not with us in favour and mercy He seeketh after us and layeth hold on us being gone from him as far as Sin and Disobedience could carry us out of his reach It was his love it was his will to do so and in this we might rest But Divines will tell us that Man was a fitter object of mercy than the Angels quia levius est alienâ mente peccare De Angelis quibusdam suâ sponte corruptis corruptior gens Daemonum evaâ—it Tert. Apol c. 22. quà m propriâ because the Angels sin was more spontaneous wrought in them by themselves Man had importunam arborem that flattering and importuning Tree and that subtile and seducing Serpent to urge and sway him from his obedience Man had a Tempter the Angels were both the temptation and tempters to themselves Man took in death by looking abroad but the Angels reflecting upon themselves gazed so long upon their own beauty till they saw it changed into horrour and deformity And the offence is more pardonable where the motive is ab extrinseco than where it groweth up of it self Besides the Angels did not all fal but the whole lump of Mankind was leavened with the same leaven and pity it may seem that so noble a Creature made up after Gods own Image should be utterly lost These reasons with others we may admit though they may seem rather to be conjectures than reasons and we have not much light in Scripture to give them a fairer appearance Hebr. 2.16 but the Scripture is plain that he took not the Angels he did not lay his hands upon them to redeem them to liberty and strike off their bonds And we must go out of the world to find the reason and seek the true cause in the bosome of the Father nay in the bowels of his Son and there see the cause why he was delivered for us written in his heart It was 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the love of God to mankind Tit. 3.4 And what was in mankind but enmity and hostility sin and deformity which are no proper motives to draw on love And yet God loved us and hated sin and made hast to deliver us from it Dilexisti me Domine plusquà m te quando mori voluisti pro me saith Augustine Lord when thou dyedst for me thou madest it manifest that my soul was dearer to thee then thy self Such a high esteem did he set upon a Soul which we scarce honour with a thought but so live as if we had none For us Men then and for us Sinners was Christ delivered The Prophet Isaiah speaketh it and he could not speak it properly of any but him Isa 53.5 He was wounded for our transgressions he was bruised for our iniquities So that he was delivered up not only to the Cross and Shame but to our Sins which nayled him to the cross which not only crucified him in his humility but crucified him still in his glory now he sitteth at the right hand of God and put him to shame to the end of the world Falsò de Judaeis querimur Why complain we of the Jews malice or Judas's treason or Pilates injustice We we alone are they who crucified the Lord of life Our Treachery was the Judas which betrayed him our Malice the Jew which accused him our Perjury the false witness against him our Injustice the Pilate that condemned him Our Pride scorned him our Envy grinned at him our Luxury spate upon him our Covetousness sold him Our corrupt Blood was drawn out of his wounds our Swellings prickt with his thorns our Sores launced with his spear and the whole body of Sin stretched out and crucified with the Lord of life He delivered him up for us Sinners No sin there is which his blood will not wash away but final Impenitency which is not so much a sin as the sealing up of the body of sin when the measure is full For us sinners for us the progeny of an arch-traytor and as great traytors as he Take us at our worst if we repent he was delivered for us And if we do not repent yet he may be said to be delivered for us for he was delivered for us to that end that we might repent For us sinners he was delivered for us when we were without strength for us when we were ungodly Rom. 5.6.8 So we were considered in this great work of Redemption And thus high are we gone on this scale and ladder of Love There is one step more He was delivered for us all ALL not considered as Elect or Reprobate but as Men as Sinners Rom. 5.12 for that name will take in all for all have sinned And here we are taught to make a stand and not to touch too hastily and yet the way is plain and easie For all This some will not touch and yet they do touch and press it with that violence that they press it almost into nothing make the world not the world and whosoever not whosoever but some certain men and turn all into a few deduct whom they please out of all people nations and languages and out of Christendome it self leave some few with Christ upon the Cross whose persons he beareth whom they call the Elect and mean themselves So God loved the world that is the Elect say they They are the world John 3.16 where it is hard to find them for they are called out of it and the best light we have which is the Scripture discovereth them not unto us in that place If the Elect be the world which God so loved then they are such Elect as may not believe such Elect as may perish and whom God will have perish if they do not believe It is true none have benefit of Christ's death but the Elect but from hence it doth not follow that no other might have had Theirs is the kingdome but are not they shut out now who might have made it theirs God saith S. Peter 2 Pet. 3 9. would not that any should perish and God is the Saviour of all men saith S. Paul 1 Tim. 4.10 but especially of those that believe all if they believe and repent and those who are obedient to the Gospel because they do The blood of Christ is poured forth on the Believer and with it he sprinkleth his heart and is saved the wicked trample it under their foot and perish The blood of Christ is sufficient to wash away the sins of the world nay of a thousand worlds Christ paid down a ransome of so infinite a value that it might redeem all that are ' or possibly might be under captivity But none are actually redeemed but they who make him their Captain and do as he commandeth that is believe and repent or to speak in their own language none are saved but the elect In this all agree in this they are Brethren and why should they fall out when both hold up the priviledge of the Believer
Christ in his shame in his sorrow in his agony take him hanging on the cross take him and take a pattern by him that as he was so we may be troubled for our sins that we may mingle our tears with his blood drag Sin to the bar accuse and condemn it revile and spit in its face at the fairest presentment it can make and then nail it to the cross that it may languish and faint by degrees till it give up the ghost and die in us Then lye we down in peace in the grave and expect a glorious resurrection when we shall receive Christ not in humility but in Majesty and with him all his riches and abundance all his promises even Glory and Immortality and Eternal life A SERMON Preached on Easter-Day REV. I. 18. I am he that liveth and was dead and behold I am alive for evermore Amen and have the keyes of Hell and of Death WE do not ask Of whom speaketh S. John this or Who is he that speaketh it For we have his character drawn out in lively colours in the verses going before my Text. The Divine calls him a voyce ver 12. when he meaneth the man who spake it I turned to see the voyce that spoke with me and in the next verse telleth us he was like to the Son of man in the midst of the seven golden Candlesticks governing his Church Lev. 26.11 12. setting his Tabernacle amongst men not abhorring to walk amongst them and to be their God that they might be his people Will you see his robes and attire Clothed he was with a garment down to the foot v. 13. which was the garment of the High Priest Hebr. 7.24 And his was an unchangeable Priesthood He had also a golden girdle or belt as a King For he is a King for ever and of his kingdome there shall be no end Luk. 1.33 Righteousness shall be the girdle of his loyns and faithfulness the girdle of his reins Isa 11.5 His head and his hairs were white as woll and as white as snow v. 14. his Judgment pure and uncorrupt not byassed by outward respects not tainted or corrupted by any turbulent affection but smooth and even as waters are when no wind troubleth them His eyes as a flame of fire piercing the inward man searching the secrets of the heart nor is there any action word or thought which is not manifest in his sight His feet like unto fine brass v. 15. sincere and constant like unto himself in all his proceedings in every part of his Oeconomy His voyce as the sound of many waters declaring his Fathers will with power and authority sounding out the Gospel of peace to all the world And last of all out of his mouth went a sharp two-edged sword v. 16. not onely dividing asunder the soul and the spirit Hebr. 4.12 but discerning the thoughts and intents of the heart and taking vengeance on those who persecute his Church His Majesty dazled every mortal eye his countenance was as the Sun shineth in his strength And now of him who walketh in the midst of his Church whose Mercy is a large robe reaching down to the feet who is girt with Power and clothed with Justice whose Wisdome pierceth even into darkness it self whose Word is heard from one end of the world to the other whose Majesty displayeth its beams through every corner of it we cannot but confess with Peter This is Christ Matth. 16.16 John 6.69 Hagg. 2.7 the Son of the living God And can the Saviour of the world the Desire of all nations the Glory of his Father Beauty it self appear in such a shape of terrour Shall we draw out a merciful Redeemer with a warriours belt with eyes of fire with feet of brass with a voyce of terrour with a sharp two-edged sword in his mouth Yes Such a High Priest became us Hebr. 7.26 who is not onely merciful but just not onely meek but powerful not only fair but terrible not onely clothed with the darkness of Humility but with the shining robes of Majesty who can dye and can live again and live for evermore who suffered himself to be judged and condemned and shall judge and condemn the world it self S. John indeed was troubled at this sight and fell down as dead but Christ rouzeth him up and biddeth him shake of that fear For he is terrible to none but those who make him so to Hereticks and Hypocrites and Persecutors of his Church to those who would have him neither wise nor just nor powerful Non accepimus iratum sed fecimus He is not angry till we force him It is rather our sins that run back again upon us as Furies than his wrath These make him clothe himself with vengeance and draw his sword To S. John to those that bow before him he is all sweetness all grace all salvation and upon these as upon S. John he layeth his right hand quickneth and rouzeth them up Fear not v. 17. neither my girdle of Justice nor my eyes of fire nor my feet of brass nor my mighty voyce nor my two-edged sword for my Wisdom shall guide you my Power shall defend you my Majesty shall uphold you and my Mercy shall crown you Fear not I am the first and the last more humble than any more powerful than any scorned whipped crucified and now highly exalted and Lord of all the world I am he that liveth and was dead and behold I am alive for evermore c. These words I may call as Tertullian doth the Lord's Prayer breviarium Evangelii the Breviary or Sum of the whole Gospel or with Augustine Symbolum abbreviatum the Epitome or Abridgement of our Creed And such a short Creed we find in Tertullian which he calls Regulam veram immobilem irreformabilem the sole immutable and unalterable rule of Faith And then the Articles or parts will be 1. The Death of Christ I was dead 2. The Resurrection of Christ with the effect and power of it I am he that liveth 3. The Duration and continuance of his life It is to all eternity I am alive for evermore 4. The Power of Christ which he purchased by his death the Power of the keyes I have the keyes of Hell and of Death And all these are 1. ushered in with an ECCE Behold that we may consider it and 2. sealed and ratified with an AMEN that we may believe it that there be not in any of us as the Apostle speaketh an unbelieving heart to depart from the living God Hebr. 3.11 I am he that liveth and was dead Of the Death of Christ we spake the last day Par. 1. We shall onely now look upon it in reference to the Resurrection and consider it as past For it is FVI MORTVVS I was dead And in this we may see the method and proceeding of our Saviour which he drew out in his blood which must sprinkle those who are to be
extent as may reach to every man to every corner of the earth as may measure out the world and put into our hands any part of it that either our wit or our power can take in Christ never drew any such Conveyance the Gospel brought no such tidings But when honest labour and industry have brought riches in Christ setteth a seal imprinteth a blessing on them sanctifieth them unto us by the Word and Prayer and so maketh them ours our servants to minister unto us and our friends to promote us unto everlasting habitations Our Charter is large enough and we need not interline it with those Glosses which the Flesh and the Love of the World will soon suggest With Christ we have all things which work to that end for which he was delivered We have his Commands which are the pledges of his love for he gave us them that he might give us more that he might give us a Crown We have his Promises of immortality and eternal life Faciet hoc nam qui promisit est potens He shall do it for he is able to perform it With him every word shall stand He hath given us Faith that is the gift of God to apprehend and receive the promises and Hope Eph. 2.8 to lift us up unto them He hath given us his Pastors to teach us that is scarce looked upon as a gift but then he hath given us his Angels to minister unto us He hath given us his Spirit and filleth us with his Grace if we will receive it which will make his Commands which are now grievous easie his Promises which are rich profitable which may carry us on in a regular and peaceable course of piety and obedience which is our Angel which is our God and we call it Grace All these things vve have with Christ And the Apostle doth not only tell us that God doth give us them but to put it out of doubt putteth up a QVOMODO NON challengeth as it were the whole world to shew how it should be otherwise How will he not with him also freely give us all things This Question addeth energy and weight and emphasis and maketh the Position more positive the Affirmation more strong and the truth of it more perswasive and convincing Shall he not give us all things It is impossible but he should It is more possible for a city upon a hill to be hid than for him to hide his favour from us more possible for Heaven to sink into Hell or for Hell to raise it self up to God's Mercy-seat than for him to withhold any thing from them to whom he hath given his Son Impossible it is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as most inconvenient as that which is against his Wisdome and his Justice and his Goodness Naz. Or. 36. and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as abhorrent to his Will to deny us any thing In brief If the Earth be not as iron the Heavens cannot be as brass God cannot but give when we are fit to receive and in Christ we are made capable When he is given all things are given with him nay more than all things more than we can desire more than we can conceive When he descendeth Mercy descendeth with him in a full shower of blessings to make our souls as the paradise of God to quicken our Faith to rouse up our Hope And in this light in this assurance in this heaven we are bold with S. Paul to put up the Question against all doubts all fears all temptations that may assault us He that spared not his own Son but delivered him up for us all how shall he not with him also freely give us all things And now we have passed up every step and degree of this scale and ladder of Love and seen Christ delivered and nailed to the cross And from thence he looketh down and speaketh to us to the end of the world Crux patientis fuit cathedra docentis The Cross on which he suffered was the Chair of his Profession And from this Chair we are taught Humility constant Patience perfect Obedience an exact Art and Method of living well drawn out in several lines What was ambitiously said of Homer That if all sciences were lost they might be found in him may most truly be said of Christ's Cross and Passion That if all the characters of Innocency Humility Obedience Love had been lost they might here be found in libro vitae Agni in the Book of the Life nay of the Death of the Lamb Rev. 13.8 slain from the foundation of the world yet now nailed to the Cross Let us then with love and reverence look upon him who thus looketh upon us Let us put on our crucified Jesus that is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Chrysostome every virtue his Humility his Patience his Obedience and so bear about with us the dying of our Lord 2 Cor. 4.10 and draw the picture of a crucified Saviour in our selves To this end was he delivered up for us to this end we must receive him that we may glorifie God as he hath glorified him on earth For God's glory and our salvation are twisted together and wrought as it were in the same thread and linked together in the same bond of peace Psal 50.15 I will deliver thee and thou shalt glorifie me Thus it runneth and it runneth on evenly in a stream of Love Oh how must it needs delight him to see his Gift prosper in our hands to see us delivering up our selves to him who was thus delivered for us to see his purchase those who were bought with this price made his peculiar people Psal 24.7 9. Lift then up the gates of your souls that this King of glory may come in If you seek salvation you must seek the glory of God and if you seek the glory of God you shall find it in your salvation Thou mayest cry Lo here it is or Lo there it is but here it is found The Jew may seek salvation in the Law the Superstitious in Ceremony and bodily Exercise the Zelote in the Fire and the Whirlwind the phantastick lazy Christian in a Thought in a Dream and the prophane Libertine in Hell it self But then then alone we find it when we meet it in conjunction with the Glory of God which shineth most gloriously in a crucified Christ and in an obedient Christian made conformable to him and so bearing about in him the marks of the LORD JESVS Gal. 6.17 To conclude then Since God hath delivered up his own Son for us all and with him given us all things let us open our hearts and receive him John 1.12 that is believe in his name that is be faithful to him that is love him and keep his Commandments which is our conformity to his Death And then he will give us What will he give us He will heap gift upon gift give us power to become the Sons of God Let us receive
saved and make them nigh unto him to follow in the same method à morte ad vitam from suffering to glory from death to life Tota ecclesia cum Christo computatur ut una persona Hebr. 2.10 Christ and his Church are in computation but one person He ought to suffer and they ought to suffer They suffer in him and he in them Luke 24.26 to the end of the world Nor is any other method answerable either to his infinite Wisdome and Justice which hath set it down in indeleble characters or to our mortal and frail condition which must be bruised before it can be healed and be levelled with the ground before it can be raised up Quicquid Deo convenit homini prodest saith Tertullian that which is convenient for Christ is profitable for us That which becometh him we must wear as an ornament of grace unto our head There is an oportet set upon both Luke 24.26 He ought and we ought first to suffer and then to enter into glory to die first that we may rise again First it cannot consist with the Wisdome of God that Christ should suffer and die and that we might live as we please and then reign with him and so pass à deliciis in delicias from one paradise to another that he should overcome the Devil for those who will be his vassals that he should foil him in his proud temptations for those who will not be humble and beat off his sullen temptation for those who will distrust and murmure that he should make his victorious death commeatum delinquendi a licence and charter for all generations to fling away their weapons and not strike a stroke If he should have done this we could not have taken him for our Captain and if we will not enter the lists he will not take us for his Souldiers Non novimus Christum si non credimus We do not know Christ if we believe him not to be such a one as he is a Captain that leadeth us as Moses did the children of Israel through a wilderness full of fiery Serpents into Canaan through the valley of death into life Nor is it expedient for us who are not born but made Christians and a Christian is not made with a thought whose lifting up supposeth some dungeon or prison in which we formerly were whose rising looketh back into some grave Tolle certamen nè virtus quidem quicquam erit Take away this combat with our spiritual enemies with afflictions and tentations and Religion it self will be but a bare name and Christianity as Leo the tenth is said to have called it but a fable What were my Patience if no Pain did look towards it What were my Faith if there were no Doubt to assault it What were my Hope if there were no Scruple to shake it What were my charity if there were no Misery to urge it no Malice to oppose it What were my Day if I had no Night or what were my Resurrection if I were never dead I was dead saith the Lord of life And his speech is directed to us who do but think we live being indeed in our graves entombed in this world which we so love compassed about with enemies covered with disgraces raked up as it were in those evils that are those locusts which come out of the smoke of the bottomless pit Rev. 9 3. And when we hear this voice and by the virtue and power of it look upon these and make a way through them we rise with Christ 1 John 5.4 our hope is lively and our faith is that victory which overcomeh the world Nor need this method seem grievous unto us For these very words I was dead may put life and light into it and commend it not onely as the truest but as a plain and easie method For by Christ's Death we must understand all those miseries that he suffered before which were as the train and ceremony of his Death as the officers of the High priest to lead him to it as Poverty Scorn and Contempt the Burden of our sins his Agony and bloody Sweat These we must look upon as the principles of this heavenly Science by which our best Master learned to succour us in our sufferings to lift us up out of our graves and to raise us from the dead There is life in his death and comfort in his sufferings For we have not such an High priest who will not help us Hebr. 4.15 2.17 but which is one and a chief end of his suffering and death who is touched with the feeling of our infirmities and is merciful and faithful hath not only power for that he may have and not shew it but will and propension also desire and diligent care to hold up them who are ready to fall and to bring them back who were even brought to the gates of death Indeed Mercy without Power can beget but a good wish S. James his complemental charity Be ye warmed and Be ye filled and Be ye comforted Jam. 2.16 which leaveth us cold and empty and comfortless And Power without Mercy will neither strengthen a weak knee nor heal a broken heart It may as well strike us dead as revive us But Mercy and Power when they meet and kiss each other will work a miracle will uphold us when we fall and raise us from the dead will give eyes to the blind and strength to the weak will make a fiery furnace a bath a rack a bed and persecution a blessing will call those sorrows that are as if they were not Such a virtue and force such life there is in these three words I was dead For though his Compassion and Mercy were coeternal with him as God yet as Man he learnt them He came into the world as into a school and there learnt them by his sufferings and death Hebr. 5.8 For the way to be sensible of anothers misery is first to feel it our selves It must be ours or if it be not ours we must make it ours before our heart will melt I must take my brother into my self I must make my self as him before I help him I must be that Lazar that beggeth of me Luke 16. Luke 10.30 34. and then I give I must be that wounded man by the way-side and then I powre my oyl and wine into his wounds and take care of him I must feel the Hell of sin in my self before I can snatch my brother out of the fire Compassion is first learnt at home and then it walketh abroad Job 29.15 and is eyes to the blind and feet to the lame and so healeth two at once both the miserable and him that comforts him They were both under the same disease one as sick as the other I was dead and I suffered are the main strength of our salvation For though Christ could no more forget to be merciful then he could leave off to be
defective in humanity Christians are the parts of the Church and all must sustein one another And this is the just and full interpretation of that of our Saviour Matth. 19.19 Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thy self then thou wilt pity him as thy self Tolle invidiam tuum est quod habet Take away Envy and all that he hath is thine And take away Hardness of heart and all that thou hast is his Take away Malice and all his virtues are thine and take away Pride and thy glories are his Art thou a part of the Church Thou hast a part in every part and every part hath a portion in thee Eph. 4.16 We are 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 compacted together by that which every joynt supplies A similitude and resemblance taken from the Curtains of the Tabernacle saith learned Grotius whereof every one hath its measure Exod. 26.2 3 5. but yet they are all coupled together one to another by their loops which lay hold one of another And like those curtains we are not to be drawn but together not to rejoyce not to weep not to suffer but together The word Church is but a second notion and it is made a term of art and every man almost saith Luther abuseth it draweth it forth after his own image taketh it commonly in that sense which may favour him so far as to leave in him a perswasion that he is a true part of it and thus many enter the Church and are shut out of heaven We are told of a Visible Church and the Church in some sense is visible But that the greatest part of this Church hath wanted bowels that some parts of it have been without sense or feeling besmeared and defiled with the bloud of their brethren is as visible as the Church We have heard of an Infallible Church we have heard it and believe it not for how can she be infallible who is so ready to design all those to death and hell who deny it If it be a Church it is a Church with horns to push at the nations or an army with banners and swords We have long talked of a Reformed Church and we make it our crown and rejoycing But it would concern us to look about us and take heed that we do not reform so as to purge out all Compassion also For certainly to put off all bowells is not as some zealots have easily perswaded themselves to put on the new man Talk not of a Visible Infallible or a Reformed Church God send us a Compassionate Church a title which will more fit and become her then those names which do not beautifie and adorn but accuse and condemn her when she hath no Heart What Visible Church is that which is seen in blood What Infallible Church is that whose very bowels are cruel What Reformed Church is that which hath purged out all Compassion Visible and yet not seen Infallible and deceived Reformed and yet in its filth Monstrum horrendum informe This is a mis-shapen monster not a Church The true Church is made up of bowels Every part of it is tender and relenting not onely when it self is touched but when others are moved as you see in a well-set instrument if you touch but one string the others will tremble and shake And this Sense and this Fellow-feeling is the fountain from whence this silver stream of Mercy floweth the spring and first mover of those outward acts which are seen in that bread of ours which floats upon the waters in the face and on the backs of the poor Luk. 10.31 c. For not then when we see our brethren in affliction when we look upon them and pass by them but when we see them and have compassion on them we shall bind up their wounds and pour in oil and wine and take care for them For till the heart be melted there will nothing flow We see almes given every day and we call them acts of piety but whether the hand of Mercy reach them forth or no we know not Our motions all of them are not from a right spring Vain-glory may be liberal Intemperance may be liberal Pride may be a benefactour Ambition must not be a niggard Covetousness it self sometimes yieldeth droppeth a peny and Importunity is a wind which will set that wheel a going which had otherwise stood still We may read large catalogues of munificent men but many names which we read there may be but the names of Men not of the Merciful Compassion is the inward true principle begetting in us the Love of Mercy which completeth and perfecteth crowneth every act giveth it its true form denomination giveth a sweet smel and fragrant savour to Maries oyntment Luk. 7.47 for she that poured it forth loved much I may say Compassion is the love of Mercy Et plus est diligere quà m facere saith Hilary It is a great deal more to love a good work then to do it to love Virtue then to bring it into act to love Mercy then to shew it It doth supply many times the place of the outward act but without it the act is nothing or something worse It hath a privilege to bring that upon account which was never done to be entitled to that which we do not which we cannot do to make the weak man strong the poor man liberal and the ignorant man a counsellor For he that loveth Mercy would do and therefore doth more then he can do As David may be said to build the Temple though he laid not a stone of it for God telleth him he did well that he had it in his heart 1 Kings 8.18 Thus our Love may build a Temple though we fall and dye before a stone be laid Now this Love of Mercy is not so soon wrought in the heart as we may imagin as every glimering of light doth not make it day It is a work of labour and travel of curious observance and watchfulness over our selves It will cost us many a combat and luctation with the World and the Flesh and many a falling out with our selves Many a Love must be digged up by the roots before we can plant this Love in our hearts It will not grow up with Luxury and Wantonness with Pride or Self-love you never see these together in the same soyl The Apostle telleth us we must put it on Col. 3.12 And the garments which adorn the soul are not so soon put on as those which clothe the body We do not put on Mercy as we do our mantle for when we do every puff of wind every distast bloweth it away But Mercy must be so put on that it may even cleave to the soul and be a part of it that every thought may be a melting thought every word as oyl and every work a blessing Then we love Mercy when we fling off all other respects whatsoever may either shrink up or
delightful but what is it to the splendour of Virtue who would look upon a face that could see Virtue naked What is Honour that is blasted with a breath with a frown to immortal Glory What is the Merchants Pearl to the Kingdome of Heaven What are Pleasures which are but for a season to those which are for evermore Hebr. 11.25 What is a span of Time a Moment to Eternity And certainly were these outward things which do but please and tempt and withdraw us from better the onely reward of goodness these aery fugitive envenomed glories all that we should find at the end of our race no wise man vvould stoop to reach them up If these vvere the end of our hopes we were of all men most miserable 1 Cor. 15.19 If this vvere all the heaven that vvere promised vve should not believe there vvas either a God or Heaven Compare them if you please vvorldly glories vvith spiritual blessings The one come tovvard us smiling and make us mirth and melody but they soon turn their back and leave us sad and disconsolate in the very shadovv of death The other present themselves at first with great distast to flesh and bloud because we look upon them through a sad and dark medium through Disgrace and Affliction and Death it self but if we look often and converse familiarly with them we shall see in them Beauty and Riches and Heaven and God himself And is it not a great deal better for a while to watch and strive and fight it out and afterwards rejoyce and triumph as conquerours then by the impatience of one hour to be slaves for ever De Patientia Quid enim est malum nisi impatientia boni saith Tertullian For what is evil what is our yielding to temptations what is the slacking of our watch but our want of patience towards that which is good Thus if we compare them we shall soon discover their deformity and on holy desires and strong resolutions as with the wings of a dove fly swiftly away that we may be at rest Thus if we know them they can hardly hurt us For what Pliny spake of Monsters and Prodigies is true either of fair or black Tentations Ostentorum vires in eorum potestate sunt quibus portenduntur Prout quaeque accepta sunt ità valent Plin. Nat. hist l. 28. c. 3. As of the one so of the other their power is no greater then they would have it to whom it is shewed and presented and are of force onely so far as they are received have no power to hurt us but from our selves And therefore we must deal with them as they did with those prodigies neglect and flight them that they may not hurt us beat down crucifie the flesh with the affections and lusts disgrace and vilifie every imagination that exalteth it self against God hath them with a perfect hatred For not to yield is to overcome To study and learn and know temptations and find out where their great strength lyeth and cut it off to consider them as they are not in appearance but reality to contemn and put them by is that which maketh way to victory and prepareth us for the coming of the Lord. Nihil in bello oportet contemni But thirdly let us not so neglect and slight them as to let them come up too near us for so to neglect an enemy is to strengthen him But let us stand at the doors and repress and put them back at the first sight either of their false glory or their borrowed terrour Psal 119.37 Let us turn away our eyes Nemo diu tatus periculo proximus Cypr. Epist 61 that they behold not vanity Periculosum est crebrò videre per quae aliquando captus sis A dangerous thing it is nay a folly to behold those objects and look upon them often which may be a snare unto us to dally with the point of that sword which may enter our bowels to sport with that serpent which may sting us to death What should they do long in the Eye Why should they stay so long in the Phansie till she gild and beautifie them and set them up as an idole to worship No let us watch and rowse up our selves and beat down every altar as soon as it is erected there Nay stay the Phansie in its work repress them here in causis in their beginnings take these Babylonish brats and dash them against the stones Psal 137.8 9. For he that doth not meet and withstand an evil in the approch hath fairly invited it to come forward Qui morbo non occurrit sibi manus infert He that doth not use speedy means to keep back a disease is as he that killeth himself A thought begetteth Delight Delight begetteth Consent Consent is seen in Action Action begetteth Custome Custome Necessity Necessity Death It was but an Object but an Apparition but a thought at first and now it is Death And he that was willing a Thought should lead in the front was willing also that Death should come in the rear It is not safe thus to dally with a Temptation to resolve not to act it and yet to act in the mind which will soon make the basis and ground-work of a resolution to be afraid of the action and yet commit the sin to nourish that sin in my bosome which I am ashamed to be seen with abroad which will yet at last break forth before the Sun and the people to harbour that in my closet which within a while will be on the house top That of Bernard is most true though it be in rhythme Non nocet sensus ubi non est consensus The sense hurteth not where there is no consent It is no sin for the Eye to see or for the Ear to hear or for the Phansie to set up objects within her in that shape in which they appear But it is a hard matter as S. Hierome speaketh integritate mentis abuti voluptatibus to abuse those pleasures which daily present themselves to a good end to have them as Aristippus had his Lais and not to have them to live in pleasure without that delight which maketh tentation a sin We may say of Temptations as he did of Fortune Vna est ad illam securitas non toties illam experiri The best security we have against Fortunes fickle inconstancy is not to make tryal of her too often not to want her So of Tentations It is not good to look too often upon them when they flatter not to see too often not to hear too often not to open our eyes or our ears to vanity For as they who busie themselves in worldly affairs when all things succeed prosperously do begin at last to dote on riches and love them for themselves which they sought for at first but for their necessity so what we look upon at first as a common object by degrees insinuateth it self and
by quickning and enlivening our Faith Eph. 3.17 He dwelleth in our hearts by faith so that we are rooted and grounded in love We read of a dead faith Jam. 2.20 a faith vvhich moveth no more in the vvayes of righteousness then a dead man sealed up in his grave And if the Son of man should come he would find enough of this faith in the World From hence from this that our Faith is not enlivened that the Gospel is not throughly believed but faintly received cum formidine contrarii vvith a fear or rather a hope that the contrary is true from hence proceed all the errours of our lives From hence ariseth that irregularity those contradictions and inconsequences in the lives of men even from hence that we have Faith but so as we should have the World We have it as if vve had it not 1 Cor. 7. and so use it as if we used it not or vvhich is vvorse abuse it Not believe and be saved but believe and be damned And we are vain men James 2.20 saith S. James if we think otherwise if we think that a dead faith can work any thing or any thing but death But when it is quickned and made a working faith vvhen Christ dwelleth in our hearts by faith then it worketh wonders We read of its valour that it subdueth kingdoms Hebr. 11.23 and stoppeth the mouthes of lions We read of its policy 2 Cor. 2.11 that it discovereth the Devils enterprises or devises We read of its medicinal virtue Acts 15.9 that it purifieth the heart We read too furta fidei the thefts and pious depredations of Faith It stealeth virtue from Christ Matth. 9.20 21. and taketh heaven by violence Yea such a wonderful power it hath in that soul in which Christ dwelleth 11.12 that it vvorketh out our corruption and stampeth his image upon us It vvorketh in us the obedience of faith Rom. 1.5 that is that obedience which is due to Faith and to which Faith naturally tendeth and to which it would bring us if we did not dull and dead and hinder it Christ first worketh in us a universal and equal obedience For if he dwell in us every room is his There are saith Parisiensis particulares voluntates particular wills or rather particular inclinations and dispositions to this virtue and not to another as to be liberal but not temperate to be sober but not chast to fast and hear and pray but not to do acts of mercy These are virtues but in appearance they proceed from rotten and unsound principles from a false spring but not from Christ And so they make up a spiritual Hermaphrodite a good speaker Duos in uno homine Syllas fuisse crediderit Valerius Max. l. 6. c. 9. and a bad liver a Jew and a Christian an Herode and a John Baptist a Zelote a Phinehas and an Adulterer and as the Historian said two Sylla's in one man like a Play-book and a Sermon bound up together But these I told you are not true virtues but proceed many times from the same principles which vices do for I may be a Hypocrite and a man of Belial for the same end But where Christ dwelleth he purgeth the whole house not one but every faculty of the soul that is the whole man as he raised not a part but all Lazarus For if any part yet favour of rottenness and corruption we cannot say that Lazarus is risen He worketh I say an universal and equal obedience in every respect answering to the command and working of Christ as a Circle doth in every part look upon the point or Centre Secondly Christ worketh in us an even and constant obedience The Apostle calleth it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Col. 2.5 the firmity and stedfastness of our faith in Christ. The Philosopher well observeth that the Affections do but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Arist l. 2. Ethic. c. 1. 5. lightly move us raise some motion in the minde trouble us and vanish so that one affection many times driveth out another as Amnon did Tamar our Love ending in Hatred our sorrow in Anger and our Fear in Joy But from Virtue we are said 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to be strongly disposed to be confirmed and established in our actions So the reason of that unevenness instability and inconstancy in the conversation of men that they are now loud in their Hosanna and anon as loud in their Crucifige now in Abrahams bosom and anon into Dalilah's lap now fighting anon cursing now very Seraphical and anon wallowing in the mire is from this That they have no other motive no other principle then peradventure some private respect or a weak impression of some good lesson they have lately heard and some faint radiations from the truth and therefore they can rise no higher then the Fountain and will soon run out with it Now it is not so with the true Christian in whom Christ dwelleth He moveth with the Sun which never starteth out of his sphere he hath Christ living in him and the power of the Gospel assisting him in every motion and so cannot have these qualms of devotion these waverings this unevenness these Cadi-surgia Ephr. Sytus as the Father calleth them these risings and fallings these marches and halts these proffers and relapses because Christ is living in him 1 John 3.9 1 Pet. 1.5 because the seed of God abideth in him and he is kept by this power of Christ unto salvation Thirdly Christ worketh a sincere and real obedience in that heart in which he dwelleth And this is proper to the true Christian For the actions of an hypocrite are not natural but artificial not like unto the actions of a living soul but like unto the motions of that artificial body which Albertus made not proceeding from any life but forced as it were by certain wheels and engines by Love of a good name by Fear of smart or Hope to bring their purposes about Thus many times the Hypocrite walketh to his end in the habit of a Saint when no other appearance will serve But where Christ dwelleth there is his Spirit and where his Spirit is there is truth and he fashioneth and shapeth out our affections to the things themselves and maketh them such as so fair an object requireth As his promises so our affections are Yea and Amen 2 Cor. 1 20. As his reward is real so is our love to it real As the Gospel and Heaven and Christ is true so are our affections towards them hearty and sincere true as he is true and faithful as he is faithful So then to conclude this Christ dwelleth in every true Christian not as a contracted or divided Christ as the antient Hereticks made him but as the Apostle speaketh fully and plentifully Secondly he dwelleth in him as Christ yesterday and to day and the same for ever not as Baal Hebr. 13.8 1 Kings 18.27
God This added to the rest maketh up a number an account Without this our joyning with such a body or company nay our appearing in his Courts our naming him and calling upon his name are but cyphers and signifie nothing It is not the Church but the Spirit of Christ and our own consciences which can witness to us that we are inhabitants of the new Jerusalem and dwell in Christ We read Gen. 45. that when Jacob had news that his son Joseph lived his heart fainted for he believed them not but at the sight of the chariots which Joseph sent to carry him his spirit revived So it is here When we shall be told or tell our selves for our selves are the likeliest to bring the news that we have been of such a Church of such a Congregation and applaud our selves for such a poor and unsignificant information bless our selves that the lines are fallen unto us in so goodly a place Psal 16.6 when we shall have well looked upon and examined all the priviledges and benefits we can gain by being parts of such a body all this will not assure us nor fix our anchor deep enough but will leave us to be tossed up and down upon the waves of uncertainty fainting and panting under doubt and unbelief For to recollect all in a word our admiring the Majesty of Christ our loving his command our relying on his protection and resting under the shadow of his wing again our sense and feeling of the operation of the Spirit of Christ by the practick efficacy of our knowledge the actuation and quickning of our faith and the power of it working an universal constant sincere obedience these are the chariots which Christ sendeth to carry us out of Egypt unto our celestial Canaan And when we see these and by a sweet and well-gained experience feel the power of them in our souls then we draw neer in full assurance then we joyfully cry out with Jacob It is enough then we know that our Joseph is alive and that Christ doth dwell and live in us of a truth And now to conclude and by way of conclusion to enforce all these to imprint and fasten them in your hearts what other motive need I use then the thing it self Christ in Man and Man in Christ For if honour or delight or riches will move us here they are all not as the world giveth them but as Truth it self giveth them A sight into which the Angels themselves stoop and desire to look into 1 Pet. 1.12 To be in Christ to dwell in Christ if a man did perfectly believe it of himself that he were the man non diu superstes maneret said Luther he would even be swallowed up and die of immoderate joy Here now is Life and Death set before us Heaven and Hell opened to our very eye If we do not dwell in Christ if we be not united to him we shall joyn our selves with something else with flesh and blood with the glory and vanity of the world which will but wait upon us to carry us to our grave feed us up and prepare us for the day of slaughter Oh who would dwell in a land darker then darkness it self who would be united with Death But if we dwell in Christ and he in us if he call us My little children and we cry Abba Father then what then Who can utter it The tongue of Men and Angels cannot express it Then as he said to the Father All mine are thine and thine are mine so all his is ours John 17.10 Col. 1.24 and all ours is his Our miseries are his and when we suffer we do but fill up that which was behind of the afflictions of Christ He is in bonds in disgrace in prison with us and we bear them joyfully for we bear them with him who beareth all things Our miseries nay our sins are his He took them upon his shoulder upon his account He sweat he groned he died under them and by dying took away their strength Nay our good deeds are his and if they were not his they were not good Hebr. 13.15 for by him we offer them unto God by his hand in his name He is the Priest that prepareth and consecrateth them Our Prayers our Preaching our Hearing our Alms our Fasting if they were not his Nazianz. were but as the Father calleth the Heathen mans virtues 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a fair name a title of health upon a box of poison the letter Tau written in the forehead of a reprobate Again to make up the reciprocation as all ours are his so all his are ours What shall I say His Poverty his Dishonour his Sufferings his Cross are ours Yes they are ours because they are his If they had not been his they could not be ours none being able to make satisfaction but he none that could transfer any thing upon man but he that was the Son of man and Son of God His Miracles are ours for for us men and for our salvation were they wrought His Innocency his Purity his Obedience are ours For God so dealeth with us for his sake as if we were innocent and pure as if we our selves had satisfied Let S. Paul conclude for me in that divine and heavenly close of the third chapter of his former Epistle to the Corinthians Whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or things present or things to come all are yours and ye are Christs and Christ is Gods And if we be Christs Rom. 8.17 then we be heirs joynt-heirs with Jesus Christ As he is heir so have we in him right and title to be heirs and so we receive eternal happiness not onely as a gift but as an inheritance In a word we live with him we suffer with him we are buried with him we rise with him and when he shall come again in glory we who dwell in him now shall be ever with him even dwell and reign with him for evermore The Sixteenth SERMON PART I. EZEKIEL XXXIII 11. As I live saith the Lord God I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked Turn ye turn ye from your evil wayes For why will ye die O house of Israel WE have here a sudden and vehement out-cry Turn ye turn ye And those events which are sudden and vehement the Philosopher telleth us do 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 leave some notable mark and impression behind them An earthquake shaketh and dislocateth the earth a whirlwind rendeth the mountains and breaketh in pieces the rocks What is sudden at once striketh us with fear and admiration Greg. in loc Certainly reverenter pensandum est saith the Father This call of the Prophet requireth a serious and reverent consideration For if this vehement ingemination be not sharp and keen enough to enter our Souls and divide asunder the joynts and the marrow here is a Quare moriemini a Reason to set an edge
the Devil Why should any mortal now fear to dye It is most true Christ dyed and by his death shook the powers of the Grave Consummatum est all is finished and he is returned victoriously with the spoils of his enemies and of this last enemy Death Job 18.14 But for all this his triumph Death may be still the King of terrours and as dreadful as before All is finisht on his part but a Covenant consisteth of two parts and something is required on ours He doth not turn Conditions into Promises as some have been willing to perswade themselves and others It must be done is not Thou shalt do it If thou wilt believe is not Thou shalt believe But every Promise every Act of grace of his implieth a Condition He delivereth those that are willing to be delivered who do not feed Death and supply this enemy with such weapons as make him terrible 1 Cor. 15.56 All the terrour Death hath is from our selves our Sin our Disobedience to the commands of God that is his sting And our part of the Covenant is by the power and virtue of Christs death every day to be plucking it off from him at last to take it quite away We we our selves must rise up against this King of terrours and in the Name and Power of Christ take the sceptre out of his hand and spoil him of his strength and terrour And this we may do by parts and degrees now cut from him this sin now that now this desire and anon another and so dye daily as S. Paul speaketh dye to Profit dye to Pleasure dye to Honour be as dead to every temptation which may beget sin in us and a sting in him and so leave him nothing to take from us not a desire not a hope not a thought nothing that can make us fear Death Then we shall not look upon it as a divorcement from those delights which we have cast off already or a passage into a worse condition from that we loved too well to that we never feared enough but we shall consider it as a Sleep as it is to all wearied pilgrimes as a Message sent from heaven to tell us our walk is at an end now we are to lay down our staff and scrip and rest in that Jerusalem which is above Tert. De patientia for which we vowed this pilgrimage Et quis non ad meliora festinat What stranger will be afraid to return to his Fathers house or lose that life quam sibi jam supervacuam fecit which by dying daily to the world he hath already made superfluous and unnecessary To conclude this He that truly feareth God can fear nothing else nor is Death terrible to any but to those who would build their tabernacle here who love to feed with swine on husks Luk. 15.16 Heb. 6.5 because they have not tasted of the powers of the world to come who wish immortality to this mortal before they put it on who are willing to converse and trade with Vanity for ever who desire not with David to be spared a little but would never go hence Psal 39.13 Last of all this will moderate our sorrow for those our friends who are dead or rather fallen asleep or rather at their journeys end For why should any man who knoweth the condition of a stranger how many dangers and how many cares and how many storms and tempests he is obnoxious to hang down the head and complain that his friend hath now passed through them all and is set down at his journeys end Why should he who looketh for a City to come Hebr. 13.14 be troubled that his fellow-pilgrime is come thither and entred before him It might be a matter of holy emulation perhaps but why it should afflict us with grief I cannot see unless it be because we have not made it our meat and drink to keep Gods commandements which might give us a tast of a better estate to come unless it be because we have not well learnt to act the part of a stranger Miserable men that we are that we will be that know not our own quality and condition that are strangers yet unwilling to draw near our selves or to see others come to their home but think them lost where they are made perfect We stand by the bed of our sick and dying friend as if he were now to be removed to a place of torment and not of rest and to be either nothing or more miserable then he was in a region of misery We send out shreeks and outcries to keep time with his gasps to call him back if it were possible from heaven and to keep him still under the yoke harrow when as the fainting of his spirits the failing of his eyes the trembling of his joynts are but as the motion of bodies to their center most violent when they are nearest to their end And then we close up his eyes and with them our hopes as if with his last gasp he had breathed out his soul into air when indeed there is no more then this One pilgrime is gone before his fellows one is gone hath left others in their way in trouble and more troubled that he is gone to rest Migrantem migrantes praemisimus saith S. Hierome We are passing forward apace and have sent one before us to his journeyes end his everlasting sabbath With this contemplation doth Religion comfort and uphold us in our way and keepeth us in that temper which the Philosopher commendeth as best in which we do sentine desiderium Sen. ad Marciam op primere She giveth Nature leave to draw tears but then she bringeth in Faith and Hope to wipe them off She suffereth us to mourn for our friends but not as men without hope Nature will vent and Love is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 1 Thess 4.13 saith the Oratour ever querulous and full of complaints when the object is removed out of sight and God remembreth whereof we are made Ps 103.14 is not angry with our Love and will suffer us to be Men But then we must silence one Love with another our natural Affection with the Love of God at least divide our language thus Alas my Father Alas my Husband Alas my Friend but then He was a stranger and now at his journeyes end And here we must raise our note and speak it more heartily Rev. 14 13. Blessed are such strangers Blessed are they that dye in the Lord even so saith the Spirit for they rest from their labours For conclusion Let us fear God and keep his commandments Eccl. 12.13 This is the whole duty of a stranger to observe those Laws which came from that place to which he is going Let these Laws be in our heart and our heart will be an Elaboratory a Limbeck to work the water of life out of the vanities and very dregs of the world
Gold All the things under the Moon are as changeable in their approches in their acquisition in their loss as that planet is Sometimes we must travel and hazard our lives for them sometimes we find them and they are even flung upon us We are wont to call such as are suddenly made rich the Children and Favourites of Fortune But in this market Fortune and Chance have no hand at all she can neither help nor hurt They who come to this Emporium or Mart know not the face of Fortune neither when she smileth nor when she frowneth but leave her behind them when they beat this bargain Nay they know her to be nothing They place their hopes neither upon Chance nor upon Necessity If Truth were brought to us any of these wayes we could not be said to buy it Do I buy that chain which I am forced to wear or that pearl which lying in my way I do but stoup for and take up I cannot think that ever Heaven did open it self and take in those who never thought of it nor that any Saint did stumble on it and enter by chance Luke 15.4 If the Truth be found it is found as the lost Sheep was we go after it and sweat and labour and search for it till we find it They were the Pharisees of old that brought Fate in and a Necessity of all events And they may well bear the same name who though they abhor the word yet countenance the thing it self and leave the Truth and all Virtues else as it were upon the cast of a die For with them we neither do nor suffer any thing but we are born and bound to it And they run upon the same absurdity which the Pharisees did attribute all to Fate and Destiny or to that which is in effect the same and yet believe a Resurrection leave us in the chains of Necessity and yet promise life to all that buy the Truth and threaten death to all that sell it make us necessarily good or evil and yet the objects for Rewards and Punishments to work upon But this fatal Necessity doth overthrow it self For if it lead or force all things to their end if it work all in us then it worketh this also That we cannot believe it And it is necessary I should deny this Necessity for I was destined to pronounce against Destiny and my fate it is to acknowledge no such thing as Fate No the Truth is established as the heavens that it cannot be moved And as it looketh toward Eternity so there is a setled and eternal course by which it is conveyed unto us Wisdome hath set it out to sale not left it in the uncertain hands of Chance nor in the infallible conduct of Fate and Destiny She standeth by the way in the places of the paths Prov. 8.2 Isa 55.1 but her voice is Come and buy It is true Truth as well as Faith is the gift of God But first every gift is not received or if it be yet he that received it might have refused it and so Necessity hath no place and a gift it is though it be not received as a Pearl may be a merchandise though it be not bought Truth is the gift of God a light kindled by him and set up in the firmament of his Church and there it shineth though men turn not their eyes that way but fix them on the earth Ephes 2.8 Faith had been the gift of God though all the world had been infidels The Civilians tell us there is a twofold Donation pura and conditionalis There is an absolute gift which the giver bestoweth to no other end but to shew his bounty he giveth it because he will give it And there is a conditional gift which exacteth something from him who must receive it It is here Do ut des I give thee this that thou mayest give something for it And such a gift is Truth such a gift is Heaven We are Men to woo and draw the Truth and not Statues to have it engraven upon us and then remain as little moved with it as insensible of it as if we were stones We read of infused Habits and though those texts of Scripture which are brought to uphold them are not so sure and firm a foundation that they may stand there unshaken yet because the opinion is so generally received we are not over-ready to lay it by But if they be infused as they are infused into us so they are not infused without us They are poured not as water into a cistern but into living vessels fitted and prepared for them For if they were infused without us they could never be lost If we did not buy the Truth we could never sell it If Wisdome were thus infused into us we should never erre If Righteousness were thus infused the Will would ever as an obedient handmaid look up upon that Wisdome and never swerve or decline from it If Sanctity were thus setled on the Affections they could never rebel The Understanding could never erre for this Wisdome would ever enlighten it the Will could not be irregular for this Righteousness would alwayes bridle it the Affections could not distract us for they would ever be under command For as they were given without us so bringing with them an irresistible and uncontrollable force they would work without us But we shall find that all these are conditional gifts and that according to the method of Truth it self we cannot receive till we ask nor find till we seek Matth. 7.7 Psal 24.7 â— nor enter the everlasting gates of Truth till we knock And those who follow this method the Truth hath its proper and powerful operation in them It is their viaticum provision for their way meat to feed them and nourish them up to an healthful constitution And it is a garment to clothe them and to defend them from those poisonous blasts and breathings of their spiritual enemy which might annoy and distemper them But in those who fancy to themselves a large and supernatural pouring in when they receive nothing nor do any thing that they may there is no room for Truth for they are filled with air with their own flitting imaginations And if the Truth do enter it entereth them not as Truth but is wrested and corrupted and made the abetter of a lie Scripture is either mangled by them or put upon the rack used as Procrustes used his guests either cut off in some part of it or stretched too far It lieth in their stomack like an undigested lump and is turned into a disease It is like a garment not well put on it sittteth not well upon them they wear it and it becometh them not They wear it either for shew to take the beholder or as a cloak of maliciousness to deceive and destroy him We may observe that that which is so easily gotten and beareth onely the name of Truth is more busie and operative
of themselves but he that thus findeth his life shall lose it and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it The loss of our lives for righteousness sake is a purchase Rejoyce and be exceeding glad for great is your reward in heaven For this Stephen was stoned Paul beheaded the Martyrs tortured So persecuted they the Prophets which were before you In the next place as a good Cause so a good Life doth fit and qualifie us to suffer for righteousness sake Non habent martyrum mortem qui non habent Christianorum vitam saith Augustine He dieth not the death of a Martyr who liveth not the life of a Christian An unclean beast is not fit to make a sacrifice Nor will the crown of Martyrdome sit upon his head who goeth on in his sin It is to the wicked that God saith What hast thou to do to declare my statutes and What hast thou to do to suffer for them For he that suffereth for them declareth them Therefore S. Augustine calleth the Donatists who in a perverse emulation of the glory of the true Martyrs leapt down from rocks and flung themselves into the water and were drowned sceleratos homicidas wicked homicides and unnatural murtherers of themselves What Cyprian speaketh of Schism is as true of other mortal sins not repented of Non Martyrium tollit not Martyrdom it self can expiate or blot it out For can we think that he that hath taken his fill in sin all his life long and still made his strength the law of unrighteousness should in a moment wash away all his filth and pollutions baptismo sanguinis with his own bloud It may supply for those other pious souls who were never washed in the other laver that of Baptism because persecution or death deprived them of that benefit for what cannot be done cannot oblige But how a man should draw out his life in an open hostility to Christ and trifle with him and contemn him all his dayes and then before repentance and reconciliation which indeed is in the very act of hostility bow to him and die for him I cannot see Take S. Pauls black catalogue of the works of the flesh Adultery Gal. 3. fornication uncleanness lasciviousness idolatry witchcraft hatred variance emulation wrath strife seditions heresies envyings murthers drunkenness revellings and not one of these but will infringe and weaken the testimony of any man and render him a suspected witness in our Courts on Earth And shall the truth of Christ stand in need of such Knights of the post who will speak for her when they oppose her Take that bed-roll of wicked men which the Apostle prophesied should come in these last and perilous times 2 Tim. 3 1-5 Lovers of their own selves Covetous Boasters Proud Blasphemers Disobedient to parents Vnthankful Vnholy Without natural affection Truce-breakers False accusers Incontinent Fierce Despisers of those that are good Traitors Heady High minded Lovers of pleasures more then lovers of God Having a form of godliness but denying the power thereof and may not the Gospel be ashamed of such Professors and Martyrs as these Or shall we look for heaven in hell and hope to find a Martyr amongst a generation of vipers Or is he fit to be advocate for any truth who hath the faith of Christ with respect of persons Then we shall have factious Martyrs seditious Martyrs malicious Martyrs profane Martyrs sacrilegious Martyrs And if these be Martyrs we may say of them as Tertullian did of the Heathen Gods Potiores apud inferos There be honester men in hell then these No a good Cause and a good Life must be our conductors to the Cross must lead us by the hand to the fiery trial must as it were anoint us to our graves and prepare us for this great work Otherwise whatsoever we suffer is not properly Persecution but an execution of justice It may be here perhaps demanded What then shall he do who having fettered himself in the snare of the Devil hath not yet shaken it off by true repentance whose conscience condemneth him of many gross and grievous sins which yet himself hath not condemned in his flesh by practising the contrary vertues What shall a notorious sinner do if he be called to this great office if his fortunes and life be brought in hazard for the profession of some article of faith or some truth which he believeth is necessary to salvation What shall he do being shut up between these three a bad conscience assurance of that truth he professeth and the terrour of death Shall he hold fast the truth or subscribe to the contrary Shall he suffer without true repentance of his former sins or repent of the truth which he professeth Shall he deny against his conscience what he knoweth to be true or shall he suffer and comfort himself in this one act as a foundation firm enough to raise a hope on of remission of sin Here is a great streight a sad Dilemma like that of the servant in the Comedy Si faxit perit si non faxit vapulat If he do it he may perish and if he do it not he may be beaten He may suffer for the truth and yet suffer for his sins and if he do it not he hath denied the faith and is worse then an infidel But beloved this is an instance like that of Buridan's ass between two bottles of hay knowing not which to chuse an instance of what peradventure never or very seldom cometh to pass We may suppose what we please we may suppose the heavens to stand still and the earth to move and some have thought so we may suppose what in nature is impossible And this if it be not impossible yet is so improbable that it hardly can gain so much credit as to win an assent For that he who all his life long hath cast Christ's word 's behind him should now seal them with his bloud that they are true that a conscience so beaten so wasted so overwhelmed with the habit of sins should now take in and entertain a fear of so little a sin as the denial of one truth in respect of the contempt of all that he that hath swallowed this monstrous camel should strain at this gnat that he that hath trampled Christ's bloud under his feet should shed his own for some one dictate of his is a thing which we may suppose but hardly believe Or tell me Where should this sting and power of conscience lye hid Or can conscience drive us to the confession of one truth which had no power to withhold us from polluting our selves with so many sins Holding faith saith S. Paul 1 Tim. 1.19 and a good conscience which some having put away concerning faith have made ship-wreck So near an alliance there is between Faith and a good Conscience that we must either keep them both or lose them both Faith as Saint Paul intimateth in that Text is as the
furta fidei the thefts and pious depredations of Faith But that Faith should be idle or speechless or dead is contrary to its nature and proceedeth from our depraved dispositions from Love of the world and Love of our selves which can silence it or lull it asleep or bury it in oblivion Thus we may have Faith as if we had it not and use it as we should use the world as if we used it not or worse abuse it not believe and say it but believe and deny it not believe and be saved but believe and be damned For the Devil can haereticare propositiones make propositions which are absolutely true heretical Believe and be saved is as true as Gospel nay it is the Gospel it self but by his art and deceit many believe and are by so much the bolder in the wayes which lead unto Death believe Jesus to be the Lord and contemn him believe him to be a Saviour and upon presumption of mercy make themselves uncapable of mercy and because he saveth sinners will be such sinners as he cannot save because they believe he taketh away the sins of the world will harden themselves in those sins which he will not take away Many there be who do veritatem sed non per vera tenere maintain the Truth but by those wayes which are contrary to the Truth make that which should confirm Religion destroy Religion and their whole life a false gloss upon a good Text having a form of godliness but denying the power of it crying Jesus is the Lord but scourging him with their blasphemies as if he were a slave and fighting against him with their lusts and affections as if he were an enemy sealing him up in his grave as if he were not that Jesus that Saviour that Lord but in the Jews language that deceiver that blasphemer But this is a most broken and imperfect language And though we are said to believe it when we cannot believe it to have the habit of Faith when we have not the use of Reason and so cannot bring it forth into act as some Divines conceive though it be spoke for us at the Font when we cannot speak and though when we can speak it we speak it again and again as often almost at we speak Lord Lord though we gasp it forth with our last breath and make it the last word we speak yet all this will not make up the Dicere all this will not rise to thus much as to say JESUS IS THE LORD Therefore In the third place that we may truly say it we must speak it to God as God speaketh to us whose word is his deed who cannot lie who Numb 23.19 if he saith it will doe it if he speak it will make it good And as he speaketh to us by his Benefits which are not words but blessings the language of Heaven by his Rain to water the earth by his Wool to clothe us and by his Bread to feed us so must we speak to him by our Obedience by Hearts not hollow by Tongues not deceitful by Hands pure and innocent Our heart conceiveth and our obedience is the report made abroad And this is indeed LO QUI to speak out 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to make our works vocal and our words operative to have lightning in our words and thunder in our deeds as Nazianzene spake of Basil that not onely Men and Angels may hear and see and applaud us but this Lord himself may understand our dialect and by that know us to be his children and accept and reward us In our Lord and Saviour's Alphabet these are the Letters in his Grammar these are the Words Meekness and Patience Compassion and Readiness to forgive Self-denial and Taking up our cross This must be our Dialect We cannot better express our Jesus and our Lord then idiomate operum by the language of our works by the language of the Angels whose Elogium is They doe his will the Tongue of Angels is not so proper as their Ministery for indeed their Ministery is their Tongue by the language of the Innocents who confessed him to be the Lord not by speaking but by dying by the language of the blessed Martyrs who in their tumultuary executions when they could not be heard for noise were not suffered to confess him said no more but took their death on it And this is truly to say Jesus is the Lord. For if he be indeed our Lord then shall we be under his command and beck Not a thought must rise which he would controll not a word be uttered which he would silence not an action break forth which he forbideth not a motion be seen which he would stop The very name of Lord must awe us must possess and rule us must inclose and bound us and keep us in on every side Till this be done nothing is done nothing is said We are his purchase and must fall willingly under his Dominion For as God made Man a little World so hath he made him a little Commonwealth Tertullian calleth him Fibulam utriusque substantiae the Clasp or Button which tieth together two diverse substances the Soul and the Body the Flesh and the Spirit And these two are contrary one to the other saith S. Paul are carried diverse wayes the Flesh to that which is pleasing to it and the Spirit to that which is proportioned to it looking on things neither as pleasing nor irksom but as they may be drawn in to contribute to the perfection and beauty of the soul Gal. 5.17 They lust and struggle one against the other and Man is the field the theatre where this battel is fought and one part or other still prevaileth Many times nay most times the Flesh with her sophistry prevaileth with the Will to joyn with her against the Spirit against those inclinations and motions which the Word and the Spirit beget in us And then Sin taketh the chair the place and throne of Christ and is Lord over us reigneth as S. Paul speaketh in our mortal bodies If it say Go we go and if it say Come we come and if it say Doe this we doe it It maketh us lay down that price for dung with which we might purchase heaven See how Mammon condemneth one to the mines to dig for metalls and treasure for that money which will perish with him See how Lust fettereth another with a look and the glance of an eye and bindeth him with a kiss which will at last bite like a serpent See how Self-love driveth on thousands as Balaam did his beast on the point of the sword And thus doth Sin 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Rom. 6.12 Lord it and King it over us And in this bondage and slavery can we truly say Jesus is the Lord when he is disgraced deposed and even crucified again Beloved whilest this fighting and contention lasteth in us something or other will lay hold on us and draw us within its
speak in Faith speak in the bitterness of your souls speak in Hope and speak in the heavenly dialect which is Love ye then truly say JESUS EST DOMINUS Jesus is the Lord. And this Jesus shall be your Jesus shall plead and intercede for you fill you with all the comforts and ravishments of his Gospel And this Lord shall descend to meet you here and welcome you to his Table And when he shall descend with a shout with the voice of the Archangel and with the trump of God he will enable and encourage you to meet him in the air and take you up with him into heaven that ye may be and rejoyce with Jesus the Lord for evermore Which the Lord grant for his infinite mercy's sake The Eighteenth SERMON PART II. 1 COR. XII 3. Wherefore I give you to understand that no man speaking by the Spirit of God calleth Jesus accursed and that no man can say that Jesus is the Lord but by the holy Ghost WE have hitherto detained you in the Lesson Which is indeed a short one but in it is comprised the whole Gospel For when we have let loose our phansie and sought out many inventions when we have even wearied our selves in the uncertain gyres and Meanders which our imaginations cut out when we have laid out that time in following that we cannot overtake which we should have imployed in that work which is visible and put into our hands when our Curiosity hath even spent it self this is all Jesus is the Lord. And to profess him to be the Lord whom we must obey in all things who hath power in heaven and in earth a power to command our Understandings to bow to the Truth and our Wills to imbrace it is compendium Evangelii the sum of Religion the whole intent and scope of the Gospel of Christ This is the Lesson And I told you in the next place we must learn to say it that is first to Profess it But that is not enough All Nations have said it and the Devils have said it And what Religion is that in which the sons of perdition and the Devils themselves may joyn with us What a Profession is that which may be heard in Hell What a poor progress do we make towards happiness if the cursed Spirits go along with us and reach as far as we There is then secondly verbum mentis a word conceived in the mind a perswasion of the Truth And this also may come too short For many times there is not so much Rhetorick and power in this to move us to our duty as there is in a piece of money or a painted face to carry us from it but it lieth useless and of no efficacy at all suffering our members to rebel our flesh to riot it our passions to break loose and hurry us into by-wayes and dangerous precipices speaking to us for the Lord whilst we despise and tread him under foot For if we consider that intimacy and familiarity that many men have with those sins which cannot but present to the mind so much monstrosity as might fright them from them if we behold with what eagerness and delight men pursue that which is as loathsome as Hell it self how they labour and dig for it as for treasure how they devote both body and mind to its service how every trifle is in esteem above Grace and every Barabbas preferred before Jesus the Lord we might easily be induced to conclude that they do not believe that there is a God or that Jesus is the Lord but as the Heathen in scorn did ask Ecquis Christus cum suâ fabulâ count the Gospel and Christianity as a fable For it is not easie to conceive how a man that is verily persuaded in his heart that Jesus is the Lord and that to break Christ's command is to forfeit his soul that for every wilful sin he loseth Paradise and for a moments brutish pleasure he shall find no better purchase then an irreversible state in hell should dare to do that which he doeth every day in a kind of triumph and Jubilee or dip but the tip of his finger in the water of bitterness which he drinketh down greedily as an oxe But upon a review and more mature consideration we may observe that Sin is not alwaies the effect of Infidelity but sometimes of Incogitancy and because we do not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 stoop and look intentively upon this truth that we have indeed learned this lesson but when we should make use of it to restrain us are willing to forget that Jesus is the Lord. We believe that we shall die but so live as if we were eternal We believe there is hell-fire but stoln waters are sweet and quench those flames We believe that there is a heaven but every trifle is a better sight We believe that Jesus is the Lord but the object that next smileth upon us becometh our Master We believe but are willing to forget what we believe Heaven and Hell the Law and the Gospel and the Lord himself In a word we believe that Death is the wages of sin but the pleasures and vanities of the world come towards us in a gaudy and triumphant march and swallow up this faith and this persuasion in victory detain it and put it in chains that it is not able to do its office not to move and work by Charity For if Heaven did display all its glory and Hell breathe forth all its terrour yet if we do but look upon it and then turn away our eye our persuasion will soon shrink back and withdraw it self and leave us naked and open to every temptation weak and impotent not able to struggle and resist it and we shall laetari in rebus pessimis rejoyce in evil sport and delight our selves at the very gates of hell as an intoxicated thief may laugh and jest at the ridge of the gallows Be not then too well persuaded of every persuasion For if it be but the word and the language of the mind it may soon be silenced And therefore we must nourish and soment it stir it up and enliven it that in the last place it may be of force to move the Tongue and the Hand that as the Heart doth speak to the Lord by a sincere belief Lord I belive so we may speak it with our Hands and Eyes and Feet and sound it out with every member that we have and together make that glorious report which may enter the highest heavens Lord we are ready to do whatsoever thou commandest that we may pray in his ears and weep in his ears Numb 11.18 that our Alms may speak louder then our Trumpet and our Fasting and Humility may houl unto him and not our exterminated face that he may hearken to our thoughts as well as to our words and that an universal Obedience may declare our Faith as the heavens do his glory This is the language of Canaan the
must put on incorruption this mortal must put on immortality There will be caro reformata angelificata as Tertullian speaks our flesh will be new refined and angelified so in our Conversion and Regeneration there is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saith Basil a kind of transmutation or transfiguration 2 Cor. 3.18 We are transformed into the image of Christ For God who hath made us after his own image will have us reformed unto the likeness of his Son As the Flesh then so the soul must be reformata angelificata refined and angelified or rather Christificata Christified having the same mind which was in Christ Jesus For we are no further risen nisi in quantum caeperimus esse Angeli but so far forth as we begin to be like unto the Angels but so far forth as we have that admonishing S. John speaks of and are like unto Christ Where their is no change 1 Jo. 2.20 there is no rising Whilst our bed is in the darkness whilst Corruption is our father and the Worm our mother and sister we cannot be said to be risen And whilst all the alliance we have is with the World whilst it is both father and mother and sister unto us whilst we mind earthy things we are still in our grave nay in Hell it self and Death devoureth us For let us call the World what we please our kingdome our place of habitation our delight yet indeed it is but our grave Will you now see a Christian rising He rises fairly not with a Tongue which is a sword and a Mouth which is a sepulchre but with a Tongue which is his glory and a Mouth full of songs of thanksgiving not with a gadding eye but an eye shut up by covenant not with an itching but with an humble ear not with a heart of stone but with a heart after Gods own heart And as in the Resurrection of the body unde videtur perdidisse quod erat inde incipit hoc apparere quod non erat from whence he doth seem to have lost that which he was from thence he begins to appear to be that which he was not So no change no resurrection It is a gross errour and deceives many and keeps their heart dead within them as a stone to think they are risen when they are bound hand and foot both dead and buried to think they are up and walking when alass they are in their grave As the Philosopher speaks of ignorant and self conceited men that they might have proved men of understanding had they not thought that they had already atteined unto knowledge so many who profess the name of Christ might have also risen with Christ but for a groundless conceit that this is a business of quick dispatch and that as Hymeneus and Philetus said their resurrection is past already The rising of the thought the raising of the voice the lifting up of the hand the elevation of the eye every inclination every profer every weak resolution is with them a Resurrection But this is as we vulgarly speak to rise on the wrong side And therefore In the third place as our Resurrection so our Regeneration must be universal of every part Quid est resurrectionem credere nisi integram credere saith Tertullian We do not believe the Resurrection if we do not believe it to be entire and of every part of that part which is bruised and of that part which is cut off Detruncatio membri mors membri The maiming or detruncation of any member is the death of the member and the body must be restored and revived in those parts which are dead So that to be raised from the dead is to be made a whole man Blind Bartimaeus must have his eyes Mephibosheth his legs and John Baptist his head again or else we cannot call it a Resurrection So it is in our rising with Christ The whole man must be renewed the man of God must be made perfect to every good work and be presented unblameable and unreproveable in Gods sight with an understanding enlightened and a heart renewed with holy desires and clean hands and sanctified lips which make us as it were the integrity of his parts In the common affairs of the world many times we do things by halves we begin to build and cannot make an end we send our hopes afar off and fall short in the way that we follow them we propose to our selves a mountain and when we have done all it is but a mole-hill because many cross accidents like so many Sanballats come in between to hinder our work And yet nevertheless though we cannot finish it we may be said to have begun it and to have done something But here in our Regeneration in our Rising with Christ there can no cross accident intervene All the hindrance is from the perversness of our own wills And therefore in this work nothing is done if any thing be left undone If we end not we begin not and if we rise not in every part in every faculty of our souls we are not risen Non vult nisi totam qui totam fecit He that made the whole soul will have it all If it be not restored in every part God hath no part in it There be say the Schools particulares voluntates particular habits particular dispositions and particular wills to some kind of virtues Some are born Eunuchs saith our Saviour Some are chast not merciful Some are liberal not temperate Some have a quick ear and but a heavy hand Some can hear and speak and walk peradventure a Sabbath-days journey and yet we cannot say they are risen For these particular operations are not natural but artificial not the actions of a living soul but like unto the motions of that artificial body which Albertus made not proceeding from any life within us but formed as it were by certain wheels and engines by Love of a good name by outward Respects by a Desire to bring our purposes about and the like This is not generalis but portionalis resurrectio a portional a particular an half resurrection indeed as good none at all This is not Gods manner of raising us Deus cùm liberat non partem aliquam liberat sed totam liberat saith S. Augustine When God raiseth us he raiseth not a part but he raiseth all His voice is Lazare veni foràs Lazarus come forth not the body alone but the soul also and not one faculty of the soul but every power of it that is the whole man all Lazarus For if any part of Lazarus yet savour of rottenness and corruption we cannot say that Lazarus is risen Let us not deceive our selves He that is risen with Christ stands not as Solomon was pictured by an Archbishop half in heaven and half in hell but his conversation is in heaven and he is raised far above all principalities and powers above the power of darkness and the
unto death There is lex Factorum the Law of Works For they are not all Credenda in the Gospel all articles of Faith there be Agenda some things to be done Nor is the Decalogue shut out of the Gospel Nay the very articles of our Creed include a Law and in a manner bind us to some duty and though they run not in that imperial strain Do this and live yet they look towards it as towards their end Otherwise to believe them in our own vain and carnal sense vvere enough and the same faith vvould save us vvith vvhich the Devils are tormented No thy Faith to vvhich thou art also bound as by a Law is dead that is is not faith if it do not vvork by a Law Thou believest there is a God Thou art then bound to vvorship him Thou believest that Christ is thy Lord Thou art then obliged to do what he commandeth His Word must be thy Law and thou must fulfill it His Death is a Law and bindeth thee to mortification His Cross should be thy obedience his Resurrection thy righteousness and his Coming to judge the quick and the dead thy care and solicitude In a word in a Testament in a Covenant in the Angel's message in the Promises of the Gospel in every Article of thy Creed thou mayest find a Law Christ's Legacy his Will is a Law the Covenant bindeth thee the Good news obligeth thee the Promises engage thee and every Article of thy Creed hath a kind of commanding and legislative power over thee Either they bind to some duty or concern thee not at all For they are not proposed for speculation but for practice and that consequence vvhich thou mayest easily draw from every one must be to thee as a Law What though honey and milk be under his tongue and he sendeth embassadours to thee and they intreat and beseech thee in his stead and in his name Yet is all this in reference to his command and it proceedeth from the same Love which made his Law And even these beseechings are binding and aggravate our guilt if we melt not and bow to his Law Principum preces mandata sunt the very intreaties of Kings and Princes are as binding as Laws preces armatae intreaties that carry force and power with them that are sent to us as it were in arms to invade and conquer us And if we neither yield to the voice of Christ in his royal Law nor fall down and worship at his condescensions and loving parlies and earnest beseechings we increase our guilt and make sin sinful in the highest degree Nor need we thus boggle at the word or be afraid to see a Law in the Gospel if either we consider the Gospel it self or Christ our King and Lord or our selves who are his redeemed captives and owe him all service and allegeance For first the Gospel is not a dispensation to sin nor was a Saviour born to us that he should do and suffer all and we do what we list No the Gospel is the greatest and sharpest curb that was ever yet put into the mouth of Sin The grace of God saith S. Paul hath appeared unto all men teaching us that is commanding us Tit. 2.11 to deny ungodliness and worldly lusts Libertas in Christo non fecit innocentiae injuriam saith the Father Our liberty in Christ was not brought in to beat down innocency before it but to uphold it rather and defend it against all those assaults which flesh and bloud our lusts and concupiscence are ready to make against it Behold the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world He taketh away those sins that are past by remission and pardon but he setteth up a Law as a rampire and bulwork against Sin that it break not in and reign again in our mortal bodies There Christ is said to take away not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the sins but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the sin of the world that is the whole nature of Sin that it may have no subsistence or being in the world If the Gospel had nothing of Law in it there could be no sin under the Gospel For Sin is a transgression of a Law But flatter our selves as we please those are the greatest sins which we commit against the Gospel And it shall be easier in the day of judgment for Sodom and Gomorrah then for those Christians who turn the grace of God into wantonness who sport and revel it under the very wings of Mercy who think Mercy cannot make a Law but is busie onely to bestow Donatives and Indulgences who are then most licencious when they are most restrained For what greater curb can there be then when Justice and Wisdom and Love and Mercy all concur and joyn together to make a Law Secondly Christ is not onely our Redeemer but our King and Law-giver As he is the wonderful Counsellour Isa 9 6. Psal 2.6 so he came out of the loyns of Judah and is a Law-giver too Yet have I set my King upon my holy hill of Zion The government shall be upon his shoulder He crept not to this honour Isa 9.6 but this honour returned to him as to the true and lawful Lord With glory and honour did God crown him and set him over the works of his hands Heb. 2.7 As he crowned the first Adam with Understanding and freedom of Will so he crowned the second Adam with the full Knowledge of all things with a perfect Will and with a wonderful Power And as he gave to Adam Dominion over the beasts of the field so he gave to Christ Power over things in heaven and things on earth And he glorified not himself Heb. 5.5 but he who said Thou art my Son this day have I begotten thee he it was that laid the government upon his shoulder Not upon his shoulders For he was well able to bear it on one of them For in him the Godhead dwelleth bodily And with this power he was able to put down all other rule autority and power 1 Cor. â—5 24 to spoil principalities and powers and to shew them openly in triumph to spoil them by his death and to spoil them by his Laws due obedience to which shaketh the power of Hell it self For this as it pulleth out the sting of Death so also beateth down Satan under our feet This if it were universal would be the best exorcism that is and even chase the Devil out of the world which he maketh his Kingdom For to run the way of Christ's commandments is to overthrow him and bind him in chains is another hell in hell unto him Thirdly if we look upon our selves we shall find there is a necessity of Laws to guide and regulate us and to bring us to the End All other creatures are sent into the world with a sense and understanding of the end for which they come and so without particular direction and yet unerringly
vanity or the next business will drive it away and take its place Nor let us make a room for it in our Phansie For it is an easie matter to think we are free when we are in chains Who is so wicked that he is not ready to persuade himself he is just And that false persuasion too shall go for the dictate of the Holy Ghost Paganism it self cannot shew such monsters as many of them are who call themselves Saints But let us gird up our loins and be up and doing the work those works of piety which the Gospel injoyneth It is Obedience alone that tieth us to God and maketh us free denisons of that Jerusalem which is above In it the Beauty the Liberty the Royalty the Kingdom of a Christian is visible and manifest For by it we sacrifice not our Flesh but our Will unto God and so have one and the same will with him and if we have his will we have his power also and his wisdom to accompany it and to to fulfil all that we can desire or expect Servire Deo regnare est To serve God is to reign as Kings here and will bring us to reign with him for evermore Let us then stand fast in our obedience which is our liberty against all the wiles and invasions of the enemy all those temptations which will shew themselves in power and craft to remove us from our station In a calm to steer our course is not so difficult but when the tempest beateth hard upon us not to dash against the rock will commend our skill Every man is ready to build a tabernacle for Christ when he is in his glory but not to leave him at the Cross is the glory and crown of a Christian And first let us not dare a temptation as Pliny dared the vapour at Mount Vesuvius and died for it Let us not offer and betray our selves to the Enemy For he that affecteth and loveth danger is in the ready way to be swallowed up in that gulf Valiant men saith the Philosopher are 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 quiet and silent before the combat but in the trial 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ready and active But audacious daring men are commonly loud and talkative before encounters but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 flag and fail in them The first weigh the danger and resolve by degrees the other are peremptory and resolve suddenly and talk their resolution away It is one thing to talk of a tempest at sea another to discourse of it leaning against a wall It is one thing to dispute of pain another to feel it Grief and Anguish hath not such a sting in the Stoicks gallery as it hath on the rack For there Reason doth fight but with a shadow and a representation here with the substance it self And when things shew themselves naked as they are they stir up the affections When the Whip speaketh by its smart not by my phansie when the Fire is in my flesh not my understanding when temptations are visible and sensible then they enter the soul and the spirit then they easily shake that resolution which was so soon built and soon beat down that which was made up in haste Therefore let us not rashly thrust our selves upon them But in the second place let us arm and prepare our selves against them For Preparation is half the conquest It looketh upon them handleth and weigheth them before hand seeeth where their great strength lieth and goeth forth in the power of the Spirit and in the name of Christ and so maketh us more then conquerers before the sight And this is our Martyrdom in peace For the practice of a Christian in the calmest times must nothing differ in readiness and resolution from times of rage and fire As Josephus speaketh of the military exercises practised amongst the Romans that they differed from a true battel only in this that their battel was a bloudy exercise and their exercise a bloudless battel So our preparation should make us martyrs before we come to resist ad sanguinem to shed a drop of bloud To conclude as the Apostle exhorteth let us take unto us the whole armour of God that we may be able to withstand in the evil day and having done all to stand to stand against the horrour of a prison against the glittering of the sword against the terrour of death to stand as expert souldiers of Christ and not to forsake our place to stand as mount Sion which cannot be moved in a word to be stedfast unmoveable alwayes abounding in the work of the Lord forasmuch as we know that our labour is not in vain in the Lord. For whoso looketh into the perfect Law of Liberty and continueth therein he being not a forgetful hearer but a doer of the work this man shall be blessed in his deed The Seven and Fortieth SERMON PART VII JAMES I. 25. But whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty and continueth therein he being not a forgetful hearer but a doer of the work this man shall be blessed in his deed TO Persevere or continue in the Gospel and To be blessed for ever are the two stages of a Christian the one here on earth the other in heaven and there is scarce a moment but a last breath between them nothing but a mouldering and decaying wall this tabernacle of flesh which falleth down suddenly and then we pass and enter And that we may persevere and continue means are here prescribed first assiduous Meditation in this Law we must not be forgetful hearers of it but look into it as into a glass vers 23 24. yet not as a man that beholdeth his natural face in a glass and then goeth away and forgetteth himself not as a man who looketh carelesly casteth an eye and thinketh no more of it but rather as a woman who looketh into her glass with intention of mind with a kind of curiosity and care stayeth and dwelleth upon it fitteth her attire and ornaments to her by a kind of method setteth every hair in its proper place and accurately dresseth and adorneth her self by it And sure there is more care and exactness due to the soul then to the body Secondly that we may continue and persevere we must not only hear and remember but do the work For Piety is confirmed by Practice To these we may now add a third which hath so near a relation to Practice that it is even included in it and carrried along with it And it is To be such students in Christ's School as S. Paul was Acts 24.16 To study and exercise our selves to have alwayes a conscience void of offence toward God and toward men Not to triflle with our God or play the wanton with our Conscience Not to displease and wound her in one particular with a resolution to follow her in the rest Not to let our love of the world or fear of danger make that a truth which we formerly
and leave the rod of the stubborn Impenitent to fall upon him The death of Christ is not applyed to all say some It is not for all say others The virtue of Christ's meritorious passion is not made use of by all say some It was never intended that it should say others And the event is the same for if it be not made use of and applyed it is as if it were not as if it had never been obtained Only the unbeliever is left under the greater condemnation who turned away from Christ who spake unto him not only from heaven but from his cross and refused that grace which was offered him Which could not befall him if there had never been any such overture made For how can one refuse that which never concerned him how can he forfeit that pardon which was never sealed how can he despise that Spirit of grace which never breathed towards him They who are so tender and jealous of Christ's blood that no drop must fall but where they direct it do but veritatem veritate concutere undermine and shake one truth with another set up the particular love of God to Believers to overthrow his general love to Mankind confound the virtue of Christs passion with its effect and draw them together within the same narrow compass bring it under a Decree that it can save no more then it doth because it hath its bounds set Hitherto it shall go and no further and was ordained to quicken some but to withdraw it self from others as shut out and hid from the light and force of it from having any title to it long before ever they saw the sun Thus they shorten the hand of God when it is stretched out to all bound his love which is profered to all stint the blood of Christ which gusheth out upon all and circumcise his mercy which is a large cloak saith Bernard large enough to cover all And the reason is no better then the position Quod vis esse charum effice ut sit rarum To make salvation more precious and estimable it must be rare Then it is most glorious when it is a peculiar and entailed on a few Why should the Love of God be a common thing I answer Why should it not be common since he is pleased to have it so Why should he cast away so many to endear a few Can there be any glory in that Priviledge which is writ with the blood of so many millions Why should not Gods Love be common since he would have it not only common but communicated to all and expresseth himself as one grieved and troubled and angry because it is not so Why should we fear God's love should be cast away by being profered to many His love of Friendship and Complacency to those whom he calleth his Friends cannot be lost but is as eternal as himself it assisteth and upholdeth them and will crown them everlastingly Nor is his general love of Good will and Affection lost though it be lost for it is ever with him even when the wicked are in hell Plus est bonitas Dei quà m beneficentia Christs blood is ever in the flow though there be but few that take the tide and are carried along with it Gods Goodness is larger then his Beneficence He doth not do what good he can or rather he doth not do what good he would because we fall back and will not receive it We will not suffer him to be good we will not suffer him to be merciful we will not suffer him to save us John 3.19 This is the condemnation of the world that light came into the world and men loved darkness more then light Apul. Flor. 1. The Philosopher will tell us that the Indians ad nascentem solem siti sunt tamen in corpore color noctis est they live at the very rising of the sun yet their bodies are black and swarthy and resemble the night So many there be who live in the very region of light where the beams fall upon them hot and pure and are darted at their very eyes and yet they remain the children of darkness Facit infidelitas multorum ut Christus non pro omnibus moriatur qui pro omnibus mortuus est saith S. Ambrose Christ was delivered for all is a true proposition it is Infidelity alone that can make it Heretical And yet it is true still though to him that believeth not it is of no more use then if it were false He was delivered for thee but thou wilt not receive him His passion is absolute but thou art impenitent He dyed for Judas who betrayed him but will not save Judas that despaired and hanged himself Infidelity and Impenitency are the worst Restrictives that limit and draw down to particulars a proposition so profitably general and bound so saving an Universal that contract and sink all into a few To conclude this Christ hanging on the cross looketh upon all but all do not cast an eye and look up in faith upon him He was delivered to deliver all but all will not be delivered Omnis natura nostra in Christi hypostasi Our whole nature is united in Christ's person not the persons of a few but our whole nature And our whole nature is of compass large enough to take in all And in that common nature of man he offered up himself on the cross for the sin of all John 1.29 that he might take away the sin of the world destroy the very species and being of it Which though it be not done cannot be imputed to any scantness or deficiency of virtue in his bloud which is of power to purge out sin wheresoere it is if the heart that fostereth sin be ready and willing to receive and apply it And in this common nature of Man not from Abraham or David onely as S. Matthew but even from the first man Adam himself as S. Luke carryeth up his Genealogy did Christ offer up himself upon the cross And in this common nature he presenteth himself before his Father And now God looketh upon Christ and Mankind as our eye doth upon Light and Colours which cannot be seen without light Before this Light came into the world we were covered over with darkness and deformity and God could not look upon us but in anger but through this common Light we may be seen and be beloved we may be seen with pleasure For as God is delighted in his Son so in him he is well pleased in those Sons which he shall bring with him to glory But if we will fully withdraw our selves from this Light then doth his soul hate us Hebr. 1.3 Christ is the brightness of his glory light enough for God to look through upon a thousand worlds multiplyed a thousand times And if we do not hide our selves from it hide our selves in the caverns of the earth in the world if we do not drown our selves in the bottome of
them were not an act of our Faith but of our Knowledge Therefore Christ shewed not himself openly to all the people at his resurrection Tert. Apol. ut fides non mediocri praemio destinata non nisi difficultate constaret that faith by which we are destined to a crown might not consist without some difficulty but commend it self by our obedience the perfection and beauty whereof is best seen in making its way through difficulties And so Hilary Habet non tam veniam quà m praemium ignorare quod credis Lib. 8. De Trin Not perfectly to know what thou certainly believest doth so little stand in need of pardon that it is that alone which draweth on the reward For what obedience can it be for me to assent to this That the whole is greater then the part that the Sun doth shine or any of those truths which are visible to the eye What obedience it is to assent to that which I cannot deny But when the object is in part hidden in part seen when the truth we assent to hath more probability to establish it then can be brought to shake it then our Saviour himself pronounceth John 20.29 Blessed are they who have not seen and yet have believed Besides it were in vain he should afford us more light who hath given us enough For to him that will not rest in that which is enough nothing is enough When God had divided the Red sea when he rained down Manna upon the Israelites and wrought many wonders amongst them the Text saith For all this they sinned still Psal 78.31 and believed not his wondrous works The Pharisees saw Christ's miracles yet would have stoned him They saw him raise Lazarus from the dead and would have killed them both The people said He hath done all things well Mar. 7.37 John 7.48 yet these were they that crucified the Lord of life Did any of the Pharisees believe in him We might ask Did any of his Disciples believe in him Christ himself calleth them Fools and slow of heart to believe what the Prophets had foretold Luke 24.25 Their Fear had sullied the evidence that they could not see it the Text sayth they forsook him and fled Matth. 26.56 And the reason of this is plain For though Faith be an act of the Understanding yet it dependeth upon the Will and men are incredulous nor for want of those means which may raise a faith but for want of will to follow that light which leadeth unto it they do not believe because they will not and so bear themselves strongly upon opinion preconceived beyond the strength of all evidence whatsoever When our affections and lusts are high and stand out against it the evidence is put by and forgot and the object which calls for our eye and faith begins to disappear and vanish and at last is nothing Quot voluntates tot fides saith Hilary So many Wills so many Creeds For there is no man that believeth more than he will To make this good we may appeal to men of the slendrest observation and least experience we may appeal to our very eye which cannot but see those uncertain and uneven motions in which men are carried on in the course of their life For what else is that that turneth us about like the hand of a Dial from one point to another from one perswasion to a contrary How cometh it to pass that I now embrace what anon I tremble at What is the reason that our Belief shifteth so many scenes and presenteth it self in so many several shapes now in the indifferency of a Laodicean anon in the violence of a Zealot now in the gaudiness of Superstition anon in the proud and scornful slovenry of factious Profaneness that many make so painful a peregrination through so many modes and forms of Religion and at last end in Atheists What reason is there There can be none but this the prevalency and victory of our Sensitive part over our Reason and the mutability yea and stubbornness of our Will which cleaveth to that which it will soon forsake but is strongly set against the Truth which bringeth with it the fairest evidence but not so pleasing to the sense This is it which maketh so many impressions in the mind Self-love and the Love of the world these frame our Creeds these plant and build these root and pull down build up a faith and then beat it to the ground and then set up another in its place James 1.8 2 Tim. 2 8 A double-minded man saith S. James is unstable in all his wayes Remember saith S. Paul that Jesus Christ of the seed of David was raised up from the dead according to my Gospel That is a sure foundation for our faith to build on There we have 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 fair and certain pledges of faith as it were a commentary upon EGO VIVO or as so many beams of light to make it open and manifest to every eye which give up so fair an evidence that the malice of the Jew cannot avoid it Matth. 28.13 Let them say His Disciples stole him away whilest their stout watchmen slept What stole him away and whilest they slept It is a dream and yet it is not a dream it is a studied lye and doth so little shake that it confirmeth our faith so transparent that through it we may behold more clearly the face of Truth which never shineth brighter than when a lye is drawn before it to vail and shadow it Matth. 28.6 He is not here he is risen if an Angel had not spoken it yet the Earthquake the Clothes the Clothes so diligently wrapt up the Grave it self did speak it And where such strange impossibilities are brought in to colour and promote a lye they help to confute it Id negant quod ostendunt They deny what they affirm and Malice it self is made an argument for the truth 1 Cor. 15.5 6. For it we have a better verdict given by Cephas and the twelve yea we have a cloud of witnesses above five hundred brethren at once who would not make themselves the fathers of a lye to propogate that Gospel which either maketh our yea yea and nay nay or damneth us Nor did they publish it to raise themselves in wealth and honour For it teacheth them to contemn these matters maketh Poverty a beatitude and sheweth them a sword and persecution which they were sure to meet with and did afterwards in the prosecution of their office and publication of that faith Nor could they take any delight in such a lye as would gather so many clouds over their heads which would at last dissolve in that bitterness that would make life it self a punishment and at last take it away And how could they hope that men would ever believe that which themselves knew to be a lye These witnesses then are 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 many and beyond exception
We have also the testimony of Martyrs who took their death on 't and when they could not live to publish it laid down their life and sealed it with their Blood And therefore we on whom the ends of the world are come have no reason to complain of distance and that we are removed so many ages from the time wherein it was done For now Christ risen is become a more obvious object than before the diversity of mediums have increased and multiplyed it We see him in his Word we see him through the Blood of Martyrs and we see him with the eye of faith Christ is risen and alive 1 Cor. 15.3 4. secundum scripturas saith S. Paul and he repeateth it twice in the same chapter Offenderunt Judaei in Christum lapidem it is S. Augustines and let it pass for his sake When the Jew stumbled at him he presented but the bigness of a stone but our Infidelity will find no excuse if we see him not now when he appeareth as visible as a mountain There is more in this VIVO than a bare rising to life 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 He liveth in as much as He giveth life There is vertue and power in his Resurrection a power to abolish Death 2 Tim. 1.10 and to bring life and immortality to light a power to raise our vile bodies and a power to raise our viler souls He will raise them nay he hath done it already Col. 2.12 3.1 We are risen together with him and we live with him We cannot think that he that made such haste out of his own grave can be willing to see us rotting in ours From this VIVO it is that though we dye yet we shall live again Christ's Living breatheth life into us In his Resurrection he cast the modell of ours Idea est eorum quae fiunt exemplar aeternum saith Seneca And this is such a one an eternal pattern Plato 's Idea or common Form by which he thought all things have their existence is but a dream to this This is a true and real an efficacious and working pattern For as an Artificer hath not lost his art when he hath finished one piece no more did Christ lose his power when he had raised himself but as he is so it is everlasting and worketh still to the end of the world Perfectum est exemplar minùs perfecti That which Christ wrought upon himself is most exact and perfect a fit pattern of that which he meaneth to work on us which will be like to his indeed but not so glorious And now VIVO I live is as loud to raise our Hope as the last trump will be to raise our Bodies And how shall they be able to hear the sound of the trump who will not hear the voice of their Saviour Christ's life derives its vertue and influence on both Soul and Body on the Body with that power which is requisite to raise a body now putrified and incinerated and well near annihilated and on the Soul with such a power as is fitted to a soul which hath both Understanding and Will though drawn and carried away from their proper operations for which they were made We do not read of any precept to bind us or any counsel â—o perswade us to contribute any thing or put a hand to the resurrection of our bodies nor can there be it will be done whether we will or no But to Awake from the pleasant sleep of sin to be Renewed and raised in the inward man to Die to sin and Live to righteousness we have line upon line and precept upon precept And though this Life of Christ work in us both the will and the deed Phil. 2.12 Phil. 2.13 yet a necessity and a law lieth upon us and wo will be unto us if we work not out our salvation By his power we are raised in both but not working after the same manner There will be a change in both As the flesh at the second so the soul at the first resurrection must be reformata Angelificata spiritualized refined and angelified or rather Christificata If I may so speak Christified drawing in no breath but Christs Phil. 2.5 Job 17.13 14 having the same mind which was in Christ Jesus Whilst our bed is in the darkness whilst Corruption is our father and the Worm our mother and sister we cannot be said to be risen and whilest all the alliance we have is with the World and it is both Father and Mother and Sister to us whilest we mind earthly things we are still in our graves nay in hell it self Death hath dominion over us For let us call the World what we please our Habitation our Delight our Kingdome where we would dwell for ever yet indeed it is but our Grave If we receive any influence from Christ's life we shall rise fairly not with a mouth which is a sepulchre but with a tongue which is our glory not with a withred hand but with a hand stretched out to the needy not with a gadding eye but an eye shut up by covenant not with an itching but with an obedient ear not with a heart of stone but with a heart after Gods own heart Our Life Col. 3.3 saith the Apostle is hid with Christ in God and whilest we leave it thereby a continual meditation of his meritorious suffering by a serious and practical application of his glorious resurrection we hide it in the bosome of Majesty and no dart of Satan can reach it When we hide it in the minerals of the earth in the love of the world the Devil who is the Prince of the world is there to seize on it when we hide it in malicious and wanton thoughts they are his baits to catch it when we hide it in sloth and idleness we hide it in a grave which he digged for us we entomb our selves alive and as much as in us lies bury the Resurrection it self But when we hide it in Christ we hide it in him who carrieth healing and life in his wings Mal. 4.2 When we worship God through Jesus Christ our Lord and put our life in his hands 2 Cor. 4.11 then the life of Jesus is made manifest in our mortal flesh then we have put off the old man yea in a manner put off our mortality we are candidati aeternitatis as Tertullian speaketh Candidates for eternity and stand for a place with Abraham and Isaac for we have the same God and he is not the God of the dead Matth. 21.32 but of the living We see now what virtue and power there is in this VIVO in the Life of Christ But we must rise yet higher even as high as Eternity it self Hebr. 6.20 Hebr. 7.16 For as he liveth so behold he is alive for evermore a Priest for ever and a King for ever being made not after the law of a carnal commandment after that law which was given to
purged from all filthiness and superfluity of naughtiness Vers 21. And in the third place to drive it home he urgeth them to the Practice and full Obedience of what they hear and believe His first reason is Because to hear and not to do is to put a cheat upon our selves to defraud our selves of the true end of Hearing which when we do we must necessarily fall upon a worse end If we hear and not do we shall do that which will destroy us His second reason is taken ab utili from the huge advantage we shall reap by it For Blessedness is entailed not upon the Hearers but the Doers of the Word as you find it in my Text But whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty and continueth therein c. In which words you have I. the Character of a true Gospeller of a Christian indeed He looketh into the Gospel and he continueth in it by frequent meditation and by constant obedience by not forgetting and by doing the work which the Gospel enjoyneth This is his Character II. his Crown He shall be blessed in his deed So that here the Apostle taketh the Christian by the hand and pointeth out to him his end namely Blessedness And that he may press forward to it he chalketh out his way before him the Gospel or the doctrine of the Gospel of Christ Here if he walk and make progress here if he remain and persevere the end is Blessedness and it is laid up for him and even expecteth and waiteth to meet him Thus we see it and thus we set forward towards it Doing is the Duty and Blessedness is the Reward These are the Parts In the first the Character of a true Christian you have the Character of the Gospel it self and that one would think a strange one For who would look for Law in the Gospel or who would look for liberty in a Law The Gospel is good news but a Law is terrible we cannot endure to hear that which is commanded And one would think that the Law were vanished with the smoke at mount Sinai And Liberty is a Jubilee bringeth rest and intermission but a Law tieth and fettereth us to hard tasks to be up and doing to labour and pain And yet there is Law in the Gospel and there is Liberty in the Gospel and these two will friendly joyn and comply together and the truest way to liberty is by this Law The Gospel then or the Doctrine of the Gospel is 1. a Law and so requireth our obedience 2. a perfect Law and exacteth a perfect and complete obedience 3. a Law of liberty that our obedience may be free and voluntary And these if we continue to the end will draw on the reward which is the end of all the end of this Law the end of our obedience We shall be blessed in our work We begin with the Character of the Gospel or the doctrine of the Gospel And first we see the Apostle calleth it a Law And though it may seem an improper speech to say the Gospel is Law yet it will bear a good and profitable sense For there is a new Law as well as an old Et lex antiqua suppletur per novam saith Tertullian The old Law receiveth addition and perfection by the new Take it in what sense you please in the best and most pleasing signification it implieth a Law If you take it for a Testament as it is called that is the Will of the Testator Hebr. 7.22 and his will is a Law It is called so mandatum a command an injunction contestatio mentis saith Gellius a declaration of our mind John 17.14 I have given them thy word saith Christ I have delivered all thy mind and will which we are bound to observe as a Law Take it for a Covenant It is called so the new covenant And what is a Covenant but a Law It was a Law upon Christ to do what belonged to his office and it is a Law upon us to do our duties unless we can think that Christ onely was under the Law that we might be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 lawless and do what we please Take it as the name importeth for Good news Even that pleasing sound the Angels Anthem the Musick of Heaven may conveigh a Law For what was the good news That we should be delivered from our enemies That is but an imperfect narration but a part of the news The Law is tied as fast to it as we are to the Law That we should serve him without fear in holiness and righteousness all the dayes of our life Take it in the Angels words To you is born a Saviour And though TO YOU may take all mankind within its compass and be as large as the whole world yet it is a Law that appropriateth and applieth these words and draweth them down to particulars For though they take in all yet they do not take in a Libertine or lawless person To you a Saviour is no good news to the impenitent sinner to him that will not be obedient to this Law to the Gospel of Christ Facit infidelitas multorum ut non omnibus nascatur qui omnibus natus est saith Ambrose To you a Saviour is born is universally true but Infidelity and Disobedience interpret it against themselves He is not your Saviour unless you receive him with his own conditions and his conditions make a Law and are obligatory For in the last place look upon his promises of Expiation and Pardon and Remission of Life and Eternity look upon them in all their brightness and radiancie and even from thence you may hear a Law as the Israelites did from the thick cloud and thunders For Love may have a Law bound up in it as vvell as Terrour Love hath its commands Indeed it is it self a Law especially the Love of the God of Love who is equal to himself in all his wayes vvhose promises are made as all things else vvhich are made by him in order number and weight vvhose Love and Promises are guided and directed by his Justice and Wisdom He doth not promise to purge those vvho vvill vvallow in the mire or to pardon those vvho vvill ever rebel or to give them life vvho love death or eternal pure spiritual joy to those vvho seek eternity onely in their lusts No his promises are alwayes attended with conditions fitted to that Wisdom that made them and to our condition that receive them He doth not ex conditionibus facere promissiones as some have been bold to say condition vvith us to do his vvill and then turn the condition into a promise but rather ex promissionibus facere conditiones make conditions out of promises For every promise in the Gospel is loaded vvith its condition Thou shalt be saved but it is if thou believe There is lex Fidei the Law of Faith I will give thee a crown of life but it is if thou be faithful