heart Let a man be zealous and fervent in reprehension of sin and there flies out an arrow that gives him the wound of a Puritan Let a man be zealous of the house of God and say any thing by way of moderation for the repairing of the ruines of that house and making up the differences of the Church of God and there flies out an arrow that gives him the wound of a Papist One shoots East and another West but both these arrows meet in him that means well to defame him And this is the first misery in these arrows these tentations Quia alienae they are shot from others they are not in our own quiver not in our own government Another quality that tentations receive from the holy Ghosts Metaphore of arrows is Quia veloces because this captivity to sin comes so swiftly so impetuously upon us Consider it first in our making In the generation of our parents we were conceiv'd in sin that is they sinn'd in that action so we were conceiv'd in sinne in their sin And in our selves we were submitted to sin in that very act of generation because then we became in part the subject of Originall sin Yet there was no arrow shot into us then there was no sinne in that substance of which we were made for if there had been sin in that substance that substance might be damn'd though God should never infuse a soul into it and that cannot be said well then God whose goodnesse and wisdome will have that substance to become a Man he creates a soul for it or creates a soul in it I dispute not that he sends a light or hee kindles a light in that lanthorn and here 's no arrow shot neither here 's no sin in that soul that God creates for there God should create something that were evill and that cannot be said Here 's no arrow shot from the body no sin in the body alone None from the soul no sin in the soul alone And yet the union of this soul and body is so accompanied with Gods malediction for our first transgression that in the instant of that union of life as certainly as that body must die so certainly the whole Man must be guilty of Originall sin No man can tell me out of what Quiver yet here is an arrow comes so swiftly as that in the very first minute of our life in our quickning in our mothers womb wee become guilty of Adams sin done 6000 years before and subject to all those arrows Hunger Labour Grief Sicknesse and Death which have been shot after it This is the fearfull swiftnesse of this arrow that God himself cannot get before it In the first minute that my soul is infus'd the Image of God is imprinted in my soul so forward is God in my behalf and so early does he visit me But yet Originall sin is there as soon as that Image of God is there My soul is capable of God as soon as it is capable of sin and though sin doe not get the start of God God does not get the start of sin neither Powers that dwell so far asunder as Heaven and Hell God and the Devill meet in an instant in my soul in the minute of my quickning and the Image of God and the Image of Adam Originall sin enter into me at once in one and the same act So swift is this arrow Originall sin from which all arrows of subsequent tentations are shot as that God who comes to my first minute of life cannot come before death And then a third and last danger which we noted in our tentations as they are represented by the holy Ghost in this Metaphore of arrows is that they are vix visibiles hardly discernible 'T is true that tentations doe not light upon us as bullets that we cannot see them till we feel them An arrow comes not altogether so but an arrow comes so as that it is not discern'd except we consider which way it comes and watch it all the way An arrow that findes a man asleep does not wake him first and wound him after A tentation that findes a man negligent possesses him before be sees it In gravtssimis criminibus confinia virtutum ladunt This is it that undoes us that vertues and vices are contiguous and borderers upon one another and very often we can hardly tell to which action the name of vice and to which the name of vertue appertains Many times that which comes within an inch of a noble action fals under the infamy of an odious treason At many executions half the company will call a man an Heretique and half a Martyr How often an excesse makes a naturall affection an unnaturall disorder Vtinam aut sororem non amasset Hamon aut non vindicasset Absolon Hamon lov'd his sister Tamar but a little too well Absolon hated his brothers incest but a little too ill Though love be good and hate be good respectively yet says S. Ambrose I would neither that love nor that hate had gone so far The contract between Ionathan and David was If I say The arrow on this side of thee all is wel If I say The arrow is beyond thee thou art in an ill case If the arrow the tentation be yet on this side of thee if it have not lighted upon thee thou art well God hath directed thy face to it and thou may'st if thou wilt continue thy diligence watch it and avoid it But if the arrow be beyond thee and thou have cast it at thy back in a forgetfulnesse in a security of thy sin thy case is dangerous In all these respects are these arrows these infirmities deriv'd from the sin of Adam dangerous as they are alienae in the hand of others as they are veloces swift in seising us and as they are vix visibiles hardly discern'd to be such And these considerations fell within this first branch of this second part Thine arrows tentations as they are arrows stick fast in me These dangers are in them as they are sagittae arrows and would be so if they were but single arrows any one tentation would endanger us any one tribulation would encumber us but they are plurall arrows and many arrows A man is not safe because one arrow hath mist him nor though he be free from one sin In the execution of Achan all Israel threw stones at him and stoned him If Achan had had some brother or cousin amongst them that would have flung over or short or weakly what good had that done him when he must stand the mark for all the rest All Israel must stone him A little disposition towards some one vertue may keep thee from some one tentation Thou mayst think it pity to corrupt a chast soul and forbear soliciting her pity to oppresse a submitting wretch and forbear to vex him and yet practise and that with hunger and thirst other sins or
of heaven our residence it is a madnesse to study the joys of the world The Kingdome of heaven is righteousnesse and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost says Saint Paul And this Kingdome of heaven is Intra nos says Christ it is in us and it is joy that is in us but every joy is not this Kingdome and therefore says the same Apostle Rejoyce in the Lord There is no other true joy none but that But yet says he there Rejoyce and again I say rejoiâ—e that is both again we say it again and again we call upon you to have this spirituall joy for without this joy ye have not the earnest of the Spirit And it is again rejoyce bring all the joys ye have to a second examination and see if you can rejoyce in them again Have you rejoyced all day in Feasts in Musickes in Conversations well at night you must be alone hand to hand with God Again I say rejoyce sleep not till you have tryed whether your joy will hold out there too Have you rejoyced in the contemplation of those temporall blessingsâ— which God hath given you 't is well for you may do so But yet again I say Rejoyce call that joy to an accompt and see whether you caâ—â— rejoyce again in such a use of those blessings as he that gave them to you requires of you Have you rejoyced in your zeal of Gods service that 's a true rejoycing in the Lord But yet still rejoyce again see that this joy be accompanyed with another joy that you have zeal with knowledge Rejoyce but rejoyce again refine your joy purge away all drosse and lees from your joy there is no false joy enters into heaven but yet no sadnesse neither There is a necessary sadnes in this life but even in this life necessary only so as Physick is necessary Tristitia data ut peccata deleamus It is Data a gift of God a sadnes and sorrow infused by him not assumed by our selves upon the crosses of this world And so it is physick and it is Morbi illius peccati it is proper and peculiar physick for that disease for sinne But as that Father pathetically enlarges that consideration Remedium lippitudinis non tâ—llit alios morbos water for fore eyes will not cure the tooth-ach sorrow and sadnesse which is prescribed for sinne will not cure should not be applyed to the other infirmities and diseases of our humane condition Pecunia mulctatus est says that Father still Doluit non emendavit A man hath a decree passed against him in a Court of Justice or lost a Ship by tempest and hee hath griev'd for this hath this revers'd the decree or repaired the shipwrack Filium amisit doluit non resuscitavit His Son his eldest Son his onely Son his towardly Son is dead and he hath grieved for this hath he raised his Son to life again Infirmatur ipse doluit abstulit morbum Himself is fallen into a consumption and languishes and grieves but doth it restore him Why no for sadnesse and sorrow is not the physick against decrees and shipwracks and consumptions and death But then Peccavit quis says he still deluit peccata delevit Hath any man sinned against his God and come to a true sorrow for that sinne peccata delevit he hath wash't away that sinne from his soule for sorrow is good for nothing else intended for nothing else but onely for our sinnes out of which sadnesse first arose And then considered so this sadnesse is not truly nor properly sadnesse because it is not so intirely There is health in the bitternesse of physique There is joy in the depth of this sadnesse Saint Basill inforces those words of the Apostle 2 Cor. 6. 10. Quasi tristes semper autem gandentes usefully to this point Tristitia nostra habet quasi gaudium non habet Our sorrow says he hath a limitation a modification it is but as it were sorrow and we cannot tell whether we may call it sorrow or no but our joy is perfect joy because it is rooted in an assurance Est in spe certa our hope of deliverance is in him that never deceived any for says he then our sadnesse passes away as a dreame Et qui insomnium judicat addit quasi quasi dicebam quasi equitabam quasi cogitabam he that tells his dreame tells it still in that phrase me thought I spoke me thought I went and me thought I thought so all the sorrow of Gods children is but a quasi tristes because it determines in joy and determines soon To end this because there is a difference inter delectationem gaudium between delight and joy for delight is in sensuall things and in beasts as well as in men but joy is grounded in reason and in reason rectified which is conscience therefore we are called to rejoyce againe to try whether our joy be true joy and not onely a delight and when it is found to be a true joy we say still rejoyce that is continue your spirituall joy till it meet the eternall joy in the kingdome of heaven and grow up into one joy but because sadnesse and sorrow have but one use and a determined and limited imployment onely for sin we doe not say be sorry and again be sorry but when you have been truly sorry for your sinnes when you have taken that spirituall physique beleeve your selfe to be well accept the seale of the holy Ghost for the remission of your sins in Christ Jesus and come to that health which that physique promises peace of conscience This joy then which Saint Paul found to be so essentiall so necessary for man he found that God placed within mans reach so neare him as that God afforded man this joy where he least looked for it even in affliction And of this joy in affliction we may observe three steps three degrees one is indeed but halfe a joy and that the Philosophers had A second is a true joy and that all Christians have but the third is an overflowing and aboundant joy to which the Apostle was come and to which by his example hee would rouse others that joy of which himselfe speaks againe I am filled with comfort and am exceeding joyfull in all our tribulations The first of these which we call a halfe joy is but an indolency and a forced unsensiblenesse of those miseries which were upon them a searing up a stupefaction is not of the senses yet of the affections That resolution which some morall men had against misery Non facies ut te dicam malam no misery should draw them to doe misery that honour as to call it misery And in respect of that extreme anguish which out of an over tendernesse ordinary men did suffer under the calamities of this life even this poore indolency and privation of griefe was a joy but yet but a halfe joy the second joy
is his word in his servants mouth come to that Conscience now nor make him mis-interpret that which he does hear or call that passion in the Preacher in which the Preacher is but sagittarius Dei the deliverer of Gods arrows for Gods arrows are sagitta Compunctionis arrows that draw bloud from the eyes Tears of repentance from Mary Magdalen and from Peter And when from thee There is a probatum est in S. Aug. Sagittaveras cor meum Thou hast shot at my heart and how wrought that To the withdrawing of his tongue à nundinis loquacitatis from that market in which I sold my self for S. Aug. at that time taught Rhetorique to turn the stream of his eloquence and all his other good parts upon the service of God in his Church You may have read or heard that answer of a Generall who was threatned with that danger that his enemies arrows were so many as that they would cover the Sun from him In umbra pugnabimus All the better says he for then we shall fight in the shadow Consider all the arrows of tribulation even of tentation to be directed by the hand of God and never doubt to fight it out with God to lay violent hands upon heaven to wrastle with God for a blessing to charge and presse God upon his contracts and promises for in umbra pugnabis though the clouds of these arrows may hide all suns of worldly comforts from thee yet thou art still under the shadow of his wings Nay thou art still for all this shadow in the light of his countenance To which purpose there is an excellent use of this Metaphor of arrows Hâ—bak 3. 11. where it is said that Gods servants shall have the light of his arrows and the â—â—ining of his glittering spear that is the light of his presence in all the instruments and actions of his corrections To end all and to dismisse you with such a re-collection as you may carry away with you literally primarily this text concerns David He by tentations to sin by tribulations for sin by comminations and increpations upon sin was bodily and ghostly become a quiver of arrows of all sorts they stook and stook fast and stook full in him in all him The Psalm hath a retrospect too it looks back to Adam and to every particular man in his loines and so Davids case is our case and all these arrowes stick in all us But the Psalm and the text hath also a prospect and hath a propheticall relation from David to our Saviour Christ Jesus And of him and of the multiplicity of these arrows upon him in the exinanition and evacuation of himself in this world for us have many of the Ancients interpreted these words literally and as in their first and primary signification Turne we therefore to him before we goe and he shall return home with us How our first part of this text is applyable to him that our prayers to God for ease in afflictions may be grounded upon reasons out of the sense of those afflictions Saint Basil tels us that Christ therefore prays to his Father now in heaven to spare mankinde because man had suffered so much and drunk so deep of the bitter cup of his anger in his person and passion before It is an avoidable plea from Christ in heaven for us Spare them O Lord in themselves since thou didst not spare them in me And how far he was from sparing thee we see in all those severall weights which have aggravated his hand and these arrowes upon us If they be heavy upon us much more was their weight upon thee every dram upon us was a Talent upon thee Non delâ—r sicut dolor tuus take Rachel weeping for her children Mary weeping for her brother Lazarus Hezekiah for his health Peter for his sins Non est delor sicut dolor â—uus The arrows that were shot at thee were Alienae Afflictions that belonged to others and did not onely come from others as ours doe but they were alienae so as that they should have fallen upon others And all that should have fallen upon all others were shot at thee and lighted upon thee Lord though we be not capable of sustaining that part this passion for others give us that which we may receive Compassion with others They were veloces these arrows met swiftly upon thee from the sin of Adam that induced death to the sin of the last man that shall not sleep but be changed when thy hour came they came all upon thee in that hour Lord put this swiftnesse into our fins that in this one minute in which our eyes are open towards thee and thine eares towards us our sins all our sins even from the impertinent frowardnesse of our childhood to the unsufferable frowardnesse of our age may meet in our present confessions and repentances and never appear more They were as ours are too Invisibiles Those arrows which fell upon thee were so invisible so undiscernible as that to this day thy Church thy School cannot see what kinde of arrow thou tookest into thy soul what kinde of affliction it was that made thy soul heavy unto death or dissolved thee into a gelly of blood in thine agony Be thou O Lord a Father of Lights unto us in all our ways and works of darkenes manifest unto us whatsoever is necessary for us to know be a light of understanding and grace before and a light of comfort and mercy after any â—in hath benighted us These arrows were as ours are also plures plurall many infinite they were the sins of some that shall never thank thee never know that thou borest their sins never know that they had any such sins to bee horn Lord teach us to number thy corrections upon us so as still to see thy torments suffered for us and our own sins to be infinitely more that occasioned those torments then those corrections that thou layst upon us Thine arrows stook and stook fast in thee the weight of thy torments thou wouldest not cast off nor lessen when at thy execution they offered thee that stupesying drink which was the civil charity of those times to condemned persons to give them an easier passage in the agonies of death thou wouldest not tast of that cup of ease Deliver us O Lord in all our tribulations from turning to the miserable comforters of this world or from wishing or accepting any other deliverance then may improve and make better our Resurrection These arrows were in thee in all thee from thy Head torn with thorns to thy feet pierced with nayls and in thy soul so as we know not how so as to extorta Si possibile If it be possible let this cup passe and an Vt quid dereliquisti My God my God why half thou forsaken me Lord whilest we remain entire here in body and soul make us and receive us an entire sacrifice to
and fragrancy which the word breaths out That they shall see it that is understand it consider it For as when the wicked come to say The Lord does not see it it is presently added Neither doth the God of Iacob regard it It is a seeing that induces a regarding so when the godly come to see their afflictions they come to regard them to regard Gods purpose in them Vidisti Domine ne sileas sayes David All this thou hast seen O Lord Lord do not hold thy peace David presumed that if God saw his afflictions he would stirre in them when we come to see them we stir we wake we rise we looke about us from whence and why these afflictions come and therein lyes this comfort Vidi I have seen afflictions I have been content to look upon them to consider them The Prophets in the Old Testament doe often call those sights and those prenotions which they had of the misery and destruction of others Onus visionis Onus verbi Domini O the burden of this sight O the burden of this message of God It was a burden to them to see Gods judgements directed upon others how much more is it a burden to a man to see his own affliction and that in the cause thereof But this must be done we must see our affliction in the Cause thereof No man is so blinde so stupid as that he doth not see his affliction that is feele it but we must see it so as to see through it see it to be such as it is so qualified so conditioned so circumstanced as he that sends it intends it We must leave out the malice of others in our oppressions and forgive that leave out the severity of the Law in our punishments and submit to that and looke intirely upon the certainty of Gods judgement who hath the whole body of our sins written together before him and picks out what sin it pleaseth him and punisheth now an old now a yesterdayes sin as he findeth it most to conduce to his glory and our amendment and the edification of others We must see the hand of God upon the wall as Belshazzar did for even that was the hand of God though wee cannot read that writing no more then Belshazzar could Wee must see the affliction so as we must see it to be the hand of God though wee cannot presently see for what sinne it is nor what will be the issue of it And then when we have seen that then we must turn to the study of those other particulars for till we see the affliction to come from God we see nothing There is no other light in that darknesse but he If thou see thy affliction thy sicknesse in that glasse in the consideration of thine own former licentiousnesse thou shalt have no other answer but that soure remorse and increpation you might have lived honestly If thou see thy affliction thy poverty in that glasse in the malice oppression of potent adversaries thou wilt get no farther then to that froward and churlish answer The Law is open mend your selfe as you can But Iactate super Dominum saith David Lay all thy burden upon the Lord and hee will apply to thee that Collyrium that soveraigne eye-salve whereby thou shalt see thy afffiction it shall not blinde thee And see from whence it commeth from him who as hee liveth would not the death of a sinner And see why it commeth that thou mightest see and taste the goodnesse of God thy selfe and declare his loving kindnesse to the Children of Men. And this is the comfort deduced from this word Vidi I have seen affliction And this leadeth us to our other Comfort That though these Afflictions have wrought deepe upon thee yet thou canst say to thy soule Ego vir I am that man Thy Morality thy Christianity is not shaked in thee It is the Mercy of God that wee are not conumed saith Ieremy here And it is a great degree of his mercy to let us feele that wee are not consumed to give us this sense that our case is not desperate but that Ego vir I am the man that there remaineth still strength enough to gather more That still thou remainest a man a reasonable man and so art able to apply to thy selfe all those medicines and reliefs which Philosophy and naturall reason can afford For even these helps deduced from Philosophy and naturall reason are strong enough against afflictions of this world as long as we can use them as long as these helps of reason and learning are alive and awake and actuated in us they are able to sustain us from sinking under the afflictions of this world for they have sustained many a Plato and Socrates and Seneca in such cases But when part of the affliction shall be that God worketh upon the Spirit it selfe and damps that enfeebles that that he casts a sooty Cloud upon the understanding and darkens that that he doth Exuere hominem devest strip the man of the man Eximere hominem take the man out of the man and withdraw and frustrate his naturall understanding so as that to this purpose he is no man yet even in this case God may mend thee in marring thee hee may build thee up in dejecring thee hee may infuse another Ego vir another Manhood into thee and though thou canst not say Ego vir I am that Morall man safe in my Naturall Reason and Philosophy that is spent yet Ego vir I am that Christian man who have seen this affliction in the Cause thereof so farre off as in my sinne in Adam and the remedy of this affliction so farre off as in the death of Christ Iesus I am the Man that cannot repine nor murmure since I am the Cause I am the man that cannot despair since Christ is the remedy I am that man which is intended in this Text Gheber Not onely an Adam a man amongst men able to convince me though they speak eloquently against me and able to prove that God hath forsaken me because he hath afflicted me but able to prevail with God himself as Iacob did and to wrastle out a blessing out of him though I doe halt become infirm with manifold afflictions yet they shall be so many seals of my infallibility in him Now this comfort hath three gradations in our text three circumstances which as they aggravated the discomfort in the former so they exalt the comfort in this part That they are His The Lords That they are from his rod That they are from the rod of his wrath We may compare our afflictions that come immediately from God with those that come instrumentally from others by considering the choice and election which David made and the choice which Susanna made in her case The Prophet Gâ—d offers David his choice of three afflictions War Famine or pestilence It does not appeare it is not
a sense a mysterious signification of the union of the soule with Christ when both persons professe the Christian Religion in generall there arises some signification of that spirituall union But when they both professe Christ in one forme in one Church in one Religion and that the right then as by the Civill Contract there is an union of their estates and persons so as that they two are made one so by this Sacramentall this mysterious union these two thus made one between themselves are also made one with Christ himself by the Civill union common to all people they are made Eadem caro The same flesh with one another By this mysterious this Sacramentall this significative union they are made Idem Spiritus cum Domino The same Spirit with the Lord. And therefore though in the Resurrection they shall not mary because then all the severall uses of mariage cease yet till the Resurrection that is as long as this world lasts for the sustentation of the world which is one Body and Mariage the food and aliment thereof for the reparation of the world which is one Building and Mariage the supply thereof to maintaine a second eternity in the succession of children and to illustrate this union of our soules to Christ we may and in some Cases must marry We are come in our order proposed at first to our second Part Erimus sicut Angeli we shall be as the Angels of God in heaven where we consider first what we are compared to those Angels And then in what that Comparison lies wherein we shall be like those Angels And lastly the Proposition that flowes out of this proposition In the Resurrection we shall be like them Till the Resurrection we shall not and therefore in the meane time we must not looke for Angelicall perfections but beare with one anothers infirmities Now when we would tell you what those Angels of God in heaven to which we are compared are we can come no nearer telling you that then by telling you we cannot tell The Angels may be content with that Negative expressing since we can express God himselfe in no clearer termes nor in termes expressing more Dignity then in saying we cannot expresse him Onely the Angels themselves know one another and one good point in which we shall be like them then shall be that then we shall know what they are we know they are Spirits in Nature but what the nature of a spirit is we know not we know they are Angels in office appointed to execute Gods will upon us but How a spirit should execute those bodily actions that Angels doe in their owne motion and in the transportation of other things we know not we know they are Creatures but whether created with this world as all our later men incline to think or long before as all the Greeke and some of the Latin Fathers thought we know not we know that for their number ◠and for their faculties also there may be one Angel for every man but whether there be so or no because not onely amongst the Fathers but even in the Reformed Churches in both sub-divisions Lutheran and Calvinist great men deny it and as great affirme it we know not we know the Angels know they understand but whether by that way which we call in the Schoole Cognitionem Matutinam by seeing all in God or that which we call Verspertinam by a clearer manifestation of the species of things to them then to us we know not we know they are distinguished into Orders the Apostle tells us so but what or how many their Orders are since S. Gregory and S. Bernard differ from that Designe of their nine orders which S. Denis the Areopagite had given before in placing of those nine and Athanasius addes more to those nine we know not But we are content to say with S. Augustine Esse firmissimè credo quaenam sint nescio that there are distinct orders of Angels assuredly I beleeve but what they are I cannot tell Dicant qui possunt si tamen probare possunt quod dicunt saies that Father Let them tell you that can so they be able to prove that they tell you true They are Creatures that have not so much of a Body as flesh is as froth is as a vapor is as a sigh is and yet with a touch they shall molder a rocke into lesse Atomes then the sand that it stands upon and a milstone into smaller flower then it grinds They are Creatures made and yet not a minute elder now then when they were first made if they were made before all measure of time began nor if they were made in the beginning of Time and be now six thousand yeares old have they one wrinckle of Age in their face or one sobbe of wearinesse in their lungs They are primogeniti Dei Gods eldest sonnes They are super-elementary meteors they hang between the nature of God and the nature of man and are of middle Condition And if we may offencelessely expresse it so they are anigmata Divina The Riddles of Heaven and the perplexities of speculation But this is but till the Resurrection Then we shall be like them and know them by that assimilation We end this branch with this consideration If by being like the Angels we shall know the Angels we are more then like ourselves we are our selves why doe we not know our selves Why did not Adam know that he had a Body that might have been preserved in an immortality and yet submitted his body and mine and thine and theirs who by this union are to be made one and all that by Gods goodnesse shall be derived from them to certaine to inevitable Death Why doe not we know our owne Immortality that dwells in us still for all Adams fall and ours in him that immortality which we cannot devest but must live for ever whether we will or no To know this immortality is to make this immortality which otherwise is the heaviest part of our Curse a Blessing unto us by providing to live in Immortall happinesse whereas now we doe so little know our selves as that if my soule could aske one of those Wormes which my dead body shall produce Will you change with me that worme would say No for you are like to live eternally in torment for my part I can live no longer then the putrid moisture of your body will give me leave and therefore I will not change nay would the Devill himselfe change with a damned soule I cannot tell As we argue conveniently that the Devil is tormented more then man because the Devill fel from God without any other Tempter then himselfe but man had a Tempter so may it be not inconveniently argued too that man may be more tormented then he because man continued and relapsed in his rebellions to God after so many pardons offered and accepted which the Devill never had Howsoever otherwise their torments
washed in my own tears and either out of compunction for my self or compassion for others I passe through this world as through a valley of tears where tears settle and swell and when I passe out of this world I leave their eyes whose hands close mine full of tears too can these persons this Image of God this God himself this glorious God and this vessell of earth this earth it self this inglorious worm of the earth meet without disparagement They doe meet and make a mariage because I am not a body onely but a body and s oul there is a mariage and Christ maries me As by the Law a man might mary a captive woman in the Warres if he shaved her head and pared her nails and changed her clothes so my Saviour having fought for my soul fought to blood to death to the death of the Crosse for her having studied my soul so much as to write all those Epistles which are in the New Testament to my soul having presented my soule with his own picture that I can see his face in all his temporall blessings having shaved her head in abating her pride and pared her nails in contracting her greedy desires and changed her clothes not to fashion her self after this world my soul being thus fitted by himself Christ Jesus hath maried my soul maried her to all the three intendments mentioned in the secular mariage first in ustionem against burning That whether I burn my self in the fires of tentation by exposing my self to occasions of tentation or be reserved to be burnt by others in the fires of persecution and martyrdome whether the fires of ambition or envy or lust or the everlasting fires of hell offer at me in an apprehension of the judgements of God yet as the Spirit of God shall wipe all tears from mine eyes so the tears of Christ Jesus shall extinguish all fires in my heart and so it is a mariage In ustionem a remedy against burning It is so too In prolificationem for children first vae soli woe unto that single soul that is not maried to Christ that is not come into the way of having issue by him that is not incorporated in the Christian Church and in the true Church but is yet in the wildernesse of Idolatry amongst the Gentiles or in the Labyrinth of superstition amongst the Papists vae soli woe unto that single man that is not maried unto Christ in the Sacraments of the Church and vae sterili woe unto them that are barren after this spirituall mariage for that is a great curse in the Prophet Ieremy Scribe virum istum sterilem write this man childlesse that implied all calamities upon him And assoon as Christ had laid that curse upon the Fig-tree Let no fruit grow upon thee for ever presently the whole tree withered no fruit no leafes neither nor body left To be incorporated in the body of Christ Jesus and bring forth no fruits worthy of that profession is a wofull state too Vae soli woe unto the Gentiles not maried unto Christ and vae sterili woe unto inconsiderate Christians that think not upon their calling that conceive not by Christ but there is a vae praegnanti too wo unto them that are with child and are never delivered that have good conceptions religious dispositions holy desires to the advancement of Gods truth but for some collaterall respects dare not utter them nor bring them to their birth to any effect The purpose of his mariage to us is to have children by us and this is his abundant and his present fecundity that working now by me in you in one instant he hath children in me and grand children by me He hath maried me in ustionem and in prolem against burning and for children but can he have any use of me in adjutorium for a helper Surely if I be able to feed him and clothe him and harbour him and Christ would not condemne men at the last day for not doing these if man could not doe them I am able to help him too Great persons can help him over sea convey the name of Christ where it hath not been preached yet and they can help him home again restore his name and his truth where superstition with violence hath disseised him And they can help him at home defend his truth there against all machinations to displant and dispossesse him Great men can help him thus and every man can help him to a better place in his own heart and his own actions then he hath had there and to be so helped in me and helped by me to have his glory thereby advanced Christ hath maried my soul And he hath maried it in aeternum for ever which is the third and last Circumstance in this spirituall as it was in the secular mariage And here the aeternum is enlarged in the secular mariage it was an eternity considered onely in this life but this eternity is not begun in this world but from all eternity in the Book of life in Gods eternall Decree for my election there Christ was maried to my soul. Christ was never in minority never under years there was never any time when he was not as ancient as the Ancient of Days as old as his Father But when my soul was in a strange minority infinite millions of millions of generations before my soul was a soul did Christ mary my soul in his eternall Decree So it was eternall it had no beginning Neither doth he interrupt â—his by giving me any occasion of jealousie by the way but loves my soul as though there were no other soul and would have done and suffered all that he did for me alone if there had been no name but mine in the Book of life And as he hath maried me to him in aeternum for ever before all beginnings and in aeternum for ever without any interruptions so I know that whom he loves he loves to the end and that he hath given me not a presumptuous impossibility but a modest infallibility that no sin of mine shall divorce or separate me from him for that which ends the secular mariage ends not the spirituall not death for my death does not take me from that husband but that husband being by his Father preferr'd to higher titles and greater glory in another state I doe but goe by death where he is become a King to have my part in that glory and in those additions which he hath received there And this hath led us to our third and last mariage our eternall mariage in the triumphant Church And in this third mariage the persons are the Lamb and my soul The mariage of the Lamb is come and blessed are they that are called to the mariage Supper of the Lamb says S. Iohn speaking of our state in the generall Resurrection That Lamb that was brought to the slaughter and opened not his mouth
It was then his Deed and it was his gift it was his Deed of gift and it hath all the formalities and circumstances that belong to that for here is a seale in his blood and here is a delivering pregnantly implied in this word which is not onely Dedit he gave but Tradidit he delivered First Dedit he gave himselfe for us to his Father in that eternall Decree by which he was Agnus occisus ab origine mundi The Lamb slain from the beginning of the world And then Tradidit he delivered possession of himselfe to Death and to all humane infirmities when he took our Nature upon him and became one of us Yea this word implies a further operativenesse and working upon himself then all this for the word which the Apostle uses here for Christ giving of himselfe is the same word which the Evangelists use still for Iudas betraying of him so that Christ did not onely give himselfe to the will of the Father in the eternall Decree nor onely deliver himselfe to the power of death in his Incarnation but he offered he exhibited he exposed we may say he betrayed himselfe to his enemies and all this for worse enemies to the Iewes that Crucified him once for us that make finne our sport and so make the Crucifying of the Lord of life a Recreation It was a gift then free and absolute Hee keeps us not in fear of Resumption of ever taking himselfe from the Church again nay he hath left himself no power of Revocation I am with you sayes he to the end of the world To particular men he comes he knocks and he enters and he stays and hesups and yet for their unworthinesse goes away again but with the Church he is usque ad consummationem till the end It is a permanent gift Dedit and Dedit seipsum It was he that did it That which he did was to give and that which he gave was himselfe Now since the Holy Ghost that is the God of unity and peace hath told us at once that the satisfaction for our sins is Christ himselfe and hath told us no more Christ entirely Christ altogether let us not divide and mangle Christ or tear his Church in pieces by froward and frivolous difputations whether Christ gave his divinity for us or his humanity whether the divine Nature or the humane Nature redeemed us for neither his divinity nor his humanity is Ipse He himselfe and Dedit seipsum He gave himselfe Let us not subdivide him into lesse pieces then those God and Man and enquire contentiously whether he suffered in soul as well as in body the pains of Hâ—ll as well as the sting of Death the Holy-Ghost hath presented him unite and knit together For neither soul nor body was Ipse He himselfe and Dedit seipsum He gave himselfe let us least of all shred Christ Iesus into lesse scruples and atoms then these Soul and body and dispute whether consisting of both it were his active or his passive obedience that redeemed us whether it were his death and passion onely or his innocency and fulfilling of the Law too let us onely take Christ himselfe for onely that is said he gave himselfe It must be an Innocent person and this Innocent person must die for us seperate the Innocency and the Death and it is not Ipse it is not Christ himselfe and Dedit seipsum it was himselfe Let us abstain from all such curiosities which are all but forc'd dishes of hot brains and not sound meat that is from all perverse wranglings whether God or Man redeemed us and then whether this God and Man suffered in soule or in body and then whether this person consisting of soule and body redeemed us by his action or by his passion onely for as there are spirituall wickednesses so there are spirituall wantonnesses and unlawfull and dangerous dallyings with mysteries of Divinity Money that is changed into small pieces is easily lost gold that is beat out into leaf-gold cannot be coyned nor made currant money we know the Heathens lost the true God in a thrust they made so many false gods of every particular quality and attribute of God that they scattered him and evacuated him to an utter vanishing so doth true and sound and nourishing Divinity vanish away in those impertinent Questions All that the wit of Man adds to the Word of God is all quicksilver and it evaporates easily Beloved Custodi Depositum sayes the Apostle keep that which God hath revealed to thee for that God himselfe cals thy Talent it hath weight and substance in it Depart not from thy old gold leave not thy Catechism-divinity for all the School-divinity in the world when we have all what would we have more if we know that Christ hath given himselfe for us that we are redeemed and not redeemed with corruptible things but with the precious blood of Christ Jesus we care for no other knowledge but that Christ and Christ crucified for us for this is another and a more peculiar and profitable giving of himselfe for thee when he gives himselfe to thee that is when he gives thee a sense and apprehension and application of the gift to thy self that Christ hath given himselfe to thy selfe We are come now to his exchange what Christ had for himselfe when he gave himselfe And he had a Church So this Apostle which in this place writes to the Ephesians when he preached personally to the Ephesians he told them so too The Church is that Quam acquisivit sanguine suo which he purchased with his bloud Here Christ bought a Church but I would there were no worse Simony then this Christ received no profit from the Church and yet he gave himselfe for it and he stayes with it to the end of the world Here is no such Non-residency as that the Church is left unserved other men give enough for their Church but they withraw themselves and necessary provision And if we consider this Church that Christ bought and paid so dearly for it was rather an Hospitall then a Church A place where the blind might recover sight that is Men borne in Paganisme or Superstition might see the true God truly worshipped and where the lame might be established that is those that Halted between two Religions might be rectified in the truth where the Deaf might receive so quicke a hearing as that they might discerne Musique in his Thunder in all his fearefull threatnings that is mercy in his Judgments which are still accompanied with conditions of repentance and they might finde Thunder in his Musique in all his promises that is threatnings of Judgements in our misuse of his mercies Where the hereditary Leper the new borne Child into whose marrow his fathers transgression cleaves in originall sinne and he that hath enwrapped Implicatos morbos one disease in another in Actuall sinnes might not onely come if he would but be intreated to come yea
speake for him After that first and heavy curse of Almighty God upon Man Morte morieris If thou eate thou shalt die and die twice thou shall die a bodily thou shalt die a spirituall death a punishment which no sentence of any law or law-maker could ever equall to deterre Men from offending by threatning to take away their lives twice and by inflicting a spirituall death eternally upon the Soule after we have all incurred that malediction Morte moriemur we shall die both death we cannot thinke to scape any lesse malediction of any law and therefore we are all Intestabiles we are all intestable in all these senses and apprehensions which we have touched upon We can make no testament of our owne we have no good thing in us to dispose we have no good inclination no good disposition in our Will we can make no use of anothers testament not of the double testaments of Almighty God for in the Old testament he gives promises of a Messias but we bring into the world no Faith to apprehend those promises and in the New testament he gives a performance the Messias is come but he is communicable to us no way but by baptisme and we cannot baptize our selves we can profit no body else by our testimony we are not able to endure persecution for the testimony of Christ to the edification of others we are not able to doe such workes as may shine before Men to the glorifying of our God Neither doth the testimony of others doe us any good for neither the Martyrdome of so many Millions in the primitive Church nor the execution of so many judgments of God in our owne times doe restifie any thing to our Consciences neither at the last day when those Saints of God whom we have accompanied in the outward worship of God here in the visible Church shall be called to the right hand and we detruded to the left shall they dare to open their mouthes for us or to testifie of us or to say Why Lord these Men when they were in the world did as we did appeared and served thee in thy house as we did they seem'd to goe the same way that we did upon Earth why goe they a sinister way now in heaven We are utterly intestable we can give nothing we can take nothing nothing will be beleeved from us who are all falshood it selfe nor can we be releeved by any thing that any other will say for us As long as we are considered under the penalty of that law this is our case Interdicti intestabiles we are accursed and so as that we are intestable Now as this great malediction Morte marieris in volves all other punishments upon whom that falls all fall so when our Saviour Christ Jesus hath a purpose to take away that or the most dangerous part of that the spirituall death when he will reverse that judgment Aqua igni interdicitur to make us capable of his water and his fire when he will reverse the intestabiles the inteâ—â—ability and make us able to receive his graces by faith and declare them by works then as he that will reedifie a demolished house begins not at the top but at the bottome so Christ Jesus when he will make this great preparation this great reedification of mankind he beginnes at the lowest step which is that we may have use of the testimony of others in our behalfe and he proceeds strongly and effectually he produces three witnesses from heaven so powerfull that they will be heard they will be beleeved and three witnesses on earth so neare us so familiar so domestique as that they will not be denied they will not be discredited Three are three that beare Record in heaven and three that beare record in earth Since then Christ Jesus makes us all our owne Iury able to conceive and judge upon the Evidence and testimony of these three heavenly and three earthly witnesses let us draw neare and hearken to the evidence and consider three things Testimonium esse Quid sit and Qui testes That God descends to meanes proportionable to Man he affords him witnesse and secondly the matter of the proofe what all these six witnesses testifie what they establish Thirdly the quality and value of the witnesses and whether the matter be to be beleeved for their sakes and for their reasons God requires nothing of us but Testimony for Martyrdome is but that A Martyr is but a witnesse God offers us nothing without testimony for his Testament is but a witnesse Teste ipso is shrewd evidence when God says I will speake and I will testifie against thee I am God even thy God when the voice of God testifies against me in mine owne conscience It is more pregnant evidence then this when his voice testifies against me in his word in his Scriptures The Lord testified against Israel by all the Prophets and by all the Seers When I can never be alone but that God speakes in me but speakes against me when I can never open his booke but the first sentence mine eye is upon is a witnesse against me this is fearfull evidence But in this text we are not in that storme for he hath made us Testabiles that is ready to testifie for him to the effusion of our bloud and Testabiles that is fit to take benefit by the testament that hee hath made for us The effusion of his bloud which is our second branch what is testified for us what these witnesses establish First then that which a sinner must be brought to understand and beleeve by the strength of these witnesses is Integritas Christi not the Integrity as it signifies the Innocency of Christ but integrity as it signifies Intireness not as it is Integer vitae but Integra vita not as he kept an integrity in his life but as he onely is intirely our life That Christ was a person composed of those two Natures divine and humane whereby he was a fit and a full satisfaction for all our sinnes and by death could be our life for when the Apostle writ this Epistle it seemes there had been a schisme not about the Mysticall body of Christ the Church but even about the Naturall that is to say in the person of Christ there had been a schisme a separation of his two natures for as we see certainly before the death of this Apostle that the Heresie of Ebion and of Cerinthus which denied the divine nature of Christ was set on foot for against them purposely was the Gospell of Saint Iohn written so by Epiphanius his ranking of the Heresies as they arose where he makes Basilides his Heresie which denied that Christ had any naturall body to be the fourth herefie and Ebions to be the tenth it seemes that they denied his humanity before they denied his Divinity And therefore it is well collected that this Epistle of Saint Iohn being written long
before his Gospell was written principally and purposely against the opposers of Christs humanity but occasionally also in defence of his divine nature too Because there is Solutio Iesu a dissolving of Jesus a taking of Jesus in peeces a dividing of his Natures or of his Offices which overthrowes all the testimonies of these six great witnesses when Christ said Solvite templum hoc destroy dissolve this temple and in three dayes I will raise it he spoke that but of his naturall body there was Solutio corporis Christs body and soule were parted but there was not Solutio Iesu the divine nature parted not from the humane no not in death but adhered to and accompanied the soule even in hell and accompanied the body in the grave And therefore says the Apostle Omnis spiritus qui solvit Iesum ex deo non est for so Irenaeus and Saint Augustine and Saint Cyrill with the Grecians read those words That spirit which receives not Jesus intirely which dissolves Jesus and breakes him in peeces that spirit is not of God All this then is the subject of this testimony first that Christ Jesus is come in the flesh there is a Recognition of his humane nature And then that this Jesus is the sonne of God there is a subscription to his divine nature he that separates these and thereby makes him not able or not willing to satisfie for Man he that separates his Nature or he that separates the worke of the Redemption and says Christ suffered for us onely as Man and not as God or he that separates the manner of the worke and says that the passive obedience of Christ onely redeemed us without any respect at all to his active obedience onely as he died and nothing as he died innocently or he that separates the perfection and consummation of the worke from his worke and findes something to be done by Man himselfe meritorious to salvation or he that separates the Prince and the Subject Christ and his members by nourishing Controversies in Religion when they might be well reconciled or he that separates himselfe from the body of the Church and from the communion of Saints for the fashion of the garments for the variety of indifferent Ceremonies all these do Solvere Iesum they slacken they dissolve that Jesus whose bones God provided for that they should not be broken whose flesh God provided for that it should not see Corruption and whose garments God provided that they should not bee divided There are other luxations other dislocations of Jesus when we displace him for any worldly respect and prefer preforment before him there are other woundings of Jesus in blasphemous oathes and exerations there are other maimings of Jesus in pretending to serve him intirely and yet retaine one particular beloved sinne still there are other rackings and extendings of Jesus when we delay him and his patience to our death-bed when we stretch the string so farre that it cracks there that is appoint him to come then and he comes not there are other dissolutions of Jesus when men will melt him and powre him out and mold him up in a waser Cake or a peece of bread there are other annihilations of Jesus when Men will make him and his Sacraments to be nothing but bare signes but all these will be avoided by us if we be gained by the testimony of these six witnesses to hold fast that integrity that intirensse of Jesus which is here delivered to us by this Apostle In which we beleeve first Iâ—sum a Saviour which implies his love and his will to save us and then we beleeve Christum the anointed that is God and man able and willing to doe this great worke and that he is anointed and sealed for that purpose and this implies the decree the contract and bargaine of acceptation by the Father that Pactum salis that eternall covenant which seasons all by which that which he meant to doe as he was Iesus should be done as he was Christ. And then as the intirenesse of Jesus is expressed in the verse before the text we beleeve Quod venit that as all this might be done if the Father and Sonne would agree as all this must be done because they had agreed it so all this was done Quâ—a venit because this Jesus is already come and that for the father intirenesse for the perfection and consummation and declaration of all venit per aquam sanguinem He came by water and bloud Which words Saint Bernard understands to imply but a difference between the comming of Christ and the comming of Moses who was drawen out of the water and therefore called by that name of Moses But before Moses came to be a leader of the people he passed through bloud too through the bloud of the Egyptian whom he slew and much more when he established all their bloudy sacrifices so that Mases came not onely by water Neither was the first Testament ordained without bloud Others understand the words onely to put a difference between Iohn Baptist and Christ because Iohn Baptist is still said to baptize with waterâ— Because he should be declared to Israel therefore am I come baptizing with water but yet Iohn Baptists baptisme had not onely a relation to bloud but a demonstration of it when still he pointed to the Lambe Ecce Agnus for that Lambe was slâ—ine from the beginning of the world So that Christ which was this Lambe came by water and bloud when he came in the risuall types and figures of Moses and when he came in the baptisme of Iohn for in the Law of Moses there was so frequent use of water as that we reckon above fifty severall Immunditi as uncleannesses which might receive their expiation by washing without being put to their bloudy sacrifies for them And then there was so frequent use of bloud that almost all things are by the Law purged with bloud and without shedding of bloud is no Remission But this was such water and such bloud as could not perfect the worke but therefore was to be renewed every day The water that Jesus comes by is such a water as he that arinketh of it shall thirst no more nay there shall spring up in him a well of water that is his example shall worke to the satisfaction of others we doe not say to a satisfaction for others And then this is that bloud that perfected the whole worke at once By his own bloud entred he once into the holy place and obtained eternall Redemption for us So that Christ came by water and bloud according to the old ablutions and old sacrifices when he wept when he sweat when he powred out bloud pretious incorruptible inestimable bloud at so many channels as he did all the while that he was upon the altar sacrificing himselfe in his passion But after the immolation of this sacrifice after his Consummatum est when Christ
from death a man might in some sort be said to be immortall for that minute but Man is never so Nunquam ei vicinius est posse vivere quà m posse mori That proposition is never truer This man may live to morrow then this proposition is This man may dy this minute Though then shortnesse of life be a malediction to the wicked The bloudy and deceitfull men shall not live halfe their dayes there 's the sentence the Judgement the Rule And they were cut down before their time there 's the execution the example God hath threatned God hath inflicted shortnesse of dayes to the wicked yet the Curse consists in their indisposition in their over-loving of this world in their terrors concerning the next world and not meerly in the shortnesse of life for this Ite depart out of this world is part of the Consolation I have a Reversion upon my friend and though I wish it not yet I am glad if he die Men that have inheritances after their fathers are glad when they dye though not glad that they die yet glad when they die I have a greater after the death of this body and shall I be loath to come to that Yet it is not so a Consolation as that we should by any means be occasions to hasten our own death Multi Innocentes ab aliis occiduntur à seipso nemo Many men get by the malice of others if thereby they dy the sooner for they are the sooner at home and dy innocently but no man dies innocently that dies by his own hand or by his own hast We may not doe it never we may not wish it alwayes nor easily Before a perfect Reconciliation with God it is dangerous to wish death David apprehended it so I said O my God take me not away in the midst of my dayes In an over tender sense and impatience of our own Calamities it is dangerous to desire death too Very holy men have transgressed on that hand Elias in his persecution came inconsiderately to desire that he might die It is enough ô Lord take away my soule He would tell God how much was enough And so sayes Iob My soule chuseth rather to be strangled and to die then to be in my bones He must have that that his soule chuses But to omit many cases wherein it is not good nor safe to wish Death certainly when it is done primarily in respect of God for his glory and then for the respect which is of our selves it is onely to enjoy the sight and union of God and that also with a Conditionall submission to his will and a tacite and humble reservation of all his purposes we may think David's thought and speak David's words My soule thirsteth for God even for the living God when shall I come and appeare before the presence of my Living God Saint Paul had David's example for it when he comes to his Cupio dissolvi to desire to be dissolved And Saint Augustine had both their examples when he sayes so affectionately Eia Domine videam ut hîc moriar O my God let me see thee in this life that I may die the death of the Righteous dy to sin moriar ut te videam let me dy absolutely that I may see thee essentially Here we may be in his Presence we see his state there we are in his Bedchamber and see his eternall and glorious Rest. The Rule is good given by the same Father Non injustum est justo optare mortem A righteous man may righteously desire deathâ— Si Deus non dederit injustum erit non tolerare vitam amarissimam but if God affords not that ease he must not refuse a laborious life So that this departing is not a going before we be call'd Christ himselfe stay'd for his ascension till he was taken up But when these comes a Lazare veni foras that God calls us from this putrefaction which we think life let us be not onely obedient but glad to depart For without such an Ite there is no such Surgite as is intended here without this departing there is no good rising without a joyfull Transmigration no joyfull Resurrection He that is loth to depart is afraid to rise againe and he that is afraid of the Resurrection had rather there were none and he that had rather there were none aâ—t â—aecitate aut animosâ—tate says S. Augustine either he will make himselfe beleeve that there is none or if he cannot overcome his Conscience so absolutely he will make the world beleeve that he beleeves there is none and truly to lose our sense of the Resurrection is as heavy a losse as of any one point of Religion It is the knot of all and hath this priviledge above all that though those Joyes of heaven which we shall possesse immediately after our death be infinite yet even to these infinite Joyes the Resurrection given an addition and enlarges even that which was infinite And therefore is Iob so passionately desirous that this doctrine of the Resurrection might be imparted to all imprinted in all Oh that my words more now written Oh that they were written in a book and graven with an Iron pen in lead and stone for ever what is all this that Iob recommends with so much devotion to all I am sure that my Redeemer liveth and be shall stand the last on Earth and though after my skin wormes destroy this body yet I shall see God in my flesh whom I my selfe shall see and mine eyes shall behold and none either for me This doctrine of the Resurrection had Iob so vehement and so early a care of Neither could the malicious and pestilent inventions of man no not of Satan himselfe abolish this doctrine of the Resurrection for as Saint Hierome observes from Adrian's time to Constantin's for 180 yeares in the place of Christs birth they had set up an Idoll a statue of Adonis In the place of his Crucifying they had set up an Idoll of Venus and in the place of his Resurrection they had erected a Iâ—â—pâ—ter in opinion that these Idolatrous provisions of theirs would have abolish'd the Mysteries of our Religion but they have outliv'd all them and shall outlive all the world eternally beyond all Generations And therefore doth Saint Ambrose apply well and usefully to our Death and Resurrection to our departing and rising these words Come my people enter then into thy Chambers and shut thy dores after thee Hide thy selfe for a very little while untill the Indignation passeover thee that is Goe quietly to your graves attend your Resurrection till God have executed his purpose upon the wicked of this world Murmur not to admit the dissolution of body and soul upon your death-beds nor the resolution and putrefaction of the body alone in your graves till God be pleased to repaire all in a full consummation and
reuniting of body and soule in a blessed Resurrection Ite Surgite depart so as you may desire to rise Depart with an In manus tuas and with a Veni Domiâ—e Iesu with a willing surrendring of your soules and a cheerfull meeting of the Lord Jesus For else all hope of profit and permanent Rest is lost for as Saint Hierome interprets these very words Here we are taught that there is no rest in this life Sed quasiâ—â—â— mortuis resurgentes ad sublime tendere ambulare post Daminum Iesum we depart when we depart from sin and we rise when we raise our selves to a conformity with Christ And not onely after his example but after his person that is to hasten thither whither he is gone to prepare us a Room For this Rest in the Text though it may be understood of the Land of Promise and of the Church and of the Arke and of the Sabbath for if we had time to pursue them we might make good use of all these acceptations yet we accept Chrysostâ—me's acceptation best Requies est ipse Christus our rest is Christ himselfe Not onely that rest that is in Christ peace of conscience in him but that Rest that Christ is in eternall rest in his kingdome There remaineth a Rest to the people of God besides that inchoation of Rest which the godly have here there remains a fuller Rest. Iesus is entred into his Rest sayes the Apostle there his Rest was not here in this world and Let us study to enter into thatâ— Rest sayes he for no other can accomplish our peace It is righteousnesse with God is recompence tribulation to them that trouble you and to you which are troubled Rest but when in this world no when the Lord Iesus shall sheâ— himselfe from heaven with his mighty Angels then comes your Rest for for the grave the body lies still but it is not a Rest because it is not sensible of that lying still In heaven the body shall rest rest in the sense of that glory This Rest then is not here Not onely not Here at this Here was taken in the first interpretation Here in the Earth but not Here in the second interpretation not in Repentance it selfe for all the Rest of this life even the spirituall Rest is rather a Truce then a peace rather a Cessation then an end of the war For when these words I will set the Egyptians against the Egyptians Every one shall fight against his brother and every one against his neighbour City against City and Kingdome against Kingdome may be interpreted and are so interpreted of the time of the Gospell of Christ Jesus when Christ himselfe says Nolite putare quod venerim mittere pacem in terrâ Never think that I came to settle peace or Rest in this world Nay when Christ sayes None of them that were bidden shall come to his supper and that may be verified of any Congregation none of us that are call'd now shall come to that Rest a Man may be at a security in an opinion of Rest and be far from it A man may be neerer Rest in a troubled Conscience then in a secure Here we have often Resurrections that is purposes to depart from sin but they are such Resurrections as were at the time of Christs Resurrection when as the strongest opinion is Resurrexerunt iterum morituri Many of the dead rose but they died again we rise from our sins here but here we fall again Monumenta aperta sunt it is Saint Hierome's note The graves were opened presently upon Christs death but yet the bodies did not arise till Christs Resurrection The godly have an opening of their graves they see some light some of their weight some of their Earth is taken from them but a Resurrection to enter into the City to follow the Lamb to come into an established security that they have not till they be united to Christ in heaven Here we are still subject to relapses and to looking back Memento uxoris Lâ—t Ipsa in loco manet transeuntes monet Shee is fixed to a place that she might settle those that are not fix'd Vt quid in statuam salis conversa si non homines ut sapiant condiat to teach us the danger of looking back till we be fix'd she is fix'd When the Prophetâ— Eliahâ— was at the dore of Desperation an Angell touch'd him and said Vp and eat and there was bread and water provided and he did eat but he slept again and we have some of these excitations and we come and eat and drink even the body and bloud of Christ but we sleep again we doe not perfect the work Our Rest Here then is never without a fear of losing it This is our best state To fear leâ—t at any time by forsaking the promise of entring into his rest we should seem to be depriv'd The Apostle disputes not neither doe I whether we can be depriv'd or no but he assures us that we may fall back so far as that to the Church and to our own Consciences we may seem to be depriv'd and that 's argument enough that here is no Rest. To end all though there be no Rest in all this world no not in our sanctification here yet this being a Consolation there must be rest some where And it is In superna Civitate unde amicus non exit quâ inimicus non intrat In that City in that Hierusalem where there shall never enter any man whom we doe not love nor any goe from us whom we doe love Which though we have not yet yet we shall have for upon those words because I live ye shall live also Saint Augustine sayes that because his Resurrection was to follow so soon Christ takes the present word because I doe live But because their life was not to be had here he says Vivetis you shall live in heaven not Vivitis for here we doe not live So as in Adam we all die even so in Christ shall all be made alive says the Apostle All our deaths are here present now now we dy our quickning is reserv'd for heaven that 's future And therefore let us attend that Rest as patiently as we doe the things of this world and not doubt of it therefore because we see it not yet even in this world we consider invisible things more then visible Vidimus pelagus non autem mercedem The Merchant sees the tempestuous Sea when he does not see the commodities which he goes for Videmus terram non autem messem The Husbandman sees the Earth and his labour when he sees no harvest and for these hopes that there will be a gain to the Merchant and a harvest to the Labourer Naturae fidimus we rely upon Creatures for our Resurrection fide usâ—orem habemus Coranatum Not Nature not Sea
there is but one place of this booke of Iob cited at all To the Corinthians the Apostle makes use of those words in Iob God taketh the wise in their owne craft And more then this one place is not I thinke cited out of this booke of Iob in the new Testament But the authority of Iob is established in another place you have heard of the patience of Iob and you have seen the end of the Lord says Saint Iames. As you have seen this so you have heard that seen and heard one way out of the Scripture you have hard that out of the booke of Iob you have seen this out of the Gospell And further then this there is no naming of Iobs person or his booke in the new Testament Saint Hierome confesses that both the Greeke and Latine Copies of this booke were so defective in his time that seven or eight hundred verses of the originall were wanting in the booke And for the originall it selfe he says Obliquus totus liber fertur lubricus it is an uncertaine and slippery book But this is onely for the sense of some places of the book And that made the authority of this book to be longer suspended in the Church and oftner called into question by particular men then any other book of the Bible But in those who have for many ages received this book for Canonicall there is an unanime acknowledgement at least tacitely that this peece of it this text When after my skin wormes shall destroy my body yet in my flesh I shall see God does establish the Resurrection Divide the expositors into three branches for so the world will needs divide them The first the Roman Church will call theirs though they have no other title to them but that they received the same translation that they doe And all they use this text for the resurrection Verba viri in gentilitate positi erubescamus It is a shame for us who have the word of God it selfe which Iob had not and have had such a commentary such an exposition upon al the former word of God as the reall and actuall and visible resurrection of Christ himselfe Erubescamus verba viri in gentilitate positi let us be ashamed and confounded if Iob a person that lived not within the light of the covenant saw the resurrection more clearly and professed it more constantly then we doe And as this Gregory of Rome so Gregory Nyssen understood Iob too For he considers Iobs case thus God promised Iob twofold of all that he had lost And in his sheep and camels and oxen and asses which were utterly destroyed and brought to nothing God performes it punctually he had all in a double proportion But Iob had seven sonnes and three daughters before and God gives him but seven sonnes and three daughters againe And yet Iob had twofold of these too for Postnati cum prioribus numerantur quia omnes deo vivunt Those which were gone and those which were new given lived all one life because they lived all in God Necquicquam aliud est mors nisi viti ositatis expiatio Death is nothing else but a devesting of those defects which made us lesse fit for God And therefore agreeably to this purpose says Saint Cyprian Scimus non amitti sed praemitti thy dead are not lost but lent Non recedere sed praecedere They are not gone into any other wombe then we shall follow them into nec acquirendae atrae vestes pro iis qui albis induuntur neither should we put on blacks for them that are clothed in white nor mourne for them that are entred into their Masters joy We can enlarge our selfes no farther in this consideration of the first branch of expositors but that all the ancients tooke occasion from this text to argue for the resurrection Take into your Consideration the other two branches of moderne expositors whom others sometimes contumeliously and themselves sometimes perversly have call'd Lutherans and Calvinists and you may know that in the first ranke Osiander and with him all his interpret these words so And in the other ranke Tremellius and Pellicanus heretofore Polanus lately and Piscator for the present All these and all the Translators into the vulgar tongues of all our neighbours of Europe do all establish the doctrine of the Resurrection by these words this place of Iob. And therefore though one and truly for any thing I know but one though one to whom we all owe much for the interpretation of the Scriptures do think that Iob intends no other resurrection in this place but that when he shall be reduc'd to the miserablest estate that can bee in this life still he will look upon God and trust in him for his restitution and reparation in this life let us with the whole Christian Church embrace and magnifie this Holy and Heroicall Spirit of Iob Scio says he I know it which is more in him then the Credo is in us more to know it then in that state then to believe it now after it hath been so evidently declar'd not onely to be a certain truth but to be an article of faith Scio Redemptorem says he I know not onely a Creator but a Redeemer And Redemptorem meum My Redeemer which implies a confidence and a personall application of that Redemption to himself Scio vivere says he I know that he lives I know that hee begunne not in his Incarnation I know he ended not in his death but it always was and is now and shall for ever be true Vivit that he lives still And then Scio venturum says he too I know hee shall stand at the last day to Judge me and all the world And after that and after my skinne and body is destroyed by worms yet in my flesh I shall see God And so have you as much as we proposed for our first part That the Jews do now that they always did believe a Resurrection That as naturall men and by naturall reason they might know it both in the possibility of the thing and in the purpose of God that they had better helpes then naturall reason for they had divers places of their Scripture and that this place of Scripture which is our text hath evermore been received for a proof of the Resurrection Proceed we now to those particulars which constitute our second part such instructions concerning the Resurrection as arise out of these words Though after my skinne worms destroy my body yet in my flesh I shall see God In this second part the first thing that was propos'd was That the Saints of God are not priviledg'd from this which fell upon Iob This Death this dissolution after death Upon the Morte morieris that double death interminated by God upon Adam there is a Non obstante Revertere turn to God and thou shalt not dy the death not the second
death But upon that part of the sentence In pulverem reverteris To dust thou shalt return there is no Non obstante though thou turn to God thou must turn into the grave for hee that redeem'd thee from the other death redeem'd not himself from this Carry this consideration to the last minute of the world when we that remain shall bee caught up in the clouds yet even that last fire may be our fever those clouds our winding sheets that rapture our dissolution and so with Saint Augustine most of the ancients most of the latter men think that there shall be a sudden dissolution of body and soul which is death and a sudden re-uniting of both which is resurrection in that instant Quis Homeo is Davids question What man is he that liveth and shall not see death Let us adde Quis Deoram What god is he amongst the Gentiles that hath not seen death Which of their three hundred Iupiters which of their thousands of other gods have not seen death Mortibus morjuntur we may adde to that double death in Gods mouth another death The gods of the Gentiles have dyed thrice In body in soul and in fame for though they have been glorified with a Deification nor one of all those old gods is at this day worshipt in any part of the world but all those temporary and transitory Gods are worn out and dead in all senses Those gods who were but men fall under Davids question Quis Home And that man who was truly God fals under it too Christ Jesus He saw death though he saw not the death of this text Corruption And if we consider the effusion of his precious blood the contusion of his sacred flesh the extention of those sinews and ligaments which tyed heaven and earth together in a reconciliation the departing of that Intelligence from that sphear of that high Priest from that Temple of that Dove from that Arke of that soul from that body that dissolution which as an ordinary man he should have had in the grave but that the decree of God declar'd in the infallibility of the manifold prophesies preserv'd him from it had been but a slumber in respect of these tortures which he did suffer The Godhead staid with him in the grave and so he did not corrupt but though our souls be gone up to God our bodies shall Corruption in the skin says Iob In the outward beauty These be the Records of velim these be the parchmins the endictments and the evidences that shall condemn many of us at the last day our own skins we have the book of God the Law written in our own hearts we have the image of God imprinted in our own souls wee have the character and seal of God stamped in us in our baptism and all this is bound up in this velim in this parchmin in this skin of ours and we neglect book and image and character and feal and all for the covering It is not a clear case if we consider the originall words properly That Iesabel did paint and yet all translators and expositors have taken a just occasion out of the ambiguity of those words to cry down that abomination of painting It is not a clear case if we consider the propriety of the words That Absolon was hanged by the hair of the head and yet the Fathers and others have made use of that indifferency and verisimilitude to explode that abomination of cherishing and curling haire to the enveagling and ensnaring and entangling of others Iudicium patietur aeternum says Saint Hierome Thou art guilty of a murder though no body die Quia vinum attulisti si faisset qui bibisset Thou hast poyson'd a cup if any would drink thou hast prepar'd a tentation if any would swallow it Tertullian thought he had done enough when he had writ his book De Habitu muliâ—bri against the excesse of women in clothes but he was fain to adde another with more vehemence De cultu foeminarum that went beyond their clothes to their skin And he concludes Illud ambitionis crimen there 's vain-glory in their excesse of clothes but Hoc prostitutionis there 's prostitution in drawing the eye to the skin Pliny says that when their thin silke stuffes were first invented at Rome Excogitatum ad faeminas denudandas It was but an invention that women might go naked in clothes for their skins might bee seen through those clothes those thinne stuffes Our women are not so carefull but they expose their nakednesse professedly and paint it to cast bird-lime for the passengers eye Beloved good dyet makes the best Complexion and a good Conscience is a continuall feast A cheerfull heart makes the best blood and peace with God is the true cheerfulnesse of heart Thy Saviour neglected his skin so much as that at last hee scarse had any all was torn with the whips and scourges and thy skin shall come to that absolute corruption as that though a hundred years after thou art buryed one may find thy bones and say this was a tall man this was a strong man yet we shall soon be past saying upon any relique of thy skinne This was a fair man Corruption seises the skinne all outward beauty quickly and so it does the body the whole frame and constitution which is another consideration After my skinne my Body If the whole body were an eye or an ear where were the body says Saint Paul but when of the whole body there is neither eye nor ear nor any member left where is the body And what should an eye do there where there is nothing to be seen but loathsomnesse or a nose there where there is nothing to be smelt but putrefaction or an ear where in the grave they doe not praise God Doth not that body that boasted but yesterday of that priviledge above all creatures that it onely could goe upright lie to day as flat upon the earth as the body of a horse or of a dogge And doth it not to morrow lose his other priviledge of looking up to heaven Is it not farther remov'd from the eye of heaven the Sunne then any dogge or horse by being cover'd with the earth which they are not Painters have presented to us with some horrour the sâ—cleton the frame of the bones of a mans body but the state of a body in the dissolution of the grave no pencil can present to us Between that excrementall jelly that thy body is made of at first and that jelly which thy body dissolves to at last there is not so noysome so putrid a thing in nature This skinne this outward beauty this body this whole constitution must be destroy'd says Iobâ— in the next place The word is well chosen by which all this is expressed in this text Nakaph which is a word of as heavy a signification to expresse an utter abolition and annihilation as perchance can be
found in all the Scriptures Tremellius hath mollifyed it in his translation there it is but Confodere to pierce And yet it is such a piercing such a sapping such an undermining such a demolishing of a fort of Castle as may justly remove us from any high valuation or any great confidence in that skinne and in that body upon which this Confoderint must fall But in the great Bible it is Contriverint Thy skinne and thy body shall be ground away trod away upon the ground Aske where that iron is that is ground off of a knife or axe Aske that marble that is worn off of the threshold in the Church-porch by continuall treading and with that iron and with that marble thou mayst finde thy Fathers skinne and body Contrita sunt The knife the marble the skinne the body are ground away trod away they are destroy'd who knows the revolutions of dust Dust upon the Kings high-way and dust upon the Kings grave are both or neither Dust Royall and may change places who knows the revolutions of dust Even in the dead body of Christ Jesus himself one dram of the decree of his Father one sheet one sentence of the prediction of the Prophets preserv'd his body from corruption and incineration more then all Iosephs new tombs and fine linnen and great proportion of spices could have done O who can expresse this inexpreffible mystery The foul of Christ Jesus which took no harm by him contracted no Originall sin in coming to him was guilty of no more sin when it went out then when it came from the breath and bosome of God yet this soul left this body in death And the Divinity the Godhead incomparably better then that soul which soul was incomparably better then all the Saints and Angels in heaven that Divinity that God-head did not forsake the body though it were dead If we might compare things infinite in themselves it was nothing so much that God did assume mans nature as that God did still cleave to that man then when he was no man in the separation of body and soul in the grave But full we from incomprehensible mysteries for there is mortification enough and mortification is vivification and aedification in this obvious consideration skinne and body beauty and substance must be destroy'd And Destroyed by wormes which is another descent in this humiliation and exâ—anition of man in death After my skinne wormes shall destroy this body I will not insist long upon this because it is not in the Originall In the Originall there is no mention of wormes But because in other places of Iob there is They shal lye down alike in the dust and the worms shall cover them The womb shal forget them and the worm shal feed sweetly on them because the word Destroying is presented in that form number Contriverint when they shall destroy they and no other persons no other creatures named both our later translations for indeed our first translation hath no mention of wormes and so very many others even Tremellâ—s that adheres most to the letter of the Hebrew have filled up this place with that addition Destroyed by worms It makes the destruction the more contemptible Thou that wouldest not admit the beames of the Sunne upon thy skinne and yet hast admitted the pollutions of sinne Thou that wouldst not admit the breath of the ayre upon thy skinne and yet hast admitted the spirit of lust and unchast solicitations to breath upon thee in execrable oathes and blasphemies to vicious purposes Thou whose body hath as farre as it can putrefyed and corrupted even the body of thy Saviour in an unworthy receiving thereof in this skinne in this body must be the food of worms the prey of destroying worms After a low birth thou mayst passe an honourable life after a sentence of an ignominious death thou mayst have an honourable end But in the grave canst thou make these worms silke worms They were bold and early worms that eat up Herod before he dyed They are bold and everlasting worms which after thy skinne and body is destroyed shall remain as long as God remains in an eternall gnawing of thy conscience long long after the destroying of skinne and body by bodily worms Thus farre then to the destroying of skinne and body by worms all men are equall Thus farre all 's Common law and no Prerogative so is it also in the next step too The Resurrection is common to all The prerogative lies not in the Rising but in the rising to the fruition of the sight of God in which consideration the first beam of comfort is the Postquam After all this destruction before by worms ruinous misery before but there is something else to be done upon me after God leaves no state without comfort God leaves some inhabitants of the earth under longer nights then others but none under an everlasting night and those whom he leaves under those long nights he recompenses with as long days after I were miserable if there were not an Antequam in my behalfe if before I had done well or ill actually in this world God had not wrapped me up in his good purpose upon me And I were miserable againe if there were not a Postquam in my behalfe If after my sinne had cast me into the grave there were not a lowd trumpet to call me up and a gracious countenance to looke upon me when I were risen Nay let my life have been as religious as the infirmities of this life can admit yet If in this life onely we have hope in Christ we are of all men most miserable For for the worldly things of this life first the children of God have them in the least proportions of any and besides that those children of God which have them in larger proportion do yet make the least use of them of any others because the children of the world are not so tender conscienced nor so much afraid lest those worldly things should become snares and occasions of tentation to them if they open themselves to a full enjoying thereof as the children of God are And therefore after my wanting of many worldly things after a penurious life and after my not daring to use those things that I have so freely as others doe after that holy and conscientious forbearing of those things that other men afford themselves after my leaving all these absolutely behind me here and my skin and body in destruction in the grace After all there remaines something else for me After but how long after That 's next When Christ was in the body of that flesh which we are in now sinne onely excepted he said in that state that he was in then Of that day and houre no man knoweth not the Angels not the Sonne Then in that state he excludes himselfe And when Christ was risen againe in an uncorruptible body he said even to his nearest followers Non est
vestruâ—â— it is not for you to know times and seasons Before in his state of mortality 〈…〉 ignor antibus he pretended to know no more of this then they that knew nothing After when he had invested immortality per sui exceptionem says that Father he excepts none but himselfe all the rest even the Apostles were left ignorant thereof For this non est vestrum it is not for you is part of the last sentence that ever Christ spake to them If it be a convenient answer to say Christ knew it not as man how bold is that man that will pretend to know it And if it be a convenient interpretation of Christs words that he knew it not that is knew it not so as that he might tell it them how indiscreet are they who though they may seem to know it will publish it For thereby they fill other men with scruples and vexations and they open themselves to scorne and reproach when their predictions prove false as Saint Augustine observed in his time and every age hath given examples since of confident men that have failed in these conjectures It is a poore pretence to say this intimation this impression of a certaine time prepares men with better dispositions For they have so often been found false that it rather weakens the credit of the thing it selfe In the old world they knew exactly the time of the destruction of the world that there should be an hundred twenty years before the flood came And yet upon how few did that prediction though from the mouth of God himselfe work to repentance Naâ—â— found grace in Gods eyes but it was not because he mended his life upon that prediction but he was grations in Gods sight before At the day of our death we write Pridiâ—râ—surrâ—ctioniâ— the day before the resurrection It is Vigilia resurectionis Our Easter Eve Adveniat regnum tuum possesse my soule of thy kingdome then And Fiâ—â— voluntas tua my body shall arise after but how soon after or how late after thy will bee done then by thy selfe and thy will bee knowne till then to thy selfe We passe on As in Massa damnata the whole lump of mankind is under the condemnation of Adams sinne and yet the good purpose of God severs some men from that condemnation so at the resurrection all shall rise but not all to glory But amongst them that doe Ego says Iob I shall I as I am the same man made up of the samebody and the same soule Shall I imagine a difficulty in my body because I have lost an Arme in the East and a leg in the West because I have left some bloud in the North and some bones in the South Doe but remember with what ease you have sate in the chaire casting an account and made a shilling on one hand a pound on the other or five shillings below ten above because all these lay easily within your reach Consider how much lesse all this earth is to him that sits in heaven and spans all this world and reunites in an instant armes and legs bloud and bones in what corners so ever they be scattered The greater work may seem to be in reducing the soul That that soule which sped so ill in that body last time it came to it as that it contracted Originall sinne then and was put to the slavery to serve that body and to serve it in the ways of sinne not for an Apprentiship of seven but seventy years after that that soul after it hath once got loose by death and liv'd God knows how many thousands of years free from that body that abus'd it so before and in the sight and fruition of that God where it was in no danger should willingly nay desirously ambitiously seek this scuttered body this Eastern and Western and Northern and Southern body this is the most inconsiderable consideration and yet Ego I I the same body and the same soul shall be recompact again and be identically numerically individually the same man The same integrity of body and soul and the same integrity in the Organs of my body and in the faculties of my soul too I shall be all there my body and my soul all my body all my soul I am not all here I am here now preaching upon this text and I am at home in my Library considering whether S. Gregory or S. Hierome have said best of this text before I am here speaking to you and yet I consider by the way in the same instant what it is likely you will say to one another when I have done you are not all here neither you are here now hearing me and yet you are thinking that you have heard a better Sermon somewhere else of this text before you are here and yet you think you could have heard some other doctrine of down-right Predestinations and Reprobation roundly delivered somewhere else with more edification to youâ— you are here and you remember your selves that now yee think of it This had been the fittest time now when every body else is at Church to have made such and such a private visit and because you would bee there you are there I cannot say you cannot say so perfectly so entirely now as at the Resurrection Ego I am here I body and soul I soul and faculties as Christ sayd to Peter Noli timere Ego sum Fear nothing it is I so I say to my selfe Noli timere My soul why art thou so sad my body why dost thou languish Ego I body and soul soul and faculties shall say to Christ Jesus Ego sum Lord it is I and hee shall not say Nescio te I know thee not but avow me and place me at his right hand Ego sum I am the man that hath seen affliction by the rod of his wrath Ego sum and I the same man shall receive the crown of glory which shall not fade Ego I the same person Ego videbo I shall see I have had no looking-glasse in my grave to see how my body looks in the dissolution I know not how I have had no houre-glasse in my grave to see how my time passes I know not when for when my eylids are closed in my death-bed the Angel hath said to me that time shall be no more Till I see eternity the ancient of days I shall see no more but then I shall Now why is Iob gladder of the use of this sense of seeing then of any of the other He is not He is glad of seeing but not of the sense but of the Object It is true that is said in the School Viciniùs se habent potentiae sensitivae ad animam quà m corpus Our sensitive faculties have more relation to the soul then to the body but yet to some purpose and in some measure all the senses shall be in our glorifyed bodies In actu or in potentiâ
one person in him My flesh shall no more be none of mine then Christ shall not be man as well as God SERMON XV. Preached at Lincolns Inne 1 COR. 15. 50. Now this I say Brethren that flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdome of God SAint Gregory hath delivered this story That Eutychius who was Bishop of Constantinople having written a book of the Resurrection and therein maintained that errour That the body of Christ had not that our bodies in the Resurrection should not have any of the qualities of a naturall body but that those bodies were in subtilitatem redacta so rarifyed so refined so attenâ—ated and reduced to a thinnesse and subtlenesse that they were aery bodies and not bodies of flesh and blood This error made a great noise and raised a great dust till the Emperour to avoid scandall which for the most part arises out of publick conferences was pleased to hear Eutychius and Gregory dispute this point privately before himself and a small company And that upon conference the Emperour was so well satisfyed that hee commanded Eutychius his books to bee burnt That after this both Gregory and Eutychius fell sicke but Eutychius dyed and dyed with this protestation In hâc carne in this flesh taking up the flesh of his hand in the presence of them that were there in this flesh I acknowledge that I and all men shall arise at the day of Judgement Now the principall place of Scripture which in his book and in that conference Eutychius stood upon was this Text these words of Saint Paul This I say brethren that flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdome of God And the directest answer that Gregory gave to it was Caro secundum culpam non regnabit sed Caro secundum naturam sinfull flesh shall not but naturall flesh that is flesh indued with all qualities of flesh all such qualities as imply no defect no corruption for there was flesh before there was sin such flesh and such blood shall inherit the Kingdome of God As there have been more Heresies about the Humanity of Christ then about his Divinity so there have been more heresies about the Resurrection of his body and consequently of ours then about any other particular article that concerns his Humiliation or Exaltation Simon Magus strook deepest at first to the root That there was no Resurrection at all The Gnosticks who took their name from knowledge as though they knew all and no body else any thing which is a pride transferr'd through all Heretickes for as that sect in the Roman Church which call themselves Ignorantes and seem to pretend to no knowledge doe yet believe that they know a better way to heaven then all other men doe so that sect amongst them which called themselves Nullanos Nothings thought themselves greater in the Kingdome of God then either of the other two sects of diminution the Minorits or the Minims did These Gnosticks acknowledged a Resurrection but they said it was of the soul onely and not of the body for they thought that the soul lay dead at least in a dead sleep till the Resurrection Those Heretickes that are called the Arabians did as the Gnosticks did affirm a temporary death of the soul as well as of the body but then they allowed a Resurrection to both soul and body after that death which the Gnostickes did not but to the soul onely Hymeneus and Philetus of whom Saint Paul speakes they restrained the Resurrection to the soule but then they restrained this Resurrection of the soule to this life and that in those who were baptized the Resurrection was accomplished already Eutychius whom wee mentioned before enlarged the Resurrection to the body as well as to the soul but enlarged the qualities of the body so far as that it was scarce a body The Armenian hereticks said that it was not onely Corpus humâ—num but Corpus masculinum That all should rise in the perfecter sex and none as women Origen allowed a Resurrection and allowed the Body to be a naturall body but the contracted the time he said that when we rose we should enjoy the benefits of the resurrection even in bodily pleasures for a thousand years and then be annihilated or absorpted and swallowed up into the nature and essence of God himselfe for it will be hard to state Origens opinion in this point Origen was not herein well understood in his owne time not doe we understand him now for the most part but by his accusers and those that have written against him Divers of these Heretiques for the maintenance of their severall heresies perverted this Scripture Flesh and bloud cannot inherit the kingdome of God and that occasioned those Fathers who opposed those heresies so diverse from one another to interpret these words diversly according to the heresie they opposed All agree that they are an argument for the resurrection though they seem at first to oppose it For this Chapter hath three generall parts first Resurrectionem esse that there shall be a Resurrection which the Apostle proves by many and various arguments to the thirty fifth verse And then Quati corpore the body shall rise but some will say How are the dead raised and with what body doe they come in that thirty fifth verse And lastly Quid de superstitibus what shall become of them who shall be found alive at the day We shall all be changed verse fifty one Now this text is the knot and corollary or all the second part concerning the qualities of the bodies in the resurrection Now says the Apostle now that I have said enough to prove that a resurrection there is now now that I have said enough what kind of bodies shall arise now I show you as much in the Negative as I have done in the Affirmative now I teach you what to avoid as well as I have done what to affect now this I say brethren that flesh and bloud cannot inherit the kingdome of God Now though those words be primarily principally intended of the last Resurrection yet in a secondary respect they are appliable in themselves and very often applied by the ancients to the first Resurrection our resurrection in this life Tertullian hath intimated and presented both together elegantly when he says of God Nobis arrhabonem spiritus reliquit arrhabonem à nobis accepit God hath given us his earnest and a pawn from him upon earth in giving us the holy Ghost and he hath received our earnest and a pawn from us into heaven by receiving our nature in the body of Christ Jesus there Flesh and bloud when it is conformed to the flesh and bloud of Christ now glorified and made like his by our resurrectien may inherite the kingdome of God in heaven Yea flesh and bloud being conformed to Christ by the sanctification of the holy Ghost here in this world may inherit the kingdome of God here upon earth for God hath a
those sins upon other persons But all Israel stones thee arrows flie from every corner and thy measure is not to thank God that thou art not as the Publican as some other man but thy measure is to be pure and holy as thy father in heaven is pure and holy and to conform thy self in some measure to thy pattern Christ Jesus Against him it is noted that the Jews took up stones twice to stone him Once wheÌ„ they did it He went away and hid himself Our way to scape these arrows these tentations is to goe out of the way to abandon all occasions and conversation that may lead into tentation In the other place Christ stands to it and disputes it out with them and puts them from it by the scriptum est and that 's our safe shield since we must necessarily live in the way of tentations for coluber in via there is a snake in every path tentation in every calling still to receive all these arrowes upon the shield of faith still to oppose the scriptum est the faithfull promises of God that he will give us the issue with the tentation when we cannot avoid the tentation it self Otherwise these arrows are so many as would tire and wear out all the diligence and all the constancy of the best morall man Wee finde many mentions in the Scriptures of filling of quivers and emptying of quivers and arrows and arrows still in the plurall many arrows But in all the Bible I think we finde not this word as it signifies tentation or tribulation in the singular one arrow any where but once where David cals it The arrow that flies by day And is seen that is known by every man for for that the Fathers and Ancients runne upon that Exposition that that one arrow common to all that day-arrow visible to all is the naturall death so the Chalde paraphrase calls it there expresly Sagitta mâ—rtis The arrow of death which every man knows to belong to every man for as clearly as he sees the Sunne set he sees his death before his eyes Therefore it is such an arrow as the Prophet does not say Thou shalt not feel but Thou shalt not feare the arrow that flies by day The arrow the singular arrow that flies by day is that arrow that fals upon every man death But every where in the Scriptures but this one place they are plurall many so many as that we know not whence nor what they are Nor ever does any man receive one arrow alone any one tentation but that he receives another tentation to hide that though with another and another sin And the use of arrows in the war was not so much to kill as to rout and disorder a battail and upon that routing followed execution Every tentation every tribulation is not deadly But their multiplicity disorders us discomposes us unseâ—â—les us and so hazards us Not onely every periodicall variation of our years youth and age but every day hath a divers arrow every houre of the day a divers tentation An old man wonders then how an arrow from an eye could wound him when he was young and how love could make him doe those things which hee did then And an arrow from the tongue of inferiour people that which we make shift to call honour wounds him deeper now and ambition makes him doe as strange things now as love did then A fair day shoots arrows of visits and comedies and conversation and so wee goe abroad and a foul day shoots arrows of gaming or chambering and wantonnesse and so we stay at home Nay the same sin shoots arrows of presumption in God before it be committed and of distrust and diffidence in God after we doe not fear before and we cannot hope after And this is that misery from this plurality and multiplacity of these arrows these manifold tentations which David intends here and as often as he speaks in the same phrase of plurality vituli multi many buls canes multi many dogs and bellantes multi many warlike enemies and aquaeâ— multae many deep waters compasse me For as it is said of the spirit of wisdome that it is unicus multiplex manifoldly one plurally singular so the spirit of tentation in every soul is unicus multiplex singularly plurall rooted in some one beloved sin but derived into infinite branches of tentation And then these arrows stick in us the raine fals but that cold sweat hangs not upon us Hail beats us but it leaves no pock-holes in our skin These arrows doe not so fall about us as that they misse us nor so hit us as they rebound back without hurting us But we complain with Ieremy The sons of his quiver are entred into our reins The Roman Translation reads that filias The daughters of his quiver If it were but so daughters we might limit these arrows in the signification of tentations by the many occasions of tentation arising from that sex But the Originall hath it filios the sons of his quiver and therefore we consider these arrows in a stronger signification tribulations as well as tentations They stick in us Consider it but in one kinde diseases sicknesses They stick to us so as that we are not sure that any old diseases mentioned in Physicians books are worn out but that every year produces new of which they have no mention we are sure We can scarce expresse the number scarce sound the names of the diseases of mans body 6000 year hath scarce taught us what they are how they affect us how they shall be cur'd in us nothing on this side the Resurrection can teach us They stick to us so as that they passe by inheritance and last more generations in families then the inheritance it self does and when no land no Manor when no title no honour descends upon the heir the stone or the gout descends upon him And as though our bodies had not naturally diseases and infirmities enow we contract more inflict more and that out of necessity too in mortifications and macerations and Disciplines of this rebellious flesh I must have this body with me to heaven or else salvation it self is not perfect And yet I cannot have this body thither except as S. Paul did his I beat down this body attenuate this body by mortification Wretched man that I am who shall deliver me from this body of death I have not body enough for my body and I have too much body for my soul not body enough not bloud enough not strength enough to sustain my self in health and yet body enough to destroy my soul and frustrate the grace of God in that miserable perplexed riddling condition of man sin makes the body of man miserable and the remedy of sin mortification makes it miserable too If we enjoy the good things of this world Duriorem carcerem praeparamus wee doe but carry an other wall about our
thee in directing body and soul to thy glory and when thou shalt be pleased to take us in pieces by death receive our souls to thee and lay up our bodies for thee in consecrated ground and in a Christian buryall And lastly thine arrows were followed and pressed with the hand of God The hand of God pressed upon thee in that eternall decree in that irrevocable contract between thy Father and thee in that Oportuit pati That all that thou must suffer and so enter into our glory Establish us O Lord in all occasions of diffidences here and when thy hand presses our arrows upon us enable us to see that that very hand hath from all eternity written and written in thine own blood a decree of the issue as well and as soon as of the tentation In which confidence of which decree as men in the virtue thereof already in possession of heaven we joyn with that Quire in that service in that Anthem Blessing and glory and wisdome and thanksgiving and honour and power and might be unto our God for ever and ever Amen SERMON XX. Preached at Lincolns Inne PSAL. 38. 3. There is no soundnesse in my flesh because of thine anger neither is there any rest in my bones because of my sinne IN that which is often reported to you out of Saint Hierome Titulus clavis that the title of the Psalme is the key of the Psalm there is this good use That the book of Psalms is a mysterious book and if we had not a lock every man would thrust in and if we had not a key we could not get in our selves Our lock is the analogy of the Christian faith That wee admit no other sense of any place in any Psalm then may consist with the articles of the Christian faith for so no Heretique no Schismatique shall get in by any countenance of any place in the Psalms and then our key is that intimation which we receive in the title of the Psalm what duty that Psalm is principally directed upon and so we get into the understanding of the Psalm and profiting by the Psalm Our key in this Psalm given us in the title thereof is that it is Psalmus ad Recordationem a Psalm of Remembrance The faculty that is awakened here is our Memory That plurall word nos which was used by God in the making of Man when God said Faciamus Let us us make man according to our image as it intimates a plurality a concurrence of all the Trinity in our making so doth it also a plurality in that image of God which was then imprinted in us As God one God created us so wee have a soul one soul that represents and is some image of that one God As the three Persons of the Trinity created us so we have in our one soul a threefold impression of that image and as Saint Bernard calls it A trinity from the Trinity in those three faculties of the soul the Vnderstanding the Will and the Memory God calls often upon the first faculty O that this people would but understand But understand Inscrutabiliâ— judicia tua Thy judgements are unsearchable and thy ways past finding out And oh that this people would not goe about to understand those unreveâ—led decrees and secrets of God God calls often upon the other faculty the Will too and complaines of the stiffe perversnesse and opposition of that Through all the Prophets runs that charge Noluerunt and Noluerunt they would not they refused me Noluerunâ— audire says God in Esay They are rebellious children that will not hear Domus Israel noluit says God to Ezekiel The house of Israel will not hear thee not Thee not the minister That 's no marvail it is added by God there Noluit me they will not hear me Noluerunt erubescere says God to Ieremy They will not be ashamed of their former ways And therefore Noluerunt reverti They will not return to better ways Hee that is past shame of sin is past recovery from sin So Christ continues that practise and that complaint in the Gospel too He sends forth his servants us to call them that were bidden Et noluerunt venire and they would not come upon their call Hee comes himself and would gather them as hen her chickens and they would not Their fault is not laid in this that they had no such faculty as a will for then their not coming were not their fault but that they perverted that will Of our perversenesse in both faculties understanding and will God may complain but as much of our memory for for the rectifying of the will the understanding must be rectified and that implies great difficulty But the memory is so familiar and so present and so ready a faculty as will always answer if we will but speak to it and aske it what God hath done for us or for others The art of salvation is but the art of memory When God gave his people the Law he proposes nothing to them but by that way to their memory I am the Lord your God which brought you out of the land of Egypt Remember but that And when we expresse Gods mercy to us we attribute but that faculty to God that he remembers us Lord what is man that thou art mindfull of him And when God works so upon us as that He makes his wonderfull works to be had in remembrance it is as great a mercy as the very doing of those wonderfull works was before It was a seal upon a seal a seal of confirmation it was a sacrament upon a sacrament when in instituting the sacrament of his body and his bloud Christ presented it so Doe this in remembrance of me Memorare novissima remember the last things and fear will keep thee from sinning Memorare praeterita remember the first things what God hath done for thee and love love which mis-placed hath transported thee upon many sins love will keep thee from sinning Plato plac'd all learning in the memory wee may place all Religion in the memory too All knowledge that seems new to day sayes Plato is but a remembring of that which your soul knew before All instruction which we can give you to day is but the remembring you of the mercies of God which have been new every morning Nay he that hears no Sermons he that reads no Scriptures hath the Bible without book He hath a Genesis in his memory he cannot forget his Creation he hath an Exodus in his memory he cannot forget that God hath delivered him from some kind of Egypt from some oppression He hath a Leviticus in his memory hee cannot forget that God hath proposed to him some Law some rules to be observed He hath all in his memory even to the Revelation God hath revealed to him even at midnight alone what shall be his portion in the next world And if he dare but remember that nights communication
people and gather them so So Christ tells us things in darknesse And so Christ speakes to us in our Ear And these low voices and holy whisperings and halfe-silences denote to us the inspirations of his Spirit as his Spirit beares witnesse with our spirit as the Holy Ghost insinuates himselfe into our soules and works upon us so by his private motions But this is not Gods ordinary way to be whispering of secrets The first thing that God made was light The last thing that he hath reserved to doe is the manifestation of the light of his Essence in our Glorification And for Publication of himselfe here by the way he hath constituted a Church in a Visibility in an eminency as a City upon a hill And in this Church his Ordinance is Ordinance indeed his Ordinance of preaching batters the soule and by that breach the Spirit enters His Ministers are an Earth-quake and shake an earthly soule They are the sonnes of thunder and scatter a cloudy conscience They are as the fall of waters and carry with them whole Congregations 3000 at a Sermon 5000 at a Sermon a whole City such a City as Niniveh at a Sermon and they are as the roaring of a Lion where the Lion of the tribe of Juda cries down the Lion that seekes whom he may devour that is Orthodoxall and fundamentall truths are established against clamorous and vociferant innovations Therefore what Christ tels us in the darke he bids us speake in the light and what he saies in our eare he bids us preach on the house top Nothing is Gospell not Evangelium good message if it be not put into a Messengers mouth and delivered by him nothing is conducible to his end nor available to our salvation except it be avowable doctrine doctrine that may be spoke alowd though it awake them that sleep in their sinne and make them the more froward for being so awaked God hath made all things in a Roundnesse from the round superficies of this earth which we tread here to the round convexity of those heavens w ch as long as they shal have any beeing shall be our footstool when we come to heaven God hath wrapped up all things in Circles and then a Circle hath no Angles there are no Corners in a Circle Corner Divinity clandestine Divinity are incompatible termes If it be Divinity it is avowable The heathens served their Gods in Temples sub dio without roofs or coverings in a free opennesse and where they could in Temples made of Specular stone that was transparent as glasse or crystall so as they which walked without in the streets might see all that was done within And even nature it self taught the naturall man to make that one argument of a man truly religious Aperto vivere voto That he durst pray aloud and let the world heare what he asked at Gods hand which duty is best performed when we joyne with the Congregation in publique prayer Saint Augustine hath made that note upon the Donatists That they were Clancularii clandestine Divines Divines in Corners And in Photius we have such a note almost upon all Heretiques as the Nestorian was called Coluber a snake because though he kept in the garden or in the meadow in the Church yet he lurked and lay hid to doe mischief And the Valentinian was called a Grashopper because he leaped and skipped from place to place and that creature the Grashopper you may hear as you passe but you shall hardly find him at his singing you may hear a Conventicle Schismatick heare him in his Pamphlets heare him in his Disciples but hardly surprize him at his exercise Publication is a fair argument of truth That tasts of Luthers holy animosity and zealous vehemency when he says Audemus gloriari Christum à nobis primo vulgatum other men had made some attempts at a Reformation and had felt the pulse of some persons and some Courts and some Churches how they would relish a Reformation But Luther rejoyces with a holy exultation That he first published it that he first put the world to it So the Apostles proceeded when they came in their peregrination to a new State to a new Court to Rome it selfe they did not enquire how stands the Emperour affected to Christ and to the preaching of his Gospel Is there not a Sister or a Wife that might be wrought upon to further the preaching of Christ Are there not some persons great in power and place that might be content to hold a party together by admitting the preaching of Christ This was not their way They only considered who sent them Christ Jesus And what they brough salvation to every soul that embraced Christ Jesus That they preached and still begunne with a Vae si non Never tell us of displeasure or disgrace or detriment or death for preaching of Christ. For woe be unto us if we preach him not And still they ended with a Qui non crediderit Damnabitur Never deceive your own souls He to whom Christ hath been preached and beleeves not shall be damned All Divinity that is bespoken and not ready made fitted to certaine turnes and not to generall ends And all Divines that have their soules and consciences so disposed as their Libraries may bee At that end stand Papists and at that end Protestants and he comes in in the middle as neare one as the other all these have a brackish taste as a River hath that comes near the Sea so have they in comming so neare the Sea of Rome In this the Prophet exalts our Consolation Though the Lord give us the bread of Adversity and the water of Affliction yes shall not our Teachers be removed into corners They shall not be silenced by others they shall not affect of themselves Corner Divinity But saies he there our eyes shall see our Teachers and our eares shall hear a word saying This is the way walke in it For so they shall declare that they have taken to heart this Commandement of him that sent them Christ Jesus All that you receive from me you must deliver to my people therefore Take heed what you hear forget none of it But then you must deliver no more then that and therefore in that respect also Take heed what you hear adde nothing to that and that is the other obligation which Christ laies here upon his Apostles That reading of those words of Saint Iohn Omnis spiritus qui solvit Iesum Every spirit that dissolves Jesus that takes him asunder in pieces and beleeves not all is a very ancient reading of that place And upon that Ancient reading the Ancients infer well That not onely that spirit that denies that Christ being God assumed our flesh not onely he that denies that Christ consists of two natures God and Mam but he also that affirmes this Christ thus consisting of two natures to consist also of two persons this man dissolves Iesus takes him asunder in
against us but yet with our ten thousand we may meet their twenty thousand if we have put on Christ and be armed with him and his holy patience and constancy but from whom may we derive an assurance that we shall have that armor that patience that constancy First a Christian must purpose to Doe and then in cases of necessity to suffer And give me leave to make this short note by the way no man shall suffer like a Christian that hath done nothing like a Christian God shall thanke no man for dying for him and his glory that contributed nothing to his glory in the actions of his life very hardly shall that man be a Martyr in a persecution that did not what he could to keep off persecution Thus then Iob comes first to the Si occiderit If he should kill me If Gods anger should proceed so far as so far it may proceed Let no man say in a sicknesse or in any temporall calamity this is the worst for a worse thing then that may fall five and thirty years sicknesse may fall upon thee and as it is in that Gospell a worse thing then that Distraction and desperation may fall upon thee let no Church no State in any distress say this is the worst for onely God knowes what is the worst that God can doe to us Iob does not deny here but that this Si occiderit if it come to a matter of life it were another manner of triall then either the si irruerent Sabaei if the Sabaeans should come and drive his Cattell and slay his servants more then the si ignis caderet if the fire of God should fall from heaven and devoute all more then the si ventus concuteret if the winde of the wildernesse should shake downe his house and kill and all his children The Devill in his malice saw that if it came to matter of life Iob was like enough to be shaked in his faith Skin for skin and all that ever a man hath will he give for his life God foresaw that in his gracious providence too and therefore he took that clause out of Satans Commission and inserted his veruntamen animam ejus servae medle not with his life The love of this life which is naturall to us and imprinted by God in us is not sinfull Few and evill have the days of my pilgrimage been says lacob to Pharaeoh though they had been evill which makes our days seem long and though he were no young man when he said so yet the days which he had past he thought few and desired more When Eliah was fled into the wildernesse and that in passion and vehemence he said to God Sufficit Domine tolle animam meam It is enough O Lord now take away my life if he had been heartily thoroughly weary of his life he needed not to have fled from Iesabel for he fled but to save his life The Apostle had a Cupie dissolvi a desire to be dissolved but yet a love to his brethren corrected that desire and made him finde that it was far better for him to live Our Saviour himselfe when it came to the pinch and to the agony had a Transeat Calix a naturall declining of death The naturall love of our naturall life is not ill It is ill in many cases not to love this life to expose it to unnecessary dangers is alwayes ill and there are overtures to as great sinnes in hating this life as in loving it and therefore Iobs first consideration is si occideret if he should kill me if I thought he would kill me this were enough to put me from trusting in any But Iobs consideration went farther then to the si occideret Though he should kill me for it comes to an absolute assurance that God will kill him for so it is in the Originall Ecce occidet Behold I see he will kill me I have I can have no hope of life at his hands T is all our cases Adam might have liv'd if he would but I cannot God hath placed an Ecce a marke of my death upon every thing living that I can set mine eye upon every thing is a remembrancer every thing is a Judge upon me and pronounces I must dye The whole frame of the world is mortall Heaven and Earth passe away and upon us all there is an irrecoverable Decree past statutum est It is appointed to all men that they shall once dye But when quickly If thou looke up into the aire remember that thy life is but a winde If thou see a cloud in the aire aske St. Iames his question what is your life and give St. Iames his answer It is a vapour that appeareth and vanisheth away If thou behold a Tree then Iob gives thee a comparison of thy selfe A Tree is an embleme of thy selfe nay a Tree is the originall thou art but the copy thou art not so good as it for There is hope of a tree as you reade there if the roote wax old if the stock be dead if it be cut down yet by the sent of the waters it will bud but man is sick and dyeth and where is he he shall not wake againe till heaven be no more Looke upon the water and we are as that and as that spilt upon the ground Looke to the earth and we are not like that but we are earth it self At our Tables we feed upon the dead and in the Temple we tread upon the dead and when we meet in a Church God hath made many echoes many testimonies of our death in the walls and in the windowes and he onely knowes whether he will not make another testimony of our mortality of the youngest amongst us before we part and make the very place of our buriall our deathbed Iobs contemplation went so far not onely to a Si occideret to a possibility that he might dye but to an Ecce occidet to an assurance that he must dye I know there is an infalliblenesse in the Decree an inevitablenesse in nature an inexorablenesse in God I must dye And the word beares a third interpretation beyond this for si occiderit is not onely if he should kill me as he maâ— if he will and it may be he will nor onely that I am sure he will kill me I know I must dye but the word may very well be also though he have killed me So that Iobs resolution that he will trust in God is grounded upon all these considerations That there is exercise of our hope in God before death in the agony of death and after death First in our good dayes and in the time of health Memorare novissima sayes the wise man we must remember our end our death But that we cannot forget every thing presents that to us But his counsell there is in omnibus operibus In all thine undertakings in all thine actions remember thine end when thou art in any worldly
work for advancing thy state remember thy naturall death but especially when thou art in a sinfull worke for satisfying thy lusts remember thy spirituall death Be afraid of this death and thou wilt never feare the other Thou wilt rather sigh with David My soule hath too long dwelt with him that hateth peace Thou wilt be glad when a bodily death may deliver thee from all farther danger of a spirituall death And thou wilt be ashamed of that imputation which is layd upon worldly men by St. Cyprian Ad nostros navigamus ventos contrarios optamus we pretend to be sayling homewards and yet we desire to have the winde against us we are travelling to the heavenly Ierusalem and yet we are loath to come thither Here then is the use of our hope before death that this life shall be a gallery into a better roome and deliver us over to a better Country for if in this life onely we have hope in Christ we are of all men the most miserable Secondly in the agony of death when the Sessions are come and that as a prisoner may looke from that Tower and see the Judge that must condemne him to morrow come in to night so we lye upon our death-bed and apprehend a present judgement to be given upon us when if we will not pleade to the Indictment if we will stand mute and have nothing to say to God we are condemned already condemned in our silence and if we do plead we have no plea but guilty nothing to say but to confesse all the Indictment against our selves when the flesh is too weake as that it can performe no office and yet would faine stay here when the soule is laden with more sins then she can bear and yet would faine contract more in this agony there is this use of our hope that as God shall then when our bodily eares are deaf whisper to our soules and say Memento homo Remember consider man that thou art but dust and art now returning into dust so we in our hearts when our bodily tongues are speechlesse may then say to God as it is in Iob Memento quaeso Remember thou also I beseech thee O God that it is thou that hast made me as clay and that it is thou that bringest me to that state againe and therefore come thou and looke to thine owne worke come and let thy servant depart in peace in having seen his salvation My hope before death is that this life is the way my hope at death is that my death shall be a doore into a better state Lastly the use of our hope is after death that God by his promise hath made himself my debter till he restore my body to me againe in the resurrection My body hath sinned and he hath not redeemed a sinner he hath not saved a sinner except he have redeemed and saved my body as well as my soule To those soules that lye under the Altar and solicite God for the resurrection in the Revelation God sayes That they should rest for a little season untill their fellow-servants and their brethren that should be killed even as they were were fulfilled All that while while that number is fulfilling is our hopes exercised after our death And therefore the bodies of the Saints of God which have been Temples of the Holy Ghost when the soule is gone out of them are not to be neglected as a sheath that had lost the knife as a shell that had spent the kernell but as the Godhead did not depart from the dead body of Christ Jesus then when that body lay dead in the grave so the power of God and the merit of Christ Jesus doth not depart from the body of man but his blood lives in our ashes and shall in his appointed time awaken this body againe to an everlasting glory Since therefore Iob had and we have this assurance before we dye when we dye after we are dead it is upon good reason that he did and we do trust in God though he should kill us when he doth kill us after he hath killed us Especially since it is Ille He who is spoken of before he that kills and gives life he that wounds and makes whole againe God executes by what way it pleases him condemned persons cannot chuse the manner of their death whether God kill by sicknesse by age by the hand of the law by the malice of man si ille as long as we can see that it is he he that is Shaddai Vastator Restaurator the destroyer and the repairer howsoever he kill yet he gives life too howsoever he wound yet he heales too howsoever he lock us into our graves now yet he hath the keys of hell and death and shall in his time extend that voyce to us all Lazare veni for as come forth of your putrefaction to incorruptible glory Amen SERMON XXXI Preached at Hanworth to my Lord of Carlile and his company being the Earles of Northumberland and Buckingham c. Aug. 25. 1622. JOE 36. 25. Every man may see it man may behold it afar off THe words are the words of Elihu Elihu was one of Iobs friends and a meer naturall man a man not captivated not fettered not enthralled in any particular forme of Religion as the Iewes were a man not macerated with the feare of God not infatuated with any preconceptions which Nurses or Godfathers or Parents or Church or State had infused into him not dejected not suppled not matured not entendred with crosses in this world and so made apt to receive any impressions or follow any opinions of other men a meer naturall man and in the meer use of meer naturall reason this man sayes of God in his works Every man may see it Man may behold it afar off It is the word of a naturall man and the holy Ghost having canonized it sanctified it by inserting it into the booke of God it is the word of God too Saint Paul cites sometimes the words of secular Poets and approves them and then the words of those Poets become the word of God Elihu speakes a naturall man and God speakes in canonizing his words and therefore when we speake to godly men we are sure to be believed for God sayes it if we were to speake to naturall men onely we might be believed for Elihu a naturall man and wise in his generation sayes it that for God in his works Every man may see it man may behold it afar off Be pleased to admit and charge your memories with this distribution of the words Let the parts be but two so you will be pleased to stoop and gather or at least to open your hands to receive some more I must not say flowers for things of sweetnesse and of delight grow not in my ground but simples rather and medicinall herbs of which as there enter many into good cordials so in this supreme cordiall of bringing
watchfulnesse that we fall not into sinne we have lucem essentiae possession and fruition of heaven and of the light of Gods presence and then if we doe by infirmity fall into sinne yet by this denudation of our soules this manifestation of our sinnes to God by confession and to that purpose a gladnesse when we heare our sinne spoken of by the preacher we have lumen gloriae an inchoation of our glorified estate and then an other couple of these lights which we propose to be considered is lumen fidei and lumen naturae the light of faith and the light of nature Of these two lights Faith and Grace first and then Nature and Reason we said something before but never too much be cause contentious spirits have cast such clouds upon both these lights that some have said Nature doth all alone and others that Nature hath nothing to do at all but all is Grace we decline wranglings that tend not to edification we say onely to our present purpose which is the operation of these severall couples of lights that by this light of Faith to him which hath it all that is involved in Prophecies is clear and evident as in a History already done and all that is wrapped up in promises is his own already in performance That man needs not goe so high for his assurance of a Messias and Redeemer as to the first promise made to him in Adam nor for the limitation of the stock and race from whence this Messias should come so far as to the renewing of this promise in Abraham nor for the description of this Messias who he should be and of whom he should be born as to Esaias nor to Micheas for the place nor for the time when he should accomplish all this so far as to Daniel no nor so far as to the Evangelists themselves for the History and the evidence that all this that was to be done in his behalf by the Messias was done 1600. yeares since But he hath a whole Bible and an abundant Library in his own heart and there by this light of Faith which is not onely a knowing but an applying an appropriating of all to thy benefit he hath a better knowledge then all this then either Propheticall or Evangelicall for though both these be irrefragable and infallible proofs of a Messias the Propheticall that he should the Evangelicall that he is come yet both these might but concern others this light of Faith brings him home to thee How sure so ever I be that the world shall never perish by water yet I may be drowned and how sure so ever that the Lamb of God hath taken away the sinnes of the world I may perish without I have this applicatory Faith And as he needs not looke back to Esay nor Abraham nor Adam for the Messias so neither needs he to looke forward He needs not stay in expectation of the Angels Trumpets to awaken the dead he is not put to his usquequo Domine How long Lord wilt thou defer our restitution but he hath already died the death of the righteous which is to die to sinne He hath already had his buriall by being buried with Christ in Baptisme he hath had his Resurrection from sinne his Ascension to holy purposes of amendment of life and his Iudgement that is peace of Conscience sealed unto him and so by this light of applying Faith he hath already apprehended an eternall possession of Gods eternall Kingdome And the other light in this second couple is Lux naturae the light of Nature This though a fainter light directs us to the other Nature to Faith and as by the quantitie in the light of the Moone we know the position and distance of the Sunne how far or how neare the Sunne is to her so by the working of the light of Nature in us we may discern by the measure and virtue and heat of that how near to the other greater light the light of Faith we stand If we finde our naturall faculties rectified so as that that free will which we have in Morall and Civill actions be bent upon the externall duties of Religion as every naturall man may out of the use of that free will come to Church heare the Word preached and believe it to be true we may be sure the other greater light is about us If we be cold in them in actuating in exalting in using our naturall faculties so farre we shall be deprived of all light we shall not see the Invisible God in visible things which Saint Paul makes so inexcusable so unpardonable a thing we shall not see the hand of God in all our worldly crosses nor the seal of God in all our worldly blessings we shall not see the face of God in his House his presence here in the Church nor the mind of God in his Gospell that his gracious purposes upon mankinde extend so particularly or reach so far as to include us I shall heare in the Scripture his Vinite omnes come all and yet I shall thinke thatâ— his eye was not upon me that his eye did not becken me and I shall heare the Deus vult omnes salves that God would save all and yet I shall finde some perverse reason in my selfe why it is not likely that God will save me I am commanded scrutari Scripturas to search the scriptures now that is not to be able to repeat any history of the Bible without booke it is not to ruffle a Bible and upon any word to turne to the Chapter and to the verse but this is exquisit a scrutatio the true searching of the Scriptures to finde all the histories to be examples to me all the prophecies to induce a Saviour for me all the Gospell to apply Christ Jesus to me Turne over all the folds and plaits of thine owne heart and finde there the infirmities and waverings of thine owne faith and an ability to say Lord I beleeve help mine unbeleefe and then though thou have no Bible in thy hand or though thou stand in a dark corner nay though thou canst not reade a letter thou hast searched that Scripture thou hast turned to Marke 9. ver 24 Turne thine eare to God and heare him turning to thee and saying to thy soule I will marry thee to my selfe for ever and thou hast searched that Scripture and turned to Hos. 2. ver 19. Turne to thine owne histery thine owne life and if thou canst reade there that thou hast endeavoured to turne thine ignorance into knowledge and thy knowledge into Practice if thou finde thy selfe to be an example of that rule of Christs If you know these things blessed are you if you do them then thou hast searched that Scripture and turned to Io. 13. ver 14. This is Scrutari Scripturas to Search the Scriptures not as though thou wouldest make a concordance but an application as thou wouldest search a
what ground he sayes or does or suffers that which he suffers and does and sayes Howsoever he pretend the honour of God in his testimony yet if the thing be materially false false in it self though true in his opinion or formally false true in it self but not known to be so to him that testifies it both ways he is an incompetent witnesse And this takes away the honour of having been witnesses for Christ and the consolation and style of Martyrs both from them who upon such evidence as can give no assurance that is traedi tions of men have grounded their faith in God and from them who take their light in corners and conventicles and not from the City set upon the top of a hill the Church of God Those Roman Priests who have given their lives those Separatists which have taken a voluntary banishment are not competent witnesses for the glory of God for a witnesse must know and qui testatur de scientia testetur de modo scientiae sayes the Law He that will prove any thing by his knowledge must prove how he came by that knowledge The Papist hath not the knowledge of his Doctrine from any Scripture the Separatist hath not the knowledge of his Discipline from any precedent any example in the primitive Church How farre then is that wretched and sinfull man from giving any testimony or glory to Christ in his life who never comes to the knowledge and consideration why he was sent into this life who is so farre from doing his errand that he knowes not what his errand was not whether he received any errand or no. But as though that God who for infinite millions of ages delighted himself in himself and was sufficient in himself and yet at last did bestow six dayes labour for the creation and provision of man as though that God who when man was sowr'd in the lumpe poysoned in the fountaine withered in the roote in the loins of Adam would then ingage his Sonne his beloved Sonne his onely Sonne to be man by a temporary life and to be no man by a violent and a shamefull death as though that God who when he was pleased to come to a creation might have left out thee amongst privations amongst nothings or might have shut thee up in the close prison of a bare being and no more as he hath done earth and stones or if he would have given thee life might have left thee a Toad or if he would have given thee a humane soule might have left thee a heathen without any knowledge of God or if he had afforded thee a Religion might have left thee a Iew or though he had made thee a Christian might have left thee a Papist as though that God that hath done so much more in breeding thee in his true Church had done all this for nothing thou passest thorough this world like a flash like a lightning whose beginning or end no body knowes like an Ignis fatuus in the aire which does not onely not give light for any use but not so much as portend or signifie any thing and thou passest out of the world as thy hand passes out of a basin of water which may bee somewhat the fouler for thy washing in it but retaines no other impression of thy having been there and so does the world for thy life in it When God placed Adam in the world he bad him fill it and subdue it and rule it and when he placed him in paradise he bad him dresse and keepe paradise and when he sent his children into the over-flowing Laud of promise he bad them fight and destroy the Idolaters to every body some task some errand for his glory And thou comest from him into this world as though he had said nothing unto thee but Go and do as you see cause Go and do as you see other men do Thou knowest not that is considerest not what thou wast sent to doe what thou shouldest have done but thou knowest much lesse what thou hast done The light of nature hath taught thee to hide thy sinnes from other men and thou hast been so diligent in that as that thou hast hid them from thy self and canst not finde them in thine owne conscience if at any time the Spirit of God would burne them up or the blood of Christ Jesus wash them out thou canst not finde them out so as that a Sermon or Sacrament can work upon them Perchance thou canst tell when was the first time or where was the first place that thou didst commit such or such a sinne but as a man can remember when he began to spell but not when he began to reade perfectly when he began to joyne his letters but not when he began to write perfectly so thou remembrest when thou wentest timorously and bashfully about sinne at first and now perchance art ashamed of that shamefastnesse and sorry thou beganst no sooner Poore bankrupt that hast sinned out thy soule so profusely so lavishly that thou darest not cast up thine accounts thou darest not aske thy selfe whether thou have any soule left how farre art thou from giving any testimony to Christ that darest not testifie to thy selfe nor heare thy conscience take knowledge of thy transgressions but haddest rather sleepe out thy daies or drinke out thy daies then leave one minute for compunction to lay hold on and doest not sinne alwaies for the love of that sinne but for feare of a holy sorrow if thou shouldest not fill up thy time with that sinne God cannot be mocked saith the Apostle nor God cannot be blinded He seeth all the way and at thy last gaspe he will make thee see too through the multiplying Glasse the Spectacle of Desperation Canst thou hope that that God that seeth this darke Earth through all the vaults and arches of the severall spheares of Heaven that seeth thy body through all thy stone walls and seeth thy soul through that which is darker then all those thy corrupt flesh canst thou hope that that God can be blinded with drawing a curtain between thy sinne and him when he is all eye canst thou hope to put out that eye with putting out a candle when he hath planted legions of Angels about thee canst thou hope that thou hast taken away all Intelligence if thou have corrupted or silenced or sent away a servant O bestow as much labour as thou hast done to finde corners for sin to finde out those sinnes in those corners where thou hast hid them As Princes giveâ— pardons by their own hands but send Judges to execute Justice come to him for mercy in the acknowledgement of thy sinnes and stay not till his Justice come to thee when he makes inquisition for blood and doe not think that if thou feel now at this presentâ— a little tendernesse in thy heart a little melting in thy bowels a little dew in thine eyes that if thou beest come to know that thou art a
invested in the light of joy and my body in the light of glory How glorious is God as he looks down upon us through the Sunne How glorious in that glasse of his How glorious is God as he looks out amongst us through the king How glorious in that Image of his How glorious is God as he calls up our eyes to him in the beauty and splendor and service of the Church How glorious in that spoufe of his But how glorious shall I conceive this light to be cum sub loco viderim when I shall see it in his owne place In that Spheare which though a Spheare is a Center too In that place which though a place is all and every where I shall see it in the face of that God who is all face all manifestration all all Innotescence to me for facies Deiest qua Deus nobis innotescit that 's Gods face to us by which God manifests himselfe to us I shall see this light in his face who is all face and yet all hand all application and communication and delivery of all himselfe to all his Saints This is Beatitudo in Auge blessednesse in the Meridionall height blessednesse in the South point in a perpetuall Sommer solstice beyond which nothing can be proposed to see God so Then There And yet the farmers of heaven and hell the merchants of soules the Romane Church make this blessednesse but an under degree but a kinde of apprentiship after they have beatified declared a man to be blessed in the fruition of God in heaven if that man in that inferiour state doe good service to that Church that they see much profit will rise by the devotion and concurrence of men to the worship of that person then they will proceed to a Canonization and so he that in his Novitiat and years of probation was but blessed Ignatius and blessed Xavier is lately become Saint Xavier aud Saint Ignatius And so they pervert the right order and method which is first to come to Sanctification and then to Beatification first to holinesse and then to blessednesse And in this method our blessed God bee pleased to proceed with us by the operation of his holy Spirit to bring us to Sanctification here and by the merits and intercession of his glorious Sonne to Beatification hereafter That so not being offended in him but resting in those meanes and seales of reconciliation which thou hast instituted in thy Church wee may have life and life more abundantly life of grace here and life of glory there in that kingdome which thy Sonne our Saviour Christ Jesus hath purchased for us with the inestimable price of his incorruptible bloud Amen SERMON XLV Preached at Saint Dunstans Aprill 11. 1624. The first sermon in that Church as Vicar thereof DEUT. 25. 5. If brethren dwell together and one of them die and have no Childe the Wife of the dead shall not mary without unto a stranger her husbands brother shall goe in unto her and take her to him to wife and performe the duty of an husbands brother unto her FRom the beginning God intimated a detestation a dislike of singularity of beeing Alone The first time that God himselfe is named in the Bible in the first verse of Genesis hee is named plurally Creavit Dit Gods Gods in the plurall Created Heaven and Earth God which is but one would not appeare nor bee presented so alone but that hee would also manifest more persons As the Creator was not Singular so neither were the creatures First he created heaven and earth both together which were to be the generall parents and out of which were to bee produced all other creatures and then he made all those other creatures plurally too Male and female created hee them And when he came to make him for whose sake next to his own glory he made the whole world Adam he left not Adam alone but joyned an Eve to him Now when they were maried we know but wee know not when they were divorced we heare when Eve was made but not when shee dyed The husbands death is recorded at last the wives is not at all So much detestation hath God himselfe and so little memory would hee have kept of any singularity of being alone The union of Christ to the whole Church is not expressed by any metaphore by any figure so oft in the Scripture as by this of Mariageâ— and there is in that union with Christ to the whole Church neither husband nor wife can ever die Christ is immortall as hee is himselfe and immortall as hee is the head of the Church the Husband of that wife for that wife the Church is immortall too for as a Prince is the same Prince when he fights a battaile and when hee triumphs after the victory so the militant and the triumphant Church is the same Church There can bee no widower There can bee no Dowager in that case Hee cannot shee cannot die But then this Metaphore this spirituall Mariage holds not onely betweene Christ and the whole Church in which case thee can be no Widow but in the union between Christs particular Ministers and particular Churches and there in that case the husband of that wife may die The present Minister may die and so that Church be a Widow And in that case and for provision of such Widows wee consider the accommodation of this Law If brethren dwell together and one of them die and have no childe the wife of the dead shall not mary without unto a stranger c. This law was but a permissive law rather a dispensation then a law as the permitting of usury to bee taken of strangers and the permitting of divorces in so many cases were At most it was but a Iudiciall law and therefore layes no obligation upon any other nation then them to whom it was given the Iews And therefore wee enquire not the reasons of that law the reasons were determined in that people wee examine not the conveniences of the law the conveniences were determined in those times wee lay hold onely upon the Typique signification and appliablenesse of the law as that secular Mariage there spoken of may be appliable to this spirituall Mariage the Mariage of the Minister to the Church If brethren dwell together c. From these words then wee shall make our approaches and application to the present occasion by these steps First there is a mariage in the case The taking and leaving of a Church is not an indifferent an arbitrary thing It is a Mariage and Mariage implies Honour It is an honourable estate and that implies charge it is a burdensome state There is Honos and Onus Honour and labour in Mariage You must bee content to afford the honour wee must bee content to endure the labour And so in that point as our Incumbencie upon a Church is our Mariage to that Church wee shall as farre as the occasion admits see
tentations to sin He shall eat up my dust so as that it shall fly into mine eys that is so work upon my carnall affections as that they shall not make me blinde nor unable to discern that it is he that works It is said of one kinde of Serpent that because they know by an instinct they have that their skin is good for the use of man for the falling sickness out of Envy they hide their skin when they cast it The Serpent is loth we should have any benefit by him but we have even his tentations arm us and the very falling exalts us when after a sin of infirmity we come to a true and scrutiny of our conscience So he hath nothing to eat but our dust and he eats up our dust so as that he contributes to our glory by his malice The Whale was Ionas Pilot The Crows were Elias caters The Lions were Daniels sentinels The Viper was Pauls advocate it pleaded for him brought the beholders in an instant from extreme to extreme from crying out that Paul was a murderer to cry that he was a god Though at any time the Serpent having brought me to a sin cry out Thou art a murderer that is bring me to a desperate sense of having murdred mine own soul yet in that darkness I shal see light by a present repentance effectual application of the merits of my Savior I shall make the Serpent see I am a God thus far a God that by my adhering to Christ I am made partaker of the Divine Nature For that which S. Chrysost. says of Baptism is true too in the second Baptism Repentance Deposui terram coelum indui then I may say to the Serpent Your meat is dust and I was dust but Deposui terram I have shak'd off my dust by true repentance for I have shak'd off my self and am a new creature and am not now meat for your Table Iam terra non sum sed sal says the same Father I am not now unsavoury dust but I am salt And Sal ex aqua vento says he Salt is made of water and winde I am made up of the water of Baptism of the water of Repentance of the water that accompanies the blood of Christ Jesus and of that winde that blows where it list and hath been pleased to blow upon me the Spirit of God the Holy Ghost and I am no longer meat for the Serpent for Dust must he eat all the days of his life I am a branch of that Vine Christ is the Vine and we are the branches I am a leafe of that Rose of Sharon and of that Lilly of the valleys I am a plant in the Orchard of Pomegranats and that Orchard of Pomegranats is the Church I am a drop of that dew that dew that lay upon the head of Christ. And this Vine and this Rose and Lilly and Pomegranats of Paradise and this Dew of heaven are not Dust And dust must thou eate all the dayes of thy life So then the Prophecy of Esay fulfils it self That when Christ shall reign powerfully over us The wolf and the lamb shall feed together Saul and Ananias shall meet in a house as S. Hierome expounds that and Ananias not be afraid of a Persecutor The Lion shall eate straw like the Bullock says that Prophet in that place Tradent se rusticitati Scripturarum says the same Father The strongest understandings shall content themselves with the homelinesse of the Scriptures and feed upon plain places and not study new dishes by subtilties and perplexities and then Dust shall be the Serpents meat says the Prophet there The power of Satan shall reach but to the body and touch a soul wrapt up in Christ. But then it is Totâ vitâ all his life His diet is impaired but it is not taken away He eats but dust but he shall not lack that as long as hee lives And how long lives the Serpent this Serpent The life of this Serpent is to seduce man to practise upon man to prevaile upon man as farre and as long as man is dust And therefore wee are not onely his dust whilst wee live all which time we serve in our carnall affections for him to feed upon but when we are dead we are his dust still Man was made in that state as that he should not resolve to dust but should have passed from this world to the next without corruption or resolution of the body That which God said to Adam Dust thou art belonged to all from the beginning he and all we were to be of dust in his best integrity but that which God adds there in terram revertêris dust thou art and to it thou shalt returne that the Serpent brought in that was induced upon man by him and his tentation So that when we are living dust here he eats us and when we are dead dust too in the grave he feeds upon us because it proceeds from him both that we die and that we are detained in the state of exinanition and ingloriousnesse in the dust of the earth and not translated immediately to the joyes of heaven as but for him we should have been But as though he do feed upon our living dust that is induce sicknesses and hunger and labour and cold and paine upon our bodies here God raises even that dust out of his hands and redeemes it from his jaws in affording us a deliverance or a â—â—â—â—itution from those bodily calamities here as he did abundantly to his servant and our example Iob so though he feed upon our dead dust and detain our bodies in the disconsolate state of the grave yet as the Godhead the divine nature did not depart from the body of Christ when it lay dead in the grave so neither doth the love and power of God depart from the body of a Christian though resolved to dust in the grave but in his due time shall recollect that dust and recompact that body and reunite that soul in everlasting joy and glory And till then the Serpent lives till the Judgement Satan hath power upon that part of man and that 's the Serpents life first to practise our death and then to hold us in the state of the dead Till then we attend with hope and with prayers Gods holy pleasure upon us and then begins the unchangeable state in our life in body and soul together then we beginne to live and then ends the Serpents life that is his earnest practise upon us in our life and his faint triumph in continuing over our dust That time the time of the generall Resurrection being not yet come the devills thought themselves wronged and complained that Christ came before the time to torment them and therefore Christ yeelded so much to their importunity as to give them leave to enter into the swine And therefore let not us murmur
we shall also see that all those particular that did aggravate the affliction in the former part That they were from the Lord from his Rod from the Rod of his wrath doe all exalt our comfort in this That it is a particular comfort that our afflictions are from the Lord Another that they are from his Rod and another also that they are from the Rod of his wrath First then in our first art and the first branch thereof The Generality of affliction considered in the nature thereof We met all generally in the first Treason against our selves without exception all In Adams rebellion who was not in his loins And in a second Treason we met all too in the Treason against Christ Iesus we met all All our sins were upon his shoulders In those two Treasons we have had no exception no exemption The penalty for our first Treason in Adam in a great part we doe all undergoe we doe all die though not without a lothnesse and colluctation at the time yet without a deliberate desire to live in this world for ever How loth soever any man be to die when death comes yet I thinke there is no man that ever formed a deliberate Prayer or wish that he might never die That penalty for our first Treason in Adam we do bear And would any be excepted from bearing any thing deduced from his second Treason his conspiracy against Christ from imitation of his Passion and fulfilling his sufferings in his body in bearing cheerfully the afflictions and tribulations of this life Omnis caro corruper at and thou art within that generall Indictment all flesh had corrupted his way upon Earth Statutum est omnibus mori and thou art within that generall Statute It is appointed unto all men once to die Anima quae peccaverit ipsa morietur and thou art within that generall Sentence and Judgement Every soul that sinneth shall die The death of the soul. Out of these generall Propositions thou canst not get And when in the same universality there commeth a generall pardon Deus vult omnes slavos God will have all men to be saved Because that Pardon hath in it that Ita quod that condition Omnem filium Hee scâ—urgeth every sonne whom he receiveth wouldst thou lose the benefit of that Adoption that Filiation that Patrimony and Inheritance rather then admit patiently his Fatherly chastisements in the afflictions and tribulations in this life Beloved the death of Christ is given to us as a Hand-writing for when Christ naild that Chirographum that first hand-writing that had passed between the Devill and us to his Crosse he did not leave us out of debt nor absolutely discharged but he laid another Chirographum upon us another Obligation arising out of his death His death is delivered to us as a writing but not a writing onely in the nature of a peece of Evidence to plead our inheritance by but a writing in the nature of a Copy to learne by It is not onely given us to reade but to write over and practise Not onely to tell us what he did but how we should do so too All the evills and mischiefes that light upon us in this world come for the most part from this Quia fruimur utendis because we thinke to injoy those things which God hath given us onely to use God hath given us a use of things and we set our hearts upon them And this hath a proportion an assimilation an accommodation in the death of Christ. God hath proposed that for our use in this world and we think to enjoy it God would have us doe it over again and we think it enough to know that Christ hath done it already God would have us write it and we doe onely read it God would have us practise the death of Christ and we do but understand it The fruition the enjoying of the death of Christ is reserved for the next life To this life belongs the use of it that use of it to fulfill his sufferings in our bodies by bearing the afflictions and tribulations of this life For Priùs Trophaeum Crucis erexit deinde Martyribus tradidit erigendum first Christ set up the victorious Trophee of his Crosse himself and then he delivered it over to his Martyrs to do as he had done Nor are they onely his Martyrs that have actually died for him but into the signification of that name which signifies a Witnesse fall all those who have glorified him in a patient and constant bearing the afflictions and tribulations of this life All being guilty of Christs death there lies an obligation upon us all to fulfill his sufferings And this is the generality of afflictions as we consider them in their own nature Now this generality is next expressed in this word of exaltation Gheber Ego vir I am the man It was that man that is denoted and signified in that name that hath lien under affliction and therefore no kinde of man was likely to scape There are in the Originall Scriptures four words by which man is called four names of man and any of the others if we consider the origination of the words might better admit afflictions to insult upon him then this Gheber vir I am the man At first man is called Ishe a word which their Grammarians derive à sonitu from a sound from a voice Whether mans excellency be in that that he can speak which no other creature can doe or whether mans impotency be in that that he comes into the world Crying in this denomination in this word man is but a sound but a voyce and that is no great matter Another name of man is Adam and Adam is no more but earth and red earth aud the word is often used for blushing When the name of man imports no more but so no more but the frailty of the earth and the bashfull acknowledgement and confession of that frailty in infinite infirmities there is no great hope of scaping afflictions in this name Adam Lesse in his third name Enosh for Enosh signifies aegrum calamitosum a person naturally subject to and actually possest with all kindes of infirmities So that this name of man Enosh is so farre from exempting him as that it involves him it overflows him in afflictions He hath a miserable name as well as a miserable nature Put them in fear O Lord says David that they may know they are but men but such men as are denoted in that name of man Enosh for there that name is expressed weak and miserable men Now to collect these as man is nothing but a frivolous an empty a transitory sound or but a sad and lamentable voice he is no more in his first name Ishe As man is nothing but red earth a moldring clod of infirmities and then blushing that is guilty sensible and ashamed of his own miserable condition and man is