study and indefatigable diligence of many moneths he enters upon possession and finds them not of so long abode as one of his cares which in so vast numbers made so great a portion of his life afflicted 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The enjoying of sin for a season St. Paul cals it he names no pleasures our English translation uses the word of enjoying pleasures but if there were any they were but for that season that instant that very transition of the act which dies in its very birth and of which we can only say as the minstrell sung of Pacuvius when he was carryed dead from his supper to his bed 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 A man can scarce have time enough to say it is alive but that it was nullo non se die extuiâ—t it died every day it lived never unto life but lived and dyed unto death being its mother and its daughter The man dyed before the sin did live and when it had lived it consign'd him to dye eternally Adde 〈◊〉 this that it so passes away that nothing at all remains behind it that is pleasant it is like the path of an arrow in the air the next morning no man can tell what is become of the pleasures of the last nights sin they are no where but in Gods books deposited in the conscience and sealed up against the day of dreadfull accounts but as to the man they are as if they never had been and then let it be considered what a horrible aggravation it will be to the miseries of damnation that a man shall for ever perish for that which if he looks round about he cannot see nor tell where it is He that dies dies for that which is not and in the very little present he findes it an unrewarding interest to walk seven dayes together over sharp stones only to see a place from whence he must come back in an hour If it goes off presently it is not worth the labour if it stayes long it growes tedious so that it cannot be pleasant if it stayes and if it does stay it is not to be valued Haec mala mentis gaudia It abides too little a while to be felt or called pleasure and if it should abide longer it would be troublesome as pain and loath'd like the tedious speech of an Orator pleading against the life of the innocent 9. Sin hath in its best advantages but a trifling inconsiderable pleasure because not only God and reason conscience and honour interest and lawes do sowre it in the sense and gust of pleasure but even the devill himself either being over-ruled by God or by a strange unsignificant malice makes it troublesome and intricate intangled and involv'd and one sin contradicts another and vexes the man with so great variety of evils that if in the course of Gods service he should meet with half the difficulty he would certainly give over the whole imployment Those that St. James speaks of who prayed that they might spend it upon their lusts were covetous and prodigall and therefore must endure the torments of one to have the pleasure of another and which is greater the pleasure of spending or the displeasure that it is spent and does not still remain after its consumption is easie to tell certain it is that this lasts much longer Does not the Devill often tempt men to despair and by that torment put bars and locks upon them that they may never return to God Which what else is it but a plain indication that it is intended the man should feel the images and dreams of pleasure no longer but till he be without remedy Pleasure is but like centries or woodden frames set under arches till they be strong by their own weight and consolidation to stand alone and when by any means the Devill hath a man sure he takes no longer care to cousen you with pleasures but is pleased that men should begin an early hell and be tormented before the time Does not envie punish or destroy flattery and self-love sometimes torment the drunkard and intemperance abate the powers of lust and make the man impotent and lazinesse become a hinderance to ambition and the desires of man wax impatient upon contradicting interests and by crossing each others design on all hands lessen the pleasure and leave the man tormented 10. Sinne is of so little relish and gust so trifling a pleasure that it is alwayes greater in expectation then it is in the possession But if men did before hand see what the utmost is which sinne ministers to please the beastly part of man it were impossible it should be pursued with so much earnestnesse and disadvantages It is necessary it should promise more then it can give Men could not otherwise be cousened And if it be inquired why men should sin again after they had experience of the little and great deception It is to be confessed it is a wonder they should but then we may remember that men sinne again though their sinne did afflict them they will be drunk again though they were sick they will again commit folly though they be surprised in their shame though they have needed an hospitall and therefore there is something else that moves them and not the pleasure for they doe it without and against its interest but either they still proceed hoping to supply by numbers what they finde not in proper measures or God permits them to proceed as an instrument of punishment or their understandings and reasonings grow cheaper or they grow in love with it and take it upon any terms or contract new appetites and are pleased with the baser and the lower reward of sinne but whatsoever can be the cause of it it is certain by the experience of all the world that the fancy is higher the desires more sharp and the reflexion more brisk at the door and entrance of the entertainment then in all the little and shorter periods of its possession for then it is but limited by the naturall measures and abated by distemper and loathed by enjoying and disturbed by partners and dishonoured by shame and evill accidents so that as men coming to the river Lucius 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and seeing waters pure as the tears of the spring or the pearls of the morning expects that in such a fair promising bosome the inmates should be fair and pleasant 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but findes the fishes black filthy and unwholesome so it is in sinne its face is fair and beauteous 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Softer then sleep or the dreams of wine tenderer then the curds of milk Euganeâ quantumvis mollior agnâ but when you come to handle it it is filthy rough as the Porcupine black as the shadowes of the night and having promised a fish it gives a scorpion and a stone in stead of bread II. The fruits of its present possession the pleasures of its taste are lesse
spirits and have been obedient to the heavenly calling There shall stand the men of Ninevch and they shall stand upright in Judgement for they at the preaching of one man in a lesse space then forty dayes returned unto the Lord their God but we have heard him call all our lives and like the deaf Adder stopt our ears against the voice of Gods servants charme they never so wisely There shall appear the men of Capernaum and the Queen of the South and the Men of Berea and the first fruits of the Christian Church and the holy Martyrs and shall proclaim to all the world that it was not impossible to do the work of Grace in the midst of all our weaknesses and accidentall disadvantages and that the obedience of Faith and the labour of Love and the contentions of chastity and the severities of temperance and self-deniall are not such insuperable mountains but that an honest and a sober person may perform them in acceptable degrees if he have but a ready ear and a willing minde and an honest heart and this seen of honest persons shall make the Divine Judgement upon sinners more reasonable and apparently just in passing upon them the horrible sentence for why cannot we as well serve God in peace as others served him in war why cannot we love him as well when he treats us sweetly and gives us health and plenty honours or fair fortunes reputation or contentednesse quietnesse and peace as others did upon gibbets and under axes in the hands of tormentors and in hard wildernesses in nakednesse and poverty in the midst of all evill things and all sad discomforts Concerning this no answer can be made 4. But there is a worse sight then this yet which in that great assembly shall distract our sight and amaze our spirits There men shall meet the partners of their sins and them that drank the round when they crown'd their heads with folly and forgetfulnesse and their cups with wine and noises There shall ye see that poor perishing soul whom thou didst tempt to adultery and wantonnesse to drunkennesse or perjury to rebellion or an evill interest by power or craft by witty discourses or deep dissembling by scandall or a snare by evill example or pernicious counsell by malice or unwarinesse and when all this is summ'd up and from the variety of its particulars is drawn into an uneasie load and a formidable summe possibly we may finde sights enough to scare all our confidences and arguments enough to presse our evill souls into the sorrowes of a most intolerable death For however we make now but light accounts and evill proportions concerning it yet it will be a fearfull circumstance of appearing to see one or two or ten or twenty accursed souls despairing miserable infinitely miserable roaring and blaspheming and fearfully cursing thee as the cause of its eternall sorrowes Thy lust betray'd and rifled her weak unguarded innocence thy example made thy servant confident to lye or to be perjur'd thy society brought a third into intemperance and the disguises of a beast and when thou feest that soul with whom thou didst sin drag'd into hell well maist thou fear to drink the dregs of thy intolerable potion And most certainly it is the greatest of evils to destroy a soul for whom the Lord Jesus dyed and to undoe that grace which our Lord purchased with so much sweat and bloud pains and a mighty charity And because very many sins are sins of society and confederation such are fornication drunkennesse bribery simony rebellion schisme and many others it is a hard and a weighty consideration what shall become of any one of us who have tempted our Brother or Sister to sin and death for though God hath spar'd our life and they are dead and their debt-books are sealed up till the day of account yet the mischief of our sin is gone before us and it is like a murther but more execrable the soul is dead in trespasses and sins and sealed up to an eternall sorrow and thou shalt see at Dooms-day what damnable uncharitablenesse thou hast done That soul that cryes to those rocks to cover her if it had not been for thy perpetuall temptations might have followed the Lamb in a white robe and that poor man that is cloathed with shame and flames of fire would have shin'd in glory but that thou didst force him to be partner of thy basenesse And who shall pay for this losse a soul is lost by thy means thou hast defeated the holy purposes of the Lord 's bitter passion by thy impurities and what shall happen to thee by whom thy Brother dies eternally Of all the considerations that concern this part of the horrors of Dooms-day nothing can be more formidable then this to such whom it does concern and truly it concerns so many and amongst so many perhaps some persons are so tender that it might affright their hopes and discompose their industries and spritefull labours of repentance but that our most mercifull Lord hath in the midst of all the fearfull circumstances of his second coming interwoven this one comfort relating to this which to my sense seems the most fearfull and killing circumstance Two shall be grinding at one mill the one shall be taken and the other left Two shall be in a bed the one shall be taken and the other left that is those who are confederate in the same fortunes and interests and actions may yet have a different sentence for an early and an active repentance will wash off this account and put it upon the tables of the Crosse and though it ought to make us diligent and carefull charitable and penitent hugely penitent even so long as we live yet when we shall appear together there is a mercy that shall there separate us who sometimes had blended each other in a common crime Blessed be the mercies of of God who hath so carefully provided a fruitfull shower of grace to refresh the miseries and dangers of the greatest part of mankind Thomas Aquinas was used to beg of God that he might never be tempted from his low fortune to Prelacies and dignities Ecclesiasticall and that his minde might never be discomposed or polluted with the love of any creature and that he might by some instrument or other understand the state of his deceased Brother and the story sayes that he was heard in all In him it was a great curiosity or the passion and impertinencies of a uselesse charity to search after him unlesse he had some other personall concernment then his relation of kindred But truly it would concern very many to be solicitous concerning the event of those souls with whom we have mingled death and sin for many of those sentences which have passed and decreed concerning our departed relatives will concern us dearly and we are bound in the same bundles and shall be thrown into the same fires unlesse we repent for our own sins and double our
Priests Nobles and Learned the Crafty and the Easie the Wise and the Foolish the Rich and the Poor the prevailing Tyrant and the oppressed Party shall all appear to receive ther Symbol and this is so farre from abating any thing of its terror and our dear concernment that it much increases it for although concerning Precepts and Discourses we are apt to neglect in particular what is recommended in generall and in incidencies of Mortality and sad events the singularity of the chance heightens the apprehension of the evill yet it is so by accident and only in regard of our imperfection it being an effect of self-love or some little creeping envie which adheres too often to the infortunate and miserable or else because the sorrow is apt to increase by being apprehended to be a rare case and a singular unworthinesse in him who is afflicted otherwise then is common to the sons of men companions of his sin and brethren of his nature and partners of his usuall accidents yet in finall and extreme events the multitude of sufferers does not lessen but increase the sufferings and when the first day of Judgement happen'd that I mean of the universall deluge of waters upon the old World the calamity swell'd like the floud and every man saw his friend perish and the neighbours of his dwelling and the relatives of his house and the sharers of his joyes and yesterdaies bride and the new born heir the Priest of the Family and the honour of the Kindred all dying or dead drench'd in water and the divine vengeance and then they had no place to flee unto no man cared for their souls they had none to goe unto for counsell no sanctuary high enough to keep them from the vengeance that raip'd down from heaven and so it shall be at the day of Judgement when that world and this and all that shall be born hereafter shall passe through the same Red sea and be all baptized with the same fire and be involv'd in the same cloud in which shall be thundrings and terrors infinite every Mans fear shall be increased by his neighbours shriekes and the amazement that all the world shall be in shall unite as the sparks of a raging furnace into a globe of fire and roul upon its own principle and increase by direct appearances and intolerable reflexions He that stands in a Church-yard in the time of a great plague and hears the Passing-bell perpetually telling the sad stories of death and sees crowds of infected bodies pressing to their Graves and others sick and tremulous and Death dress'd up in all the images of sorrow round about him is not supported in his spirit by the variety of his sorrow and at Dooms-day when the terrors are universall besides that it is in it self so much greater because it can affright the whole world it is also made greater by communication and a sorrowfull influence Grief being then strongly infections when there is no variety of state but an intire Kingdome of fear and amazement is the King of all our passions and all the world its subjects and that shrieke must needs be terrible when millions of Men and Women at the same instant shall fearfully cry out and the noise shall mingle with the Trumpet of the Archangell with the thunders of the dying and groaning heavens and the crack of the dissolving world when the whole fabrick of nature shall shake into dissolution and eternall ashes But this generall consideration may be hightned with four or five circumstances 1. Consider what an infinite multitude of Angels and Men and Women shall then appear it is a huge assembly when the Men of one Kingdome the Men of one Age in a single Province are gathered togother into heaps and confusion of disorder But then all Kingdomes of all ages all the Armies that ever mustered all that World that Augustus Caesar taxed all those hundreds of Millions that were slain in all the Roman Wars from Numa's time till Italy was broken into Principalities and small Exarchats all these and all that can come into numbers and that did descend from the loins of Adam shall at once be represented to which account if we adde the Armies of Heaven the nine orders of blessed Spirits and the infinite numbers in every order we may suppose the numbers fit to expresse the Majesty of that God and the terror of that Judge who is the Lord and Father of all that unimaginable multitude Erit terror ingens tot simul tantorúmque populorum 2. In this great multitude we shall meet all those who by their example and their holy precepts have like tapers enkindled with a beam of the Sun of righteousnesse enlightned us and taught us to walk in the paths of justice There we shall see all those good men whom God sent to preach to us and recall us from humane follies and inhumane practises and when we espie the good man that chid us for our last drunkennesse or adulteries it shall then also be remembred how we mocked at counsell and were civilly modest at the reproof but laugh'd when the man was gone and accepted it for a religious complement and took our leaves and went and did the same again But then things shall put on another face and what we smil'd at here and slighted fondly shall then be the greatest terror in the world Men shall feel that they once laugh'd at their own destruction and rejected health when it was offered by a man of God upon no other condition but that they would be wise and not be in love with death Then they shall perceive that if they had obeyed an easie and a sober counsell they had been partners of the same felicity which they see so illustrious upon the heads of those Preachers whose work is with the Lord and who by their life and Doctrine endeavoured to snatch the Soul of their friend or relatives from an intolerable misery But he that sees a crown put upon their heads that give good counsell and preach holy and severe Sermons with designs of charity and piety will also then perceive that God did not send Preachers for nothing on trifling errands and without regard but that work which he crowns in them he purposed should be effective to us perswasive to the understanding and active upon our consciences Good Preachers by their Doctrine and all good men by their lives are the accusers of the disobedient and they shall rise up from their seats and judge and condemn the follies of those who thought their piety to be want of courage and their discourses pedanticall and their reproofs the Priests trade but of no signification because they prefer'd moments before eternity 3. There in that great assembly shall be seen all those Converts who upon easier terms and fewer miracles and a lesse experience and a younger grace and a seldomer Preaching and more unlikely circumstances have suffered the work of God to prosper upon their
sorrows for their damnation 5. We may consider that this infinite multitude of men and women Angels and Devils is not ineffective as a number in Pythagoras Tables but must needs have influence upon every spirit that shall there appear For the transactions of that court are not like Orations spoken by a Grecian Orator in the circles of his people heard by them that croud nearest him or that sound limited by the circles of aire or the inclosure of a wall but every thing is represented to every person and then let it be considered when thy shame and secret turpitude thy midnight revels and secret hypocrisies thy lustfull thoughts and treacherous designes thy falshood to God and startings from thy holy promises thy follies and impieties shall be laid open before all the world and that then shall be spoken by the trumpet of an Archangell upon the house top the highest battlements of Heaven all those filthy words and lewd circumstances which thou didst act secretly thou wilt find that thou wilt have reason strangely to be ashamed All the wise men in the world shall know how vile thou hast been and then consider with what confusion of face wouldst thou stand in the presence of a good man and a severe if peradventure he should suddenly draw thy curtain and finde thee in the sins of shame and lust it must be infinitely more when God and all the Angels of heaven and earth all his holy myriads and all his redeemed Saints shall stare and wonder at thy impurities and follies I have read a story that a young Gentleman being passionately by his mother disswaded from entring into the severe courses of a religious and single life broke from her importunity by saying Volo servare animam meam I am resolved by all means to save my soul. But when he had undertaken a rule with passion he performed it carelesly and remisly and was but lukewarm in his Religion and quickly proceeded to a melancholy and wearied spirit and from thence to a sicknesse and the neighbourhood of death but falling into an agony and a phantastick vision dream'd that he saw himself summon'd before Gods angry throne and from thence hurryed into a place of torments where espying his Mother full of scorn she upbraided him with his former answer and asked him Why he did not save his soul by all means according as he undertook But when the sick man awaked and recovered he made his words good indeed and prayed frequently and fasted severely and laboured humbly and conversed charitably and mortified himself severely and refused such secular solaces which other good men received to refresh and sustain their infirmities and gave no other account to them that asked him but this If I could not in my extasie or dream endure my Mothers upbraiding my follies and weak Religion how shall I be able to suffer that God should redargue me at Dooms-day and the Angels reproach my lukewarmnesse and the Devlls aggravate my sins and all the Saints of God deride my follies and hypocrisies The effect of that mans consideration may serve to actuate a meditation in every one of us for we shall all be at that passe that unlesse our shame and sorrowes be cleansed by a timely repentance and cover'd by the Robe of Christ we shall suffer the anger of God the scorn of Saints and Angels and our own shame in the generall assembly of all mankind This argument is most considerable to them who are tender of their precious name and sensible of honour if they rather would chuse death then a disgrace poverty rather then shame let them remember that a sinfull life will bring them to an intolerable shame at that day when all that is excellent in heaven and earth shall be summon'd as witnesses and parties in a fearfull scrutiny The summe is this All that are born of Adam shall appear before God and his Christ and all the innumerable companies of Angels and Devils shall be there and the wicked shall be afrighted with every thing they see and there they shall see those good men that taught them the waies of life and all those evill persons whom themselves have tempted into the waies of death and those who were converted upon easier termes and some of these shall shame the wicked and some shall curse them and some shall upbraid them and all shall amaze them and yet this is but the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the beginning of those evils which shall never end till eternity hath a period but concerning this they must first be judged and that 's the second generall consideration We must appear before the Judgement seat of Christ and that 's a new state of terrors and afrightments Christ who is our Saviour and is our Advocate shall then be our Judge and that will strangely change our confidences and all the face of things 2. That 's then the place and state of our appearance Before the Judgement seat of Christ For Christ shall rise from the right hand of his Father he shall descend towards us and ride upon a cloud and shall make himself illustrious by a glorious Majesty and an innumerable retinue and circumstances of terror and a mighty power and this is that which Origen affirms to be the sign of the Son of Man Remalcus de Vaux in Harpocrate divino affirms that all the Greek and Latine Fathers consentientibus animis asseverant hoc signo Crucem Christi significari do unanimously affirm that the representment of the Crosse is the sign of the Son of Man spoken of Mat. 24. 30. And indeed they affirm it very generally but Origen after his manner is singular hoc signum Crucis erit cum Dominus ad judicandum venerit so the Church used to sing and so it is in the Sibyls verses O lignum felix in quo Deus ipse pependit Nec te terra capit sed coeli tecta videbis Cum renovata Dei facies ignita micabit The sign of the Crosse is that sign of the Son of Man when the Lord shall come to Judgement and from those words of Scripture They shall look on him whom they have pierced it hath been freely entertain'd at the day of Judgement Christ shall signifie his person by something that related to his passion his crosse or his wounds or both I list not to spin this curious cobweb but Origen's opinion seems to me more reasonable and it is more agreeable to the Majesty and Power of Christ to signifie himself with proportions of his glory rather then of his humility with effects of his being exalted into Heaven rather then of his poverty and sorrowes upon Earth and this is countenanced better by some Greek copies 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 so it is commonly read the sign of the Son of man in Heaven that is say they the signe of the Son of man imprinted upon a cloud but it is in others 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the signe of the Son
meat of order and regular provision and to suffer gentle usages and the familiarities of societies but once he brake out into his own wildnesse Dedidicit pacem subitò feritate reversâ and kil'd two Roman boyes but those that sorrage in the Lybian mountains tread down and devour all that they meet or master and when they have fasted two dayes lay up an anger great as is their appetite and bring certain death to all that can be overcome God is pleased to compare himself to a Lion and though in this life he hath confin'd himself with promises and gracious emanations of an infinite goodnesse and limits himself by conditions and covenants and suffers himself to be overcome by prayers and himself hath invented wayes of atonement and expiation yet when he is provoked by our unhandsome and unworthy actions he makes sudden breaches and tears some of us in pieces and of others he breaks their bones or affrights their hopes and secular sayeties and fils their house with mourning and Cypresse and groans and death But when this Lion of the tribe of Judah shall appear upon his own mountain the mountain of the Lord in his naturall dresse of Majesty and that Justice shall have her chain and golden fetters taken off then Justice shall strike and Mercy shall not hold her hands she shall strike sore strokes and pity shall not break the blow and God shall account with us by minutes and for words and for thoughts and then he shall be severe to mark what is done amisse and that Justice may reign intirely God shall open the wicked mans treasure and tell the sums and weigh grains and scruples 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 said Philo upon the place of Deuteronomy before quoted As there are treasures of good things and God hath Crowns and Scepters in store for his Saints and servants and Coronets for Martyrs and Rosaries for Virgins and Phials full of Prayers and bottles full of tears and a register of sighs and penitentiall groans so God hath a treasure of wrath and fury of scourges and scorpions and then shall be produced the shame of lust and the malice of envie and the groans of the oppressed and the persecutions of the Saints and the cares of covetousnesse and the troubles of ambition and the insolencies of traitors and the violences of rebels and the rage of anger and the uneasinesse of impatience and the restlesnesse of unlawfull desires and by this time the monsters and diseases will be numerous and intolerable when Gods heavie hand shall presse the sanies and the intolerablenesse the obliquity and the unreasonablenesse the amazement and the disorder the smart and the sorrow the guilt and the punishment out from all our sins and pour them into one chalice and mingle them with an infinite wrath and make the wicked drink off all the vengeance and force it down their unwilling throats with the violence of Devils and accursed Spirits 3. We may guesse at the severity of the Judge by the lesser strokes of that Judgement which he is pleased to send upon sinners in this world to make them afraid of the horrible pains of Dooms-day I mean the torments of an unquiet conscience the amazement and confusions of some sins and some persons For I have sometimes seen persons surpriz'd in a base action and taken in the circumstances of crafty theft and secret unjustices before their excuse was ready They have changed their colour their speech hath faltered their tongue stammer'd their eyes did wander and fix no where till shame made them sink into their hollow eye-pits to retreat from the images and circumstances of discovery their wits are lost their reason uselesse the whole order of their soul is discomposed and they neither see nor feel nor think as they use to do but they are broken into disorder by a stroke of damnation and a lesser stripe of hell but then if you come to observe a guilty and a base murtherer a condemned traytor and see him harrassed first by an evill conscience and then pull'd in pieces by the hangmans hooks or broken upon sorrows and the wheel we may then guesse as well as we can in this life what the pains of that day shall be to accursed souls But those we shall consider afterwards in their proper scene now only we are to estimate the severity of our Judge by the intolerablenesse of an evill conscience if guilt will make a man despair and despair will make a man mad confounded and dissolved in all the regions of his senses and more noble faculties that he shall neither feel nor hear nor see any thing but spectres and illusions devils and frightfull dreams and hear noises and shriek fearfully and look pale and distracted like a hopelesse man from the horrors and confusions of a lost battell upon which all his hopes did stand then the wicked must at the day of Judgement expect strange things and fearfull and such which now no language can expresse and then no patience can endure 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Then only it can truly be said that he is inflexible and inexorable No prayers then can move him no groans can cause him to pity thee therefore pity thy self in time that when the Judge comes thou mayest be one of the sons of everlasting mercy to whom pity belongs as part of thine inheritance for all else shall without any remorse except his own be condemned by the horrible sentence 4. That all may think themselves concerned in this consideration let us remember that even the righteous and most innocent shall passe through a severe triall Many of the Ancients explicated this severity by the fire of conflagration which say they shall purifie those souls at the day of Judgement which in this life have built upon the foundation hay and stubble works of folly and false opinions and states of imperfection So S. Austins Doctrine was Hoc aget caminus alios in sinistrâ separabit alios in dextrâ quodam modo eliquabit The great fire at Dooms-day shall throw some into the portion of the left hand and others shall be purified and represented on the right and the same is affirmed by Origen and Lactantius and S. Hilary thus expostulates Since we are to give account for every idle word shall we long for the day of Judgement in quo est nobis indefessus ille ignis ebeundus in quo subeunda sunt gravia illa expiandae à peccatis animae supplicia Wherein we must every one of us passe that unwearied fire in which those grievous punishments for expiating the soul from sins must be endured for to such as have been baptized with the Holy Ghost it remaineth that they be consummated with the fire of Judgement And S. Ambrose addes That if any be as Peter or as John they are baptiz'd with this fire and he that is purged here had need to be purged there again Illic quoque
shall have three sorts of accusers 1. Christ himself who is their Judge 2. Their own conscience whom they have injured and blotted with characters of death and foul dishonour 3. The Devill their enemy whom they served 1. Christ shall be their accuser not only upon the stock of those direct injuries which I before reckoned of crucifying the Lord of life once and again c. But upon the titles of contempt and unworthinesse of unkindnesse and ingratitude and the accusation will be nothing else but a plain representation of those artifices and assistances those bonds and invitations those constrainings and importunities which our dear Lord used to us to make it almost impossible to lye in sin and necessary to be sav'd For it will it must needs be a fearfull exprobration of our unworthinesse when the Judge himself shall bear witnesse against us that the wisdome of God himself was strangely imployed in bringing us safely to felicity I shall draw a short Scheme which although it must needs be infinitely short of what God hath done for us yet it will be enough to shame us * God did not only give his Son for an example and the Son gave himself for a price for us but both gave the holy Spirit to assist us in mighty graces for the verifications of Faith and the entertainments of Hope and the increase and perseverance of Charity * God gave to us a new nature he put another principle into us a third part of a perfective constitution we have the Spirit put into us to be a part of us as properly to produce actions of a holy life as the soul of man in the body does produce the naturall * God hath exalted humane nature and made it in the person of Jesus Christ to sit above the highest seat of Angels and the Angels are made ministring spirits ever since their Lord became our Brother * Christ hath by a miraculous Sacrament given us his body to eat and his bloud to drink he made waies that we may become all one with him * He hath given us an easie religion and hath established our future felicity upon naturall and pleasant conditions and we are to be happy hereafter if we suffer God to make us happy here and things are so ordered that a man must take more pains to perish then to be happy * God hath found out rare wayes to make our prayers acceptable our weak petitions the desires of our imperfect souls to prevail mightily with God and to lay a holy violence and an undeniable necessity upon himself and God will deny us nothing but when we aske of him to do us ill offices to give us poisons and dangers and evill nourishment and temptations and he that hath given such mighty power to the prayers of his servants yet will not be moved by those potent and mighty prayers to do any good man an evill turn or to grant him one mischief in that only God can deny us * But in all things else God hath made all the excellent things in heaven and earth to joyn towards holy and fortunate effects for he hath appointed an Angell to present the prayers of Saints and Christ makes intercession for us and the holy Spirit makes intercession for us with groans unutterable and all the holy men in the world pray for all and for every one and God hath instructed us with Scriptures and precedents and collaterall and direct assistances to pray and he incouraged us with divers excellent promises and parables and examples and teaches us what to pray and how and gives one promise to publique prayer and another to private prayer and to both the blessing of being heard * Adde to this account that God did heap blessings upon us without order infinitely perpetually and in all instances when we needed and when we needed not * He heard us when we pray'd giving us all and giving us more then we desired * He desired that we should aske and yet he hath also prevented our desires * He watch'd for us and at his own charge sent a whole order of men whose imployment is to minister to our souls and if all this had not been enough he had given us more also * He promised heaven to our obedience a Province for a dish of water a Kingdome for a prayer satisfaction for desiring it grace for receiving and more grace for accepting and using the first * He invited us with gracious words and perfect entertainments * He threatned horrible things to us if we would not be happy * He hath made strange necessities for us making our very repentance to be a conjugation of holy actions and holy times and a long succession * He hath taken away all excuses from us he hath called us off from temptation he bears our charges he is alwaies before-hand with us in every act of favour and perpetually slow in striking and his arrowes are unfeathered and he is so long first in drawing his sword and another long while in whetting it and yet longer in lifting his hand to strike that before the blow comes the man hath repented long unlesse he be a fool and impudent and then God is so glad of an excuse to lay his anger aside that certainly if after all this we refuse life and glory there is no more to be said this plain story will condemn us but the story is very much longer and as our conscience will represent all our sins to us so the Judge will represent all his Fathers kindnesses as Nathan did to David when he was to make the justice of the Divine Sentence appear against him * Then it shall be remembred that the joyes of every daies piety would have been a greater pleasure every night then the remembrance of every nights sin could have been in the morning * That every night the trouble and labour of the daies vertue would have been as much passed and turned to as very a nothing as the pleasure of that daies sin but that they would be infinitely distinguished by the remanent effects 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 So Musonius expressed the sense of this inducement and that this argument would have grown so great by that time we come to dye that the certain pleasures and rare confidences and holy hopes of a death-bed would be a strange felicity to the man when he remembers he did obey if they were compared to the fearfull expectations of a dying sinner who feels by a formidable and afrighting remembrance that of all his sins nothing remains but the gains of a miserable eternity * The offering our selves to God every morning and the thanksgiving to God every night hope and fear shame and desire the honour of leaving a fair name behinde us and the shame of dying like a fool every thing indeed in the world is made to be an argument and an inducement
to us to invite us to come to God and be sav'd and therefore when this and infinitely more shall by the Judge be exhibited in sad remembrances there needs no other sentence we shall condemn our selves with a hasty shame and a fearfull confusion to see how good God hath been to us and how base we have been to our selves Thus Moses is said to accuse the Jewes and thus also he that does accuse is said to condemn as Verres was by Cicero and Claudia by Domitius her accuser and the world of impenitent persons by the men of Nineveh and all by Christ their Judge I represent the horror of this circumstance to consist in this besides the reasonablenesse of the Judgement and the certainty of the condemnation it cannot but be an argument of an intolerable despair to perishing souls when he that was our Advocate all our life shall in the day of that appearing be our Accuser and our Judge a party against us an injur'd person in the day of his power and of his wrath doing execution upon all his own foolish and malicious enemies * 2. Our conscience shall be our accuser but this signifies but these two things 1. that we shall be condemned for the evils that we have done and shall then remember God by his power wiping away the dust from the tables of our memory and taking off the consideration and the voluntary neglect and rude shufflings of our cases of conscience For then we shall see things as they are the evill circumstances and the crooked intentions the adherent unhandsomenesse and the direct crimes for all things are laid up safely and though we draw a curtain of cobweb over them and few figleaves before our shame yet God shall draw away the curtain and forgetfulnesse shall be no more because with a taper in the hand of God all the corners of our nastinesse shall be discovered And secondly it signifies this also that not only the Justice of God shall be confessed by us in our own shame and condemnation but the evill of the sentence shall be received into us to melt our bowels and to break our heart in pieces within us because we are the authors of our own death and our own inhumane hands have torn our souls in pieces Thus farre the horrors are great and when evill men consider it it is certain they must be afraid to dye Even they that have liv'd well have some sad considerations and the tremblings of humility and suspicion of themselves I remember S. Cyprian tels of a good man who in his agony of death saw a phantasme of a noble and angelicall shape who frowning and angry said to him Pati timetis exire non vultis Quid faciam vobis Ye cannot endure sicknesse ye are troubled at the evils of the world and yet you are loth to dye and to be quit of them what shall I do to you Although this is apt to represent every mans condition more of lesse yet concerning persons of wicked lives it hath in it too many sad degrees of truth they are impatient of sorrow and justly fearfull of death because they know not how to comfort themselves in the evill accidents of their lives and their conscience is too polluted to take death for sanctuary and to hope to have amends made to their condition by the sentence of the day of Judgement Evill and sad is their condition who cannot be contented here nor blessed hereafter whose life is their misery and their conscience is their enemy whose grave is their prison and death their undoing and the sentence of Dooms-day the beginning of an intolerable condition 3. The third sort of accusers are the Devils and they will do it with malicious and evill purposes The Prince of the Devils hath 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for one of his chiefest appellatives The accuser of the Brethren he is by his professed malice and imployment and therefore God who delights that his mercy should triumph and his goodnesse prevail over all the malice of men and Devils hath appointed one whose office is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to reprove the accuser and to resist the enemy and to be a defender of their cause who belong to God The holy Spirit is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a defender the evill spirit is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the accuser and they that in this life belong to one or the other shall in the same proportion be treated at the day of Judgement The Devill shall accuse the Brethren that is the Saints and servants of God and shall tell concerning their follies and infirmities the sins of their youth and the weaknesse of their age the imperfect grace and the long schedule of omissions of duty their scruples and their fears their diffidences and pusillanimity and all those things which themselves by strict examination finde themselves guilty of and have confessed all their shame and the matter of their sorrowes their evill intentions and their little plots their carnall confidences and too fond adherences to the things of this world their indulgence and easinesse of government their wilder joyes and freer meals their losse of time and their too forward and apt compliances their trifling arrests and little peevishnesses the mixtures of the world with the things of the Spirit and all the incidences of humanity he will bring forth and aggravate them by the circumstance of ingratitude and the breach of promise and the evacuating all their holy purposes and breaking their resolutions and rifling their vowes and all these things being drawn into an intire representment and the bils clog'd by numbers will make the best man in the world â—â—em foul and unhandsome and stained with the characters of death and evill dishonour But for these there is appointed a defender The holy Spirit that maketh intercession for us shall then also interpose and against all these things shall oppose the passion of our blessed Lord and upon all their defects shall cast the robe of his righteousnesse and the sins of their youth shall not prevail so much as the repentance of their age and their omissions be excused by probable intervening causes and their little escapes shall appear single and in disunion because they were alwaies kept asunder by penitentiall prayers and sighings and their seldome returns of sin by their daily watchfulnesse and their often infirmities by the sincerity of their souls and their scruples by their zeal and their possions by their love and all by the mercies of God and the sacrifice which their Judge offer'd and the holy Spirit made effective by daily graces and assistances These therefore infallibly go to the portion of the right hand because the Lord our God shall answer for them But as for the wicked it is not so with them for although the plain story of their life be to them a sad condemnation yet what will be answered when it shall be told concerning them that they despised Gods mercies and feared
who dyed for them who pardons easily and pities readily and excuses much and delights in our being saved and would not have us dye and takes little things in exchange for great it is certain that Gods mercies are infinite and it is also certain that the matter of eternall torments cannot truly be understood and when the School-men go about to reconcile the Divine justice to that severity and consider why God punishes eternally a temporall sin or a state of evill they speak variously and uncertainly and unsatisfyingly But that in this question we may separate the certain from the uncertain 1. It is certain that the torments of hell shall certainly last as long as the soul lasts for eternall and everlasting can signifie no lesse but to the end of that duration to the perfect end of the period in which it signifies So Sodom and Gomorrah when God rained down hell from heaven upon the earth as Salvian's expression is they are said to suffer the vengeance of eternall fire that is of a fire that consumed them finally and they never were restored and so the accursed souls shall suffer torments till they be consumed who because they are immortall either naturally or by gift shall be tormented for ever or till God shall take from them the life that he restored to them on purpose to give them a capacity of being miserable and the best that they can expect is to despair of all good to suffer the wrath of God never to come to any minute of felicity or of a tolerable state and to be held in pain till God be weary of striking This is the gentlest sentence of some of the old Doctors But 2. the generality of Christians have been taught to beleeve worse things yet concerning them and the words of our blessed Lord are 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 eternall affliction or smiting Nec mortis poenas mors altora finiet hujus Horaque erit tantis ultima nulla malis And S. John who well knew the minde of his Lord saith The smoke of their torment ascendeth up for ever and ever and they have no rest day nor night that is their torment is continuall and it is eternall Their second death shall be but a dying to all felicity for so death is taken in Scripture Adam dyed when he eat the forbidden fruit that is he was lyable to sicknesse and sorrowes and pain and dissolution of soul and body and to be miserable is the worse death of the two they shall see the eternall felicity of the Saints but they shall never taste of the holy Chalice Those joyes shall indeed be for ever and ever for immortality is part of their reward and on them the second death shall have no power but the wicked shall be tormented horridly and insufferably till death and hell be thrown into the lake of fire and shall be no more which is the second death But that they may not imagine that this second death shall be the end of their pains S. Iohn speaks expresly what that is Rev. 21. 8. The fearfull and unbeleeving the abominable and the murderers the whoremongers and sorcerers the idolaters and all lyars shall have their part in the lake wich burneth with fire and brimstone which is the second death no dying there but a being tormented burning in a lake of fire that is the second death For if life be reckoned a blessing then to be destitute of all blessing is to have no life and therefore to be intolerably miserable is this second death that is death eternall 3. And yet if God should deal with man hereafter more mercifully and proportionably to his weak nature then he does to Angels and as he admits him to repentance here so in hell also to a period of his smart even when he keeps the Angels in pain for ever yet he will never admit him to favour he shall be tormented beyond all the measure of humane ages and be destroyed for ever and ever It concerns us all who hear and beleeve these things to do as our blessed Lord will do before the day of his coming he will call and convert the Jews and strangers Conversion to God is the best preparatory to Dooms-day and it concerns all them who are in the neighbourhood and fringes of the flames of hell that is in the state of sin quickly to arise from the danger and shake the burning coals off our flesh lest it consume the marrow and the bones Exuenda est velociter de incendio sarcina priusquam flammis supervenientibus concremetur Nemo diu tutus est periculo proximus saith S. Cyprian No man is safe long that is so neer to danger for suddenly the change will come in which the Judge shall be called to Judgement and no man to plead for him unlesse a good conscience be his Advocate and the rich shall be naked as a condemned criminall to execution and there shall be no regard of Princes or of Nobles and the differences of mens account shall be forgotten and no distinction remaining but of good or bad sheep and goats blessed and accursed souls Among the wonders of the day of Judgement our blessed Saviour reckons it that men shall be marrying and giving in marriage 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 marrying and crosse marrying that is raising families and lasting greatnesse and huge estates when the world is to end so quickly and the gains of a rich purchase so very a trifle but no trifling danger a thing that can give no security to our souls but much hazards and a great charge More reasonable it is that we despise the world and lay up for heaven that we heap up treasures by giving almes and make friends of unrighteous Mammon but at no hand to enter into a state of life that is all the way a hazard to the main interest and at the best an increase of the particular charge Every degree of riches every degree of greatnesse every ambitious imployment every great fortune every eminency above our brother is a charge to the accounts of the last day He that lives temperately and charitably whose imployment is religion whose affections are fear and love whose desires are after heaven and do not dwell below that man can long and pray for the hastning of the coming of the day of the Lord. He that does not really desire and long for that day either is in a very ill condition or does not understand that he is in a good * I will not be so severe in this meditation as to forbid any man to laugh that beleeves himself shall be called to so severe a Judgement yet S. Hierom said it Coram coelo terrâ rationem reddemus totius nostrae vitae tu rides Heaven and earth shall see all the follies and basenesse of thy life and doest thou laugh That we may but we have not reason to laugh loudly and frequently if we consider things wisely and as
keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace we cannot have the blessing of the Spirit in the returns of a holy prayer and all those assemblies which meet together against God or Gods Ordinances may pray and call and cry loudly and frequently and still they provoke God to anger and many times he will not have so much mercy for them as to deny them but le ts them prosper in their sin till it swels to intolerable and impardonable * But when good men pray with one heart and in a holy assembly that is holy in their desires lawfull in their authority though the persons be of different complexion then the prayer flies up to God like the hymns of a Quire of Angels for God that made body and soul to be one man and God and man to be one Christ and three persons are one God and his praises are sung to him by Quires and the persons are joyned in orders and the orders into hierarchies and all that God may be served by unions and communities loves that his Church should imitate the Concords of heaven and the unions of God and that every good man should promote the interests of his prayers by joyning in the communion of Saints in the unions of obedience and charity with the powers that God and the Lawes have ordained The sum is this If the man that makes the prayer be an unholy person his prayer is not the instrument of a blessing but a curse but when the sinner begins to repent truly then his desires begin to be holy But if they be holy and just and good yet they are without profit and effect if the prayer be made in schisme or an evill communion or if it be made without attention or if the man soon gives over or if the prayer be not zealous or if the man be angry There are very many waies for a good man to become unblessed and unthriving in his prayers and he cannot be secure unlesse he be in the state of grace and his spirit be quiet and his minde be attentive and his society be lawfull and his desires carnest and passionate and his devotions persevering lasting till his needs be served or exchanged for another blessing so that what Laelius apud Cicer. de senectute said concerning old age neque in summâ inopiâ levis esse senectus potest ne sapienti quidem nec insipienti etiam in summâ coptâ non gravis that a wise man could not bear old age if it were extremely poor and yet if it were very rich it were intolerable to a fool we may say concerning our prayers they are sins and unholy if a wicked man makes them and yet if they be made by a good man they are ineffective unlesse they be improved by their proper dispositions A good man cannot prevail in his prayers if his desires be cold and his affections trifling and his industry soon weary and his society criminall and if all these appendages of prayer be observed yet they will do no good to an evill man for his prayer that begins in sin shall end in sorrow SERMON VI. Part III. 3. NExt I am to inquire and consider what degrees and circumstances of piety are requir'd to make us fit to be intercessors for others and to pray for them with probable effect I say with probable effect for when the event principally depends upon that which is not within our own election such as are the lives and actions of others all that we can consider in this affair is whether wee be persons fit to pray in the behalf of others that hinder not but are persons within the limit and possibilities of the presentmercy When the Emperour Maximinus was smitten with the wrath of God and a sore disease for his cruell persecuting the Christian cause and putting so many thousand innocent and holy persons to death and he understood the voice of God and the accents of thunder and discerned that cruelty was the cause he revoked their decrees made against the Christians recall'd them from their caves and deserts their sanctuaries and retirements and enjoyned them to pray for the life and health of their Prince They did so and they who could command mountaines to remove and were obeyed they who could doe miracles they who with the key of prayer could open Gods four closets of the wombe and the grave of providence and rain could not obtain for their bloudy Emperour one drop of mercy but he must die miserable for over God would not be intreated for him and though he loved the prayer because he loved the Advocates yet Maximinus was not worthy to receive the blessing And it was threatned to the rebellious people of Israel and by them to all people that should sin grievously against the Lord God would break their staffe of bread and even the righteous should not be prevailing intercessors Though Noah Job or Daniel were there they should deliver but their own souls by their righteousnesse saith the Lord God and when Abraham prevailed very far with God in the behalf of Sodome and the five Cities of the Plain it had its period If there had been ten righteous in Sodom it should have been spared for their sakes but four onely were found and they onely delivered their own souls too but neither their righteousnesse nor Abrahams prayer prevailed any further and we have this case also mentioned in the New Testament If any man see his brother sin a sin which is not unto death he shall aske and he shall give him life for them that sin not unto death At his prayer the sinner shall receive pardon God shall give him life for them to him that prays in their behalf that sin provided it be not a sin unto death For there is a sin unto death but I doe not say that he shall pray for it There his Commission expires and his power is confin'd For there are some sins of that state and greatnesse that God will not pardon S. Austin in his books de sermone Domini in monte affirms it concerning some one single sin of a perfect malice It was also the opinion of Origen and Athanasius and is followed by venerable Bede and whether the Apostle means a peculiar state of sin or some one single great crime which also supposes a precedent and a present state of criminall condition it is such a thing as will hinder our prayers from prevailing in their behalf we are therefore not encouraged to pray because they cannot receive the benefit of Christs intercession and therefore much lesse of our Advocation which onely can prevail by vertue and participation of his mediation For whomsoever Christ prays for them wee pray that is for all them that are within the covenant of repentance for all whose actions have not destroyed the very being of Religion who have not renounc'd their faith nor voluntarily quit their hopes nor openly opposed the Spirit of grace nor
grown by a long progresse to a resolute and finall impiety nor done injustices greater then sorrow or restitution or recompense or acknowledgment However though it may be uncertain and disputed concerning the number of sins unto death and therefore to pray or not to pray is not matter of duty yet it is all one as to the effect whether we know them or no for though we intend charity when we pray for the worst of men yet concerning the event God will take care and will certainly return thy prayer upon thy own head though thou didst desire it should water and refresh thy neighbors drynesse and St. John so expresses it as if he had left the matter of duty undetermin'd because the instances are uncertain yet the event is certainly none at all therefore because we are not encouraged to pray and because it is a sin unto death that is such a sin that hath no portion in the promises of life and the state of repentance But now suppose the man for whom wee pray to be capable of mercy within the covenant of repentance and not farre from the Kingdome of heaven yet 2ly No prayers of others can further prevail then to remove this person to the next stage in order to felicity When S. Monica prayed for her son she did not pray to God to save him but to cōvert him and when God intended to reward the prayers and almes of Cornelius he did not do it by giving him a Crown but by sending an Apostle to him to make him a Christian the meaning of which observation is that we may understand that as in the person prayed for there ought to be the great disposition of being in a saveable condition so there ought also to be all the intermediall aptnesses for just as he is disposed so can we prevail and the prayers of a good man first prevail in behalf of a sinner that he shall be invited that he shall be reproved and then that he shall attend to it then that he shall have his heart open'd and then that he shall repent And still a good mans prayers follow him thorough the severall stages of pardon of sanctification of restraining graces of a mighty providence of great assistance of perseverance and a holy death No prayers can prevaile upon an undisposed person For the Sun himself cannot enlighten a blind eye nor the soule move a body whose silver cord is loosed and whose joints are untyed by the rudenesse and dissolutions of a pertinacious sicknesse But then suppose an eye quick and healthfull or apt to be refreshed with light and a friendly prospect yet a glow-worm or a diamond the shels of pearl or a dead mans candle are not enough to make him discern the beauties of the world and to admire the glories of creation Therefore 2. As the persons must be capable for whom we pray so they that pray for others must be persons extraordinary in something 1. If persons be of an extraordinary piety they are apt to be intercessors for others This appeares in the case of Job When the wrath of God was kindled against Eliphaz and his two friends God commanded them to offer a sacrifice but my servant Job shall pray for you for him will I accept and it was so in the case of the prevaricating Israelites God was full of indignation against them and smote them Then stood up Phinehas and prayed and the plague ceased For this man was a good man and the spirit of an extraordinary zeal filled him and he did glory to God in the execution upon Zimri and his fair Madianite And it was a huge blessing that was intail'd upon the posterity of Abraham Isaac and Jacob because they had a great Religion a great power with God and their extraordinary did consist especially in the matter of prayers and devotion for that was eminent in them besides their obedience for so Maimonides tells concerning them that Abraham first instituted Morning prayer The affairs of Religion had not the same constitution then as now They worshipped God never but at their Memorials and in places and seldome times of separation The bowed their head when they came to a hallowed stone and upon the top of their staffe and worshipped when they came to a consecrated pillar but this was seldome and they knew not the secrets and the priviledges of a frequent prayer of intercourses with God by ejaculations and the advantages of importunity and the Doctors of the Jews that record the prayer of Noah who in all reason knew the secret best because he was to teach it to all the world yet have transmitted to us but a short prayer of some seaven lines long and this he onely said within the Ark in that great danger once on a day provoked by his fear and stirred up by a Religion then made actuall in those days of sorrow and penance But in the descending ages when God began to reckon a Church in Abraham's family there began to be a new institution of offices and Abraham appointed that God should be prayed to every morning Isaac being taught by Abraham made a law or at least commended the practise and adopted it into the Religion that God should be worshipped by decimation or tithing of our goods and he added an order of prayer to be said in the afternoon and Jacob to make up the office compleat added evening prayer and God was their God and they became fit persons to blesse that is of procuring blessings to their relatives as appears in the instances of their own families of the King of Egypt and the Cities of the Plain For a man of an ordinary piety is like Gideons fleece wet in its own locks but it could not water a poor mans Garden But so does a thirsty land drink all the dew of heaven that wets its face and a great shower makes no torrent nor digs so much as a little furrow that the drils of the water might passe into rivers or refresh their neighbours wearinesse but when the earth is full and hath no strange consumptive needs then at the next time when God blesses it with a gracious shower it divides into portions and sends it abroad in free and equall communications that all that stand round about may feel the shower So is a good mans prayer his own cup is full it is crowned with health and overflowes with blessings and all that drink of his cup and eat at his table are refreshed with his joys and divide with him in his holy portions And indeed he hath need of a great stock of piety who is first to provide for his own necessities and then to give portions to a numerous relation It is a great matter that every man needs for himself the daily expences of his own infirmities the unthriving state of his omission of duties and recessions from perfection and sometimes the great losses and shipwracks the plundrings and burning of his house by
unbeleevers and therefore they doe it with lesse honesty and excuse 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 I know not which is worse either to sin knowingly or wilfully or to repent of our sin and sin it over again And the same severe doctrine is delivered by Theodoret in his 12 book against the Greeks and is hugely agreeable to the discipline of the Primitive Church And it is a truth of so great severity that it ought to quicken the repentance and sowre the gayeties of easy people and make them fear whose repentance is therefore ineffectuall because it is not integrall or united but broken in pieces by the intervention of new crimes so that the repentance is every time to begin anew and then let it be considered what growth that repentance can make that is never above a week old that is for ever in its infancy that is still in its birth that never gets the dominion over sin These men I say ought to fear lest God reject their persons and deride the folly of their new begun repentances and at last be weary of giving them more opportunities since they approve all and make use of none their understanding is right and their will a slave their reason is for God and their affections for sin these men as the Apostles expression is walk not as wise but as fools for we deride the folly of those men that resolve upon the same thing a thousand times and never keep one of those resolutions These men are vaine and light easy and effeminate childish and abused these are they of whom our blessed Saviour said those sad decretory words Many shall strive to enter in and shall not be able SERMON VIII Part II. 3. THey have great reason to feare whose sins are not yet remitted for they are within the dominion of sin within the Kingdome of darknesse and the regions of feare Light makes us confident and Sin checks the spirit of a man into the pusillanimity and cowardize of a girle or a conscious boy and they doe their work in the days of peace and a wealthy fortune and come to pay their symbole in a warre or in a plague then they spend of their treasure of wrath which they laid up in their vessels of dishonour And indeed want of feare brought them to it for if they had known how to have accounted concerning the changes of mortality if they could have reckoned right concerning Gods judgements falling upon sinners and remembred that themselves are no more to God then that Brother of theirs that died in a drunken surfeit or was kill'd in a Rebell warre or was before his grave corrupted by the shames of lust if they could have told the minutes of their life and passed on towards their grave at least in religious and sober thoughts and consider'd that there must come a time for them to die and after death comes judgement a fearfull and an intolerable judgement it would not have come to this passe in which their present condition of affairs doe amaze them and their sin hath made them lyable unto death and that death is the beginning of an eternall evill In this case it is naturall to fear and if men consider their condition and know that all the felicity and all the security they can have depends upon Gods mercy pardoning their sins they cannot choose but fear infinitely if they have not reason to hope that their sins are pardoned * Now concerning this men indeed have generally taken a course to put this affair to a very speedy issue God is mercifull and God forgive mee and all is done or it may be a few sighs like the deep sobbings of a man that is almost dead with laughter that is a trifling sorrow returning upon a man after he is full of sin and hath pleased himselfe with violence and revolving onely by a naturall change from sin to sorrow from laughter to a groan from sunshine to a cloudy day or it may be the good man hath left some one sin quite or some degrees of all sin and then the conclusion is firm he is rectus in Curâ—â his sins are pardoned he was indeed in an evill condition but now he is purged he is sanctified and clean These things are very bad but it is much worse that men should continue in their sin and grow old in it and arrive at confirmation and the strength of habituall wickednesse and grow fond of it and yet think if they die their account stands as fair in the eyes of Gods mercy as St. Peter's after his tears and sorrow Our sins are not pardoned easily and quickly and the longer and the greater hath been the iniquity the harder and more difficult and uncertain is the pardon it is a great progresse to return from all the degrees of death to life to motion to quicknesse to purity to acceptation to grace to contention and growth in grace to perseverance and so to pardon For pardon stands no where but at the gates of heaven It is a great mercy that signifies a finall and universall acquittance God sends it out in little scroles and excuses you from falling by the sword of the enemy or the secret stroke of an Angell in the days of the plague but these are but little entertainments and inticings of our hopes to work on towards the great pardon which is registred in the leaves of the Book of Life And it is a mighty folly to think that every little line of mercy signifies glory and absolution from the eternall wrath of God and therefore it is not to be wondred at that wicked men are unwilling to dye it is a greater wonder that many of them dye with so little resentment of their danger and their evill There is reason for them to tremble when the Judge summons them to appear When his messenger is clothed with horror and speaks in thunder when their conscience is their accuser and their accusation is great and their bills uncancell'd and they have no title to the crosse of Christ no advocate no excuse when God is their enemy and Christ is the injur'd person and the Spirit is grieved and sicknesse and death come to plead Gods cause against the man then there is reason that the naturall fears of death should be high and pungent and those naturall fears encreased by the reasonable and certain expectations of that anger which God hath laid up in heaven for ever to consume and destroy his enemies And indeed if we consider upon how trifling and inconsiderable grounds most men hope for pardon if at least that may be call'd hope which is nothing but a carelesse boldnesse and an unreasonable wilfull confidence we shall see much cause to pity very many who are going merrily to a sad and intolerable death Pardon of sins is a mercy which Christ purchased with his dearest blood which he ministers to us upon conditions of an infinite kindnesse but yet of great holinesse and obedience
and an active living faith it is a grace that the most holy persons beg of God with mighty passion and labour for with a great diligence and expect with trembling fears and concerning it many times suffer sadnesses with uncertain soules and receive it by degrees and it enters upon them by little portions and it is broken as their sighs and sleeps But so have I seen the returning sea enter upon the strand and the waters rolling towards the shore throw up little portions of the tide and retire as if nature meant to play and not to change the abode of waters but still the floud crept by little steppings and invaded more by his progressions then he lost by his retreat and having told the number of its steps it possesses its new portion till the Angell calls it back that it may leave its unfaithfull dwelling of the sand so is the pardon of our sins it comes by slow motions and first quits a present death and turnes it may be into a sharp sicknesse and if that sicknesse prove not health to the soul it washes off and it may be will dash against the rock again and proceed to take off the severall instances of anger and the periods of wrath but all this while it is uncertain concerning our finall interest whether it be ebbe or floud and every hearty prayer and every bountifull almes still enlarges the pardon or addes a degree of probability and hope and then a drunken meeting or a covetous desire or an act of lust or looser swearing idle talk or neglect of Religion makes the pardon retire and while it is disputed between Christ and Christs enemy who shall be Lord the pardon fluctuates like the wave striving to climbe the rock and is wash'd off like its own retinue and it gets possession by time and uncertainty by difficulty and the degrees of a hard progression When David had sinned but in one instance interrupting the course of a holy life by one sad calamity it pleased God to pardon him but see upon what hard terms He prayed long and violently he wept sorely he was humbled in sackcloth and ashes he eat the bread of affliction and drank of his bottle of tears he lost his Princely spirit and had an amazing conscience he suffer'd the wrath of God and the sword never did depart from his house his Son rebell'd and his Kingdome revolted he fled on foot and maintained Spies against his childe hee was forc'd to send an army against him that was dearer then his owne eyes and to fight against him whom he would not hurt for all the riches of Syria and Egypt his concubines were desir'd by an incestuous mixture in the face of the sun before all Israel and his childe that was the fruit of his sin after a 7 days feaver dyed and left him nothing of his sin to show but sorrow and the scourges of the Divine vengeance and after all this God pardoned him finally because he was for ever sorrowfull and never did the sin againe He that hath sinned a thousand times for David's once is too confident if he thinks that all his shall be pardoned at a lesse rate then was used to expiate that one mischief of the religious King The son of David died for his father David as well as he did for us he was the Lambe slain from the beginning of the world and yet that death and that relation and all the heap of the Divine favours which crown'd David with a circle richer then the royall diadem could not exempt him from the portion of sinners when he descended into their pollutions I pray God we may find the sure mercies of David and may have our portion in the redemption wrought by the Son of David but we are to expect it upon such terms as are revealed such which include time and labour and uncertainty and watchfulnesse and fear and holy living But it is a sad observation that the case of pardon of sins is so administred that they that are most sure of it have the greatest fears concerning it and they to whom it doth not belong at all are as confident as children and fooles who believe every thing they have a mind to not because they have reason so to doe but because without it they are presently miserable The godly and holy persons of the Church work out their salvation with fear and trembling and the wicked goe to destruction with gayety and confidence these men think all is well while they are in the gall of bitternesse and good men are tossed in a tempest crying and praying for a safe conduct and the sighs of their feares and the wind of their prayers waft them safely to their port Pardon of sins is not easily obtain'd because they who onely certainly can receive it find difficulty and danger and fears in the obtaining it and therefore their case is pityable and deplorable who when they have least reason to expect pardon yet are most confident and carelesse But because there are sorrows on one side and dangers on the other and temptations on both sides it will concern all sorts of men to know when their sins are pardoned For then when they can perceive their signes certain and evident they may rest in their expectations of the Divine mercies when they cannot see the signes they may leave their confidence and change it into repentance and watchfulnesse and stricter observation and in order to this I shall tell you that which shall never faile you a certaine signe that you may know whether or no and when and in what degree your persons are pardoned 1. I shall not consider the evils of sin by any Metaphysicall and abstracted effects but by sensible reall and materiall Hee that revenges himself of another does something that will make his enemy grieve something that shall displease the offender as much as sin did the offended and therefore all the evills of sin are such as relate to us and are to bee estimated by our apprehensions Sin makes God angry and Gods anger if it be turned aside will make us miscrable and accursed and therefore in proportion to this we are to reckon the proportions of Gods mercy in forgivenesse or his anger in retaining 2. Sin hath obliged us to suffer many evills even whatsoever the anger of God is pleased to inflict sicknesse and dishonour poverty and shame a caytive spirit and a guilty conscience famine and war plague and pestilence sudden death and a short life temporall death or death eternall according as God in the severall covenants of the Law and Gospel hath expressed 3. For in the law of Moses sin bound them to nothing but temporall evills but they were sore and heavy and many but these only there were threatned in the Gospel Christ added the menaces of evills spirituall and eternall 4. The great evill of the Jews was their abscission and cutting off from being Gods people to which eternall damnation answers
amongst us and as sicknesse and war and other intermediall evills were lesser strokes in order to the finall anger of God against their Nation so are these and spirituall evills intermediall in order to the Eternall destruction of sinning and unrepenting Christians 5. When God had visited any of the sinners of Israel with a grievous sicknesse then they lay under the evil of their sin and were not pardoned till God took away the sicknesse but the taking the evill away the evill of the punishment was the pardon of the sin to pardon the sin is to spare the sinner and this appears For when Christ had said to the man sick of the palsey Son thy sins are forgiven thee the Pharisees accused him of blasohemy because none had power to forgive sins but God onely Christ to vindicate himselfe gives them an ocular demonstration and proves his words that yee may know the Son of Man hath power on earth to forgive sins he saith to the man sick of the palsey Arise and walk then he pardoned the sin when he took away the sicknesse and proved the power by reducing it to act for if pardon of sins be any thing else it must be easier or harder if it be easier then sin hath not so much evill in it as a sicknesse which no Religion as yet ever taught If it be harder then Christs power to doe that which was harder could not be proved by doing that which was easier It remaines therefore that it is the same thing to take the punishment away as to procure or give the pardon because as the retaining the sin was an obligation to the evill of punishment so the remitting the sin is the disobliging to its penalty So farre then the case is manifest 6. The next step is this that although in the Gospel God punishes sinners with temporall judgements and sicknesses and deaths with sad accidents and evill Angels and messengers of wrath yet besides these lesser strokes he hath scorpions to chastise and loads of worse evils to oppresse the disobedient he punishes one sin with another vile acts with evill habits these with a hard heart and this with obstinacy and obstinacy with impenitence and impenitence with damnation Now because the worst of evills which are threatned to us are such which consign to hell by persevering in sin as God takes off our love and our affections our relations and bondage under sin just in the same degree he pardons us because the punishment of sin being taken off and pardoned there can remaine no guilt Guiltinesse is an unsignificant word if there be no obligation to punishment Since therefore spirituall evils and progressions in sin and the spirit of reprobation and impenitence and accursed habits and perseverance in iniquity are the worst of evils when these are taken off the sin hath lost its venome and appendant curse for sin passes on to eternall death onely by the line of impenitence and it can never carry us to hell if we repent timely and effectually in the same degree therefore that any man leaves his sin just in the same degree he is pardoned and he is sure of it For although curing the temporall evill was the pardon of sins among the Jews yet wee must reckon our pardon by curing the spirituall If I have sinned against God in the shamefull crime of Lust then God hath pardoned my sins when upon my repentance and prayers he hath given me the grace of Chastity My Drunkennesse is forgiven when I have acquir'd the grace of Temperance and a sober spirit My Covetousnesse shall no more be a damning sin when I have a loving and charitable spirit loving to do good and despising the world for every further degree of sin being a neerer step to hell and by consequence the worst punishment of sin it follows inevitably that according as we are put into a contrary state so are our degrees of pardon and the worst punishment is already taken off And therefore we shall find that the great blessing and pardon and redemption which Christ wrought for us is called sanctification holinesse and turning us away from our sins So St. Peter Yee know that you were not redeemed with corruptible things as silver and gold from your vain conversation that 's your redemption that 's your deliverance you were taken from your sinfull state that was the state of death this of life and pardon and therefore they are made Synonyma by the same Apostle According as his divine power hath given us all things that pertain to life and godlinesse to live and to be godly is all one to remain in sin and abide in death is all one to redeem us from sin is to snatch us from hell he that gives us godlinesse gives us life and that supposes pardon or the abolition of the rites of eternall death and this was the conclusion of St. Peter's Sermon and the summe totall of our redemption and of our pardon God having raised up his Son sent him to blesse us in turning away every one of you from your iniquity this is the end of Christs passion and bitter death the purpose of all his and all our preaching the effect of baptisme purging washing sanctifying the work of the Sacrament of the Lords Supper the same body that was broken and the same blood that was shed for our redemption is to conform us into his image and likenesse of living and dying of doing and suffering The case is plain just as we leave our sins so Gods wrath shall be taken from us as we get the graces contrary to our former vices so infallibly we are consign'd to pardon If therefore you are in contestation against sin while you dwell in difficulty and sometimes yeeld to sin and sometimes overcome it your pardon is uncertain and is not discernible in its progresse but when sin is mortified and your lusts are dead and under the power of grace and you are led by the Spirit all your fears concerning your state of pardon are causelesse and afflictive without reason but so long as you live at the old rate of lust or intemperance of covetousnesse or vanity of tyranny or oppression of carelesnesse or irreligion flatter not your selves you have no more reason to hope for pardon then a begger for a Crown or a condemned criminall to be made Heir apparent to that Prince whom he would traiterously have slain 4. They have great reason to fear concerning their condition who having been in the state of grace who having begun to lead a good life and give their names to God by solemne deliberate acts of will and understanding and made some progresse in the way of Godlinesse if they shall retire to folly and unravell all their holy vows and commit those evils from which they formerly run as from a fire or inundation their case hath in it so many evills that they have great reason to fear the anger of God and
become credulous in twenty for want of reason we discourse our selves into folly and weak observation and give the Devill power over us in those circumstances in which we can least resist him 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 A theef is consident in the twilight if you suffer impressions to be made upon you by dreams the Devill hath the reins in his own hands and can tempt you by that which will abuse you when you can make no resistance Dominica the wife of Valens the Emperor dreamt that God threatned to take away her only son for her despitefull usage of St. Basil the fear proceeding from this instance was safe and fortunate but if she had dreamt in the behalf of a Heretick she might have been cousened into a false proposition upon a ground weaker then the discourse of a waking childe Let the grounds of our actions be noble beginning upon reason proceeding with prudence measured by the common lines of men and confident upon the expectation of an usuall providence Let us proceed from causes to effects from naturall means to ordinary events and believe felicity not to be a chance but a choice and evill to be the daughter of sin and the Divine anger not of fortune and fancy let us fear God when we have made him angry and not be afraid of him when we heartily and laboriously do our duty our fears are to be measured by open revelation and certain experience by the threatnings of God and the sayings of wise men and their limit is reverence and godlinesse is their end and then fear shall be a duty and a rare instrument of many in all other cases it is superstition or folly it is sin or punishment the Ivy of Religion and the misery of an honest and a weak heart and is to be cured only by reason and good company a wise guide and a plain rule a cheerfull spirit and a contented minde by joy in God according to the commandements that is a rejoycing evermore 2. But besides this superstitious fear there is another fear directly criminall and it is cald worldly fear of which the Spirit of God hath said But the fearfull and incredulous shall have their part in the lake that burneth with fire and brimstone which is the second death that is such fears which make men to fall in the time of persecution those that dare not own their faith in the face of a Tyrant or in despite of an accursed Law For though it be lawfull to be afraid in a storm yet it is not lawfull to leap into the sea though we may be more carefull for our fears yet we must be faithfull too and we may flie from the persecution till it overtakes us but when it does we must not change our Religion for our safety or leave the robe of Baptisme in the hand of the tempter and run away by all means St. Athanasius for 46 years did run and fight he disputed with the Arrians and fled from their Officers and that flies may be a man worth preserving if he bears his faith along with him and leaves nothing of his duty behinde but when duty and life cannot stand together he that then flies a persecution by delivering up his soul is one that hath no charity no love to God no trust in promises no just estimation of the rewards of a noble contention Perfect love casts out fear saith the Apostle that is he that loves God will not fear to dye for him or for his sake to be poor In this sense no man can fear man and love God at the same time and when St. Laurence triumph'd over Valerianus St. Sebastian over Diocletian St. Vincentius over Dacianus and the armies of Martyrs over the Proconsuls accusers and executioners they shew'd their love to God by triumphing over fear and leading captivity captive by the strength of their Captain whose garments were red from Bozrah 3. But this fear is also tremulous and criminall if it be a trouble from the apprehension of the mountains and difficulties of duty and is called pusillanimity For some see themselves encompassed with temptations they observe their frequent fals their perpetuall returns from good purposes to weak performances the daily mortifications that are necessary the resisting naturall appetites and the laying violent hands upon the desires of flesh and bloud the uneasinesse of their spirits and their hard labours and therefore this makes them afraid and because they despair to run through the whole duty in all its parts and periods they think as good not begin at all as after labour and expence to lose the Jewell and the charges of their venture St. Austin compares such men to children and phantastick persons afrighted with phantasmes and specters Terribiles visu formae the sight seems full of horror but touch them and they are very nothing the meer daughters of a sick brain and a weak heart an infant experience and a trifling judgement so are the illusions of a weak piety or an unskilfull unconsident soul they fancy to see mountains of difficulty but touch them and they seem like clouds riding upon the wings of the winde and put on shapes as we please to dream He that denies to give almes for fear of being poor or to entertain a Disciple for fear of being suspected of the party or to own a duty for fear of being put to venture for a crown he that takes part of the intemperance because he dares not displease the company or in any sense fears the fears of the world and not the fear of God this man enters into his portion of fear betimes but it will not be finished to eternall ages To fear the censures of men when God is your Judge to fear their evill when God is your defence to fear death when he is the entrance to life and felicity is unreasonable and pernicious but if you will turn your passion into duty and joy and security fear to offend God to enter voluntarily into temptation fear the alluring face of lust and the smooth entertainments of intemperance fear the anger of God when you have deserved it and when you have recover'd from the share then infinitely fear to return into that condition in which whosoever dwels is the heir of fear and eternall sorrow Thus farre I have discoursed concerning good fear and bad that is filiall and servile they are both good if by servile we intend initiall or the new beginning fear of penitents a fear to offend God upon lesse perfect considerations But servile fear is vitious when it still retains the affection of slaves and when its effects are hatred wearinesse displeasure and want of charity and of the same cognations are those fears which are superstitious and worldly But to the former sort of vertuous fear some also adde another which they call Angelicall that is such a fear as the blessed Angels have who before God hide their faces and tremble at his presence and
with so little relish that it comes as news of a victory to a man upon the Rack or the birth of an heir to one condemned to dye he hears a story which was made to delight him but it came when he was dead to joy and all its capacities and therefore sicknesse though it be a good Monitor yet it is an ill stage to act some vertues in and a good man cannot then doe much and therefore he that is in the state of flesh and blood can doe nothing at all 4. But in these considerations we find our nature in disadvantages and a strong man may be overcome when a stronger comes to disarme him and pleasure and pain are the violences of choice and chance but it is no better in any thing else for nature is weak in all its strengths and in its fights at home and abroad in its actions and passions we love some things violently and hate others unreasonably any thing can fright us when we should be confident and nothing can scare us when we ought to feare the breaking of a glasse puts us into a supreme anger and we are dull and indifferent as a Stoick when we see God dishonour'd we passionately desire our preservation and yet we violently destroy our selves and will not be hindred we cannot deny a friend when he tempts us to sin and death and yet we daily deny God when he passionately invites us to life and health we are greedy after money and yet spend it vainly upon our lusts we hate to see any man flatter'd but our selves and we can endure folly if it be on our side and a sin for our interest we desire health and yet we exchange it for wine and madnesse we sink when a persecution comes and yet cease not daily to persecute our selves doing mischiefs worse then the sword of Tyrants and great as the malice of a Devill 5. But to summe up all the evills that can be spoken of the infirmities of the flesh the proper nature and habitudes of men are so foolish and impotent so averse and peevish to all good that a mans will is of it self onely free to choose evils Neither is it a contradiction to say liberty and yet suppose it determin'd to one object onely because that one object is the thing we choose For although God hath set life and death before us fire and water good and evill and hath primarily put man into the hands of his owne counsell that he might have chosen good as well as evill yet because he did not but fell into an evill condition and corrupted manners and grew in love with it and infected all his children with vicious examples and all nations of the world have contracted some universall stains and the thoughts of mans hearts are onely evill and that continually and there is not one that doth good no not one that sinneth not since I say all the world have sinned we cannot suppose a liberty of indifferency to good and bad it is impossible in such a liberty that there should be no variety that all should choose the same thing but a liberty of complacency or delight we may suppose that is so that though naturally he might choose good yet morally he is so determin'd with his love to evill that good seldome comes into dispute and a man runs to evill as he runs to meat or sleep for why else should it be that every one can teach a childe to be proud or to swear to lie or to doe little spites to his play-fellow and can traine him up to infant follies But the severity of Tutors and the care of Parents discipline and watchfulnesse arts and diligence all is too little to make him love but to say his prayers or to doe that which becomes persons design'd for honest purposes and his malice shall out-run his yeares he shall be a man in villany before he is by law capable of choice or inheritance and this indisposition lasts upon us for ever even as long as we live just in the same degrees as flesh and blood does rule us 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Art of Physicians can cure the evills of the body but this strange propensity to evill nothing can cure but death the grace of God eases the malignity here but it cannot be cured but by glory that is this freedome of delight or perfect unabated election of evill which is consequent to the evill manners of the world although it be lessened by the intermediall state of grace yet it is not cured untill it be changed into its quite contrary but as it is in heaven all that is happy and glorious and free yet can choose nothing but the love of God and excellent things because God fills all the capacities of Saints and there is nothing without him that hath any degrees of amability so in the state of nature of flesh and blood there is so much ignorance of spirituall excellencies and so much proportion to sensuall objects which in most instances and in many degrees are prohibited that as men naturally know no good but to please a wilde indetermin'd infinite appetite so they will nothing else but what is good in their limit and proportion and it is with us as it was with the shee-goat that suckled the wolves whelp he grew up by his nurses milke and at last having forgot his foster mothers kindnesse eat that udder which gave him drink and nourishment Improbit as nullo flectitur obsequio for no kindnesse will cure an ill nature and a base disposition so are we in the first constitution of our nature so perfectly given to naturall vices that by degrees we degenerate into unnaturall and no education or power of art can make us choose wisely or honestly 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 said Phalaris There is no good nature but onely vertue till we are new created we are wolves and serpents free and delighted in the choice of evill but stones and iron to all excellent things and purposes 2. Next I am to consider the weaknesse of the flesh even when the state is changed in the beginning of the state of grace For many persons as soon as the grace of God rises in their hearts are all on fire and inflamed it is with them as Homer said of the Syrian starre 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 It shines finely and brings feavers splendor and zeal are the effects of the first grace and sometimes the first turnes into pride and the second unto uncharitablenesse and either by too dull and slow motions or by too violent and unequall the flesh will make pretences and too often prevail upon the spirit even after the grace of God hath set up its banners in our hearts 1. In some dispositions that are forward and apt busie and unquiet when the grace of God hath taken possessions and begins to give laws it seems so pleasant and gay to their undiscerning spirits to be delivered from the
women and young persons by reputation in the more aged and by honour in the more noble and by conscience in all have fortified the spirit of Man that men dare not prevaricate their duty though they be tempted strongly and invited perpetually and this is a partition wall that separates the spirit from the flesh and keeps it in its proper strengths and retirements But here the spirit of man for all that it is assisted strongly breaks from the inclosure and runnes into societies of flesh and sometimes despises reputation and sometimes supplies it with little arts of flattery and self-love and is modest as long as it can be secret and when it is discovered it growes impudent and a man shelters himselfe in crouds and heaps of sinners and beleeves that it is no worse with him then with other mighty criminals and publick persons who bring sin into credit amongst fooles and vicious persons or else men take false measures of fame or publick honesty and the world being broken into so many parts of disunion and agreeing in nothing but in confederate vices and grown so remisse in governments and severe accounts every thing is left so loose that honour and publick fame modesty and shame are now so slender guards to the spirit that the flesh breaks in and makes most men more bold against God then against men and against the laws of Religion then of the Common-wealth 7. When the spirit is made willing by the grace of God the flesh interposes in deceptions and false principles If you tempt some man to a notorious sin as to rebellion to deceive his trust or to be drunk he will answer he had rather die then doe it But put the sin civilly to him and let it be disguised with little excuses such things which indeed are trifles but yet they are colours fair enough to make a weak pretence and the spirit yeelds instantly Most men choose the sin if it be once disputable whether it be a sin or no If they can but make an excuse or a colour so that it shall not rudely dash against the conscience with an open professed name of Sin they suffer the temptation to doe its worst If you tempt a man you must tell him 't is no sin or it is excusable this is not rebellion but necessity and selfe defence it is not against my allegiance but is a performing of my trust I doe it for my friend not against my Superiour I doe it for a good end and for his advantage this is not drunkennesse but free mirth and fair society it is refreshment and entertainment of some supernumerary hours but it is not a throwing away my time or neglecting a day of salvation and if there be any thing more to say for it though it be no more then Adams fig-leaves or the excuses of children and truants it shall be enough to make the flesh prevail and the spirit not to be troubled for so great is our folly that the flesh always carries the cause if the spirit can be cousen'd 8. The flesh is so mingled with the spirit that we are forced to make distinctions in our appetite to reconcile our affections to God and Religion lest it be impossible to doe our duty we weep for our sins but we weep more for the death of our dearest friends or other temporall sadnesses we say we had rather die then lose our faith and yet we doe not live according to it we lose our estates and are impatient we lose our vertue and bear it well enough and what vertue is so great as more to be troubled for having sin'd then for being asham'd and begger'd and condemn'd to die Here we are forced to a distinction there is a valuation of price and a valuation of sense or the spirit hath one rate of things and the flesh hath another and what we beleeve the greatest evill does not alwayes cause to us the greatest trouble which shews plainly that we are imperfect carnall persons and the flesh will in some measure prevaile over the spirit because we will suffer it in too many instances and cannot help it in all 9. The spirit is abated and interrupted by the flesh because the flesh pretends it is not able to doe those ministeries which are appointed in order to Religion we are not able to fast or if we watch it breeds gouts and catarrhes or charity is a grace too expensive our necessities are too big to do it or we cannot suffer pain and sorrow breeds death and therefore our repentances must be more gentle and we must support our selves in all our calamities for we cannot beare our crosses without a freer refreshment and this freedome passes on to licence and many melancholy persons drowne their sorrows in sin and forgetfulnesse as if sin were more tolerable then sorrow and the anger of God an easier load then a temporall care here the flesh betrayes its weaknesse and its follies For the flesh complains too soon and the spirit of some men like Adam being too fond of his Eve attends to all its murmurs and temptations and yet the flesh is able to bear farre more then is required of it in usuall duties Custome of suffering will make us endure much and feare will make us suffer more and necessity makes us suffer any thing and lust and desire makes us to endure more then God is willing we should and yet we are nice and tender and indulgent to our weaknesses till our weaknesses grow too strong for us And what shall we doe to secure our duty and to be delivered of our selves that the body of death which we bear about us may not destroy the life of the spirit I have all this while complain'd and you see not without cause I shall afterwards tell you the remedies for all this evill In the mean time let us have but mean opinions of our selves let us watch every thing of our selves as of suspected persons and magnifie the grace of God and be humbled for our stock and spring of follies and let us look up to him who is the fountaine of grace and spirituall strengths 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And pray that God would give us what we ask and what we ask not for we want more helps then we understand and we are neerer to evill then we perceive and we bear sin and death about us and are in love with it and nothing comes from us but false principles and silly propositions and weak discourses and startings from our holy purposes and care of our bodies and of our palates and the lust of the lower belly these are the imployment of our lives but if wee design to live happily and in a better place it must be otherwise with us we must become new creatures and have another definition and have new strengths which we can onely derive from God whose grace is sufficient for us and strong enough to prevail over all our
half a dozen to God and one for his company or his friend his education or his appetite and if he hath parted from his folly yet he will remember the fleshpots and please himself with a phantastick sin and call it home through the gates of his memory and place it at the door of fancy that there he may behold it and consider concerning what he hath parted withall out of the fears and terrors of religion and a necessary unavoidable conscience Do not many men go from sin to sin even in their repentance they go backward from sin to sin and change their crime as a man changes his uneasie load and shakes it off from one shoulder to support it with the other How many severe persons virgins and widows are so pleased with their chastity and their abstinence even from lawfull mixtures that by this means they fall into a worse pride insomuch that I remember St. Austin said Audeo dicere superbis continentibus expedit cadere they that are chaste and proud it is sometimes a remedy for them to fall into sin and by the shame of lust to cure the devill of pride and by the sin of the body to cure the worser evils of the spirit and therefore he addes that he did beleeve God in a severe mercy did permit the barbarous nations breaking in upon the Roman Empire to violate many virgins professed in Cloisters and religious Families to be as a mortification of their pride lest the accidentall advantages of a continent life should bring them into the certain miseries of a spirituall death by taking away their humility which was more necessary then their virgin state It is not a cure that men may use but God permits it sometimes with greater safety through his wise conduct and over-ruling providence St. Peter was safer by his fall as it fell out in the event of things then by his former confidence Man must never cure a sin by a sin but he that brings good out of our evill he can when he please But I speak it to represent how deceitfully many times we do the work of the Lord. We reprove a sinning Brother but do it with a pompous spirit we separate from scandall and do it with glory and a gaudy heart we are charitable to the poor but will not forgive our unkinde enemies or we powre relief into their bags but we please our selves and drink drunk and hope to commute with God giving the fruit of our labours or effluxes of money for the sin of our souls And upon this account it is that two of the noblest graces of a Christian are to very many persons made a savour of death though they were intended for the beginning and the promotion of an eternal life and those are faith and charity some men think if they have faith it is enough to answer all the accusations of sin which our consciences or the Devils make against us If I be a wanton person yet my faith shall hide it and faith shall cover the follies of drunkennesse and I may all my life relye upon faith at last to quit my scores For he that is most carefull is not innocent but must be saved by faith and he that is least carefull may have faith and that will save him But because these men mistake concerning faith and consider not that charity or a good life is a part of that faith that saves us they hope to be saved by the Word they fill their bellies with the story of Frimalcions banquet and drink drunk with the newes of wine they eat shadows and when they are drowning catch at the image of the trees which hang over the water and are reflected from the bottome But thus many men do with charity Give almes and all things shall be clean unto you said our Blessed Saviour and therefore many keep a sin alive and make account to pay for it and God shall be put to relieve his own poor at the price of the sin of another of his servants charity shall take lust or intemperance into protection and men will not be kinde to their brethren unlesse they will be also at the same time unkinde to God I have understood concerning divers vicious persons that none have been so free in their donatives and offerings to Religion and the Priest as they and the Hospitals that have been built and the High-wayes mended at the price of souls are too many for Christendome to boast of in behalf of charity But as others mistake concerning faith so these do concerning its twin sister The first had faith without charity and these have charity without hope for every one that hath this hope that is the hope of receiving the glorious things of God promised in the Gospell purifies himself even as God is pure faith and charity too must both suppose repentance and repentance is the abolition of the whole body of sin the purification of the whole man But the summe of the Doctrine and case of conscience in this particular is this 1. Charity is a certain cure of sins that are past not that are present He that repents and leaves his sin and then relieves the poor and payes for his folly by a diminution of his own estate and the supplies of the poor and his ministring to Christs poor members turns all his former crimes into holinesse he purges the slains and makes amends for his folly and commutes for the baser pleasure with a more noble usage so said Daniel to Nebuchadnezzar Break off thy sins by righteousnesse and thine iniquities by shewing mercy to the poor first be just and then be charitable for it is pity almes which is one of the noblest services of God and the greatest mercy to thy Brother should be spent upon sin and thrown away upon folly 2. Faith is the remedy of all our evils but then it is never of force but when we either have endevoured or undertaken to do all good this in baptisme that after faith and repentance at first and faith and charity at last and because we fail often by infirmity and sometimes by inadvertency sometimes by a surprize and often by omission and all this even in the midst of a sincere endevour to live justly and perfectly therefore the passion of our Lord payes for thus and faith layes hold upon that But without a hearty and sincere intent and vigorous prosecution of all the parts of our duty faith is but a word not so much as a cover to a naked bosome nor a pretence big enough to deceive persons that are not willing to be cousened 3. The bigger ingredient of vertue and evill actions will prevail but it is only when vertue is habituall and sins are single interrupted casuall and seldome without choice and without affection that is when our repentance is so timely that it can work for God more then we served under the tyranny of sin so that if you will account the whole
be more esteemed and called to stand at the chairs of Princes and Nobles * Holy persons and holy things and all great relations are to be valued by generall proportions to their correlatives but if wee descend to make minute and exact proportions and proportion an inch of temporall to a minute of spirituall we must needs be hugely deceived unlesse we could measure the motion of an Angell by a string or the progressions of the Spirit by weight and measure of the staple * And yet if these measures were taken it would be unreasonable that the lower of the higher kind should be preferr'd before the most perfect and excellent in a lower order of things A man generally is to be esteemed above a woman but not the meanest of her subjects before the most excellent Queen not alwayes this man before this woman Now Kings and Princes are the best in all temporall dignities and therefore if they had in them no spirituall relations and consequent excellencies as they have very many yet are not to be undervalu'd to spirituall relations which in this world are very imperfect weak partiall and must stay till the next world before they are in a state of excellency propriety and perfection and then also all shall have them according to the worth of their persons not of their calling * But lastly what men may not challenge is not their just and proper due but spirituall persons and the neerest relatives to God stand by him but so long as they dwell low and safe in humility and rise high in nothing but in labours and zeal of soules and devotion * In proportion to this rule a Church may be pull'd down to save a Town and the Vessels of the Church may be sold to redeem Captives when there is a great calamity imminent and prepared for reliefe and no other way to succour it But in the whole the duty of zeale requires that we neglect an ordinary visit rather then an ordinary prayer and a great profit rather then omit a required duty No excuse can legitimate a sin and he that goes about to distinguish between his duty and his profit and if he cannot reconcile them will yet tie them together like a Hyaena and a Dog this man pretends to Religion but secures the world and is indifferent and lukewarme towards that so he may be warme and safe in the possession of this 2. To that fervour and zeal that is necessary and a duty it is required that we be constant and persevering Eslo sidelis ad mortem said the Spirit of God to the Angel of the Church of Smyrna Be faithfull unto death and I will give thee a crown of life For he that is warm to day and cold to morrow zealous in his resolution and weary in his practises fierce in the beginning and slack and easie in his progresse hath not yet well chosen what side he will be of he sees not reason enough for Religion and he hath not confidence enough for its contrary and therefore he is duplicis animi as St. James calls him of a doubtfull mind For Religion is worth as much to day as it was yesterday and that cannot change though we doe and if we doe we have left God and whither he can goe that goes from God his owne sorrowes will soon enough instruct him This fire must never goe out but it must be like the fire of heaven it must shine like the starres though sometimes cover'd with a cloud or obscur'd by a greater light yet they dwell for ever in their orbs and walk in their circles and observe their circumstances but goe not out by day nor night and set not when Kings die nor are extinguish'd when Nations change their Government So must the zeal of a Christian be a constant incentive of his duty and though sometimes his hand is drawne back by violence or need and his prayers shortned by the importunity of businesse and some parts omitted by necessities and just complyances yet still the fire is kept alive it burns within when the light breaks not forth and is eternall as the orb of fire or the embers of the Altar of Incense 3. No man is zealous as he ought but he that delights in the service of God without this no man can persevere but must faint under the continuall pressure of an uneasie load If a man goes to his prayers as children goe to schoole or give alms as those that pay contribution and meditate with the same willingnesse with which young men die this man does personam sustinere he acts a part which he cannot long personate but will find so many excuses and silly devices to omit his duty such tricks to run from that which will make him happy he will so watch the eyes of men and be so sure to doe nothing in private he will so often distinguish and mince the duty into minutes and little particles he will so tie himself to the letter of the Law and be so carelesse of the intention and spirituall designe he will be punctuall in the ceremony and trifling in the secret and he will be so well pleased when he is hindred by an accident not of his own procuring and will have so many devices to defeat his duty and to cosuen himselfe that he will certainly manifest that he is afraid of Religion and secretly hates it he counts it a burthen and an objection and then the man is sure to leave it when his circumstances are so fitted But if we delight in it we enter into a portion of the reward as soon as we begin the worke and the very grace shall be stronger then the temptation in its very pretence of pleasure and therefore it must needs be pleasing to God because it confesses God to be the best Master Religion the best work and it serves God with choice and will and reconciles our nature to it and entertaines our appetite and then there is no ansa or handle left whereby we can easily be drawne from duty when all parties are pleased with the imployment But this delight is not to be understood as if it were alwayes required that we should feele an actuall cheerfulnesse and sensible joy such as was that of Jonathan when he had newly tasted honey and the light came into his eyes and he was refreshed and pleasant This happens sometimes when God please to intice or reward a mans spirit with little Antepasts of heaven but such a delight onely is necessary and a duty that we alwayes choose our duty regularly and undervalue the pleasures of temptation and proceed in the work of grace with a firme choice and unabated election our joy must be a joy of hope a joy at least of confident sufferers the joys of faith and expectation rejoycing in hope so the Apostle calls it that is a going forward upon such a perswasion as sees the joyes of God laid up for the Children of men and so the
may not give it to him unlesse he knowes by other means to pay the debt but if he can do both he hath his liberty to lay out his money for a Crown But then in the case of provision for children our restraint is not so easie or discernible 1. Because we are not bound to provide for them in a certain portion but may do it by the analogies and measures of prudence in which there is a great latitude 2. Because our zeal of charity is a good portion for them and layes up a blessing for inheritance 3. Because the fairest portions of charity are usually short of such sums which can be considerable in the duty of provision for our children 4. If we for them could be content to take any measure lesse then all any thing under every thing that we can we should finde the portions of the poor made ready to our hands sufficiently to minister to zeal and yet not to intrench upon this case of conscience But the truth is we are so carelesse so unskil'd so unstudied in religion that we are only glad to make an an excuse and to defeat our souls of the reward of the noblest grace we are contented if we can but make a pretence for we are highly pleased if our conscience be quiet and care not so much that our duty be performed much lesse that our eternall interest be advanced in bigger portions We care not we strive not we think not of getting the greater rewards of Heaven and he whose desires are so indifferent for the greater will not take pains to secure the smallest portion and it is observable that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the least in the Kingdome of heaven is as much as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as good as none if a man will be content with his hopes of the lowest place there and will not labour for something beyond it he does not value it at all and it is ten to one but will lose that for which he takes so little pains and is content with so easie a security He that does his almes and resolves that in no case he will suffer inconvenience for his brother whose case it may be is intolerable should do well to remember that God in some cases requires a greater charity and it may be we shall be called to dye for the good of our brother and that although it alwaies supposes a zeal and a holy fervour yet sometimes it is also a duty and we lose our lives if we go to save them and so we do with our estates when we are such good husbands in our Religion that we will serve all our own conveniences before the great needs of a hungry and afflicted brother God oftentimes takes from us that which with so much curiosity we would preserve and then we lose our money and our reward too 3. Hither is to be reduced * the accepting and choosing the counsels Evangelicall * the virgin or widow estate in order to Religion * selling all and giving it to the poor * making our selves Eunuchs for the Kingdome of Heaven * offering our selves to death voluntary in exchange or redemption of the life of a most usefull person as Aquila and Priscilla who ventur'd their lives for St. Paul * the zeal of souls * St. Paul's preaching to the Corinthian Church without wages remitting of rights and forgiving of debts when the obliged person could pay but not without much trouble * protection of calamitous persons with hazard of our own interest and a certain trouble concerning which and all other acts of zeal we are to observe the following measures by which our zeal will become safe and holy and by them also we shall perceive the excesses of Zeal and its inordinations which is the next thing I am to consider 1. The first measure by which our zeal may comply with our duty and its actions become laudable is charity to our neighbour For since God receives all that glorification of himself whereby we can serve and minister to his glory reflected upon the foundation of his own goodnesse and bounty and mercy and all the Allellujahs that are or ever shall be sung in heaven are praises and thank givings and that God himself does not receive glory from the acts of his Justice but then when his creatures will not rejoyce in his goodnesse and mercy it followes that we imitate this originall excellency and pursue Gods own method that is glorifie him in via misericordiae in the way of mercy and bounty charity and forgivenesse love and fair compliances There is no greater charity in the world then to save a soul nothing that pleases God better nothing that can be in our hands greater or more noble nothing that can be a more lasting and delightfull honour then that a perishing soul snatched from the flames of an intolerable Hell and born to Heaven upon the wings of piety and mercy by the Ministery of Angels and the graces of the holy Spirit shall to eternall ages blesse God and blesse thee Him for the Author and finisher of salvation and thee for the Minister and charitable instrument that bright starre must needs look pleasantly upon thy face for ever which was by thy hand plac'd there and had it not been by thy Ministery might have been a footy coal in the regions of sorrow Now in order to this God hath given us all some powers and ministeries by which we may by our charity promote this Religion and the great interest of souls Counsels and prayers preaching and writing passionate desires and fair examples going before others in the way of godlinesse and bearing the torch before them that they may see the way and walk in it This is a charity that is prepared more or lesse for every one and by the way we should do well to consider what we have done towards it For as it will be a strange arrest at the day of Judgement to Dives that he fed high and sufferred Lazarus to starve and every garment that lies by thee and perishes while thy naked brother does so too for want of it shall be a bill of Inditement against thy unmercifull soul so it will be in every instance in what thou couldst profit thy brother and didst not thou art accountable and then tell over the times in which thou hast prayed for the conversion of thy sinning brother and compare the times together and observe whether thou hast not tempted him or betrayed him to a sin or encourag'd him in it or didst not hinder him when thou mightest more frequently then thou hast humbly and passtonately and charitably and zealously bowed thy head and thy heart and knees to God to redeem that poor soul from hell whither thou seest him descending with as much indifferency as a stone into the bottome of a well In this thing 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 it is a good thing to be zealous and put forth all your strength for you
women tenderly and yet would never strike And if the man cannot endure her talking how can she endure his striking But this caution contains a duty in it which none prevaricates but the meanest of the people fools and bedlams whose kindnesse is a curse whose government is by chance and violence and their families are herds of talking cattell Sic alternos reficit cursus Alternus amor sic astrigeris Bellum discors exulat or is Haec concordia temperat aequis Elementamodis ut pugnantia Vicibus cedant humida siccis Jungantque sidem frigora flammis The maritall love is infinitely removed from all possibility of such rudenesses it is a thing pure as light sacred as a Temple lasting as the world Aamicitia quae desinere potuit nunquam vera fuit said one that love that can cease was never true it is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 so Moses call'd it it is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 so St. Paul it is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 so Homer it is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 so Plutarch that is it contains in it all sweetnesse and all society and all felicity and all prudence and all wisdome For there is nothing can please a man without love and if a man be weary of the wise discourses of the Apostles and of the innocency of an even and a private fortune or hates peace or a fruitfull year he hath reaped thorns and thistles from the choicest flowers of Paradise For nothing can sweeten felicity it self but love but when a man dwels in love then the brests of his wife are pleasant as the droppings upon the hill of Hermon her eyes are fair as the light of heaven she is a fountain sealed and he can quench his thirst and ease his cares and lay his sorrowes down upon her lap and can retire home as to his sanctuary and refectory and his gardens of sweetnesse and chast refreshments No man can tell but he that loves his children how many delicious accents make a mans heart dance in the pretty conversation of those dear pledges their childishnesse their stammering their little angers their innocence their imperfections their necessities are so many little emanations of joy and comfort to him that delights in their persons and society but he that loves not his wife and children feeds a Lionesse at home and broods a nest of sorrowes and blessing it self cannot make him happy so that all the commandements of God injoyning a man to love his wife are nothing but so many necessities and capacities of joy She that is lov'd is safe and he that loves is joyfull Love is a union of all things excellent it contains in it proportion and satisfaction and rest and confidence and I wish that this were so much proceeded in that the Heathens themselves could not go beyond us in this vertue and its proper and its appendant happinesse Tiberius Gracchus chose to die for the safety of his wife and yet me thinks to a Christian to do so should be no hard thing for many servants will dye for their masters and many Gentlemen will die for their friend but the examples are not so many of those that are ready to do it for their dearest relatives and yet some there have been Baptista Fregosa tels of Neapolitan that gave himself a slave to the Moores that he might follow his wife and Dominicus Catalusius the Prince of Lesbos kept company with his Lady when she was a Leper and these are greater things then to die But the cases in which this can be required are so rare and contingent that holy Scripture instances not the duty in this particular but it contains in it that the husband should nourish and cherish her that he should refresh her sorrowes and intice her fears into confidence and pretty arts of rest for even the fig-trees that grew in Paradise had sharp pointed leaves and harshnesses fit to mortifie the too forward lusting after the sweetnesse of the fruit But it will concern the prudence of the husbands love to make the cares and evils as simple and easie as he can by doubling the joyes and acts of a carefull friendship by tolerating her infirmities because by so doing he either cures her or makes himself better by fairly expounding all the little traverses of society and communication by taking every thing by the right handle as Plutarchs expression is for there is nothing but may be misinterpreted and yet if it be capable of a fair construction it is the office of love to make it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Love will account that to be well said which it may be was not so intended and then it may cause it to be so another time 3. Hither also is to be referred that he secure the interest of her vertue and felicity by a fair example for a wife to a husband is like a line or superficies it hath dimensions of its own but no motion or proper affections but commonly put on such images of vertues or vices as are presented to them by their husbands Idea and if thou beest vicious complain not that she is infected that lies in the bosome the interest of whose love ties her to transcribe thy copy and write after the characters of thy manners Paris was a man of pleasure and Helena was an adulteresse and she added covetousnesse upon her own account But Ulysses was a prudent man and a wary counsellor sober and severe and he efformed his wife into such imagery as he desir'd and she was chast as the snows upon the mountains diligent as the fatall sisters alwaies busie and alwaies faithfull 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 she had a lazie tongue and a busie hand 4. Above all the instances of love let him preserve towards her an inviolable faith and an unspotted chastity for this is the marriage Ring it tyes two hearts by an eternall band it is like the Cherubims flaming sword set for the guard of Paradise he that passes into that garden now that is immur'd by Christ and the Church enters into the shades of death No man must touch the forbidden Tree that in the midst of the garden which is the tree of knowledge and life Chastity is the security of love and preserves all the mysteriousnesse like the secrets of a Temple Under this lock is deposited security of families the union of affections the repairer of accidentall breaches 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 This is a grace that is shut up and secur'd by all arts of heaven and the defence of lawes the locks and bars of modesty by honour and reputation by fear and shame by interest and high regards and that contract that is intended to be for ever is yet dissolv'd and broken by the violation of this nothing but death can do so much evill to the holy ties of marriage as unchastity and breach of faith
will depart from us or if he staies he will strike us The best of these is bad enough and he is highly miserable Qui non sit tanto hoc custode securus whom an Angell cannot defend from mischief nor any thing secure him from the wrath of God It was the description and character which the Erythrean Sibyl gave of God 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 It is Gods appellative to be a giver of excellent rewards to just and innocent persons but to assign to evill men fury wrath and sorrow for their portion If I should lanch further into this Dead sea I should finde nothing but horrid shriekings and the skuls of dead men utterly undone Fearfull it is to consider that sin does not only drive us into calamity but it makes us also impatient and imbitters our spirit in the sufferance * It cryes loud for vengeance and so torments men before the time even with such fearfull outcries and horrid alarms that their hell begins before the fire is kindled * It hinders our prayers and consequently makes us hopelesse and helplesse * It perpetually affrights the conscience unlesse by its frequent stripes it brings a callousnesse and an insensible damnation upon it * It makes us to lose all that which Christ purchased for us all the blessings of his providence the comforts of his spirit the aids of his grace the light of his countenance the hopes of his glory it makes us enemies to God and to be hated by him more then he hates a dog and with a dog shall be his portion to eternall ages with this only difference that they shall both be equally excluded from heaven but the dog shall not and the sinner shall descend into hell and which is the confirmation of all evill for a transient sin God shall inflict an eternall Death Well might it be said in the words of God by the Prophet ponam Babylonem in possessionem Erinacei Babylon shall be the possession of an Hedgehog that 's a sinners dwelling incompassed round with thornes and sharp prickles afflictions and uneasinesse all over So that he that wishes his sin big and prosperous wishes his Bee as big as a Bull and his Hedgehog like an Elephant the pleasure of the honey would not cure the mighty sting and nothing make recompense or be a good equall to the evill of an eternall ruine But of this there is no end I summe up all with the saying of Publius Mimus Tolerabilior est qui mori jubet quà m qui malè vivere He is more to be endured that puts a man to death then he that betrayes him into sin For the end of this is death eternall Sermon XXII THE GOOD and EVILL TONGUE Ephes. 4. 29. Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth but that which is good to the use of edifying that it may minister grace unto the hearers HE that had an ill memory did wisely comfort himselfe by reckoning the advantages he had by his forgetfulnesse For by this means he was hugely secured against malice and ambition for his anger went off with the short notice and observation of the injury and he saw himself unfit for the businesses of other men or to make records in his head undertake to conduct the intrigues of affairs of a multitude who was apt to forget the little accounts of his own seldom reading He also remembred this that his pleasures in reading books were more frequent while he remembred but little of yesterdays study and tomorrow the book is newes and with its novelties gives him fresh entertainment while the retaining brain layes the book aside and is full already Every book is new to an ill memory and one long book is a Library and its parts return fresh as the morning which becomes a new day though by the revolution of the same sun Besides these it brought him to tell truth for fear of shame and in meer necessity made his speech little and his discourses short because the web drawn from his brain was soon spun out and his fountain grew quickly dry and left running through forgetfulnesse * He that is not eloquent and faire spoken hath some of these comforts to plead in excuse of his ill fortune or defective nature For if he can but hold his peace he shall be sure not to be troublesome to his company not mark'd for lying or become tedious with multiplicity of idle talk He shall be presumed wise and oftentimes is so he shall not feel the wounds of contention nor be put to excuse an ill taken saying nor sigh for the folly of an irrecoverable word If his fault be that he hath not spoken that can at any time be mended but if he sinn'd in speaking it cannot be unspoken again Thus he escapes the dishonor of not being believed and the trouble of being suspected he shall never fear the Sentence of Judges nor the Decrees of Courts high reproaches or the angry words of the proud the contradiction of the disputing man or the thirst of talkers By these and many other advantages he that holds his peace and he that cannot speak may please themselves and he may at least have the rewards and effects of solitarinesse if he misses some of the pleasures of society But by the use of the tongue God hath distinguished us from beasts and by the well or ill using it we are distinguished from one another and therefore though silence be innocent as death harmlesse as a roses breath to a distant passenger yet it is rather the state of death then life and therefore when the Egyptians sacrificed to Harpocrates their god of Silence in the midst of their rites they cryed out 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The Tongue is an Angel good or bad that 's as it happens Silence was to them a god but the Tongue is greater it is the band of humane entercourse and makes men apt to unite in Societies and Republicks and I remember what one of the Ancients said that we are better in the company of a known dog then of a man whose speech is not known ut externus alieno non sit hominis vice a stranger to a stranger in his language is not as a man to a man for by voices and homilies by questions and answers by narratives and invectives by counsell and reproofe by praises and hymnes by prayers and glorifications we serve Gods glory and the necessities of men and by the tongue our Tables are made to differ from Mangers our Cities from Deserts our Churches from Herds of beasts and flocks of sheep Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God spoken by the tongues of men and Angels and the blessed Spirits in heaven cease not from saying night and day their 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 their song of glory to him that sitteth on the throne and to the Lambe for ever and ever and then our imployment shall be
his life returning for to be miserable is death but nothing is life but to be comforted and God is pleased with no musick from below so much as in the thanksgiving songs of relieved Widows of supported Orphans of rejoycing and comforted and thankfull persons This part of communication does the work of God and of our Neighbors and bears us to heaven in streams of joy made by the overflowings of our brothers comfort It is a fearfull thing to see a man despairing None knows the sorrow and the intolerable anguish but themselves and they that are damned and so are all the loads of a wounded spirit when the staffe of a mans broken fortune bowes its head to the ground and sinks like an Osier under the violence of a mighty tempest But therefore in proportion to this I may tell the excellency of the imployment and the duty of that charity which bears the dying and languishing soul from the fringes of hell to the seat of the brightest stars where Gods face shines and reflects comforts for ever and ever And though God hath for this especially intrusted his Ministers and Servants of the Church and hath put into their hearts and notices great magazines of promises and arguments of hope and arts of the Spirit yet God does not alwayes send Angels on these embassies but sends a man ut sit homo homini Deus that every good man in his season may be to his brother in the place of God to comfort and restore him and that it may appear how much it is the duty of us all to minister comfort to our brother we may remember that the same words and the same arguments doe oftentimes more prevaile upon our spirits when they are applyed by the hand of another then when they dwell in us and come from our owne discoursings This is indeed 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 it is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to the edification of our needs and the greatest and most holy charity 3. Our communication must in its just season be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 we must reprove our sinning brother for the wounds of a friend are better then the kisses of an enemy saith Solomon we imitate the office of the great Shepheard and Bishop of souls if we goe to seek and save that which was lost and it is a fearfull thing to see a friend goe to hell undisturbed when the arresting him in his horrid progresse may possibly make him to return this is a course that will change our vile itch of judging and censuring others into an act of charity it will alter slander into piety detraction into counsell revenge into friendly and most usefull offices that the Vipers flesh may become Mithridate and the Devill be defeated in his malicious imployment of our language He is a miserable man whom none dares tell of his faults so plainly that he may understand his danger and he that is uncapable and impatient of reproof can never become a good friend to any man For besides that himself would never admonish his friend when he sins and if he would why should not himself be glad of the same chairty he is also proud and Scorner is his name he thinks himself exempt from the condition and failings of men or if he does not he had rather goe to hell then be call'd to his way by an angry Sermon or driven back by the sword of an Angell or endure one blushing for all his hopes and interests of heaven It is no shame to be reproved but to deserve it but he that deserves it and will doe so still shall increase his shame into confusion and bring upon himselfe a sorrow bigger then the calamities of war and plagues and hospitals and poverty He onely is truely wise and will be certainly happy that so understands himself and hates his sin that he will not nurse it but get to himselfe a Reprover on purpose whose warrant shall be liberty whose thanks shall be amendment whose entertainment shall be obedience for a flattering word is like a bright sun-shine to a sore Eye it increases the trouble and lessens the sight Haec demum sapiet dictio quae feriet The severe word of the reproving man is wise and healthfull But because all times and all circumstances and all persons are not fit for this imployment et plurima sunt quae Non audent homines pertusâ dicere laenâ Some will not endure that a pore man or an obliged person should reprove them and themselves are often so unprofitable servants that they will rather venture their friends damnation then hazard their owne interest therefore in the performance of this duty of the usefull communication the following measures are fit to be observed 1. Let not your reproofe be publick and personall if it be publick it must be in generall if it be personall it must be in private and this is expressely commanded by our blessed Saviour If thy Brother offends tell it him between him and thee for when it comes afterwards in case of contumacy to be declared in publick it passes from fraternall correption to Ecclesiasticall discipline When Socrates reproved Plato at a feast Plato told him it had been better he had told him his fault in private for to speak it publickly is indecency Socrates replyed and so it is for you publickly to condemne that indecency For it is the nature of man to be spitefull when he is shamed and to esteem that the worst of evils and therefore to take impudence and perseverance for its cover when his shame is naked And for this indiscretion Aristomenes the Tutor of Ptolemy who before the Corinthian Embassadors reproved the King for sleeping at the solemne audience profited nothing but enraged the Prince and was himself forc'd to drink poyson But this warinesse is not alwayes necessary For 1. a publick and an authoriz'd person may doe it publickly and may name the person as himself shall judge expedient secuit Lucilius urbem Te Lupe te Muti genuinum fregit in illis Omne vafer vitium Lucilius was a censor of manners and by his office he had warrant and authority 2. There are also some cases in which a publick reproofe is prudent and that is when the crime is great but not understood to be any at all for then it is Instruction and Catechism and layes aside the affront and trouble of reproofe Thus Ignatius the Martyr did reprove Trajan sacrificing at the Altar in the sight of all the Officers of the Army and the Iews were commanded to reprove the Babylonians for Idolatry in the land of their Captivity and if we see a Prince in the confidence of his pride and carelesnesse of spirit and heat of war spoyle a Church or rob God it is then fit to tell him the danger of Sacriledge if otherwise he cannot well be taught his danger and his duty 3. There are some circumstances of person in