these houres they may heare if they will and till they doe heare they are dead Sin is the root of death the body of death and then it is the fruit of death August S. Augustine confesses of himselfe that he was Allisus intra parietes in celebritate solemnitatum tuarum that in great meetings upon solemne dayes in the Church there within the walls of Gods house Egit negotium procurandi fructus mortis he was not buying and selling doves but buying and selling soules by wanton lookes cheapning and making the bargaine of the fruits of death as himselfe expresses it Sin is the root and the tree and the fruit of death The mother of death death it selfe and the daughter of death and from this death this threefold death death past in our past sins present death in our present in sensiblenesse of sin future death in those sins with which sins God will punish our former and present sins if he proceed meerly in justice God affords us this first resurrection How Resurrectio Thus. Death is the Divorce of body and soule Resurrection is the Re-union of body and soule And in this spirituall death and resurrection which we consider now and which is all determined in the soule it selfe Grace is the soule of the soule and so the departing of grace is the death and the returning of grace is the resurrection of this sinfull soule But how By what way what meanes Consider Adam Adam was made to enjoy an immortality in his body He induced death upon himselfe And then as God having made Marriage for a remedy against uncleannesse intemperate men make even Marriage it selfe an occasion of more uncleannesse then if they had never married so man having induced and created death by sin God takes death and makes it a means of the glorifying of his body in heaven God did not induce death death was not in his purpose Cyril Alex. but veluti medium opportunum quo vas confractum rursus fingeretur As a means whereby a broken vessell might be made up againe God tooke death and made it serve for that purpose That men by the grave might be translated to heaven So then to the resurrection of the body there is an ordinary way The grave To the resurrection of the soule there is an ordinary way too The Church In the grave the body that must be there prepared for the last resurrection hath wormes that eat upon it In the Church the soule that comes to this first resurrection must have wormes The worme the sting the remorse the compunction of Conscience In those that have no part in this first resurrection the worme of conscience shall never die but gnaw on to desperation but those that have not this worme of conscience this remorse this compunction shall never live In the grave which is the furnace which ripens the body for the last resurrection there is a putrefaction of the body and an ill savour In the Church the wombe where my soule must be mellowed for this first resurrection my soul which hath the savour of death in it as it is leavened throughout with sin must stink in my nostrils and I come to a detestation of all those sins which have putrified her And I must not be afraid to accuse my selfe to condemne my selfe to humble my selfe lest I become a scorne to men Augusâ Nemo me derideat ab eo medico aegrum sanari à quo sibi praestitum est ne aegrotaret Let no man despise me or wonder at me that I am so humbled under the hand of God or that I fly to God as to my Physitian when I am sick since the same God that hath recovered me as my Physitian when I was sick hath been his Physitian too and kept him from being sick who but for that Physitian had been as ill as I was At least he must be his Physitian if ever he come to be sick and come to know that he is sick and come to a right desire to be well Spirituall death was before bodily sinne before the wages of sin God hath provided a resurrection for both deaths but first for the first This is the first resurrection Reconciliation to God and the returning of the soule of our soule Grace in his Church by his Word and his seales there Now every repentance is not a resurrection It is rather a waking out of a dreame then a rising to a new life Nay it is rather a startling in our sleep then any awaking at all Ephes 5.14 Esay â0 1 to have a sudden remorse a sudden flash and no constant perseverance Awake thou that sleepest sayes the Apostle out of the Prophet First awake come to a sense of thy state and then arise from the dead sayes he from the practise of dead works and then Christ shall give thee light life and strength to walk in new wayes It is a long work and hath many steps Awake arise and walke and therefore set out betimes At the last day in those which shall be found alive upon the earth we say there shall be a sudden death and a sudden resurrection In raptu in transitu in ictu oculi In an instant in the twinckling of an eye but do not thou trust to have this first Resurrection In raptu in transitu in ictu oculi In thy last passage upon thy death-bed when the twinckling of the eye must be the closing of thine eyes But as we assign to glorified bodies after the last Resurrection certaine Dotes as we call them in the Schoole certaine Endowments so labour thou to finde those endowments in thy soule here if thou beest come to this first Resurrection Amongst those Endowments we assigne Subtilitatem Agilitatem The glorified bodie is become more subtile more nimble not encumbred not disable for any motion that it would make So hath that soule which is come to this first Resurrection by grace a spirituall agility a holy nimblenesse in it that it can slide by tentations and passe through tentations and never be polluted follow a calling without taking infection by the ordinary tentations of that calling So have those glorified bodies Claritatem a brightnesse upon them from the face of God and so have these soules which are come to this first resurrection a sun in themselves an inherent light by which they can presently distinguish betweene action and action what must what may what must not bee done But of all the endowments of the glorified body we consider most Impassibilitatem That that body shall suffer nothing and is sure that it shall suffer nothing And that which answers that endowment of the body most in this soule that is come to this first resurrection is as the Apostle speaks That neither persecution sicknesse nor death Rom. 8. shall separate her from Christ Iesus In Heaven we doe not say that our bodies shall devest their mortality so as that naturally they could not dye
it selfe retaine an Almighty power and an effectuall purpose to deliver his soule from death by a glorious a victorious and a Triumphant Resurrection So it is true Christ Josus dyed else none of us could live but yet hee dyed not so as is intended in this question Not by the necessity of any Law not by the violence of any Executioner not by the separation of his best soule if we may so call it the God-head nor by such a separation of his naturall and humane soule as that he would not or could not or did not resume it againe If then this question had beene asked of Angels at first Quis Angelus what Angel is that that stands and shall not fall though as many of those Angels as were disposed to that answer Erimus similes Altissimo We will be like God and stand of our selves without any dependance upon him did fall yet otherwise they might have answered the question fairly All we may stand if we will If this question had been asked of Adam in Paradise Quis homo though when he harkned to her who had harkned to that voyce Erit is sicut Dii You shall be as Gods he fell too yet otherwise he might have answered the question fairly so I may live and not dye if I will so if this question be asked of us now as the question implies the generall penalty as it considers us onely as the sons of Adam we have no other answer but that by Adam sin entred upon all and death by sin upon all as it implies the state of them onely whom Christ at his second comming shall finde upon earth wee have no other answer but a modest non liquet we are not sure whether we shall dye then or no wee are onely sure it shall be so as most conduces to our good and Gods glory but as the question implies us to be members of our Head Christ Jesus as it was a true answer in him it is true in every one of us adopted in him Here is a man that liveth and shall not see death Death and life are in the power of the tongue sayes Solomon in another sense Prov. 18.21 and in this sense too If my tongue suggested by my heart and by my heart rooted in faith can say Non moriar non moriar If I can say and my conscience doe not tell me that I belye mine owne state if I can say That the blood of my Saviour runs in my veines That the breath of his Spirit quickens all my purposes that all my deaths have their Resurrection all my sins their remorses all my rebellions their reconciliations I will harken no more after this question as it is intended de morte naturali of a naturall death I know I must die that death what care I nor de morte spirituali the death of sin I know I doe and shall die so why despaire I but I will finde out another death mortem raptus 2 Cor. 12. a death of rapture Acts 9. Greg. and of extasie that death which S. Paul died more then once The death which S. Gregory speaks of Divina contemplatio quoddam sepulchrum animae The contemplation of God and heaven is a kinde of buriall and Sepulchre and rest of the soule and in this death of rapture and extasie in this death of the Contemplation of my interest in my Saviour I shall finde my self and all my sins enterred and entombed in his wounds and like a Lily in Paradise out of red earth I shall see my soule rise out of his blade in a candor and in an innocence contracted there acceptable in the sight of his Father Though I have been dead 1 Tim. 5.6 in the delight of sin so that that of S. Paul That a Widow that liveth in pleasure is dead while she liveth be true of my soule that so viduatur gratiâ mortuâ when Christ is dead not for the soule but in the soule that the soule hath no sense of Christ Viduatur anima the soul is a Widow and no Dowager she hath lost her husband and hath nothing from him Esay 28.15 yea though I have made a Covenant with death and have been at an agreement with hell and in a vain confidence have said to my self that when the overflowing scourge shall passe through it shall not come to me yet God shall annull that covenant he shall bring that scourge that is some medicinall correction upon me and so give me a participation of all the stripes of his son he shall give me a sweat that is some horrour and religious feare and so give me a participation of his Agony he shall give me a diet perchance want and penury and so a participation of his fasting and if he draw blood if he kill me all this shall be but Mors raptus a death of rapture towards him into a heavenly and assured Contemplation that I have a part in all his passion yea such an intire interest in his whole passion as though all that he did or suffered had been done and suffered for my soul alone 2 Cor. 6.9 Quasi moriens ecce vivo some shew of death I shall have for I shall sin and some shew of death again for I shall have a dissolution of this Tabernacle Sed ecce vivo still the Lord of life will keep me alive and that with an Ecce Behold I live that is he will declare and manifest my blessed state to me I shall not sit in the shadow of death no nor I shall not sit in darknesse his gracious purpose shall evermore be upon me and I shall ever discerne that gracious purpose of his I shall not die nor I shall not doubt that I shall If I be dead within doores If I have sinned in my heart why Suscitavit in domo Mar. 9.23 Christ gave a Resurrection to the Rulers daughter within doores in the house If I be dead in the gate If I have sinned in the gates of my soule in mine Eies Luke 7.11 or Eares or Hands in actuall sins why Suscitavit in porta Christ gave a Resurrection to the young man at the gate of Naim If I be dead in the grave in customary and habituall sins why John 11. Suscitavit in Sepulchro Christ gave a Resurrection to Lazarus in the grave too If God give me mortem raptus a death of rapture of extasie of fervent Contemplation of Christ Jesus a Transfusion a Transplantation a Transmigration a Transmutation into him for good digestion brings alwaies assimilation certainly if I come to a true meditation upon Christ I come to a conformity with Christ this is principally that Pretiosa mors Sanctorum Psal 116.15 Pretious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his Saints by which they are dead and buryed and risen again in Christ Jesus pretious is that death by which we apply that pretious blood to our selves and grow strong
as all sin is a violating of God God being the God of mercy and the God of life because it deprives us of both those of mercy and of life in opposition to mercy Ephes 2.3 Rom. 5.12 it is called anger and wrath We are all by nature the children of wrath And in opposition to life it is called death Death enters by sin and death is gone over all men And as originall sin hath relation to our souls It is called that indeleble foulnesse and uncleannesse which God discovers in us all Jer. 2.22 Though thou wash thee with nitre and take thee much sope yet thine iniquity is marked before me saith the Lord And which every man findes in himself as Iob did If I wash my self in Snow-water Job 9. and purge my hands never so cleane yet mine own clothes shall make me filthy As it hath relation to our bodies so it is not only called Lex carnis A law which the flesh cannot disobey And Lex in membris A law written and imprinted naturally in our bodies and inseparably inherent there but it is a law that hath got Posse comitatus All our strength and munition into her own hands all our powers and faculties to execute her purposes against us and as the Apostle expresses it fully Hath force in our members to bring forth fruits unto death Rom. 7.5 Consider our originall weaknesse as God lookes upon it so it is inexcusable sin consider it as our soules suffer by it so it is an indeleble foulnesse consider it as our bodies contribute to it and harbour it and retain it and so it is an unquenchable fire and a brand of hell it self It hath banished me out of my self It is no more I that do any thing but sin that dwelleth in me It doth not only dwell but reign in these mortall bodies not only reign but tyrannize and lead us captives under the law of sin which is in our members Ver. 23. So that we have utterly lost Bonum possibilitatis for as men we are out of all possibility not only of that victorious and triumphant gratulation and acclamation to our selves as for a delivery I thank God through Iesus Christ but we cannot come to that sense of our misery Ver. ult as to cry out in the Apostles words immediately preceding O wretched man that I am who shall deliver me from the body of this death Now as this death hath invaded every part and faculty of man understanding and will and all for though originall sin seem to be contracted without our will yet Sicut omnium natura ita omnium voluntates fuere originaliter in Adam sayes S. Augustine As the whole nature of mankinde and so of every particular man was in Adam so also were the faculties and so the will of every particular man in him so this death hath invaded every particular man Death went over all men for as much as all men had sinned And therefore they that do blasphemously exempt some persons from sin they set them not above the Law but without the Law They out-law them in taking from them the benefit of the new Law the Gospel and of the author of that Law Christ Jesus who came a Physitian to the sick and was sent only to save sinners for them that are none it is well that they need no Redeemer for if they did they could have no part in ours for he came only to redeem sinners and they are none God brought his Son out of Aegypt not out of Goshen in Aegypt not out of a priviledged place in Aegypt but out of Aegypt God brought his Son Christ Jesus out of the Virgin Mary without sin but he brought not her so out of her mother If they might be beleeved that the blessed Virgin and Iohn Baptist and the Prophet Ieremy were without all sin they would goe about at last to make us beleeve that Ignatius were so too For us in the highest of our sanctification still let us presse with that Dimitte nobis debita nostra O Lord forgive us our trespasses and confesse that we needed forgivenesse even for the sins which we have not done Dimissa fateor quae mea sponte feci quae te duce non feci sayes S. Augustine I confesse I need thy mercy both for the sins which I have done and for those which if thy grace had not restrained me I should have done And therefore if another think he hath scaped those sins that I have committed August Non me derideat ab eo medico aegrum sanari à quoei praestitum ne aegrotaret Let him not despise me who am recovered since it is the same physitian who hath wrought upon us both though by a diverse method for he hath preserved him and he hath recovered me for for himselfe we say still with the same Father Perdiderat bonum possibilitatis As well he as I had lost all possibility of standing or rising after our fall This was our first branch Quid homo potest The universall impotency And our second is That this is In homine In man no man as man can make this profession That Iesus is the Lord and therefore we consider first wherein and how far man is disabled In every Age some men have attributed to the power of nature more then a naturall man can doe and yet no man doth so much as a naturall man might doe For the over-valuing of nature and her power there are impressions in the Fathers themselves which whether mis-understood by the Readers or by the Authors have led and prevailed much When Iustin Martyr sayes Ratio pro fide Graecis Barbaris That rectified reason did the same office in the Gentiles as faith did in the Christians when Clement sayes Philosophia per sese justi ficavit Graecos That the Gentiles to whom the Law and Gospell was not communicated were justified by their Philosophy when Chrysostome sayes Satis fuit Gentibus abstinuisse ab Idololatria It was sufficient for the Gentiles if they did not worship false gods though they understood not the true when S. Augustine sayes Rectè facis nihil quaerere ampliùs quà m quod docet ratio He doth well that seeks no farther then his reason leads them these impressions in the Fathers have transported later men farther so far as that Andradius in the Romane Church saves all honest Philosophers that lived morally well without Christ And Tostatus takes all impediments out of their way That originall sin is absolutely remitted to them In prima bona operatione in charitate In their first good morall work that they do So that they are in an easier way then we who are but Christians for in the opinion of Tostatus himselfe and that whole Church we cannot be delivered from originall sin but by baptisme nothing lesse then a Sacrament would deliver us from originall sin and any good worke shall deliver any of the Gentiles
parts of this text and to all that the Holy Ghost is to do upon the world for howsoever he may rebuke the world of sin he cannot be said to rebuke it of righteousnesse and of judgement according to S. Augustines later interpretation of these words for in one place of his workes he takes this word Reproofe in the harder sense for rebuke but in another in the milder we have and must pursue the second signification of the word That the Holy Ghost shall reprove the world of sin of righteousnesse of judgement by convincing the world by making the world confesse and acknowledge all that that the Holy Ghost intends in all these And this manifestation and this conviction in these three will be our parts In the first of which That the Holy Ghost shall Reprove that is convince the world of sin we shall first looke how all the world is under sin and then whether the Holy Ghost being come have convinced all the world made all the world see that it is so and in these two inquisitions we shall determine that first branch For the first for of the other two we shall reach you the boughes anon 1 Part. Mundus sub peccato when you come to gather the fruit and lay open the particulars then when we come to handle them That all the world is under sin and knowes it not for this Reproofe Elenchus is sayes the Philosopher Syllogismus contra contraria opinantem An argument against him that is of a contrary opinion we condole first the misery of this Ignorance for August Quid miserius misero non miser ante seipsum What misery can be so great as to be ignorant insensible of our owne misery Every act done in such an ignorance as we might overcome is a new sin And it is not onely a new practise from the Devill but it is a new punishment from God August Iussisti Domine sic est ut poena sit sibi omnis inordinatus animus Every sinner is an Executioner upon himselfe and he is so by Gods appointment who punishes former sins with future This then is the miserable state of the world It might know and does not that it is wholly under an inundation a deluge of sin For sin is a transgression of some Law which he that sins may know himselfe to be bound by For if any man could be exempt from all Law he were impeccable he could not sin And if he could not possibly have any knowledge of the Law it were no Law to him Now under the transgression of what Law lyes all the World Lex Humana For the positive Laws of the States in which we live a man may keepe them according to the intention of them that made those Laws which is all that is required in any humane Law to keepe it if not according to the letter yet according to the intention of the Law-maker Nay it is not onely possible Seneca but easie to do so Angusta innocentia ad legem bonum esse sayes the morall mans holy Ghost Seneca It is but a narrow and a shallow honesty to be no honester then the Law forces him to be Thus then in violating the Laws of the State all the World is not under sin If we passe from Laws meerely humane Ceremonialia though in truth scarce any just Law is so meerely humane for God that commands obedience to humane Laws hath a hand in the making of them to those ceremoniall and judiciall Laws which the Jews received immediately from God in which respect they may be called divine Laws though they were but locall and but temporary which were in such a number as that though penall Laws in some States be so many and so heavy as that they serve onely for snares and springes upon the people yet they are no where equall to the ceremoniall and judiciall Laws Psal â 6 which lay upon the Jews yet even for these Laws S. Paul sayes of himselfe That touching that righteousnesse which is in the Law he was blamelesse Thus therefore in violating ceremoniall or judiciall Laws all the World is not under sin both because all the World was not bound by that Law and some in the World did keepe it But in two other respects it is Lex Naturae first That there is a Law of Nature that passes through all the World a Law in the heart and of the breach of this no man can be alwayes ignorant As every man hath a devill in himselfe Chrysost Spontaneum Daemonem A Devill of his owne making some particular sin that transports him so every man hath a kinde of God in himselfe such a conscience as sometimes reproves him Carry we this consideration a little higher and we may see herein some verification at least some usefull application of Origens extreme error Origen He thought that at last after infinite revolutions as all other substances should be even the Devill himselfe should be as it were sucked and swallowed into God and there should remaine nothing at last as there was nothing else at first but onely God not by an annihilation of the Creature that any thing should come to nothing but by this absorption by a transmigration of all Creatures into God that God should be all and all should be God So in our case That which is the sinners devill becomes his God That very sin which hath possessed him by the excesse of that sin or by some losse or paine or shame following that sin occasions that reproofe and remorse that withdraws him from that sin So all the world is under sin because they have a Law in themselves and a light in themselves And it is so in a second respect Originale peecatum Esay 1.4 Wisd 2.23 That all being derived from Adam Adams sin is derived upon all Onely that one man that was not naturally deduced from Adam Christ Jesus was guilty of no sin All others are subject to that malediction Vae genti peccatrici Wo to this sinfull World God made man Inexterminabilem sayes the Wiseman undisseisible unexpellible such as he could not be thrust out of his Immortality whether he would or no August for that was mans first immortality Posse non mori That he needed not have dyed When man killed himselfe and threw upon all his posterity the morte morieris that we must dye and that Death is Stipendium peccati The wages of sin and that Anima quae peccaverit Ezech. 18.4 ipsa morietur that That soule and onely that soule that sins shall dye Since we see the punishment fall upon all we are sure the fault cleaves to all too all do dye therefore all do sin And though this Originall sin that over-flowes us all may in some sense be called peccatum involuntarium a sin without any elicite act of the Will for so it must needs be in Children and so properly no sin yet as
constitutions or onely a testimony of outward conformity which should be signaculum viaticum a seale of pardon for past sins and a provision of grace against future But he that is well prepared for this strips himselfe of all these vae desiderantibus of all these comminations that belong to carnall desires and he shall be as Daniel was vir desideriorum a man of chast and heavenly desires onely hee shall desire that day of the Lord as that day signifies affliction here with David Psal 119.17 Bonum est mihi quòd humiliasti me I am mended by my sicknesse enriched by my poverty and strengthened by my weaknesse and with S. Bern. desire Irascar is mihi Domine O Lord be angry with me for if thou chidest me not thou considerest me not if I taste no bitternesse I have no Physick If thou correct me not I am not thy son And he shall desire that day of the Lord as that day signifies the last judgement with the desire of the Martyrs under the Altar Vsquequo Domine How long O Lord ere thou execute judgement And he shall desire this day of the Lord as this day is the day of his own death with S. Pauls desire Cupio dissolvi I desire to be dissolved and to be with Christ And when this day of the Lord as it is the day of the Lords resurrection shall come his soule shall be satified as with marrow and with fatnesse in the body and bloud of his Saviour and in the participation of all his merits as intirely as if all that Christ Jesus hath said and done and suffered had beene said and done and suffered for his soule alone Enlarge our daies O Lord to that blessed day prepare us before that day seale to us at that day ratifie to us after that day all the daies of our life an assurance in that Kingdome which thy Son our Saviour hath purchased for us with the inestimable price of his incorruptible bloud To which glorious Son of God c. SERMON XV. Preached at VVhite-hall March 8. 1621. 1 COR. 15.26 The last Enemie that shall be destroyed is Death THis is a Text of the Resurrection and it is not Easter yet but it is Easter Eve All Lent is but the Vigill the Eve of Easter to so long a Festivall as never shall end the Resurrection wee may well begin the Eve betimes Forty yeares long was God grieved for that Generation which he loved let us be content to humble our selves forty daies to be fitter for that glory which we expect In the Booke of God there are many Songs there is but one Lamentation And that one Song of Solomon nay some one of Davids hundred and fiftie Psalmes is longer then the whole booke of Lamentations Make way to an everlasting Easter by a short Lent to an undeterminable glory by a temporary humiliation You must weepe these teares teares of contrition teares of mortification before God will wipe all teares from your eyes You must dye this death this death of the righteous the death to sin before this last enemy Death shal be destroyed in you and you made partakers of everlasting life in soule and body too Our division shall be but a short Divisio and our whole exercise but a larger paraphrase upon the words The words imply first That the Kingdome of Christ which must be perfected must be accomplished because all things must be subdued unto him is not yet perfected not accomplished yet Why what lacks it It lacks the bodies of Men which yet lie under the dominion of another When we shall also see by that Metaphor which the Holy Ghost chooseth to expresse that in which is that there is Hostis and so Militia an enemie and a warre and therefore that Kingdome is not perfected that he places perfect happinesse and perfect glory in perfect peace But then how far is any State consisting of many men how far the state and condition of any one man in particular from this perfect peace How truly a warfare is this life if the Kingdome of Heaven it selfe have not this peace in perfection And it hath it not Quia hostis because there is an enemy though that enemy shall not overthrow it yet because it plots and workes and machinates and would overthrow it this is a defect in that peace Who then is this enemy An enemy that may thus far thinke himselfe equall to God that as no man ever saw God and lived so no man ever saw this enemy and lived for it is Death And in this may thinke himselfe in number superiour to God that many men live who shall never see God But Quis homo is Davids question which was never answered Is there any man that lives and shall not see death An enemie that is so well victualled against man as that he cannot want as long as there are men for he feeds upon man himselfe And so well armed against Man as that he cannot want Munition while there are men for he fights with our weapons our owne faculties nay our calamities yea our owne pleasures are our death And therefore he is Novissimus hostis saith the Text The last enemy We have other Enemies Satan about us sin within us but the power of both those this enemie shall destroy but when they are destroyed he shall retaine a hostile and triumphant dominion over us But Vsque quo Domine How long O Lord for ever No Abolebitur wee see this Enemy all the way and all the way we feele him but we shall see him destroyed Abolebitur But how or when At and by the resurrection of our bodies for as upon my expiration my transmigration from hence as soone as my soule enters into Heaven I shall be able to say to the Angels I am of the same stuffe as you spirit and spirit and therefore let me stand with you and looke upon the face of your God and my God so at the Resurrection of this body I shall be able to say to the Angel of the great Councell the Son of God Christ Jesus himselfe I am of the same stuffe as you Body and body Flesh and flesh and therefore let me sit downe with you at the right hand of the Father in an everlasting security from this last enemie who is now destroyed death And in these seven steps we shall passe apace and yet cleerely through this paraphrase We begin with this Vestig 1. Quia desunt Corpora That the Kingdome of Heaven hath not all that it must have to a consummate perfection till it have bodies too In those infinite millions of millions of generations in which the holy blessed and glorious Trinity enjoyed themselves one another and no more they thought not their glory so perfect but that it might receive an addition from creatures and therefore they made a world a materiall world a corporeall world they would have bodies In that noble part of that world which Moses
Lord and thou only knowest Which is also the sense of those words Heb. 11.35 Others were tortured and accepted not a deliverance that they might obtain a better Resurrection A present deliverance had been a Resurrection but to be the more sure of a better hereafter they lesse respected that According to that of our Saviour Mat. 10.39 He that findes hi life shall lose it He that fixeth himself too earnestly upon this Resurrection shall lose a better This is then the propheticall Resurrection for the future but a future in this world That if Rulers take counsell against the Lord the Lord shall have their counsell in derision If they take armes against the Lord the Lord shall break their Bows and cut their Spears in sunder Psal 2.4 If they hisse and gnash their teeth and say we have swallowed him up If we be made their by-word their parable their proverb their libell the theame and burden of their songs as Iob complaines yet whatsoever fall upon me dmage distresse scorn or Hostis ultimus death it self that death which we consider here death of possessions death of estimation death of health death of contentment yet Abolebitur it sahll be destroyed in a Resurrection in the return of the light of Gods countenance upon me even in this world And this is the first Resurrection But this first Resurrection 2. Apeecatis which is but from temporall calamities doth so little concerne a true and established Christian whether it come or no for still Iobs Basis is his Basis and his Centre Etiamsi occiderit though he kill me kill me kill me in all these severall deaths and give me no Resurrection in this world yet I will trust in him as that as though this first resurrection were no resurrection not to be numbred among the rersurrections S. Iohn calls that which we call the second which is from sin the first resurrection Blessed and holy is be who hath part in the firstresurrection And this resurrection Christimplies Apoe 20.6 John 5.25 when he saies Verely verely I say unto you the houre is comming and now is when the dead shall heare the ovyce of the Son of God and they that heare it shall live That is by the voyce of the word of life the Gospell of repentance they shall have a spirituall resurrection to a new life S. Austine and Lactantius both were so hard in beleeving the roundnesse of the earth that they thought that those homines pensiles as they call them those men that hang upon the other cheek of the face of the earth those Antipodes whose feet are directly against ours must necessarily fall from the earth if the earth be round But whither should they fall If they fall they must fall upwards for heaven is above them too as it is to us So if the spirituall Antipodes of this world the Sons of God that walk with feet opposed in wayes contrary to the sons of men shall be said to fall when they fall to repentance to mortification to a religious negligence and contempt of the pleasures of this life truly their fall is up wards they fall towards heaven God gives breath unto the people upon the earth sayes the Prophet Et spiritum his qui calcant illam Esay 45.5 Our Translation carries that no farther but that God gives breath to people upon the earth and spirit to them that walk thereon But Irenaeus makes a usefull difference between afflatus and spiritus that God gives breath to all upon earth but his spirit onely to them who tread in a religious scorne upon earthly things Is it not a strange phrase of the Apostle Mortifie your members fornication uncleanenesse inordinate affections He does not say mortifie your members against those sins Col. 3.5 but he calls those very sins the members of our bodies as though we were elemented and compacted of nothing but sin till we come to this resurrection this mortification which is indeed our vivification Till we beare in our body the dying of our Lord Iesus that the life also of Iesus may be made manifest in our body 2 Cor. 4.10 God may give the other resurrection from worldly misery and not give this A widow may be rescued from the sorrow and solitarinesse of that state by having a plentifull fortune there she hath one resurrection but the widow that liveth in pleasure is dead while she lives 1 Tim. 5.6 shee hath no second resurrection and so in that sense even this Chappell may be a Church-yard men may stand and sit and kneele and yet be dead and any Chamber alone may be a Golgotha a place of dead mens bones of men not come to this resurrection which is the renunciation of their beloved sin It was inhumanely said by Vitellius upon the death of Otho when he walkedin the field of carcasses where the battle was fought O how sweet a perfume is a dead enemy But it is a divine saying to thy soule O what a savor of life unto life is the death of a beloved sin What an Angelicall comfort was that to Ioseph and Mary in Aegypt after the death of Herod Arise for they are dead that sought the childes life Mat. 2.20 And even that comfort is multiplied upon thy soul when the Spirit of God saies to thee Arise come to this resurrection for that Herod that sin that sought the life the everlasting life of this childe the childe of God thy soule is dead dead by repentance dead by mortification The highest cruelty that story relates or Poets imagine is when a persecutor will not afford a miserable man death not be so mercifull to him as to take his life Thou hast made thy sin thy soule thy life inanimated all thy actions all thy purposes with that sin Miserere animatuae be so mercifull to thy selfe as to take away that life by mortification by repentance and thou art come to this Resurrection and thugh a man may have the former resurrection and not this peace in his fortune and yet not peace in his conscience yet whosoever hath this second hath an infallible seale of the third resurrection too to a fulnesse of glory in body as well as in soule For Spiritus maturam efficit carnem capacem incorruptelae this resurrection by the spirit Irenaeus mellowes the body of man and makes that capable of everlasting glory which is the last weapon by which the last enemy death shall be destroyed A morte Upon that pious ground that all Scriptures were written for us as we are Christians that all Scriptures conduce to the proofe of Christ and of the Christian state 3. A morte it is the ordinary manner of the Fathers to make all that David speaks historically of himselfe and all that the Prophet speaks futurely of the Jews if those place may be referred to Christ to referre them to Christ primarily and but by reflection and in a second
incorruptionem sicut anima per fidem Because our bodie shall be regenerated by glory there as our soules are by faith here Therefore Tertul. cals the Resurrection Exemplum spei nostrae The Originall out of which we copy out our hope and Clavem sepulchroruÌ nostrorum How hard soever my grave be locked yet with that key with the application of the Resurrection of Christ Jesus it will open And they are all names which expresse this well which Tertullian gives Christ Vadem obsidem fidejussorem resurrectionis nostrae That he is the pledge the hostage the surety of our Resurrection So doth that also which is said in the Schoole Sicut Adam forma morientium Theoph. it a Christus forma resurgentium Without Adam there had beene no such thing as death without Christ no such thing as a Resurrection But ascendit ille effractor as the Prophet speaks The breaker is gone up before and they have passed through the gate that is assuredly Mich. 2.13 infallibly they shall passe But what needs all this heat all this animosity all this vehemence about the Resurrection May not man be happy enough in heaven though his body never come thither upon what will ye ground the Resurrection upon the Omnipotence of God Asylum haereticorum est Omnipotentia Dei which was well said and often repeated amongst the Ancients The Omnipotence of God hath alwaies been the Sanctuary of Heretiques that is alwaies their refuge in all their incredible doctrines God is able to do it can do it You confesse the Resurrection is a miracle And miracles are not to be multiplied nor imagined without necessity and what necessity of bodies in Heaven Beloved we make the ground and foundation of the Resurrection to be not meerely the Omnipotency of God for God will not doe all that he can doe but the ground is Omnipotens voluntas Dei revelata The Almighty will of God revealed by him to us And therefore Christ joynes both these together Erratis Ye erre Mat. 22.29 not knowing the Scriptures nor the power of God that is not considering the power of God as it is revealed in the Scriptures for there is our foundation of this Doctrine we know out of the Omnipotence of God it may be and we know out of the Scriptures it must be That works upon our faith this upon our reason That it is man that must be saved man that must be damned and to constitute a man there must be a body as well as a soule Nay the Immortality of the soule will not so well lie in proofe without a resuming of the body For upon those words of the Apostle If there were no Resurrection we were the miserablest of all men the Schoole reasons reasonably Naturally the soule and body are united when they are separated by Death it is contrary to nature which nature still affects this union and consequently the soule is the lesse perfect for this separation and it is not likely that the perfect naturall state of the soule which is to be united to the body should last but three or foure score yeares and in most much lesse and the unperfect state that in the separation should last eternally for ever so that either the body must be beleeved to live againe or the soule beleeved to die Never therefore dispute against thine own happinesse never say God asks the heart that is the soule and therefore rewards the soule or punishes the soule and hath no respect to the body Nec auferamus cogitationes a collegio carnis saies Tertullian Never go about to separate the thoughts of the heart from the colledge from the fellowship of the body Siquidem in carne cum carne per carnem agitur quicquid ab anima agitur All that the soule does it does in and with and by the body And therefore saies he also Caro abluitur ut anima emaculetur The body is washed in baptisme but it is that the soule might be made cleane Caro ungitur ut anima consecretur In all unctions whether that which was then in use in Baptisme or that which was in use at our transmigration and passage out of this world the body was anointed that the soule might be consecrated Caro signatur saies Tertullian still ut anima muniatur The body is signed with the Crosse that the soule might be armed against tentations And againe Caro de Corpore Christi vescitur ut anima de Deo saginetur My body received the body of Christ that my soule might partake of his merits He extends it into many particulars and summes up all thus Non possunt in mercede separari quae opera conjungunt These two Body and Soule cannot be separated for ever which whilst they are together concurre in all that either of them doe Never thinke it presumption saies S. Gregory Sperare in te quod in se exhibuit Deus homo To hope for that in thy selfe which God admitted when he tooke thy nature upon him And God hath made it saies he more easie then so for thee to beleeve it because not onely Christ himselfe but such men as thou art did rise at the Resurrection of Christ And therefore when our bodies are dissolved and liquefied in the Sea putrified in the earth resolv'd to ashes in the fire macerated in the ayre Velut in vasa sua transfunditur caro nostra Tertul. make account that all the world is Gods cabinet and water and earth and fire and ayre are the proper boxes in which God laies up our bodies for the Resurrection Curiously to dispute against our owne Resurrection is seditiously to dispute against the dominion of Jesus who is not made Lord by the Resurrection if he have no subjects to follow him in the same way Wee beleeve him to be Lord therefore let us beleeve his and our Resurrection This blessed day Ille Iohn 2.19 Iohn 10.17 which we celebrate now he rose he rose so as none before did none after ever shall rise He rose others are but raised Destroy this Temple saies he and I will raise it I without imploying any other Architect I lay downe my life saies he the Jewes could not have killed him when he was alive If he were alive here now the Jesuits could not kill him here now except his being made Christ and Lord an anointed King have made him more open to them I have a power to lay it downe saies he and I have a power to take it up againe This day Nos Iohn 2.3 we celebrate his Resurrection this day let us celebrate our owne Our own not our one Resurrection for we need many Upon those words of our Saviour to Nicodemus Oportet denuo nasci speaking of the necessity of Baptisme Non solum denuo sed tertiò nasci oportet saies S. Bernard He must be born againe and againe againe by baptisme for Originall sin and for actuall sin againe by repentance Infoelix homo ego
the figurative exposition of those places of Scripture which require that way oft to be figuratively expounded that Expositor is not to be blamed who not destroying the literall sense proposes such a figurative sense as may exalt our devotion and advance our edification And as no one of those Expositors did ill in proposing one such sense so neither do those Expositors ill who with those limitations that it destroy not the literall sense that it violate not the analogy of faith that it advance devotion do propose another and another such sense So doth that preacher well also who to the same end and within the same limit makes his use of both of all those expositions because all may stand and it is not evident in such figurative speeches which is the literall that is the principall intention of the Holy Ghost Of these words of this first Resurrection which is not the last of the body but a spirituall Resurrection there are three expositions authorized by persons of good note in the Church Alcazar First that this first Resurrection is a Resurrection from that low estate to which persecution had brought the Church and so it belongs to this whole State and Church August nostri and Blessed are we who have our part in this first Resurrection Secondly that it is a Resurrection from the death of sin of actuall and habituall sin so it belongs to every particular penitent soul and Blessed art thou blessed am I if we have part in this first Resurrection And then thirdly because after this Resurrection it is said That we shall raign with Christ a thousand yeares Ribera which is a certain for an uncertain a limited for a long time it hath also been taken for the state of the soul in heaven after it is parted from the body by death for though the soul cannot be said properly to have a Resurrection because properly it cannot die yet to be thus delivered from the danger of a second death by future sin to be removed from the distance and latitude and possibility of tentations in this world is by very good Expositors called a Resurrection and so it belongs to all them who are departed in the Lord Blessed and holy is he that hath part in this first Resurrection And then the occasion of the day which we celebrate now being the Resurrection of our Lord and Saviour Christ Jesus invites me to propose a fourth sense or rather use of the words not indeed as an exposition of the words but as a convenient exaltation of our devotion which is that this first Resurrection should be the first fruits of the dead The first Rising is the first Riser Christ Jesus for as Christ sayes of himself that He is the Resurrection so he is the first Resurrection the root of the Resurrection He upon whom our Resurrection all ours all our kindes of Resurrections are founded and so it belongs to State and Church and particular persons alive and dead Blessed and holy is he that hath part in this first Resurrection And these foure considerations of the words A Resurrection from persecution by deliverance a Resurrection from sin by grace a Resurrection from tentation to sin by the way of death to the glory of heaven and all these in the first Resurrection in him that is the roote of all in Christ Jesus These foure steps these foure passages these foure transitions will be our quarter Clock for this houres exercise First then 1. Part. From persecution we consider this first Resurrection to be a Resurrection from a persecution for religion for the profession of the Gospell to a forward glorious passage of the Gospell And so a learned Expositor in the Romane Church carries the exposition of this whole place though not indeed the ordinary way yet truly not incommodiously not improperly upon that deliverance which God afforded his Church from those great persecutions which had otherwise supplanted her in her first planting in the primitive times Then sayes he and in part well towards the letter of the place The devill was chained for a thousand yeares and then we began to raign with Christ for a thousand yeares reckoning the time from that time when God destroyed Idolatry more fully and gave peace and rest and free exercise of the Christian religion under the Christian Emperours till Antichrist in the height of his rage shall come and let this thousand yeares prisoner Satan loose and so interrupt our thousand yeares raign with Christ with new persecutions In that persecution was the death of the Church in the eye of the world In that deliverance by Christian Emperours was the Resurrection of the Church And in Gods protecting her ever since is the chaining up of the devill and our raigning with Christ for those thousand yeares And truly beloved if we consider the low the very low estate of Christians in those persecutions tryed ten times in the fire ten severall and distinct persecutions in which ten persecutions God may seem to have had a minde to deale eavenly with the world and to lay as much upon his people whom he would try then as he had laid upon others for his people before and so to equall the ten plagues of Aegypt in ten persecutions in the primitive Church if we consider that low that very low estate we may justly call their deliverance a Resurrection For as God said to Jerusalem I found thee in thy blood and washed thee so Christ Jesus found the Church the Christian Church in her blood and washed her and wiped her washed her in his own blood which washes white and wiped her with the garments of his own righteousnesse that she might be acceptable in the sight of God and then wiped all teares from her eyes took away all occasions of complaint and lamentation that she might be glorious in the eyes of man and chearefull in her own such was her Resurrection We wonder and justly at the effusion at the pouring out of blood in the sacrifices of the old Law that that little countrey scarce bigger then some three of our Shires should spend more cattle in some few dayes sacrifice at some solemnities and every yeare in the sacrifices of the whole yeare then perchance this kingdome could give to any use Seas of blood and yet but brooks tuns of blood and yet but basons compared with the sacrifices the sacrifices of the blood of men in the persecutions of the Primitive Church For every Oxe of the Jew the Christian spent a man and for every Sheep and Lamb a Mother and her childe and for every heard of cattle sometimes a towne of Inhabitants sometimes a Legion of Souldiers all martyred at once so that they did not stand to fill their Martyrologies with names but with numbers they had not roome to say such a day such a Bishop such a day such a Generall but the day of 500. the day of 5000. Martyrs and the martyrdome of
accrues to us we shall see that though it be presented by Reason before and illustrated by Reason after yet the roote and foundation thereof is in Faith though Reason may chafe the wax yet Faith imprints the seale for the Resurrection is not a conclusion out of naturall Reason but it is an article of supernaturall Faith and though you assent to me now speaking of the Resurrection yet that is not out of my Logick nor out of my Rhetorique but out of that Character and Ordinance which God hath imprinted in me in the power and efficacy whereof I speak unto you as often as I speak out of this place As I say we determine our first part in this How the assurance of this Resurrection accrues to us so when we descend to our second part That is the consolation which we receive whilest we are In via here upon our way in this world out of the contemplation of that Resurrection to glory which we shall have In patria at home in heaven and how these two Resurrections are arguments and evidences of one another we shall look upon some correspondencies and resemblances between naturall death and spirituall death by sin and between the glorious Resurrection of the body and the gracious Resurrection of the soule that so having brought bodily death and bodily Resurrection and spirituall death and spirituall Resurrection by their comparison into your consideration you may anon depart somewhat the better edified in both and so enjoy your present Resurrection of the soule by Grace with more certainty and expect the future Resurrection of the body to glory with the more alacrity and chearfulnesse Though therefore we may hereafter take just occasion of entring into a war 1. Part. in vindicating and redeeming these words seased and seduced by our adversaries to testifie for their Purgatory yet this day being a day of peace and reconciliation with God and man we begin with peace with that wherein all agree That these words Else what shall they do that are baptized for dead If the dead rise not at all why are they baptized for dead must necessarily receive such an Exposition as must be an argument for the Resurrection This baptisme pro mortuis for dead must be such a baptisme as must prove that the Resurrection For that the Apostle repeats twice in these few words Else sayes he that is if there be no Resurrection why are men thus baptized And again if the dead rise not why are men thus baptized Indeed the whole Chapter is a continuall argument for the Resurrection from the beginning thereof to the 35. ver he handles the An sit whether there be a Resurrection or no For if that be denyed or doubted in the roote in the person of Christ whether he be risen or no the whole frame of our religion fals and every man will be apt and justly apt to ask that question which the Indian King asked when he had been catechized so far in the articles of our Christian religion as to come to the suffered and crucified and dead and buried impatient of proceeding any farther and so losing the consolation of the Resurrection he asked only Is your God dead and buried then let me return to the worship of the Sun for I am sure the Sun will not die If Christ be dead and buried that is continue in the state of death and of the grave without a Resurrection where shall a Christian look for life Therefore the Apostle handles and establishes that first that assurance A Resurrection there is From thence he raises and pursues a second question De modo But some man will say sayes he How are the dead raised up and with what body come they forth And in these questions De modo there is more exercise of reason and of discourse for many times The matter is matter of faith when the manner is not so but considerable and triable by reason Many times for the matter we are all bound and bound upon salvation to think alike But for the manner we may think diversly without forfeiture of salvation or impeachment of discretion For he is not presently an indiscreet man that differs in opinion from another man that is discreet in things that fall under opinion Absit superstito Geâson hoc est superflua religio sayes a moderate man of the Romane Church This is truly superstition to bring more under the necessity of being beleeved then God hath brought in his Scriptures superfluous religion sayes he is superstition Remove that and then as he addes there Contradictoria quorum utrumque probabile credi possunt Where two contrary opinions are both probable they may be embraced and beleeved by two men and those two be both learned and discreet and pious and zealous men And this consideration should keep men from that precipitation of imprinting the odious and scandalous names of Sects or Sectaries upon other men who may differ from them and from others with them in some opinions Probability leads me in my assent and I think thus Let me allow another man his probability too and let him think his way in things that are not fundamentall They that do not beleeve alike in all circumstances of the manner of the Resurrection may all by Gods goodnesse meet there and have their parts in the glory thereof if their own uncharitablenesse do not hinder them And he that may have been in the right opinion may sooner misse heaven then he that was in the wrong if he come uncharitably to condemne or contemne the other for in such cases humility and love of peace may in the sight of God excuse and recompence many errours and mistakings And after these of the Matter of the Manner of the Resurrection the Apostle proceeds to a third question of their state and condition whom Christ shall finde alive upon Earth at his second comming and of them he sayes onely this Ecce mysterium vobis dico Behold I tell you a mystery a secret we shall not all sleep that is not dye so as that we shall rest any time in the grave but we shall all be changed that is receive such an immutation as that we shall have a sudden dissolution of body and soul which is a true death and a sudden re-union of body and soule which is a true resurrection in an instant in the twinkling of an eye Thus carefull and thus particular is the Apostle that the knowledge of the resurrection might be derived unto us Now of these three questions which he raises and pursues first whether there be a Resurrection then what manner of Resurrection and then what kinde of Resu rrection they shall have that live to the day of Judgement our Text enters into the first For for the first That a resurrection there is the Apostle opens severall Topiques to prove it One is from our Head and Patterne and Example Christ Jesus For so he argues first If the dead be not raised
this fall is by Re-union the soule and body are re-united at the last day A second fall in naturall death is Casus in dissolutionem The dead body falls by putrifaction into a dissolution into atoms and graines of dust and the resurrection from this fall is by Re-efformation God shall re-compact and re-compile those atoms and graines of dust into that Body which was before And then a third fall in naturall death is Casus in Dispersionem This man being falne into a divorce of body and soule this body being falne into a dissolution of dust this dust falls into a dispersion and is scattered unsensibly undiscernibly upon the face of the earth and the resurrection from this death is by way of Re-collection God shall recall and re-collect all these Atoms and grains of dust and re-compact that body and re-unite that soule and so that resurrection is accomplished And these three falls Into a Divorce into a Separation into a Dispersion And these three Resurrections By Re-union by Re-efformation by Re-collecting we shall also finde in our present state The spirituall death of the soule by sinne First then Casus in separationem the first fall in the spirituall death is the divorce of body and soule That whereas God hath made the body to be the Organ of the soule and the soule to be the breath of that Organ and bound them to a mutuall relation to one another Man sometimes withdrawes the soule from the body by neglecting the duties of this life for imaginary speculations and oftner withdrawes the body from the soule which should be subject to the soule but does maintain a war and should be a wife to the soule and does stand out in a divorce Now the Resurrection Resurrectie a casu in separationem from this first fall into a Divorce is seriously and wisely that is both piously and civilly to consider that Man is not a soule alone but a body too That man is not placed in this world onely for speculation He is not sent into this world to live out of it but to live in it Adam was not put into Paradise onely in that Paradise to contemplate the future Paradise but to dresse and to keep the present God did not breathe a soule towards him but into him Not in an obsession but a possession Not to travaile for knowledge abroad but to direct him by counsell at home Not for extasies but for an inherence for when it was come to that in S. Paul we see it is called a rapture he was not in his proper station nor his proper motion He was transported into the third heaven but as long as we are in our dwelling upon earth though we must love God with all our soule yet it is not with our soule alone Our body also must testifie and expresse our love not onely in a reverentiall humiliation thereof in the dispositions and postures and motions and actions of the body when we present our selves at Gods Service in his house but in the discharge of our bodily duties and the sociable offices of our callings towards one another Not to run away from that Service of God by hiding our selves in a superstitious Monastery or in a secular Monastery in our owne house by an unprofitable retirednesse and absenting our selves from the necessary businesses of this world Not to avoid a Calling by taking none Not to make void a Calling by neglecting the due offices thereof In a word To understand and to performe in the best measure we can the duties of the body and of the soule this is the resurrection from the first fall The fall into a divorce of body and soule And for the advancing of this knowledge and the facilitating of this performance of these duties be pleased a little to stop upon the consideration of both both of Spirituall and Divine and then of secular and sociable duties so far as concerns this subject in hand First for the duties of the soule Officium animae God was never out of Christs sight He was alwaies with him alwaies within him alwaies he himself yet Christ at some times applyed himself in a nearer distance and stricter way of prayer to God then at other times Christs whole life was a continuall abstinence a perpetuall sobriety yet Christ proposed and proportioned a certaine time and a certaine number of dayes for a particular fast upon particular occasion This is the harmony this is the resurrection of a Christian in this respect That his soule be alwayes so fixed upon God as that he doe nothing but with relation to his glory principally and habitually That he think of God at all times but that besides that he sepose some times to think of nothing but God That he pray continually so far as to say nothing to wish nothing that he would not be content God should heare but that besides that he sepose certaine fixed times for private prayer in his chamber and for publique prayer in the Congregation For though it be no where expresly written that Christ did pray in the Congregation or in company yet all that Christ did is not written and it is written that he went often into the Temples and into the Synagogues and it is written that even the Pharisee and the Publican that went to those places went thither to pray But howsoever Christ was never so alone but that if he were not in the Church the Church was in him All Christians were in him as all Men were in Adam This then is our first Resurrection for the duty that belongs to the soule Officium corporis That the soule doe at all times think upon God and at some times think upon nothing but him And for that which in this respect belongs to the body That we neither enlarge and pamper it so nor so adorne and paint it as though the soule required a spacious and specious palace to dwell in Of that excesse Porphyrie who loved not Christ nor Christians said well out of meer Morality That this enormous fatning and enlarging our bodies by excessive diet was but a shoveling of more and more fat earth upon our soules to bury them deeper Dum corpus augemus mortaliores efficimur sayes he The more we grow the more mortall we make our selves and the greater sacrifice we provide for death when we gather so much flesh with that elegancy speaks he speaking out of Nature and with this simplicity and homelinesse speaks S. Hierom speaking out of Grace Qui Christum desiderat illo pane vescitur de quà m preciesis cibis stercus conficiat non quaerit He that can rellish Christ and feed upon that Bread of life will not be so diligent to make precious dung and curious excrements to spend his purse or his wit in that which being taken into him must passe by so ignoble a way from him The flesh that God hath given us is affliction enough but the flesh that
God and for the instruction of Iob himselfe What was it we see ver 17. Shall mortall man be more just then God Quid. shall a man be more pure then his Maker Why Did this Doctrine need this solemnity this preparation that Eliphaz gives it v. 8. That it was a thing told him in secret and such a secret that he was able to comprehend but a little at once of it Is there any such incomprehensiblenesse any such difficulty in this Doctrine That no mortall man is more just then God no man more pure then his Maker but that the shallowest capacity may receive it and the shortest memory retaine it Needs this a Revelation an extraordinary conveyance For the generall knowledge it does not Every man will say he knowes mortall man cannot be more just then God nor any man purer then his Maker But for the particular consideration it does Every justifying a sin is a making mortall man more just then God when I come to say With what justice can God punish a nights or an houres sin with everlasting torments Every murmuring at Gods corrections is a making man purer then God when I come to say Does not God depart farther from the purity of his nature when he is an angry and a vindicative God then I from mine when I am an amorous or wanton man We that are but mortall men must not think sayes Eliphaz to make our selves purer then our Maker for they who in their nature are much purer then we the Angels are farre short of that for God put no trust in those servants and those Angells he charged with folly So then though Eliphaz his premisses reach to the Angels and their state his inference and his last purpose fals upon us who by Gods goodnesse become capable of succession into the place of the Angels that are fallen and of an association and assimilation to those Angels that stand And our assimilation is this That as they have in their station we also shall have in ours a faithfull certitude that we shall never fall out of the armes and bosome of our gracious God But then there arises to us a sweeter rellish in considering this stability this perpetuity this infallibility to consist in the continuall succession and supply of grace then in any one act which God hath done for them or us I conceive a more effectual delight when I consider God to have so wrought the confirmation of Angels that he hath taken them into a state of glory and a fruition of his sight and to perpetuate that state unto them perpetually superinfuses upon them more and more beames of that glory then if I should consider God to have confirmed them with such a measure of grace at once as that he could not withdraw or they could forfeit that grace For as there is no doubt made by the Fathers nor by the Schoole but that that light which the Apostles saw at the Transfiguration of Christ was that very light of glory which they see now in Heaven and yet they lost the sight of that light againe so is there no violation of any Article of our Faith if we concurre in opinion with them who say That S. Paul in his extasie in his rapture into the third heaven did see that very light of glory which constitutes the Beatificall Vision and yet did lose that light againe Truly to me this consideration That as his mercy is new every morning so his grace is renewed to me every minute That it is not by yesterdaies grace that I live now but that I have Panem quotidianum and Panem horarium My daily bread my hourely bread in a continuall succession of his grace That the eye of God is open upon me though I winke at his light and watches over me though I sleep That God makes these returnes to my soule and so studies me in every change this consideration infuses a sweeter verdure and imprints a more cheerefull tincture upon my soule then any taste of any one Act done at once can minister unto me God made the Angels all of one naturall condition in nature all alike and God gave them all such grace as that thereby they might have stood and to them that used that grace aright he gave a farther a continuall succession of grace and that is their Confirmation Not that they cannot but that they shall not fall not that they are safe in themselves but by Gods preservation safe for otherwise He puts no trust in those Servants and those Angels he charges with folly This is our case too ours that are under the blessed Election and good purpose of God upon us if we do not fall from him it is not of our selves for left to our selves we should For Iohn 5. so S. Augustine interprets those words of our Saviour Pater operatur My Father worketh still God hath not accomplished his worke upon us in one Act though an Election but he works in our Vocation and he works in our Justification and in our Sanctification he works still And if God himselfe be not so come to his Sabbath and his rest in us but that he works upon us still for all that Election shall any man thinke to have such a Sabbath such a rest in that Election as shall slacken our endeavour to make sure our Salvation and not worke as God works to his ends in us Hence then we banish all self-subsistence all attributing of any power to any faculty of our own either by preoperation in any naturall or morall disposing of our selves before Gods preventing grace dispose us or by such a cooperation as should put God and man in Commission together or make grace and nature Collegues in the worke or that God should do one halfe and man the other or any such post-operation That I should thinke to proceed in the waies of godlinesse by vertue of Gods former grace without imploring and obtaining more in a continuall succession of his concomitant grace for every particular action In Christ I can do all things I need no more but him without Christ I can doe nothing not onely not have him but not know that I need him for I am not better then those Angels of whom it is said He put no trust in those Servants and those Angels hee charged with folly And as we banish from hence all self-subsistence all opinion of standing by our selves so doe we also all impeccability and all impossibility of falling in our selves or in any thing that God hath already done for us if he should discontinue his future grace and leave us to our former stock They that were raised from death to life againe Dorcas Lazarus and the rest were subject to sin in that new life which was given them They that are quickned by the soule of the soule Election it selfe are subject to sin for all that God sees the sins of the Elect and sees their sins to be sins and in his
all knowledge in heaven is experimentall As all knowledge in this world is causall we know a thing if we know the cause thereof so the knowledge in heaven is effectuall experimentall we know it because we have found it to be so The endowments of the blessed those which the School calls Dotes beatorum are ordinarily delivered to be these three Visio Dilectio Fruitio The sight of God the love of God and the fruition the injoying the possessing of God Now as no man can know what it is to see God in heaven but by an experimentall and actuall seeing of him there nor what it is to love God there but by such an actuall and experimentall love of him nor what it is to enjoy and possesse God but by an actuall enjoying and an experimentall possessing of him So can no man tell what the eternity and everlastingnesse of all these is till he have passed through that eternity and that everlastingnesse and that he can never doe for if it could be passed through then it were not eternity How barren a thing is Arithmetique and yet Arithmetique will tell you how many single graines of sand will fill this hollow Vault to the Firmament How empty a thing is Rhetorique and yet Rherorique will make absent and remote things present to your understanding How weak a thing is Poetry and yet Poetry is a counterfait Creation and makes things that are not as though they were How infirme how impotent are all assistances if they be put to expresse this Eternity The best help that I can assigne you is to use well Aeternum vestrum your owne Eternity as S. Gregory calls our whole course of this life Aeternum nostrum our Eternity Aequum est ut qui in aeterno suo peccaverit in aeterno Dei puniatur sayes he It is but justice that he that hath sinned out his owne Eternity should suffer out Gods Eternity So if you suffer out your owne Eternity in submitting your selves to God in the whole course of your life in surrendring your will intirely to his and glorifying of him in a constant patience under all your tribulations It is a righteous thing with God sayes our Apostle in his other Epistle to these Thessalonians To recompence tribulation to them that trouble you 2 Thess 1.6 and to you that are troubled rest with us sayes hee there with us who shall be caught up in the Clouds to meete the Lord in the Ayre and so shall be with the Lord for ever Amen SERMON XXVII Preached to the LL. upon Easter-day at the Communion The KING being then dangerously sick at New-Market PSAL. 89.47 What man is he that liveth and shall not see death AT first God gave the judgement of death upon man when he should transgresse absolutely Morte morieris Thou shalt surely dye The woman in her Dialogue with the Serpent she mollifies it Ne fortè moriamur perchance if we eate we may die and then the Devill is as peremptory on the other side Nequaquam moriemini do what you will surely you shall not die And now God in this Text comes to his reply Quis est homo shall they not die Give me but one instance but one exception to this rule What man is hee that liveth and shall not see death Let no man no woman no devill offer a Ne fortè perchance we may dye much lesse a Nequaquam surely we shall not dye except he be provided of an answer to this question except he can give an instance against this generall except he can produce that mans name and history that hath lived and shall not see death Wee are all conceived in close Prison in our Mothers wombes we are close Prisoners all when we are borne we are borne but to the liberty of the house Prisoners still though within larger walls and then all our life is but a going out to the place of Execution to death Now was there ever any man seen to sleep in the Cart between New-gate and Tyborne between the Prison and the place of Execution does any man sleep And we sleep all the way from the womb to the grave we are never throughly awake but passe on with such dreames and imaginations as these I may live as well as another and why should I dye rather then another but awake and tell me sayes this Text Quis homo who is that other that thou talkest of What man is he that liveth and shall not see death In these words we shall first for our generall humiliation consider the unanswerablenesse of this question There is no man that lives and shall not see death Secondly we shall see how that modification of Eve may stand fortè moriemur how there may be a probable answer made to this question that it is like enough that there are some men that live and shall not see death And thirdly we shall finde that truly spoken which the Devill spake deceitfully then we shall finde the Nequaquam verified we shall finde a direct and full answer to this question we shall finde a man that lives and shall not see death our Lord and Saviour Christ Jesus of whom both S. Augustine and S. Hierome doe take this question to be principally asked and this Text to be principally intended Aske me this question then of all the sons of men generally guilty of originall sin Quis homo and I am speechlesse I can make no answer Aske me this question of those men which shall be alive upon earth at the last day when Christ comes to judgement Quis homo and I can make a probable answer forte moriemur perchance they shall die It is a problematicall matter and we say nothing too peremptorily Aske me this question without relation to originall sin Quis homo and then I will answer directly fully confidently Ecce homo there was a man that lived and was not subject to death by the law neither did he actually die so but that he fulfilled the rest of this verse Eruit animam de inferno by his owne power he delivered his soule from the hand of the grave From the first this lesson rises Generall doctrines must be generally delivered All men must die From the second this lesson Collaterall an unrevealed doctrines must be soberly delivered How we shall be changed at the last day we know not so clearly From the third this lesson arises Conditionall Doctrines must be conditionally delivered If we be dead with him we shall be raised with him First then 1. Part. Quis homo for the generality Those other degrees of punishment which God inflicted upon Adam and Eve and in them upon us were as absolutely and illimitedly pronounced as this of death and yet we see they are many wayes extended or contracted To man it was said In sudore vultus In the sweat of thy browes thou shalt eate thy bread and how many men never sweat till they sweat with eating To the woman it
things as are problematicall if thou love the peace of Sion be not too inquisitive to know nor too vehement when thou thinkest thou doest know it Come then to ask this question 3. Part. not problematically as it is contracted to them that shall live in the last dayes nor peremptorily of man as he is subject to originall sin but at large so as the question may include Christ himself and then to that Quis homo What man is he We answer directly here is the man that shall not see death And of him principally August and literally S. Augustine as we said before takes this question to be framed Vt quaeras dictum non ut desperes saith he this question is moved to move thee to seek out and to have thy recourse to that man which is the Lord of Life not to make thee despaire that there is no such man in whose self and in whom for all us there is Redemption from death For sayes he this question is an exception to that which was said before the text which is Wherefore hast thou made all men in vain Consider it better sayes the Holy Ghost here and it will not prove so Man is not made in vain at first though he do die now for Perditio tua ex te This death proceeds from man himself and Quare moriemini domus Israel Why will ye die ô house of Israel God made not death âap 1.13 neither hath he pleasure in the destruction of the living The Wise man sayes it and the true God sweares it As I live saith the Lord I would not the death of a sinner God did not create man in vain then though he die not in vain for since he will needs die God receives glory even by his death in the execution of his justice not in vaine neither because though he be dead God hath provided him a Redeemer from death in his mercy Man is not created in vain at all nor all men so neare vanity as to die for here is one man God and Man Christ Jesus which liveth and shall not see death And conformable to S. Augustines purpose ãâã speakes S. Hierome too Scio quòd nullus homo carneus evadet sed novi Deum sub velamento carnis latentem I know there is no man but shall die but I know where there is a God clothed in mans flesh and that person cannot die But did not Christ die then Shall we joyne with any of those Heretiques which brought Christ upon the stage to play a part and say he was born or lived or dyed In phantasmate In apparance only and representation God forbid so all men were created in vain indeed if we had not a regeneration in his true death Where is the contract between him and his Father that Oportuit pati All this Christ ought to suffer and so enter into glory Is that contract void and of none effect Must he not die Where is the ratification of that contract in all the Prophets ãâã 53.4.9 Where is Esays Verè languores nostros tulit Surely he hath born our sorrows and he made his grave with the wicked in his death Is the ratification of the Prophets cancelled Shall he not must he not die Where is the consummation and the testification of all this Where is the Gospell Consummatum est And he bowed his head and gave up the ghost Is that fabulous Did he not die How stands the validity of that contract Christ must die the dignity of those Prophecies Christ will die the truth of the Gospell Christ did die with this answer to this question Here is a man that liveth and shall not see death Very well For though Christ Jesus did truly die so as was contracted so as was prophecied so as was related yet hee did not die so as was intended in this question so as other naturall men do die For first Christ dyed because he would dye other men admitted to the dignity of Martyrdome are willing to dye but they dye by the torments of the Executioners they cannot bid their soules goe out and say now I will dye And this was Christs case ãâã 10.15 It was not only I lay down my life for my sheep but he sayes also No man can take away my soule And I have power to lay it down And De facto he did lay it down he did dye before the torments could have extorted his soule from him Many crucified men lived many dayes upon the Crosse The thieves were alive long after Christ was dead and therefore Pilate wondred that he was already dead His soule did not leave his body by force ãâ¦ã but because he would and when he would and how he would Thus far then first this is an answer to this question Quis homo Christ did not die naturally nor violently as all others doe but only voluntarily Again the penalty of death appertaining only to them who were derived from Adam by carnall and sinfull generation Christ Jesus being conceived miraculously of a Virgin by the over-shadowing of the Holy Ghost was not subject to the Law of death and therefore in his person it is a true answer to this Quis homo Here is a man that shall not see death that is he need not see death he hath not incurred Gods displeasure he is not involved in a general rebellion and therfore is not involved in the generall mortality not included in the generall penalty He needed not have dyed by the rigour of any Law all we must he could not dye by the malice or force of any Executioner all we must at least by natures generall Executioners Age and Sicknesse And then when out of his own pleasure and to advance our salvation he would dye yet he dyed so as that though there were a dis-union of body and soule which is truly death yet there remained a Nobler and faster union then that of body and soule the Hypostaticall Union of the God-head not onely to his soule but to his body too so that even in his death both parts were still not onely inhabited by but united to the Godhead it selfe and in respect of that inseparable Union we may answer to this question Quis homo Here is a man that shall not see death that is he shall see no separation of that which is incomparably and incomprehensibly a better soul then his soule the God-head shall not be separated from his body But that which is indeed the most direct and literall answer to this question is That whereas the death in this Text is intended of such a death as hath Dominion over us and from which we have no power to raise our selves we may truly and fully answer to his Quis homo here is a man that shall never see death so but that he shall even in the jawes and teeth of death and in the bowels and wombe of the grave and in the sink and furnace of hell
for so is it twice taken in one verse Psal 58.4 Their poison is like the poison of a Serpent so that this Hot displeasure is that poison of the soule obduration here and that extention of this obduration a finall impenitence in this life and an infinite impenitiblenesse in the next to dye without any actuall penitence here and live without all possibility of future penitence for ever hereafter David therefore foresees that if God Rebuke in anger it will come to a Chastening in hot displeasure 1 Sam. 2.25 For what should stop him For If a man sinne against the Lord who will plead for him sayes Eli Plead thou my cause sayes David It is onely the Lord that can be of counsell with him and plead for him and that Lord is both the Judge and angry too So Davids prayer hath this force Rebuke me not in anger for though I were able to stand under that yet thou wilt also Chasten mee in thine hot displeasure and that no soule can beare for as long as Gods anger lasts so long he is going on towards our utter destruction In that State it is not a State in that Exinanition in that annihilation of the soule it is not an annihilation the soule is not so happy as to come to nothing but in that misery which can no more receive a name then an end all Gods corrections are borne with grudging with murmuring with comparing our righteousnesse with others righteousnesse Job 7.20 In Iobs impatience Quare posuisti me contrarium tibi Why hast thou set me up as a marke against thee O Thou preserver of men Thou that preservest other men hast bent thy bow I. am 3.12 and made me a mark for thine arrowes sayes the Lamentation In that state we cannot cry to him that he might answer us If we doe cry and he answer we cannot heare Job 9.16 if we doe heare we cannot beleeve that it is he Cum invocantem exaudierit sayes Iob If I cry and he answer yet I doe not beleeve that he heard my voyce We had rather perish utterly Ver. 23. then stay his leisure in recovering us Si flagellat occidat semel sayes Iob in the Vulgat If God have a minde to destroy me let him doe it at one blow Et non de poenis rideat Let him not sport himselfe with my misery Whatsoever come after we would be content to be out of this world so we might but change our torment whether it be a temporall calamity that oppresses our state or body or a spirituall burthen a perplexity that sinks our understanding or a guiltinesse that depresses our conscience Vt in inferno protegas Job 14.13 as Iob also speaks O that thou wouldest hide me In inferno In the grave sayes the afflicted soule but in Inferno In hell it selfe sayes the dispairing soule rather then keepe me in this torment in this world This is the miserable condition or danger that David abhors and deprecates in this Text To be rebuked in anger without any purpose in God to amend him and to be chastned in his hot displeasure so as that we can finde no interest in the gracious promises of the Gospel no conditions no power of revocation in the severe threatnings of the Law no difference between those torments which have attached us here and the everlasting torments of Hell it selfe That we have lost all our joy in this life and all our hope of the next That we would faine die though it were by our own hands and though that death doe but unlock us a doore to passe from one Hell into another This is Ira tua Domine faror tuus Thy anger O Lord and Thy hot displeasure For as long as it is but Ira patris the anger of my Father which hath dis-inherited me Gold is thine and silver is thine and thou canst provide me As long as it is but Ira Regis some mis-information to the King some mis-apprehension in the King Cor Regis in manu tua The Kings heart is in thy hand and thou canst rectifie it againe As long as it is but Furor febris The rage and distemper of a pestilent Fever or Furor furoris The rage of madnesse it selfe thou wilt consider me and accept me and reckon with me according to those better times before those distempers overtooke me and overthrew me But when it comes to be Ira tua furor tuus Thy anger and Thy displeasure as David did so let every Christian finde comfort if he be able to say faithfully this Verse this Text O Lord rebuke me not in thine anger neither chasten me in thy hot displeasure for as long as he can pray against it he is not yet so fallen under it but that he hath yet his part in all Gods blessings which we shed upon the Congregation in our Sermons and which we seale to every soule in the Sacrament of Reconcilation SERM. LI. Preached upon the Penitentiall Psalmes PSAL. 6.2 3. Have mercy upon me O Lord for I am weake O Lord heale me for my bones are vexed My soule is also sore vexed But thou O Lord how long THis whole Psalme is prayer And the whole prayer is either Deprecatory as in the first verse or Postulatory Something David would have forborne and something done And in that Postulatory part of Davids prayer which goes through six verses of this Psalme we consider the Petitions and the Inducements What David asks And why of both which there are some mingled in these two verses which constitute our Text. And therefore in them we shall necessarily take knowledge of some of the Petitions and some of the Reasons For in the Prayer there are five petitions First Miserere Have mercy upon me Thinke of me looke graciously towards me prevent me with thy mercy And then Sana me O Lord heale me Thou didst create me in health but my parents begot me in sicknesse and I have complicated other sicknesses with that Actuall with Originall sin O Lord heale me give me physick for them And thirdly Convertere Returne O Lord Thou didst visit me in nature returne in grace Thou didst visit me in Baptisme returne in the other Sacrament Thou doest visit me now returne at the houre of my death And in a fourth petition Eripe O Lord deliver my soule Every blessing of thine because a snare unto me and thy benefits I make occasions of sinne In all conversation and even in my solitude I admit such tentations from others or I produce such tentations in my selfe as that whensoever thou art pleased to returne to me thou findest me at the brinke of some sinne and therefore Eripe me O Lord take hold of me and deliver me And lastly Salvum me fac O Lord save me Manifest thy good purpose upon me so that I may never be shaken or never overthrown in the faithfull hope of that salvation which thou hast preordained for me These are
the principall arguments against Confessions by Letter which some went about to set up in the Romane Church that that took away one of the greatest evidences and testimonies of their repentance which is this Erubescence this blushing this shame after sin if they should not be put to speak it face to face but to write it that would remove the shame which is a part of the repentance But that soule that goes not to confession to it selfe that hath not an internall blushing after a sin committed is a pale soule even in the palenesse of death and senslesnesse and a red soule red in the defiance of God And that whitenesse to avoid approaches to sin and that rednesse to blush upon a sin which does attempt us is the complexion of the soule which God loves and which the Holy Ghost testifies when he sayes Cant. 5.12 My Beloved is white and ruddy And when these men that David speaks of here had lost that whitenesse their innocency for David to wish that they might come to a rednesse a shame a blushing a remorse a sense of sin may have been no such great malediction or imprecation in the mouth of David but that a man may wish it to his best friend which should be his own soule and say Erubescam not let mine enemies but let me be ashamed with such a shame In the second word Conturbentur Let them be sore vexed he wishes his enemies no worse then himselfe had been For he had used the same word of himselfe before Ossa turbata My bones are vexed Ver. 2. 3. and Anima turbata My soule is vexed and considering that David had found this vexation to be his way to God it was no malicious imprecation to wish that enemy the same Physick that he had taken who was more sick of the same disease then he was For this is like a troubled Sea after a tempest the danger is past but yet the billow is great still The danger was in the calme in the security or in the tempest by mis-interpreting Gods corrections to our obduration and to a remorselesse stupefaction but when a man is come to this holy vexation to be troubled to be shaken with a sense of the indignation of God the storme is past and the indignation of God is blowne over That soule is in a faire and neare way of being restored to a calmnesse and to reposed security of conscience that is come to this holy vexation In a flat Map there goes no more to make West East though they be distant in an extremity but to paste that flat Map upon a round body and then West and East are all one In a flat soule in a dejected conscience in a troubled spirit there goes no more to the making of that trouble peace then to apply that trouble to the body of the Merits to the body of the Gospel of Christ Jesus and conforme thee to him and thy West is East Zoch 6.12 thy Trouble of spirit is Tranquillity of spirit The name of Christ is Oriens The East Esay 14.12 And yet Lucifer himselfe is called Filius Orientis The Son of the East If thou beest fallen by Lucifer fallen to Lucifer and not fallen as Lucifer to a senslesnesse of thy fall and an impenitiblenesse therein but to a troubled spirit still thy Prospect is the East still thy Climate is heaven still thy Haven is Jerusalem for in our lowest dejection of all even in the dust of the grave we are so composed so layed down as that we look to the East If I could beleeve that Trajan or Tecla could look East-ward that is towards Christ in hell I could beleeve with them of Rome that Trajan and Tecla were redeemed by prayer out of hell God had accepted sacrifices before but no sacrifice is call Odor quiet is Gen. 8.21 It is not said That God smelt a savor of rest in any sacrifice but that which Noah offered after hee had beene variously tossed and tumbled in the long hulling of the Arke upon the waters A troublesome spirit and a quiet spirit are farre asunder But a troubled spirit and a quiet spirit are neare neighbours And therefore David meanes them no great harme when hee sayes Let them be troubled For Let the winde be as high as it will so I sayle before the winde Let the trouble of my soule be as great as it will so it direct me upon God and I have calme enough And this peace Convertantur this calme is implyed in the next word Convertantur which is not Let them be overthrowne but Let them returne let them be forced to returne he prayes that God would do something to crosse their purposes because as they are against God so they are against their owne soules In that way where they are he sees there is no remedy and therefore he desires that they might be Turned into another way What is that way This. Turne us O Lord and we shall be turned That is turned the right way Towards God And as there was a promise from God to heare his people not onely when they came to him in the Temple but when they turned towards that Temple in what distance soever they were so it is alwaies accompanied with a blessing occasionally to turne towards God But this prayer Turne us that we may be turned is that we may be that is remaine turned that we may continue fixed in that posture Lots Wife turned her selfe and remained an everlasting monument of Gods anger God so turne us alwaies into right wayes as that we be not able to turne our selves out of them For God hath Viam rectam bonam as himselfe speakes in the Prophet A right way and then a good way which yet is not the right way that is not the way which God of himselfe would go For his right way is that we should still keepe in his way His good way is to beat us into his right way againe by his medicinall corrections when we put our selves out of his right way And that and that onely David wishes and we wish That you may Turne and Be turned stand in that holy posture all the yeare all the yeares of your lives That your Christmas may be as holy as your Easter even your Recreations as innocent as your Devotions and every roome in the house as free free from prophanenesse as the Sanctuary And this he ends as he begun with another Erubescant Let them be ashamed and that Valde volociter Suddenly for David saw that if a sinner came not to a shame of sin quickly he would quickly come to a shamelesnesse to an impudence to a searednesse to an obduration in it Now beloved this is the worst curse that comes out of a holy mans mouth even towards his enemie that God would correct him to his amendment And this is the worst harme that we meane to you when we denounce the judgements of
afflictionis Verse 16. Studied and premeditated plots and practises swallowe mee possesse me intirely In all these dayes I shall not onely have a Zoar to flie to if I can get out of Sodom joy if I can overcome my sorrow There shall not be a Goshen bordering upon my Egypt joy if I can passe beyond or besides my sorrow but I shall have a Goshen in my Egypt nay my very Egypt shall be my Goshen I shall not onely have joy though I have sorrow but therefore my very sorrow shall be the occasion of joy I shall not onely have a Sabbath after my six dayes labor but Omnibus diebus a Sabbath shall enlighten every day and inanimate every minute of every day And as my soule is as well in my foot as in my hand though all the waight and oppression lie upon the foot and all action upon the hand so these beames of joy shall appeare as well in my pillar of cloud as in theirs of fire in my adversity as well as in their prosperity And when their Sun shall set at Noone mine shall rise at midnight they shall have damps in their glory and I joyfull exaltions in my dejections And to end with the end of all In die mortis In the day of my death and that which is beyond the end of all and without end in it selfe The day of Judgement If I have the testimony of a rectified conscience that I have accustomed my selfe to that accesse to God by prayer and such prayer as though it have had a body of supplication and desire of future things yet the soule and spirit of that prayer that is my principall intention in that prayer hath been praise and thanksgiving If I be involved in S. Chrysostoms Patent Orantes non natura sed dispensatione Angeli fiunt That those who pray so that is pray by way of praise which is the most proper office of Angels as they shall be better then Angels in the next world for they shall be glorifying spirits as the Angels are but they shall also be glorified bodies which the Angels shall never bee so in this world they they shall be as Angels because they are employed in the office of Angels to pray by way of praise If as S. Basil reads those words of that Psalme not spiritus meus but respiratio mea laudet Dominum Not onely my spirit but my very breath not my heart onely but my tongue and my hands bee accustomed to glorifie God In die mortis in the day of my death when a mist of sorrow and of sighes shall fill my chamber and a cloude exhaled and condensed from teares shall bee the curtaines of my bed when those that love me shall be sorry to see mee die and the devill himselfe that hates me sorry to see me die so in the favour of God And In die Iudicii In the day of Judgement when as all Time shall cease so all measures shall cease The joy and the sorrow that shall be then shall be eternall no end and infinite no measure no limitation when every circumstance of sinne shall aggravate the condemnation of the unrepentant sinner and the very substance of my sinne shall bee washed away in the blood of my Saviour when I shall see them who sinned for my sake perish eternally because they proceeded in that sinne and I my selfe who occasioned their sin received into glory because God upon my prayer and repentance had satisfied me early with his mercy early that is before my transmigration In omnibus diebus In all these dayes the dayes of youth and the wantonnesses of that the dayes of age and the tastlesnesse of that the dayes of mirth and the sportfulnesse of that and of inordinate melancholy and the disconsolatenesse of that the days of such miseries as astonish us with their suddennesse and of such as aggravate their owne waight with a heavy expectation In the day of Death which pieces up that circle and in that day which enters another circle that hath no pieces but is one equall everlastingnesse the day of Judgement Either I shall rejoyce be able to declare my faith and zeale to the assistance of others or at least be glad in mine owne heart in a firme hope of mine owne salvation And therefore beloved as they whom lighter affections carry to Shewes and Masks and Comedies As you your selves whom better dispositions bring to these Exercises conceive some contentment and some kinde of Joy in that you are well and commodiously placed they to see the Shew you to heare the Sermon when the time comes though your greater Joy bee reserved to the comming of that time So though the fulnesse of Joy be reserved to the last times in heaven yet rejoyce and be glad that you are well and commodiously placed in the meane time and that you sit but in expectation of the fulnesse of those future Joyes Returne to God with a joyfull thankfulnesse that he hath placed you in a Church which withholds nothing from you that is necessary to salvation whereas in another Church they lack a great part of the Word and halfe the Sacrament And which obtrudes nothing to you that is not necessary to salvation whereas in another Church the Additionall things exceed the Fundamentall the Occasionall the Originall the Collaterall the Direct And the Traditions of men the Commandements of God Maintaine and hold up this holy alacrity this religious cheerfulnesse For inordinate sadnesse is a great degree and evidence of unthankfulnesse and the departing from Joy in this world is a departing with one piece of our Evidence for the Joyes of the world to come SERM. LXXX Preached at the funerals of Sir William Cokayne Knight Alderman of London December 12. 1626. JOH 11.21 Lord if thou hadst been here my brother had not died GOd made the first Marriage and man made the first Divorce God married the Body and Soule in the Creation and man divorced the Body and Soule by death through sinne in his fall God doth not admit not justifie not authorize such Super-inductions upon such Divorces as some have imagined That the soule departing from one body should become the soule of another body in a perpetuall revolution and transmigration of soules through bodies which hath been the giddinesse of some Philosophers to think Or that the body of the dead should become the body of an evill spirit that that spirit might at his will and to his purposes informe and inanimate that dead body God allowes no such Super-inductions no such second Marriages upon such divorces by death no such disposition of soule or body after their dissolution by death But because God hath made the band of Marriage indissoluble but by death farther then man can die this divorce cannot fall upon man As farre as man is immortall man is a married man still still in possession of a soule and a body too And man is for ever immortall in both Immortall in
pacto thus the contract led it to this he was obedient obedient unto death and unto the death of the Crosse Phil. 2.8 By bloud and not onely by comming into this world and assuming our nature which humiliation was an act of infinite value and not by the bloud of his Circumcision or Agony but bloud to death and by no gentler nor nobler death then the death of the Crosse was this peace to be made by him Though then one drop of his bloud had beene enough to have redeemed infinite worlds if it had beene so contracted and so applyed yet he gave us a morning showre of his bloud in his Circumcision and an evening showre at his passion and a showre after Sunset in the piercing of his side And though any death had beene an incomprehensible ransome for the Lord of life to have given for the children of death yet he refused not the death of the Crosse The Crosse to which a bitter curse was nayled by Moses Deut. 21 23. from the beginning he that is hanged is not onely accursed of God as our Translation hath it but he is the curse of God as it is in the Originall not accursed but a curse not a simple curse but the curse of God And by the Crosse which besides the Infamy was so painfull a death as that many men languished many dayes upon it before they dyed And by his bloud of this torture and this shame this painfull and this ignominious death was this peace made In our great work of crucifying our selves to the world too it is not enough to bleed the drops of a Circumcision that is to cut off some excessive and notorious practice of sin nor to bleed the drops of an Agony to enter into a conflict and colluctation of the flesh and the spirit whether we were not better trust in Gods mercy for our continuance in that sin then lose all that pleasure and profit which that sin brings us nor enough to bleed the drops of scourging to be lashed with viperous and venemous tongues by contumelies and slanders nor to bleed the drops of Thornes to have Thornes and scruples enter into our consciences with spirituall afflictions but we must be content to bleed the streames of naylings to those Crosses to continue in them all our lives if God see that necessary for our confirmation and if men will pierce and wound us after our deaths in our good name yea if they will slander our Resurrection as they did Christs if they will say that it is impossible God should have mercy upon such a man impossible that a man of so bad life and so sad and comfortlesse a death should have a joyfull Resurrection here is our comfort as that piercing of Christs side was after the Consummatum est after his passion ended and therefore put him to no paine as that slander of his Resurrection was after that glorious triumph He was risen and had shewed himselfe before and therefore it diminished not his power so all these posthume wounds and slanders after my death after my God and my Soule shall have passed that Dialogue Veni Domine Iesu and euge bone serve That I shall have said upon my death-bed Come Lord Jesu come quickly and he shall have said Well done good and faithfull servant enter into thy Masters joy when I shall have said to him In manus tuas Domine Into thy hands O Lord I commend my spirit And he to me Hodie mecum eris in paradiso This day this minute thou shalt be now thou art with me in Paradise when this shall be my state God shall heare their slanders and maledictions and write them all downe but not in my booke but in theirs and there they shall meet them at Judgement amongst their owne sinnes to their everlasting confusion and finde me in possession of that peace made by bloud made by his bloud made by the bloud of his Crosse which were all the peeces laid out for this second part with which we have done and passe from the qualification of the person It pleased the Father that in him all fulnesse should dwell which was our first part and the Pacification and the way thereof by the bloud of his Crosse to make peace which was our second to the Reconciliation it selfe and the Application thereof to all to whom that Reconciliation appertaines That all things whether they be things in earth or things in heaven might be reconciled unto him All this was done 3. Part. He in whom it pleased the Father that this fulnesse should dwell had made this peace by the bloud of his Crosse and yet after all this the Apostle comes upon that Ambassage 2 Cor. 5.20 We pray ye in Christs stead that ye be reconciled to God So that this Reconciliation in the Text is a subsequent thing to this peace The generall peace is made by Christs death as a generall pardon is given at the Kings comming The Application of this peace is in the Church as the suing out of the pardon is in the Office Ioab made Absaloms peace with his Father Bring the young man againe sayes David to Ioab 2 Sam. 14.22.2.28.24.16 but yet he was not reconciled to him so as that he saw his face in two yeare God hath sounded a Retreat to the Battle As I live saith the Lord I would not the death of a sinner He hath said to the destroyer It is enough stay now thy hand He is pacified in Christ and he hath bound the enemy in chaines Now let us labour for our Reconciliation for all things are reconciled to him in Christ that is offered a way of reconciliation All things in heaven and earth sayes the Apostle And that is so large as that Origen needed not to have extended it to Hell too Origen and conceive out of this place a possibility that the Devils themselves shall come to a Reconciliation with God But to all in Heaven and Earth it appertaines Consider we how First then there is a reconciliation of them in heaven to God In coelis and then of them on earth to God and then of them in heaven and them in earth to one another by the blood of his Crosse If we consider them in heaven to be those who are gone up to heaven from this world by death they had the same reconciliation as we Animae either by reaching the hand of faith forward to lay hold upon Christ before he came which was the case of all under the Law or by reaching back that hand to lay hold upon all that hee had done and suffered when he was come which is the case of those that are dead before us in the profession of the Gospell All that are in heaven and were upon earth are reconciled one way by application of Christ in the Church so that though they be now in heaven yet they had their reconciliation here upon earth But
not Christ meerly as the Son of God but the Son of Mary too And that generation the Holy Ghost hath told us was in the fulnesse of time When the fulnesse of time was come God sent forth c. In which words Divisio we have these three considerations First the time of Christs comming and that was the fulnesse of time And then the maner of his comming which is expressed in two degrees of humiliation one that he was made of a woman the other that he was made under the Law And then the third part is the purpose of his comming which also was twofold for first he came to redeem them who were under the Law All And secondly he came that we we the elect of God in him might receive adoption When the fulnesse of time was come c. For the full consideration of this fulnesse of time ãâã we shall first consider this fulnesse in respect of the Jews and then in respect of all Nations and lastly in respect of our selves The Jews might have seen the fulnesse of time the Gentiles did in some measure see it and we must if we will have any benefit by it see it too It is an observation of S. Cyril That none of the Saints of God nor such as were noted to be exemplarily religious and sanctified men did ever celebrate with any festivall solemnity their own birth-day Pharaoh celebrated his own Nativity ãâã 40.22 but who would make Pharaoh his example and besides he polluted that festivall with the bloud of one of his servants Herod celebrated his Nativity but who would think it an honor to be like Herod and besides he polluted that festivall with the blood of Iohn Baptist But the just contemplation of the miseries and calamities of this life into which our birth-day is the doore and the entrance is so far from giving any just occasion of a festivall as it hath often transported the best disposed Saints and servants of God to a distemper to a malediction and cursing of their birth-day ãâ¦ã Cursed be the day wherein I was born and let not that day wherein my mother bare me be blessed Let the day perish wherein I was born let that day be darknesse Job 3. and let not God regard it from above How much misery is presaged to us when we come so generally weeping into the world that perchance in the whole body of history we reade but of one childe Zoroaster that laughed at his birth What miserable revolutions and changes what downfals what break-necks and precipitations may we justly think our selves ordained to if we consider that in our comming into this world out of our mothers womb we doe not make account that a childe comes right except it come with the head forward and thereby prefigure that headlong falling into calamities which it must suffer after Though therefore the dayes of the Martyrs which are for our example celebrated in the Christian Church be ordinarily called natalitia Martyrum the birth-day of the Martyrs yet that is not intended of their birth in this world but of their birth in the next when by death their soules were new delivered of their prisons here and they newly born into the kingdome of heaven that day upon that reason the day of their death was called their birth-day and celebrated in the Church by that name Onely to Christ Jesus the fulnesse of time was at his birth not because he also had not a painfull life to passe through but because the work of our redemption was an intire work and all that Christ said or did or suffered concurred to our salvation as well his mothers swathing him in little clouts as Iosephs shrowding him in a funerall sheete as well his cold lying in the Manger as his cold dying upon the Crosse as well the puer natus as the consummatum est as well his birth as his death is said to have been the fulnesse of time First we consider it to have been so to the Jews for this was that fulnesse Indeic in which all the prophecies concerning the Messias were exactly fulfilled Dan. 2. Hagg. 2. Mich. 5. Esay 7. That he must come whilest the Monarchy of Rome flourished And before the Temple of Jerusalem was destroyed That he must be born in Bethlem That he must be born of a Virgin His person his actions his passion so distinctly prophecyed so exactly accomplished as no word being left unfulfilled this must necessarily be a fulnesse of time So fully was the time of the Messias comming come that though some of the Jews say now that there is no certain time revealed in the Scriptures when the Messias shall come and others of them say that there was a time determined and revealed and that this time was the time but by reason of their great sins he did not come at his time yet when they examine their own supputations they are so convinced with that evidence that this was that fulnesse of time that now they expresse a kinde of conditionall acknowledgement of it by this barbarous and inhumane custome of theirs that they alwayes keep in readinesse the blood of some Christian with which they anoint the body of any that dyes amongst them with these words if Jesus Christ were the Messias then may the blood of this Christian availe thee to salvation So that by their doubt and their implyed consent in this action this was the fulnesse of time when Christ Jesus did come that the Messias should come It was so to the Jews and it was so to the Gentiles too Gontibus It filled those wise men which dwelt so far in the East that they followed the star from thence to Jerusalem Herod was so full of it that he filled the Countrey with streames of innocent bloud and lest he should spare that one innocent childe killed all The two Emperours of Rome Vespasian and Domitian were so full of it that in jealousie of a Messias to come then from that race they took speciall care for the destruction of all of the posterity of David All the whole people were so full of it that divers false-Messiahs Barcocab and Moses of Crete and others rose up and drew and deceived the people as if they had been the Messiah because that was ordinarily knowne and received to be the time of his comming And the Devill himself was so full of it as that in his Oracles he gave that answer That an Hebrew childe should be God over all gods and brought the Emperour to erect an Altar to this Messiah Christ Jesus though he knew not what he did This was the fulnesse that filled Jew and Gentile Kings and Philosophers strangers and inhabitants counterfaits and devils to the expectation of a Messiah and when comes this fulnesse of time to us that we feele this Messiah born in our selves In this fulnesse in this comming of our Saviour into us Nobis we should
those that were under the law that is all but to Adopt those whom he had chosen us And those are the persons the subjects that he works upon by his comming First then to begin with the persons those of the first kinde Sub lege those that were under the Law for them as we told you before the law must not be so narrowly restrained here as to be intended onely of Moses Law for Christs purpose was not onely upon the Jews for else Naaman the Syrian by whom God fought great battailes 2 Reg. 5. before he was cured of his leprosie and who when he was cured was so zealous of the worship of the true God that he would needs carry holy earth to make Altars of from the place where the Prophet dwelt And else Iob who though he were of the land of Hus hath good testimony of being an upright and just man and one that feared God And else the Widow of Sarepta 1. Reg. 17. whose meale and oyle God preserved unwasted and whose dead sonne God raised againe at the prayer of Eliah All these and all others whom the searching Spirit of God seales to his service in all the corners of the earth because they are strangers in the land of Israel should not be under the Law and so should have no profit by Christs being made under the Law if the Law should be understood onely of the Law of Moses And therefore to be under the Law signifies here thus much To be a debter to the law of nature to have a testimony in our hearts and consciences that there lyes a law upon us which we have no power in our selves to performe that to those lawes To love God with all our powers and to love our neighbour as our selves and to doe as we would be done to we finde our selves naturally bound and yet wee finde our selves naturally unable to performe them and so to need the assistance of another which must be Christ Jesus to performe them for us And so all men Jews and Gentiles are under the Law because naturally they feele a law upon them which they breake And therefore wheresoever our power becomes defective in the performance of this law if our will be not defective too if we come not to say God hath given us an impossible Law and therefore it is lost labour to goe about to performe it or God hath given us another to performe this Law for us and therefore nothing is required at our hands If we abstaine from these quarrels to the law and these murmurings at our owne infirmity wee shall finde that the fulnesse of time is this day come this day Christ is come to all that are under the Law that is to all mankinde to all because all are unable to performe that Law which they all see by the light of nature to lye upon them These then be the persons of the first kinde Redemit All all the world Dilexit mundum God so loved the world that he gave his Son for it for all the world And accordingly venit salvare mundum the obedience of the Son was as large as the love of the Father Hee came to save all the world and he did save all the world God would have all men and Christ did save all men It is therefore fearefully and scarce allowably said that Christ did contrary to his Fathers will when he called those to grace of whom he knew his Fathers pleasure to bee that they should have no grace It is fearefully and dangerously said Absurdum non esse Deum interdum falsa loqui falsum loquenti credendum that it is not absurd to say that is that it may truly be said that God does sometimes speake untruly and that we are bound to beleeve God when he does so for if we consider the soveraigne balme of our soules the blood of Christ Jesus there is enough for all the world if we consider the application of this physick by the Ministers of Christ Jesus in the Church hee hath given us that spreading Commission To goe and preach to every creature we are bid to offer to apply to minister this to all the world Christ hath excommunicated no Nation no shire no house no man Hee gives none of his Ministers leave to say to any man thou art not Redeemed he gives no wounded nor afflicted conscience leave to say to it selfe I am not Redeemed There may be meat enough brought into the house for all the house though some be so weake as they cannot which is the case of the Gentiles some so stubborne as they will not eate which is the case of the carnall man though in the Christian Church He came to all There are the persons and to Redeeme all there is his errand but how to Redeeme S. Hierome saies Gentes non Redimuntur sed emuntur The Gentiles saies hee are not properly Christs by way of Redeeming but by an absolute purchase To which purpose those words are also applied which the Apostle saies to the Corinthians 1 Cor. 6.20 Ye are bought with a price S. Hieroms meaning therein is that if we compare the Jews and the Gentiles though God permitted the Jews in punishment of their rebellions to bee captivated by the devill in Idolatries yet the Jews were but as in a mortgage for they had beene Gods peculiar people before But the Gentiles were as the devils inheritance for God had never claimed them nor owned them for his and therefore God sayes to Christ Ps 2.8 Postula à me Aske of me and I will give thee the nations for thine inheritance as though they were not his yet or not his by that title as the Jews were So that in S. Hieromes construction the Jewes which were Gods people before were properly Redeemed the Gentiles to whom God made no title before are rather bought then redeemed But Nullum tempus occurrit Regi against the King of Kings there runnes no prescription no man can devest his Allegeance to his Prince and say he will be subject no longer And therefore since the Gentiles were his by his first title of Creation for it is he that hath made us and not we our selves nor the devill neither when all we by our generall revolt and prevarication as we were all collectively in Adams loynes came to be under that law morte morieris Thou shalt dye the death when Christ came in the fulnesse of time and delivered us from the sharpest and heaviest clause of that Law which is the second death then he Redeemed us properly because though not by the same title of Covenant as the Jews were yet we were his and sold over to his enemy These then were the persons All none can say that he did not need him none can say that he may not have him And this was his first worke to Redeeme to vindicate them from the usurper to deliver them from the intruder to emancipate them
The Kingdome of Heaven Be but a worme and no man as David speakes even in the person of Christ Ps 22.7 finde thy selfe troden under foot and under thine owne foot that is depressed in thine owne estimation and God shall raise thee with that supportation Feare not thou worme of Iacob Esay 41.14 ye men of Israel Be but wormes and no more in your owne eyes and God shall make you men bee but men and no more in your owne eyes and GOD shall make you the men of his Israel This was Moses way not a running away from God but a turning into himselfe not a reluctation against God but a consideration of himselfe For though the lazy mans Quis ego shall not profit him when he shall say what am I I am but one man I can doe nothing alone and so leave all reformation un-attempted in his place because others will âââorme nothing in theirs for that which David saies Ps 50.18 If thou sawest a thiefe Currebas thou didst rise and run with him is not much worse then when thou seest a lazy man to lye downe and sleepe with him Though this mans Quis ego what am I shall not profit him for it is but the voice of prevarication in the ordinary duties of his calling yet in Moses case in every undertaking of a new action this examination this exinanition of our selves is acceptable in the fight of God And therefore Calvin saies justly of this particular in Moses case Non modo culpa vacare sed laude dignum puto that Moses in this his proceeding with God was so far from deserving blame that hee deserved much praise And so it seemes God himselfe interpreted it and accepted it for first for his way he gives him that assurance Certainely I will be with thee V. 12. and then for the end and the effect too he directs him thus when thou hast brought forth the people out of Egypt as certainely this people thou shalt bring from thence then shall they serve God upon this Mountaine And further we may not carry the consideration of Moses first excuse arising out of the contemplation of his owne insufficiency in generall The second doubt and difficulty that Moses makes to himselfe and presents to God Quod nomeu V. 13. Euseb l. 6. c. 3. is this that hee was not able to tell them to whom he was sent his name that sent him When I am come to them saies Moses to God and shall say thou hast sent me and they shall say what is his Name what shall I say unto them In Eusebius his history A Tyran a persecutor askes a martyr Artalus in the midst of his torments in scorne and contempt What is your Gods name you pretende a necessity of worshipping a new God your God but what shall we call your God what is your Gods name And the Martyr answered Qui plures sunt nominibus decernuntur qui unus est nomine non indiget You who worship many Gods need many names to distinguish your Gods by we who know but one God need no other name of God but God wee who worship the onely true God need not the semi-gods nor the sesqui-gods of the Romane Church not their semi-gods their halfe-gods men beatified but not sanctified made private gods but not publique gods chamber-gods but not Church-gods nor any sesqui-god any that must be more then God and receive appeales from God and reverse the decrees of God which they make the office of the Virgin Mary whom no man can honour too much that makes her not God and they dishonour most that make her so much more But yet some names some notifications of God no doubt the Jews had Moses sayes here that he would tell them that the God of their Fathers had sent him which was a name of specification and distinction of this GOD from all the gods of the Gentiles But in this place Moses desires such a name of God as might not onely intimate to them to whom he was sent a great power in that Prince that sent him but might also intimate a great privacy and confidence in him that was sent A name by which he might be knowne to know more of that God then other men knew for nothing advances a businesse more then when hee that is employed is beleeved to know the mind and to have the heart of him that sends him Therefore God gives Moses a cyphar God declares to Moses his bosome name his viscerall name his radicall his fundamentall name the name of his Essence Qui sum I am Goe and tell them that he whose name is I am hath sent thee It is true that literally in the Originall this name is conceived in the future it is there Qui ero I that shall be But this present acceptation I am hath passed through all Translators and all Commentors and Fathers and Councels and Schooles and the whole Church of God rests in it Piscator And I know but one who is of the Reformation and of the most rigid sub-division in the Reformation and who hath many other singularities besides this that will needs translate this name Qui eram I was Howsoever all intend that this is a name that denotes Essence Beeing Beeing is the name of God and of God onely for of every other creature Plato saies well Ejus nomen est potius non esse The name of the Creator is I am but of every creature rather I am not I am nothing Hee considers it and concludes it in the best and noblest of creatures Man for he as well as the rest plus habet non entis quam entis Man hath more privatives then positives in him Man hath but his owne beeing Man hath not the beeing of an Angel nor the beeing of a lyon God hath all in a kind of eminence more excellently then the kinds themselves onely his name is I am Plato pursues this consideration usefully Habuit ante aeternum non esse Man had an eternall not beeing before that is before the creation for those infinite millions of millions of generations before the Creation there was a God whose name was I am but till within these sixe thousand yeares Man was not there was no man And so saies Plato Haberet aeternum non esse ãâã Man had an eternall not beeing before the Creation so he would have another eternall not-being after his dissolution by death in soule as well as in body if God did not preserve that beeing which he hath imprinted in both in both And jam dum est saies he As man had one eternall not beeing before and would have another after so for that beeing which he seemes to have here now it is a continuall declination into a not being because he is in continuall change and mutation quae desinit in non esse as he saies well Every change and mutation bends to a not beeing because in every change it comes
is done sayes the Apostle So that here is the case if the naturall man say alas they are but dark notions of God which I have in nature if the Jew say alas they are but remote and ambiguous things which I have of Christ in the Prophets If the slack and historicall Christian say alas they are but generall things done for the whole world indifferently and not applyed to me which I reade in the Gospell to this naturall man to this Jew to this slack Christian we present an established Church a Church endowed with a power to open the wounds of Christ Jesus to receive every wounded soule to spread the balme of his blood upon every bleeding heart A Church that makes this generall Christ particular to every Christian that makes the Saviour of the world thy Saviour and my Saviour that offers the originall sinner Baptisme for that and the actuall sinner the body and blood of Christ Jesus for that a Church that mollifies and entenders and shivers the presumptuous sinner with denouncing the judgements of God and then consolidates and establishes the diffident soule with the promises of his Gospell a Church in contemplation whereof God may say Quid potui Vineae what could I doe more for my people then I have done first to send mine only Son to die for the whole world and then to spread a Church over the whole world by which that death of his might be life to every soule This we preach this we propose according to that commission put into our hands Ite praedicate Goe and preach the Gospell to every creature and yet Domine quis credidit Lord who hath beleeved our report In this then the Apostle and this Text places the inflexible the incorrigible stiffenesse of mans disobedience in this he seales up his inexcusablenesse his irrecoverablenesse first that he is not afraid of future judgements because they are remote then that he does not beleeve present judgements to be judgements because he can make shift to call them by a milder name accidents and not judgements and can assigne some naturall or morall or casuall reason for them But especially in this that he does not beleeve a perpetuall presence of Christ in his Church he does not beleeve an Ordinance of meanes by which all burdens of bodily infirmities of crosses in fortune of dejection of spirit and of the primary cause of all these that is sin it selfe may be taken off or made easie unto him he does not beleeve a Church Now as in our former part we were bound to know Gods hand and then bound to reade it to acknowledge a judgement to be a judgement and then to consider what God intended in that judgement so here we are bound to know the true Church and then to know what the true Church proposes to us The true Church is that where the word is truely preached and the Sacraments duly administred But it is the Word the Word inspired by the holy Ghost not Apocryphall not Decretall not Traditionall not Additionall supplements and it is the Sacraments Sacraments instituted by Christ himself and not those super-numerary sacraments those posthume post-nati sacrameÌts that have been multiplyed after and then that which the true Church proposes is all that is truly necessary to salvation and nothing but that in that quality as necessary So that Problematical points of which either side may be true in which neither side is fundamentally necessary to salvation those marginal interlineary notes that are not of the body of the text opinions raised out of singularity in some one man and then maintained out of partiality and affection to that man these problematicall things should not be called the Doctrine of the Church nor lay obligations upon mens consciences They should not disturb the general peace they should not extinguish particular charity towards one another The Act then that God requires of us is to beleeve so the words carry it in all the three places The Object the next the nearest Object of this Belief is made the Church that is to beleeve that God hath established means for the application of Christs death to all in all Christian Congregations All things are possible to him that beleeveth Mar. 9 23. saith our Saviour In the Word and Sacraments there is Salvation to every soule that beleeves there is so As on the other side we have from the same mouth and the same pen He that beleeveth not is damned Faith then being the root of all Mar. 16.16 and God having vouchsafed to plant this root this faith here in his terrestriall paradise and not in heaven in the manifest ministery of the Gospell and not in a secret and unrevealed purpose for faith comes by hearing and hearing by preaching which are things executed and transacted here in the Church be thou content with those meanes which God hath ordained and take thy faith in those meanes and beleeve it to be influxus suasorius that it is an influence from God but an influence that works in thee by way of perswasion and not of compulsion It convinces thee but it doth not constraine thee It is as S. Augustine sayes excellently Vocatio congrua it is the voice of God to thee but his voice then when thou art fit to heare and answer that voice not fitted by any exaltation of thine own naturall faculties before the coÌming of grace nor fitted by a good husbanding of Gods former grace so as in rigor of justice to merit an increase of grace but fitted by his preventing his auxiliant his concomitant grace grace exhibited to thee at that time when he calls thee for so saies that Father Sic eum vocat quo modo seit ei congruere ut vocanteÌ non respuat God calls him then when he knows he wil not resist his calling But he doth not say then when he caÌnot resist that needs not be said But as there is podus glcriae as the Apostle speaks an eternall weight of glory which mans understanding cannot coÌprehend so there is Pondus gratiae a certain weight of grace that God layes upon that soule which shall be his under which that soule shall not easily bend it self any way from God This then is the summe of this whole Catechisme which these words in these three places doe constitute First that we be truely affected with Gods fore-warnings and say there Domine credo Lord I beleeve that report I beleeve that judgement to be denounced against my sin And then that we be duely affected with present changes and say there Domine credo Lord I beleeve that report I beleeve this judgement to come from thee and to be a letter of thy hand Lord enlighten others to interpret it aright for thy more publique glory and me for my particular reformation And then lastly to be sincerely and seriously affected with the Ordinances of his Church and to rest in them for the means of our salvation and to
swore by himselfe because he could propose no greater thing in himself no clearer notion of himself then life for his life is his eternity and his eternity is himselfe does therefore through all the Law and the Prophets still sweare in that form Vivo ego vivit Dominus As I live saith the Lord and as the Lord liveth still he sweares by his own life As that solemne Oath which is mentioned in Daniel is conceived in that form too He lift up his right hand and his left hand to heaven Dan. 12.7 and swore by him that liveth for ever that is by God and God in that notion as he is life All that the Queen and the Councell could wish and apprecate to the King was but that Life In sempiternum vive vive in aeternum O King live for ever God is life Dan. 5. and would not the death of any We are not sure that stones have not life stones may have life neither to speak humanely is it unreasonably thought by them that thought the whole world to be inanimated by one soule and to be one intire living creature and in that respect does S. Augustine prefer a fly before the Sun 1 Tim. 5.6 because a fly hath life and the Sun hath not This is the worst that the Apostle sayes of the young wanton widow That if she live in pleasure she is dead whilst she lives So is that Magistrate that studies nothing but his own honour and dignity in his place dead in his place And that Priest that studies nothing but his owne ease and profit dead in his living And that Judge that dares not condemne a guilty person And which is the bolder transgression dares condemne the innocent deader upon the Bench then the Prisoner at the Barre God hath included all that is good Dcut. 30.15 in the name of Life and all that is ill in the name of Death when he sayes See I have set before thee Vitam Bonum Life and Good Mortem Malum Death and Evill This is the reward proposed to our faith Hab. 2.4 Iustus fide sua vivit To live by our faith And this is the reward proposed to our works Fac hoc vives to live by our works All is life And this fulnesse this consummation of happinesse Life and the life of life spirituall life and the exaltation of spirituall life eternall life is the end of Christs comming I came that they might have life And first Vt daret ut daret that he might give life bring life into the world that there might be life to be had that the world might be redeemed from that losse which S. Augustine sayes it was falne into Perdidimus possibilitatem boni That we had all lost all possibility of life For the heaven and the earth and all that the Poet would call Chaos was not a deader lump before the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters then Mankind was before the influence of Christs comming wrought upon it But now that God so loved the world as that he gave his Son now that the Son so loved the world as that he gave himselfe Psal 19.6 as David sayes of the Sun of the firmament the father of nature Nihit absconditum there is nothing hid from the heat thereof so we say of this Son of God the Father of the faithfull in a far higher sense then Abraham was called so Nihilabsconditum there is nothing hid from him no place no person excluded from the benefit of his comming The Son hath paid the Father hath received enough for all not in fingle money for the discharge of thy lesser debts thy idle words thy wanton thoughts thy unchast looks but in massie talents to discharge thy crying debts the clamors of those poore whom thou hast oppressed and thy thundring debts those blasphemies by which thou hast torne that Father that made thee that Sonne that redeemed thee that boly Ghost that would comfort thee 1 Reg. 5. There is enough given but then as Hiram sent materials sufficient for the building of the Temple but there was something else to be done for the fitting and placing thereof so there is life enough brought into the world for all the world by the death of Christ but then there is something else to be done for the application of this life to particular persons intended in this word in our Text ut haberent I came that they might have life There is Ayre enough in the world Vt haberent to give breath to every thing though every thing doe not breath If a tree or a stone doe not breathe it is not because it wants ayre but because it wants meanes to receive it or to returne it All egges are not hatched that the hen sits upon Matt. 23.37 neither could Christ himselfe get all the chickens that were hatched to come and to stay under his wings That man that is blinde or that will winke shall see no more sunne upon S. Barnabies day then upon S. Lucies no more in the summer then in the winter solstice Psal 130.7 And therefore as there is copiosa redemptio a plentifull redemption brought into the world by the death of Christ so as S. Paul found it in his particular conversion there is copiosa lux Acts 22.6 a great a powerfull light exhibited to us that we might see and lay hold of this life in the Ordinances of the Church in the Confessions and Absolutions and Services and Sermons and Sacraments of the Church Christ came ut daret that he might bring life into the world by his death and then he instituted his Church ut haberent that by the meanes thereof this life might be infused into us and infused so as the last word of our Text delivers it Abundantiùs I came that they might have life more abundantly Dignaris Domine AbuÌdantiùs August ut eis quibus debita dimittis te promissionibus tuis debitorem facias This O Lord is thine abundant proceeding First thou forgivest me my debt to thee and then thou makest thy selfe a debter to me by thy large promises and after all performest those promises more largely then thou madest them Indeed God can doe nothing scantly penuriously singly Even his maledictions to which God is ever loth to come his first commination was plurall it was death and death upon death Morte morieris Death may be plurall but this benediction of life cannot admit a singular Chajim which is the word for life hath no singular number This is the difference betweene Gods Mercy and his Judgements that sometimes his Judgements may be plurall complicated enwrapped in one another but his Mercies are alwayes so and cannot be otherwise he gives them abundantiùs more abundantly More abundantly then to whom Illis gentibus The naturall man hath the Image of God imprinted in his soule eternity is God himselfe man hath not
in the warfare Mat. 26.38 so we have our example in our great Generall Christ Jesus Who though his soul were heavy and heavy unto death though he had a baptisme to be baptised with coarctabatur he was straightned and in paine till it were accomplished and though he had power to lay down his soul Iohn 10.18 and take it up againe and no man else could take it from him yet he sought it out to the last houre and till his houre came he would not prevent it nor lay downe his soule Vae desiderantibus woe unto them that desire any other end of Gods correction but what he hath ordained and appointed for ut quid vobis what shall you get by choosing your owne wayes Tenebrae non lux They shall passe out of this world in this inward darknesse of melancholy and dejection of spirit into the outward darknesse which is an everlasting exclusion from the Father of lights and from the Kingdome of joy their case is well expressed in the next verse to our Text they shall flie from a Lyon and a Beare shall meet them they shall leane on a wall and a Serpent shall bite them they shall end this life by a miserable and hasty death and out of that death shall grow an immortall life in torments which no wearinesse nor desire nor practice can ever bring to an end And here in this acceptation of these words this vae falls directly upon them who colouring and apparelling treason in martyrdome expose their lives to the danger of the Law Scribanius embrace death these of whom one of their own society saith that the Scevolaes the Caves the Porciaes the Cleopatraes of the old time were nothing to the Jesuites for saith he they could dye once but they lacked courage ad multas mortes perchance hee meanes that after those men were once in danger of the Law and forfeited their lives by one comming they could come again and again as often as the plentifull mercy of their King would send them away Rapiunt mortem spontanea irruptione sayes he to their glory they are voluntary and violent pursuers of their own death and as he expresses it Crederes morbo adesos Baron Martyrââ 29. Decemb you would think that the desire of death is a disease in them A graver man then he mistakes their case and cause of death as much you are saith he incouraging those of our Nation to the pursuit of death in sacris septis ad martyrium saginati fed up and fatned here for martyrdome Sacramento sanguinem spospondistis they have taken an oath that they will be hanged but that he in whom as his great patterne God himselfe mercy is above all his works out of his abundant sweetnesse makes them perjured when they have so Tworne and vowed their owne ruine But those that send them give not the lives of these men so freely so cheaply as they pretend But as in dry Pumps men poure in a little water that they may pump up more so they are content to drop in a little blood of imaginary but traiterous Martyrs that by that at last they may draw up at last the royall blood of Princes and the loyall blood of Subjects vae desiderantibus woe to them that are made thus ambitious of their owne ruine ut quid vobis Tenebrae non lux you are kept in darknesse in this world and sent into darknesse from heaven into the next and so your ambition ad multas mortes shall be satisfied you dye more then one death morte moriemini this death delivers you to another from which you shall never be delivered We have now past through these three acceptations of these words Conclusion which have falne into the contemplation and meditation of the Ancients in their Expositions of this Text as this dark day of the Lord signifies his judgements upon Atheisticall scorners in this world as it signifies his last irrevocable and irremediable judgements upon hypocriticall relyers upon their own righteousnesse in the next world and between both as it signifies their uncomfortable passage out of this life who bring their death inordinately upon themselves and we shall shut up all with one signification more of the Lords day That that is the Lords day of which the whole Lent is the Vigil and the Eve All this time of mortification and our often meeting in this place to heare of our mortality and our immortality which are the two reall Texts and Subjects of all our Sermons All this time is the Eve of the Resurrection of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ That is the Lords day when all our mortification and dejection of spirit and humbling of our soules shall be abundantly exalted in his resurrection and when all our fasts and abstinence shall be abundantly recompenced in the participation of his body his bloud in the Sacrament Gods Chancery is alwayes open and his seale works alwaies at all times remission of sins may be sealed to a penitent soule in the Sacrament That clause which the Chancellors had in their Patents under the Romane Emperours Vt praerogativamgerat conscientiae nostrae is in our commission too for God hath put his conscience into his Church whose sins are remitted there are remitted in heaven at all times but yet dies Domini the Lords resurrection is as the full Terme a more generall application of this seale of reconciliation But vae desiderantibus woe unto them that desire that day only because they would have these dayes of preaching and prayer and fasting and trouble some preparation past and gone Vae desiderantibus woe unto them who desire that day onely that by receââing the Sacrament day that they might delude the world as though they were not of a contrary religion in their heart vae desiderantibus woe unto them who present themselves that day without such a preparation as becomes so fearful and mystesious an action upon any carnall or collaterall respects Before that day of the Lord comes comes the day of his crucifying before you come to that day if you come not to a crucifying of your selves to the world and the world to you ut quid vobis what shall you get by that day you shall prophane that day and the Author of it as to make that day of Christs triumph the triumph of Satan and to make even that body and bloud of Christ Jesus Vehiculum Satanae his Chariot to enter into you as he did into Iudas That day of the Lord will be darknesse and not light and that darknesse will be that you shall not discerne the Lords body you shall scatter all your thoughts upon wrangling and controversies de modo how the Lords body can be there and you shall not discerne by the effects nor in your owne conscience that the Lords body is there at all But you shall take it to be onely an obedience to civill or Ecclesiasticall
miser abilis casus saies he cui non sufficit una regeneratio Miserable man that I am and miserable condition that I am fallen into whom one regeneration will not serve So is it a miserable death that hath swallowed us whom one Resurrection will serve We need three but if we have not two we were as good be without one There is a Resurrection from worldly calamities a resurrection from sin and a resurrection from the grave First Exod. 10.17 1 Cor. 15.31 Psal 41.8 from calamities for as dangers are called death Pharaoh cals the plague of Locusts a death Intreat the Lord your God that he may take from me this death onely And so S. Paul saies in his dangers I dye daily So is the deliverance from danger called a Resurrection It is the hope of the wicked upon the godly Now that he lieth he shall rise no more that is Now that he is dead in misery he shall have no resurrection in this world Now this resurrection God does not alwaies give to his servants neither is this resurrection the measure of Gods love of man whether he do raise him from worldly calamities or no. The second is the resurrection from sin Apec 20.5 and therefore this S. Iohn calls The first Resurrection as though the other whether we rise from worldly calamities or no were not to be reckoned Anima spiritualiter cadit spiritualiter resurget saies S. Augustine Since we are sure there is a spirituall death of the soule let us make sure a spirituall resurrection too Audacter dicam saies S. Hierome I say confidently Cum omnia posset Deus suscitare Virginem post ruinam non potest Howsoever God can do all things he cannot restore a Virgin that is fallen from it to virginity againe He cannot do this in the body but God is a Spirit and hath reserved more power upon the spirit and soule then upon the body and therefore Audacter dicam I may say with the same assurance that S. Hierome does No soule hath so prostituted her selfe so multiplied her fornications but that God can make her a virgin againe and give her even the chastity of Christ himselfe Fulfill therefore that which Christ saies Iohn 5.25 The houre is comming and now is when the dead shall heare the voyce of the Son of God and they that heare shall live Be this that houre be this thy first Resurrection Blesse Gods present goodnesse for this now and attend Gods leasure for the other Resurrection hereafter 1 Cor. 15.20 He that is the first fruits of them that slept Christ Jesus is awake he dyes no more he sleepes no more Sacrificium pro te fuit sed à te accepit August quod pro te obtulit He offered a Sacrifice for thee but he had that from thee that he offered for thee Primitiae fuit sed tuae primitiae He was the first fruits but the first fruits of thy Corne Spera in te futurum quod praecess it in primitiis tuis Doubt not of having that in the whole Croppe which thou hast already in thy first fruits that is to have that in thy self which thou hast in thy Saviour And what glory soever thou hast had in this world Glory inherited from noble Ancestors Glory acquired by merit and service Glory purchased by money and observation what glory of beauty and proportion what glory of health and strength soever thou hast had in this house of clay The glory of the later house Hag. 2.9 shall be greater then of the former To this glory the God of this glory by glorious or inglorious waies such as may most advance his own glory bring us in his time for his Son Christ Jesus sake Amen SERMON XIX Preached at S. Pauls upon Easter-day in the Evening 1624. APOC. 20.6 Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first Resurrection IN the first book of the Scriptures that of Genesis there is danger in departing from the letter In this last book this of the Revelation there is as much danger in adhering too close to the letter The literall sense is alwayes to be preserved but the literall sense is not alwayes to be discerned for the literall sense is not alwayes that which the very Letter and Grammer of the place presents as where it is literally said That Christ is a Vine and literally That his flesh is bread and literally That the new Ierusalem is thus situated thus built thus furnished But the literall sense of every place is the principall intention of the Holy Ghost in that place And his principall intention in many places is to expresse things by allegories by figures so that in many places of Scripture a figurative sense is the literall sense and more in this book then in any other As then to depart from the literall sense that sense which the very letter presents in the book of Genesis is dangerous because if we do so there we have no history of the Creation of the world in any other place to stick to so to binde our selves to such a literall sense in this book will take from us the consolation of many spirituall happinesses and bury us in the carnall things of this world The first error of being too allegoricall in Genesis transported divers of the ancients beyond the certain evidence of truth and the second error of being too literall in this book fixed many very many very ancient very learned upon an evident falshood which was that because here is mention of a first Resurrection and of raigning with Christ a thousand years after that first Resurrection There should be to all the Saints of God a state of happinesse in this world after Christs comming for a thousand yeares In which happy state though some of them have limited themselves in spirituall things that they should enjoy a kinde of conversation with Christ and an impeccability and a quiet serving of God without any reluctations or coÌcupiscences or persecutions yet others have dreamed on and enlarged their dreames to an enjoying of all these worldly happinesses which they being formerly persecuted did formerly want in this world and then should have them for a thousand yeares together in recompence And even this branch of that error of possessing the things of this world so long in this world did very many and very good and very great men whose names are in honour and justly in the Church of God in those first times stray into and flattered themselves with an imaginary intimation of some such thing in these words Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first Resurrection Thus far then the text is literall Divisio That this Resurrection in the text is different from the generall Resurrection The first differs from the last And thus far it is figurative allegoricall mysticall that it is a spirituall Resurrection that is intended But wherein spirituall or of what spirituall Resurrection In
for they shall have a composition still and every compounded thing may perish but they shal be so assured and with such a preservation as they shall alwaies know they shall never dye S. Augustine saies well Aug. Assit motio absit fatigatio assit potestas vescendi absit necessitas esuriendi They have in their nature a mortality and yet be immortall a possibility and an impossibility of dying with those two divers relations one to nature the other to preservation will consist together So in this soule that hath this first Resurrection from sin by grace a conscience of her owne infirmity that she may relapse and yet a testimony of the powerfulnesse of Gods Spirit that easily she shall not relapse may consist well together But the last seale of this holy confidence is reserved for that which is the third acceptation of this first Resurrection not from persecutions in this world nor from sin in this world but from all possibility of falling back into sin in the world to come and to this have divers Expositors referred these words this first resurrection Blessed and holy is he that hath part in this first Resurrection Now a Resurrection of the soule seemes an improper an impertinent an improbable 3 Part. an impossible forme of speech for Resurrection implies death and the soule does not dye in her passage to Heaven And therefore Damascen makes account De ortho sid l. 4. c. ult that he hath sufficiently proved the Resurrection of the body which seems so incredible if he could prove any Resurrection if there be any Resurrection at all saies he it must be of the body for the soule cannot dye therefore not rise Yet have not those Fathers nor those Expositors who have in this text acknowledged a Resurrection of the soule mistaken nor miscalled the matter Take Damascens owne definition of Resurrection Resurrectio est ejus quod cecidit secunda surrectio A Resurrection is a second rising to that state from which any thing is formerly fallen Now though by death the soule do not fall into any such state as that it can complaine for what can that lack which God fils yet by death the soule fals from that for which it was infused and poured into man at first that is to be the forme of that body the King of that Kingdome and therefore when in the generall Resurrection the soule returnes to that state for which it was created and to which it hath had an affection and a desire even in the fulnesse of the Joyes of Heaven then when the soule returnes to her office to make up the man because the whole man hath therefore the soule hath a Resurrection not from death but from a deprivation of her former state that state which she was made for and is ever enclined to But that is the last Resurrection and so the soule hath part even in that last Resurrection But we are in hand with the first Resurrection of the soule and that is when that soule which was at first breath'd from God and hath long suffered a banishment a close imprisonment in this body returnes to God againe The returning of the soule to him from whom it proceeded at first is a Resurrection of the soule Here then especially I feele the straitnesse of time two considerations open themselves together of such a largenesse as all the time from Moses his In principio when time began to the Angels Affidavit in this booke That shall say and sweare that time shall be no more were too narrow to contemplate these two Hemispheares of Man this Evening and Morning of Mans everlasting day The miseries of man in this banishment in this emprisonment in this grave of the soule the body And the glory and exaltation of that soule in her Resurrection to Heaven That soule which being borne free is made a slave to this body by comming to it It must act but what this body will give it leave to act according to the Organs which this body affords it and if the body be lame in any limme the soule must be lame in her operation in that limme too It must doe but what the body will have it doe and then it must suffer whatsoever that body puts it to or whatsoever any others will put that body to If the body oppresse it selfe with Melancholy the soule must be sad and if other men oppresse the body with injury the soule must be sad too Consider it is too immense a thing to consider it reflect but one thought but upon this one thing in the soule here and hereafter In her grave the body and in her Resurrection in Heaven That is the knowledge of the soule Here saies S. Augustine when the soule considers the things of this world Non veritate certior sed consuetudine securior She rests upon such things as she is not sure are true but such as she sees are ordinarily received and accepted for truths so that the end of her knowledge is not Truth but opinion and the way not Inquisition but ease But saies he when she proceeds in this life to search into heavenly things Verberatur luce veritatis The beames of that light are too strong for her and they sink her and cast her downe Et ad familiaritatem tenebrarum suarum non electione sed fatigatione convertitur and so she returnes to her owne darknesse because she is most familiar and best acquainted with it Non electione not because she loves ignorance but because she is weary of the trouble of seeking out the truth and so swallowes even any Religion to escape the paine of debating and disputing and in this lazinesse she sleeps out her lease her terme of life in this death in this grave in this body But then in her Resurrection her measure is enlarged and filled at once There she reads without spelling and knowes without thinking and concludes without arguing she is at the end of her race without running In her triumph without fighting In her Haven without sayling A free-man without any prentiship at full yeares without any wardship and a Doctor without any proceeding She knowes truly and easily and immediately and entirely and everlastingly Nothing left out at first nothing worne out at last that conduces to her happinesse What a death is this life what a resurrection is this death For though this world be a sea yet which is most strange our Harbour is larger then the sea Heaven infinitely larger then this world For though that be not true which Origen is said to say That at last all shall be saved nor that evident which Cyril of Alexandria saies That without doubt the number of them that are saved is far greater then of them that perish yet surely the number of them with whom we shall have communion in Heaven is greater then ever lived at once upon the face of the earth And of those who lived in our time how few did we
they have brought it nearer to the understanding nay even to the very sense by producing some such things as even in nature doe not only resemble but as they apprehend evict a resurrection yet when all is done and all the reasons of Athenogaras and the Schoole and of S. Paul himselfe are waighed they determine all in this that they are faire and pregnant and convenient illustrations of that which was beleeved before and that they have force and power to encline to an assent and to create and beget such a probability as a discreet and sad and constant man might rest in and submit to But yet we shall finde also that though no man may speak a word or conceive a thought against the resurrection because for the matter we are absolutely and expresly concluded by the Scriptures yet a man may speak probably and dangerously against any particulur argument that is produced for the resurrection We beleeve it immediately intirely cheafully undisputably because we see it expresly delivered by the Holy Ghost And we embrace thankfully that sweetnesse and that fulnesse of that blessed Spirit that as he laies an obligation upon our faith by delivering the article positively to us so he is also pleased to accompany that Article with reasons and arguments proportionable to our reason and understanding for though those reasons do not so conclude us as that nothing might be said to the contrary or nothing doubted after yet the Holy Ghost having first begotten the faith of this Article Per ea augescit fides pinguescit as Luther speaks in another case By those reasons and arguments and illustrations that faith is nourished and maintained in a good habitude and constitution And of that kind are all the reasons brought by S. Paul here Argumentae Apostols The matter is positively delivered by him and so apprehended by us and his reasons as we said before issue out of two Topiques Be pleased to looke upon both The first is our patterne Christ Jesus He is risen therefore we shall In which though I have a faire illustration and consolation in that The Head is risen therefore the Body shall yet this reaches not to make my Resurrection like his for I shall not rise as he did And then from his other Topique his reasons rise thus If there be no Resurrection we that suffer thus much for the prefession of Christ are the miserablest men in the world Why so have not all Philosophers had Scholars and all Heretiques Disciples and all great Men flatterers and every private man affections And hath there not been as much suffered by occasion of these as S. Paul argues upon here and yet no imagination no expectation of a resurrection Leave out the consideration of Philosophers many of which suffered more then the Turks doe and yet the Turks suffer infinitely more in their Mortifications then the Papists doe Leave out the Heretiques which were so hungry of suffering that if they could not provoke others to kill them they would kill themselves Leave out the pressures of our own affections and concupiscencies and yet the covetous man is in a continuall starving and the licentious man in a continuall Consumption Take onely into your consideration the miserable vexation of the flatterer and humourer and dependant upon great persons that their time is not their owne nor their words their owne their joyes are not their owne nay their sorrowes are not their owne they might not smile if they would nor they may not sigh when they would they must doe all according to anothers mind and yet they must not know his minde consider this and you cannot say but that there is as much suffered in the world as this upon which S. Paul argues by them who place not their consolation nor their retribution in the hope of a resurrection He argues farther Edamus bibamus If there be no resurrection let us dissolve our selves into the pleasures of this world and enjoy them Why so too Have we not stories full of exemplar men that might be our patterns for sobriety and continency and denying themselves the sweetnesses of this life and yet never placed Consolation nor Retribution upon a Resurrection Would not S. Pauls own Pondus gloriae That there is an exceeding waight of eternall glory attending our afflictions serve our turne though that were determined in the salvation of the soule though there were no resurrection of the body It is strongly and wisely said by Aquinas Derogant fidei Christianae rationes non cogentes To offer reasons for any Article of faith which will not convince a man therein derogates from the dignity of that Article Therefore we must consider S. Pauls reasons as they were intended to Christians that had received the Article of the Resurrection into their faith before And then as God gave Adam a body immediately from himself but then maintained and nourished that body by other meanes so the holy Ghost by S. Paul gives the article of the Resurrection to our faith positively and then enables us to declare to our own consciences and to other mens understandings that we beleeve no impossible thing in beleeving the Resurrection for as it is the candle that lights me but yet I take a lanthorne to defend that candle from the wind so my faith assures me of the Resurrection but these reasons and illustrations assist that faith And so we have done with our first part How this assurance accrues unto us and passe in order to the other The consolation which we have from this resurrection of the body not onely in it selfe but as it gives us a sense of the spirituall resurrection of our soules from sinne by Grace We are assured then of a Resurrection and we see how that assurance growes 2. Part. But of what Of all Body and soule too For Quod cadit resurgit sayes S. Hierome All that is falne receives a resurrection and that is suppositum sayes the Schoole that is The person the whole man not taken in pieces soule alone or body alone but both For as Damascen expresses the same that S. Hierome intends Resurrectio est ejus quod cecidit iterata surrectio The Resurrection is a new rising of that which fell and Man fell A man is not saved a sinner is not redeemed I am not received into heaven if my body be left out The soule and the body concurred to the making of a sinner and body and soule must concur to the making of a Saint So it is in the last Resurrection so it is in the first which we consider now by Grace from sin And therefore we receive into comparison Triplicem casum a threefold fall and a threefold resurrection as in the naturall and bodily death so in the spirituall death of the soule also For first in naturall death there is Casus in separationem The man the person falls into a separation a divorce of body and soul and the resurrection from
the devill gives us is affliction upon affliction and to that there belongs a woe Per tenuitatem assimilamur Deo saies the same Author The attenuation the slendernesse the deliverance of the body from the encumbrance of much flesh gives us some assimilation some conformity to God and his Angels The lesse flesh we carry the liker we are to them who have none That is still the lesse flesh of our owne making for for that flesh which God and his instrument Nature hath given us in what measure or proportion soever that does not oppresse us to this purpose neither shall that be laid to our charge but the flesh that we have built up by curious diet by meats of provocation and witty sawces or by a slothfull and drowsie negligence of the works of our calling All flesh is sinfull flesh sinfull so as that it is the mother of sin it occasions sin naturall flesh is so But this artificiall flesh of our owne making is sinfull so as that it is also the daughter of sin It is indeed the punishment of former sins and the occasion of future The soule then requires not so large so vast a house of sinfull flesh to dwell in Macerationes corporis But yet on the other side we may not by inordinate abstinencies by indiscreet fastings by inhumane flagellations by unnaturall macerations and such Disciplines as God doth not command nor authorize so wither and shrinke and contract the body as though the soule were sent into it as into a prison or into fetters and manacles to wring and pinch and torture it Nihil interest saies S. Hierome It is all one whether thou kill thy selfe at one blow or be long in doing it if thou do it All one whether thou fall upon thine own sword or sterve thy selfe with such a fasting as thou discernest to induce that effect for saies he Descendit a dignitate viri not as insaniae incurrit He departs from that dignity which God hath imprinted in man in giving him the use and the dominion over his creatures and he gives the world just occasion to thinke him mad And as Tertullian adds Respuit datorem qui datum deserit He that does not use a benefit reproaches the Benefactor and he is ungratefull to God that does not accept at his hands the use of his blessings Therefore is it accepted as a good interpretation which is made of Christs determining his fast in forty daies Ne sui homicida videretur Lest if he continued it longer he might have seemed to have killed himselfe by being the author of his owne death And so do they interpret aright his Esuriit That then he began to be hungry that he began to languish to faint to finde a detriment in his body for else a fasting when a man is not hungry is no fasting but then he gave over fasting when he found the state of his body empaired by fasting And therefore those mad doctrines so S. Hierom cals them Notas insaniae habent yea those devilish doctrines so S. Paul cals them that forbid certaine meats and that make un-commanded macerations of the body meritorious that upon a supposititious story of an Ermit that lived 22. yeares Abbasll sperg without eating any thing at all And upon an impertinent example of their S. Francis that kept three Lents in the yeare which they extoll and magnifie in S. Francis and S. Hierom condemned and detested in the Montanists who did so too have built up those Carthusian Rules That though it appeare that that and nothing but that would save the patients life yet he may not eat flesh that is a Carthusian And have brought into estimation those Apocryphall and bastardly Canons which they father upon the Apostles That a man must rather sterve then receive food from the hand of a person excommunicate or otherwise detected of any mortall sin And that all that can be done with the almes of such a person is that it be spent in wood and coales and other fuell that so as the subtile philosophy of their Canon is it may be burnt and consumed by fire for to save a mans life it must not be spent upon meat or drink or such sustentation These Doctrines are not the Doctrines of this Resurrection by which man considered in Composito as he consists of soule and body by a sober and temperate life makes his body obsequious and serviceable to his soule but yet leaves his soule a body to worke in and an Organ to praise God upon both in a devout humiliation of his body in Gods service and in a bodily performance of the duties of some calling for this is our first Resurrection A casu separationis from having falne into a separation of body and soule for they must serve God joyntly together because God having joyned them man may not separate them but as God shall re-unite them at the last Resurrection so must we in our Resurrections in this life And farther we extend not this Resurrection from this separation this divorce The second fall of man in naturall death Casus in dissolutionem is Casus in dissolutionem The man being fallen into a divorce of soule and body the body fals by putrefaction into a dissolution of dust and the Resurrection from this fall is a re-efformation when God shall recompact that dust into that body This fall and this resurrection we have in our spirituall death too for we fall into daily customes and continuall habits of those sins and we become not onely as that Lazarus in the parable to have sores upon us but as that Lazarus in the Gospell that was dead Domine jam faetemus quatriduani sumus Lord we stinke in thy nostrils and we have beene buried foure dayes All the foure changes of our life Infancy Youth Middle Age and Old have beene spent and worne out in a continuall and uninterrupted course of sin In which we shall best consider our fall and best prepare our Resurrection by looking from whence we are fallen and by what steps and they are three First Nardus nostra Cant. 1.12 Perdidimus nardum nostraÌ We have lost the sweet savour of our own Spikenard for so the Spouse saies Nardus mea dedit odorem suum My Spikenard hath given forth her sweet savour There was a time when we had a Spikenard and a sweet savour of our own when our own Naturall faculties in that state as God infused them in Adam had a power to apprehend and lay hold upon the graces of God Man hath a reasonable soule capable of Gods grace so hath no creature but man man hath naturall faculties which may be employed by God in his service so hath no creature but man Onely man was made so as that he might be better whereas all other creatures were but to consist in that degree of goodnesse in which they entred Miserable fall Only man was made to mend and only man does grow
of particular sins Now after all this there is in naturall death a third fall casus in dispersionem In dispersionem the man is fallen in separationem into a divorce of body and soule the body is fallen in dissolutionem to putrifaction and dissolution in dust and then this dust is fallen in dispersionem into a dispersion and scattering over the earth as God threatens Comminuam in pulverem I will break the wicked as small as dust and scatter them with the winde Psal 18. For after such a scattering no power but of God onely can recollect those grains of dust and re-compact them into a body and re-inanimate them into a man And such a state such a dispersion doth the heart and soule of an habituall sinner undergoe For Pro. 17.24 as the eyes of a foole are in the corners of the earth so is the heart and soule of a sinner The wanton and licentious man sighs out his soule weeps out his soule sweares out his soule in every place where his lust or his custome or the glory of victory in overcomming and deluding puts him upon such solicitations In the corrupt taker his soul goes out that it may leave him unsensible of his sin and not trouble him in his corrupt bargaine and in a corrupt giver ambitious of preferment his soule goes out with his money which he loves well but not so well as his preferment This yeare his soule and his money goes out upon one office and next yeare more soul and more money upon another He knowes how his money will come in againe for they will bring it that have need of his corruptnesse in his offices But where will this man finde his soule thus scattered upon every woman corruptly won upon every office corruptly usurped upon every quillet corruptly bought upon every fee corruptly taken Thus it is when a soule is scattered upon the daily practise of any one predominant and habituall sin but when it is indifferently scattered upon all how much more is it so In him that swallowes sins in the world as he would doe meats at a feast passes through every dish and never askes Physitian the nature the quality the danger the offence of any dish That baits at every sin that rises and poures himselfe into every sinfull mold he meets That knowes not when he began to spend his soule nor where nor upon what sin he laid it out no nor whether he have whether ever he had any soule or no but hath lost his soule so long agoe in rusty and in incoherent sins not sins that produced one another as in Davids case and yet that is a fearfull state that concatenation of sins that pedegree of sins but in sins which he embraces meerely out of an easinesse to sin and not out of a love no nor out of a tentation to that sin in particular that in these incoherent sins hath so scattered his soule as that he hath not soule enough left to seek out the rest And therefore David makes it the Title of the whole Psalme Domine ne disperdas O Lord doe not scatter us Psal 58. And he begins to expresse his sense of Gods Judgements in the next Psalme so O Lord thou hast cast us out thou hast scattered us turn again unto us for even from this aversion there may be conversion and from this last and lowest fall a resurrection But how In the generall resurrection upon naturall death God shall work upon this dispersion of our scattered dust as in the first fall which is the Divorce by way of Re-union and in the second which is Putrifaction by way of Re-efformation so in this third which is Dispersion by way of Re-collection where mans buried flesh hath brought forth grasse and that grasse fed beasts and those beasts fed men and those men fed other men God that knowes in which Boxe of his Cabinet all this seed Pearle lies in what corner of the world every atome every graine of every mans dust sleeps shall recollect that dust and then recompact that body and then re-inanimate that man and that is the accomplishment of all In this resurrection from this Dilpersion and scattering in sin the way is by Recollection too That this sinner recollect himselfe and his own history his own annalls his own journalls and call to minde where he lost his way and with what tendernesse of conscience and holy startling he entred into some sins at first in which he is seared up now and whereas his triumph should have been in a victory over the flesh he is come to a triumph in his victory over the spirit of God and glories in having overcome the Holy Ghost and brought his conscience to an unsensiblenesse of sin If hee can recollect himselfe thus and cast up his account so If he can say to God Lord we have sold our selves for nothing he shall heare God say to him as he does there in the Prophet You have sold your selves for nothing Esay 52.3 and you shall be redeemed without money But how is this recollecting wrought God hath intimated the way Ezek. 37. in that vision to the Prophet Ezekiel He brings the Prophet into a field of dead bones and dry bones sicca vehementer as it is said there as dry as this dust which we speak of And he asks him fili hominis thou that art but the son of man and must judge humanely Putasne vivent ossa ista Dost thou think that these bones can live The Prophet answers Domine tu nosti thou Lord who knowest whose names are written in the Book of Life and whose are not whose bones are wrapped up in the Decree of thy Election and whose are not knowest whether these bones can live or no for but in the efficacy and power of that Decree they cannot Yes they shall sayes God Almighty and they shall live by this meanes Dices eis Thou shalt say unto them O ye dry bones heare the word of the Lord As dry as desperate as irremediable as they are in themselves God shall send his servants unto them and they shall heare them And as it is added in that place Prophetante me factus sonitus commotio As I Prophesied there was a noyse and a shaking As whilst Peter spake The Holy Ghost fell upon all them that heard the word So whilst the Messengers of God speak in the presence of such sinners there shall be a noyse and a commotion a horrour of their former sins a wonder how they could provoke so patient and so powerfull a God a sinking down under the waight of Gods Judgements a flying up to the apprehension of his mercies and this noyse and commotion in their soules shall be setled with that Gospell in that Prophet Dabo super vos nervos I will lay sinewes upon you and will bring up flesh upon you and cover you with skin and put breath into you and you shall live and ye
our virility our holy manhood our true and religious strength consists in the assurance that though death have divided us and though we never receive our dead raised to life again in this world yet we do live together already in a holy Communion of Saints and shal live together for ever hereafter in a glorious Resurrection of bodies Little know we how little a way a soule hath to goe to heaven when it departs from the body Whether it must passe locally through Moone and Sun and Firmament and if all that must be done all that may be done in lesse time then I have proposed the doubt in or whether that soule finde new light in the same roome and be not carried into any other but that the glory of heaven be diffused over all I know not I dispute not I inquire not Without disputing or inquiring I know that when Christ sayes That God is not the God of the dead he saies that to assure me that those whom I call dead are alive And when the Apostle tels me That God is not ashamed to be called the God of the dead Heb. 11.16 he tels me that to assure me That Gods servants lose nothing by dying He was but a Heathen that said Menander Thraces If God love a man Iuvenis tollitur He takes him young out of this world And they were but Heathens that observed that custome To put on mourning when their sons were born and to feast and triumph when they dyed But thus much we may learne from these Heathens That if the dead and we be not upon one floore nor under one story yet we are under one roofe We think not a friend lost because he is gone into another roome nor because he is gone into another Land And into another world no man is gone for that Heaven which God created and this world is all one world If I had fixt a Son in Court or married a daughter into a plentifull Fortune I were satisfied for that son and that daughter Shall I not be so when the King of Heaven hath taken that son to himselfe and maried himselfe to that daughter for ever I spend none of my Faith I exercise none of my Hope in this that I shall have my dead raised to life againe This is the faith that sustaines me when I lose by the death of others or when I suffer by living in misery my selfe That the dead and we are now all in one Church and at the resurrection shall be all in one Quire But that is the resurrection which belongs to our other part That resurrection which wee have handled though it were a resurrection from death yet it was to death too for those that were raised again died again But the Resurrection which we are to speak of is forever They that rise then shall see death no more for it is sayes our Text A better Resurrection That which we did in the other part 2 Part. in the last branch thereof in this part we shall doe in the first First we shall consider the examples from which the Apostle deduceth this encouragement and faithfull constancy upon those Hebrewes to whom he directs this Epistle Though as he sayes in the beginning of the next Chapter he were compassed about with a Cloud of witnesses and so might have proposed examples from the Authenticke Scriptures and the Histories of the Bible yet we accept that direction which our Translators have given us in the Marginall Concordance of their Translation That the Apostle in this Text intends and so referres to that Story which is 2 Maccab. 7.7 To that Story also doth Aquinas referre this place But Aquinas may have had a minde to doe that service to the Romane Church to make the Apostle cite an Apocryphall Story though the Apostle meant it not It may be so in Aquinas He might have such a minde such a meaning But surely Beza had no such meaning Calvin had no such minde and yet both Calvin and Beza referre this Text to that Story Though it be said sayes Calvin that Ieremy was stoned to death and Esay sawed to death Non dubito quin illas persecutiones designet quae sub Antiocho I doubt not sayes he but that the Apostle intends those persecutions which the Maccabees suffered under Antiochus So then there may be good use made of an Apocryphall Booke It alwayes was and alwayes will be impossible for our adversaries of the Romane Church to establish that which they have so long endeavoured that is to make the Apocryphall Bookes equall to the Canonicall It is true that before there was any occasion of jealousie or suspition that there would be new Articles of faith coyned and those new Articles authorized and countenanced out of the Apocryphall Books the blessed Fathers in the Primitive Church afforded honourable names and made faire and noble mention of those Books So they have called them Sacred and more then that Divine and more then that too Canonicall Books and more then all that by the generall name of Scripture and Holy Writ But the Holy Ghost who fore-saw the danger though those blessed Fathers themselves did not hath shed and dropt even in their writings many evidences to prove in what sense they called those Books by those names and in what distance they alwayes held them from those Bookes which are purely and positively and to all purposes and in all senses Sacred and Divine and Canonicall and simply Scripture and simply Holy Writ Of this there is no doubt in the Fathers before S. Augustine For all they proposed these Bookes as Canones morum non sidei Canonicall that is Regular for applying our manners and conversation to the Articles of Faith but not Canonicall for the establishing those Articles Canonicall for edification but not for foundation And even in the later Roman Church we have a good Author that gives us a good rule Cajeâan Ne turberis Novitie Let no young Student be troubled when he heares these Bookes by some of the Fathers called Canonicall for they are so saies he in their sense Regulares ad aedificationem Good Canons good Rules for matter of manners and conversation And this distinction saies that Author will serve to rectifie not onely what the Fathers afore S. Augustine for they speake cleerely enough but what S. Augustine himselfe and some Councels have said of this matter But yet this difference gives no occasion to an elimination to an extermination of these Books which we call Apocryphall And therefore when in a late forraine Synod that Nation where that Synod was gathered would needs dispute whether the Apocryphall Bookes should not be utterly left out of the Bible And not effecting that yet determined that those Bookes should be removed from their old place where they had ever stood that is after the Bookes of the Old Testament Exteri se excusari petierunt Sessio 10. say the Acts of that Synod Those that
walk by faith and not by sight we are absent from the Lord. 2 Cor. 5.6 Faith is a blessed presence but compared with heavenly vision it is but an absence though it create and constitute in us a possibility a probability a kinde of certainty of salvation yet that faith which the best Christian hath is not so far beyond that sight of God which the naturall man hath as that sight of God which I shall have in heaven is above that faith which we have now in the highest exaltation Therefore there belongs a consideration to that which is added by our Apostle here That the knowledge which I have of God here even by faith through the ordinances of the Church is but a knowledge in part Now I know in part That which we call in part the Syriack translates Modicum ex multis Ex parte Though we know by faith yet for all that faith it is but a little of a great deale that we know yet because though faith be good evidence yet faith is but the evidence of things not seen Heb. 11.1 And there is better evidence of them when they are seen For if we consider the object we cannot beleeve so much of God nor of our happinesse in him as we shall see then For when it is said that the heart comprehends it not certainly faith comprehends it not neither And if we consider the manner faith it self is but darknesse in respect of the vision of God in heaven For those words of the Prophet I will search Ierusalem with Candles are spoken of the times of the Christian Church Zeph. 1.12 and of the best men in the Christian Church yet they shall be searched with Candles some darknesse shall be found in them To the Galatians well instructed and well established Gal. 4.9 the Apostle sayes Now after ye have knowen God or rather are knowen of God The best knowledge that we have of God here even by faith is rather that he knows us then that we know him And in this Text it is in his own person that the Apostle puts the instance Now I I an Apostle taught by Christ himselfe know but in part And therefore as S. Augustine saith Sunt quasi cunabula charitatis Dei quibus diligimus proximum The love which we beare to our neighbour is but as the Infancy but as the Cradle of that love which we beare to God so that sight of God which we have In speculo in the Glasse that is in nature is but Cunabula fidei but the infancy but the cradle of that knowledge which we have in faith and yet that knowledge which we have in faith is but Cunabula visionis the infancy and cradle of that knowledge which we shall have when we come to see God face to face Faith is infinitely above nature infinitely above works even above those works which faith it self produces as parents are to children the tree to the fruit But yet faith is as much below vision and seeing God face to face And therefore though we ascribe willingly to faith more then we can expresse yet let no man think himself so infallibly safe because he finds that he beleeves in God as he shall be when he sees God The faithfullest man in the Church must say Domine adauge Lord increase my faith He that is least in the kingdome of heaven shal never be put to that All the world is but Speculum a glasse in which we see God The Church it self and that which the Ordinance of the Church begets in us faith it self is but aenigma a dark representation of God to us till we come to that state To see God face to face and to know as also we are knowen Now Calum Sphaera as for the sight of God here our Theatre was the world our Medium and glasse was the creature and our light was reason And then for our knowledge of God here our Academy was the Church our Medium the Ordinances of the Church and our Light the light of faith so we consider the same Termes first for the sight of God and then for the knowledge of God in the next life First the Sphear the place where we shall see him is heaven He that asks me what heaven is meanes not to heare me but to silence me He knows I cannot tell him When I meet him there I shall be able to tell him and then he will be as able to tell me yet then we shall be but able to tell one another This this that we enjoy is heaven but the tongues of Angels the tongues of glorified Saints shall not be able to expresse what that heaven is for even in heaven our faculties shall be finite Heaven is not a place that was created for all place that was created shall be dissolved God did not plant a Paradise for himself and remove to that as he planted a Paradise for Adam and removed him to that But God is still where he was before the world was made And in that place where there are more Suns then there are Stars in the Firmament for all the Saints are Suns And more light in another Sun The Sun of righteousnesse the Son of Glory the Son of God then in all them in that illustration that emanation that effusion of beams of glory which began not to shine 6000. yeares ago but 6000. millions of millions ago had been 6000. millions of millions before that in those eternall in those uncreated heavens shall we see God This is our Spheare Medium Revelatio sui and that which we are fain to call our place and then our Medium our way to see him is Patefactio sui Gods laying himself open his manifestation his revelation his evisceration and embowelling of himselfe to us there Doth God never afford this patefaction this manifestation of himself in his Essence to any in this life We cannot answer yea nor no without offending a great part in the Schoole so many affirm so many deny that God hath been seen in his Essence in this life There are that say That it is fere de fide little lesse then an article of faith that it hath been done And Aquinas denies it so absolutely as that his Followers interpret him de absoluta potentia That God by his absolute power cannot make a man remaining a mortall man and under the definition of a mortall man capable of seeing his Essence as we may truly say that God cannot make a beast remaining in that nature capable of grace or glory S. Augustine speaking of discourses that passed between his mother and him not long before her death sayes Perambulavimus cuncta mortalia ipsum coelum We talked our selves above this earth and above all the heavens Venimus in mentes nostras transcendimus eas We came to the consideration of our owne mindes and our owne soules and we got above our own soules that is to
be well Christ said in his behalfe Verily I have not found so great faith no not in Israel When Christ makes so much of this single grain of Mustard-seed this little faith as to prefer it before all the faith of Israel surely faith went very low in Israel at that time Nay when Christ himself sayes speaking of his last comming after so many ages preaching of the Gospell When the Son of man comes shall he finde faith upon earth Luk. 18.8 any faith We have I say a blessed beam of comfort shining out of this text that it is no small number that is reserved for that Kingdome For whether the Apostle speak this of himself and the Thessalonians or of others he speaks not as of a few but that by Christs having preached the narrownesse of the way and the straitnesse of the gate our holy industry and endeavour is so much exalted which was Christs principall end in taking those Metaphors of narrow wayes and strait gates not to make any man suspect an impossibility of entring but to be the more industrious and endeavorous in seeking it that as he hath sent workmen in plenty abundant preaching so he shall return a plentifull harvest a glorious addition to his Kingdome both of those which slept in him before and of those which shall be then alive fit all together to be caught up in the clouds to meet him and be with him for ever for these two armies imply no small number Now of the condition of these men who shall be then alive and how being clothed in bodies of corruption they become capable of the glory of this text in our first distribution we proposed that for a particular consideration and the other branch of this second part and to that in that order we are come now I scarce know a place of Scripture more diversly read Immutabimur and consequently more variously interpreted then that place which should most enlighten us in this consideration presently under our hands which is that place to the Corinthians 1 Cor. 15.51 Non omnes dormiemus We shall not all sleep but we shall all be changed The Apostle professes there to deliver us a mystery Behold I shew you a mystery but Translators and Expositors have multiplyed mysticall clouds upon the words S. Chrysostome reads these words as we do Chrysost Non dormiemus We shall not all sleep but thereupon he argues and concludes that wee shall not all die The common reading of the ancients is contrary to that Omnes dormiemus sed non c. We shall all sleep but we shall not all be changed The vulgat Edition in the Romane Church differs from both and as much from the originall as from either Omnes resurgemus We shall all rise again but we shall not all be changed S. Hierome examines the two readings and then leaves the reader to his choice as a thing indifferent S. Augustine doth so too and concludes aquè Catholicos esse That they are as good Catholiques that reade it the one way as the other But howsoever that which S. Chrysostome collects upon his reading may not be maintained He reads as we do and without all doubt aright We shall not all sleep But what then Therefore shall we not all die To sleep there is to rest in the grave to continue in the state of the dead and so we shall not all sleep not continue in the state of the dead But yet Statutum est sayes the Apostle Heb. 9.27 as verily as Christ was once offered to beare our sinnes so verily is it appointed to every man once to die Rom. 5.12 And as verily as by one man sinne entred into the world and death by sinne so verily death passed upon all men for that all men have sinned So the Apostle institutes the comparison so he constitutes the doctrine in those two places of Scripture As verily as Christ dyed for all all shall die As verily as every man sins every man shall die In that change then which we who are then alive shall receive for though we shall not all sleep we shall all be changed we shall have a present dissolution of body and soul and that is truly a death and a present redintegration of the same body and the same soul and that is truly a Resurrection we shall die and be alive again before another could consider that we were dead but yet this shall not be done in an absolute instant some succession of time though undiscernible there is It shall be done In raptu in a rapture but even in a rapture there is a motion a transition from one to another place It shall be done sayes he In ictuoculi In the twinkling of an eye But even in the twinkling of an eie there is a shutting of the eie-lids and an opening of them again Neither of these is done in an absolute instant but requires some succession of time The Apostle in the Resurrection in our text constitutes a Prius something to be done first and something after first those that were dead in Christ shall rise first and then Then when that is done after that not all at once we that are alive shall be wrought upon we shall be changed our change comes after their rising so in our change there is a Prius too first we shall be dissolved so we die and then we shall be re-compact so we rise again This is the difference they that sleep in the grave put off and depart with the very substance of the body it is no longer flesh but dust they that are changed at the last day put off and depart with only the qualities of the body as mortality and corruption It is still the same body without resolving into dust but the first step that it makes is into glory Now transfer this to the spirituall Resurrection of thy soul by grace here Here Grace works not that Resurrection upon thy soul in an absolute instant And therefore suspect not Gods gracious purpose upon thee if thou beest not presently throughly recovered God could have made all the world in one day and so have come sooner to his Sabbath his rest but he wrought more to give us an example of labour and of patience in attending his leasure in our second Creation this Resurrection from sin as we did in our first Creation when we were not made till the sixt day But remember too that the last Resurrection from death is to be transacted quickly speedily And in thy first thy spirituall Resurrection from sin make haste The last is to be done In raptu in a rapture Let this rapture in the first Resurrection be to teare thy self from that company and conversation that leads thee into tentation The last is to be done Inictu oculi In the twinkling of an eye Let that in thy first Resurrection be The shutting of thine eyes from looking upon things in things upon creatures in creatures
was said Thy desire shall be to thy husband and he shall rule over thee and how many women have no desire to their husbands how many over-rule them Hunger and thirst and wearinesse and sicknesse are denounced upon all and yet if you ask me Quis homo What is that man that hungers and thirsts not that labours not that sickens not I can tell you of many that never felt any of these but contract the question to that one of death Quis homo What man is he that shall not taste death And I know none Whether we consider the Summer Solstice when the day is sixteen houres and the night but eight or the Winter Solstice when the night is sixteen houres and the day but eight still all is but twenty foure houres and still the evening and morning make but a day The Patriarchs in the old Testament had their Summer day long lives we are in the Winter short lived but Quis homo Which of them or us come not to our night in death If we consider violent deaths casuall deaths it is almost a scornfull thing to see with what wantonnesse and sportfulnesse death playes with us We have seen a man Canon proofe in the time of War and slain with his own Pistoll in the time of peace We have seen a man recovered after his drowning and live to hang himselfe But for that one kinde of death which is generall though nothing be in truth more against nature then dissolution and corruption which is death we are come to call that death naturall death then which indeed nothing is more unnaturall The generality makes it naturall Moses sayes that Mans age is seventy Psal 90.10 and eighty is labour and pain and yet himselfe was more then eighty and in a good state and habitude when he said so No length no strength enables us to answer this Quis homo What man c. Take a flat Map a Globe in plano and here is East and there is West as far asunder as two points can be put but reduce this flat Map to roundnesse which is the true form and then East and West touch one another and are all one So consider mans life aright to be a Circle Pulvis es in pulverem reverâeris Dust thou art and to dust thou must return Nudus egressus Job 1. Nudus revertar Naked I came and naked I must go In this the circle the two points meet the womb and the grave are but one point they make but one station there is but a step from that to this This brought in that custome amongst the Greek Emperours that ever at the day of their Coronation they were presented with severall sorts of Marble that they might then bespeak their Tombe And this brought in that Custome into the Primitive Church that they called the Martyrs dayes wherein they suffered Natalitia Martyrum their birth dayes birth and death is all one Their death was a birth to them into another life into the glory of God It ended one Circle and created another for immortality and eternity is a Circle too not a Circle where two points meet but a Circle made at once This life is a Circle made with a Compasse that passes from point to point That life is a Circle stamped with a print an endlesse and perfect Circle as soone as it begins Of this Circle the Mathematician is our great and good God The other Circle we make up our selves we bring the Cradle and Grave together by a course of nature Every man does Mi Gheber sayes the Originall It is not Ishe which is the first name of man in the Scriptures and signifies nothing but a sound a voyce a word a Musicall ayre dyes and evaporates what wonder if man that is but Ishe a sound dye too It is not Adam which is another name of man and signifies nothing but red earth Let it be earth red with blood with that murder which we have done upon our selves let it be earth red with blushing so the word is used in the Originall with a conscience of our own infirmity what wonder if man that is but Adam guilty of this self-murder in himself guilty of this in-borne frailty in himself dye too It is not Enos which is also a third name of man and signifies nothing but a wretched and miserable creature what wonder if man that is but earth that is a burden to his Neighbours to his friends to his kindred to himselfe to whom all others and to whom himself desires death what wonder if he dye But this question is framed upon none of these names Not Ishe not Adam not Enos but it is Mi Gheber Quis vir which is the word alwayes signifying a man accomplished in all excellencies a man accompanied with all advantages fame and good opinion justly conceived keepes him from being Ishe a meere sound standing onely upon popular acclamation Innocency and integrity keepes him from being Adam red earth from bleeding or blushing at any thing hee hath done That holy and Religious Art of Arts which S. Paul professed That he knew how to want and how to abound keepes him from being Enos miserable or wretched in any fortune Hee is Gheber a great Man and a good Man a happy Man and a holy Man and yet Mi Gheber Quis homo this man must see death And therefore we will carry this question a little higher from Quis homo to Quis deorum Which of the gods have not seene death Aske it of those who are Gods by participation of Gods power of those of whom God saies Ego dixi dii est is and God answers for them and of them and to them You shall dye like men Aske it of those gods who are gods by imputation whom Creatures have created whom Men have made gods the gods of the Heathen and do we not know where all these gods dyed Sometimes divers places dispute who hath their tombes but do not they deny their godhead in confessing their tombes doe they not all answer that they cannot answer this text Mi Gheber Quis homo What man Quis deorum What god of mans making hath not seen death As Iustin martyr asks that question Why should I pray to Apollo or Esculapius for health Qui apud Chironem medicinam didicerunt when I know who taught them all that they knew so why should I looke for Immortality from such or such a god whose grave I finde for a witnesse that he himselfe is dead Nay carry this question higher then so from this Quis homo to quid homo what is there in the nature and essence of Man free from death The whole man is not for the dissolution of body and soule is death The body is not I shall as soone finde an immortall Rose an eternall Flower as an immortall body And for the Immortality of the Soule It is safelier said to be immortall by preservation then immortall by nature That God
keepes it from dying then that it cannot dye We magnifie God in an humble and faithfull acknowledgment of the immortality of our soules but if we aske quid homo what is there in the nature of Man that should keepe him from death even in that point the question is not easily answered It is every mans case then every man dyes Videbit and though it may perchance be but a meere Hebraisme to say that every man shall see death perchance it amounts to no more but to that phrase Gustare mortem To taste death yet thus much may be implied in it too That as every man must dye so every man may see that he must dye as it cannot be avoided so it may be understood A beast dyes but he does not see death S. Basil sayes he saw an Oxe weepe for the death of his yoke-fellow Basil orat de Morte but S. Basil might mistake the occasion of that Oxes teares Many men dye too and yet doe not see death The approaches of death amaze them and stupifie them they feele no colluctation with Powers and Principalities upon their death bed that is true they feele no terrors in their consciences no apprehensions of Judgement upon their death bed that is true and this we call going away like a Lambe But the Lambe of God had a sorrowfull sense of death His soule was heavy unto death and he had an apprehension that his Father had forsaken him And in this text the Chalde Paraphrase expresses it thus Videbit Angelum mortis he shall see a Messenger a forerunner a power of Death an executioner of Death he shall see something with horror though not such as shall shake his morall or his Christian constancy So that this Videbunt They shall see implies also a Viderunt they have seene that is they have used to see death to observe a death in the decay of themselves and of every creature and of the whole World Almost fourteene hundred yeares agoe Cyprian ad Demetrianum S. Cyprian writing against Demetrianus who imputed all the warres and deaths and unseasonablenesses of that time to the contempt and irreligion of the Christians that they were the cause of all those ils because they would not worship their Gods Cyprian imputes all those distempers to the age of the whole World Canos videmus in pueris saies hee Wee see Children borne gray-headed Capilli deficiunt antequam crescant Their haire is changed before it be growne Nec aetas in senectute desinit sed incipit asenectute Wee doe not dye with age but wee are borne old Many of us have seene Death in our particular selves in many of those steps in which the morall Man expresses it Seneca Wee have seene Mortem infantiae pueritiam The death of infancy in youth and Pueritiae adolescentiam and the death of youth in our middle age And at last we shall see Mortem senectutis mortem ipsam the death of age in death it selfe But yet after that a step farther then that Morall man went Mortem mortis in morte Iesu We shall see the death of Death it self in the death of Christ As we could not be cloathed at first in Paradise till some Creatures were dead for we were cloathed in beasts skins so we cannot be cloathed in Heaven but in his garment who dyed for us This Videbunt this future sight of Death implies a viderunt they have seene they have studied Death in every Booke in every Creature and it implies a Vident they doe presently see death in every object They see the houre-glasse running to the death of the houre They see the death of some prophane thoughts in themselves by the entrance of some Religious thought of compunction and conversion to God and then they see the death of that Religious thought by an inundation of new prophane thoughts that overflow those As Christ sayes that as often as wee eate the Sacramentall Bread we should remember his Death so as often as we eate ordinary bread we may remember our death Bern. Aug. for even hunger and thirst are diseases they are Mors quotidiana a daily death and if they lasted long would kill us In every object and subject we all have and doe and shall see death not to our comfort as an end of misery not onely as such a misery in it selfe as the Philosopher takes it to be Mors omnium miseriarum That Death is the death of all miserie because it destroyes and dissolves our beeing Prov. 16.14 but as it is Stipendium peccati The reward of sin That as Solomon sayes Indignatio Regis nuncius mortis The wrath of the King is as a messenger of Death so Mors nuncius indignationis Regis We see in Death a testimony that our Heavenly King is angry for but for his indignation against our sinnes we should not dye And this death as it is Malum ill for if ye weigh it in the Philosophers balance it is an annihilation of our present beeing and if ye weigh it in the Divine Balance it is a seale of Gods anger against sin so this death is generall of this this question there is no answer Quis homo What man c. We passe then from the Morte moriemini 2 Part. to the fortè moriemini from the generality and the unescapablenesse of death from this question as it admits no answer to the Fortè moriemini perchance we shall dye that is to the question as it may admit a probable answer Of which we said at first that in such questions nothing becomes a Christian better then sobriety to make a true difference betweene problematicall and dogmaticall points betweene upper buildings and foundations betweene collaterall doctrines and Doctrines in the right line Aug. for fundamentall things Sine haesitatione credantur They must be beleeved without disputing there is no more to be done for them but beleeving for things that are not so we are to weigh them in two balances in the balance of Analogy and in the balance of scandall we must hold them so as may be analogall proportionable agreeable to the Articles of our Faith and we must hold them so as our brother be not justly offended nor scandalized by them wee must weigh them with faith for our own strength and we must weigh them with charity for others weaknesse Certainly nothing endangers a Church more then to draw indifferent things to be necessary I meane of a primary necessity of a necessity to be beleeved De fide not a secondary necessity a necessity to be performed and practised for obedience Without doubt the Roman Church repents now and sees now that she should better have preserved her selfe if they had not denied so many particular things which were indifferently and problematically disputed before to bee had necessarily De fide in the Councell of Trent Taking then this Text for a probleme Quis homo What man lives and shall not
see Death we answer It may be that those Men whom Christ shal find upon the earth alive at his returne to Judge the World shall dye then and it may be they shall but be changed and not dye That Christ shall judge quick and dead is a fundamentall thing we heare it in S. Peters Sermon Acts 10.42 to Cornelius and his company and we say it every day in the Creed Hee shall judge the quick and the dead But though we doe not take the quick and the dead August Chrys as Augustine and Chrysostome doe for the Righteous which lived in faith and the unrighteous which were dead in sinne Though wee doe not take the quick and the dead as Ruffinus and others doe for the soule and the body He shall judge the soule which was alwaies alive and he shall the body which was dead for a time though we take the words as becomes us best literally yet the letter does not conclude but that they whom Christ shall finde alive upon earth shall have a present and sudden dissolution and a present and sudden re-union of body and soul again Saint Paul sayes Behold I shew you a mystery Therefore it is not a cleare case and presently 1 Cor. 15.51 and peremptorily determined but what is it We shall not all sleep but we shall all be changed But whether this sleeping be spoke of death it self and exclude that that we shall not die or whether this sleep be spoke of a rest in the grave and exclude that we shall not be buried and remain in death that may be a mystery still S. Paul sayes too 1 Thes 4.17 The dead in Christ shall rise first Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the ayre But whether that may not still be true that S. Augustine sayes that there shall be Mors in raptu August An instant and sudden dis-union and re-union of body and soul which is death who can tell So on the other side when it is said to him in whom all we were to Adam Pulvis es Dust thou art Gen. 3.19 1 Cor. 15.22 Rom. 5.12 and into dust thou shalt return when it is said In Adam all die when it is said Death passed upon all men for all have sinned Why may not all those sentences of Scripture which imply a necessity of dying admit that restriction Nisi dies judicii natur ae cursum immutet Pet. Mar. We shall all die except those in whom the comming of Christ shall change the course of Nature Consider the Scriptures then and we shall be absolutely concluded neither way Consider Authority and we shall finde the Fatherrs for the most part one way and the Schoole for the most part another Take later men and all those in the Romane Church Then Cajetan thinks that they shall not die and Catharin is so peremptory Cajetan Catharinus that they shall as that he sayes of the other opinion Falsam esse confidenter asserimus contra Scripturas sat is manifestas omnino sine ratione It is false and against Scriptures and reason saith he Take later men and all those in the reformed Church Calvin and Calvin sayes Quia aboletur prior natura censetur species mortis sed non migrabit anima à corpore S. Paul calls it death because it is a destruction of the former Beeing but it is not truly death saith Calvin and Luther saith Luther That S. Pauls purpose in that place is only to shew the suddennesse of Christs comming to Judgement Non autem inficiatur omnes morituros nam dormire est sepeliri But S. Paul doth not deny but that all shall die for that sleeping which he speaks of is buriall and all shall die though all shall not be buried saith Luther Take then that which is certain It is certain a judgement thou must passe If thy close and cautelous proceeding have saved thee from all informations in the Exchequer thy clearnesse of thy title from all Courts at Common Law thy moderation from the Chancery and Star-Chamber If heighth of thy place and Authority have saved thee even from the tongues of men so that ill men dare not slander thy actions nor good men dare not discover thy actions no not to thy self All those judgements and all the judgements of the world are but interlocutory judgements There is a finall judgement In judicantes judicatos against Prisoners and Judges too where all shal be judged again Datum est omne judicium All judgement is given to the Son of man John 5. and upon all the sons of men must his judgement passe A judgement is certain and the uncertainty of this judgement is certain too perchance God will put off thy judgement thou shalt not die yet but who knows whether God in his mercy do put off this judgement till these good motions which his blessed Spirit inspires into thee now may take roote and receive growth and bring forth fruit or whether he put it off for a heavier judgement to let thee see by thy departing from these good motions and returning to thy former sins after a remorse conceived against those sins that thou art inexcusable even to thy self and thy condemnation is just even to thine own conscience So perchance God will bring this judgement upon thee now now thou maist die but whether God will bring that judgement upon thee now in mercy whilest his Graces in his Ordinance of preaching work some tendernesse in thee and gives thee some preparation some fitnesse some courage to say Veni Domine Iesu Come Lord Iesu come quickly come now or whether he will come now in judgement because all this can work no tendernesse in thee who can tell Thou hearest the word of God preached as thou hearest an Oration with some gladnesse in thy self if thou canst heare him and never be moved by his Oratory thou thinkest it a degree of wisdome to be above perswasion and when thou art told that he that feares God feares nothing else thou thinkest thy self more valiant then so if thou feare not God neither Whether or why God defers or hastens the judgement we know not This is certain this all S. Pauls places collineate to this all the Fathers and all the Schoole all the Cajetans and all the Catharins all the Luthers and all the Calvins agree in A judgement must be and it must be In ictu oculi In the twinkling of an eye and Fur in nocte A thiefe in the night Make the question Quis homo What man is he that liveth and shall not passe this judgement or what man is he that liveth and knowes when this judgement shall be So it is a Nemo scit A question without an answer but ask it as in the text Quis homo Who liveth and shall not die so it is a problematicall matter and in such
concealing which were the pieces that constitute our first Part in the second Part which is the time when this Legacy accrues to us is to be given us In die illo at that day At that day shall yee know c. It is the illumination the illustration of our hearts and therefore well referred to the Day The word it selfe affords cheerefulnesse For when God inflicted that great plague to kill all the first-borne in Aegypt Exod. 12. Luke 20. that was done at Midnight And when God would intimate both deaths at once spirituall and temporall he sayes O foole this night they will fetch away thy soule Against all supply of knowledge he cals him foole and against all sense of comfort in the day he threatens night It was In die Illo and In die illo in the day and at a certaine day and at a short day For after Christ had made his Will at this supper given strength to his Will by his death and proved his Will by his Resurrection and left the Church possest of his estate by his Ascension within ten dayes after that he poured out this Legacy of knowledge For though some take this day mentioned in the Text Calvin to be Tanqnam unius diei tenor à dato Spiritu ad Resurrectionem from the first giving of the Holy Ghost to the Resurrection And others take this day Osiand to bee from his Resurrection to the end of his second Conversation upon earth till his Ascension and S. Augustine referre it Ad perfectam visionem in Coelis to the perfect fruition of the sight of God in Heaven yet the most usefull and best followed acceptation is This Day of the comming of the Holy Ghost That day we celebrate this day and we can never finde the Christian Church so farre as we can judge by the evidence of Story to have been without this festivall day The reason of all Festivals in the Church was and is Ne volumine temporum ingrata subrepat oblivio August Lest after many ages involved and wrapped up in one another Gods particular benefits should bee involved and wrapped up in unthankfulnesse And the benefits received this day were such as should never be forgotten for without this day all the rest had been evacuated and uneffectuall If the Apostles by the comming of the Holy Ghost had not been established in an infallibility in themselves and in an ability to deale with all Nations by the benefit of tongues the benefit of Christs passion had not been derived upon all Nations And therefore to This day and to Easter-day all publike Baptismes in the Primitive Church were reserved None were baptized except in cases of necessity but upon one of these two dayes for as there is an Exaltation a Resurrection given us in Baptisme represented by Easter so there belongs to us a confirmation an establishing of grace and the increase thereof represented in Pentecost in the comming of the Holy Ghost As the Jews had an Easter in the memory of their deliverance from Aegypt and a Pentecost in the memory of the Law given at Mout Sinai So at Easter we celebrate the memory of that glorious Passeover when Christ passed from the grave and hell in his Resurrection and at this Feast of Pentecost we celebrate his giving of the Law to all Nations and his investing and possessing himselfe of his Kingdome the Church for this is Festum Adoptionis as S. Chrysostome cals it The cheerefull feast of our Adoption in which the Holy Ghost convaying the Son of God to us enables us to be the Sons of God and to cry Abba Father This then is that day Acts 2. when the Apostles being with one accord and in one place that is in one faith and in one profession of that faith not onely without Heresie but without Schisme too the Holy Ghost as a mighty winde filled them all and gave them utterance As a winde to note a powerfull working And he filled them to note the abundance And he gave them utterance to inferre that which we spoke of before The Communication of that knowledge which they had received to others This was that Spirit whom it concerned the Apostles so much to have as that Christ himselfe must goe from them to send him to them If I goe not away sayes Christ the Comforter will not come to you How great a comfort must this necessarily be which must so abundantly recompence the losse of such a comfort as the presence of Christ was This is that Spirit who though hee were to be sent by the Father and sent by the Son yet he comes not as a Messenger from a Superiour for hee was alwaies equall to Father and Son But the Father sent him and the Son sent him as a tree sends forth blossomes and as those blossomes send forth a sweet smell and as the Sun sends forth beames by an emanation from it selfe He is Spiritus quem nemo interpretari potest sayes S. Chrysostome hee hath him not that doth not see he hath him nor is any man without him who in a rectified conscience thinks he hath him Illo Prophetae illustrantur Illo idiotae condiuntur sayes the same Father The Prophets as high as their calling was saw nothing without this Spirit and with this Spirit a simple man understands the Prophets And therefore doth S. Basil attribute that to the Holy Ghost which seemes to be peculiar to the Son he cals him Verbum Dei because sayes he Spiritus interpres Filii sicut Filius Patris As the Son hath revealed to us the will of the Father and so is the Word of God to us so the Holy Ghost applies the promises and the merits of the Son to us and so is the Word of God to us too and enables us to come to God in that voyce of his blessed Servant S. Augustine O Deus secretissime patentissime Though nothing be more mysterious then the knowledge of God in the Trinity yet nothing is more manifest unto us then by the light of this person the Holy Ghost so much of both the other Persons as is necessary for our Salvation is Now it is not onely to the Apostles that the Holy Ghost is descended this day but as S. Chrysostom saies of the Annunciation Non ad unam tantùm animam It is not onely to one Person that the Angel said then The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee and overshadow thee but sayes he that Holy Ghost hath said Super omnem Ioel 2. I will poure out my selfe upon all men so I say of this day This day if you be all in this place concentred united here in one Faith and one Religion If you be of one accord that is in perfect charity The Holy Ghost shall fill you all according to your measure and his purpose and give you utterance in your lives and conversations Qui ita vacat orationibus Origen ut dignus fiat illo
said also That the inhabitants of the earth were made drunk with the wine Ver. 2. Sin is wine at first so farre as to allure to intoxicate It is water at last so farre as to suffocate to strangle Christ Jesus way is to change water into wine sorrow into joy The Devils way is to change wine into water pleasure and but false pleasure neither into true bitternesse The watrish wine which is spoken of there and called fornication is idolatry and the like And in such a respect Jer. 2.18 God sayes to his people What hast thou to doe in the way of Egypt In the way of Egypt we cannot chuse but have something to doe some conversation with men of an Idolatrous religion we must needs have But yet What hast thou to doe in the way of Egypt to drinke of the waters of Sihor Or what hast thou to doe in the wayes of Assyria to drink the waters of the River Though we be bound to a peaceable conversation with men of an Idolatrous perswasion we are not bound to take in to drink to taste their errours For this facility and this indifferency to accompany men of divers religions in the acts of their religion Ver. 13. this multiplicity will end in a nullity and we shall hew to our selves Cisternes broken Cisternes that can hold no water We shall scatter one religion into many and those many shall vanish into none Praise we God therefore that the Spirit of God hath so moved upon these waters these sinfull waters of superstition and idolatry wherein our fore-Fathers were overwhelmed that they have not swelled over us Ecclus. 43.20 For then the cold North-winde blowes and the water is congealed into Ice Affliction overtakes us damps us stupifies us and we finde no Religion to comfort us Affliction is as often expressed in this word Tribulatio Esay 43.2 Waters as sin When thou passest through waters I will be with thee and through the rivers they shall not overflow thee But then the Spirit of God moves upon these waters too and grace against sin and deliverance from affliction is as often expressed in waters as either Where God takes another Metaphore for judgement Ezek. 36.5 Ver. 25. yet he continues that of water for his mercy In the fire of my jealousie have I spoken against them speaking of enemies but then speaking of Israel I will sprinkle cleane water upon you and you shall be cleane This is his way and this is his measure He sprinkles enough at first to make us cleane even the sprinkling of Baptisme cleanses us from originall sin but then he sets open the windowes of heaven and he inlarges his Flood-gates Esay 44.3 I will poure out water upon the thirsty and floods upon the dry ground To them that thirst after him he gives grace for grace that is present grace for an earnest of future grace of subsequent grace and concomitant grace and auxiliant grace and effectuall grace grace in more formes more notions and in more operations then the Schoole it selfe can tell how to name Thus the Spirit of God moves upon our waters Mat. 14. By faith Peter walked upon the waters so we prevent occasions of tentation to sin and sinke not in them but walke above them By godly exercises we swim through waters so the Centurion commanded that they that could swim Acts 27.43 should cast themselves into the sea Men exercised in holinesse can meet a tentation or tribulation in the face and not be shaked with it weaker men men that cannot swim must be more wary of exposing themselves to dangers of tentation A Court does some man no harme when another finds tentation in a Hermitage By repentance we saile through waters by the assistance of Gods ordinances in his Church which Church is the Arke we attaine the harbour peace of conscience after a sin But this Arke this helpe of the Church we must have God can save from dangers though a man went to Sea without art Sine rate saies the Vulgat without a Ship Wisd 14.4 But God would not that the worke of his Wisedome should be idle God hath given man Prudentiam navifactivam saies our Holkot upon that place and he would have that wisdome exercised God can save without Preaching and Absolution and Sacraments but he would not have his Ordinance neglected To end all with the end of all Death comes to us in the name Mors. 2 Sam. 14.14 and notion of waters too in the Scriptures The Widow of Tekoah said to David in the behalfe of Absalon by the Counsaile of Ioab The water of death overslowes all We must needs dye saies she and are as water spilt upon the ground which cannot be gathered up againe yet God devises meanes that his banished be not expelled from him So the Spirit of God moves upon the face of these waters the Spirit of life upon the danger of death Consider the love more then love the study more then study the diligence of God he devises meanes that his banished those whom sins or death had banished be not expelled from him I sinned upon the strength of my youth and God devised a meanes to reclaime me an enfeebling sicknesse I relapsed after my recovery and God devised a meanes an irrecoverable a helpless Consumption to reclaime me That affliction grew heavy upon me and weighed me down even to a diffidence in Gods mercy and God devised a meanes the comfort of the Angel of his Church his Minister The comfort of the Angel of the great Counsell the body and blood of his Son Christ Jesus at my transmigration Yet he lets his correction proceed to death I doe dye of that sicknesse and God devises a meanes that I though banished banished into the grave shall not be expelled from him a glorious Resurrection We must needs dye and be as water spilt upon the ground but yet God devises meanes that his banished shall not be expelled from him And this is the motion and this is the Rest of the Spirit of God upon those waters in this spirituall sense of these words He brings us to a desire of Baptisme he settles us in the sense of the obligation first and then of the benefits of Baptisme He suffers us to goe into the way of tentations for Coluber in via and every calling hath particular tentations and then he settles us by his preventing or his subsequent grace He moves in submitting us to tribulation he settles us in finding that our tribulations do best of all conforme us to his Son Christ Jesus He moves in removing us by the hand of Death and he settles us in an assurance That it is he that now lets his Servants depart in peace And he who as he doth presently lay our soules in that safe Cabinet the Bosome of Abraham so he keepes an eye upon every graine and atome of our dust whither soever it be blowne and keepes a
so there should be Diluvium Spiritus A flowing out of the holy Ghost upon all Joel 2.28 Esay 2.2 Joh. 3.8 as he promises Effundam I will poure it out upon all and Diluvium gentium That all nations should flow up unto him For this Spirit Spirat ubi vult Breathes where it pleases him and though a naturall winde cannot blow East and West North and South together this Spirit at once breathes upon the most contrary dispositions upon the presuming and upon the despairing sinner and in an instant can denizen and naturalize that soule that was an alien to the Covenant Empale and inlay that soule that was bred upon the Common amongst the Gentiles transform that soul which was a Goate into a Sheep unite that soul which was a lost sheep to the fold again shine upon that soul that sits in darknesse and in the shadow of death and so melt and poure out that soul that yet understands nothing of the Divine nature nor of the Spirit of God that it shall become partaker of the Divine nature 2 Pet. 1.4 1 Cor. 6.17 and be the same Spirit with the Lord. When Christ took our flesh he had not all his Ancestors of the Covenant he was pleased to come of Ruth a Moabite a poore stranger As he came so will the holy Ghost go to strangers also Shall any man murmur or draw into disputation why this Spirit doth not breath in all nations at once or why not sooner then it doth in some Doth this Spirit fall and rest upon every soul in this Congregation now May not one man finde that he receives him now and suffer him to go away again May not another who felt no motion of him now recollect himself at home and remember something then which hath been said now to the quickning of this Spirit in him there Since the holy Ghost visits us so successively not all at once not all with an equall establishment we may safely imbrace that acceptation of this word Arguet He shall he will Antequam abierit Before the end come Reprove convince the whole world of sin by this his way the way of comfort the preaching of the Gospell And that is the first acceptation thereof The second acceptation of the word is in the present Arguit not Arguet He shall but Arguit He doth now he doth reprove all the world As when the Devill confessed Christ in the Gospel as when Judas who was the Devils Devill for he had sold Christ to the Chiefe-Priests Mat. 26.14 before Satan entred into him after the Sop Iohn 13.27 professed this Gospel this was not Sine omni impulsu Spiritus Sancti Altogether without the motion of the Holy Ghost who had his ends and his purposes therein to draw testimonies for Christ out of the mouths of his adversaries so when a naturall man comes to be displeased with his owne actions and to discerne sin in them though his naturall faculties be the Instruments in these actions yet the Holy Ghost sets this Instrument in tune and makes all that is musique and harmony in the faculties of this naturall man At Ephesus S. Paul found certaine Disciples which were baptized and when he asked them Whether they had received the Holy Ghost Acts 19.2 they said That they had not so much as heard that there was a Holy Ghost So certainly infinite numbers of men in those unconverted Nations have the Holy Ghost working in them though they have never so much as heard that there is a Holy Ghost When we see any man doe any work well that belongs to the hand to write to carve to play to doe any mechanique office well doe we determine mine our consideration onely upon the Instrument the hand doe we onely say he hath a good a fit a well disposed hand for such a work or doe we not rather raise our contemplation to the soule and her faculties which enable that hand to do that work So certainly when a morall man hath any reproofe any sense of sin in himselfe the holy Ghost is the intelligence that moves in that spheare and becomes the soule of his soule and works that in him primarily of which naturall faculties or philosophicall instructions are but ministeriall instruments and suppletory assistances after And not only in the beginning of good actions but in the prosecution of some evill the holy Ghost hath an interest though we discern him not In the disposing of our sins the holy Ghost hath a working thus That when we intended some mischievous sin to morrow a lesse sin some sin of pleasure meets us and takes hold of us and diverts us from our first purpose and so the holy Ghost rescues us from one sin by suffering us to fall into another What action soever hath any degree of good what action soever hath any lesse evill in it then otherwise it would have had hath received a working of the holy Ghost though that man upon whom he hath wrought knew not his working nor his name As we thinke that we have the differences of seasons of Winter and Summer by the naturall motion of the Sun but yet it is not truly by that naturall motion but by a contrary motion of a higher spheare which drawes the Sun against his naturall course for if the Sun were left to himselfe we should not have these seasons so if the soul and conscience of a meere naturall man have any of these reproofes and remorses though perchance fear or shame or sicknesse or penalties of law yea though a wearinesse and excesse of the sin it selfe may seem to him to be the thing that reproves him and that occasions this remorse because it is the most immediate and therefore most discernible yet there is Digitus Dei The hand of God and spiritus Spiritus sancti The breath of the holy Ghost in all this who as a liberall almes-giver sends to persons that never know who sends works upon persons who never know who works So the holy Ghost reproves all the world of sin that is all the reproofe which even the naturall man hath and every man hath some at sometimes is from the holy Ghost and as in the former sense the Cum venerit When he eomes was Antequam abierit before he goes so here the Cum venerit is Quia adest because he is alwayes present and alwayes working And then there is a third acceptation where the Arguet is not in the future Operatus est That he shall do it nor in the present Arguit That he doth it now in every naturall man but it is in the time past Arguit He hath done it done it already And here in this sense it is not that the holy Ghost shall bring the Gospell before the end to all Nations that is Antequam abierit Nor that the holy Ghost doth exalt the naturall faculties of every man in all his good actions that is Quia semper adest but it
dereliction on Gods part he cals not upon him by this name not My Father but My God my God why hast thou forsaken me Mat. 27.37 But when he would incline him to mercy mercy to others mercy to enemies he comes in that name wherein he could be denied nothing Father Father forgive them they know not what they doe He is the Lord of Hosts Luke 23.24 There hee scatters us in thunder transports us in tempests enwraps us in confusion astonishes us with stupefaction and consternation The Lord of Hosts but yet the Father of mercies There he receives us into his own bowels fills our emptinesse with the blood of his own Son and incorporates us in him The Lord of Hosts but the Father of mercy Sometimes our naturall Fathers die before they can gather any state to leave us but he is the immortall Father and all things that are as soone as they were were his Sometimes our naturall Fathers live to waste and dissipate that state which was left them to be left us but this is the Father out of whose hands and possession nothing can be removed and who gives inestimably and yet remaines inexhaustible Sometimes our naturall Fathers live to need us and to live upon us but this is that Father whom we need every minute and requires nothing of us but that poore rent of Benedictus sit Blessed praised glorified be this Father This Father of mercies of mercies in the plurall David calls God Miserationum Psal 59.17 Numb 14.19 Psal 51.1 Misericordiam suam His mercy all at once God is the God of my mercy God is all ours and all mercy Pardon this people sayes Moses Secundùm magnitudinem misericordiae According to the greatnesse of thy mercy Pardon me sayes David Have mercy upon me Secùndum multitudinem misericordiarum According to the multitude of thy mercies His mercy in largenesse in number extends over all It was his mercy that we were made and it is his mercy that we are not consumed David calls his mercy Multiplicatam and Mirificatam Psal 17.7 Psal 31.22 It is manifold and it is marvellous miraculous Shew thy marvellous loving kindnesse and therefore David in severall places carries it Super judicium above his judgements Super Coelos above the heavens Super omnia opera above all his works And for the multitude of his mercies for we are now upon the consideration of the plurality thereof Pater miserationum Father of mercies put together that which David sayes Psal 89.50 Vbi misericordiae tuae antiquae Where are thy ancient mercies His mercy is as Ancient as the Ancient of dayes who is God himselfe And that which another Prophet sayes Omni mane His mercies are new every morning And put betweene these two betweene Gods former and his future mercies his present mercy in bringing thee this minute to the consideration of them and thou hast found Multiplicatam and Mirificatam manifold and wondrous mercy But carry thy thoughts upon these three Branches of his mercy and it will be enough First that upon Adams fall and all ours in him he himselfe would think of such a way of mercy as from Adam to that man whom Christ shall finde alive at the last day no man would ever have thought of that is that to shew mercy to his enemies he would deliver his owne his onely his beloved Son to shame to torments to death That hee would plant Germen Iehovae in semine mulieris The blossome the branch of God in the seed of the woman This mercy in that first promise of that Messias was such a mercy as not onely none could have undertaken but none could have imagined but God himselfe And in this promise we were conceived In visceribus Patris In the bowels of this Father of mercies In these bowels in the womb of this promise we lay foure thousand yeares The blood with which we were fed then was the blood of the Sacrifices and the quickning which we had there was an inanimation by the often refreshing of this promise of that Messias in the Prophets But in the fulnesse of time that infallible promise came to an actuall performance Christ came in the flesh and so Venimus ad partum In his birth we were borne and that was the second mercy in the promise in the performance he is Pater miserationum Father of mercies And then there is a third mercy as great That he having sent his Son and having re-assumed him into heaven againe he hath sent his Holy Spirit to governe his Church and so becomes a Father to us in that Adoption in the application of Christ to us by the Holy Ghost and this as that which is intended in the last word Deus totius Consolationis The God of all Comfort I may know that there is a Messias promised and yet be without comfort Consolatio in a fruitlesse expectation The Jews are so in their dispersion When the Jews will still post-date the commings of Christ when some of them say There was no certaine time of his comming designed by the Prophets And others There was a time but God for their sins prorogued it And others againe God kept his word the Messiah did come when it was promised he should come but for their sins he conceales himselfe from Manifestation when the Jews will postdate his first comming and the Papists will antidate his second comming in a comming that cannot become him That he comes even to his Saints in torment before he comes in glory That when he comes to them at their dissolution at their death he comes not to take them to Heaven but to cast them into one part of hell That the best comfort which a good man can have at his death is but Purgatory Miserable comforters are they all How faire a beame of the joyes of Heaven is true comfort in this life If I know the mercies of God exhibited to others and feele them not in my self I am not of Davids Church Psal 59.1 not of his Quire I cannot sing of the mercies of God I may see them and I may sigh to see the mercies of God determined in others and not extended to me but I cannot sing of the mercies of God if I find no mercy But when I come to that Psal 94.19 Consolationes tuae laetificaverunt In the multitude of my thoughts within me thy comforts delight my soule then the true Comforter is descended upon me and the Holy Ghost hath over-shadowed me Mat. 5.4 and all that shall be borne of me and proceed from me shall be holy Blessed are they that mourne sayes Christ But the blessednesse is not in the mourning but because they shall be comforted Blessed am I in the sense of my sins and in the sorrow for them but blessed therefore because this sorrow leads me to my reconciliation to God and the consolation of his Spirit Whereas if I sinke in this sorrow in this dejection
tastlesse things Compare the Prophets with the Son and even the promises of God 2 King 4.34 in them are faint and dilute things Elishaes staffe in the hand of Gehazi his servant would not recover the Shunamites dead child but when Elisha himselfe came and put his mouth upon the childs mouth that did In the mouth of Christs former servants there was a preparation but effect and consummation in his owne mouth In the Old Testament at first God kissed man and so breathed the breath of life and made him a man In the New Testament Christ kissed man he breathed the breath of everlasting life the holy Ghost into his Apostles and so made the man a blessed man Love is as strong as death Cant. 8.6 As in death there is a transmigration of the soule so in this spirituall love and this expressing of it by this kisse there is a transfusion of the soule too And as we find in Gellius a Poëm of Platoes where he sayes he knew one so extremely passionate Vt parùm affuit quin moreretur in osculo much more is it true in this heavenly union expressed in this kisse as S. Ambrose delivers it Per osculum adhaeret anima Deo et transfunditur spiritus osculantis In this kisse where Righteousnesse and peace have kissed each other In this person where the Divine and the humane nature have kissed each other Psal 85.10 In this Christian Church where Grace and Sacraments visible and invisible meanes of salvation have kissed each other Love is as strong as death my soule is united to my Saviour now in my life as in death and I am already made one spirit with him and whatsoever death can doe this kisse this union can doe that is give me a present an immediate possession of the kingdome of heaven And as the most mountainous parts of this kingdome are as well within the kingdome as a garden so in the midst of the calamities and incommodities of this life I am still in the kingdome of heaven In the Old Testament it was but a contract but per verba de futuro Sponsabo I will marry thee Hos 2.19 Mat. 9.15 but now that Christ is come the Bride-groome is with us for ever and the children of the Bride-chamber cannot mourne Now by this we are slid into our fourth and last branch of our first part Exhortatic The perswasion to come to this holy kisse though defamed by treachery though depraved by licentiousnesse since God invites us to it by so many good uses thereof in his Word It is an imputation laid upon Nero That Neque adveniens neqùe profisciscens That whether comming or going he never kissed any And Christ himselfe imputes it to Simon as a neglect of him That when he came into his house he did not kisse him Luke 7.45 August This then was in use first among kinsfolks In illa simplicitate antiquorum propinqui propinquos osculabantur In those innocent and harmlesse times persons neare in bloud did kisse one another And in that right and not onely as a stranger Iacob kissed Rachel Gen. 29.12 and told her how near of kin he was to her There is no person so neare of kin to thee as Christ Jesus Christ Jesus thy Father as he created thee and thy brother as he took thy nature Thy Father as he provided an inheritance for thee and thy brother as he divided this inheritance with thee and as he dyed to give thee possession of that inheritance He that is Nutritius thy Foster-father who hath nursed thee in his house in the Christian Church and thy Twin-brother so like thee as that his Father and thine in him shall not know you from one another but mingle your conditions so as that he shall find thy sins in him and his righteousnesse in thee Osculamini Filium Kisse this Son as thy kinsman This kisse was also in use as Symbolum subjectionis A recognition of soveraignty or power Pharaoh sayes to Ioseph Thou shalt be over my house Gen. 41.40 and according to thy word shall all my people be ruled there the Originall is All my people shall kisse thy face This is the Lord Paramount the Soveraigne Lord of all The Lord Jesus Iesus Phil. 2.10 Mat. 28.18 at whose name every knee must bow in heaven in earth and in hell Iesus into whose hands all power in heaven and in earth is given Iesus who hath opened a way to our Appeal from all powers upon earth Fear not them which kill the body but are not able to kill the soule Iesus Mat. 10.28 who is the Lion and the Lambe too powerfull upon others accessible unto thee Osculamini Filium Kisse this Son as he is thy Soveraigne It was in use likewise In discessu friends parting kissed Gen. 31.15 Act. 20.37 Laban rose up early in the morning and kissed his sons and his daughters and departed And at Pauls departing they fell on his neck and wept and kissed him When thou departest to thy worldly businesses to thy six dayes labour kisse him take leave of him and remember that all that while thou art gone upon his errand and though thou worke for thy family and for thy posterity yet thou workest in his vineyard and dost his worke They kissed too In reditu Esau ran to meet his brother and fell on his neck and kissed him Gen. 33.4 When thou returnest to his house after thy six dayes labour to celebrate his Sabbath kisse him there and be able to give him some good account from Sabbath to Sabbath from week to week of thy stewardship and thou wilt never be bankrupt They kissed in reconciliation David kissed Absalon 2 Sam. 14.33 If thou have not discharged thy stewardship well Restore to man who is damnified therein Confesse to God who hath suffered in that sin Reconcile thy selfe to him and kisse him in the Sacrament in the seale of Reconciliation They kissed in a religious reverence even of false gods I have sayes God 2 King 19 18. seaven thousand knees that have not bowed unto Baal and mouths that have not kissed him Let every one of us kisse the true God in keeping his knees from bowing to a false his lips from assenting his hands from subscribing to an Idolatrous worship And as they kissed In Symbolum concordiae Rom. 16.16 which was another use thereof Salute one another with a holy kisse upon which custome Iustin Martyr sayes Osculum ante Eucharistiam before the Communion the Congregation kissed to testifie their unity in faith in him to whom they were then Sacramentally to be united as well as Spiritually And Tertullian calls it Osculum signaculum Orationis Because they ended their publique Prayers with that seale of unity and concord Let every Congregation kisse him so at every meeting to seale to him a new band a new vow that they will never break in departing from any part of his
an Oath There is one event of all sayes he but sayes he This is an evill that it is so But what kinde of evill An evill of vexation because the weake are sometimes scandalized that it is so and the glory of God seems for a time to be obscured when it is so because the good are not discerned from the evill But yet God who knowes best how to repayre his own honour suffers it nay appoints it to be so that just and unjust are wrapped up in the same Judgement The Corne is as much beaten in the threshing as the straw is The just are as much punished here as the unjust Because God of his infinite goodnesse hath elected me from the beginning therefore must he provide that I have another manner of birth or another manner of death then the Reprobate have Must he provide that I be borne into the world without originall sin of a Virgin as his Son was or that I go out of the world by being taken away as Enoch was or as Elias And though we have that one example of such a comming into the world and a few examples of such a going out of the world yet we have no example not in the Son of God himselfe of passing through this world without taking part of the miseries and calamities of the world common to just and unjust to the righteous and unrighteous If Abraham therefore should have intended onely temporall destruction his argument might have been defective for Ezekiel and Daniel and other just men were carried into Captivity as well as the unjust and yet God not unrighteous God does it and avowes it and professes that he will do it and do it justly Occidam in te justum injustum I will cut off the righteous and unrighteous together There is no man so righteous Ezek. 21.3 upon whom God might not justly inflict as heavy judgements in this world as upon the most unrighteous Though he have wrapped him up in the righteousnesse of Christ Jesus himselfe for the next world yet he may justly wrap him up in any common calamity falling upon the unrighteous here But the difference is onely in spirituall destruction Abraham might justly apprehend a feare that a sudden and unprepared death might endanger them for their future state And therefore he does not pray that they might be severed from that judgement because if they dyed with the unrighteous they dyed as the unrighteous if they passed the same way as they out of this world they therefore passed into the same state as they in the next world Abraham could not conclude so but because the best men do alwayes need all meanes of making them better Abraham prayes that God would not cut them off by a sudden destruction from a considering and contemplating the wayes of his proceeding and so a preparing themselves to a willing and to a thankfull embracing of any way which they should so discerne to be his way The wicked are suddenly destroyed and do not see what hand is upon them till that hand bury them in hell The godly may die as suddenly but yet he sees and knows it to be the hand of God and takes hold of that hand and by it is carried up to heaven Now if God be still just though he punish the just with the unjust in this life Sinon parcat much more may he be so though he do not spare the unjust for the righteous sake which is the principall drift of Abrahams expostulation or deprecation God can preserve still so as he did in Aegypt God hath the same Receipts and the same Antidotes which he had to repell the flames of burning furnaces to binde or stupifie the jawes of hungry Lyons to blunt the edge of Swords and overflowing Armyes as he had heretofore Iohn 8.59.18.6 Christ was invisible to his enemies when he would scape away And he was impregnable to his enemies when in his manifestation of himselfe I am he they fell downe before him And he was invulnerable and immortall to his enemies as long as he would be so for if he had not opened himselfe to their violence no man could have taken away his soule And where God sees such deliverances conduce more to his honour then our suffering does he will deliver us so in the times of persecution So that God hath another way and he had another answer for Abrahams petition he might have said There is no ill construction no hard conclusion to be made if I should take away the just with the unjust neither is there any necessity that I should spare the wicked for the righteous I can destroy Sodome and yet save the righteous I can destroy the righteous and yet make death an advantage to them which way soever I take I can do nothing unjustly But yet though God do not binde himselfe to spare the wicked for the righteons yet he descends to do so at Abrahams request The jaw-bone of an Asse in the hand of Samson Tainen id facit was a devouring sword The words of man in the mouth of a faithfull man of Abraham are a Canon against God himselfe and batter down all his severe and heavy purposes for Judgements Yet this comes not God knows out of the weight or force of our words but out of the easinesse of God God puts himselfe into the way of a shot he meets a weak prayer and is graciously pleased to be wounded by that God sets up a light that we direct the shot upon him he enlightens us with a knowledge how and when and what to pray for yea God charges and discharges the Canon himself upon himselfe He fils us with good and religious thoughts and appoints and leaves the Holy Ghost to discharge them upon him in prayer for it is the Holy Ghost himselfe that prayes in us Mauz zim whch is The God of forces is not the name of our God Dan. 11.38 but of an Idoll Our God is the God of peace and of sweetnesse spirituall peace spirituall honey to our souls His name is Deus optimus maximus He is both He is All Greatnesse but he is All Goodnesse first He comes to shew his Greatnesse at last but yet his Goodnesse begins his Name and can never be worne out in his Nature He made the whole world in six dayes but he was seaven in destroying one City Jericho God threatens Adam If thou eate that fruit in that day Morte morieris Thou shalt dye the death Here is a double Death interminated in one Day Now one of these Deaths is spirituall Death and Adam never dyed that Death And for the other Death the bodily Death which might have been executed that day Adam was reprieved above nine hundred yeares To lead all to our present purpose Gods descending to Abrahams petition to spare the wicked for a few just is first and principally to advance his mercy That sometimes in abundant mercy he does
any subject a falling for for our bodies we say a man is falne sick And for his state falne poore And for his mind falne mad And for his conscience falne desperate we are borne low and yet we fall every way lower so universall is our falling sicknesse Sin it selfe is but a falling The irremediable sin of the Angels The undeterminable sinne of Adam is called but so The fall of Adam The fall of Angels And therefore the effectuall visitation of the holy Ghost to man is called a falling too we are fallen so low as that when the holy Ghost is pleased to fetch us againe and to infuse his grace he is still said to fall upon us But the fall which we consider in the Text is not a figurative falling not into a decay of estate nor decay of health nor a spirituall falling into sin a decay of grace but it is a medicinall falling a falling under Gods hand but such a falling under his hand as that he takes not off his hand from him that is falne but throwes him downe therefore that he may raise him To this posture he brings Paul now when he was to re-inanimate him with his spirit rather to pre-inanimate him for indeed no man hath a soule till he have grace Christ who in his humane nature hath received from the Father all Judgement and power and dominion over this world hath received all this upon that condition that he shall governe in this manner Psal 2.8 Aske of me and I shall give thee the Heathen for thine inheritance sayes the Father How is he to use them when he hath them Thus Thou shalt breake them with a rod of iron and dash them in pieces like a potters vessell Now God meant well to the Nations in this bruising and breaking of them God intended not an annihilation of the Nations but a reformarion for Christ askes the Nations for an Inheritance not for a triumph therefore it is intended of his way of governing them and his way is to bruise and beat them that is first to cast them downe before he can raise them up first to breake them before he can make them in his fashion August Novit Dominus vulnerare ad amorem The Lord and onely the Lord knowes how to wound us out of love more then that how to wound us into love more then all that to wound us into love not onely with him that wounds us but into love with the wound it selfe with the very affliction that he inflicts upon us The Lord knowes how to strike us so as that we shall lay hold upon that hand that strikes us and kisse that hand that wounds us Ad vitam interficit ad exaltationem prosternit sayes the same Father No man kills his enemy therefore that his enemy might have a better life in heaven that is not his end in killing him It is Gods end Therefore he brings us to death that by that gate he might lead us into life everlasting And he hath not discovered but made that Northerne passage to passe by the frozen Sea of calamity and tribulation to Paradise to the heavenly Jerusalem There are fruits that ripen not but by frost There are natures there are scarce any other that dispose not themselves to God but by affliction And as Nature lookes for the season for ripening and does not all before so Grace lookes for the assent of the soule and does not perfect the whole worke till that come It is Nature that brings the season and it is Grace that brings the assent but till the season for the fruit till the assent of the soule come all is not done Therefore God begun in this way with Saul and in this way he led him all his life Tot pertulit mortes quot vixit dies He dyed as many deaths as he lived dayes Chrysost for so himselfe sayes Quotidie morior I die daily God gave him sucke in blood and his owne blood was his daily drink He catechized him with calamities at first and calamities were his daily Sermons and meditations after and to authorize the hands of others upon him and to accustome him to submit himself to the hands of others without murmuring Christ himself strikes the first blow and with that Cecidit he fell which was our first consideration in his humiliation and then Cecidit in terram He fell to the ground which is our next I take no farther occasion from this Circumstance but to arme you with consolation In terram how low soever God be pleased to cast you Though it be to the earth yet he does not so much cast you downe in doing that as bring you home Death is not a banishing of you out of this world but it is a visitation of your kindred that lie in the earth neither are any nearer of kin to you then the earth it selfe and the wormes of the earth You heap earth upon your soules and encumber them with more and more flesh by a superfluous and luxuriant diet You adde earth to earth in new purchases and measure not by Acres but by Manors nor by Manors but by Shires And there is a little Quillet a little Close worth all these A quiet Grave And therefore when thou readest That God makes thy bed in thy sicknesse rejoyce in this not onely that he makes that bed where thou dost lie but that bed where thou shalt lie That that God that made the whole earth is now making thy bed in the earth a quiet grave where thou shalt sleep in peace till the Angels Trumpet wake thee at the Resurrection to that Judgement where thy peace shall be made before thou commest and writ and sealed in the blood of the Lamb. Saul falls to the earth So farre But he falls no lower God brings his servants to a great lownesse here but he brings upon no man a perverse sense or a distrustfull suspition of falling lower hereafter His hand strikes us to the earth by way of humiliation But it is not his hand that strikes us into hell by way of desperation Will you tell me that you have observed and studied Gods way upon you all your life and out of that can conclude what God meanes to doe with you after this life That God took away your Parents in your infancy and left you Orphanes then That he hath crossed you in all your labours in your calling ever since That he hath opened you to dishonours and calumnies and mis-interpretations in things well intended by you That he hath multiplied ficknesses upon you and given you thereby an assurance of a miserable and a short life of few and evill dayes nay That he hath suffered you to fall into sins that you your selves have hated To continue in sins that you your selves have been weary of To relapse into sins that you your selves have repented And will you conclude out of this that God had no good purpose upon you that if ever
and dignity and outward splendor The Church of God requires also besides unanimity in fundamentall Doctrines an equanimity and a mildnesse and a charity in handling problematicall points and also requires order and comelinesse in the outward face and habit thereof And so we preach a Kingdome So we preach a Kingdome as that we banish from thence all imaginary fatality and all decretory impossibility of concurrence and cooperation to our owne salvation And yet we banish all pride and confidence that any naturall faculties in us though quickned by former grace can lead us to salvation without a continuall succession of more and more grace And so we preach a Kingdome So as that we banish all spirituall treason in setting up new titles or making any thing equall to God or his Word And we banish all spirituall felony or robbery in despoyling the Church Psal 45.13 either of Discipline or of Possessions either of Order or of Ornaments Be the Kings Daughter all glorious within Yet all her glory is not within For Her cloathing is of wrought gold sayes that text Still may she glory in her internall glory in the sincerity and in the integrity of Doctrinall truths and glory too in her outward comelinesse and beauty So pray we and so preach we the Kingdome of God And so we have done with our first Part. Our second Part 2 Part. to which in our order we are now come is a passionate valediction Now I know that all you shall see my face no more where first we inquire how he knew it But why doe we inquire that They that heard him did not so They heard it and beleeved it Acts 17.10 and lamented it When S. Paul preached at Berea his story sayes that he was better beleeved there then at Thessalonica And the reason is given That there were Nobler persons there Persons of better quality of better natures and dispositions and of more ingenuity and so as it is added They received the word with all readinesse of minde Prejudices and disaffections and under-valuations of the abilities of the Preacher in the hearer disappoint the purpose of the Holy Ghost frustrate the labours of the man and injure and defraud the rest of the Congregation who would and would justly like that which is said if they were not mis-led and shaked by those hearers And so worke also such jealousies and suspitions that though his abilities be good yet his end upon his Auditory is not their edification but to work upon them to other purposes Though we require not an implicite faith in you that you beleeve because we say it yet we require a holy Noblenesse in you A religious good nature a conscientious ingenuity that you remember from whom we come from the King of heaven and in what quality as his Ambassadors And so be apt to beleeve that since we must returne to him that sent us and give him a relation of our negotiation we dare not transgresse our Commission The Bereans are praised for this That they searched the Scriptures daily whether those things that Paul said were so But this begun not at a jealousie or suspition in them that they doubted that that which he said was not so nor proceeded not to a gladnesse or to a desire that they might have taken him in a lie or might have found that that which he said was not so But they searched the Scriptures whether those things were so that so having formerly beleeved him when he preached they might establish that beliefe which they had received by that which was the infallible rocke and foundation of all The Scriptures They searched but they searched for confirmation and not upon suspition In our present case they to whom S. Paul said this doe not aske S. Paul how hee knew that they should see his face no more they beleeved as we doe that he had it by revelation from God and such knowledge is faith Tricubitalis er at coelum attingit sayes S. Chrysostome S. Paul was a man of low stature but foure foot and a halfe high sayes he and yet his head reached to the highest heaven and his eyes saw and his eares heard the counsels of God Scarce any Ambassadour can shew so many Letters of his Masters owne hand as S. Paul could produce Revelations His King came to him as often as other Kings write to their Ambassadours Acts 9.4 Gal. 1.1 Gal. 2. Acts 13. Acts 16. Acts 18. Acts 17. He had his first calling by Revelation He had his Commission his Apostle-ship by Revelation So hee was directed to Jerusalem And so to Rome to both by Revelation and so to Macedonia also So hee was confirmed and comforted in the night by Vision by Revelation And so he was assured of the lives of all them that suffered shipwrack with him at Malta All his Cate chismes in the beginning all his Dictats in his proceeding all his incouragements at his departing were all Revelation Every good man hath his conversation in heaven and heaven it self had a conversation in S. Paul And so even the book of the Acts of the Apostles is as it were a first Part of the book of Revelation Revelations to S. Paul as the other was to S. Iohn This is the way that Christ promised to take with him I will shew him Acts 9.16 Acts 20.11 how great things he must suffer for my sake And this way Christ pursued At Caesarea Agabus a Prophet came from Iudaea to Paul and took Pauls girdle and bound his own hands and feet and said Thus saith the Holy Ghost So shall the Iews binde the man that owes the girdle and shall deliver him into the hands of the Gentiles This then was his case in our text for that revelation by Agabus his Prophesie of his suffering was after this he had a revelation that he should never be seen by them more but when or how or where he should dye he had not had a particular revelation then He sayes a little before our text Ver. 12. I goe bound in the Spirit to Ierusalem That is so bound by the Spirit that if I should not goe I should resist the Spirit But sayes he I know not the things that shall befall me there not at Jerusalem much lesse the last and bitterest things which were farther off the things that should befall him at Rome where he died But from the very first he knew enough of his death to shake any soule that were not sustained by the Spirit of God which is another Branch in this Part That no revelations no apprehensions of death removed him from his holy intrepidnesse and religious constancy We have a story in an Author of S. Hieromes time Palladius Non perterritus that in a Monastery of S. Isidors every Monk that dyed in that house was able and ever did tell all the society that at such a time he should die God does extraordinary things for extraordinary
ends but since we see no such ends nor use of this we are at our liberty to doubt of the thing it selfe God told Simeon that he should not die till he had seen Christ but he did not tell him that he should die as soone as he had seen him But so much as was told him was enough to make him content to die when he had seen him and to come to his Nunc dimittis to that chearfulnesse as to sing his owne Requiem God accustomed S. Paul no doubt to such notifications from him and such apprehensions in himselfe of death as because it was not new it could not be terrible When S. Paul was able to make that protestation I protest by your rejoycing which I have in Christ Iesus our Lord I die dayly 1 Cor. 15.31 2 Cor. 11.23 And againe I am in prisons oft and often in deaths I die often No Executioner could have told him you must die to morrow but he could have said Alas I died yesterday and yesterday was twelve-month and seaven yeare and every yeare and month and weeke and day and houre before that There is nothing so neare Immortality as to die daily for not to feele death is Immortality and onely hee shall never feele death that is exercised in the continuall Meditation thereof Continuall Mortification is Immortality As Cordials lose their vertue and become no Cordials if they be taken every day so poysons do their venome too If a man use himselfe to them in small proportions at first he may grow to take any quantity He that takes a dram of Death to day may take an ounce to morrow and a pound after He that begins with that mortification of denying himselfe his delights which is a dram of Death shall be able to suffer the tribulations of this world which is a greater measure of death and then Death it selfe not onely patiently but cheerefully And to such a man death is not a dissolution but a redintegration not a divorce of body and soule but a sending of both divers wayes the soule upward to Heaven the body downeward to the earth to an indissoluble marriage to him who for the salvation of both assumed both our Lord and Saviour Christ Jesus Psal 2.17 Therefore does S. Paul say of himselfe If I be offered upon the sacrifice and service of your faith I joy and rejoyce with you all that is It is a just occasion of our common joy on your part and on mine too And therefore does S. Augustine say in his behalfe whatsoever can be threatned him Si potest vivere tolerabile est Whatsoever does not take away life may be endured for if it could not be endured it would take away life and Si non potest vivere sayes he If it doe take away life what shall he feele when hee is dead He adds the reason of all Opus cum fine merces sine fine Death hath an end but their reward that dye for Christ and their peace that dye in Christ hath no end Therefore was not S. Paul afraid of melancholique apprehensions by drawing his death into contemplation and into discourse he was not afraid to thinke nor to talke of his death But then S. Paul had another end in doing so here which is our last consideration To make the deeper impression in them to whom he preached then by telling them that he knew they should see his face no more This that S. Paul sayes Moriturus he sayes to the Ephesians but not at Ephesus He was departed from thence the yeare before for upon the newes that Claudius the Emperour who persecuted the Christians was dead he purposed to goe by Jerusalem to Rome In that peregrination and visitation of his his way fell out after to be by Miletus a place not far from Ephesus Ver. 22. He was bound in the Spirit as he sayes here to go to Ierusalem and therefore he could not visit them at Ephesus A man may have such obligations even for the service of God upon him as that it shall not be in his power to doe that service which he may owe and desire to pay in some particular Church It was in part S. Pauls case Vers 17. But yet he did what he could from Miletus he sent to Ephesus to call the Elders of that Church thither And then he preached this short but powerfull Sermon And as his manner ever was though still without prevaricating or forbearing to denounce the judgements of God upon them in cases necessary to make those whom he preached or writ to as benevolent and well-affected to him as he could for he was Omnia omnibus Made all things to all men to which purpose it is that he speakes and poures out himselfe Gal 4.14 with such a loving thankfulnesse to the Galatians Ye received me as an Angel of God even as Christ Iesus himselfe pursuing I say this manner of a mutuall endearing and a reciprocall embowelling of himselfe in the Congregation and the Congregation in him as certainely if we consider all unions the naturall union of Parents and children the matrimoniall union of Husband and Wife no union is so spirituall nor so neare to that by which we are made Idem spiritus cum Domino The same Spirit with the Lord as when a good Pastor and a good flock meete and are united in holy affections to one another to unite himselfe to his Ephesians inseparably even after his separation to be still present with them in his everlasting absence and to live with them even after death to make the deeper impressions of all his past and present instructions he speaks to them as a dying man I know you shall see my face no more Why did he so S. Paul did not dye in eleven yeares after this But he dyed to them for bodily presence now They were to see him no more As the day of my death is the day of Judgement to me so this day of his departing was the day of his death to them And for himselfe from this time when he gave this judgement of death upon himselfe all the rest of his life was but a leading far off to the place of execution For first very soone after this Agabus gave him notice of manifold afflictions in that Girdle which we spake of before There he was bound and emprisoned at Jerusalem from thence sent bound to Caesarea practised upon to be killed by the way forced to appeale to Caesar upon that Appeale sent prisoner to Rome ship-wracked upon the way at Malta Emprisoned under guard though not close prisoner two yeares after his comming thither and though dismissed and so enabled to visit some Churches yet laid hold upon againe by Nero and executed So that as it was literally true that the Ephesians never saw his face after this valediction so he may be said to have dyed then in such a sense as himselfe sayes to the Corinthians 1 Cor.
conformity to Angels But divers others of the Ancients have taken Soule and Spirit for different things even in the Intellectuall part of man somewhat obscurely I confesse and as some venture to say unnecessarily if not dangerously It troubled S. Hierome sometimes Ad Hedibiam l. 12. Epist 150 how to understand the word Spirit in man but he takes the easiest way he dispatches himselfe of it as fast as he could that is to speake of it onely as it was used in the Scriptures Famosa quaestio sayes he sed brevi sermone tractanda It is a question often disputed but may be shortly determined Idem spiritus hic ac in iis verbis Nolite extinguere spiritum When we heare of the Spirit in a Man in Scriptures we must understand it of the gifts of the Spirit for so fully to the same purpose sayes S. Chrysostome Spiritus est charisma spiritus The Spirit is the working of the Spirit The gifts of the Spirit and so when we heare The Spirit was vexed The Spirit was quenched still it is to be understood The gifts of the Spirit And so as they restraine the signification of Spirit to those gifts onely though the word do indeed in many places require a larger extension so do many restraine this word in our text The Soule onely Ad sensum to the sensitive faculties of the soule that is onely to the paine and anguish that his body suffered But so far at least David had gone in that which he said before My bones are vexed Now Ingravescit morbus The disease festers beyond the bone even into the marrow it selfe His Bones were those best actions that he had produced and he saw in that Contemplation that for all that he had done he was still at best but an unprofitable servant if not a rebellious enemy But then when he considers his whole soule and all that ever it can do he sees all the rest will be no better The poyson he sees is in the fountaine the Canker in the roote the rancor the venom in the soule it selfe Corpus instrumentum anima ars ipsa sayes S. Basil The body and the senses are but the tooles and instruments that the soule works with But the soule is the art the science that directs those Instruments The faculties of the soule are the boughs that produce the fruits and the operations and particular acts of those faculties are the fruits but the soule is the roote of all And David sees that this art this science this soule can direct him or establish him in no good way That not onely the fruits his particular acts nor onely the boughs and armes his severall faculties but the roote it selfe the soule it selfe was infected His bones are shaken he dares not stand upon the good he hath done his soule is so too he cannot hope for any good he shall do He hath no merit for the past he hath no free-will for the future that is his case This troubles his bones Turbata this troubles his soule this vexes them both for the word is all one in both places as our last Translators have observed and rendred it aright not vexed in one place and troubled in the other as our former Translators had it But in both places it is Bahal and Bahal imports a vehemence both in the intensnesse of it and in the suddennesse and inevitablenesse of it And therefore it signifies often Praecipitantiam A headlong downfall and irrecoverablenesse And often Evanescentiam an utter vanishing away and annihilation David whom we alwayes consider in the Psalmes not onely to speake literally of those miseries which were actually upon himselfe but prophetically too of such measures and exaltations of those miseries as would certainly fall upon them as did not seeke their sanation their recovery from the God of all health looking into all his actions they are the fruits and into all his faculties they are the boughs and into the root of all the soule it selfe considering what he had done what he could do he sees that as yet he had done no good he sees he should never be able to doe any His bones are troubled He hath no comfort in that which is growne up and past And his soule is sore troubled for to the trouble of the soule there is added in the Text that particle Valde It is a sore trouble that falls upon the soule A troubled spirit who can beare because he hath no hope in the future He was no surer for that which was to come then for that which was past But he that is all considered in that case which he proposes he comes as the word signifies ad praecipitantiam That all his strength can scarce keepe him from precipitation into despaire And he comes as the word signifies too ad Evanescentiam to an evaporating and a vanishing of his soule that is even to a renouncing and a detestation of his immortality and to a willingnesse to a desire that he might die the death of other Creatures which perish altogether and goe out as a Candle This is the trouble the sore trouble of his soule who is brought to an apprehension of Gods indignation for not performing Conditions required at his hands and of his inability to performe them and is not come to the contemplation of his mercy in supply thereof There is Turbatio Timoris Mat. 2.3 Psal 107.27 A trouble out of feare of danger in this world Herods trouble When the Magi brought word of another King Herod was troubled and all Ierusalem with him There is Turbatio confusionis The Mariners trouble in a tempest Their soule melteth for trouble Luk. 10.41 Luk. 1.29 sayes David There is Turbatio occupationis Martha's trouble Martha thou art troubled about many things sayes Christ There is Turbatio admirationis The blessed Virgins trouble When she saw the Angel she was troubled at his saying To contract this John 11.33 There is Turbatio compassionis Christs own trouble When he saw Mary weepe for her brother Lazarus he groaned in the spirit and was troubled in himselfe But in all these troubles Herods feare The Mariners irresolution Martha's multiplicity of businesse The blessed Virgins sudden amazement Our Saviours compassionate sorrow as they are in us worldly troubles so the world administers some means to extemiate and alleviate these troubles for feares are overcome and stormes are appeased and businesses are ended and wonders are understood and sorrows weare out But in this trouble of the bones and the soule in so deepe and sensible impressions of the anger of God looking at once upon the pravity the obliquity the malignity of all that I have done of all that I shall doe Man hath but one step between that state and despaire to stop upon to turne to the Author of all temporall and all spirituall health the Lord of life with Davids prayer Psal 51.10 Cor mundum crea Create a cleane heart within me
godly men have declared this lothnesse to dye Beloved waigh Life and Death one against another and the balance will be even Throw the glory of God into either balance and that turnes the scale S. Paul could not tell which to wish Life or Death There the balance was even Then comes in the glory of God the addition of his soule to that Quire that spend all their time eternity it selfe only in glorifying God and that turnes the scale and then he comes to his Cupio dissolvi To desire to be dissolved and to be with Christ But then he puts in more of the same waight in the other scale he sees that it advances Gods glory more for him to stay and labour in the building of Gods Kingdome here and so adde more soules then his owne to that state then only to enjoy that Kingdome in himself and that turnes the scale againe and so he is content to live These Saints of God then when they deprecate death and complain of the approaches of death they are at that time in a charitable extasie abstracted and withdrawne from the consideration of that particular happinesse which they in themselves might haye in heaven and they are transported and swallowed up with this sorrow that the Church here and gods kingdome upon earth should lack those meanes of advancement or assistance which God by their service was pleased to afford to his Church Whether they were good Kings good Priests or good Prophets the Church lost by their death and therefore they deprecated that death Esay 38.18 and desired to live The grave cannot praise thee death cannot celebrate thee But the living the living he shall praise thee as I doe this day sayes Hezekias He was affected with an apprehension of a future barrennesse after his death and a want of propagation of Gods truth I shall not see the Lord even the Lord sayes he He had assurance that he should see the Lord in Heaven when by death he was come thither But sayes he I shall not see him in the land of the living Well even in the land of the living even in the land of life it selfe he was to see him if by death he were to see him in Heaven But this is the losse that he laments this is the misery that he deplores with so much holy passion I shall behold man no more with the Inhabitants of the world Howsoever I shall enjoy God my selfe yet I shall be no longer a meanes an instrument of the propagation of Gods truth amongst others And till we come to that joy which the heart cannot conceive it is I thinke the greatest joy that the soule of man is capable of in this life especially where a man hath been any occasion of sinne to others to assist the salvation of others And even that consideration that he shall be able to doe Gods cause no more good here may make a good man loath to die Quid facies magno nomini tuo Jos 7.9 sayes Ioshuah in his prayer to God if the Canaanites come in and destroy us and blaspheme thee What wilt thou do unto thy mighty Name What wilt thou doe unto thy glorious Church said the Saints of God in those Deprecations if thou take those men out of the world whom thou hadst chosen enabled qualified for the edification sustentation propagation of that Church In a word David considers not here what men doe or doe not in the next world but he considers onely that in this world he was bound to propagate Gods Truth and that that he could not doe if God tooke him away by death Consider then this horrour and detestation and deprecation of death in those Saints of the old Testament with relation to their particular and then it must be Quia promissiones obscurae Because Moses had conveyed to those men all Gods future blessings all the joy and glory of Heaven onely in the types of earthly things and said little of the state of the soule after this life And therefore the promises belonging to the godly after this life were not so cleere then not so well manifested to them not so well fixt in them as that they could in contemplation of them step easily or deliver themselves confidently into the jawes of death he that is not fully satisfied of the next world makes shift to be content with this and he that cannot reach or does not feele that will be glad to keepe his hold upon this Consider their horrour and âetestation and deprecation of death not with relation to themselves but to Gods Church and then it will be Quia operarii pauci Because God had a great harvest in hand and few labourers in it they were loath to be taken from the worke And these Reasons might at least by way of excuse and extenuation in those times of darknesse prevaile somewhat in their behalfe They saw not whither they went and therefore were loath to goe and they were loath to goe because they saw not how Gods Church would subsist when they were gone But in these times of ours when Almighty God hath given an abundant remedy to both these their excuses will not be appliable to us We have a full cleernesse of the state of the soule after this life not onely above those of the old Law but above those of the Primitive Christian Church which in some hundreds of yeares came not to a cleere understanding in that point whether the soule were immortall by nature or but by preservation whether the soule could not die or onely should not die Or because that perchance may be without any constant cleernesse yet that was not cleere to them which concernes our case neerer whether the soule came to a present fruition of the sight of God after death or no. But God having afforded us cleernesse in that and then blest our times with an established Church and plenty of able work-men for the present and plenty of Schooles and competency of endowments in Universities for the establishing of our hopes and assurances for the future since we have both the promise of Heaven after and the promise that the gates of Hell shall not prevaile against the Church here Since we can neither say Promissiones obseurae That Heaven hangs in a Cloud nor say Operarii pauci That dangers hang over the Church it is much more inexcusable in us now then it was in any of them then to be loath to die or to be too passionate in that reason of the deprecation Quia non in morte Because in death there is no remembrance of thee c. Which words being taken literally may fill our meditation and exalt our devotion thus If in death there be no remembrance of God if this remembrance perish in death certainly it decayes in the neernesse to death If there be a possession in death there is an approach in age And therefore Remember now thy Creator in the dayes of thy youth
Eccles 12.1 There are spirituall Lethargies that make a man forget his name forget that he was a Christian and what belongs to that duty God knows what forgetfulnesse may possesse thee upon thy death-bed and freeze thee there God knows what rage what distemper what madnesse may scatter thee then And though in such cases God reckon with his servants according to that disposition which they use to have towards him before and not according to those declinations from him which they shew in such distempered sicknesses yet Gods mercy towards them can worke but so that he returnes to those times when those men did remember him before But if God can finde no such time that they never remembred him then he seales their former negligence with a present Lethargy they neglected God all their lives and now in death there is no remembrance of him nor there is no remembrance in him God shall forget him eternally and when he thinkes he is come to his Consummatum est The bell tolls and will ring out and there is an end of all in death by death he comes but to his Secula Seculorum to the beginning of that misery which shall never end This then which we have spoken arises out of that sense of these words which seems the most literall that is of a naturall death But as it is well noted by divers Expositors upon this Psalme this whole Psalme is intended of a spirituall agonie and combat of David wrastling with the apprehension of hell and of the indignation of God even in this world whilst he was alive here And therefore S. Augustine upon the last words of this verse in that Translation which he followed In inferno quis consitchitur tibi Not In the grave but In hell who shall confesse unto thee puts himselfe upon this In Inferne Dives confessus Domino oravit pro fratribus In hell Dives did confesse the name of the Lord and prayed there for his brethren in the world And therefore he understands not these words of a literall and naturall a bodily death a departing out of this world but he calls Peccatum Mortem and then Caecitatem animae Infernum He makes the easinesse of sinning to be Death and then blindnesse and obduration and remorslesnesse and impenitence to be this Hell And so also doth S. Ierome understand all that passionate deploring of Hezekias which seems literally to be spoken of naturall death of this spirituall death of the habit of sin and that he considered and lamented especially his danger of that death of a departing from God in this world rather then of a departing out of this world And truely many pieces and passages of Hezekias his lamentation there will fall naturally enough into that spirituall interpretation though perchance all will not though S. Ierome with a holy purpose drive them and draw them that way But whether that of Hezekias be of naturall or of a spirituall death we have another Author ancienter then S. Augustine and S. Ierome and so much esteemed by S. Iereme as that he translated some of his Works which is Didymus of Alexandria who sayes it is Impia opinio not an inconvenient or unnaturall but an impious and irreligious opinion to understand this verse of naturall death because sayes he The dead doe much more remember God then the living doe And he makes use of that place Deus non confunditur Heb. 11.16 God is not ashamed to be called the God of the dead for he hath prepared them a City And therefore reading these words of our Text according to that Translation which prevailed in the Easterne Church which was the Septuagint he argues thus he collects thus that all that David sayes here is onely this Non est in morte qui memor est Dei Not that he that is dead remembers not God but that he that remembers God is not dead not in an irreparable and irrecoverable state of death not under such a burthen of sin as devastates and exterminates the conscience and evacuates the whole power and work of grace but that if he can remember God confesse God though he be falne under the hand of a spirituall death by some sin yet he shall have his resurrection in this life for Non est in morte sayes Didymus He that remembers God is not dead in a perpetuall death And then this reason of Davids Prayer here Doe this and this for in death there is no remembrance of thee will have this force That God would returne to him in his effectuall grace That God would deliver his soule in dangerous tentations That God would save him in applying to him and imprinting in him a sober but yet confident assurance that the salvation of Christ Jesus belongs to him Because if God did not return to him but suffer him to wither in a long absence If God did not deliver him by taking hold of him when he was ready to fall into such sins as his sociablenesse his confidence his inconsideration his infirmity his curiosity brought him to the brinke of If God did not save him by a faithfull assurance of salvation after a sin committed and resented This absence this slipperinesse this pretermitting might bring him to such a deadly and such a hellish state in this world as that In death that is In that death he should have no remembrance of God In hell In the grave that is In that hell In that grave he should not confesse nor praise God at all There was his danger he should forget God utterly and God forget him eternally if God suffered him to proceed so far in sin that is Death and so far in an obduration and remorslesnesse in sin that is Hell The Death and the Hell of this world to which those Fathers refer this Text. In this lamentable state we will onely note the force and the emphasis of this Tui and Tibi in this verse no remembrance of Thee no praise to Thee For this is not spoken of God in generall but of that God to which David directs the last and principall part of his Prayer which is To save him It is to God as God is Jesus a Saviour and the wretchednesse of this state is that God shall not be remembred in that notion as he is Iesus a Saviour No man is so swallowed up in the death of sin nor in the grave of impenitence No man so dead and buried in the custome or senselesnesse of sin but that he remembers a God he confesses a God If an Atheist sweare the contrary beleeve him not His inward terrors his midnight startlings remember him of that and bring him to confessions of that But here is the depth and desperatenesse of this death and this grave habituall sin and impenitence in sin that he cannot remember he cannot confesse that God which should save him Christ Jesus his Redeemer he shall come he shall not chuse but come to remember a God that
consider the two termes in which it is expressed what this is which is translated Transgression and then what this Forgiving imports The Originall word is Pashang and that signifies sin in all extensions The highest the deepest the waightiest sin It is a malicious and a forcible opposition to God It is when this Herod and this Pilat this Body and this soule of ours are made friends and agreed that they may concurre to the Crucifying of Christ When not onely the members of our bodies but the faculties of our soul our will and understanding are bent upon sin when we doe not only sin strongly and hungerly and thirstily which appertain to the body but we sin rationally we finde reasons and those reasons even in Gods long patience why we should sin We sin wittily we invent new sins and we thinke it an ignorant a dull and an unsociable thing not to sin yea we sin wisely and make our sin our way to preferment Then is this word used by the Holy Ghost when he expresses both the vehemence and the waight and the largenesse and the continuance all extensions all dimensions of the sins of Damascus Amos 1.3 Thus saith the Lord for three transgressions of Damascus and for foure I will not turne to it because they have threshed Gilead with threshing instruments of Iron So then we consider sin here not as a staine such as Originall sin may be nor as a wound such as every actuall sin may be but as a burden a complication a packing up of many sins in an habituall practise thereof This is that waight that sunke the whole world under water in the first floud and shall presse downe the fire it selfe to consume it a second time It is a waight that stupifies and benums him that beares it August so as that the sinner feeles not the oppression of his owne sins Et quid miserius miscro non miserante seipsum What misery can be greater then when a miserable man hath not sense to commiserate his owne misery Our first errors are out of Levity and S. Augustin hath taught us a proper ballast and waight for that Amor Dei pondus animae The love of God would carry us evenly and steadily if we would embarke that But as in great tradings they come to ballast with Merchandise ballast and fraight is al one so in this habituall sinner all is sin plots and preparations before the act gladnesse and glory in the act sometimes disguises sometimes justifications after the act make up one body one fraight of sin So then Transgression in this place in the naturall signification of the word is a waight a burden and carrying it as the word requires to the greatest extension it is the sin of the whole World And that sinne is forgiven which is the second Terme The Prophet does not say here Forgiven Blessed is that man that hath no transgression for that were to say Blessed is that man that is no man All people all Nations did ever in Nature acknowledge not onely a guiltinesse of sin but some meanes of reconciliation to their Gods in the Remission of sins for they had all some formall and Ceremoniall Sacrifices and Expiations and Lustrations by which they thought their sins to be purged and washed away Whosoever acknowledges a God acknowledges a Remission of sins and whosoever acknowledges a Remission of sins acknowledges a God And therefore in this first place David does not mention God at all he does not say Blessed is he whose transgression the Lord hath forgiven for he presumes it to be an impossible tentation to take hold of any man that there can be any Remission of sin from any other person or by any other meanes then from and by God himselfe and therefore Remission of sins includes an Act of God But what kinde of Act is more particularly designed in the Originall word which is Nasa then our word forgiving reaches to for the word does not onely signifie Auferre but ferre not onely to take away sin by way of pardon but to take the sin upon himselfe and so to beare the sin and the punishment of the sin in his owne person And so Christ is the Lambe of God Qui tollit not onely that takes away Esay 53.4 but that takes upon himselfe the sins of the world Tulit portavit Surely he hath borne our griefes and carried our sorrowes Those griefes those sorrowes which we should he hath borne and carried in his owne person So that as it is all one never to have come in debt and to have discharged the debt So the whole world all mankinde considered in Christ is as innocent as if Adam had never sinned And so this is the first beame of Blessednesse that shines upon my soule That I beleeve that the justice of God is fully satisfied in the death of Christ and that there is enough given and accepted in the treasure of his blood for the Remission of all Transgressions And then the second beame of this Blessednesse is in The covering of sins Now to benefit our selves by this part of Davids Catechisme Sinne. we must as we did before consider the two termes of which this part of this Blessednesse consists sin and covering Sin in this place is not so heavy a word as Transgression was in the former for that was sin in all extensions sinne in all formes all sin of all men of all times of all places the sin of all the world upon the shoulders of the Saviour of the world In this place the word is Catah and by the derivation thereof from Nata which is to Decline to step aside or to be withdrawne and Kut which is filum a thread or a line that which we call sin here signifies Transilire lineam To depart or by any tentation to be withdrawne from the direct duties and the exact straightnesse which is required of us in this world for the attaining of the next So that the word imports sins of infirmity such sins as doe fall upon Gods best servants such sins as rather induce a cofession of our weaknesse and an acknowledgement of our continuall need of pardon for some thing passed and strength against future invasions then that induce any devastation or obduration of the conscience which Transgression in the former branch implied For so this word Catah hath that signification as in many other places there where it is said Iudg ââ 16 That there were seven hundred left-handed Benjamits which would sling stones at a haires breadth and not faile that is not misse the marke a haires breadth And therefore when this word Catah sin is used in Scripture to expresse any weighty hainous enormous sin it hath an addition Peccatum magnum peccaverunt sayes Moses Exod. 32.31 when the people were become Idolaters These people have sinned a great sin otherwise it signifies such sin as destroyes not the foundation such as in the nature
yet this is still limited by the law of God so far as God hath instituted this power by his Gospel in his Church and far from inducing amongst us that torture of the Conscience that usurpation of Gods power that spying into the counsails of Princes supplanting of their purposes with which the Church of Rome hath been deeply charged And this usefull and un-mis-interpretable Confession which we speake of Adversum me is the more recommended to us in that with which David shuts up his Act as out of S. Hierome and out of our former translation we intimated unto you that he doth all this Adversum se I will confesse my sinnes unto the Lord against my selfe The more I finde Confession or any religious practise to be against my selfe and repugnant to mine owne nature the farther I will goe in it For still the Adversum me is Cum Deo The more I say against my selfe the more I vilifie my selfe the more I glorifie my God As S. Chry sostome sayes every man is Spontaneus Satan a Satan to himselfe as Satan is a Tempter every man can tempt himselfe so I will be Spontaneus Satan as Satan is an Accuser an Adversary I will accuse my selfe I consider often that passionate humiliation of S. Peter Exi à me Domine He fell at Iesus knees saying Depart from me for I am a sinfull man O Lord Luk. 5.8 And I am often ready to say so and more Depart from me O Lord for I am sinfull inough to infect thee As I may persecute thee in thy Children so I may infect thee in thine Ordinances Depart in withdrawing thy word from me for I am corrupt inough to make even thy saving Gospel the savor of death unto death Depart in withholding thy Sacrament for I am leprous inough to taint thy flesh and to make the balme of thy blood poyson to my soule Depart in withdrawing the protection of thine Angels from me for I am vicious inough to imprint corruption and rebellion into their nature And if I be too foule for God himselfe to come neare me for his Ordinances to worke upon me I am no companion for my selfe I must not be alone with my selfe for I am as apt to take as to give infection I am a reciprocall plague passively and actively contagious I breath corruption and breath it upon my selfe and I am the Babylon that I must goe out of Gen. 32.10 Mat. 8.8 or I perish I am not onely under Iacobs Non dignus Not worthy the least of all thy mercies nor onely under the Centurions Non dignus I am not worthy that thou shouldest come under my roofe That thy Spirit should ever speake to my spirit which was the forme of words in which every Communicant received the Sacrament in the Primitive Church Lord I am not worthy that thou shouldest enter under my roofe Nor onely under the Prodigals Non dignus Luke 15.21 Not worthy to be called thy sonne neither in the filiation of Adoption for I have deserved to be dis-inherited nor in the filiation of Creation for I have deserved to be annihilated Mark 1.7 But Non dignus procumbere I am not worthy to stoop down to fall down to kneele before thee in thy Minister the Almoner of thy Mercy the Treasurer of thine Absolutions So farre doe I confesse Adversum me against my selfe as that I confesse I am not worthy to confesse nor to be admitted to any accesse any approach to thee much lesse to an act so neare Reconciliation to thee as an accusation of my selfe or so neare thy acquitting as a self-condemning Be this the issue in all Controversies whensoever any new opinions distract us Be that still thought best that is most Adversum nos most against our selves That that most layes flat the nature of man so it take it not quite away and blast all vertuous indeavours That that most exalts the Grace and Glory of God be that the Truth And so have you the whole mystery of Davids Confession in both his Acts preparatory in resenting his sinfull condition in generall and survaying his conscience in particular And then his Deliberation his Resolution his Execution his Confession Confession of true sins and of them onely and of all them of his sins and all this to the Lord and all that against himselfe That which was proposed for the second Part must fall into the compasse of a Conclusion and a short one that is Gods Act Thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin This is a wide doore 2 Part. and would let out Armies of Instructions to you but we will shut up this doore with these two leaves thereof The fulnesse of Gods Mercy He forgives the sin and the punishment And the seasonablenesse the acceleration of his mercy in this expression in our text that Davids is but Actus inchoatus He sayes he will confesse And Gods is Actus consummatus Thou forgavest Thou hadst already forgiven the iniquity and punishment of my sin These will be the two leaves of this doore and let the hand that shuts them be this And this Particle of Connection which we have in the text I said And thou didst For though this Remission of sin be not presented here as an effect upon that cause of Davids Confession It is not delivered in a Quia and an Ergo Because David did this God did that for mans wil leads not the will of God as a cause who does all his acts of mercy for his mercies sake yet though it be not an effect as from a cause yet it is at least as a consequent from an occasion so assured so infallible as let any man confesse as David did and he shall be sure to be forgiven as David was For though this forgivenesse be a flower of mercy yet the roote growes in the Justice of God If wee acknowledge our sin 1 John 1.9 he is faithfull and just to forgive us our sin It growes out of his faithfulnesse as he hath vouchsafed to binde himselfe by a promise And out of his Justice as he hath received a full satisfaction for all our sins So that this Hand this And in our Text is as a ligament as a sinew to connect and knit together that glorious body of Gods preventing grace and his subsequent grace if our Confession come between and tie the knot God that moved us to that act will perfect all Here enters the fulnesse of his mercy Plenitudo Rev. 3 20. at one leafe of this doore well expressed at our doore in that Ecce sto pulso Behold I stand at the doore and knock for first he comes here is no mention of our calling of him before He comes of himselfe And then he suffers not us to be ignorant of his comming he comes so as that he manifests himself Ecce Behold And then he expects not that we should wake with that light and look out of our selves but he knocks
to splendor He hath preserved this Church from perplexities If they say we are perplexed with differences of opinions amongst our selves let this satisfie them that we doe agree all in all fundamentall things And that in things much nearer the foundation then those in which our differences lie they differ amongst themselves with more acrimony and bitternesse then we doe If they thinke to perplex us with the Fathers we are ready to joyne that issue with them where the Fathers speak unanimously dogmatically in matters of faith we are content to be tried by the Fathers If they thinke to perplex us with Councels we will goe as farre as they in the old ones and as farre as they for meeting in new Councels if they may be fully that is Royally Imperially called and equally proceeded in and the Resolutions grow and gathered there upon debatements upon the place and not brought thither upon commandment from Rome If there be no way but Force and Armes if they will admit no triall but that God bee blessed that keepes us from the necessity but God bee blessed also that he preserves us from perplexity or not being able to defend his cause if he call us to that triall And therefore let them never call it a Perplexity in us let them never say that we know not what to doe when we acknowledge the Church of Rome to be truly a Church for the Pest-house is a house and theirs is such a Church But the Pest-house is not the best ayre to live in nor the Romane Church the best Church to die in Thou hast preserved me from perplexities may the Primitive Church say and so may the Reformed too and so also may every particular soule say which is a Consideration that from the beginning we proposed for every Part and are now come to it in this When we were upon this consideration in our former Part Anima we shewed you that no over-tender or timorous soule might hide it selfe in a retired life from the offices of society but though every particular age bring a new sin with it every complexion a new sin every occupation a new sin every friend a new sin that must be loved for his sake yet Para te foro Thou art bound to come abroad and trust upon Gods hiding thee there from tentations and so assure thy self that he will preserve thee from perplexities Now wee consider in the Schoole Perplexities which are such onely by mis-understanding and Perplexities which are such in the true nature of the thing Those of the first kinde perplexities in a mis-understanding should fall upon no man perplexities of the second kinde in the nature of the thing it selfe can fall upon no man Of the first kinde this is an example A man sweares to conceale all his friends secrets and he tells him of a treasonable purpose against the State Either way he must offend Against his oath if he reaveale it or against his Allegeance if he doe not This is no perplexity for in a right understanding he must know that such an Oath bindes not Of the second kinde there was an example in Origen who must by the commandement of the Persecutor either offer sacrifice to an Idol or prostitute his body to an adominable abuse with another man Which should he doe Neither God gives a man an issue in such cases by death August Et vitam potiùs finire dèbet quà m maculare He is bound to give his life rather then to staine his life This timorous soule then feares where no feare is He would hide himselfe he is loath to come into the world because he thinks hee must needs sin Hee needs not Is there a necessity laid upon him that he must die as rich as the richest of his profession and that he cannot doe without sin That he must leave his wife such a Joynture and his children such Portions and all that he cannot doe without sin First all that he may doe without sin We have seene in all Professions honest men die as rich Mark 10.29 as dishonest If thou do not he that hath said There is no man that hath left wife or children for my sake but shall have a hundred fold here and everlasting life which is a blessed Codicil to a Will that was abundant before will also say There is no man that hath left wife and children poore for my sake but I will enlarge my providence upon them even in this life and my glory in the next And this was our second Part considered in the Church and in our selves Thou shalt preserve c. There remaines yet a third Part 3. Part. that as God hides us from tentations that they reach us not or preserves us from intricacies and perplexities so that they hurt us not so if they doe yet he compasses us with a joyfull Deliverance as our former or with songs of Deliverance as this Translation hath it that is imprints in us a holy certitude a faire assurance that he will never forsake us And this voyce we may heare from the Church first and then from every particular soule for to both as we have told you all the way doe all the parts of this Psalme appertaine As it is an exaltation of Gods indignation Compasse Lament 3.5 when he is said to Compasse by way of siege so Jerusalem complaines He hath builded against me he hath compassed me with gall and travell he hath hedged me about that I cannot get out So God threatens I will camp against thee round about Esay 39.3 and I will lay siege against thee for this intimates such a displeasure of God as that he does not onely leave us succourlesse joylesse comfortlesse in our selves but cuts off those supplies which might relieve us He compasses us he besieges us hee camps round about us that no reliefe can enter so when his love and mercy is expressed in this phrase that he compasses us it signifies both an intire mercy that no enemy shall break in in any part whilst he doth compasse us and a permanent and durable mercy that as no force of the enemy so no wearinesse in himselfe shall make him discontinue his watches or his guard over us but that he will compasse us still Thy faithfulnesse is round about thee sayes David to God that is our first comfort Psal 89.8 that God compasses himselfe with his owne faithfulnesse that is is never unmindfull of his owne promises and purposes And then He is round about our habitations Psal 78.28 God compasses himselfe with his owne faithfulnesse and then he compasses us with himselfe That as Satan told God one day after another Circuivi terram perambulavieam Job 1.8 I have compassed the earth and walked it round Job 2.2 but could never say that he had broke into Iobs quarter for hee found the impossibility in that The Lord had made a hedge about him Where note that Gods first
care is of the man and the soule is the man first a hedge about him and then about his house and about all that he had on every side Job 1.10 So day after day we shall finde arguments to establish our hearts in hope that the Lord hath compassed us and nothing shall breake in so as to take us from him but God shall say to us as to his former people Leva in circuitu oculos tuos Lift up thine eyes round about Esay 49.18 and behold which is one great comfort that he enables us to see and to know our enemies to discerne a tentation to be a tentation Omnes isti congregati sunt All these gather themselves together and come to thee which is another assistance that when we see our enemies multiply and that there is none that fighteth for us but onely thou O God we make a more present recourse to him But Vivo ego dicit Dominus As I live saith the Lord Velut ornamento vestieris thou shalt surely cloathe thee with them all as with an ornament and binde them on thee as a Bride doth which is the fulnesse of the mercy That as in another place he promises his children Panis vester sunt your enemies shall be your Bread Numb 14.9 you shall feed upon your enemies So here hee makes our enemies even our spirituall enemies our Cloathes and more then that our Jewels our Ornaments wee shall bee the stronger the warmer the richer by tribulations and tentations having overcome them as we shall if the Lord compasse us if he continue his watchfulnesse over us And that David sayes here first in the Churches behalfe God from the beginning carried a wall about his Church in that assurance Primitiva Mat. 16.18 Portae inferi The gates of hell shall not prevaile against it The Gentiles the Philosophers that were without the Church found a party Traitors Conspirators within The Heretiques and all these led and maintained by potent Princes that persecuted the Church The gates of hell were all opened and issued all her forces but Non praevaluerunt they never prevailed The Arians were sometimes more then the true Christians in all the world The Martyrians a sect that affected the name of Martyrdome could name more Martyrs then the true Church could but Evanuerunt yet they vanished The Emperours of Rome persecuted the Bishops of Rome to death yet when we looke upon the reckoning the Emperors died faster then Bishops Thou hast compassed me sayes the Primitive Church and so sayes the Reformed too Princes that hated one another have joyned in leagues against the Religion Reformata Princes that needed their Subjects have spent their Subjects by thousands in Massacres to extinguish the Religion Personall Assasinates Clandestine plots by poyson by fire by water have been multiplied against Princes that favour the Religion Inquisitions Confiscations Banishments Dishonours have overflowne them that professe the true Religion and yet the Lord compassing his Church she enjoyes a holy certainty arising out of these testimonies of his care that she shall never be forsaken And this may every good soule have too God comes to us without any purpose of departing from us againe Anima For the Spirit of life that God breated into man that departs from man in death but when God had assumed the nature of man the God-head never parted from that nature no not in death When Christ lay dead in the grave the God-head remained united to that body and that soule which were dis-united in themselves God was so united to man as that he was with man when man was not man in the state of death So when the Spirit of God hath invested compassed thy soule and made it his by those testimonies that Spirit establishes it in a kinde of assurance that he will never leave it Old Rome had as every City amongst the Heathen had certaine gods which they called their Tutelar gods gods that were affected to the preservation of that place But they durst never call upon those gods by their proper names for feare of losing them lest if their names should bee knowne by their enemies their enemies should winne away their gods from them by bestowing more cost or more devotion towards them then they themselves used So also is it said of them that when they had brought to Rome a forraigne god which they had taken in a conquered place Victory they cut the wings of their new god Victory lest he should flie from them againe This was a misery that they were not sure of their gods when they had them We are If he once come to us he never goes from us out of any variablenesse in himselfe but in us onely That promise reaches to the whole Church Esay 30.20 and to every particular soule Thy Teachers shall not bee removed into a corner any more but thine eye shall see thy Teachers which in the Originall as is appliably to our present purpose noted by Rabbi Moses is Non erunt Doctores tui alati Thy Teachers shall have no wings They shall never flie from thee and so the great Translation reads it Non avolabunt As their great god Victory could not flie from Rome so after this victory which God hath given his Church in the Reformation none of her Teachers should flie to or towards Rome Every way that God comes to us he comes with a purpose to stay and would imprint in us an assurance that he doth so and that Impression is this Compassing of thy soule with songs of deliverance in the signification and use of which word we shall in one word conclude all God hath given us this certitude Songs this faire assurance of his perpetuall residence with us in a word of a double signification The word is Ranan which signifies Joy exultation singing Lament 2.14 Psal 17.1 But it hath another sense too Arise Cry out in the night And Attend unto my cry which are voyces far from singing This God meanes therein That though he give us that comfort to sit and sing of our Deliverance yet hee would not have us fall asleepe with that musique but as when we contemplate his everlasting goodnesse wee celebrate that with a constant Joy so when we looke upon our owne weaknesse and unworthinesse we cry out Wretched men that wee are who shall deliver us from this body of death For though we have the Spirit of life in us we have a body of death upon us How loving soever my soule be it will not stay in a diseased body How loving soever the Spirit of life be it will not stay in a diseased soule My soule is loath to goe from my body but sicknesse and paine will drive it out so will sinne the Spirit of life from my soule God compasses us with Songs of Deliverance we are sure he would not leave us But he compasses us with Cries too we are afraid we are sure that we
and that dejection of spirit which the Adversary by temporall afflictions would induce upon me is an act of his Power So this Metaphor The shadow of his wings which in this place expresses no more then consolation and refreshing in misery and not a powerfull deliverance out of it is so often in the Scriptures made a denotation of Power too as that we can doubt of no act of power if we have this shadow of his wings For in this Metaphor of Wings doth the Holy Ghost expresse the Maritime power the power of some Nations at Sea in Navies Woe to the land shadowing with wings that is Esay 18.1 that hovers over the world and intimidates it with her sailes and ships In this Metaphor doth God remember his people of his powerfull deliverance of them Exod. 19.14 You have seene what I did unto the Egyptians and how I bare you on Eagles wings and brought you to my selfe In this Metaphor doth God threaten his and their enemies what hee can doe Ezek. 1.24 The noise of the wings of his Cherubims are as the noise of great waters and of an Army So also what hee will doe Hee shall spread his wings over Bozrah Ier. 49.22 and at that day shall the hearts of the mighty men of Edom be as the heart of a woman in her pangs So that if I have the shadow of his wings I have the earnest of the power of them too If I have refreshing and respiration from them I am able to say as those three Confessors did to Nebuchadnezzar My God is able to deliver me I am sure he hath power And my God will deliver me Dan. 3.17 when it conduces to his glory I know he will But if he doe not bee it knowne unto thee O King we will not servethy Gods Be it knowne unto thee O Satan how long soever God deferre my deliverance I will not seeke false comforts the miserable comforts of this world I will not for I need not for I can subsist under this shadow of these Wings though I have no more The Mercy-seat it selfe was covered with the Cherubims Wings Exod. 25.20 and who would have more then Mercy and a Mercy-seat that is established resident Mercy permanent and perpetuall Mercy present and familiar Mercy a Mercy-seat Our Saviour Christ intends as much as would have served their turne if they had laid hold upon it when hee sayes That hee would have gathered Ierusalem Matt. 23.37 as a henne gathers her chickens under her wings And though the other Prophets doe as ye have heard mingle the signification of Power and actuall deliverance in this Metaphor of Wings yet our Prophet whom wee have now in especiall consideration David never doth so but in every place where hee uses this Metaphor of Wings which are in five or sixe severall Psalmes still hee rests and determines in that sense which is his meaning here That though God doe not actually deliver us nor actually destroy our enemies yet if hee refresh us in the shadow of his Wings if he maintaine our subsistence which is a religious Constancy in him this should not onely establish our patience for that is but halfe the worke but it should also produce a joy and rise to an exultation which is our last circumstance Therefore in the shadow of thy wings I will rejoice I would always raise your hearts and dilate your hearts to a holy Joy Gaudium to a joy in the Holy Ghost There may be a just feare that men doe not grieve enough for their sinnes but there may bee a just jealousie and suspition too that they may fall into inordinate griefe and diffidence of Gods mercy And God hath reserved us to such times as being the later times give us even the dregs and lees of misery to drinke For God hath not onely let loose into the world a new spirituall disease which is an equality and an indifferency which religion our children or our servants or our companions professe I would not keepe company with a man that thought me a knave or a traitor with him that thought I loved not my Prince or were a faithlesse man not to be beleeved I would not associate my selfe And yet I will make him my bosome companion that thinks I doe not love God that thinks I cannot be saved but God hath accompanied and complicated almost all our bodily diseases of these times with an extraordinary sadnesse a predominant melancholy a faintnesse of heart a chearlesnesse a joylesnesse of spirit and therefore I returne often to this endeavor of raising your hearts dilating your hearts with a holy Joy Joy in the holy Ghost for Vnder the shadow of his wings you may you should rejoyce If you looke upon this world in a Map you find two Hemisphears two half worlds If you crush heaven into a Map you may find two Hemisphears too two half heavens Halfe will be Joy and halfe will be Glory for in these two the joy of heaven and the glory of heaven is all heaven often represented unto us And as of those two Hemisphears of the world the first hath been knowne long before but the other that of America which is the richer in treasure God reserved for later Discoveries So though he reserve that Hemisphear of heaven which is the Glory thereof to the Resurrection yet the other Hemisphear the Joy of heaven God opens to our Discovery and delivers for our habitation even whilst we dwell in this world As God hath cast upon the unrepentant sinner two deaths a temporall and a spirituall death so hath he breathed into us two lives Gen. 2.17 for so as the word for death is doubled Morte morieris Thou shalt die the death so is the word for life expressed in the plurall Chaiim vitarum God breathed into his nostrils the breath of lives of divers lives Though our naturall life were no life but rather a continuall dying yet we have two lives besides that an eternall life reserved for heaven but yet a heavenly life too a spirituall life even in this world And as God doth thus inflict two deaths and infuse two lives so doth he also passe two Judgements upon man or rather repeats the same Judgement twice For that which Christ shall say to thy soule then at the last Judgement Matt. 25.23 Enter into thy Masters joy Hee sayes to thy conscience now Enter into thy Masters joy The everlastingnesse of the joy is the blessednesse of the next life but the entring the inchoation is afforded here For that which Christ shall say then to us Verse 24. Venite benedicti Come ye blessed are words intended to persons that are comming that are upon the way though not at home Here in this world he bids us Come Luk. 15.10 there in the next he shall bid us Welcome The Angels of heaven have joy in thy conversion and canst thou bee without that joy in thy selfe
If thou desire revenge upon thine enemies as they are Gods enemies That God would bee pleased to remove and root out all such as oppose him that Affection appertaines to Glory Let that alone till thou come to the Hemisphear of Glory There joyne with those Martyrs under the Altar Revel 6.10 Vsquequo Domine How long O Lord dost thou deferre Judgement and thou shalt have thine answere there for that Whilst thou art here here joyne with David and the other Saints of God in that holy increpation of a dangerous sadnesse Why art thou cast downe O my soule why art thou disquieted in mee That soule that is dissected and anatomized to God Psal 42.5 in a sincere confession washed in the teares of true contrition embalmed in the blood of reconciliation the blood of Christ Jesus can assigne no reason can give no just answer to that Interrogatory Why art thou cast downe O my soule why art thou disquieted in me No man is so little as that he can be lost under these wings no man so great as that they cannot reach to him Semper ille major est August quantumcumque creverimus To what temporall to what spirituall greatnesse soever wee grow still pray wee him to shadow us under his Wings for the poore need those wings against oppression and the rich against envy The Holy Ghost who is a Dove shadowed the whole world under his wings Incubabat aquis He hovered over the waters he sate upon the waters and he hatched all that was produced and all that was produced so was good Be thou a Mother where the Holy Ghost would be a Father Conceive by him and be content that he produce joy in thy heart here First thinke that as a man must have some land or els he cannot be in wardship so a man must have some of the love of God or els he could not fall under Gods correction God would not give him his physick God would not study his cure if he cared not for him And then thinke also that if God afford thee the shadow of his wings that is Consolation respiration refreshing though not a present and plenary deliverance in thy afflictions not to thanke God is a murmuring and not to rejoyce in Gods wayes is an unthankfulnesse Howling is the noyse of hell singing the voyce of heaven Sadnesse the damp of Hell Rejoycing the serenity of Heaven And he that hath not this joy here lacks one of the best pieces of his evidence for the joyes of heaven and hath neglected or refused that Earnest by which God uses to binde his bargaine that true joy in this world shall flow into the joy of Heaven as a River flowes into the Sea This joy shall not be put out in death and a new joy kindled in me in Heaven But as my soule as soone as it is out of my body is in Heaven and does not stay for the possession of Heaven nor for the fruition of the sight of God till it be ascended through ayre and fire and Moone and Sun and Planets and Firmament to that place which we conceive to be Heaven but without the thousandth part of a minutes stop as soone as it issues is in a glorious light which is Heaven for all the way to Heaven is Heaven And as those Angels which came from Heaven hither bring Heaven with them and are in Heaven here So that soule that goes to Heaven meets Heaven here and as those Angels doe not devest Heaven by comming so these soules invest Heaven in their going As my soule shall not goe towards Heaven but goe by Heaven to Heaven to the Heaven of Heavens So the true joy of a good soule in this world is the very joy of Heaven and we goe thither not that being without joy we might have joy infused into us but that as Christ sayes Iohn 16.24.22 Our joy might be full perfected sealed with an everlastingnesse for as he promises That no man shall take our joy from us so neither shall Death it selfe take it away nor so much as interrupt it or discontinue it But as in the face of Death when he layes hold upon me and in the face of the Devill when he attempts me I shall see the face of God for every thing shall be a glasse to reflect God upon me so in the agonies of Death in the anguish of that dissolution in the sorrowes of that valediction in the irreversiblenesse of that transmigration I shall have a joy which shall no more evaporate then my soule shall evaporate A joy that shall passe up and put on a more glorious garment above and be joy super-invested in glory Amen SERM. LXVII The third of my Prebend Sermons upon my five Psalmes Preached at S. Pauls November 5. 1626. In Vesperis PSAL. 64.10 And all the upright in heart shall glory I Have had occasion to tell you more then once before that our Predecessors in the institution of the Service of this Church have declared such a reverence and such a devotion to this particular Booke of Scripture The Psalmes as that by distributing the hundred and fifty Psalmes of which number the body of this booke consists into thirty portions of which number the body of our Church consists and assigning to every one of those thirty persons his five Psalmes to bee said by him every day every day God receives from us howsoever wee be divided from one another in place the Sacrifice of Praise in the whole Booke of Psalmes And though we may be absent from this Quire yet wheresoever dispersed we make up a Quire in this Service of saying over all the Psalmes every day This sixty fourth Psalme is the third of my five And when according to the obligation which I had laid upon my selfe to handle in this place some portion of every one of these my five Psalmes in handling of those words of the Psalme immediately before this in the seventh verse Because thou hast beene my helpe therefore in the shadow of thy Wings I will rejoyce I told you that the next world Heaven was as this world is divided into two Hemispheares and that the two Hemispheares of Heaven were Joy and Glory for in those two notions of Joy and Glory is Heaven often represented unto us as in those words which we handled then wee sailed about the first Hemispheare That of Joy In the shadow of thy Wings will I rejoyce So in these which I have read to you now our voyage lies about the Hemispheare of Glory for All the upright in heart shall Glory As we said then of Joy we say of Glory now There is an inchoative joy here though the consummative joy be reserved for Heaven so is there also such a taste such an inchoation of glory in this life And as no man shall come to the joyes of Heaven that hath no joy in this world for there is no peace of conscience without this joy so no man
concionibus 1 Cor. 1.21 and what you give him in that Exercise Because God cals Preaching foolishnesse you take God at his word and you thinke Preaching a thing under you Hence is it that you take so much liberty in censuring and comparing Preacher and Preacher nay Sermon and Sermon from the same Preacher as though we preached for wagers and as though coine were to be valued from the inscription meerely and the image and the person and not for the metall You measure all by persons 1 ãâã 4. ââ and yet Non erubescit is faciem Sacerdotis You respect not the person of the Priest you give not so much reverence to Gods Ordinance as he does In no Church of Christendome but ours doth the Preacher preach uncovered And for all this good and humble and reverend example fit to be continued by us cannot we keepe you uncovered till the Text be read All the Sermon is not Gods word but all the Sermon is Gods Ordinance and the Text is certainely his word There is no salvation but by faith nor faith but by hearing nor bearing but by preaching and they that thinke meanliest of the Keyes of the Church and speake faintliest of the Absolution of the Church will yet allow That those Keyes lock and unlock in Preaching That Absolution is conferred or with held in Preaching That the proposing of the promises of the Gospel in preaching is that binding and loosing on earth which bindes and looses in heaven And then though Christ have bid us Preach the Gospel to every creature Mar. 16.15 yet in his own great Sermon in the Mount he hath forbidden us to give holy things to dogs Mat. 7.6 or to cast pearle before swine lest they trample them and turne and rend us So that if all those manifold and fearfull judgements which swell in every Chapter and blow in every verse and thunder in every line of every Booke of the Bible fall upon all them that come hither as well if they turne and rend that is Calumniate us the person of the Preacher as if they trample upon the pearles that is undervalue the Doctrine and the Ordinance it selfe If his terrible Judgements fall upon every uncharitable mis-interpretation of that which is said here and upon every irreverence in this place and in this action Confesse that though he be the God of your salvation and doe answer you yet by terrible things doth the God of your salvation answer you And confesse it also as in manners and in prayers and in preaching so in the holy and blessed Sacrament This Sacrament of the Body and Blood of our Saviour Luther calls safely In Sacramento Venerabile adorabile for certainly whatsoever that is which we see that which we receive is to be adored for we receive Christ He is Res Sacramenti The forme the Essence the substance the soule of the Sacrament And Sacramentum sine re Sacramenti mors ost Bernar. To take the body and not the soule the bread and not Christ is death But he that feels Christ in the receiving of the Sacrament and will not bend his knee would scarce bend his knee if he saw him The first of that royall Family Alvarez de Auxil Epist ad Phil. 3. which thinks it selfe the greatest in Christendome at this day The House of Austrich had the first marks of their Greatnesse The Empire brought into that House for a particular reverence done to the holy and blessed Sacrament What the bread and wine is or what becomes of it Damasc Damascen thinks impertinent to be inquired He thinks he hath said enough and so may we doe Migrat in substantiam animae There is the true Transubstantiation that when I have received it worthily it becomes my very soule that is My soule growes up into a better state and habitude by it and I have the more soule for it the more sanctified the more deified soule by that Sacrament Now this Sacrament which as it is ministred to us is but a Sacrament but as it is offered to God is a Sacrifice too is a fearfull a terrible thing If the sacrifices of the Law the blood of Goats and Rammes were so how fearfull how terrible how reverentiall a thing is the blood of this immaculate Lambe the Sonne of God And though God doe so abound in goodnesse towards us Vt possint injuriata Sacramenta prodesse reversis Cyprian as S. Cyprian excellently expresses it That that Sacrament which we have injured and abused received unworthily or irreverently at one time may yet benefit us and be the savour and seale of life unto us at another yet when you heare that terrible Thunder break upon you That the unworthy receiver eats and drinks his own damnation 1 Cor. 11.27 That he makes Christ Jesus who is the propitiation of all the world his damnation And then That not to have come to a severe examination of the Conscience before and to a sincere detestation of the sin and to a formed and fixed and deliberate and determinate resolution against that sin at the receiving of the Sacrament which alas how few doe Is there one that does it There is scorce one That this makes a man an unworthy receiver of the Sacrament That thus we make a mock of the Sonne of God Heb. 10.29 thus we tread the blood of the Covenant under foot and despite the Spirit of grace And that for this at the last day we shall be ranked with Iudas and not onely with Iudas as a negligent despiser but with Iudas as an actuall betrayer of the blood of Christ Jesus Consider well with what fearfull Conditions even this scale of your reconciliation is accompanied and though you may not doubt but that God the God of your salvation does answer you yet you must confesse too That it is by terrible things that he does it And as it is so in matter of manners and so in our prayers and so in our preaching and so in the Sacrament so is it also at the houre of our Death which is as far as we can pursue this Meditation for after Death we can aske nothing at Gods hands and therefore God makes us no answer And therefore with that Conclusion of all we shall conclude all That by terrible things the God of our salvation answers us at the houre of our death Though death be but a sleepe In morte yet it is a sleepe that an Earth-quake cannot wake And yet there is a Trumpet that will when that hand of God that gathered dust to make these bodies shall crumble these bodies into dust againe when that soule that evaporated it selfe in unnecessary disputations in this world shall make such fearfull and distempered conclusions as to see God onely by absence never to see him face to face And to know God onely by ignorance never to know him sicuti est as he is for he is All mercy And to
expresse himselfe Norah which is rather Reverendus Mal. 2.5 then Terribilis as that word is used I gave him life and peace for the feare wherewith he feared me and was afraid before my Name So that this Terriblenesse which we are called upon to professe of God is a Reverentiall a Majesticall not a Tyrannicall terriblenesse And therefore hee that conceives a God that hath made man of flesh and blood and yet exacts that purity of an Angel in that flesh A God that would provide himselfe no better glory then to damme man A God who lest hee should love man and be reconciled to man hath enwrapped him in an inevitable necessity of sinning A God who hath received enough and enough for the satisfaction of all men and yet not in consideration of their future sinnes but meerely because he hated them before they were sinners or before they were any thing hath made it impossible for the greatest part of men to have any benefit of that large satisfaction This is not such a Terriblenesse as arises out of his Works his Actions or his Scriptures for God hath never said never done any such thing as should make us lodge such conceptions of God in our selves or lay such imputations upon him The true feare of God is true wisedome It is true Joy Rejoice in trembling saith David Psal 2.11 There is no rejoycing without this feare there is no Riches without it Reverentia Ichovae The feare of the Lord is his treasure and that is the best treasure Thus farre we are to goe Heb. 12.28 Let us serve God with reverence and godly feare godly feare is but a Reverence it is not a Jealousie a suspition of God And let us doe it upon the reason that followes in the same place For our God is a consuming fire There is all his terriblenesse he is a consuming fire to his enemies but he is our God and God is love And therefore to conceive a cruell God a God that hated us even to damnation before we were as some who have departed from the sense and modesty of the Ancients have adventured to say or to conceive a God so cruell as that at our death or in our way he will afford us no assurance that hee is ours and we his but let us live and die in anxiety and torture of conscience in jealousie and suspition of his good purpose towards us in the salvation of our soules as those of the Romane Heresie teach to conceive such a God as from all eternity meant to damne me or such a God as would never make me know and be sure that I should bee saved this is not to professe God to be terrible in his works For his Actions are his works and his Scriptures are his works and God hath never done or said any thing to induce so terrible an opinion of him And so we have done with all those pieces which in our paraphrasticall distribution of the text at beginning did constitute our first our Historicall part Davids retrospect his commemoration of former blessings In which he proposes a duty a declaration of Gods goodnesse Dicite publish it speake of it He proposes Religious duties in that capacity as he is King Religion is the Kings care He proposes by way of Counsaile to all by way of Commandment to his owne Subjects And by a more powerfull way then either counsaile or Commandment that is by Example by doing that himselfe which he counsailes and commands others to doe Dicite Say speake It is a duty more then thinking and lesse then doing Every man is bound to speake for the advancement of Gods cause but when it comes to action that is not the private mans office but belongs to the publique or him who is the Publique David himselfe the King The duty is Commemoration Dicite Say speake but Dicite Deo Do this to God ascribe not your deliverances to your Armies and Navies by Sea or Land no nor to Saints in Heaven but to God onely Nor are ye called upon to contemplate God in his Essence or in his Decrees but in his works In his Actions in his Scriptures In both those you shall find him terrible that is Reverend majesticall though never tyrannicall nor cruell Passe we now according to our order laid downe at first to our second part the Propheticall part Davids prospect for the future and gather wee something from the particular branches of that Through the greatnesse of thy power thine enemies shall submit themselves unto thee In this our first consideration is that God himselfe hath enemies and then 2 Part. Habet Deus hostes how should we hope to be nay why would wee wish to be without them God had good that is Glory from his enemies And we may have good that is advantage in the way to glory by the exercise of our patience from enemies too Those for whom God had done most the Angels turned enemies first vex not thou thy selfe if those whom thou hast loved best hate thee deadliest There is a love in which it aggravates thy condemnation that thou art so much loved Does not God recompence that if there be such a hate as that thou art the better and that thy salvation is exalted for having beene hated And that profit the righteous have from enemies God loved us then when we were his enemies Rom. 5.10 and we frustrate his exemplar love to us if we love not enemies too The word Hostis which is a word of heavy signification and implies devastation and all the mischiefes of war is not read in all the New Testament Inimicus that is non amicus unfriendly is read there often very very often There is an enmity which may consist with Euangelicall charity but a hostility that carries in it a denotation of revenge of extirpation of annihilation that cannot This gives us some light how far we may and may not hate enemies God had enemies to whom he never returned The Angels that opposed him and that is because they oppose him still and are by their owne perversenesse incapable of reconciliation We were enemies to God too but being enemies Rom. 5.10 we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son As then actual reconciliation makes us actually friends so in differences which may be reconciled we should not be too severe enemies but maintaine in our selves a disposition of friendship but in those things which are in their nature irreconciliable we must be irreconciliable too There is an enmity which God himselfe hath made and made perpetuall Ponam inimicitias sayes God Gen. 3.15 God puts an enmity betweene the seed of the Serpent and the seed of the woman And those whom God joynes let no man sever those whom God severs let no man joyne The Schoole presents it well wee are to consider an enemy formally or materially that is that which makes him an enemy or that which makes him a man In that
without permanency we might call an intermitting ague a good day in a fever health If we could imagine a blessing of plenty without permanency we might call a full stomach and a surfet though in a time of dearth plenty If we could imagine a blessing of peace without permanency we might call a nights sleepe though in the midst of an Army peace but it is onely provision for the permanency and continuance that makes these blessings blessings To thinke of to provide against famine and sicknesse and warre that is the blessing of plenty and health and peace One of Christs principall titles was Esay 9. that he was Princeps pacis and yet this Prince of peace sayes Non veni mittere pacem I came not to bring you peace not such a peace as should bring them security against all warre If a Ship take fire though in the midst of the Sea it consumes sooner and more irrecoverably then a thatched house upon Land If God cast a fire-brand of warre upon a State accustomed to peace it burnes the more desperately by their former security But here in our Text we have a religious King David that first prayes for these blessings for the three former Verses are a prayer and then praises God in the acknowledgement of them for this Text is an acclamatory a gratulatory glorifying of God for them And when these two meet in the consideration of temporall blessings a religious care for them a religious confessing of them prayer to God for the getting praise to God for the having Blessed is that people that is Head and members Prince and subjects present and future people that are so So blessed so thankefull for their blessings We come now Ad dextram dextrae to the right blessedness 2 Part. in the right sense and interpretation of these words to spirituall blessedness to the blessedness of the soule Estne Deo cura de bobus is the Apostles question and his answer is pregnantly implied 1 Cor. 9.9 God hath care of beasts But yet God cared more for one soule then for those two thousand hogges which he suffered to perish in the Sea when that man was dispossessed Mar. 5. A dram of spirituall is worth infinite talents of temporall Here then in this spirituall blessedness as we did in the former wee shall looke first Quid beatitudo what it is and then In quibus in what it is placed here Vt Deus eorum sit Dominus That their God bee the Lord And lastly the extent of it That all the people bee made partakers of this spirituall blessedness This blessedness then you see is placed last in the Text Beatitudo not that it cannot be had till our end till the next life In this case the Nemo ante obitum failes for it is in this life that we must find our God to be the Lord or else if we know not that here we shall meet his Nescio vos he will not know us But it is placed last because it is the waightiest and the uttermost degree of blessendness which can be had To have the Lord for our God Consider the making up of a naturall man and you shall see that hee is a convenient Type of a spirituall man too First in a naturall man wee conceive there is a soule of vegetation and of growth and secondly a soule of motion and of sense and then thirdly a soule of reason and understanding an immortall soule And the two first soules of vegetation and of sense wee conceive to arise out of the temperament and good disposition of the substance of which that man is made they arise out of man himselfe But the last soule the perfect and immortall soule that is immediatly infused by God Consider the blessedness of this Text in such degrees in such proportions First God blesses a man with riches there is his soule of vegetation and growth by that hee growes in estimation and in one kinde of true ability to produce good fruits for he hath wherewithall And then God gives this rich man the blessing of understanding his riches how to employ them according to those morall and civill duties which appertaine unto him and there is his soule of sense for many rich men have not this sense many rich men understand their owne riches no more then the Oaks of the Forrest doe their owne Akorns But last of all God gives him the blessing of discerning the mercy and the purpose of God in giving him these temporall blessings and there is his immortall soule Now for the riches themselves which is his first soule he may have them ex traduce by devolution from his parents and the civill wisedome how to governe his riches where to purchase where to sell where to give where to take which is his second soule this he may have by his owne acquisition and experience and conversation But the immortall soule that is the discerning of Gods image in every piece and of the seale of Gods love in every temporall blessing this is infused from God alone and arises neither from Parents nor the wisedome of this world how worldly wise so ever wee bee in the governing of our estate And this the Prophet may very well seeme to have intimated when he saith Psal 112.1 The generation of the righteous shall be blessed Here is a permanent blessedness to the generation Wherein is it expressed thus Riches and treasure shall bee in his house and his righteousnesse endureth for ever Hee doth not say that Simony or Usury or Extortion shall bee in his house for riches got so are not treasure Nor he doth not say that Riches well got and which are truely a blessing shall endure for ever but his righteousnesse shall endure for ever The last soule the immortall soule endures for ever The blessedness of having studied and learnt and practised the knowledge of Gods purpose in temporall blessings this blessedness shall endure for ever When thou shalt turne from the left to the right side upon thy death bed from all the honours and riches of this world to breathe thy soule into his hands that gave it this righteousness this good conscience shall endure then and then accompany thee And when thine eyes are closed and in the twinckling of his eye that closed thine thy soule shall be gone an infinite way from this honour and these riches this righteousness this good conscience shall endure then and meet thee in the gates of heaven And this is so much of that righteousness as is expressed in this Text because this is the root of all That our God be the Lord. In which In quibus first wee must propose a God that there is one and then appropriate this God to our selves that he be our God and lastly be sure that we have the right God that our God be the Lord. For for the first he that enterprises any thing seeks any thing possesses any thing
remembred of Death Why are these men thus baptized for the Dead And then here is Sanctum Sanctorum The innermost part of the Church The Holy of Holyes that is the manifestation of all the mysterious salvation belonging to soule and body in the Resurrection Why are these men thus baptized for the dead if there be no Resurrection Our first dayes worke in handling these words was to accept and then to apply that in which all agreed that these words were an argument for the Resurrection And we did both those offices we did accept it and so shew you how the assurance of the Resurrection accrues to us and what is the office of Reason and what is the office of Faith in that affayre And then we did apply it and so shew you divers resemblances and conformities between naturall Death and spirituall Death and between the Resurrection of the body to glory at last and the Resurrection of the soule by grace in the way and wherein they induced and assisted and illustrated one another And those two miles made up that Sabbath dayes journey When we shall returne to the handling of them the next day which will be the last we shall consider how these words have been misapplyed by our Adversaries of the Romane Church and then the severall Expositions which they have received from sound and Orthodoxall men that thence we may draw a conclusion and determination for our selves And in those two miles wee shall also make up that Sabbath Dayes journey when God shall be pleased to bring us to it This dayes Exercise shall be to consider that very point for the establishment whereof they have so detorted and mis-applyed these words which is their Purgatory That this Baptisme for the Dead must necessarily prove Purgatory and their Purgatory So then this Dayes Exercise will bee meerely Polemicall the handling of a Controversie which though it be not alwayes pertinent yet neither is it alwayes unseasonable There was a time but lately when he who was in his desire and intension the Peace-maker of all the Christian world as he had a desire to have slumbred all Field-drums so had he also to have slumbred all Pulpit-drums so far as to passe over all impertinent handling of Controversies meerly and professedly as Controversies though never by way of positive maintenance of Orthodoxall and fundamentall Truths That so there might be no slackning in the defence of the truth of our Religion and yet there might bee a discreet and temperate forbearing of personall and especially of Nationall exasperations And as this way had piety and peace in the worke it selfe so was it then occasionally exalted by a great necessity He who was then our hope and is now the breath of our nostrils and the Anointed of the Lord being then taken in their pits and in that great respect such exasperations the fitter to be forborne especially since that course might well bee held without any prevarication or cooling the zeale of the positive maintenance of the religion of our Church But things standing now in another state and all peace both Ecclesiasticall and Civill with these men being by themselves removed and taken away and hee whom we feared returned in all kinde of safety safe in body and safe in soule too whom though their Church could not their Court hath chatechised in their religion that is brought him to a cleere understanding of their Ambition for Ambition is their Religion and S. Peters Ship must saile in their Fleets and with their winds or it must sink and the Catholique and Militant Church must march in their Armies though those Armies march against Rome it selfe as heretofore they have done to the sacking of that Towne to the holding of the Pope himselfe in so sordid a prison for sixe moneths as that some of his nearest servants about him died of the plague to the treading under foot Priests and Bishops and Cardinals to the dishonouring of Matrons and the ravishing of professed Virgins and committing such insolencies Catholiques upon Catholiques as they would call us Heretiques for beleeving them but that they are their owne Catholique Authors that have written them Things being now I say in this state with these men since wee heare that Drums beat in every field abroad it becomes us also to returne to the brasing and beating of our Drums in the Pulpit too that so as Adam did not onely dresse Paradise but keepe Paradise and as the children of God did not onely build but build with one hand and fight with another so wee also may employ some of our Meditations upon supplanting and subverting of error as well as upon the planting and watering of the Truth To which purpose I shall prepare this day for the vindicating and redeeming of these words from the Adversary which will bee the worke of the next day by handling to day that point for which they have misapplied them which is Purgatory and the mother and the off-spring of that for what can that generation of vipers suck from this Text which is not If there be no such Purgatory but If there be no such Resurrection why then are these men baptized for the dead Heaven and earth shall passe away saith Christ but my word shall not passe away Matt 24.35 But rather then Purgatory shall passe away his word must admit such an Interpretation as shall passe away and evacuate the intention and purpose of the Holy Ghost therein How much of the earth is passed away from them wee know who acknowledge the mercy and might and miracle of Gods working in withdrawing so many Kingdomes so many Nations of the earth in so short time from the obedience and superstition of Rome as that if Controversies had been to have been tried by number they would have found as many against them as with them so much of the earth is passed from them How much of heaven is passed from them that is how much lesse interest and claime to heaven they can have now when God hath afforded them so much light and they have resisted it then when they were in so great a part under invincible ignorance God onely who is the onely Judge in such causes knowes and he of his goodnesse enlarge their title to that place by their conversion towards it But how much soever of earth or heaven passe away they will not lose an acre an inch of Purgatory For as men are most delighted with things of their owne making their owne planting their owne purchasing their owne building so are these men therefore inamoured of Purgatory Men that can make Articles of faith of their owne Traditions And as men to elude the law against new Buildings first build sheds or stables and after erect houses there as upon old foundations so these men first put forth Traditions of their owne and then erect those Traditions into Articles of faith as ancient foundations of Religion Men that make God himselfe of a piece of bread
to the Office of a Prophet 54. D. The promises of God in the Prophets how different from those in the Gospel 40. E. A This a seditious inference the Prophets did thus and thus in the Law therefore the Ministers of the Gospel should doe so likewise and why 734. A Psalmes The Booke of Psalmes the dignity and vertue of it 653. D. E They are the Manna of the Church 663. B Such forbid to bee made Priests that were not perfect in the Psalmes 813. B Singing of the Psalmes how generall and commendable in S. Hieromes times ibid. B. C Purgatorie none in the old Testament and why 783. E How derived from Poets and Philosophers to Fathers 784. A. B. C How suspitiously and doubtfully the Fathers speak of it bid specially S Augustine 786. E Bellarmine refuted about it 792.793 Q QVestions arising taken away by Silencing of both parties 42. D Against curiosity in seeking after them 57. D There is alwaies Divinity enough to save a soule that was never called into Question 745. A How peevish some Romish Authors doe detoât the Scripture when they fall upon any Question or Controversie though otherwise they content themselves with the true meaning and sense of the same words 790. E. 791. A Quomodo to Question how God doth this or that dangerous 301. E. 367. C R REason not to be enquired after in all points of Faith 23. B Reasons not convincing never to be proffered for to prove Articles of Faith 205. D God useth to accompany those Duties which hee commands with Reasons to enduce us to the performance of them 593. A Reconciliation how little amongst the Papists 10. D All Nations under heaven have acknowledged some meanes of Reconciliation to their offended gods in the remission of their sinnes 564. C Religion against such as damnifie Religion by their outward profession more than if they did forsake it 757. D Every Religion had her mysteries her Reservations and in-intelligiblenesse which were not easily understood of all men 690. D And therefore Religion not to be made too homely and course a thing ibid. C Christian Religion an easie yoke a short and contracted burden 71. D All points of Religion not to bee divulged to the people 87. D Defects in Religion safer than superfluities 291. A Of peaceable conversation with men of divers Religions 310. C Wee charged to have but a negative Religion 636. A Religion how farre we may proceed in the outward declaration of our Religion 814. A Resurrection of three sorts 149. E Of that from persecution 185. B. C. D Of that from Sinne 186. D. E. c Of that from Death 189. D How a Resurrection of the soule being the soule cannot die 189. D Christ how the First Resurrection 191. B Our Resurrection a mystery 204. C Resurrection All Religions amongst the Heathens had some Impressions of it 800. E Retrospection or looking upon time past the best rule to judge of the future 668. D Reverence how much due to men of old Age 31. D What Required in Gods House 43. D Revelations wee are not to hearken after them 238 E Nor yet to binde God from them 239. A Rewards against bribery or receiving of Rewards 389. E God first proposes to himselfe persons to be Rewarded or condemned before he thinks of their condemnation or their Reward 674. B. 675. B. C Riches the cause of lesse sinne than poverty 658. D Especially considered in the highest degree and in the lowest that is abundant Riches and extreme beggerly poverty 659. D Against the perverse desire of Riches 728. C Riches S. Chrysostome calls the parents of absurdities and why 729. A The Remane Church a true Church as the Pest house is a house 606. A. 621. C Rome the Church of Rome the better for reformamation 621. B They doe charge us that we have but a negative Religion 636. A Why they so much under-value the Scripture and yet endevour to bring bookes of other Authors into that ranke as the Macchabees and such like 738. E Rome it selfe how it hath beene handled ever by Catholikes in their bloody warres 779. A Almost all the Controversies between Rome and the Christian world are matters of profit 791. A Rule and Example the two onely wayes of Teaching 571. E. 668. B The onely Rule of doctrine the Scripture and Word of God 738. E S THe Sabbath a Ceremoniall Law 92. C Sacrament how effectually Christ is present in it 19. C Of preparing our selves to the worthy receiving of it 32. A. c 33. A. c Against Superstition and Prophanesse too in the comming to it 34. A Of Christs reall presence in it 36. D. 37. B. C That which we receive in the Sacrament to bee Adored 693. B Against unworthy receiving of it 693. D. E Of both extremes about Chrsts presence in the Sacrament 821. E Saints against praying to them 90. D. 378. D. 595. A. 744. A. 757. B The Saints in heaven pray for us 106. B Why they must not pray to Saints in the Church of Rome upon good Friday Easter and Whitsunday 485. D Whether they enjoy degrees of Glory in heaven 742. E Salvation of the generall possibility of Salvation for all men 66. B. 330. A. B. 742. B. C. D. Not to be ascribed to our Workes 107. D Nor to our Faith ibid. E More that are Saved than that are damned 241. A. 259. C The impossibility of Salvation to any man before hee was a man a discomfortable doctrine 278. B Of that certaintie of Salvation which is taught of some in the Roman Church and how farre we are from it 339. D. E. 340. A. 608. C Salvation offered to all men and in earnest 742. A. B Saviour the name of Saviour attributed to others beside Christ 528. D Scriptures the most eloquent Books that are 47. E 556. E. 557. C foure Elements of the right exposition and sense of Scripture 305. B Moderation in reading of them 323. C Scripures the only rule of Doctrine 738. E Secrecy in Confession commended but in case of disloyaltie 92. E. 575. E Seeing of God in our Actions how necessary 169. E Against Selfe-Subsistence or standing of our selves 240. A. B Against Selfe-Love 156. A Sermons how loth the Fathers were to lacke company at them 48. C Of preaching the same Sermons twice 114. C 250. C The danger of hearing Sermons without practising 455. C. D Sighing for sinne the benefit of it 537. D Sight the noblest of the sences and all the sences 225. B Signe of the Crosse wherefore used in the Primative times 538. A And why by us in baptisme ibid. Signes how they may be sought after and how not 15. B. C. D Shame for sinne a good signe 557. D To be voice-proofe not afraid nor Ashamed of what the World sayes of a Man an ill signe of a Spirituall obduration in sinne 589. A Silence the severall sorts of it Silence of Reverence 575. C Silence of subjection ibid. D
pleasure of God In which first part you have also had the qualification of the person that came this day to establish Redemption for us that in Him there was fulnesse infinite capacity and infinite infusion and all fulnesse defective in nothing impassible and yet passible perfit God and perfit man and this fulnesse dwelling in Him in Him as he is Head of the Church that is visible sensible meanes of salvation to every soule in his Church And so we passe to our second part from this Qualification of the person It pleased the Father that in him all fulnesse should dwell to the Pacification it selfe for which it pleased the Father to doe all this that Peace might be made through the bloud of his Crosse In this Part St. Chrysostome hath made our steps our branches It is much sayes he 2 Part. that God would admit any peace magis per sanguinem more that for peace he should require effusion of bloud magis quod per ejus more that it must be His bloud his that was injured his that was to triumph Et adhuc magis quod per sanguinem Crucis ejus That it must be by the bloud of his Crosse his heart bloud his death and yet this was the case He made Peace through the bloud of his Crosse There was then a warre before and a heavy warre for the Lord of hosts was our enemy and what can all our musters come to Bellum ante if the Lord of Hosts of all Hosts have raised his forces against us There was a heavy war denounced in the Inimicitias ponam when God raised a warre betweene the Devill Gen. 3.15 and us For if we could consider God to stand neutrall in that warre and meddle with neither side yet we were in a desperate case to be put to fight against Powers and Principalities against the Devill How much more when God the Lord of Hosts is the Lord even of that Host too when God presses the Devill and makes the Devill his Soldier to fight his battles and directs his arrowes and his bullets and makes his approaches and his attempts effectuall upon us That which is fallen upon the Jews now Basil for their sinne against Christ that there is not in all the world a Soldier of their race not a Jew in the world that beares armes is true of all mankinde for their sin against God there is not a Soldier amongst them able to hurt his spirituall enemy or defend himselfe It is a strange warre where there are not two sides and yet that is our case for God uses the Devill against us and the Devill uses us against one another nay he uses every one of us against our selves so that God and the Devill and we are all in one Army and all for our destruction we have a warre and yet there is but one Army and we onely are the Countrey that is fed upon and wasted From God to the Devill we have not one friend and yet as though we lacked enemies we fight with one another in inhumane Duels Vbi morimur homicidae Ad milites Templa Ser. 1. ãâã as St. Bernard expresses it powerfully and elegantly that in those Duels and Combats he that is murdered dyes a murderer because he would have beene one Occisor laethaliter peccat occisus aeternaliter perit He that comes alive out of the field comes a dead man because he comes a deadly sinner and he that remaines dead in the field is gone into an everlasting death So that by this inhumane effusion of one anothers bloud we maintaine a warre against God himselfe and we provoke him to that which he expresses in Esay My sword shall be bathed in heaven Inebriabitur sanguine Esay 34.5 The sword of the Lord shall be made drunk with bloud Their land shall be soaked with bloud and their dust made fat with fatnesse The same quarrell which God hath against particular men and particular Nations for particular sinnes God hath against all Mankinde for Adams sin And there is the warre But what is the peace and how are we included in that That is our second and next disquisition That peace might be made A man must not presently think himselfe included in this peace Pax. because he feeles no effects of this warre If God draw none of his swords of warre or famine or pestilence upon thee no outward warre If God raise not a rebellion in thy selfe nor fight against thee with thine owne affections in colluctations betweene the flesh and the spirit The warre may last Gellius for all this Induciarum tempore bellum manet licet pugna cesset Though there be no blow striken the warre remaines in the time of Truce But thy case is not so good here is no Truce no cessation but a continuall preparation to a fiercer warre All this while that thou enjoyest this imaginary security the Enemy digges insensibly under ground all this while he undermines thee and will blow thee up at last more irrecoverably then if he had battered thee with outward calamities all that time So any State may be abused with a false peace present or with a fruitlesse expectation of a future peace But in this text there is true peace and peace already made present peace and and safe peace Bernard Pax non promissa sed missa sayes St. Bernard in his musicall and harmonious cadences not promised but already sent non dilata sed data not treated but concluded Non prophetata sed praesentata not prophesied but actually established There is the presentnesse thereof And then made by him who lacked nothing for the making of a safe peace Esay 9.6 For after his Names of Counsellor and of the Mighty God he is called for the consummation of all princeps pacis A Counsellor There is his wisdome A mighty God There is his Power and this Counsellor This Mighty God this wise and this powerfull Prince hath undertaken to make our peace But how that is next per sanguinem Peace being made by bloud Is effusion of bloud the way of peace Per sanguinem effusion of bloud may make them from whom bloud is so abundantly drawne glad of peace because they are thereby reduced to a weaknesse But in our warres such a weaknesse puts us farther off from peace and puts more fiercenesse in the Enemy But here mercy and truth are met together God would be true to his owne Justice bloud was forfeited and he would have bloud and God would be mercifull to us he would make us the stronger by drawing bloud and by drawing our best bloud Gen. 34. the bloud of Christ Jesus Simeon and Levi when they meditated their revenge for the rape committed upon their sister when they pretended peace yet they required a little bloud They would have the Sichemites circumcised but when they had opened a veyne they made them bleed to death when they were under
the sorenesse of Circumcision they slew them all Gods justice required bloud but that bloud is not spilt but poured from that head to our hearts into the veines and wounds of our owne soules There was bloud shed but no bloud lost Before the Law was thorowly established when Moses came downe from God and deprehended the people in that Idolatry to the Calfe before he would present himselfe as a Mediator betweene God and them Exod. 32.28 32. for that sinne he prepares a sacrifice of bloud in the execution of three thousand of those Idolaters and after that he came to his vehement prayer in their behalfe And in the strength of the Law Heb. 9 22. all things were purged with bloud and without bloud there is no remission Whether we place the reason of this in Gods Justice which required bloud or whether we place it in the conveniency that bloud being ordinarily received to be sedes animae the seat and residence of the soule The soule for which that expiation was to be could not be better represented nor purified then in the state and seat of the soule in bloud or whether we shut up our selves in an humble sobriety to inquire into the reasons of Gods actions thus we see it was no peace no remission but in bloud Nor is that so strange as that which followes in the next place per sanguinem ejus by his bloud Before Per sanguinem ejus Psal 50.10 under the Law it was in sanguine hircorum vitulorum In the bloud of Goats and Bullocks here it is in sanguine ejus in his bloud Not his as he claims all the beasts of the forrest all the cattle upon a thousand hils and all the fowles of the mountaines to be his not his as he sayes of Gold and Silver The Silver is mine and the Gold is mine Hag. 2.8 not his as he is Lord and proprietary of all by Creation so all bloud is his no nor his as the bloud of all the Martyrs was his bloud which is a neare relation and consanguinity but his so as it was the precious bloud of his body the seat of his soule the matter of his spirits the knot of his life This bloud he shed for me and I have bloud to shed for him too though he call me not to the tryall nor to the glory of Martyrdome Sanguis animae meae voluntas mea The bloud of my soule is my will Bern. Scindatur vena ferro compunctionis open a veine with that knife remorce compunction ut si non sensus certe consensus peccati effluat That though thou canst not bleed out all motions to sinne thou maist all consent thereunto Noli esse nimium justus noli sapere plus quam oportet St. Bernard makes this use of those Counsels Be not righteous overmuch nor be not overwise Ecces 7.16 Cui putas venae parcendum si justitia sapientia egent minutione what veine maist thou spare if thou must open those two veines righteousnesse and wisedome If they may be superfluously abundant if thou must bleed out some of thy Righteousnesse and some of thy wisedome cui venae parcendum at what veine must thou not bleed Tostat in Levit fo 45. D. Now in all sacrifices where bloud was to be offerd the fat was to be offerd to If thou wilt sacrifice the bloud of thy soule as St. Bernard cals the will sacrifice the fat too If thou give over thy purpose of continuing in thy sin give over the memory of it and give over all that thou possessest unjustly and corruptly got by that sinne else thou keepest the fat from God though thou give him the bloud If God had given over at his second daies work we had had no sunne no seasons If at his fift we had had no beeing If at the sixt no Sabbath but by proceeding to the seventh we are all and we have all Naaman 2 Reg. 5.14 who was out of the covenant yet by washing in Jordan seven times was cured of his leprosie seaven times did it even in him but lesse did not Tostat in Levit 4. q. 16. The Priest in the Law used a seven-fold sprinkling of bloud upon the Altar and we observe a seven-fold shedding of bloud in Christ In his Circumcision and in his Agony in his fulfilling of that Prophesie gen as vellicantibus I gave my cheeks to them that plucked off the haire and in his scourging Esay 50.6 in his crowning and in his nayling and lastly in the piercing of his side These seven channels hath the bloud of thy Saviour found Poure out the bloud of thy soule sacrifice thy stubborne and rebellious will seaven times too seaven times that is every day and seaven times every day for so often a just man falleth And then Prov. 24.16 how low must that man lie at last if he fall so often and never rise upon any fall and therefore raise thy self as often and as soone as thou fallest Iericho would not fall Jos 6. but by being compassed seaven dayes and seaven times in one day Compasse thy selfe comprehend thy selfe seaven times many times and thou shalt have thy losse of bloud supplied with better bloud with a true sense of that peace which he hath already made and made by bloud and by his owne bloud and by the bloud of his Crosse which is the last branch of this second part Greater love hath no man then to lay downe his life for his friend yet he that said so Crux Joh. 15.13 did more then so more then lay downe his life for he exposed it to violences and torments and all that for his enemies But doth not the necessity diminish the love where a testament is there must also of necessity be the death of the testator Heb. 9.16 was there then a necessity in Christs dying simply a necessity of coaction there was not such as is in the death of other men naturall or violent by the hand of Justice There was nothing more arbitrary more voluntary more spontaneous then all that Christ did for man And if you could consider a time before the contract between the Father and him had passed for the redemption of man by his death we might say that then there was no necessity upon Christ that he must dye But because that contract was from all eternity Luc. 24.26 supposing that contract that this peace was to be made by his death there entred the oportuit pati That Christ ought to suffer all these things and to enter into his glory And so as for his death so for the manner of his death by the Crosse it was not of absolute necessity and yet it was not by casualty neither not because he was to suffer in that Nation which did ordinarily punish such Malefactors such as he was accused to be seditious persons with that manner of death but all this proceeded ex
torments is the everlasting absence of God and the everlasting impossibility of returning to his presenââ Horrendum est sayes the Apostle It is a fearefull thing to fall into the hands of the living God Heb. 10.31 Yet there was a case in which David found an ease to fall into the hands of God to scape the hands of men Horrendum est when Gods hand is bent to strike it is a fearefull thing to fall into the hands of the living God but to fall out of the hands of the living God is a horror beyond our expression beyond our imagination That God should let my soule fall out of his hand into a bottomlesse pit and roll an unremoveable stone upon it and leave it to that which it finds there and it shall finde that there which it never imagined till it came thither and never thinke more of that soule never have more to doe with it That of that providence of God that studies the life of every weed and worme and ant and spider and toad and viper there should never never any beame flow out upon me that that God who looked upon me when I was nothing and called me when I was not as though I had been out of the womb and depth of darknesse will not looke upon me now when though a miserable and a banished and a damned creature yet I am his creature still and contribute something to his glory even in my damnation that that God who hath often looked upon me in my foulest uncleannesse and when I had shut out the eye of the day the Sunne and the eye of the night the Taper and the eyes of all the world with curtaines and windowes and doores did yet see me and see me in mercy by making me see that he saw me and sometimes brought me to a present remorse and for that time to a forbearing of that sinne should so turne himselfe from me to his glorious Saints and Angels as that no Saint nor Angel nor Christ Jesus himselfe should ever pray him to looke towards me never remember him that such a soule there is that that God who hath so often said to my soule Quare morier is Why wilt thou die and so often sworne to my soule Vivit Dominus As the Lord liveth I would not have thee dye but live will nether let me dye nor let me live but dye an everlasting life and live an everlasting death that that God who when he could not get into me by standing and knocking by his ordinary meanes of entring by his Word his mercies hath applied his judgements and hath shaked the house this body with agues and palsies and set this house on fire with fevers and calentures and frighted the Master of the house my soule with horrors and heavy apprehensions and so made an entrance into me That that God should frustrate all his owne purposes and practises upon me and leave me and cast me away as though I had cost him nothing that this God at last should let this soule goe away as a smoake as a vapour as a bubble and that then this soule cannot be a smoake a vapour nor a bubble but must lie in darknesse as long as the Lord of light is light it selfe and never sparke of that light reach to my soule What Tophet is not Paradise what Brimstone is not Amber what gnashing is not a comfort what gnawing of the worme is not a tickling what torment is not a marriage bed to this damnation to be secluded eternally eternally eternally from the sight of God Especially to us for as the perpetuall losse of that is most heavy with which we have been best acquainted and to which wee have been most accustomed so shall this damnation which consists in the losse of the sight and presence of God be heavier to us then others because God hath so graciously and so evidently and so diversly appeared to us in his pillar of fire in the light of prosperity and in the pillar of the Cloud in hiding himselfe for a while from us we that have seene him in all the parts of this Commission in his Word in his Sacraments and in good example and not beleeved shall be further removed from his sight in the next world then they to whom he never appeared in this But Vincenti credenti to him that beleeves aright and overcomes all tentations to a wrong beliefe God shall give the accomplishment of fulnesse and fulnesse of joy and joy rooted in glory and glory established in eternity and this eternity is God To him that beleeves and overcomes God shall give himselfe in an everlasting presence and fruition Amen SERM. LXXVII Preached at S. PAULS May 21. 1626. 1 COR. 15.29 Else what shall they doe which are baptized for the dead if the dead rise not at all why are they then baptized for the dead I Entred into the handling of these words upon Easter day for though the words have received divers Expositions good and pervers yet all agreed that the words were an argument for the Resurrection and that invited me to apply them to that Day At that Day I entred into them with Origens protestation Odit Dominus qui festum ejus unum putat diem God hates that man that thinks any holy-day of his lasts but one day that never thinks of the Resurrection but upon Easter day And therefore I engaged my selfe willingly according to the invitation and almost the necessity of the words which could not conveniently scarce possibly be determined in one day to returne againe and againe to the handling thereof For they are words of a great extent a great compasse The whole Circle of a Christian is designed and accomplished in them for here is first the first point in that Circle our Birth our spirituall birth that is Baptisme Why are these men thus baptized sayes the Text And then here is the point directly and diametrally opposed to that first point our Birth that is Death Why are these men thus baptized for the dead sayes the Text And then the Circle is carried up to the first point againe to our Birth in another Birth in the Resurrection Why are these men thus baptized for the dead if there be no Resurrection So that if we consider the Militant and the Triumphant Church to be as they are all one House and under one roofe here is first Limen Ecclesiae as S. Augustine calls Baptisme The Threshold of the Church we are put over the Threshold into the Body of the Church by Baptisme and here we are remembred of Baptisme Why are these men thus baptized And then here is Chorus Ecclesiae The Quire the Chancell of the Church in which all the service of God is officiated and executed for we are made not onely hearers and spectators but actors in the service of God when we come to beare a part in the Hymnes and Anthems of the Saints by our Death and here we are