it lasted full three years and better Thirdly the time of the plague it fell long after the person offending was dead Fourthly whereas it is said in my Text That Bloud is cleansed by the Bloud of him that shed it here the Bloud of him that did this sin sufficed not to purge the Land from it that desperate and woful end that befell both Saul and his sons in that last and fatal Battel upon Mount Gilboa a man may think had freed the Land from danger of Bloud yet we see that the Bloud of the Gibeonites had left so deep a stain that it could not be sponged out without the Bloud of seven more of Saul's off-spring So that in some cases it seems we must alter the words of my Text The Land cannot be purged of Bloud but by the Bloud of him and his Posterity that shed it St. Peter tells us that some mens sins go before them unto judgment and some mens sins follow after Beloved here is a sin that exceeds the members of this division for howsoever it goes before or after us unto judgment yet it hath a kind of Vbiquity and so runs afore so follows us at the heels that it stays behind us too and calls for vengeance long after that we are gone Bloud unrevenged passes from Father to Son like an Heirlome or Legacy and he that dies with Bloud hanging on his fingers leaves his off-spring and his Family as pledges to answer it in his stead As an Engineer that works in a Mine lays a train or kindles a Match and leaves it behind him which shall take hold of the powder long after he is gone so he that sheds Bloud if it be not betimes purged as it were kindles a Match able to blow up not onely a Parliament but even a whole Land where Bloud lies unrevenged Secondly another circumstance serving to express unto us the greatness of this sin I told you was the difficulty of cleansing it intimated in those words cannot be cleansed but by the Bloud of him that shed it Most of other sins have sundry ways to wash the guilt away As in the Levitical Law the woman that was unclean by reason of Child-bearing might offer a pair of Turtle-doves or two young Pigeons so he that travels with other sins hath either a Turtle or a Pigeon he hath more ways then one to purifie him prayer unto God or true repentance or satisfaction to the party wronged or bodily affliction or temporary mulct But he that travels with the sin of Bloud for him there remains no sacrifice for sin but a fearful expectation of vengeance he hath but one way of cleansing onely his Bloud the Bloud of him that shed it The second general part which we considered in these words was that one mean which is left to cleanse Bloud exprest in the last words the bloud of him that shed it The Apostle to the Hebrews speaking of the sacrifices of the Old Testament notes that without Bloud there was no cleansing no forgiveness He spake it onely of the Bloud of beasts of Bulls and Goats who therefore have their Bloud that they might shed it in mans service and for mans use But among all the Levitical Sacrifices there was not one to cleanse the manslayer For the Bloud of the cattle upon a thousand hills was not sufficient for this yet was that sin to be purged with Bloud too and that by a more constant and perpetual Law then that of Sacrifices For the cleansing of other sins by Bloud is done away the date of it is out but to cleanse Bloud by bloud remains as a Law to our times and so shall unto the worlds end Sanguine quaerendi reditus out of Bloud no way to get but by Bloud 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saith St. Basil hast thou shed Bloud wouldst thou be free from the guilt of it Thy best way is to be a Martyr and shed thy Bloud for Christ's sake Now that what I have to say may the better be conceived and lodged up in your memories I will comprehend and order all that I will speak under three heads First I will in general yet a little further breifly shew how great a sin the sin of Bloud is Secondly I will speak of the redress of some misorders very frequent in our age which give way to this sin especially private revenge and single combat Thirdly I will touch at the means of taking the guilt of Bloud away which here the holy Ghost commends to those which are set in Authority to that purpose And first of the greatness of the crime and sin of Bloud Of sins in holy Scripture there be two sorts recorded One sort is a silent dumb and quiet sin God doth as it were seek after it to find it as the people did after Saul when he was hidden amongst the stuff Of this nature are the ordinary sins of our life which do more easily find pardon at the hands of God but there is a second sort of sin which is a vocal and a crying sin a sin like that importunate widow in the Gospel that will not suffer the Judge to be quiet till he hath done justice and those are the more heavy and grievouser sins of our lives Of this second sort there are two sins to which the Scripture doth attribute this crying faculty First the sin of Sodom for so God tells Abraham The cry of Sodom and Gomorrha is come up before me The second is the sin of which I am now to speak the sin of Bloudshed for so God tells Cain The voice of thy brothers bloud cries unto me from the earth The sin of Adam in Paradise doubtless was a great and heinous sin which hath thus made us all the children of death yet it seems to be but of the rank of mute sins and to have had no voice to betray it God comes unto Adam convents him examins him as if he had not known it and seems not to beleive any such thing was done till himself had confessed it But bloud is an unmannerly importunate and clamorous sin God shall not need to come and enquire after it it will come up unto him and cry as the souls do under the Altar in the Revelation How long Lord how long Nec patimur iracunda Deum ponere fulmina suffers not God to forget judgment or entertain a thought of mercy To satisfie therefore the cry of this importunate sin and to shew men the grievousness of it the Laws of God and men have wonderfully conspired in the avenging of bloud by what means or by what creature soever it were shed Beasts unreasonable creatures though whatsoever they do they cannot be said to sin for whatsoever they do they do by force of that natural instinct by which they are guided and led as by their proper Law yet man's bloud if they shed it is revenged upon them God himself is the Authour of this Law Gen. ix where he tells Noah
for both these are compatible for a time If then we look upon the persons of Peter and Iudas both of them are in the state of mortal sin unrepented of and therefore both in state of damnation but if we look back unto God we shall see a hand reach'd out unto St. Peter pulling him back as he is now running down the hill which hand we do not see reach'd out unto Iudas Christ had a look in store for St. Peter which if it had pleased him to have lent unto Iudas Iudas would have done that which St. Peter did When then we pronounce St. Peter and in him any of the Elect of God as they are in St. Peter's case to be fallen from grace we speak not with relation to any purpose of God but we mean onely that they have not that measure of Sanctification which ought to be in every child which shall be an heir to life and what hinders to pronounce that man fallen from grace whom we must needs acknowledge to be in that state in which if he continue there is no way open but to death What then may some men say had St. Peter lost the Spirit of Adoption had he not those sanctifying qualities of Faith Hope and Charity which are proper to the Saints and are given them by divine inspiration in the moment of their conversion was that immortal seed of the Word quite kill'd No verily How then Having all these may he not yet be called the child of death I answer he may and is indeed so for these do not make him that at no time he can be so but that finally he shall not be so for they are not armour of proof to keep out all darts neither do they make our souls invulnerable as the Poets fain the body of Cyenus or Achilles to have been but they are precious balms ever more ready at hand to cure the wound when it is given They are not of force to hinder mortal sin for then every soul in whom they are were pure undefiled neither were it possible that the Elect of God after their conversion should fall but they are of force to work repentance which makes all our wounds remediable He that is mortally sick and dies and he that is likewise mortally sick and through help of restoring physick recovers in this both agree that they are mortally sick notwithstanding the recovery of one party The wound of St. Peter and of Judas was mortal and in both festred unto death but there was balm in Gilead for St. Peter for Iudas there was none The sting of the fiery Scorpion in the Wilderness was deadly and all that looked not on the Brazen Serpent died the Brazen Serpent altered not the quality of the Scorpion's sting it onely hindred the working of the poison The sting of sin in St. Peter and in Iudas was deadly but he that was lift up on mount Calvary as the Brazen Serpent was in the Wilderness at him did St. Peter look and live Iudas did not look and therefore died How comes it about Beloved that God every where in Scripture threatens death without exception to all that repent not if the state of sin unrepented of in whomsoever it is be not indeed the state of death When David was intending to stay in Keilah and suspecting the inhabitants of that City asks of God whether the men of Keilah would deliver him over into the hand of Saul God tells him they would and therefore certainly had he stayed there he had been betrayed unto Saul To urge that St. Peter because of God's purpose to save him could not have finally miscarried though he had died without repentance as some have not stuck to give out is nothing else in effect but to maintain against God that David had he stayed in Keilah had not fallen into Saul's hands because we know it was God's purpose to preserve David from the violence of Saul All the determinations of God are of equal certainty It was no more possible for Saul to seize on David then it is for the Devil to pull one of God's Elect out of his hand as therefore the determinate purpose of God to free David from the malice of Saul took not away that supposition If David go to Keilah he shall fall into the hands of Saul So neither doth the Decree of God to save his Elect destroy the supposition If they repent not they die eternally for the purposes of God though impossible to be defeated yet lay not upon things any violent necessity they exempt not from the use of ordinary means they infringe not our liberty they stand very well with common casualty yea these things are the very means by which his Decrees are brought about I may not stand longer upon this I will draw but one short admonition and so to an end Let no man presume to look into the Third Heaven to open the Books of Life and Death to pronounce over peremptorily of God's purpose concerning himself or any other man Let every man look into himself and try whether he be in the faith or no The surest means to try this is to take an unpartial veiw of all our actions Many deceive themselves whilst they argue from their Faith to their Works whereas they ought out of their Works to conclude their Faith whilst presuming they have Faith and the gifts of sanctification they think all their actions warrantable whereas we ought first throughly to sift all our actions to examine them at the Touch of God's Commandments and if indeed we find them currant then to conclude that they come from the sanctifying Graces of the holy Spirit It is Faith indeed that gives the tincture the die the relish unto our actions yet the onely means to examine our Faith is by our Works It is the nature of the Tree that gives the goodness the savour and pleasantness to the Fruit yet the Fruit is the onely means to us to know whether the Tree be good By their fruit ye shall know them saith Christ It is not a rule not onely to know others but our selves too To reason thus I am of the Elect I therefore have saving Faith and the rest of the sanctifying qualities therefore that which I do is good thus I say to reason is very preposterous We must go a quite contrary course and thus reason My life is good and through the mercies of God in Iesus Christ shall stand with God's Justice I therefore have the gifts of Sanctification and therefore am of God's Elect For St. Peter to have said with himself I am of the Elect this sin therefore cannot endanger me had been great presumption but thus to have reasoned My sin is deadly therefore except I repent I am not of the number of God's Elect this reasoning had well befitted St. Peter and becomes every Christian man whom common frailty drives into the like distress I made my entrance into my Sermon with the consideration
by yeilding not by fighting but by dying Pilate had heard that he was a King it was the accusation which was fram'd against him that he bear himself as King of the Iews but because he saw no pomp no train no guard about him he took it but as an idle report To put him therefore out of doubt our Saviour assures him that he is a King but of such a Kingdom as he could not skill of My Kingdom is not of this world c. For the better unfolding of which words first we will consider what the meaning of this word Kingdom is for there lies an ambiguity in it Secondly we will consider what Lessons for our instruction the next words will yeild Not of this world First of this word Kingdom Our Saviour is a King three manner of ways and so correlatively hath three distinct several Kingdoms He is first King in the largest extent and meaning which can possibly be imagined and that is as he is Creatour and absolute Lord of all creatures Of this Kingdom Heaven Earth and Hell are three large Provinces Angels Men and Devils his very enemies every creature visible and invisible are subjects of this Kingdom The glory and strength of this Kingdom consists least of all in men and man is the weakest part of it for there is scarcely a creature in the world by whom he hath not been conquer'd When Alexander the Great had travell'd through India and over-ran many large Provinces and conquer'd many popular Cities when tidings came that his Soldiers in Grece had taken some small Towns there he scorn'd the news and in contempt Me-thinks said he I hear of the Battel of Frogs and Mice Beloved if we look upon these huge Armies of Creatures and consider of what wonderful strength they are when the Lord summons them to Battel all the Armies of men and famous Battels of which we have so large Histories in the comparison of these what are they but a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but Homer's tale a Battel of Frogs and Mice Infinite Legions of Angels attend him in Heaven and every Angel is an Army One Angel in the Book of Kings is sent out against the Army of the Assyrians and in one night fourscore thousand persons die for it Base and contemptible creatures when God calls for them are of strength to conquer whole Countreys He over-runs Egypt with his Armies of Frogs and Flies and Lice and before his own people with an Army of Hornets chases the Canaanites out of the Land Nay the dull and senseless Elements are up in Arms when God summons them He shoots his Hail-shot with his Hail-stones from Heaven he destroys more of the Canaanites then the Israelites can with their swords As for his Armies of Fire and Water what power is able to withstand them Every creature when God calls is a soldier How great then is the glory of this Kingdom of which the meanest parts are invincible Secondly again our Saviour is a King in a more restrain'd and confin'd sense as he is in Heaven attended on by Angels and Archangels Powers Principalities and all the heavenly Hosts For though he be Omni-present and fills every place both in Heaven and Earth yet Heaven is the Palace Throne of this Kingdom there is he better seen and known there with more state and honour served and therefore more properly is his Kingdom said to be there And this is called his Kingdom of glory The Rules and Laws and admirable Orders of which Kingdom could we come to see and discover it would be with us as it was with the Queen of Saba when she came to visit Solomon of whom the Scripture notes that when she heard his wisdom and had seen the order of his servants the attendance that was given him and the manner of his table There was no more spirit left in her Beloved Dum Spiritus hos regit artus whilst this Spirit is in us we cannot possibly come to discern the Laws and Orders of this Kingdom and therefore I am constrain'd to be silent Thirdly our Saviour is a King in a sense yet more impropriated For as he took our nature upon him as he came into the world to redeem mankind and to conquer Hell and Death so is there a Kingdom annext unto him A Kingdom the purchase whereof cost him much sweat and Bloud of which neither Angels nor any other creature are a part onely that remnant of mankind that Ereptus titio that number of blessed Souls which like a brand out of the fire by his death and passion he hath recovered out of the power of sin and all these alone are the subjects of that Kingdom And this is that which is called his Kingdom of Grace and which himself in Scripture every where calls his Church his Spouse his Body his Flock and this is that Kingdom which in this place is spoken of and of which our Saviour tells Pilate That it is not of this world My Kingdom is not of this world Which words at the first reading may seem to savour of a little imperfection for they are nothing else but a Negation or denial Now our Books teach us that a Negative makes nothing known for we know things by discovering not what they are not but what they are yet when we have well examin'd them we shall find that there could not have been a speech delivered more effectual for the opening the nature of the Church and the discovery of mens errours in that respect For I know no errour so common so frequent so hardly to be rooted out so much hindring the knowledge of the true nature of the Church as this that men do take the Church to be like unto the World Tully tells us of a Musician that being ask'd what the Soul was answered that it was Harmony is saith he à principiis artis suae non recescit He knew not how to leave the principles of his own Art Again Plato's Scholars had been altogether bred up in Arithmetick and the knowledge of Numbers and hence it came that when afterward they diverted their studies to the knowledge of Nature or Moral Philosophy wheresoever they walked they still feigned to themselves somewhat like unto Numbers the World they supposed was framed out of Numbers Cities and Kingdoms and Common-wealths they thought stood by Numbers Number with them was sole Principle and Creatour of every thing Beloved when we come to learn the quality and state of Christ's Kingdom it fares much with us as it does with Tullie's Musician or Plato's Scholars difficulter à principiis artis nostrae recedimus Hardly can we forsake those principles in which we have been brought up In the world we are born in it we are bred the world is the greatest part of our study to the true knowledge of God and of Christ still we fancy unto us something of the world It may seem but a light thing that I shall say yet