts of the Holy Spirit that so if he feel that for his fathers hard dealing God hath removed the possession from him he doth not doubt therefore of Gods mercy to his father nor dishonor his fathers memory but behave himself so in his course as that the like judgment may not fall upon his son but that his riches increasing by his good travail they may still remain in the hands of his son whom he hath begotten A Serm. 11. SERMON PREACHED AT GREENVVICH Aprill 30. 1615. SERM. XI Esay 52.3 Ye have sold your selves for nought and ye shall be redeemed without money IT is evident in it self and agreed by all that this is a prophecy of a deliverance but from what calamity it is a deliverance or when this prophecy was accomplished is not so evident nor so constantly agreed upon All the expositions may well be reduced to three first that it is a deliverance from the captivity of Babylon and then the benefit appertains onely to the Jews and their deliverer and Redeemer is Cyrus Secondly that it is a deliverance from persecutions in the primitive Church and so it appertains onely to Christians and their Redeemer from those persecutions is Constantine And thirdly that it is a deliverance from the sting and bondage of death by sin and so it appertains to the whole world and the Redeemer of the whole world is Christ Jesus For the first since both the Chaldee Paraphrase and the Jewish Rabbins themselves do interpret this to be a prophecy of the Messias because they labour ever more as strongly as they can to wring our weapons out of our hands and to take from us many of those arguments which we take from the Prophets for the proof of the Messias it concerns us therefore to hold fast as much

his alleigance induces an addition of punishment upon the devil himself Consider a little further our wretchedness in this prodigality we think those Laws barbarous and inhumane which permit the sute of men in debt for the satisfaction of Creditors but we sell our selves and grow the farther in debt by being sold we are sold and to even rate our debts and to aggravate our condemnation We find in the history of the Muscovits that it is an ordinary detainder amongst them to sell themselves and their posterity into everlasting bondage for hot drink In one winter a wretched man will drink himself and his posterity into perpetual slavery But we sell our selves not for drink but for thirst we are sory when our appetite too soon decaies and we would fain sin more than we do At what a high rate did the blessed Martyrs sell their bodies They built up Gods Church with their blood They sowed his field and prepared his harvest with their blood they got heaven for their bodies and we give bodies souls for hell In a right inventary every man that ascends to a true value of himself considers it thus First His Soul then His life after his fame and good name And lastly his goods and estate for thus their own nature hath ranked them and thus they are as in nature so ordinarily in legal consideration preferred before one another But for our souls because we know not how they came into us we care not how they go out because if I aske a Philosopher whither my soul came in by propagation from my parents or by an immediate infusion from God perchance he cannot tell so I think a divine can no more tell me whither when my soul goes out of me it be likely to turn on the right or on the left hand if I continue in this course of sin And then for the second thing in this inventary Life the Devil himself said true skin for skin and all that a man hath will he give for his life Indeed we do not easily give away our lives expresly and at once but we do very easily suffer our selves to be cousened of our lives we pour in death in drink and we call that health we know our life to be but a span and yet we can wash away one inche in ryot we can burn away one inch in lust we can bleed away one inch in quarrels we have not an inch for every sin and if we do not pour out our lives yet we drop them away For the third peece of our self our fame and reputation who had not rather be thought an usurer then a beggar who had not rather be the object of envy by being great than of scorn and contempt by being poor upon any conditions And for the last of all which is our goods Seneca though our coveteousness appears most in the love of them in that lowest thing of all Adeo omnia homini cariora seipso so much does every man think every inferiour thing better than himself than his fame than his body than his soul which is a most perverse undervaluing of himself and a damnable humility yet even with these goods also as highly as he values them a man will past if to fuell and foment and maintain that sin that he delights in that which is the most precious our souls we undervalue most and that which we do esteem most though naturally it should be lowest our estate we are content to wast and dissipate for our sins And whereas the Heathens needed laws to restrain them from an expensive and wastful worship of their Gods every man was so apt to exceed in sacrifices and such other religious duties til that law Deus frugi Colunto Let men be thrifty moderate in religious expenses was enacted which law was a kind of mortmain and inhibition That every man might not bestow what he would upon the service of those Gods we have turned our prodigality the other way upon the devil whom we have made Haeredem in esse and our sole executor and sacrificed soul and life and fame and fortune all the gifts of God and God himself by making his religion and his Sacraments and the profession of his name in an hypocriticall use of them to be the devils instruments to draw us the easilyer and hold us the faster and what prodigality can be conceived to exceed this in which we do not onely mispend our selves Nihil but mispend our God The other point in this exprobration is that as we have prodigally sold our selves so we have inconsiderately sold our selves for nothing we have in our bargain diseases and we have poverty and we have unsensibleness of our miseries but diseases are but privations of health and poverty but a privation of wealth and unsensibleness but a privation of tenderness of Conscience all are privations and privations are nothing if a man had got nothing by a bargain but repentance he would think and justly he had got little but if thou hadst repentance in this bargain thy bargain were the better if thou couldst come to think thy bargain bad it were a good bargain but the height of the misery is in this that one of those nothings for which we have sold our selves is a stupidity an unsensibleness of our own wretchedness The Laws do annull and make void fraudulent conveyances and then the laws presume fraud in the conveyance if at least half the value of the thing be not given now if the whole world be not worth one soul who can say that he hath half his value it were not meerly nothing if considering that inventary which we spoke of before we had the worse for the better that were but an ill exchange but yet it were not nothing If we had bodies for our souls it were not meerly nothing but we finde that sin that sells our souls decays and withers our bodies our bodies grow incapable of that sin unable to commit that sin which we sold our souls for If we had fame and reputation for out bodies it were not nothing but we see that Heretiques that give their bodies to the fire are by the very law infamous and they are infamous in every mans apprehension If we had worldly goods for loss of fame and of our good name yet still it were not nothing but we see that witches who are infamous persons for the most part live in extreme beggery too So that the exprobration is just we have sold our selves for nothing and however the ordinary murmuring may be true in other things that all things are grown dearer our souls are still cheap enough which at first were all sold in gross for perchance an Apple and are now retailed every day for nothing Joseph was sold underfoot by his brethren but it is hard to say for how much some Copies have that he was sold for 20 pieces and some for 25 and some for 30 and S. Ambrose and S.

You would not go into a Medicinal Bath without some preparatives presume not upon that Bath the blood of Christ Jesus in the Sacrament then without preparatives neither Neither say to your selves we shall have preparatives enough warnings enough many more Sermons before it come to that and so it is too soon yet you are not sure you shall have more not sure you shall have all this not sure you shall be affected with any If you be when you are remember that as in that good Custome in these Cities you hear cheerful street musick in the winter mornings but yet there was a sad and doleful bel-man that wak'd you and call'd upon you two or three hours before that musick came so for all that blessed musick which the servants of God shall present to you in this place it may be of use that a poor bell-man wak'd you before and though but by his noyse prepared you for their musick And for this early office I take Christs earliest witness his Proto-Martyr his first witness St. Stephen and in him that which especially made him his witness and our example his his death and our preparation to death what he suffered what he did what he said so far as is knit up in those words When he had said this he fell a sleep Divisio From which example I humbly offer to you these two general considerations first that every man is bound to do something before he dye and then to that man who hath done those things which the duties of his calling bind him to death is but a sleep In the first we shall stop upon each of those steps first there is a sis aliquid every man is bound to be something to take some calling upon him Secondly there is a hoc age every man is bound to do seriously and scedulously and sincerely the duties of that calling And Thirdly there is a sis aliquis the better to performe those duties every man shall do well to propose to himself some person some pattern some example whom he will follow and imitate in that calling In which third branch of this first part we shall have just occasion to consider some particulars in him who is here propos'd for our Example St. Stephen and in these three sis aliquid be something profess something and then hoc age do truly the duties of that profession and lastly sis aliquis propose some good man in that profession to to follow and in the things intended in this text propose St. Stephen we shall determine our first part And in the other we shall see that to them that do not this that do not settle their consciences so death is a bloody conflict and no victory at last a tempestuous sea and do harbor at last a slippery heighth and no footing a desperate fall and no bottom But then to them that have done it their pill is gilded and the body of the pill hony too mors lucrum death is a gain a treasure and this treasure brought some in a calm too they do not only go to heaven by death but heaven comes to them in death their very manner of dying is an inchoative act of their glorified state therefore it is not call'd a dying but asseeping which one metaphor intimates two blessings that because it is a sleep it gives a present rest and because it is a sleep it promises a future waking in the resurrection First part Sis aliquid First Then for our first branch of our first part we begin with our beginning our birth man is born to trouble so we read it to trouble The original is a little milder then so yet there it is Man is born unto labor Job 5 7. God never meant less then labor to any man Put us upon that which we esteem the honorablest of labors the duties of martial discipline yet where it is said that man is appointed to a warfare upon earth it is seconded with that His dayes are like the dayes of an hireling 7.1 How honorable soever his station be he must do his daies labor in the day the duties of the place in the place How far is he from doing so that never so much as considers why he was sent into this world who is so sar from having done his errand here that he knows not considers not what his errand was nay knows not considers not whether he had any errand hither or no. But as though that God who for infinite millions of millions of generations before any creation any world contented himself with himself satisfied delighted himself with himself in heaven without any creatures yet at last did bestow six daies labor upon the Creation accommodation of man as though that God who when man was sour'd in the whole lump poysoned in the fountain perished at the chore withered in the root in the fall of Adam would them in that dejection that exainantion that evacuation of the dignity of man and not in his sormer better estate engage his own Son his only his beloved Son to become man by a temporary life and then to become no man by a violent and yet a voluntary death as though that God who he was pleased to come to a creation might yet have left thee where thou wast before amongst privations a nothing or if he would have made thee something a creature yet he might have shut thee up in the closs prison of a bare being and no more without life or sense as he hath done earth and stones or if he would have given thee life and sense he might have left thee a toad without the comeliness of shape without that reasonable and immortal Soul which makes thee a man or if he had made thee a man yet he might have lost thee upon the common amongst the Heathen and not have taken thee into his inclosures by giving the a particular form of religion or if he would have given thee a religion He might have left thee a Jew or if he would have given thee Christianity He might have left thee a Papist as though this God who had done so much more for thee by breeding thee in a true Church had done all this for nothing thou pussest through this world as a flash as a lightning or which no man knows the beginning or the ending as an ignis fatuus in the air which does not only not give light for any use but does not so much as portend or signifie any thing and thou passest out of the world as a hand passes out of a bason or a body out of a bath where the water may be the fouler for thy having washed in it else the water retains no impression of thy hand or body so the world may be the worse for thy having liv'd in it else the world retains no marks of thy having been there When God plac'd Adam in the world God enjoyned Adam to fill the world to subdue

thou pass away uncharitably towards him thou raisest an everlasting Trophee for thine enemy and prepar'st him a greater triumph then he proposed to himself he meant to triumph over thy body and thy fortune and thou hast provided him a triumph over thy Soul too by thy uncharitableness and he may survive to repent and to be pardoned at Gods hands and thou who art departed in uncharitableness canst not he shall be saved that ruind thee unjustly and thou who wast unjustly ruind by him shalt perish irrecoverably And so we have done with all those peeces which constitute our first part Sis aliquid profess something Hoc age do seriously the duties of that profession and then Sis aliquis propose some good man in that profession for thine immitation as we have proposed Stephen for general duties falling upon all professions And we shall pass now to our other part which we must all play and play in earnest that conclusion in which we shall but begin our everlasting state our death When he had said this he fell asleep Second part Mors impti Here I shall only present to you two Pictures two pictures in little two pictures of dying men and every man is like one of these and may know himself by it he that dies in the Bath of a peaceable he that dies upon the wrack of a distracted conscience When the devil imprints in a man a mortuum me esse non curo I care not though I were dead it were but a candle blown out and there were an end of all where the Devil imprints that imagination God will imprint an Emori nolo a loathness to die and fearful apprehension at his transmigration As God expresses the bitterness of death in an ingemination morte morietur in a conduplication of deaths he shall die and die die twice over So aegrotando aegrotabit in sicknesse he shall be sick twice sick body-sick and soul-sick too sense-sick and conscience-sick together when as the sinnes of his body have cast sicknesses and death upon his Soule so the inordinate sadnesse of his Soule shall aggravate and actuate the sicknesse of his body His Physitian ministers and wonders it works not He imputes that to flegme and ministers against that and wonders again that it works not He goes over all the humors and all his Medicines and nothing works for there lies at his Patients heart a dampe that hinders the concurrence of all his faculties to the intention of the Physitian or the virtue of the Physick Loose not O blessed Apostle thy question upon this Man 1 Cor. 15.55 O Death where is thy sting O Grave where is thy victory for the sting of Death is in every limb of his body and his very body is a victorious grave upon his Soule And as his Carcas and his Coffin shall lie equally insensible in his grave so his Soule which is but a Carcas and his body which is but a Coffin of that Carcas shall be equally miserable upon his Death-bed And Satan's Commissions upon him shall not be signed by Succession as upon Job first against his goods and then his Servants and then his children and then himselfe but not at all upon his life but he shall apprehend all at once Ruine upon himselfe and all his ruine upon himselfe and all him even upon his life both his lives the life of this and the life of the next world too Yet a drop would redeeme a shoure and a Sigh now a Storme then Yet a teare from the eye would save the bleeding of the heart and a word from the mouth now a roaring or which may be worse a silence of consternation of stupefaction of obduration at that last houre Truly if the death of the wicked ended in Death yet to scape that manner of death were worthy a Religious life To see the house fall and yet be afraid to goe out of it To leave an injur'd world and meet an incensed God To see oppression and wrong in all thy professions and to foresee ruine and wastefulnesse in all thy Posterity and Lands gotten by one sin in the Father molder away by another in the Sonne To see true figures of horror and ly and fancy worse To begin to see thy sins but then and finde every sin at first sight in the proportion of a Gyant able to crush thee into despair To see the Blood of Christ imputed not to thee but to thy Sinnes To see Christ crucified and not crucifyed for thee but crucified by thee To heare this blood speake not better things then the blood of Abel but lowder for vengeance then the blood of Abel did This is his picture that hath been Nothing that hath done nothing that hath proposed no Stephen No Law to regulate No example to certifie his Conscience But to him that hath done this Death is but a Sleepe Many have wondred at that note of Saint Chrysostom's Mors Piorum That till Christ's time death was called death plainly literally death but after Christ death was called but sleepe for indeede in the old-Testament before Christ I thinke there is no one metaphor so often used as Sleepe for Death and that the Dead are said to Sleepe Therefore wee wonder sometimes that Saint Chrysostome should say so But this may be that which that holy Father intended in that Note that they in the old-Testament who are said to have slept in Death are such as then by Faith did apprehend and were fixed upon Christ such as were all the good men of the old-Testament and so there will not bee many instances against Saint Chrysostome's note That to those that die in Christ Death is but a Sleepe to all others Death is Death literally Death Now of this dying Man that dies in Christ that dies the Death of the Righteous that embraces Death as a Sleepe must wee give you a Picture too These is not a minute left to do it not a minutes sand Is there a minutes patience Bee pleased to remember that those Pictures which are deliver'd in a minute from a print upon a paper had many dayes weeks Moneths time for the graving of those Pictures in the Copper So this Picture of that dying Man that dies in Christ that dies the death of the Righteous that embraces Death as a Sleepe was graving all his life All his publique actions were the lights and all his private the shadowes of this Picture And when this Picture comes to the Presse this Man to the streights and agonies of Death thus he lies thus he looks this he is His understanding and his will is all one faculty He understands Gods purpose upon him and he would not have God's purpose turned any other way hee sees God will dissolve him and he would faine be dissolved to be with Christ His understanding and his will is all one faculty His memory and his fore-sight ate fixt and concentred upon one object upon goodnesse Hee remembers that

Judg be desposed towards us well or not well there is this comfort given us here that that Judgment shall be per legem by a law we shall be judged by a law of liberty which is our second branch in this second part Per legem The Jews that prosecuted the Judgment against Christ durst not do that without pretending a law habemus legem say they we have a law and he hath transgress'd that The necessary precipitations into sodain executions to which States are forc'd in rebellious time we are fain to call by the name of law martial law the torrents and inundations which invasive armies power upon nations we are fain to call by the name of law the law of arms No Judgment no execution without the name the color the pretence of law for still men call for a law for every execution And shall not the Judg of all the earth do right shall God Judg us condemn us execute us at the last day and not by law by something that we never saw never knew never notified never publish'd and Judg me by that and leave out the consideration of that law which he bound me to keep 1 Cor. 1.20 I ask St. Pauls question Where is the disputer of the world who will offer to dispute unnecessary things especially where Authority hath made it necessary to us to forbear such disputations Blessed are the peace-makers that command and blessed are the peace-keepers that obey and accommodate themselves to peace in forbearing unnecessary and uncharitable controversies But without controversie great is the mystery of godliness the Apostle invites us to search into on farther mysteries then such as may be without controversie 1 Tim. 3.16 the mystery of godliness is without controversy and godliness is to believe that God hath given us a law and to live according to that law This this godliness that is knowledg and obedience to the law hath the promises of this life and the next too all referr'd to his law for without this this godliness which is holiness no man shall see God all referr'd to a law This is Christs Catechism in St. John that we might know the only true God 17.3 and Jesus Christ whom he sent a God commanding and a Christ reconciling us if we have transgress'd that commandment and this is the holy Ghost's Catechism in St. Paul Deus remunerator Heb. 11.6 that we believe God to be and to be a just rewarder of mans actions still all referr'd to an obedience or disobedience of a law The mystery of godliness is great that is great enough for our salvation and yet without controversie For though controversies have been mov'd about Gods first act there can be none of his last act though men have disputed of the object of election yet of the subject of execution there is no controversie no man can doubt but that when God delivers over any soul actually and by way of execution to eternal condemnation that he delivers over that soul to that eternal condemnation for breaking this law In this we have no other adversary but the over-sad the despairing soul and it becomes us all to lend our hand to his succor and so pour in our wine and our oyl into his wounds that lies weltring and surrounded in the blood of his own pale and exhausted soul that soul who though it can testifie to it self some endeavour to the waies of holiness yet upon some collatteral doubts is still suspicious and jealous of God How often have we seen that a needless jealousie and suspicion conceiv'd without cause hath made a good body bad a needless jealousie and suspicion of his purposes and intentions upon thee may make thy merciful God angry too Nothing can alienate God more from thee then to think that any thing but sin can alienate him How wouldst thou have God merciful to thee if thou wilt be unmerciful to God himself And qui quid tyrannicum in Deo Basil He that conceives any tyrannical act in God is unjust to the God of Justice and unmerciful to the God of mercy Therefore in the 17th of our injunctions we are commanded to arm sad souls against despair by setting forth the mercy and the benefits and the godliness of Almighty God as the word of the injunction is the godliness of God for to leave God under a suspicion of dealing ill with any penitent soul were to impute ungodliness to God Therefore to that mistaking soul that discompos'd that shiver'd and shriveled and ravell'd and ruin'd soul to that jealous and suspicious soul only I say with the Apostle let no man Judg you intruding into those things which he hath not seen Colos 2.18 Let no man make you afraid of secret purposes in God which they have not nor you have not seen for that by which you shall be Judged is the law that law which was notified and published to you The law alone were much too heavy if there were not a suprabundant ease and alleviation in that hand that Christ Jesus reaches out to us O consider the weight and the ease and for pitty to such distrustful souls and for establishing of your own stop your devotions a little upon this consideration first there is Chirograpbum A hand writing of Ordinances against me v. 14. a debt an obligation contracted by our first Parents in their disobedience and faln upon me And even that be it but original sin is shrewd evidence ther 's my first charge But deletum est saies the Apostle there that 's blotted that 's defac'd that cannot be sued against me after baptism nay sublatum cruci affixum 28.15 It is cancell'd it is naild to the Cross of Christ Jesus it is no more sin in it self it is but to me to condemnation it is not ther 's my charge and my discharge for that But yet there is a heavier evidence Pactum cum inferno as the Prophet Isai speaks I have made a Covenant with death with hell I am at an agreement that is saies St. Gregory Audacter indesinentur peccamus et diligendo amicitiam profitemur We sin constantly and we sin continually and we sin confidently and we find so much pleasure and profit in sin as that we have made a league and sworn a friendship with sin we keep that perverse irreligious promise over-religiously the sins of our youth flow into other sins when age disables us for them But yet there is a delectum est in this case too our Covenant with death is disannull'd saies that Prophet when we are made partakers of the death of Christ in the blessed Sacrament mine actual sins lose their act and mine habitual sins fall from me as a habit as a garment put of when I come to that ther 's my charge and my discharge for that But yet there is worse evidence against me then either this Chirographum the first hand writing of Adams hand or

then this pactum this contract of mine own hand actual and habitual sin for of these one is wash'd out in water and the other in blood Ro. 7.20 in the two Sacraments But then there is Lex in membris saith the Apostle I find a law that when I would do good evil is present with me Sin assisted by me is now become a Tyrant over me and hath establish'd a government upon me and therefore is a law of sin and a law in my flesh which after the water of baptism taken and the water of penitent tears given after the blood of Christ Jesus taken and mine one blood given that is a holy readiness at that time when I am made partaker of Christs death to die for Christ throws me back by relapses into those repented sins This put the Apostle to that passionate exclamation O wretched man that I am and yet he found a deliverance even from the body of his death through Jesus Christ his Lord that is a free and open recourse and access to him in all oppressions of heart in all dejections of spirit Now when this Chirographum this band of Adams hand Original sin is cancell'd upon the Cross of Christ and this pactum this band of mine own hand actual sins wash'd away in the blood of Christ and this Lex in membris this disposition to relapse into repented sins which as a tide that does certainly come every day does come every day in one form or other is beaten back as a tide by a bank by a continual opposing the merits and the example of Christ Jesus and the practice of his fasting such other medicinal disciplines as I find to prevail against such relapses when by this blessed means the whole law against which I am a trespasser is evacuated will God condemn me for all this and not by a law when I have pleaded Christ Christ and Christ baptism and blood and tears will God condemn mean oblique way when he cannot by a direct way by a secret purpose when he hath no law to condemn me by Sad and discomposed distorted and distracted soul if it be well said in the School absurdum est disputare ex manuscriptis it is an unjust thing in controversies and disputations to press arguments out of manuscripts that cannot be seen by every man it were ill said in thy conscience that God will proceed against thee ex manuscriptis or condemn thee upon any thing which thou never sawst any unreveal'd purpose of his Suspicious soul ill-presaging soul is there something else besides the day of Judgment that the Son of man does not know disquiet soul does he not know the proceeding of that Judgment wherin himself is to be Judg but that when he hath died for thy sins and so fulfill'd the law in thy behalf thou maist be condemn'd without respect of that law and upon something that shall have had no consideration no relation to any such breach of any such law in thee Intricated entangled conscience Christ tels thee of a Judgment because thou didst not do the works of mercy not feed not cloth the poor for these were enjoyn'd thee by a law but he never tels thee of any Judgment therefore because thy name was written in a dark book of death never unclaps'd never opened unto thee in thy life He saies to the lovingly indulgently fear not for it is Gods good pleasure to give you the Kingdom but he never saies to the wickedest in the world live in fear dy in anxiety in suspition and suspension for his displeasure a displeasure conceiv'd against you before you were sinners before you were men hath thrown you out of that kingdom into utter darkness There is no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus The reason is added because the law of the Spirit of life hath made them free from the law of sin and of death All upon all sides is still refer'd to a law And where there is no law against thee as there is not to him that is in Christ and he is in Christ who hath endeavoured the keeping or repented the breaking of the law God wil never proceed to execution by any secret purpose ever notified never manifested Suspicious jealous scattered soul recollect thy self and give thy self that redintegration that acquiescence which the spirit of God in the means of the Church offers thee study the mysterie of godliness which is without all controversie that is endeavour to keep repent the not keeping of the law and thou art safe for that you shall be judged by is a law But then this law is called here a law of liberty and whether that denotation that it is called a law of liberty import an ease to us or heavier weight upon us is our last disquisition and conclusion of all So speak ye and so do as they that shall be judged by the law of liberty Lex libertatis That the Apostle here by the law of liberty means the Gospel was never doubted he had call'd the Gospel so before this place whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty 1.25 and continueth therein shal be blessed in his deed that is blessed in doing so blessed in conforming himself to the Gospel but why does he call it so A law of liberty not because men naturally affecting liberty might be drawn to an affection of the Gospel by proposing it in that specious name of liberty though it were not so The holy Ghost calls the Gospel a pearl and a treasure and a kingdome and joy and glory Not to allure men with false names but because men love these and the Gospel is truly all these a pearl and a treasure and a kingdome and joy and glory And it is truly a law of liberty but of what kind and in what respect not such a liberty as they have established in the Roman Church where Ecclesiastical liberty must exempt Ecclesiastical persons from participating all burdens of the State and from being traitors though they commit treason because they are Subjects to no secular Prince nor the liberty of the Anabaptist that overthrows Magistracy and consequently all subjection both Ecclesiastical Laick for when upon those words 1 Cor. 7.23 Be ye not servants of men St. Chrysostome sayes This is Christian liberty Nec aliis nec sibi servire neither to be subjects to others nor to our selves that 's spoken with modification an allegiance with relation to our first allegiance to God not to be so subject to others or to our selves as that either for their sakes or our own we depart from any necessary declaration of our service to God Deo First then the Gospel is a Law of Liberty in respect of the author of the Gospel of God himself because it leaves God at his liberty Not at liberty to judg against his Gospel where he hath manifested it for a law for he hath laid a holy necessity upon himself

but die and we must die And Edamus bibamus cras moriemur Let us eat and drink and take our pleasure and make our profits for to morrow we shall die and so were cut off by the hand of God some even in their robberies in half-empty houses and in their drunkenness in voluptuous and riotous houses and in their lusts and wantonness in licentious houses and so took in infection and death like Judas's sop death dipt and soaked in sin Men whose lust carried them into the jaws of infection in lewd houses and seeking one sore perished with another men whose rapine and covetousness broke into houses and seeking the Wardrobes of others found their own winding-sheet in the infection of that house where they stole their own death men who sought no other way to divert sadness but strong drink in riotous houses and there drank up Davids cup of Malediction the cup of Condemned men of death in the infection of that place For these men that died in their sins that sinned in their dying that sought and hunted after death so sinfully we have little comfort of such men in the phrase of this Text They were dead for they are dead still As Moses said of the Egyptians I am afraid we may say of these men We shall see them no more for ever But God will give us the comfort of this phrase in the next House Domus nostra This next House is Domus nostra our Dwelling-House our Habitation our Family and there They were dead they were but by Gods goodness they are not If this savor of death have been the savor of life unto us if this heavy weight of Gods hand upon us have awakened us to a narrower survey and a better discharge of our duties towards all the parts of our Families we may say to our comforts and his glory There was a son dead in disobedience and murmuring there was a daughter dead in a dangerous easiness of conversation there was a servant dead in the practice of deceit and falsifying there was but the Lord hath breath'd a new life into us the Lord hath made even his tempest a refreshing and putrefaction a perfume unto us The same measure of wind that blows out a candle kindles a fire this correction that hath hardned some hath entendred and mollified us and howsoever there were dead sons and dead daughters and dead servants this holy sense of Gods Judgements shall not only preserve for the future that we shall admit no more such dead limbs into our Family but even give to them who were in these kindes formerly dead a new life a blessed resurrection from all their sinful habits by the power of his grace though reached to them with a bloody hand and in a bitter cup in this heavy calamity and as Christ said of himself they shall say in him I was dead but am alive and by that grace of God I am that I am The same comfort also shall we have in this phrase of the Text in our third House the third House is not Domus nostra Domus nos but Domus nos not the House we inhabit but the House we carry not that House which is our House but that House which is our selves There also They were dead they were but are not For beloved we told you before in our former survey of these several Houses That our first-born for still ye remember they were the first-born of Egypt that induce all this application Our first-born in this House in our selves is our Zeal not meerly and generally our Religion but our zeal to our Religion For Religion in general is natural to us the natural man hath naturally some sense of God and some inclination to worship that Power whom he conceives to be God and this Worship is Religion But then the first thing that this general pious affection produces in us is Zeal which is an exaltation of Religion Primus actus voluntatis est Amor Philosophers and Divines agree in that That the will of man cannot be idle and the first act that the will of man produces is Love for till it love something prefer and chuse something till it would have something it is not a Will neither can it turn upon any object before God So that this first and general and natural love of God is not begotten in my soul nor produced by my soul but created and infus'd with my soul and as my soul there is no soul that knows she is a soul without such a general sense of the love of God But to love God above all to love him with all my faculties this exaltation of this religious love of God is the first-born of Religion and this is Zeal Religion which is the Worship of that Power which I call God does but make me a man the natural man hath that Religion but that which makes me a Father and gives me an off-spring a first-born that 's Zeal By Religion I am an Adam but by Zeal I am an Abel produced out of that Adam Now if we consider times not long since past there was scarce one house scarce one of us in whom this first-born this Zeal was not dead Discretion is the ballast of our Ship that carries us steady but Zeal is the very Fraight the Cargason the Merchandise it self which enriches us in the land of the living and this was our case we were all come to esteem our Ballast more then our Fraight our Discretion more then our Zeal we had more care to please great men then God more consideration of an imaginary change of times then of unchangeable eternity it self And as in storms it falls out often that men cast their Wares and their Fraights over-board but never their Ballast so as soon as we thought we saw a storm in point of Religion we cast off our Zeal our Fraight and stuck to our Ballast our Discretion and thought it sufficient to sail on smoothly and steadily and calmly and discreetly in the world and with the time though not so directly to the right Haven So our first-born in this House in our selves our Zeal was dead It was there 's the comfortable word of our Text. But now now that God hath taken his fan into his hand and sifted his Church now that God hath put us into a straight and crooked Limbeck passed us through narrow and difficult trials and set us upon a hot fire and drawn us to a more precious substance and nature then before now that God hath given our Zeal a new concoction a new refining a new inanimation by this fire of tribulation let us embrace and nurse up this new resurrection of this Zeal which his own Spirit hath begot and produced in us and return to God with a whole and entire soul without dividing or scattering our affections upon other objects and in the sincerity of the true Religion without inclinations in our selves to induce and without inclinableness

by diversion when Saul pursued David with the most vehemence of all 1 Sam. 23.27 a messenger came and told him that the Philistines had invaded his Land and then he gave over the pursuit of David Really great admirably strange things did God in the behalf of his children for the destruction of his and their Idolatrous enemies But yet were they ever destroy'd totally destroy'd they were not The Lord left some Nations says the Text there without hastily driving them out neither did he deliver them into the hands of Joshuah Judg. 2.23 The Jebusites dwell with the children of Benjamin in Jerusalem unto this day says that holy story and so did other Nations with the other Tribes in other places 1.21.28 They were able as we are told there to put the Canaanites to Tribute but not to drive them out to make Penal Laws against them but not to deliver the Land of them Now why did God do this We would not ask this question if God had not told us ut erudiret in iis Jerusalem 3.2 that the Enemy might be their Schoolmaster and War their Chatechism that they might never think that they stood in no more need of God The Lord was with Judah saith the Text so far with him 1.19 as that he drave out the Inhabitants of the Mountain but yet would not drive out the Inhabitants of the Valley Sometimes God does the greater work and yet leaves some lesser things undone God chooses his Matter and his Manner and his Measure and his Means and his Minutes But yet God is truly and justly said to have destroyed those Idolatrous Enemies in that he brought them so low as that they could not give Laws to the children of Israel nor force them to the Idolatrous Worship of their gods though some scattered Idolaters did still live amongst them God could destroy Nequitias in coelestibus he could evacuate all Powers and Principalities he could annihilate the Devil or he could put him out of Commission take from him the power of tempting or solliciting his servants Though God hath not done it yet he is properly said to have destroyed him because he hath destroyed his Kingdom Death is swallowed up in victory saith Saint Paul out of Ose O death where is thy sting says he Where is it Why 1 Cor. 15.5.4 Ose 13.14 it is in thy bosome It is at the heart of the greatest Princes of the earth Though they be gods they die like men O grave where is thy victory says he there Why above the Victories and Trophies and Triumphs of all the Conquerors in the world And yet the Apostle speaks and justly as if there were no death in man no sting in death no grave after death because to him who dies in the Lord all this is nothing not he by death but death in him is destroyed And as it is of the cause of Sin the Devil and of the effect of Sin Death so is it of Sin it self it is destroyed and yet we sin He that is born of God doth not commit sin so as that sin shall be imputed to him Sin and Satan and Death are destroyed in us because they can do no harm to us So the Idolatrous Nations were destroyed amongst the Israelites because they could not bring in an Inquisition amongst them and force them to their Religion And so Idolatry hath been destroyed amongst us destroyed so as that it hath been declared to be Idolatry towards God and declared to be complicated and wrapped up inseparably in Treason towards the King and the State Our Schools and Pulpits have destroyed it and our Parliaments have destroyed it Our Pulpits establish them that stay at home and our Laws are able to lay hold upon them that run from home and return ill affected to their home Let no man therefore murmur at Gods proceedings and say If God had a minde to destroy Idolatry he would have left no seed or he would not have admitted such arepullulation and such a growth of that seed as he hath done God hath his own ends and his own ways He destroyed the Nations from before the Israelites Christ hath destroyed Sin and Satan and Death and Hell and Idolaters amongst us for Gods greater glory do remain For such a destruction as should be absolute God never intended God never promised for that were to occasion and to induce a security and remove all diligence Which is our second Branch in this first part Cave tibi see take heed c. In the beginning of the world we presume all things to have been produced in their best state all was perfect and yet how soon a decay all was summer and yet how soon a fall of the leaf a fall in Paradise not of the leaf but of the Tree it self Adam fell A fall before that in heaven it self Angels fell Better security then Adam then Angels had there we cannot have we cannot look for here And therefore there is danger still still occasion of diligence Lev. 11.3 of consideration The chewing of the Cudd was a distinctive mark of cleanness in the Creature The holy rumination the daily consideration of his Christianity is a good character of a Christian 1 Cor. 12.31 Covet earnestly the best gifts says the Apostle those to whom he writ had good gifts already yet he exhorts them to a desire of better And what doth he promise them not the Gift it self but the way to it I will shew a more excellent way There is still something more excellent then we have yet attained to Non dicit charisma Chrysost sed viam The best step the best height in this world is but the way to a better and still we have way before us to walk further in Anathema pro fratribus Rom. 9.3 was but once said St. Paul once and in a vehement and inordinate zeal and religious distemper said so That he could be content to be separated from Christ Exi à me Domine was but once said once St. Peter said Luc. 5.8 Depart from me O Lord. The Anathema the exi but once but the Adveniat Regnum Let thy Kingdom come I hope is said more then once by every one of us every day every day we receive and yet every day we pray for that Kingdom more and more assurance of Glory by more and more increase of Grace For as there are bodily diseases and spiritual diseases too proper to certain ages a yong man and an old man are not ordinarily subject to the same distempers nor to the same vices so particular forms of Religion have their indispositions their ill inclinations too Thou art bred in a Reformed Church where the truth of Christ is sincerely Preached bless God for it but even there thou mayest contract a pride an opinion of purity and uncharitably despise those who labour yet under their ignorances or superstitions or thou mayest grow weary of thy Manna and smell

fixt the Almighty and immoveable God if it can be content to inquire after it self and take knowledge where it is and in what way it will finde the means of cleansing And so this second consideration The placing of this pureness in the heart enlarges it self also into the third branch of this part which is De Modo by what means this pureness is fix'd in the heart in which is involved the Affection with which it must be embrac'd Love He that loveth pureness of heart Both these then are setled Our heart is naturally foul Modus And our heart may be cleansed But how is our present disquisition Who can bring a clean thing out of filthiness There is not one Job 14.4 Adam foul'd my heart and all yours nor can we make it clean our selves Who can say I have made clean my heart There is but one way Prov. 20.9 a poor beggarly way but easie and sure to ask it of God And even to God himself it seems a hard work to cleanse this heart and therefore our prayer must be with David Cor mundum crea Create Psal 51.12 O Lord a pure heart in me And then comes Gods part not that Gods part begun but then for it was his doing that thou madest this prayer but because it is a work that God does especially delight in to build upon his own foundations when he hath disposed thee to pray and upon that prayer created a new heart in thee then God works upon that new heart and By faith purifyes it Act. 15.9 enables it to preserve the pureness as Saint Peter speaks He had kindled some sparks of this faith in thee before thou askedst that new heart else the prayer had not been of faith but now finding thee obsequious to his beginnings he fuels this fire and purifies thee as Gold and Silver in all his furnaces through Believing and Doing and suffering through faith and works and tribulation we come to this pureness of heart And truely he that lacks but the last but Tribulation as fain as we would be without it lacks one concoction one refining of this heart But in this great work the first act is a Renovation a new heart Co● Nov●m and the other That we keep clean that heart by a continual diligence and vigilancy over all our particular actions In these two consists the whole work of purifying the heart first an Annihilating of the former heart which was all sin And then a holy superintendency over that new heart which God vouchsafes to create in us to keep it as he gives it clean pure It is in a word a Detestation of former sins and a prevention of future And for the first Chromakus Anno 390. Mundi corde sunt qui deposuere cor peccati That 's the new heart that hath disseised expelled the heart of sin There is in us a heart of sin which must be cast up for whilst the heart is under the habits of sin we are not onely sinful but we are all sin as it is truly said that land overflow'd with sea is all sea And when sin hath got a heart in us it will quickly come to be that whole Body of Death Rom. 7.24 which Saint Paul complains of who shall deliver me from the Body of this Death when it is a heart it will get a Braine a Brain that shall minister all Sense and Delight in sin That 's the office of the Brain A Brain which shall send for the sinews and ligaments to tye sins together and pith and marrow to give a succulencie and nourishment even to the bones to the strength and obduration of sin and so it shall do all those services and offices for sin that the brain does to the natural body So also if sin get to be a heart it will get a liver to carry blood and life through all the body of our sinful actions That 's the office of the liver And whilst we dispute whether the throne and seat of the soul be in the Heart or Brain or Liver this tyrant sin will praeoccupate all and become all so as that we shall finde nothing in us without sin nothing in us but sin if our heart be possest inhabited by it And if it be true in our natural bodies that the heart is that part that lives first and dyes last it is much truer of this Cor peccati this heart of sin for this hearty sinner that hath given his heart to his sin doth no more foresee a Death of that sin in himself then he remembers the Birth of it and because he remembers not or understands not how his soul contracted sin by coming into his body he leaves her to the same ignorance how she shall discharge her self of sin when she goes out of that body But as his sin is elder then himself for Adams sin is his sin so is it longer liv'd then his body for it shall cleave everlastingly to his soul too God asks no more of thee but fili da mihi cor Prov. 23.26 My son give me thy heart Because when God gave it thee it was but one heart But since thou hast made it Cor cor as the Prophet speaks a Heart and a Heart a double Heart give both thy Hearts to God thy natural weakness and disposition to sin The inclinations of thy heart And thy habitual practise of sin The obduration of thy heart cor peccans and Cor peccati and he shall create a new heart in thee which is the first way of attaining this pureness of heart to become once in a good state to have as it were paid all thy former debts and so to be the better able to look about thee for the future for prevention of subsequent sins which is the other way that we proposed for attaining this pureness detestation of former habits watchfulness upon particular actions Till this be done till this Cor peccati Peccata Minutiora this hearty habitualness in sin be devested there is no room no footing to stand and sweep it a heart so filled with foulness will admit no counsel no reproof The great Engineir would have undertaken to have removed the World with his Engine if there had been any place to fix his Engine upon out of the World I would undertake by Gods blessing upon his Ordinance to cleanse the foulest heart that is if that Engine which God hath put into my hands might enter into his heart if there were room for the renouncing Gods Judgements and for the application of Gods mercies in the merits of Christ Jesus in his heart they would infallibly work upon him But he hath petrified his heart in sin and then he hath immur'd it wall'd it with a delight in sin and fortified it with a justifying of his sin and adds daily more and more out-works by more and more daily sins so that the denouncing of Judgement the application of Mercies

wherewith this inestimable pureness is to be embraced love He that loveth pureness of heart Love in Divinity is such an attribute or such a notion as designs to us one person in the Trinity and that person who communicates and applies to us Amor. the other two persons that is The Holy Ghost So that as there is no power but with relation to the Father nor wisdom but with relation to the Son so there should be no love but in the Holy Ghost from whom comes this pureness of heart and consequently the love of it necessarily For the love of this pureness is part of this pureness it self and no man hath it except he love it All love which is placed upon lower things admits satiety but this love of this pureness always grows always proceeds It does not onely file off the rust of our hearts in purging us of old habits but proceeds to a daily polishing of the heart in an exact watchfulness and brings us to that brightness Augustine Ut ipse videas faciem in corde alii videant cor in facie That thou maist see thy face in thy heart and the world may see thy heart in thy face indeed that to both both heart and face may be all one Thou shalt be a Looking-glass to thy self and to others too Mulieres The highest degree of other love is the love of woman Which love when it is rightly placed upon one woman it is dignified by the Apostle with the highest comparison Ephes 5.25 Husbands love your wives as Christ loved his Church And God himself forbad not that this love should be great enough to change natural affection Gen. 2.24 Relinquet patrem for this a man shall leave his Father yea to change nature it self caro una two shall be one Accordingly David expresses himself so in commemoration of Jonathan 2 Sam. 1.26 Thy love to me was wonderful passing the love of women A love above that love is wonderful Now this love between man and woman doth so much confess a satiety as that if a woman think to hold a man long she provides her self some other capacity some other title then meerly as she is a woman Her wit and her conversation must continue this love and she must be a wife a helper else meerly as a woman this love must necessarily have intermissions And therefore St. Jerome notes a custom of his time Jerome perchance prophetically enough of our times too that to uphold an unlawful love and make it continue they used to call one another Friend and Sister and Cousen Ut etiam peccatis induant nomina caritatis that they might apparel ill affections in good names and those names of natural and civil love might carry on and continue a work which otherwise would sooner have withered In Parables and in Mythology and in the application of Fables this affection of love for the often change of subjects is described to have wings whereas the true nature of a good love such as the love of this Text is a constant union But our love of earthly things is not so good as to be volatilis apt to fly for it is always groveling upon the earth and earthly objects As in spiritual fornications the Idols are said to have ears and hear not and eyes and see not so in this idolatrous love of the Creature love hath wings and flies not it flies not upward it never ascends to the contemplation of the Creator in the Creature The Poets afford us but one Man that in his love flew so high as the Moon Endymion loved the Moon The sphear of our loves is sublunary upon things naturally inferior to our selves Let none of this be so mistaken as though women were thought improper for divine or for civil conversation For they have the same soul and of their good using the faculties of that soul the Ecclesiastick story and the Martyrologies give us abundant examples of great things done and suffered by women for the advancement of Gods glory But yet as when the woman was taken out of man God caused a heavy sleep to fall upon man Gen. 2.22 and he slept so doth the Devil cast a heavy sleep upon him too When the woman is so received into man again as that she possesses him fills him transports him I know the Fathers are frequent in comparing and paralleling Eve the Mother of Man and Mary the Mother of God But God forbid any should say That the Virgin Mary concurred to our good so as Eve did to our ruine It is said truly That as by one man sin entred and death Rom. 5.12 so by one man entred life It may be said That by one woman sin entred and death and that rather then by the man for 1 Tim. 2.14 Adam was not deceived but the woman being deceived was in the transgression But it cannot be said in that sense or that manner that by one woman innocence entred and life The Virgin Mary had not the same interest in our salvation as Eve had in our destruction nothing that she did entred into that treasure that ransom that redeemed us She more then any other woman and many other blessed women since have done many things for the advancing of the glory of God and imitation of others so that they are not unfit for spiritual conversation nor for the civil offices of friendship neither where both tentation at home and scandal abroad may truly be avoided I know St. Jerome in that case despised all scandal and all malicious mis-interpretations of his purpose therein rather then give over perswading the Lady Paula to come from Rome to him and live at Jerusalem But I know not so well that he did well in so doing A familiar and assiduous conversation with women will hardly be without tentation and scandal St. Jerome himself apprehended that scandal tenderly and expresses it passionately Sceleratum me putant omnibus peccatis obrutum The world takes me for a vicious man more sceleratum for a wicked a facinorous man for this and obrutum surrounded overflowed with all sins Versipellem lubricum mendacem satanae arte decipientem They take me to be a slippery fellow a turn-coat from my professed austerity a Lyar an Impostor a Deceiver yet though he discerned this scandal and this inconvenience in it he makes shift to ease himself in this Nihil aliud mihi objicitur nisi sexus meus They charge me with nothing but my sex that I am a man Et hoc nunquam objicitur nisi cum Hierosolymam Paula proficiscitur nor that neither but because this Lady follows me to Jerusalem He proceeds farther That till he came acquainted in Paulas house at Rome Omnium penè judicio summo sacerdotio dignus decernebar every man thought me fit to be Pope every man thought reverently of him till he used her house St. Jerome would fain have corrected their mis-interpretations and slackned the

Richmond this night and the joys of London at this place at this time in the morning and we shall finde Prophecy even in that saying of the Poet Nocte pluit tota showers of rain all night of weeping for our Soveraign and we would not be comforted because she was not Matth. 2.18 And yet redeunt spectacula manè the same hearts the same eyes the same hands were all directed upon recognitions and acclamations of her successor in the morning And when every one of you in the City were running up and down like Ants with their eggs bigger then themselves every man with his bags to seek where to hide them safely Almighty God shed down his Spirit of Unity and recollecting and reposedness and acquiescence upon you all In the death of that Queen unmatchable immitable in her sex that Queen worthy I will not say of Nestors years I will not say of Methusalems but worthy of Adams years if Adam had never faln in her death we were all under one common flood and depth of tears But the Spirit of God moved upon the face of that depth and God said Let there be light and there was light and God saw that that light was good God took pleasure and found a savor of rest in our peaceful chearfulness and in our joyful and confident apprehension of blessed days in his Government whom he had prepared at first and preserved so often for us Plinius ad Trajan As the Rule is true Cum de Malo principe posteri tacent manifestum est vilem facere praesentem when men dare not speak of the vices of a Prince that is dead it is certain that the Prince that is alive proceeds in the same vices so the inversion of the Rule is true too Cum de bono principe loquuntur when men may speak freely of the vertues of a dead Prince it is an evident argument that the present Prince practises the same vertues for if he did not he would not love to hear of them Of her we may say that which was well said and therefore it were pity it should not be once truly said for so it was not when it was first said to the Emperor Iulian nihil humile aut abjectum cogitavit quia novit de se semper loquendum she knew the world would talk of her after her death and therefore she did such things all her life were worthy to be talked of Of her glorious successor and our gracious Soveraign Plinus ad Trajan we may say Onerosum est succedere bono Principi It would have troubled any king but him to have come in succession and in comparison with such a Queen And in them both we may observe the unsearchableness of the ways of God of them both we may say Dominus fecit It is the Lord that hath done it Psal 118.23 and it is wonderful in our eyes First That a woman and a maid should have all the wars of Christendom in her contemplation and govern and ballance them all And then That a King born and bred in a warlike Nation and so accustomed to the sword as that it had been directed upon his own person in the strength of his age and in his Infancy in his Cradle in his mothers belly should yet have the blessed spirit of peace so abundantly in him as that by his Councils and his authority he should sheath all the swords of Christendom again De forti egressa dulcedo sweetness is come out of the strong Judg. 14.24 in a stranger manner then when Sampson said so in his riddle And howsoever another wise King found it true Anima saturata calcab it favum The person that is full despiseth honey Prov. 27.7 they that are glutted with the benefits of peace would faln change for a war yet the wisest King of all hath pronounced for our King Mat. 5.9 Beati pacifici Blessed are the peace-makers If subjects will not apprehend it with joy here the King himself shall joy hereafter for Therefore says that Gospel Therefore because he was a peace-maker he shall be called The childe of God 2 Tim. 2.12 Though then these two great Princes of whom the one con-regnat Christo reigns now with Christ the other reigns here over us vice Christi for Christ were near in blood yet thus were they nearest of kin quod uterque optimus That they were both better then any other and equal to one another Dignus alter eligi Plin. de Nerva Traja alter eligere That she was fittest in that fullness of years to be chosen and assum'd into heaven and he fittest as Saint Paul did because it was more behoofeful for his brethren to choose to stay upon earth for our protection and for our direction because as in all Princes it is vita principis perpetua censura There cannot be a more powerful increpation upon the subjects excesses then when they see the King deny himself those pleasures which they take As then this place where we all stand now Non Anticipavit was the Sanctuary whither we all resorted this day to receive the assurance of our safety in the proclamation of his undoubted title to this Kingdom so let it be our Altar now where we may sacrifice our humble thanks to God first that he always gave the King a just and a religious patience of not attempting a coming into this Kingdom till God emptied the throne here by translating that Queen to a throne more glorious Perchance he was not without tentations from other men to have done otherwise But Pacatus ad Theodos Ad Principatum per obsequ ium venit he came to be King by his obedience his obedience to the law of Nature and the laws of this Kingdom to which some other King would have disputed whether he should have obey'd or no. Cum omnia faceret imperare ut deberet nihil fecit ut imperaret All his Actions all that he did shew'd him fit for this Crown and yet he would do nothing to anticipate that Crown Next let us pour out our thanks to God Nen adulatus that in his entrance he was beholden to no by-religion The Papists could not make him place any hopes upon them nor the Puritans make him entertain any fears from them but his God and our God as he brought him via lactea by the sweet way of Peace that flows with milk and hony so he brought him via Regia by the direct and plain way without any deviation or descent into ignoble flatteries or servile humoring of any persons or factions Non occulte Which noble and Christian courage he expressed more manifestly when after that infamous powder treason the intended dissolution and conflagration of this state that plot that even amaz'd and astonished the Devil and seem'd a miracle even in hell that treason which whosoever wishes might be covered how is sorry that it was discovered

to be angry for this 4. 3. and after about the Gourd dost thou well to be angry for that he replies I do well to be angry even unto death How much worse a death then death is this life which so good men would so often change for death But if my case be St. Pauls case Quotidie morior 1 Cor. 15.31 that I die dayly that something heavier then death fall upon me every day If my case be Davids case Tota die mortificamur psa 44.22 all the day long we are killed that not only every day but every hour of the day something heavier then death fals upon me though that be true of me conceptus in peccatis I was shapen in iniquity and in sin did my mother conceive me 51. 5. There I died one death though that be true of me natus filius irae I was born not only the child of sin but the child of the wrath of God for sin which is a heavier death yet Domini Domini sunt exitus mortis with God the Lord are the issues of death and after a Job and a Joseph and a Jeremy and a Daniel I cannot doubt of a deliverance and if no other deliverance conduce more to his glory and my good yet He hath the keyes of death Apo. 1.18 and he can let me out at that dore that is deliver me from the manifold deaths of this world the omni die and the tota die the every daies death and every hours death by that one death the final disolution of body and soul the end of all But then is that the end of all Exitus a morte Incinerationis is that dissolution of body and soul the last death that the body shall suffer for of spiritual deaths we speak not now it is not Though this be exitus a morte it is introitus in mortem though it be an issue from the manifold deaths of this world yet it is an entrance into the death of corruption and putrifaction and vermiculation and incineration and dispersion in and from the grave in which every dead man dies over again It was a prerogative peculiar to Christ not to die this death not to see corruption What gave him this privilege not Josephs great proportions of gums and spices that might have preserved his body from corruption and incineration longer then he needed it longer then three daies but yet would not have done it for ever What preserv'd him then did his exemption and freedome from original sin preserve him from this corruption and incineration 'T is true that original sin hath induc'd this corruption and incineration upon us 1 C●● 15.33 If we had not sinn'd in Adam mortality had not put on immortality as the Apostle speaks nor corruption had not put on incorruption but we had had our transmigration from this to the other world without any mortality any corruption at all But yet since Christ took sin upon him so far as made him mortal he had it so far too as might have made him see this corruption and incineration though he had no original sin in himself What preserv'd him then did the hypostatical union of both natures God and man preserve his flesh from this corruption this incineration 't is true that this was a most powerful embalming To be embalm'd with the divine nature it self to be embalm'd with eternity was able to preserve him from corruption and incineration for ever And he was embalm'd so embalm'd with the divine nature even in his body as well as in his soul for the Godhead the divine nature did not depart but remain still united to his dead body in the grave But yet for all this powerful imbalming this hypostatical union of both natures we see Christ did die and for all this union which made him God and man he became no man for the union of body and soul makes the man and he whose soul and body are seperated by death as long as that state lasts is properly no man And therefore as in him the dissolution of body and soul was no dissolution of the hypostatical union so is there nothing that constrains us to say that though the flesh of Christ had seen corruption and incineration in the grave this had been any dissolving of the hypostatical union for the divine nature the Godhead might have remain'd with all the elements and principles of Christs body as well as it did with the two constitutive parts of his person his body and soul This incorruption then was not in Josephs gums and spices nor was it in Christs innocency and exemption from original sin nor was it that is it is not necessary to say it was in the Hypostatical union But this incorruptibleness of his flesh Psa 16 10. is most conveniently plac d in that non dabis Thou wilt not suffer thy holy one to see corruption We look no farther for causes or reasons in the mysteries of our religion but to the will and pleasure of God Mat. 11.26 Christ himself limited his inquisition in that Ita est even so father for so it seemed good in thy sight Christs body did not see corruption therefore because God had decreed that it should not The humble soul and only the humble soul is the religions soul rests himself upon Gods purposes and his decrees but then it is upon those purposes and decrees of God which he hath declared and manifested not such as are conceiv'd and imagin'd in our selves though upon some probability some verisimilitude So in our present case Act. 2.31.13.35 Peter proceeded in his sermon at Jerusalem and so Paul in his at Antioch they preached Christ to be risen without having seen corruption not only because God had decreed it but because he had manifested that decree in his Prophet Therefore does St. Paul cite by special number the second Psalme for that decree and therefore both St. Peter and St. Paul cite for that place in the 16. Psal for v. 10. when God declares his decree and purpose in the express word of his Prophet or when he declares it in the real execution of the decree then he makes it ours then he manifests it to us And therefore as the mysteries of our religion are not the objects of our reason but by faith we rest in Gods decree and purpose it is so O God because it is thy will it should be so so Gods decrees are ever to be considered in the manifestation thereof All manifestation is either in the word of God or in the execution of the decree and when these two concur and meet it is the strongest demonstration that can be when therefore I find those marks of Adoption and spiritual filiation which are delivered in the word of God to be upon me when I find that real execution of his good purpose upon me as that actually I do live under the obedience and under the conditions which are

any thing that shall be said before lessen but rather enlarge your devotion to that which shall be said of his Passion at the time of the due solemnization thereof Christ bled not a drop the lesse at last for having bled at his Circumcision before nor will you shed a teare the lesse then if you shed some now And therefore be now content to consider with me how to this God the Lord belong'd the issues of Death That God the Lord The Lord of Life could die is a strange contemplation That the red-Sea could be dry Potuisse Mori Exod. 14.21 That the Sun could stand still Jos 10.12 That an Oven could be seven times heat and not burn That Lyons could be hungry and not bite is strange miraculously strange But super-miraculous That God could die But that God would die is an exaltation of that But even of that also it is a super-exaltation that God should die must die and non exitus saith Saint Augustin God the Lord had no issue but by death and oportuit pati saith Christ himself all this Christ ought to suffer was bound to suffer Psal 94.1 Voluisse Mori Deus ultionum Deus saith David God is the God of Revenges He would not passe over the sin of man unrevenged unpunished But then Deus ultionum libere egit sayes that place The God of Revenges works freely he punishes he spares whom he will and would he not spare himself He would not Dilectio fortis ut Mors Can. 8.6 Love is as strong as Death stronger it drew in Death that naturally was not welcome Si possibile saith Christ If it be possible let this Cup passe when his Love expressed in a former Decree with his Father had made it impossible Many waters quench not Love Christ tryed many He was baptized out of his Love v. 7. and his love determin'd not there He wept over Jerusalem out of his love and his love determined not there He mingled blood with water in his Agony and that determined not his love He wept pure blood all his blood at all his eyes at all his pores in his flagellations and thornes to the Lord our God belonged the issues of blood and these expressed but these did not quench his love Oportuisse Mori He would not spare nay he would not spare himself There was nothing more free more voluntary more spontaneous then the death of Christ 'T is true libere egit he died voluntarily But yet when we consider the contract that had passed between his Father and him there was an Oportuit a kinde of necessity upon him All this Christ ought to suffer And when shall we date this obligation this Oportuit this necessity when shall we say it begun Certainly this Decree by which Christ was to suffer all this was an eternall Decree and was there any thing before that that was eternall Infi●ite love eternall love be pleased to follow this home and to consider it seriously that what liberty soever we can conceive in Christ to dy or not to dy this necessity of dying this Decree is as eternall as that Liberty and yet how small a matter made he of this Necessity and this dying Gen. 3.15 His Father calls it but a Bruise and but a bruising of his heele The Serpent shall bruise his heele and yet that was that the Serpent should practise and compasse his death Himself calls it but a Baptism as though he were to be the better for it I have a Baptism to be baptized with Luk. 12.50 and he was in paine till it was accomplished and yet this Baptism was his death The holy-Ghost calls it Joy For the joy which was set before him he endured the Crosse which was not a joy of his reward after his passion Heb. 12.2 but a joy that filled him even in the middest of those torments and arose from them When Christ cals his passion Calicem a cup and no worse Can ye drink of my cup He speaks not odiously not with detestation of it indeed it was a cup salus mundo Mat. 20.22 A health to all the world and quid retribuem saies David Psal 116.12 What shall I render unto the Lord Answer you with David Accipiam Calicom I will take the cup of salvation Take that that cup of salvation his passion if not into your present imitation yet into your present contemplation and behold how that Lord who was God yet could die would die must die for your salvation That Moses and Elias talked with Christ in the transfiguration both St. Matthew and St. Mark tel us but what they talked of Mat 17.3 Mat. 9.4 Luc. 9.31 only St. Luke Dicebant excessum ejus saies he they talked of his decease of his death which was to be accomplished at Jerusalem The word is of his Exodus the very word of our Text Exitus his issue by death Moses who in his Exodus had prefigured this issue of our Lord and in passing Israel out of Egypt through the red sea had foretold in that actual prophecy Christs passing of mankind through the sea of his blood and Elias whose Exodus and issue out of this world was a figure of Christs ascension had no doubt a great satisfaction in talking with our blessed Lord De excessu ejus of the full consummation of all this in his death which was to be accomplished at Jerusalem Our meditation of his death should be more viseral and affect us more because it is of a thing already done The ancient Romans had a certain tenderness and detestation of the name of death they would not name death no not in their wils there they would not say Si mori contingat but Si quid humanitas contingat not if or when I die but when the course of nature is accomplished upon me To us that speak daily of the death of Christ He was crucified dead and buried can the memory or the mention of our death be irksome or bitter There are in these latter times amongst us that name death freely enough and the death of God but in blasphemous oaths and execrations Miserable men who shall therefore be said never to have named Jesus because they have named him too often and therefore hear Jesus say Nescive vos I never knew you because they made themselves too familiar with him Moses and Elias talked with Christ of his death only in a holy and joyful sence of the benefit which they and all the world were to receive by it Discourses of religion should not be out of curiosity but edification And then they talked with Christ of his death at that time when he was at the greatest heighth of glory that ever he admitted in this world that is his transfiguration And we are afraid to speak to the great men of this world of their death but nourish in them a vain imagination of immortallity and immutability But bonum est

nobis esse hic as St. Peter said there It is good to dwell here in this consideration of his death and therefore transfer we our Tabernacle our devotion through some of these steps which God the Lord made to his issue of death that day Take in his whole day from the hour that Christ eat the passover upon Thursday to the hour in which he died the next day Make this present day Conformitas that day in thy devotion and consider what he did and remember what you have done Before he instituted and celebrated the sacrament which was after the eating of the passover he proceeded to the act of humility to wash his Disciples feet even Peters who for a while resisted him In thy preparation to the holy and blessed sacrament hast thou with a sincere humilty sought a reconciliation with all the world even with those who have been averse from it and refused that reconciliation from thee If so and not else thou hast spent that first part of this his last day in a conformity with him After the sacrament he spent the time til night in prayer in preaching in Psalms Hast thou considered that a worthy receiving of the sacrament consists in a continuation of holiness after as wel as in a preparation before If so thou hast therein also conformed thy self to him so Christ spent his time till night At night he went into the garden to pray and he prayed prolixius He spent much time in prayer Luc. 22.24 How much because it is literally expressed that he praied there three several times and that returning to his Disciples after his first prayer and finding them asleep said could ye not watch with me one hour Mat. 26.40 it is collected that he spent three houres in prayer I dare scarce ask thee whither thou wentst or how thou disposedst of thy self when it grew dark and after last night If that time were spent in a holy recommendation of thy self to God and a submission of thy will to his that it was spent in a conformity to him In that time and in those prayers was his agony and bloody sweat I will hope that thou didst pray but not every ordinary and customary prayer but prayer actually accompanied with shedding of tears and dispositively in a readiness to shed blood for his glory in necessary cases puts thee into a corformity with him About midnight he was taken and bound with a kiss Art thou not too conformable to him in that Is not that too literally too exactly thy case At midnight to have been taken and bound with a kiss from thence he was carried back to Jerusalem first to Annas then to Caiphas and as late as it was there he was examined and buffeted and delivered over to the custody of those officers from whom he received all those irr●sions and violences the covering of his face the spitting upon his face the blasphemies of words and the smartness of blows which that Gospel mentions In which compass fell that Gallicinium that crowing of the Cock which called up Peter to his repentance How thou passedst all that time last night thou knowest If thou didst any thing then that needed Peters tears and hast not shed them let me be thy Cock do it now now thy Master in the unworthyest of his servants looks back upon thee Do it now Betimes in the morning as soon as it was day the Jews held a Councel in the high Priests house and agreed upon their evidence against him then carried him to Pilate who was to be his Judg. Didst thou accuse thy self when thou wak'dst this morning wast thou content to admit even fals accusations that is rather to suspect actions to have been sin which were not then to smother justifie such as were truly sins then thou spendst that hour in conformity to him Pilat found no evidence against him therefore to ease himself to pass a complement upon Herod Tetrarch of Galilee who was at that time at Jerusalem because Christ being a Galilean was of Herods jurisdiction Pilat sent him to Herod rather as a mad man then a malefactor Herod remanded him with scorns to Pilat to proceed against him this was about 8 of the Clock Hast thou been content to come to this inquisition this examination this agitation this cribration this pursuit of thy conscience to sift it to follow it from the sins of thy youth to thy present sins from the sins of thy bed to the sins of thy board and from the substance to the circumstance of thy sins that 's time spent like thy Saviours Pilat would have sav'd Christ by using the priviledg of the day in his behalf because that day one prisoner was to be delivered but they chose Barrabas He would have sav'd him from death by satisfying their fury with inflicting other torments upon him scourging and crowning with thorns loading him with many scornful ignominious contumelies but this redeem'd him not they press'd a crucifying Hast thou gone about to redeem thy sin by fasting by alms by disciplines mortifications in the way of satisfaction to the justice of God that will not serve that 's not the right way We press an utter crucifying of that sin that governs thee and that conforms thee to Christ Towards noon Pilat gave Judgment and they made such hast to execution as that by noon he was upon the Cross There now hangs that sacred body upon the cross re-baptiz'd in his own tears sweat and embalm'd in his own blood alive There are those bowels of compassion which are so conspicuous so manifested as that you may see them through his wounds There those glorious eyes grew faint in their light so as the Sun asham'd to survive them departed with his light too And there that Son of God who was never from us yet had now come a new way unto us in assuming our nature delivers that soul which was never out of his Fathers hands into his Fathers hands by a new way a voluntary emission thereof for though to this God our Lord belong these issues of death so that considered in his own contract he must necessarily dy yet at no breach nor battery which they had made upon his sacred body issues his soul but emisit he gave up the Ghost as God breath'd a soul into the first Adam so this second Adam breath'd his soul into God into the hands of God There we leave you in that blessed dependancy to hang upon him that hangs upon the cross There bath in his tears there suck at his wounds lie down in peace in his grave till he vouchsafe you a Resurrection an ascension into that Kingdome which he hath purchas'd for you with the inestimable price of his incorruptible blood Amen FINIS