it was not sealed in this world we must be wrought here and sifted and squared for the house of God or no where for after this life shall cease the noyse of the hammer the Axe and the Chisill the day is for action whether good or ill the night commeth in which no man worketh for that reason remember thy Creator here and for this remember him here in thy youth because it is uncertaine whether thou shalt ever be old none are old which were not young many are young which shall not bee old Times and ages God as a wise dispenser has kept in his owne hands to the intent that wee might suspect a shorter thred of life and yet not despaire of a longer There is a time to be borne and a time to dye sayes Solomon marke his language here is birth and death but no talke of life as if in a new way of Philosophy he would make a passage ab extremo ad extremum sine medio as if wee were to spring immediately out of our mothers wombe out of our swadling Clouts into our winding sheet But suppose it were so that thou hadst a long lease of thy life and wert forc't to go to thy grave as a sheafe of Wheat into the Barne ripe and in a good age suppose thou hadst a promise to see thy childrens children and their Children yet were it extreame impiety to deferre thy repentance to thy later dayes to give thy beautie and youth to thy pleasure and thy wrinckles and gray haires to thy God Hast thou not read hath it not beene told thee that God will have no pleasure in thy leavings the halt the lame the bleare-eyed and the blind are these fit offerings on his Altar Besides how unjust is this to play away the strength of thine age and then to lay the burden of all thy sinnes upon thy old and decrepit age which God knowes is a burden to it selfe whose knees tremble and shake under as many diseases as sinnes O Lord that back that so stoops under threescore yeares how shall it sinke under the sins of threescore yeares the sinnes I say whose weight hee full well knowes that calls to us Come unto mee all you that are heavie laden for this I call heaven and earth and hell to witnesse for the earth sunk under the sins of Corah Dathan and Abiram the first sinne weighed the apostate Angels to hell and now is another hell to them and the sinne of man weighed downe from heaven to earth The Son of God who on the Mount of Olives sweat drops of bloud under the load of our iniquities and when hee bare them on the Crosse hee cryed out in the anguish of his soule heaven and earth bewayling the extreame weight that lay upon him for the Sunne shut his eye and the whole Land of Iurie became as a close mourner for it was wrapt in a blacke Mantle of Darknesse from the sixt even unto the ninth houre is this then a burthen for thine old age for crazie and faint limbes then let a Pigmie a Dwarfe twitch up Mount Aetna at the roots and strut away with it on his shoulders Besides all this doe but thinke of the many and certaine miseries of that age Nonius Marcellus coats three places out of Aecius Pacuvius and Titinnius where senium is put for Malum as if it were one and the same thing to be old and miserable adde hither the decay of Senses conscience of an ill-acted life the feare to dye and yet wearinesse to live with Chiliads and Iliads more of evills Ministers to the first I tremble to say the second death Beyond all this there are some vices naturall to old age as jealousie peevishnesse morositie loquacitie their present life being but a vaine repetition or memorie of their former {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} they live by memorie saies Arist. I add hither also Covetousnesse so proper to this age that the Philosopher therfore cals it {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} uncurable because {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} old age and everie impotencie breeds it whether it bee that when the gifts of body and minde faile wee catch at those of fortune as our last refuge like men halfe drowned that missing of better hold catch at strawes or weeds which reason Aquinas on that place gives or whether it be {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} which is the Philosophers one Reason in 2. of his Rhetor because old men by experience best know how necessary those eternalls are and yet how hardly got how easily lost This is that that makes them when they are even at their journies end breake their Asses backs with laying on new provision not much unlike Rivers that then runne biggest and gather most waters when they come nearest to the Sea to their owne home Lastly how hardly does gray-headed sinne leave a sinner This is that Aegyptian Tyrant that Pharaoh that will not let Israel goe it is continuance in sinne that makes an earnest sinner our first sinnes are with some reluctancy some checks some gripes our later with delight happy is hee that dashes those Brats those little ones against the Stone as it is in Psalme one hundred thirtie sixe Some Interpreters by little one doe there understand sinne in its Infancy and by the Stone the Rock the Corner stone CHRIST JESUS How hardly is the iniquity of our Heeles shooke off Cassiodorus expounds our Heeles our later Age and the difficultie proceeds partly from the Devill to insidiaberis calcaneo said God to the Serpent thou shalt lye in wait for his Heele partly from the sinner hee is an old a grave sinner hardly cureable not as if the Balme of Gilead failed not as if GOD wanted mercie for he ran to meet the Prodigall afarre off and Saint Iohn saw Ierusalem with twelve Gates open to the East three to the West three to the North three and to the South three but because God in Iustice hardens such sinners not positively but negatively that is Non impertiendo malitiam sed non impertiendo gratiam sayes Lumbard not by making them evill but by not making them good leaving them stupid bed-ridden and speechlesse sinners without sence without motion not able to doe or say so much as the Prodigall did I will rise or I would rise and goe to my Father Hence now I passe to the second particular In the dayes of thy youth Why in the dayes of our youth more than in the yeares of our youth They that have set us out the shortest time for youth allow us from foureteene to thirtie foure but this is to put us in minde of uncertaintie of life as if our youth was but for a few dayes or like as at the end of the day comes evening and then darke night so at the end of our youth comes old Age and then Death Or it may bee without violence to the Text you may take in the
Two SERMONS BY GEO. HALL Late Fellow of Kings Coledge in Cambridge LONDON Printed by J. O. for Anth. Hall and are to be sold at his shop in St. Dunstans Church-yard 1641. GEN 3.19 In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat thy bread till thou returne to the earth GOD Almightie the great and sole Builder of heaven and earth in those six dayes in which his goodnesse did first reconcile the odds betweene being and not being calling the possible world into act made these and but these two natures the necessarie and the voluntarie to the former as being voyd of reason and therefore not capable of any positive Law he gave no precept hee set Nature to them a rule and furnisht them with faculties determined and if there be no impediment in second causes necessitated to such or such actions tending to such or such ends To the latter as being endowed with freedome and a power indifferent to both extremes to doe or not to doe to doe this or that good or ill He expressely gave in charge what if hee tendered his life hee should not doe and therefore hee had no sooner pronounced him Lord of the whole earth but knowing how proper it is for happinesse to forget her selfe and how safe for Monarchs to remember that they are dependantly and subordinately great in the proper tone of a Law-Giver Legum enim authoritas ratione suasoria vile est tels him flatly Of the fruit of the tree which is in the middest of the garden thou shalt not eat The tree is now forbidden and that by the Lord and Maker of it from henceforth for Adam to taste it shall be disobedience shall bee intemperance shall bee injustice the least of which shall not dwell in Paradise they make too great a stir in the soule and are too turbulent to reside in him whom God created as a Citie at unitie in it selfe there was no insurrection of the sensitive appetite against the will no deformitie betweene the will and reason the intellect directed the will commanded the members executed In a word there was a neat and harmonious consent of all the faculties with reason and of reason with God thus was man at peace with God and with himselfe But like as from the quietnesse of the aire the Philosopher suspects an earth-quake mee thinks the man that had not read this book should have read so much in the book of Nature tane so much from politick rules as to fore-see a declension of things at perfection to fear most a rebellion in a State most composed such was the state of Adam and with such successe in the same day were his affections quiet and tumultuous his will which that day had well given up her name revolted from the regiment of reason judge you how voluntarily fallen in that the left her leader and yet her selfe blind I ask not whence this desertion who permitting who instigating This is enough for me this will bring me to my text if I tell how the evill of sin lets in the evill of paine and that I find in the sacred History that our first parents did eat and this probable in the schoole that they were both created both stood and both fell and both in one day Let both these two great lights on earth answer to those two in heaven and then behold the eclipse that Hesychius Milesius speaks of {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} The Sun was darkened and the Moone withdrew her light but happy you superiour lights whose eclipses are not sins the defects and anomies of humane actions are scann'd at the bar of justice and bearing a guilt upon the offendent will not be expiated but by suffering for let the man but taste of the prohibited fruit and he shall heare a voyce from heaven that voyce which breaketh the Cedars of Libanus thundring out wrath and this sad doom In the sweat of thy face c. The generals in the text are three first the sufferer thou secondly his sufferings to eat his bread in the sweat of his face thirdly the terme of his sufferings till thou returne to the earth Since there is so necessary dependancie of morall acts upon intention it is a good rule which the Philosopher gives in the first of his Rhetorick {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} Not to look so much to the letter of the Law as the mind of the Law-giver The expresse prohibition of eating was to one but intended for all one man our first father did eat and sin the sin ran downe to his sons and to the sons of their sons and to those that did descend from them to all nations sexes conditions times and ages of the world to the man that shall last see the Sun set In the day that thou shalt eat thou shalt dye the death as it sayes more kinds of death than one so more that should dye than one and to dust thou shalt returne was more than a personall sentence for all men were dead in one and were gathered to their fathers as to a living sepulcher larger and more common than that which Abraham bought of Ephron the son of Zoar which was but for him and for his house so that it seemes to have a great deale of mind that which the Jewes so talk of that Abraham Isaac and Jacob were buried in the same cave with Adam Now if posteritie dyed with him then it sinned with him and then shall suffer and labour with him Sane hoc iniquum videtur sayes Bodinus parentum culpam in liberos derivari Does not Sylla heare ill for the sonnes of Proscripts Can a man be guiltie of that which was done before he was Ask the Schoole Is it not the nature of sinne to bee voluntarie Does it not require knowledge counsell consent election If not why then is not the Wolfe called unjust that devoures the Lamb Why is not hee cited to Areopagus as well as Mars Why doe not Princes promulgate their Lawes in the Desarts and compell the affections of the wild Asse to a meane as well as ours But {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} Arist. Moral lib. 3. The Law-giver hath an eye to what is voluntarie and unvoluntarie to the former by the rule of distributive justice hee sets out rewards and punishments to the latter neither reward nor punishment How then does God punish the sin of the first man in his posteritie that personally had done neither good nor ill How could they conceive and bring forth sin who yet themselves were not conceived or call it a sin shall it be a mortall sin {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} Who blames a man for being borne blind That does the Judge of the great Court of heaven and earth and surely the Almightie does not pervert justice it is not with him as with those Romane Praetors Jus dicunt cum iniqua decernunt For like as by a politicall union many families become
one body civill so by participation of the same specificall nature were all men as one man and like as the acts of any part of the body as theft or murder done by the hand doe not ascribe it to that part but as it is moved by that first and universall motive principle the will so is not that first sin layd to us as severall persons but as persons and individuals meeting in the same universall nature totally at once by one man depraved It is not I confesse the nature of positive Lawes to bind where they are not known or publisht so that if Cain had eaten of the forbidden fruit Enoch his son had not therefore been borne a sinner but it pleased God by a peculiar will to wrap up all men in one Adam whose will should be reputed as the will of all to come whose innocencie should be our innocencie whose sin our sin though his repentance not our repentance Let not dust and ashes wrangle and dispute how just this is how much safer is it to rest in his decree at whose right hand with the testimony of the Gentiles we proclaime that justice sits enthroned and in the infancie of time did sit when he examined nature in a true balance and weighed out to all things their being their properties their places their figures with most exact conformitie to their exemplarie cause So then you have seene how many came within the precincts of this prohibition Thou shalt not eat so many are guiltie of the breach of it and so many are sufferers Now I proceed to the sufferings Democritus and the Epicure whether flattering corrupt manners with promise of impunitie or trembling to joyne wrath with omnipotencie gave out that God was not angrie at all but that he sate in Heaven a Dispenser of good things only The Poet sang of an age that knew not whether Iove could thunder or no and wee have heard of an age when God as yet had not entered into judgement with the sons of men when death had no more name than it hath reall nature when mans labour was his pleasure his life contemplation and his dwelling Paradise But oh {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} The very name of Troy is dolefull how much more of Paradise it adds to our misery since we have lost the thing to keep the name which at this day sounds no better than to the Mariner some unhappy place in the sea famous of old for the notorious wrack of some goodly vessell Well wee are now unparadised turned out of our pleasant walks and must fall to our work we must eat our bread in the sweat of our face this is our sentence wherein consider first the act eating of bread secondly the qualification of this act in sweat of thy face Man in his innocencie had not a body intrinsecally immortall but a naturall and elementary body composed of the same principles with ours and using for the reparation of nature food though not using the very same with us hee was to eat though not to eat in sweat And though he was not as Suarez sayes in a literall sense to eat bread by reason of the toyle in tillage in sowing in reaping in grinding yet was hee as the word is meant in my text to eat bread it being taken here for all manner of sustenance and here I cannot passe by that ridiculous conceit of some Rabbins who from this very word bread doe gather that God condemned all men to jog after the plow a thing which could not stand either with the nature of man or with the wisdome of God I declare it thus The light of nature a beame of that intelligible and eternall Son was not set our by the fall of man this lighted men out of caves and rocks into societies oeconomicall and politicall Politicall have for their end {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} selfe-sufficiencie never to bee found if all men were plow-men the multitude of our defects must be supplyed by the multitude and varietie of Arts and Artificials since then God gave man a naturall appetite of a civill and sociable life which appetite being naturall is not in vaine nor yet was lost by sin for Cain an hainous sinner built the first Citie it had not so well suted either with the nature of man or with the wisdome and goodnesse of God to have adjudged all men to that one condition of life besides what had become of Sciences liberall Arts Had not been mechanicall rude and inchoate manners as courtly as old Evander found them among the wild Aborigines the whole world had been benighted darknesse had beene on the face of the earth Aegyptian darknesse and yet not felt and God himselfe had scarce found an unblemishable Levite to serve at his Altar {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} sayes the 7. of the Politicks The Plow-man is no sit Priest Thus much of the act I now come to the qualification of the act In the sweat of the face To sweat is proper to the body yet may be translated to the soule neither is it a bold metaphore Tully hath it de Oratore Commentatio stylus ille tuus multisudoris est so that Archimedes sitting still in his study did sweat as well as Marcellus his Souldiers then in the middest of Athens neither does the word face restraine the sense to bodily exercise since it is so frequent by metaphore to attribute to things incorporeall things proper to corporeall thus does Aristotle call the understanding {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} and David prayes Turne away thy face from my sins O God when as God hath neither figure nor face Thus much de signo the word or the name now de signato or the thing signified Man is a continuall Actour the Sun riseth and sets upon his action waking he moves heares discourses and when his externall senses are lockt up his vegetative facultie is at work and his fansie dreams the whole man here never rests nay let it seeme a paradox I am sure it is true there is no rest in Heaven The grand Stoick denied motion I deny rest But yet take this distinction Rest is either a meere cessation from action a simple not operation or a cessation from some action that wearied the Agent there is a great deale of difference betweene these two In the former sense God rested the seventh day from production of new species In the latter it was not possible for him to rest In the former man in all his faculties all at once is never at rest In the latter hee is in the time of sleep in this sense our God wils neither perpetuall labour nor rest it was his providence that the Heavens should move that divers parts of the earth might be disposed by the influence of divers stars upon this motion followes a necessarie vicissitude of day and night upon that a vicissitude of rest and labour these two God