thou pass away uncharitably towards him thou raisest an everlasting Trophee for thine enemy and prepar'st him a greater triumph then he proposed to himself he meant to triumph over thy body and thy fortune and thou hast provided him a triumph over thy Soul too by thy uncharitableness and he may survive to repent and to be pardoned at Gods hands and thou who art departed in uncharitableness canst not he shall be saved that ruind thee unjustly and thou who wast unjustly ruind by him shalt perish irrecoverably And so we have done with all those peeces which constitute our first part Sis aliquid profess something Hoc age do seriously the duties of that profession and then Sis aliquis propose some good man in that profession for thine immitation as we have proposed Stephen for general duties falling upon all professions And we shall pass now to our other part which we must all play and play in earnest that conclusion in which we shall but begin our everlasting state our death When he had said this he fell asleep Second part Mors impti Here I shall only present to you two Pictures two pictures in little two pictures of dying men and every man is like one of these and may know himself by it he that dies in the Bath of a peaceable he that dies upon the wrack of a distracted conscience When the devil imprints in a man a mortuum me esse non curo I care not though I were dead it were but a candle blown out and there were an end of all where the Devil imprints that imagination God will imprint an Emori nolo a loathness to die and fearful apprehension at his transmigration As God expresses the bitterness of death in an ingemination morte morietur in a conduplication of deaths he shall die and die die twice over So aegrotando aegrotabit in sicknesse he shall be sick twice sick body-sick and soul-sick too sense-sick and conscience-sick together when as the sinnes of his body have cast sicknesses and death upon his Soule so the inordinate sadnesse of his Soule shall aggravate and actuate the sicknesse of his body His Physitian ministers and wonders it works not He imputes that to flegme and ministers against that and wonders again that it works not He goes over all the humors and all his Medicines and nothing works for there lies at his Patients heart a dampe that hinders the concurrence of all his faculties to the intention of the Physitian or the virtue of the Physick Loose not O blessed Apostle thy question upon this Man 1 Cor. 15.55 O Death where is thy sting O Grave where is thy victory for the sting of Death is in every limb of his body and his very body is a victorious grave upon his Soule And as his Carcas and his Coffin shall lie equally insensible in his grave so his Soule which is but a Carcas and his body which is but a Coffin of that Carcas shall be equally miserable upon his Death-bed And Satan's Commissions upon him shall not be signed by Succession as upon Job first against his goods and then his Servants and then his children and then himselfe but not at all upon his life but he shall apprehend all at once Ruine upon himselfe and all his ruine upon himselfe and all him even upon his life both his lives the life of this and the life of the next world too Yet a drop would redeeme a shoure and a Sigh now a Storme then Yet a teare from the eye would save the bleeding of the heart and a word from the mouth now a roaring or which may be worse a silence of consternation of stupefaction of obduration at that last houre Truly if the death of the wicked ended in Death yet to scape that manner of death were worthy a Religious life To see the house fall and yet be afraid to goe out of it To leave an injur'd world and meet an incensed God To see oppression and wrong in all thy professions and to foresee ruine and wastefulnesse in all thy Posterity and Lands gotten by one sin in the Father molder away by another in the Sonne To see true figures of horror and ly and fancy worse To begin to see thy sins but then and finde every sin at first sight in the proportion of a Gyant able to crush thee into despair To see the Blood of Christ imputed not to thee but to thy Sinnes To see Christ crucified and not crucifyed for thee but crucified by thee To heare this blood speake not better things then the blood of Abel but lowder for vengeance then the blood of Abel did This is his picture that hath been Nothing that hath done nothing that hath proposed no Stephen No Law to regulate No example to certifie his Conscience But to him that hath done this Death is but a Sleepe Many have wondred at that note of Saint Chrysostom's Mors Piorum That till Christ's time death was called death plainly literally death but after Christ death was called but sleepe for indeede in the old-Testament before Christ I thinke there is no one metaphor so often used as Sleepe for Death and that the Dead are said to Sleepe Therefore wee wonder sometimes that Saint Chrysostome should say so But this may be that which that holy Father intended in that Note that they in the old-Testament who are said to have slept in Death are such as then by Faith did apprehend and were fixed upon Christ such as were all the good men of the old-Testament and so there will not bee many instances against Saint Chrysostome's note That to those that die in Christ Death is but a Sleepe to all others Death is Death literally Death Now of this dying Man that dies in Christ that dies the Death of the Righteous that embraces Death as a Sleepe must wee give you a Picture too These is not a minute left to do it not a minutes sand Is there a minutes patience Bee pleased to remember that those Pictures which are deliver'd in a minute from a print upon a paper had many dayes weeks Moneths time for the graving of those Pictures in the Copper So this Picture of that dying Man that dies in Christ that dies the death of the Righteous that embraces Death as a Sleepe was graving all his life All his publique actions were the lights and all his private the shadowes of this Picture And when this Picture comes to the Presse this Man to the streights and agonies of Death thus he lies thus he looks this he is His understanding and his will is all one faculty He understands Gods purpose upon him and he would not have God's purpose turned any other way hee sees God will dissolve him and he would faine be dissolved to be with Christ His understanding and his will is all one faculty His memory and his fore-sight ate fixt and concentred upon one object upon goodnesse Hee remembers that
by the King to wait upon my L. of Doncaster in his Embassage to Germany First Sermon as we went out June 16. 1619. SERMON XX. Rom. 13.11 For now is our Salvation nearer then when we believed THere is not a more comprehensive a more embracing word in all Religion then the first word of this Text Now for the word before that For is but a word of connexion and rather appertains to that which was said before the Text then to the Text it self The Text begins with that important and considerable particle Now Now is salvation nearer c. This present word Now denotes an Advent a new coming or a new operation otherwise then it was before And therefore doth the Church appropriate this Scripture to the celebration of the Advent before the Feast of the Birth of our Saviour It is an extensive word Now for though we dispute whether this Now that is whether an instant be any part of time or no yet in truth it is all time for whatsoever is past was and whatsoever is future shall be an instant and did and shall fall within this Now. We consider in the Church four Advents or Comings of Christ of every one of which we may say Now now it is otherwise then before For first there is verbum in carne the word came in the flesh in the Incarnation and then there is caro in verbo he that is made flesh comes in the word that is Christ comes in the preaching thereof and he comes again in carne saluta when at our dissolution and transmigration at our death he comes by his spirit and testifies to our spirit that we die the Children of God And lastly he comes in carne reddita when he shall come at the Resurrection to redeliver our bodies to our souls and to deliver everlasting glory to both The Ancients for the most part understand the word of our Text of Christs first coming in the flesh to us in this world the latter Exposition understand them rather of his coming in glory But the Apostle could not properly use this present word Now with relation to that which is not now that is to future glory otherwise then as that future glory hath a preparation and an inchoation in present grace for so even the future glory of heaven hath a Now now the elect Children of God have by his powerfull grace a present possession of glory So then it will not be impertinent to suffer this flowing and extensive word Now to spread it self into all three for the whole duty of Christianity consists in these three things first in pietate erga Deum in religion towards God in which the Apostle had enlarged himself from the beginning to the twelfth chapter of his Epistle And secondly in charitate erga proximum in our mutual duties of society towards our Equals and Inferiors and of Subjection towards our Superiours in which that twelfth chapter and this to the eitghth verse is especially conversant And then thirdly in sanctimonia propria in the works of sanctification and holiness in our selves And this Text the Apostle presents as a forcible reason to induce us to that to those works of sanctification because Now our salvation is nearer us then when we believed Take then this now the first way of the coming Christ in person in the flesh into this world and then the Apostle of directs himself principally to the Jews converted to the faith of Christ and he tels them That their salvation is nearer them now now they had seen him come then when they did only believe that he would come Take the words the second way of his coming in grace into our hearts and so the Apostle directs himself to all Christians now now that you have bin bred in the Christian Church now that you are grown from Grace to grace from faith to faith now that God by his spirit strengthens and confirms you now is your salvation nearer then when ye believed that is when you began to believe either by the faith of your Parents or the faith of the Church or the faith of your Sureties at your Baptism or when you began to have some notions and impressions and apprehensions of faith in your self when you came to some degrees of understanding and discretion Take the word of Christs coming to us at the hour of death or of his coming to us at the day of Judgment for those two are all one to our present purpose because God never reverses any particular judgement given at a mans death at the day of the general Judgment take the word so this is the Apostles argument you have believed and you have lived accordingly and that faith and that good life hath brought salvation nearer you that is given you a fair and modest infallibility of salvation in the nature of reversion but now now that you are come to the approches of death which shall make your reversion a possession Now is salvation nearer you then when you believed Summarily the Text is a reason why we ought to proceed in good and holy wayes and it works in all the three acceptations of the word for whether salvation be said to be near us because we are Christians and so have advantage of the Jews or near us because we have made some proficiency in holiness sanctimony or near us because we are near our end and thereby near a possession of our endless joy and glory Still from all these acceptations of the word arise religious provocations to perseverance in holiness of life and therefore we shall pursue the words in all three acceptations In all three acceptations we must consider three termes in the Text First Quid salus what this Salvation is that is intended here Part. 1. and then Quid prope what this Distance this nearness is and lastly Quid credere what Belief this is So then taking the words first the first way as spoken by the Apostles to the Jews newly converted to the Christian Faith salvation is the outward means of salvation which are more and more manifest to the Christians then they were to the Jews And then the second Term Nearness salvation is nearer is in this That salvation to the Christian is in things present or past in things already done and of which we are experimentally sure but to the Jews it was of future things of which howsoever they might assure themselves that they would be yet they had no assurance when And therefore in the third place their Believing was but a confident expectation and faithfull assenting to their Prophets quando credidistis when you believed that is when you did only believe and saw nothing First then the first Terme in the first acceptation Salvation Salus is the outward means of salvation Outward and visible means of knowing God God hath given to all Nations in the book of Creatures from the first leaf of that book the firmament above to
every mans first-born-childe is his zeal to the Religion and Service of God As soon as we know that there is a Soul that Soul knows that there is a God and a Worship belonging to that God and this Worship is Religion And is not this first-born childe dead in many of us In him that is not stirr'd not mov'd not affected for his Religion his pulse is gone and that 's an ill sign In him that dares not speak for it not counsel not preach for it his Religion lies speechless and that 's an ill sign In him that feeds not Religion that gives nothing to the maintenance thereof his Religion is in a consumption In a word if his zeal be quenched his first-born is dead And so for these three Houses That in Egypt that at home that in our selves There is not a house in which there is not one dead Part 4. The fourth House falling under this survey is this House in which we are met now the house of God the Church and the ground wrapped up in the same consecration and in this house you have seen and seen in a lamentable abundance and seen with sad eyes that for many moneths there hath scarce been one day in which there hath not been one dead How should there be but multiplicity of deaths why should it be or be looked to be or thought to be otherwise The Master of the house Christ Jesus is dead before and now it is not so much a part of our punishment for the first Adam as an imitation of the second Adam to die death is not so much a part of our debt to Nature or Sin or Satan as a part of our conformity to him who died for us If death were in the nature of it meerly evil to us Christ would have redeemed us even from this death by his death But as the death of Christ Jesus is the Physick of mankinde so this natural death of the body is the application of that Physick to every particular man who only by death can be made capable of that glory which his death hath purchased for us This Physick all they whom God hath taken to him have taken and by his grace received life by it Their first-born is dead the body was made before the soul and that body is dead Rachel wept for her children and would not be comforted because they were not If these children and parents and friends and neighbours of ours were not if they were resolved into an absolute annihilation we could not be comforted in their behalf but Christ who says he is the Life lest we should think that to belong only to this life says also that he is the Resurrection We were contracted to Christ in our Election married to him in our Baptism in the Grave we are bedded with him and in the Resurrection estated and put into possession of his Kingdom And therefore because these words do not only affect us with that sad consideration That there is none of these houses in whieh there is not one dead but minister withall that consolation That there is none so dad but may have a Resurrection We shall pass another short survey over all these Houses Thus far we have survey'd these four Houses Egypt our families our selves and the Church as so many places of Infection so many temporal or spiritual Pesthouses into which our sins had heaped powder and Gods indignation had cast a match to kindle it But now the very phrase of the Text which is That in every house there was one dead There was invites us to a more particular consideration of Gods mercy in that howsoever it were it is not so now in which we shall look how far this beam of mercy shines out in every of these houses that it is not so now There is not one dead in every house now but the Infection Temporal and Spiritual Infection is so far ceased as that not only those that are alive do not die as before but those whom we called dead are not dead they are alive in their spirits in Abrahams bosome and they are alive in their very bodies in their contract and inherence in Christ Jesus in an infallible assurance of a joyful Resurrection Now in the survey of the first sort of houses of Egypt Egyptus herein we are interrupted Here they were dead and are dead still We see clearly enough Gods indignation upon them but we see neither of those beams of mercy either that there die no more or that we have the comfort of a joyful Resurrection in them who are dead For this fearful calamity of the death of their first-born wrought no more upon them but to bring them to that exclamation that vociferation that voice of despairful murmuring Omnes Moriemur We are all dead men v. 33. And they were mischievous Prophets upon themselves for proceeding in that sin which induc'd that calamity and the rest upon them they pursued the children of Israel through the Red-sea and perished in it and then they came not to die one in a house but as it is expressed in the Story and repeated in the Psalms Exod. 14.28 Psal 106.10 There remained not so much as one of them alive so that in their case there is no comfort in the first beam of mercy that this phrase They were dead or They did die should intimate That now they did not die now Gods correction had so wrought upon them as that God withdrew that correction from them for it pursued them and accompanied them to their final and total destruction And then for the other beam of mercy of transferring them which seemed dead in the eyes of the world to a better life by that hand of death to present happiness in their souls and to an assured resurrection to joy and glory in their bodies in the communion of Gods Saints Moses hath given us little hope in their behalf for thus he encourageth his Countreymen in that place The Egyptians whom you have seen this day Exod. 14.13 you shall see no more for ever No more in this world no more in the world to come Beloved as God empayl'd a Goshen in Egypt a place for the righteous amongst the wicked so there is an Egypt in every Goshen neasts of Snakes in the fairest Gardens and even in this City which in the sense of the Gospel we may call The Holy City as Christ called Jerusalem though she had multiplied transgressions The Holy City because she had not cast away his Law though she had disobeyed it So howsoever your sins have provoked God yet as you retain a zealous profession of the truth of his Religion I may in his name and do in the bowels of his mercy call you The Holy City even in this City no doubt but the hand of God fell upon thousands in this deadly infection who were no more affected with it then those Egyptians to cry out Omnes Moriemur We can
fixt the Almighty and immoveable God if it can be content to inquire after it self and take knowledge where it is and in what way it will finde the means of cleansing And so this second consideration The placing of this pureness in the heart enlarges it self also into the third branch of this part which is De Modo by what means this pureness is fix'd in the heart in which is involved the Affection with which it must be embrac'd Love He that loveth pureness of heart Both these then are setled Our heart is naturally foul Modus And our heart may be cleansed But how is our present disquisition Who can bring a clean thing out of filthiness There is not one Job 14.4 Adam foul'd my heart and all yours nor can we make it clean our selves Who can say I have made clean my heart There is but one way Prov. 20.9 a poor beggarly way but easie and sure to ask it of God And even to God himself it seems a hard work to cleanse this heart and therefore our prayer must be with David Cor mundum crea Create Psal 51.12 O Lord a pure heart in me And then comes Gods part not that Gods part begun but then for it was his doing that thou madest this prayer but because it is a work that God does especially delight in to build upon his own foundations when he hath disposed thee to pray and upon that prayer created a new heart in thee then God works upon that new heart and By faith purifyes it Act. 15.9 enables it to preserve the pureness as Saint Peter speaks He had kindled some sparks of this faith in thee before thou askedst that new heart else the prayer had not been of faith but now finding thee obsequious to his beginnings he fuels this fire and purifies thee as Gold and Silver in all his furnaces through Believing and Doing and suffering through faith and works and tribulation we come to this pureness of heart And truely he that lacks but the last but Tribulation as fain as we would be without it lacks one concoction one refining of this heart But in this great work the first act is a Renovation a new heart Coâ— Novâ—m and the other That we keep clean that heart by a continual diligence and vigilancy over all our particular actions In these two consists the whole work of purifying the heart first an Annihilating of the former heart which was all sin And then a holy superintendency over that new heart which God vouchsafes to create in us to keep it as he gives it clean pure It is in a word a Detestation of former sins and a prevention of future And for the first Chromakus Anno 390. Mundi corde sunt qui deposuere cor peccati That 's the new heart that hath disseised expelled the heart of sin There is in us a heart of sin which must be cast up for whilst the heart is under the habits of sin we are not onely sinful but we are all sin as it is truly said that land overflow'd with sea is all sea And when sin hath got a heart in us it will quickly come to be that whole Body of Death Rom. 7.24 which Saint Paul complains of who shall deliver me from the Body of this Death when it is a heart it will get a Braine a Brain that shall minister all Sense and Delight in sin That 's the office of the Brain A Brain which shall send for the sinews and ligaments to tye sins together and pith and marrow to give a succulencie and nourishment even to the bones to the strength and obduration of sin and so it shall do all those services and offices for sin that the brain does to the natural body So also if sin get to be a heart it will get a liver to carry blood and life through all the body of our sinful actions That 's the office of the liver And whilst we dispute whether the throne and seat of the soul be in the Heart or Brain or Liver this tyrant sin will praeoccupate all and become all so as that we shall finde nothing in us without sin nothing in us but sin if our heart be possest inhabited by it And if it be true in our natural bodies that the heart is that part that lives first and dyes last it is much truer of this Cor peccati this heart of sin for this hearty sinner that hath given his heart to his sin doth no more foresee a Death of that sin in himself then he remembers the Birth of it and because he remembers not or understands not how his soul contracted sin by coming into his body he leaves her to the same ignorance how she shall discharge her self of sin when she goes out of that body But as his sin is elder then himself for Adams sin is his sin so is it longer liv'd then his body for it shall cleave everlastingly to his soul too God asks no more of thee but fili da mihi cor Prov. 23.26 My son give me thy heart Because when God gave it thee it was but one heart But since thou hast made it Cor cor as the Prophet speaks a Heart and a Heart a double Heart give both thy Hearts to God thy natural weakness and disposition to sin The inclinations of thy heart And thy habitual practise of sin The obduration of thy heart cor peccans and Cor peccati and he shall create a new heart in thee which is the first way of attaining this pureness of heart to become once in a good state to have as it were paid all thy former debts and so to be the better able to look about thee for the future for prevention of subsequent sins which is the other way that we proposed for attaining this pureness detestation of former habits watchfulness upon particular actions Till this be done till this Cor peccati Peccata Minutiora this hearty habitualness in sin be devested there is no room no footing to stand and sweep it a heart so filled with foulness will admit no counsel no reproof The great Engineir would have undertaken to have removed the World with his Engine if there had been any place to fix his Engine upon out of the World I would undertake by Gods blessing upon his Ordinance to cleanse the foulest heart that is if that Engine which God hath put into my hands might enter into his heart if there were room for the renouncing Gods Judgements and for the application of Gods mercies in the merits of Christ Jesus in his heart they would infallibly work upon him But he hath petrified his heart in sin and then he hath immur'd it wall'd it with a delight in sin and fortified it with a justifying of his sin and adds daily more and more out-works by more and more daily sins so that the denouncing of Judgement the application of Mercies
to be angry for this 4. 3. and after about the Gourd dost thou well to be angry for that he replies I do well to be angry even unto death How much worse a death then death is this life which so good men would so often change for death But if my case be St. Pauls case Quotidie morior 1 Cor. 15.31 that I die dayly that something heavier then death fall upon me every day If my case be Davids case Tota die mortificamur psa 44.22 all the day long we are killed that not only every day but every hour of the day something heavier then death fals upon me though that be true of me conceptus in peccatis I was shapen in iniquity and in sin did my mother conceive me 51. 5. There I died one death though that be true of me natus filius irae I was born not only the child of sin but the child of the wrath of God for sin which is a heavier death yet Domini Domini sunt exitus mortis with God the Lord are the issues of death and after a Job and a Joseph and a Jeremy and a Daniel I cannot doubt of a deliverance and if no other deliverance conduce more to his glory and my good yet He hath the keyes of death Apo. 1.18 and he can let me out at that dore that is deliver me from the manifold deaths of this world the omni die and the tota die the every daies death and every hours death by that one death the final disolution of body and soul the end of all But then is that the end of all Exitus a morte Incinerationis is that dissolution of body and soul the last death that the body shall suffer for of spiritual deaths we speak not now it is not Though this be exitus a morte it is introitus in mortem though it be an issue from the manifold deaths of this world yet it is an entrance into the death of corruption and putrifaction and vermiculation and incineration and dispersion in and from the grave in which every dead man dies over again It was a prerogative peculiar to Christ not to die this death not to see corruption What gave him this privilege not Josephs great proportions of gums and spices that might have preserved his body from corruption and incineration longer then he needed it longer then three daies but yet would not have done it for ever What preserv'd him then did his exemption and freedome from original sin preserve him from this corruption and incineration 'T is true that original sin hath induc'd this corruption and incineration upon us 1 Câ—â— 15.33 If we had not sinn'd in Adam mortality had not put on immortality as the Apostle speaks nor corruption had not put on incorruption but we had had our transmigration from this to the other world without any mortality any corruption at all But yet since Christ took sin upon him so far as made him mortal he had it so far too as might have made him see this corruption and incineration though he had no original sin in himself What preserv'd him then did the hypostatical union of both natures God and man preserve his flesh from this corruption this incineration 't is true that this was a most powerful embalming To be embalm'd with the divine nature it self to be embalm'd with eternity was able to preserve him from corruption and incineration for ever And he was embalm'd so embalm'd with the divine nature even in his body as well as in his soul for the Godhead the divine nature did not depart but remain still united to his dead body in the grave But yet for all this powerful imbalming this hypostatical union of both natures we see Christ did die and for all this union which made him God and man he became no man for the union of body and soul makes the man and he whose soul and body are seperated by death as long as that state lasts is properly no man And therefore as in him the dissolution of body and soul was no dissolution of the hypostatical union so is there nothing that constrains us to say that though the flesh of Christ had seen corruption and incineration in the grave this had been any dissolving of the hypostatical union for the divine nature the Godhead might have remain'd with all the elements and principles of Christs body as well as it did with the two constitutive parts of his person his body and soul This incorruption then was not in Josephs gums and spices nor was it in Christs innocency and exemption from original sin nor was it that is it is not necessary to say it was in the Hypostatical union But this incorruptibleness of his flesh Psa 16 10. is most conveniently plac d in that non dabis Thou wilt not suffer thy holy one to see corruption We look no farther for causes or reasons in the mysteries of our religion but to the will and pleasure of God Mat. 11.26 Christ himself limited his inquisition in that Ita est even so father for so it seemed good in thy sight Christs body did not see corruption therefore because God had decreed that it should not The humble soul and only the humble soul is the religions soul rests himself upon Gods purposes and his decrees but then it is upon those purposes and decrees of God which he hath declared and manifested not such as are conceiv'd and imagin'd in our selves though upon some probability some verisimilitude So in our present case Act. 2.31.13.35 Peter proceeded in his sermon at Jerusalem and so Paul in his at Antioch they preached Christ to be risen without having seen corruption not only because God had decreed it but because he had manifested that decree in his Prophet Therefore does St. Paul cite by special number the second Psalme for that decree and therefore both St. Peter and St. Paul cite for that place in the 16. Psal for v. 10. when God declares his decree and purpose in the express word of his Prophet or when he declares it in the real execution of the decree then he makes it ours then he manifests it to us And therefore as the mysteries of our religion are not the objects of our reason but by faith we rest in Gods decree and purpose it is so O God because it is thy will it should be so so Gods decrees are ever to be considered in the manifestation thereof All manifestation is either in the word of God or in the execution of the decree and when these two concur and meet it is the strongest demonstration that can be when therefore I find those marks of Adoption and spiritual filiation which are delivered in the word of God to be upon me when I find that real execution of his good purpose upon me as that actually I do live under the obedience and under the conditions which are
evidences of adoption and spiritual filiation then and so long as I see these marks and live so I may safely comfort my self in a holy certitude a modest infallibility of my adoption Christ determins himself in that the purpose of God because the purpose of God was manifest to him S. Pet. S. Paul determine themselves in those two waies of knowing the purpose of God the word of God before the execution of the Decree in the fulness of time It was prophecied before said they it is perform'd now Christ is risen without seeing corruption Now this which is so singularly peculiar to him that his flesh should not see corruption at his second coming his coming to Judgment shall be extended to all that are then alive their flesh shall not see corruption because as the Apostle saies and saies as a secret as a mystery behold I shew you a mystery we shall not all sleep 1 Cor. 15.51 that is not continue in the state of the dead in the grave but we shall all be changed In an instant we shall have a dissolution and in the same instant a redintegration a recompacting of body and soul and that shall be truly a death and truly a resurrection but no sleeping no corruption But for us who dy now and sleep in the state of the dead we must all pass this posthume death this death after death nay this death after burial this dissolution after dissolution this death of corruption and putrefaction of virmiculation and incineration of dissolution and dispersion in and from the grave When those bodies which have been the children of royal Parents and the Parents of royal Children must say with Job 17.14 to corruption thou art my Father to the worm thou art my Mother my Sister Miserable riddle when the same worm must be my mother my sister my self Miserable incest when I must be married to mine own mother and sister and be both Father and Mother to mine one mother and sister beget and bear that worm which is all that miserable penury when my mouth shall be silled with dust and the worm shall feed and feed sweetly upon me 24.20 When the ambitious man shall have no satisfaction if the poorest a live tread upon him nor the poorest receive any contentment in being made equal to Princes for they shall be equal but in dust 23.24 One dyeth at his full strength being wholly at ease and in quiet and another dies in the bitterness of his soul and never eats with pleasure but they ly down alike in the dust and the worm cover them 24.11 The worm covers them in Job and in Esai it covers them is spread under them the worm is spread under thee and the worm covers thee There is the mats and the carpet that lie under and there is the state and the canopy that hangs over the greatest of the Sons of men Even those bodies that were the Temples of the holy Ghost come to this dilapidation to ruine to rubbish to dust Even the Israel of the Lord and Jacob himself had no other specification Esa 41.14 no other denomination but that vermis Jacob thou worm of Jacob. Truly the consideration of this posthume death this death after burial that after God with whom are the issues of death hath delivered me from the death of the womb by bringing me into the world and from the manifold deaths of the world by laying me in the grave I must die again in an incineration of this flesh and in a dispersion of that dust that all that monarch that spread over many nations alive must in his dust lie in a corner of that sheet of lead and there but so long as the lead will last and that private and retired man that thought himself his own for ever and never came forth must in his dust of the grave be published and such are the revolutions of graves be mingled in his dust with the dust of every high way and of every dunghil and swallowed in every puddle and pond this is the most inglorious and contemptible villification the most deadly and peromptory nullification of man that we can consider God seems to have carried the declaration of his power to a great heighth when he sets the Prophet Ezechiel in the vally of dry bones 37. 1. and saies Son of man can these dry bones live as though it had been impossible and yet they did the Lord laid sinews upon them and flesh and breathed into them and they did live But in that case there were bones to be seen something visible of which it might be said can this this live but in this death of incineration and dispersion of dust we see nothing that we can call that mans If we say can this dust live perchance it cannot It may be the meer dust of the earth which never did live nor never shall it may be the dust of that mans worms which did live but shall no more it may be the dust of another man that concerns not him of whom it is asked This death of incineration and dispersion is to natural reason the most irrecoverable death of all and yet Domini Domini sunt exitus mortis unto God the Lord belong the issues of death and by recompacting this dust into the same body and re-inanimating the same body with the same soul be shall in a blessed and glorious Resurrection give me such an issue from this Death as shall never passe into any other death but establish me in a Life that shall last as long as the Lord of Life himself And so have you that that belongs to the first acceptation of these words unto God the Lord belong the issues of Death That though from the womb to the grave and in the grave it self we passe from Death to Death yet as Daniel speaks The Lord our God is able to deliver us and he will deliver us And so we passe to our second accomodation of these words Unto God the Lord belong the issues of Death That it belongs to God and not to Man to passe a Judgement upon us at our Death or to conclude a dereliction on God's part upon the manner thereof Those Indications which Physitians receive Part. 2. Liberatio in morte and those praesagitions which they give for death or recovery in the Patient they receive and they give out of the grounds and rules of their Art But we have no such rule or art to ground a presagition of spiritual death and damnation upon any such Indication as we see in any dying man we see often enough to be sorry but not to despayr for the mercies of God work momentanely in minuts and many times insensibly to by-standers or any other then the party departing and we may be deceived both wayes we use to comfort our selves in the death of a friend if it be testifyed that he went away like
a Lamb that is but with any reluctation But God knows that may have been accompanied with a dangerous damp and stupefaction and insensibility of his present state Our blessed Saviour admitted colluctations with Death and a sadnesse even in his Soul to death and an agony even to a bloody sweat in his body and expostulations with God and exclamations upon the Crosse He was a devout man who upon his death-bed or death-turse for he was an Hermit said Septuaginta annis domino servivisti mori times Hast thou serv'd a good Master threescore and ten yeeres Hilarion and now art thou loth to goe into his presence yet Hilarion was loath He was a devoure man an Hermite that said that day that he died Cogitate hodie coepisse servire Domino Barlaam hodie finiturum Consider this to be the first days service that ever thou didst thy Master to gloryfie him in a christianly and constant death and if thy first day be thy last day too how soone dost thou come to receive thy wages yet Barlaam could have beene content to have stayed longer for it Make no ill conclusion upon any man's lothnesse to die And then upon violent deaths inflicted as upon malefactors Christ himself hath forbidden us by his own death to make any ill conclusion for his own death had those impressions in it he was reputed he was executed as a Malefactor and no doubt many of them who concurred to his death did beleeve him to be so Of sodain deaths there are scarce examples to be found in the Scriptures upon good men for death in battail cannot be called sodain death But God governs not by examples but by rules and therefore make no ill conclusions upon sodain-sodain-Death nor upon distempers neyther though perchance accompanied with some words of diffidence and distrust in the mercies of God The Tree lies as it falls 'T is true but yet it is not the last stroke that fells the Tree nor the last word nor last gaspe that qualifies the Soule Still pray we for a peaceable life against violent deaths and for time of Repentance against sodaine Deaths and for sober and modest assurance against dâ—stemper'd and diffident Deaths but never make ill conclusâ—ion upon persons overtaken with such Deaths Domini Domini sunt exitus Mortis To God the Lord belong the issues of Death and he received Samson who went out of this world in such a manner consider it actively consider it passively in his own death and in those whom he slew with himself as was subject to interpretation hard enough yet the holy-Ghost hath mov'd Saâ—nt Paul to celebrate Samson in his great Catalogue and so doth all the Church Heb. 11. Our Criticall day is not the very day of our death but the whole course of our life I thank him that prayes for me when my bell tolls but I thank him much more that Carechises me or preaches to me or instructs me how to live fac hoc vives There 's my security The mouth of the Lord hath spoken it Doe this and thou shalt live But though I doe it yet I shall die too dy a bodily a naturall death but God never mentions never seems to consider that death the bodily the naturall death God doth not say Live well and thou shalt die well well that is an easy a quiet death but live well here and thou shalt live well for ever As the first part of a Sentence peeces well with the last and never respects never hearkens after the parenthesis that comes between so doth a good life here flow into an eternall life without any consideration what manner of death we die But whether the gate of my prison be opened with an oyl'd key by a gentle and preparing sicknesse or the gate be hew'd down by a violent death or the gate be burnt down by a rageing and frantick feaver a gate into Heaven I shall have for from the Lord is the course of my life and with God the Lord are the issues of death And farther we carry not this second acceptation of the words as this issue of death is liberatio in morte God's care that the Soule be safe what agonie soever the body suffer in the houre of death but passe to our third and last Part as this issue of death is liberatio per mortem a deliverance by the death of another by the death of Christ Part. 3. Liberatio per mortem SufferentiaÌ„ Job audiâ—stis judistis fineÌ„ Domini saies S. Ja. 5.11 You have heard of the patience of Job saies he All this while you have done that for in every man calamitous miserable man a Job speaks Now see the end of the Lord saith that Apostle which is not that end which the Lord proposed to himself Salvation to us nor the end which he proposes to us conformity to him but See the end of the Lord saies he the end that the Lord himself came to Death and a painfull and a shamefull death But why did he die and why die so Quia Domini Domini sunt exitus Mortis as Saint Augustine interpreting this Text De Civit. Dei l. 17. c. 18. answers that question because to this God our Lord belong'd these issues of Death Quid apertius diceretur sayes he there what can be more obvious more manifest then this sense of these words In the former part of the verse it is said He that is our God is the God of Salvation Deus salvos faciendi so he reads it The God that must save us Who can that be saith he but Jesus For therefore that name was given him because he was to save us And to this Jesus saith he Mat. 1.21 this Saviour belongs the issues of Death Nec oportuit cum de hac vita alios exitus habere quam mortis Being come into this life in our mortall nature he could not goe out of it any other way then by Death Ideo dictum saith he therefore is it said To God the Lord belong the issues of Death Ut ostenderetur moriendo nos salvos facturum to shew that his way to save us was to die And from this Text doth Saint Isiodore prove that Christ was truly man which as many Sects of Hereticks denied as that he was truly God because to him though he were Dominus Dominus as the Text doubles it God the Lord yet to him to God the Lord belong'd the issues of Death Oportuit cum pati more cannot be said then Christ himself saith of himself These Luk. 24.26 things Christ ought to suffer He had no other way but by Death So then this part of our Sermon must necessarily be a Passion Sermon since all his life was a continuall Passion all our Lent may well be a continual good-Friday Christ's painfull Life took off none of the pains of his Death he felt not the lesse then for having felt so much before nor will
to us sincerely shall certainly have the heavier condemnation for having had that which they wanted Our multiplicity of Preachers and their assiduity in preaching our true interpretation of their labours when we doe heare and our diligent coming that we may hear shall leave us in worse state then they found us si non fecerimus If we doe not doe that which we heare And to doe the Gospel is to doe what we can for the preservation of the Gospel I know what I can do as a Minister of the Gospel and of Gods Word out of his Word I can preach against Linsey-woolsey garments out of his Word I can preach against plowing with an Oxe and with an Asse against mingling of Religions I know what I can do as a Father as a Master I can preserve my Family from attempts of Jesuits Those that are of higher place Magistrates know what they can do too They know they can execute lawes if not to the taking of Life yet to the restraining of Liberty Serm. 2. And it is no seditious saying it is no saucinesse it is no bitternesse it is no boldnesse to say that the spirituall death of those soules who perish by the practise of those seducers whom they might have stopp'd lies upon them And how knowes he who lets a Jesuit scape whether he let go but a Fox that will deceive some simple soule in matter of Religion or a Wolfe who but the protection of the Almighty would adventure upon the person of the highest of all Non facient quae dixeris is as far as the Text goes they will not do that we say but Quae dixerint is more they will not do that which themselves have said But Quae juraverint is most of all If they will not do that which for the preservation of the Gospel they have taken an Oath to do The Increpation the Malediction intended by God in this Text that all our preaching and all our hearing shall aggravate our condemnation will fall upon us And therefore this being the season in which especially God affords you the performance of that part of this Prophecy assiduous and laborious and acceptable and usefull preaching where all you of all sorts are likely to hear the Duties of Administration towards others and of Mortification in your selves powerfully represented unto you this may have been somewhat necessarily said by me now for the removing of some stones out of their way and the chafing of that wax in which they may thereby make the deeper and clearer impressions that so we may not onely be to you as a lovely song sung to an Instrument nor you onely heare our words but doe them AMEN A Lent-SERMON Preached at WHITE-HALL Serm. 3. February 20. 1628. SERMON III. James 2.12 So speak ye and so Do as they that shall be Judged by the law of Liberty THis is one of those seven Epistles which Athanasius and Origen call'd Catholick that is universal perchance because they are not directed to any one Church as some others are but to all the Christian world And S. Hierom call'd them Canonical perchance because all Rules all Canons of holy Conversation are compriz'd in these Epistles And Epiphanius and Oecumenius call'd them Circular perchance because as in a Circle you cannot discern which was the first point nor in which the compass begun the Circle so neither can we discern in these Epistles whom the Holy Ghost begins withall whom he means principally King or Subject Priest or People Single or Married Husband or Wife Father or Children Masters or Servants but Universally promiscuously indifferently they give All rules for All actions to All persons at All times and in all places As in this Text in particular which is not by any precedent or subsequent relation by any connexion or coherence directed upon any company or any Degree of Men for the Apostle does not say Ye Princes nor ye people but ye ye in general to all So speak ye and so do as they that shall be judged by the law of liberty So these Epistles are Catholick so they are Canonical and they Circular so But yet though in a Circle we know not where the compass began we know not which was the first point yet we know that the last point of the Circle returns to the first and so becomes all one and as much as we know the last we know the first point Since then the last point of that Circle in which God hath created us to move is a kingdome for it is the kingdom of heaven and it is a Court for it is that glorious Court which is the presence of God in the communion of his Saints it is a fair and a pious conception for this Congregation here present now in this place to believe that the first point of this Circle of our Apostle here is a Court too and that the Holy Ghost in proposing these duties in his general Ye does principally intend ye that live in Court ye whom God brings so neer to the sight of himself and of his Court in heaven as that you have always the picture of himself and the pourtraiture of his Court in your eyes for a Religious King is the Image of God and a Religious Court is a Copy of the Communion of Saints And therefore be you content to think that to you especially our Apostle says here Ye ye who have a nearer propinquity to God a more assiduous conversation with God by having better helps then other inferior stations do afford for though God be seen in a weed in a worm yet he is seen more clearly in the sum So speak ye and so Do as they that shall be judged by the law of liberty Now Divisio as the first Divels were in heaven for it was not the punishment which they feel in Hell but the sin which they committed in heaven which made them Divels and yet the fault was not in God nor in the place so if the greatest sins be committed in Courts as even in Rome where they will needs have an Innocent Church yet they confess a guilty Court the faults are personal theirs that do them and there is no higher author of their sin The Apostle does not bid us say that it is so in Courts but lest it should come to be so he bids us give these rules to Courts So speak ye and so Do as they that shall be judged by a law of liberty First then here is no express precept given no direct commandment to speak The Holy Ghost saw there would be speaking enough in Courts for though there may be a great sin in silence a great prevarication in not speaking in a good cause or for an oppressed person yet the lowest voice in a Court whispering it self speaks a loud and reaches far and therefore here is onely a rule to regulate our speech Sic loquimini So speak ye And then as here is no express precept for
upon me and there is a law of sin and a law in my flesh which after the water of Baptism taken and the water of penitent teares given after the blood of Jesus Christ taken and mine own blood given that is a holy readiness at that time when I am made partaker of Christs death to die for Christ throwes me back by relapses into those repented sins This put the Apostle to that passionate exclamation O wretched man that I am And yet he found a deliverance even from the body of this death through Jesus Christ his Lord that is a free an open recourse and access to him in all oppressions of heart in all dejections of spirit Now when this Chyrographum this bond of Adams hand Original sin is cancell'd upon the Cross of Christ And this Pactum this band of mine hand actual sins washed away in the blood of Christ and this Lex in membris this disposition to relapse into repented sins which as a tide that does certainly come every day does come every day in one form or other is beaten back as a tide by a bank by a continual opposing the merits and the example of Christ Jesus and the practise of his fasting and such other medicinall disciplines as I find to prevaile against such relapses when by this blessed means the whole Law against which I am a trespasser is evacuated will God condemn me for all this and not by a Law When I have pleaded Christ and Christ and Christ Baptism and Blood and Teares will God condemn me an oblique way when he cannot by a direct way by a secret purpose when he hath no law to condemn me by Sad and disconsolate distorted and distracted soul if it be well said in the School Absurdum est disputare ex manuscriptis it is an unjust thing in Controversies and Disputations to press arguments out of Manuscripts that cannot be seen by every man it were ill said in thy conscience that God will proceed against thee ex manuscripto or condemn thee upon any thing which thou never saw'st any unrevealed purpose of his Suspicious soul ill-presaging soul Is there something else besides the day of Judgement that the Son of Man does not know Disquiet soul Does he not know the proceeding of that Judgement wherein himself is to be the Judge But that when he hath died for thy sins and so fulfilled the Law in thy behalfe thou maist be condemned without respect of that Law and upon something that shall have had no consideration no relation to any such breach of any such Law in thee Intricated intangled conscience Christ tells thee of a Judgement because thou didst not do the works of Mercy not feed not cloath the poor for those were enjoyned thee by a Law But he never tells thee of any Judgement therefore because thy name was written in a dark book of Death never unclasped never opened unto thee in thy life He sayes unto thee lovingly and indulgently Fear not for it is Gods good pleasure to give you the Kingdome But he never sayes to the wickedest in the world Live in fear dye in anxiety in suspition and suspension for his displeasure a displeasure conceived against you before you were sinners before you were men hath thrown you out of that Kingdome into utter darkness There is no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus the reason is added because the Law of the Spirit of Life hath made them free from the Law of Sin and of Death All upon all sides is still referred to Law And where there is no law against thee as there is not to him that is in Christ and he is in Christ who hath endeavoured the keeping or repented the breaking of the Law God will never proceed to execution by any secret purpose never notified never manifested Suspicious jealous scattered soule recollect thy self and give thy self that redintegration that acquiescence which the Spirit of God in the means of the Church offers thee study the Mystery of godlinesse which is without all controversie that is endeavour to keep repent the not keeping of the Law and thou art safe for that that you shall be judged by is a Law But then this Law is called here a Law of Liberty and whether that denotation that it is called a Law of Liberty import an ease to us or a heavier weight upon us is our last disquisition and conclusion of all So speak ye and so do as they that shall be judged by the Law of Liberty Lex libertatis That the Apostle here by the Law of Liberty meanes the Gospel 1.25 was never doubted He had called the Gospel so before this place Whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty and continueth therein shall be blessed in his deed that is blessed in doing so blessed in conforming himself to the Gospel But why does he call it so a Law of Liberty Not because men naturally affecting liberty might be drawn to an affection of the Gospel by proposing it in that specious name of Liberty though it were not so The Holy Ghost calls the Gospel a Pearle and a Treasure and a Kingdom and Joy and Glory not to allure men with false names but because men love these and the Gospel is truly all these a Pearle and a Treasure and a Kingdome and Joy and Glory And it is truly a Law of Liberty But of what kind and in what respect Not such a Liberty as they have established in the Roman Church where Ecclesiastical Liberty must exempt Ecclesiastical persons from participating all burdens of the State and from being Traitors though they commit treason because they are Subjects to no secular Prince nor the liberty of the Anabaptists that overthrowes Magistracy and consequently all subjection both Ecclesiastical and Laick for when upon those words Be ye not servants of men 1 Cor. 7.23 S. Chrysostome sayes this is Christian liberty Nec aliis nec sibi servire neither to be subjects to others nor to our selves that 's spoken with modification with relation to our first Allegeance our Allegeance to God not to be so subject to others or to our selves as that either for their sakes or our owne we depart from any necessary declaration of our service to God Deo First then the Gospel is a Law of Liberty in respect of the Author of the Gospel of God himself because it leaves God at his liberty Not at liberty to judge against his Gospel where he hath manifested it for a Law for he hath laid a holy necessity upon himself to judge according to that Law where he hath published that law But at liberty so as that it consists onely in his good pleasure to what Nation he will publish the Gospel or in what Nation he will continue the Gospel or upon what persons he will make this Gospel effectuall So Oecumenius who is no single witness nor speaks not alone but compiles the former Fathers places this
that which we intend by his being justified a spiritu suo by his own spirit is not by the testimony that he gave of himself but by that Spirit that God-head that dwelt bodily in him and declared him and justified him in that high power and practise of Miracles When Christ came into this world as if he had come a day before any day a day before Moses his in principio before there was any creature for when Christ came there was creatures that could exercise any natural faculty in opposition to his purposes when Nature his Vicegerent gave up her sword to his hands when the Sea shut up her selfe like Marble and bore him and the Earth opened her selfe like a book to deliver out her dead to wait upon him when the winds in the midst of their own roaring could heare his voyce and Death it self in putrid and corrupt carkases could heare his voice when his own body whom his own soul had left abandoned was not abandoned by this Spirit by this Godhead for the Deity departed not from the dead body of Christ then was Christ especially justified by this Spirit in whose power he raised himself from the dead he was justified in Spiritu Sancto and in spiritu suo two witnesses were enough for him Adde a third for thy self justificetur in Spiritu tuo let him be justified in thy spirit God is safe enough in himself and yet it was a good declaratory addition that the Publicans justified God Luke 7.29 Mat. 2.19 Wisdom is safe enough of her self and yet Wisdome is justified of her children Christ is sufficiently justified but justificetur in Spiritu tuo in thy spirit To say If I consider the Talmud Christ may as well be the Messias as any whom the Jews place their marks upon if I consider the Alchoran Christ is like enough to be a better Prophet then Mahomet if I consider the Arguments of the Arrians Christ may be the Son of God for all that if I consider the Church of Rome and ours he is as likely to manifest himself in his own Word here as there in their word to say but so Christ may be God for any thing I know this is but to baile him not to justifie him not to quit him but to put him over to the Sessions to the great Sessions where he shall justifie himself but none of them who do not justifie him testifie for him in spiritu suo sincerely in their souls nay that 's not enough to justifie is an act of declaration 1 Cor. 2.2 and no man knowes what is in man but the spirit of man and therefore he that leaves any outward thing undone that belongs to his calling for Christ is so far from having justified Christ as that at the last day he shall meet his voice with them that cried Crucifie him and with theirs that cried Not Christ but Barabbas if thou doubt in thy heart if thou disguise in thine actions non justificatur in spiritu tuo Christ is not justified in thy spirit and that 's it which concernes thee most Christ had all this testimony more Visus ab Angelis Visus ab Angelis he was seen of Angels which is not onely visited by Angels serv'd by Angels waited upon by Angels so he was and he was so in every passage in every step An Angel told his mother that he should be born and an Angel told the Shepherd that he was born and that which directed the wise men of the East where to finde him when he was born is also believed by some of the Ancients to have been an Angel in the likeness of a Star When he was tempted by the Devil Angels came and ministred to him Mat. 4.2 but the Devil had left him before his own power Luke 22.43 had dissipated his In his Agony in the Garden an Angel came from heaven to strengthen him but he had recovered before and was come to his Veruntamen Not my will but thine be done He told Peter Mat. 26.53 he could have more then twelve legions of Angels to assist him but he would not have the assistance of his own sword he denies not that which the Devil sayes that the Angels had in charge that he should not dash his foot against a stone Mat. 4.6 but they had an easie service of it for his foot never dasht never stumbled never tripp'd in any way As soon as any stone lay in his way an Angel removed it Mat. 28.2 He rolled away the stone from the sepulchre There the Angel testified to the women that sought him not onely that he was not there that was a poor comfort but where he was He is gone into Galilee and there you shall finde him There also the Angel testified to the men of Galilee that look'd after him not onely that he was gone up that was but a poor comfort but that he should come again Acts 1.2 The same Jesus shall so come as he went There in Heaven they perform that service whilest he stayes there Heb. 1.6 which they are call'd upon to do Let all the Angels of God worship him and in judgement when the Son of man shall come in his glory all the holy Angels shall be with him in every point of that great compass in every arch in every section of that great circle of which no man knowes the Diameter how long it shall be from Christs first coming to his second visus ab Angelis he was seen he was visited he was waited upon by the Angels But there is more intended in this then so Christ was seen of the Angels otherwise now then ever before something was reveal'd to the Angels themselves concerning Christ which they knew not before at least not so as they knew it now For all the Angels do not alwayes know all things if they had there would have been no dissention no strife no difference between the two Angels Dan. 10. the Angel of Persia would not have withstood the other Angel 21 dayes neither would have resisted Gods purpose if both had known it S. Dionyse who considers the names and natures and places and apprehensions of Angels most of any observes of the highest orders of Angels Ordin supremi ad Jesu aspectum haesitabant the highest of the highest orders of Angels were amaz'd at Christs coming up in the Flesh it was a new and unexpected thing to see Christ come thither in that manner There they say with amazement Quis iste Isa 63.1 Who is this that cometh from Edom with dyed garments from Bozrah And Christ answers there Ego it is I I that speak in righteousness I that am mighty to save The Angels reply Wherefore are thy garments red like him that treadeth the wine-press and Christ gives them satisfaction calcavi You mistake not the matter I have trodden the wine-press and calcavi solus I have trodden the wine-press alone and of
then contract them in thy self and consider Gods speedy execution upon thy soul and upon thy body and upon thy soul and body together Was not Gods judgement executed speedily enough upon thy soul when in the same instant that it was created and conceiv'd and infus'd it was put to a necessity of contracting Original sin and so submitted to the penalty of Adam's disobedience the first minute Was not Gods judgement speedily enough executed upon thy body if before it had any temporal life it had a spiritual death a sinful conception before any inanimation If hereditary diseases from thy parents Gouts and Epilepsies were in thee before the diseases of thine own purchase the effects of thy licentiousness and thy riot and that from the first minute that thou beganst to live thou beganst to die too Are not the judgements of God speedily enough executed upon thy soul and body together every day when as soon as thou commitst a sin thou art presently left to thine Impenitence to thine Insensibleness and Obduration Nay the judgement is more speedy then so for that very sin it self was a punishment of thy former sins But though God may begin speedily yet he intermits again he slacks his pace and therefore the execution is not speedy As it is said of Pharaoh often Because the plagues ceased though they had been laid upon him Ingratum est cor Pharaonis Pharaoh's heart was hardned But first we see by that punishment which is laid upon Heli That with God it is all one to begin and to consummate his judgement When I begin I will make an end 1 Sam. 3.12 And when Herod took a delight in that flattery and acclamation of the people It is the voice of God and not of man Acts 12.22 the angel of the Lord smote him immediately the worms took possession of him though if we take Josephus relation for truth he died not in five days after Howsoever if we consider the judgements of God in his purpose and decree there they are eternal And for the execution thereof though the wicked sinner dissemble his sense of his torments and as Tertullian says of a persecutor Herminianus who being tormented at his death in his violent sickness cryed out Nemo sciat ne gaudeant Christiani Let no man know of my misery lest the Christians rejoyce thereat so these sinners suppress these judgements of God from our knowledge because they would not have that God that inflicts them glorified therein by us Yet they know their damnation hath never slept nor let them sleep quietly and in Gods purpose the judgement hath been eternal and they have been damned as long as the devil and that 's an execution speedy enough But because this appears not so evidently but that they may disguise it to the world and with much ado to their own Consciences Therefore their hearts are fully set in them to do evil And so we pass to our third Part. Part III. This is that perversness which the Heathen Philosopher Epictetus apprehends and reprehends That whereas every thing is presented to us Cum duabus sausis with two handles we take it still by the wrong handle This is tortuositas serpentis The wryness the knottiness the entangling of the Serpent This is that which the Apostle takes such direct knowledge of Rom. 2.4 Despisest thou the riches of Gods bountifulness and long-suffering not knowing that it leads thee to repentance St. Chrysostome's comparison of such a sinner to a Vulture that delights onely in dead carcases that is in company dead in their sins holds best as himself notes in this particular that the Vulture perhorrescit fragrantiam unguenti He loaths and is ill affected with any sweet savour for so doth this sinner finde death in that soveraign Balm of the patience of God and he dies of Gods mercy Et quid infelicius illis qui bono odore moriuntur says S. Augustine In what worse state can any man be then to take harm of a good air But as the same Father addes Numquid quia mori voluisti malum fecisti odorem This indisposition in that particular man does not make this air an ill air and yet this abuse of the patience of God comes to be an infectious poyson and such a poyson as strikes the heart and so general as to strike the heart of the children of men and so strongly as that their hearts should be fully set in them to do evil First then what is this setting of the heart upon evil and then what is this fulness that leaves no room for a Cure When a man receives figures and images of sin into his Fancie and Imagination and leads them on to his Understanding and Discourse to his Will to his Consent to his Heart by a delightful dwelling upon the meditation of that sin yet this is not a setting of the heart upon doing evil To be surpris'd by a Tentation to be overthrown by it to be held down by it for a time is not it It is not when the devil looks in at the window to the heart by presenting occasions of tentations to the eye nor when he comes in at the door to our heart at the ear either in lascivious discourses or Satyrical and Libellous defamations of other men It is not when the devil is put to his Circuit to seek whom he may devour and how he may corrupt the King by his Council that is The Soul by the Senses But it is when by a habitual custom in sin the sin arises meerly and immediately from my self It is when the heart hath usurp'd upon the devil and upon the world too and is able and apt to sin of it self if there were no devil and if there were no outward objects of tentation when our own heart is become spontanea insania voluntarius daemon Such a wilful Madness Chrysost and such a voluntary and natural Devil to it self as that we should be ambitious though we were in an Hospital and licentious though we were in a wilderness and voluptuous though in a famine so that such a mans heart is as a land of such Gyants where the Children are born as great as the Men of other nations grow to be for those sins which in other men have their birth and their growth after their birth they begin at a Concupiscence and proceed to a Consent and grow up to Actions and swell up to Habits In this man sin begins at a stature and proportion above all this he begins at a delight in the sin and comes instantly to a defence of it and to an obduration and impenitibleness in it This is the evil of the heart by the mis-use of Gods grace to devest and lose all tenderness and remorse in sin Now for the Incurableness of this heart it consists first in this that there is a fulness It is fully set to do evil such a full heart hath no room for a
8. and bearing of our sicknesses Or to be no richer or no more provident then so To sell all and give it away Luc. 12. and make a treasure in Heaven and all this for fear of Theeves and Rust and Canker and Moths here That which is not allowable in Courts of Justice in criminal Causes To hear Evidence against the King we will admit against God we will hear Evidence against God we will hear what mans reason can say in favor of the Delinquent why he should be condemned why God should punish the soul eternally for the momentany pleasures of the body Nay we suborn witnesses against God and we make Philosophy and Reason speak against Religion and against God though indeed Omne verum omni vero consentiens whatsoever is true in Philosophy is true in Divinity too howsoever we distort it and wrest it to the contrary We hear Witnesses and we suborn Witnesses against God and we do more we proceed by Recriminations and a cross Bill with a Quia Deus because God does as he does we may do as we do Because God does not punish Sinners we need not forbear sins whilst we sin strongly by oppressing others that are weaker or craftily by circumventing others that are simple This is but Leoninum and Vulpinum that tincture of the Lyon and of the Fox that brutal nature that is in us But when we come to sin upon reason and upon discourse upon Meditation and upon plot This is Humanum to become the Man of Sin to surrender that which is the Form and Essence of man Reason and understanding to the service of sin When we come to sin wisely and learnedly to sin logically by a Quia and an Ergo that Because God does thus we may do as we do we shall come to sin through all the Arts and all our knowledge To sin Grammatically to tie sins together in construction in a Syntaxis in a chaine and dependance and coherence upon one another And to sin Historically to sin over sins of other men again to sin by precedent and to practice that which we had read And we come to sin Rhetorically perswasively powerfully and as we have found examples for our sins in History so we become examples to others by our sins to lead and encourage them in theirs when we come to employ upon sin that which is the essence of man Reason and discourse we will also employ upon it those which are the properties of man onely which are To speak and to laugh we will come to speak and talk and to boast of our sins and at last to laugh and jest at our sins and as we have made sin a Recreation so we will make a jest of our condemnation And this is the dangerous slipperiness of sin to slide by Thoughts and Actions and Habits to contemptuous obduration Part II. Now amongst the manifold perversnesses and incongruities of this artificial sinning of sinning upon Reason upon a quia and an ergo of arguing a cause for our sin this is one That we never assigne the right cause we impute our sin to our Youth to our Constitution to our Complexion and so we make our sin our Nature we impute it to our Station to our Calling to our Course of life and so we make our sin our Occupation we impute it to Necessity to Perplexity that we must necessarily do that or a worse sin and so we make our sin our Direction We see the whole world is Ecclesia malignantium Psal 26.5 a Synagogue a Church of wicked men and we think it a Schismatical thing to separate our selves from that Church and we are loth to be excommunicated in that Church and so we apply our selves to that we do as they do with the wicked we are wicked and so we make our sin our Civility And though it be some degree of injustice to impute all our particular sins to the devil himself after a habit of sin hath made us spontaneos daemones Chrysost devils to our selves yet we do come too near an imputing our sins to God himself when we place such an impossibility in his Commandments as makes us lazie that because we cannot do all therefore we will do nothing or such a manifestation and infallibility in his Decree as makes us either secure or desperate and say The Decree hath sav'd me therefore I can take no harm or The Decree hath damn'd me therefore I can do no good No man can assigne a reason in the Sun why his body casts a shadow why all the place round about him is illumin'd by the Sun the reason is in the Sun but of his shadow there is no other reason but the grosness of his own body why there is any beam of light any spark of life in my soul he that is the Lord of light and life and would not have me die in darkness is the onely cause but of the shadow of death wherein I sit there is no cause but mine own corruption And this is the cause why I do sin but why I should sin there is none at all Yet in this Text the Sinner assignes a cause and it is Quia non mutationes Because they have no Changes God hath appointed that earth which he hath given to the sons of men to rest and stand still and that heaven which he reserves for those sons of men who are also the sons of God he hath appointed to stand still too All that is between heaven and earth is in perpetual motion and vicissitude but all that is appointed for man mans possession here mans reversion hereafter earth and heaven is appointed for rest and stands still and therefore God proceeds in his own way and declares his love most where there are fewest Changes This rest of heaven he hath expressed often by the name of a Kingdom as in that Petition Thy kingdom come And that rest which is to be derived upon us here in earth he expresses in the same phrase too when having presented to the children of Israel an Inventary and Catalogue of all his former blessings he concludes all includes all in this one Et prosperata es in regnum I have advanced thee to be a kingdom which form God hath not onely still preserv'd to us but hath also united Kingdoms together and to give us a stronger body and safer from all Changes whereas he hath made up other Kingdoms of Towns and Cities he hath made us a Kingdom of Kingdoms and given us as many Kingdoms to our Kingdom as he hath done Cities to some other Gods gracious purpose then to man being Rest and a contented Reposedness in the works of their several Callings and his purpose being declared upon us in the establishing and preserving of such a Kingdom as hath the best Body best united in it self and knit together and the best Legs to stand upon Peace and Plenty and the best Soul to inanimate and direct it Truth
of our Professors themselves who as she thinks come as near to her as they dare Because she hath gained of late upon many of the weaker sex women laden with sin and of weaker fortunes men laden with debts and of weaker consciences souls laden with scruples therefore she imagines that she hath seen the worst and is at an end of her change though this be but indeed a running an ebbing back of the main River but onely a giddy and circular Eddy in some shallow places of the stream which stream God be blessed runs on still currantly and constantly and purely and intemerately as before yet because her corrections are not multiplied because her absolute Ruine is not accelerated she hath some false conceptions of a general returning towards her and she fears up her self against all sense of Truth and all tenderness of Peace and because she hath rid out one storm in Luther and his successors therefore she fears not the Lord for any other Quia non habent Because she hath no changes now Habuerunt then They have had changes and Habebunt They shall have more and greater Impii non stabunt says David The wicked shall not stand In how low ground soever they stand and in how great torment soever they stand yet they shall not stand there but sink to worse and at last non stabunt in judicio They shall not stand in judgement but fall there from whence there is no rising Non stabunt They shall not stand though they think they shall they shall counterfeit the Seals of the Holy Ghost and delude themselves with imaginary certitudes of Salvation and illusory apprehensions of Decrees of Election nay non stabunt They shall not be able to think that they shall stand that which the Apostle saith 1 Cor. 10.12 Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall belongs onely to the godly onely they can think deliberately and upon just examination of the marks and evidences of the Elect that they shall stand God shall suffer the wicked to sink down not to a godly sense of their infirmity and holy remorse of the effects thereof but yet lower then that to a diffident jealousie to a desperate acknowledgement that they cannot stand in the sight of God they shall have no true rest at last they shall not stand nay they shall not have that half that false comfort by the way they shall not be able to flatter themselves by the way with that imagination that they shall stand Now both the ungodly and godly too must have Changes in matter of Fortune changes are common to them both and then in all of all conditions Mortalitas Mutabilitas says St. Augustine even this That we must die is a continual change The very same word 14.14 which is here kalaph is in Job also All the days of my appointed time till my changing come And because this word which we translate changing is there spoken in the person of a righteous man Symma some Translators have rendred that place Donec veniat sancta nativitas mea Till I be born again the change the death of such men is a better birth And so the Chaldee Paraphrasts the first Exposition of the Bible have express'd it Quousque rursus fiam Till I be made up again by death He does not stay to call the Resurrection a making up but this death this dissolution this change is a new creation this Divorce is a new Marriage this very Parting of the soul is an Infusion of a soul and a Transmigration thereof out of my bosome into the bosom of Abraham Bernard But yet though it is all this yet it is a change Maxima mutatio est Mutabilitatis in Immutabilitatem To be changed so as that we can never be changed more is the greatest change of all All must be changed so far as to die yea those who shall in some sort escape that death those whom the last day shall surprise upon earth though they shall not die yet they shall be changed Statutum est omnibus semel mori All men must die once Heb. 9.27 we live all under that Law But statutum nemini hic mori since the promise of a Messiah there is no Law no Decree by which any man must necessarily die twice a Temporal death and a Spiritual death too It is not the Man but the Sinner that dies the second death God sees sin in that man or else that man had never seen the second death So we shall all have one change besides those which we have all had good and bad must die but the men in this text shall have two But whatsoever changes are upon others in the world whatsoever upon themselvs whatsoever they have had whatsoever they are sure to have yet Quia non habent non timent Deum Because they have none now they fear not God And so we are come to our third and last Part. They fear not God This is such a state Part III. Non timent as if a man who had been a Schoolmaster all his life and taught others to read or had been a Critick all his life and ingeniosus in alienis over-witty in other mens Writings had read an Author better then that Author meant and should come to have use of his Reading to save his life at the Bar when he had his Book for some petty Felony and then should be stricken with the spirit of stupidity and not be able to read then Such is the state of the wisest of the learnedest of the mightiest in this world If they fear not God they have forgot their first letters they have forgot the basis and foundation of all Power the reason and the purpose of all Learning the life and the soul of all Counsel and Wisdom for The fear of God is the beginning of all They are all fallen into the danger of the Law they have all sinn'd they are offer'd their Book the merciful promises of God to repentant sinners in his Word and they cannot read they cannot apply them to their comfort There is Scripture but not translated not transferr'd to them there is Gospel but not preached to them there are Epistles but not superscribed to them It is an hereditary Sentence Psal 111.10 Prov. 1.7 Ecclus 1.16 and hath pass'd from David in his Psalms to Solomon in his Proverbs and then to him that glean'd after them both the Author of Ecclesiasticus The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom All three profess all that and more then that It is Blessedness it self says the father David Blessedness it self says the son Solomon and Plenitudo Sapientiae and Omnis Sapientia says the other The fulness of wisdom and the onely wisdom Job had said it before them all Ecce timor Domini 28. ipsa est sapientia The fear of the Lord is wisdom it self And the Prophet Esai said it after of Ezechias 33.6 There
The Incarnation of God and then the death and Crucifying of that God so Incarnate could never have fallen within the desire nor wish of any man neither would any man oâ— himself ever have conceived That the Sacraments of the Church poor and naked things of themselves for all that the wit of man could imagine in them or allow to them should be such means to sâ—al and convey the graces which accompany this Redemption of our souls to our souls Divisio So then Having thus represented unto you a model and designe of the miserable condition of man and the abundant mercy of our Redeemer so far as those words which the Holy Ghost hath chosen in this text hath invited and led us That we may look better upon some pieces of it that we may take such a sight of this Redeemer here as that we may know Him when we meet Him at home at our house in our private meditations at His house in the last judgment I shall onely offer you two considerations Exprobrationem and Consolaâ—ionem First an exprobration or increpation from God to us And then a consolation or consolidation of the same God upon us And in the exprobration God reproches to us first our Prodigality that we would sell a reversion our possibility our expectance of an inheritance in heaven And then our cheapness that we would sell that for nothing Prodigality First then Prodigality is a sin that destroys even the means of liberality If a man wast so as that he becomes unable to releive others by this wast this is a sinful prodigality but much more if he wast so as that he is not able to subsist and maintain himself and this is our case who have even annihilated our selves by our proâ—useness For it is his mercy that we are not consumed It is a sin and a viperous sin it eats out his own womb The Prodigal consumes that that should maintain his Prodigality It is peccatum Biathana ton a sin that murders it self Now as in civil Prodigalities in a wastfulness of our temporal estate the Laws inflicts three kinds of punishment three incommodities upon him that is a Prodigal so have the same punishments a proportion and somethings that answer them in this spiritual prodigality of the soul by sin The first is bonis suis interdicitur He that is a Prodigall in the Law cannot dispose of his own Estate whatsoever he gives or sells or leases all is void as of a mad-man or of an Infant And such is the condition of a man in sin He hath no interest in his own natural faculties He cannot think he cannot wish he cannot do any thing of himself the venem and the malignity of his sin goes through all his actions and he cannot purge it The second incommodity is Testamentum non facit The Prodigal person hath no power allowed him by the Law to make a will at his death And this also doth an habitual sinner suffer For when he comes to his end he may dictate to a Notary and he may bid him write Imprimis I give my Soul to God my Body to such a Church my Goods to such and such persons But if those Goods be lâ—able to other debts â—he Legâ—tarie shall have no profit If the person be under excommunication he shall not lye in that Church If his soul be under the weight of unrepented sins God will do the devil no wrong he will not take a soul that is sold to him before The third Incommodity that a Prodigal incurrs by the Law is Exhaeredatus creditur He is presum'd to be disinherited by his father that whereas by that Law if the father in his Will leave out any of his childrens names and never mention him yet that child which is pretermitted shall come in for a childs part except the father have assigned a particular reason why he left him out If this childe were a Prodigal there needs no other reason to be assigned but Exhaeredatus Creditur He is presum'd to be disinherited And so also if we have seen a man prodigal of his own soul and run on in a course of sin all his life except there appear very evident signs of resumption into Gods grace at his end Exhaeredatus Creditur we have just reason to be afraid that he is disinherited If any such sinner seem to thee to repent at his end Faâ—eor vobis non negamus quod petit saith St. Augustin I confess we ought not to deny him any help that he desires in that late extremity Sed non praesumimus quia bene exit I dare not assure you that that man dyes in a good state he adds that vehemence non praesumo non vos fallo non praesumo I should but deceive you if I should assure you that such a man dyed well There was one good and happy Thief that stole a Salvation at the crucifying of Christ but in him that was throughly true which is proverbially spoken Occasio facit furem the oppotunity made him a thief and when there is such another opportunity there may be such another theif when Christ is to dye again we may presume of mercy upon such a late repentance at our death The preventing grace of God made him lay violent hands upon heaven But when thou art a Prodigal of thy soul will God be a prodigal too for thy sake and betray and prostitute the kingdome of Heaven for a sigh or a groan in which thy pain may have a greater part than thy repentance God can raise up children out of the stones of the street and therefore he might be as liberal as he would of his people and suffer them to be sold for old shoes but Christ will not sell his birth-right for a messe or pottage the kingdome of Heaven for the dole at a Funeral Heaven is not to be had in exchange for an Hospital or a Chantry or a Colledge erected in thy last will It is not onely the selling all we have that must buy that pearl which represents the kingdome of Heaven The giving of all that we have to the poor at our death will not do it the pearl must be sought and found before in an even and constant course of Sanctification we must be thrifty all our life or we shall be to poor for that purchase It is then an unthrifty a perplexed bargain when both the buyer and the seller loose our losse is plain enough for we loose our souls And certainly howsoever the devil be expressed to take some joy at the winning of a sinner howsoever his kingdome be thereby enlarged yet Almighty God suffers not his treason his undermining of man to be unpunished but afflicts him with more and more accidental torments even for that as a licencious man takes pleasure in the victory of having corrupted a woman by his solicitation but yet insensibly overthrows his constitution by his sin so the withdrawing of Gods Subjects from
by saying by speaking the making of Man was in in sermone in a consultation In this first Creation thus presented there is a shadow a representation of our second Creation our Regeneration in Christ and of the saving knowledge of God for first there is in Man a knowledge of God sine sermone without his word in the book of Creatures Non sunt loquelae sayes David Psal 19. They have no language they have no speech and yet they declare the glory of God The correspondence and relation of all parts of Nature to one Author the consinuity and dependance of every piece and joynt of this frame of the world the admirable order the immutable succession the lively and certain generation and birth of effects from their Parents the causes in all these though there be no sound no voice yet we may even see that it is an excellent song an admirable piece of musick and harmony and that God does as it were play upon this Organ in his administration and providence by naturall means and instruments and so there is some kind of creation in us some knowledge of God imprinted sine sermone without any relation to his word But this is a Creation as of heaven and earth which were dark and empty and without form till the Spirit of God moved and till God spoke Till there came the Spirit the breath of Gods mouth the word of God it is but a faint twilight it is but an uncertain glimmering which we have of God in the Creature But in sermone in his word when we come to him in his Scriptures we finde better and nobler Creatures produced in us clearer notions of God and more evident manifestations of his power and of his goodness towards us for if we consider him in his first word sicut locutus ab initio as he spoke from the beginning in the Old Testament from thence we cannot only see but feel and apply a Dixit fiat lux that God hath said let there be light and that there is a light produced in us by which we see that this world was not made by chance for then it could not consist in this order and regularity and we see that it was not eternall for if it were eternall as God and so no Creature then it must be God too we see it had a beginning a beginning of nothing and all from God So we find in our self a fiat lux that there is such a light produced And there we may find a fiat firmamentum that there is a kind of firmament produced in us a knowledge of a difference between Heaven and Earth and that there is in our constitutions an earthly part a body and a heavenly part a soul and an understanding as a firmament to separate distinguish and discern between these So also may we find a congregenter aquae that God hath said Let there be a sea a gathering a confluence of all such means as are necessary for the attaining of salvation that is that God from the beginning settled and established a Church in which he was alwayes carefull to minister to man means of eternall happiness The Church is that Sea and into that Sea we launched the water of Baptism To contract this sine sermone till God spake in his Creatures only we have but a faint and uncertain and generall knowledge of God in sermone when God comes to speak at first in the Old Testament though he come to more particulars yet it was in dark speeches and in vails and to them who understood best and saw clearest into Gods word still it was but de futuro by way of promise and of a future thing But when God comes to his last work to make Man to make up Man that is to make Man a Christian by the Gospel when he comes not to a fiat homo Let there be a Man as he proceeded in the rest but to a faciamus hominem Let us make Man Then he calls his Sonne to him and sends him into the world to suffer death the death of the Crosse for our salvation And he calls the Holy Ghost to him and sends him to teach us all truth and apply that which Christ suffered for our souls to our souls God leaves the Nations the Gentiles under the non locutus est he speaks not at all to them but in the speechless creatures He leaves the Jewes under the locutus est under the killing letter of the Law and their stubborn perverting thereof And he comes to us sicut locutus est in manifesting to us that our Messias Christ Jesus is come and come according to the promise of God and the foretelling of all his Prophets for that is our safe anchorage in all storms that our Gospel is in sermone that all things are done so as God had foretold they should be done that we have infallible marks given us before by which we may try all that is done after All the word of God then conduces to the Gospel the Old Testament is a preparation and a poedagogie to the New All the word belongs to the Gospell and all the Gospell is in the word nothing is to be obtruded to our faith as necessary to salvation except it be rooted in the Word And as the locutus est that is the promises that God hath made to us in the Old Testament and the sicut locutus est that is the accomplishing of those promises to us in the New-Testament are thus applyable to us so is this especially Quod adhuc loquitur that God continues his speech and speaks to us every day still we must hear Evangelium in sermone the Gospel in the Word in the Word so as we may hear it that is the Word preached for howsoever it be Gospel in it self it is not Gospel to us if it be not preached in the Congregation neither though it be preached to the Congregation is it Gospel to me except I find it work upon my understanding and my faith and my conscience A man may believe that there shall be a Redeemer and he may give an Historicall assent that there hath been a Redeemer that that Redeemer is come he may have heard utrumque sermonem both Gods wayes of speaking both his voices both his languages his promises in the Old Testament his performances in the New Testament and yet not hear him speak to his own soul Ferme Apostoli plus laborarunt says S. Chrys It cost the Apostles and their Successors the preachers of the Gospell more paines and more labour ut persuaderent hominibus dona Dei iis indulta To perswade men that this mercy of God and these merits of Christ Jesus were intended to them and directed upon them in particular then to perswade them that such things were done they can beleeve the promise and the performance in the generall but they cannot finde the application thereof in particular the voice that is neerest us we least
You would not go into a Medicinal Bath without some preparatives presume not upon that Bath the blood of Christ Jesus in the Sacrament then without preparatives neither Neither say to your selves we shall have preparatives enough warnings enough many more Sermons before it come to that and so it is too soon yet you are not sure you shall have more not sure you shall have all this not sure you shall be affected with any If you be when you are remember that as in that good Custome in these Cities you hear cheerful street musick in the winter mornings but yet there was a sad and doleful bel-man that wak'd you and call'd upon you two or three hours before that musick came so for all that blessed musick which the servants of God shall present to you in this place it may be of use that a poor bell-man wak'd you before and though but by his noyse prepared you for their musick And for this early office I take Christs earliest witness his Proto-Martyr his first witness St. Stephen and in him that which especially made him his witness and our example his his death and our preparation to death what he suffered what he did what he said so far as is knit up in those words When he had said this he fell a sleep Divisio From which example I humbly offer to you these two general considerations first that every man is bound to do something before he dye and then to that man who hath done those things which the duties of his calling bind him to death is but a sleep In the first we shall stop upon each of those steps first there is a sis aliquid every man is bound to be something to take some calling upon him Secondly there is a hoc age every man is bound to do seriously and scedulously and sincerely the duties of that calling And Thirdly there is a sis aliquis the better to performe those duties every man shall do well to propose to himself some person some pattern some example whom he will follow and imitate in that calling In which third branch of this first part we shall have just occasion to consider some particulars in him who is here propos'd for our Example St. Stephen and in these three sis aliquid be something profess something and then hoc age do truly the duties of that profession and lastly sis aliquis propose some good man in that profession to to follow and in the things intended in this text propose St. Stephen we shall determine our first part And in the other we shall see that to them that do not this that do not settle their consciences so death is a bloody conflict and no victory at last a tempestuous sea and do harbor at last a slippery heighth and no footing a desperate fall and no bottom But then to them that have done it their pill is gilded and the body of the pill hony too mors lucrum death is a gain a treasure and this treasure brought some in a calm too they do not only go to heaven by death but heaven comes to them in death their very manner of dying is an inchoative act of their glorified state therefore it is not call'd a dying but asseeping which one metaphor intimates two blessings that because it is a sleep it gives a present rest and because it is a sleep it promises a future waking in the resurrection First part Sis aliquid First Then for our first branch of our first part we begin with our beginning our birth man is born to trouble so we read it to trouble The original is a little milder then so yet there it is Man is born unto labor Job 5 7. God never meant less then labor to any man Put us upon that which we esteem the honorablest of labors the duties of martial discipline yet where it is said that man is appointed to a warfare upon earth it is seconded with that His dayes are like the dayes of an hireling 7.1 How honorable soever his station be he must do his daies labor in the day the duties of the place in the place How far is he from doing so that never so much as considers why he was sent into this world who is so sar from having done his errand here that he knows not considers not what his errand was nay knows not considers not whether he had any errand hither or no. But as though that God who for infinite millions of millions of generations before any creation any world contented himself with himself satisfied delighted himself with himself in heaven without any creatures yet at last did bestow six daies labor upon the Creation accommodation of man as though that God who when man was sour'd in the whole lump poysoned in the fountain perished at the chore withered in the root in the fall of Adam would them in that dejection that exainantion that evacuation of the dignity of man and not in his sormer better estate engage his own Son his only his beloved Son to become man by a temporary life and then to become no man by a violent and yet a voluntary death as though that God who he was pleased to come to a creation might yet have left thee where thou wast before amongst privations a nothing or if he would have made thee something a creature yet he might have shut thee up in the closs prison of a bare being and no more without life or sense as he hath done earth and stones or if he would have given thee life and sense he might have left thee a toad without the comeliness of shape without that reasonable and immortal Soul which makes thee a man or if he had made thee a man yet he might have lost thee upon the common amongst the Heathen and not have taken thee into his inclosures by giving the a particular form of religion or if he would have given thee a religion He might have left thee a Jew or if he would have given thee Christianity He might have left thee a Papist as though this God who had done so much more for thee by breeding thee in a true Church had done all this for nothing thou pussest through this world as a flash as a lightning or which no man knows the beginning or the ending as an ignis fatuus in the air which does not only not give light for any use but does not so much as portend or signifie any thing and thou passest out of the world as a hand passes out of a bason or a body out of a bath where the water may be the fouler for thy having washed in it else the water retains no impression of thy hand or body so the world may be the worse for thy having liv'd in it else the world retains no marks of thy having been there When God plac'd Adam in the world God enjoyned Adam to fill the world to subdue
then this pactum this contract of mine own hand actual and habitual sin for of these one is wash'd out in water and the other in blood Ro. 7.20 in the two Sacraments But then there is Lex in membris saith the Apostle I find a law that when I would do good evil is present with me Sin assisted by me is now become a Tyrant over me and hath establish'd a government upon me and therefore is a law of sin and a law in my flesh which after the water of baptism taken and the water of penitent tears given after the blood of Christ Jesus taken and mine one blood given that is a holy readiness at that time when I am made partaker of Christs death to die for Christ throws me back by relapses into those repented sins This put the Apostle to that passionate exclamation O wretched man that I am and yet he found a deliverance even from the body of his death through Jesus Christ his Lord that is a free and open recourse and access to him in all oppressions of heart in all dejections of spirit Now when this Chirographum this band of Adams hand Original sin is cancell'd upon the Cross of Christ and this pactum this band of mine own hand actual sins wash'd away in the blood of Christ and this Lex in membris this disposition to relapse into repented sins which as a tide that does certainly come every day does come every day in one form or other is beaten back as a tide by a bank by a continual opposing the merits and the example of Christ Jesus and the practice of his fasting such other medicinal disciplines as I find to prevail against such relapses when by this blessed means the whole law against which I am a trespasser is evacuated will God condemn me for all this and not by a law when I have pleaded Christ Christ and Christ baptism and blood and tears will God condemn mean oblique way when he cannot by a direct way by a secret purpose when he hath no law to condemn me by Sad and discomposed distorted and distracted soul if it be well said in the School absurdum est disputare ex manuscriptis it is an unjust thing in controversies and disputations to press arguments out of manuscripts that cannot be seen by every man it were ill said in thy conscience that God will proceed against thee ex manuscriptis or condemn thee upon any thing which thou never sawst any unreveal'd purpose of his Suspicious soul ill-presaging soul is there something else besides the day of Judgment that the Son of man does not know disquiet soul does he not know the proceeding of that Judgment wherin himself is to be Judg but that when he hath died for thy sins and so fulfill'd the law in thy behalf thou maist be condemn'd without respect of that law and upon something that shall have had no consideration no relation to any such breach of any such law in thee Intricated entangled conscience Christ tels thee of a Judgment because thou didst not do the works of mercy not feed not cloth the poor for these were enjoyn'd thee by a law but he never tels thee of any Judgment therefore because thy name was written in a dark book of death never unclaps'd never opened unto thee in thy life He saies to the lovingly indulgently fear not for it is Gods good pleasure to give you the Kingdom but he never saies to the wickedest in the world live in fear dy in anxiety in suspition and suspension for his displeasure a displeasure conceiv'd against you before you were sinners before you were men hath thrown you out of that kingdom into utter darkness There is no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus The reason is added because the law of the Spirit of life hath made them free from the law of sin and of death All upon all sides is still refer'd to a law And where there is no law against thee as there is not to him that is in Christ and he is in Christ who hath endeavoured the keeping or repented the breaking of the law God wil never proceed to execution by any secret purpose ever notified never manifested Suspicious jealous scattered soul recollect thy self and give thy self that redintegration that acquiescence which the spirit of God in the means of the Church offers thee study the mysterie of godliness which is without all controversie that is endeavour to keep repent the not keeping of the law and thou art safe for that you shall be judged by is a law But then this law is called here a law of liberty and whether that denotation that it is called a law of liberty import an ease to us or heavier weight upon us is our last disquisition and conclusion of all So speak ye and so do as they that shall be judged by the law of liberty Lex libertatis That the Apostle here by the law of liberty means the Gospel was never doubted he had call'd the Gospel so before this place whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty 1.25 and continueth therein shal be blessed in his deed that is blessed in doing so blessed in conforming himself to the Gospel but why does he call it so A law of liberty not because men naturally affecting liberty might be drawn to an affection of the Gospel by proposing it in that specious name of liberty though it were not so The holy Ghost calls the Gospel a pearl and a treasure and a kingdome and joy and glory Not to allure men with false names but because men love these and the Gospel is truly all these a pearl and a treasure and a kingdome and joy and glory And it is truly a law of liberty but of what kind and in what respect not such a liberty as they have established in the Roman Church where Ecclesiastical liberty must exempt Ecclesiastical persons from participating all burdens of the State and from being traitors though they commit treason because they are Subjects to no secular Prince nor the liberty of the Anabaptist that overthrows Magistracy and consequently all subjection both Ecclesiastical Laick for when upon those words 1 Cor. 7.23 Be ye not servants of men St. Chrysostome sayes This is Christian liberty Nec aliis nec sibi servire neither to be subjects to others nor to our selves that 's spoken with modification an allegiance with relation to our first allegiance to God not to be so subject to others or to our selves as that either for their sakes or our own we depart from any necessary declaration of our service to God Deo First then the Gospel is a Law of Liberty in respect of the author of the Gospel of God himself because it leaves God at his liberty Not at liberty to judg against his Gospel where he hath manifested it for a law for he hath laid a holy necessity upon himself
come now A Sermon Preached at St. Dunstans January 15. 1625. The First SERMON after Our Dispersion by the Sickness SERMON XXI Exod. 12.30 For there was not a house where there was not one dead GOd intended life and immortality for man and man by sin induc'd death upon himself at first When man had done so and that now man was condemned man must die yet yet God gave him though not an absolute pardon yet a long reprieve though not a new immortality yet a life of seven and eight hundred years upon earth And then misery by sin growing upon man and this long life which was enlarged in his favour being become a burden unto him God abridged and contracted his seven hundred to seventy and his eight hundred to eighty years the years of his life came to be threescore and ten and if misery do suffer him to exceed those even the exceeding it self is misery Death then is from our selves it is our own but the executioner is from God it is his he gives life no man can quicken his own soul but any man can forfeit his own soul And yet when he hath done so he may not be his own executioner for as God giveth life so he killeth says Moses there not as the cause of death for death is not his creature but because he employs what person he will and executes by what instrument it pleases him to chuse age or sickness or justice or malice or in our apprehension fortune In that History from whence we deduce this Text which was that great execution the sodain death of all the first-born of Egypt it is very large and yet we may usefully and to good purpose enlarge it if we take into our consideration spiritual death as well as bodily for so in our houses from whence we came hither if we left but a servant but a child in the cradle at home there is one dead in that house If we have no other house but this which we carry about us this house of clay this tabernacle of flesh this body yet if we consider the inmate the sojourner within this house Serm. 21. the state of our corrupt and putrified soul there is one dead in this house too And though we be met now in the House of God and our God be the God of Life yet even in this house of the God of Life and the ground enwrapped in the same consecration not only of every such house but let every mans length in the house be a house of every such space this Text will be verified There is not a house where there is not one dead God is abundant in his mercies to man and as though he did but learn to give by his giving as though he did but practise to make himself perfect in his own Art which Art is bountiful Mercy as though all his former blessings were but in the way of earnest and not of payment as though every benefit that he gave were a new obligation upon him and not an acquittance to him he delights to give where he hath given as though his former gifts were but his places of memory and marks set upon certain men to whom he was to give more It is not so good a plea in our prayers to God for temporal or for spiritual blessings to say Have mercy upon me now for I have loved thee heretofore as to say Have mercy upon me for thou hast loved me heretofore We answer a Beggar I gave you but yesterday but God therefore gives us to day because he gave us yesterday and therefore are all his blessings wrap'd up in that word Panis quotidianus Give us this day our daily bread Every day he gives and early every day his Manna falls before the Sun rises and his mercies are new every morning In this consideration of his abounding in all ways of mercy to us we consider justly how abundant he is in instructing us He writes his Law once in our hearts and then he repeats that Law and declares that Law again in his written Word in his Scriptures He writes his Law in stone-Tables once and then those Tables being broken he repeats that Law writes that Law again in other Tables He gives us his Law in Exodus and Leviticus and then he gives us a Deuteronomy a repetition of that Law another time in another Book And as he abounds so in instructing us in going the same way twice over towards us as he gives us the Law a second time so he gives us a second way of instructing us he accompanies he seconds his Law with examples In his Legal Books we have Rules in the Historical Examples to practise by And as he is every way abundant as he hath added Law to Nature and added Example to Law so he hath added Example to Example and by that Text which we have read to you here and by that Text which we have left at home our house and family and by that Text which we have brought hither our selves and by that Text which we finde here where we stand and sit and kneel upon the bodies of some of our dead friends or neighbors he gives to us he repeats to us a full a various a multiform a manifold Catechism and Institution to teach us that it is so absolutely true that there is not a house in which there is not one dead as that taking spiritual death into our consideration there is not a house in which there is one alive That therfore we may take in light at all these windows that God opens for us Divisio that we may lay hold upon God by all these handles which he puts out to us we shall make a brief survey of these four Houses of that in Egypt where the Text places it of that at home in which we dwell of this which is our selves where we always are or always should be within and of this in which we are met where God is in so many several Temples of his as are above and under ground So that this Sermon may be a general Funeral Sermon both for them that are dead in the flesh and for our selves that are dead in our sins for of all these four houses it is true and by useful accommodation applyable to all There is not a house where there is not one dead First then to survey the first House the House in Egypt Part 1. Pharaoh by drawing upon himself and his Land this last and heaviest plague of the ten the universal the sodain the midnight destruction of all all the first born of Egypt hath made himself a Monument and a History and a Pillar everlasting to the end of the world to the end of all place in the world and to the end of all time in the world by which all men may know that man how perverse soever cannot weary God that man cannot add to his Rebellions so many heavy circumstances but that God can
from others upon whom we may depend to admit any dramms of the dregs of a superstitious Religion for it is a miserable extremity when we must take a little poyson for physick And so having made the right use of Gods corrections we shall enjoy the comfort of this phrase in this House our selves our first-born our Zeal was dead it was but it is not Lastly in this fourth House the House where we stand now the House of God and of his Saints God affords us a fair beam of this consolation in the phrase of this Text also They were dead How appliable to you in this place is that which God said to Moses Put off thy shoes for thou treadest on holy ground put off all confidence all standing all relying upon worldly assurances and consider upon what ground you tread upon ground so holy as that all the ground is made of the bodies of Christians and therein hath received a second consecration Every puff of wind within these walls may blow the father into the sons eys or the wife into her husbands or his into hers or both into their childrens or their childrens into both Every grain of dust that flies here is a piece of a Christian you need not distinguish your Pews by figures you need not say I sit within so many of such a neighbour but I sit within so many inches of my husbands or wives or childes or friends grave Ambitious men never made more shift for places in Court then dead men for graves in Churches and as in our later times we have seen two and two almost in every Place and Office so almost every Grave is oppressed with twins and as at Christs resurrection some of the dead arose out of their graves that were buried again so in this lamentable calamity the dead were buried and thrown up again before they were resolved to dust to make room for more But are all these dead They were says the Text they were in your eys and therefore we forbid not that office of the eye that holy tenderness to weep for them that are so dead But there was a part in every one of them that could not die which the God of life who breathed it into them from his own mouth hath suck'd into his own bosome And in that part which could die They were dead but they are not The soul of man is not safer wrapt up in the bosome of God then the body of man is wrapt up in the Contract and in the eternal Decree of the Resurrection As soon shall God tear a leaf out of the Book of Life and cast so many of the Elect into Hell fire as leave the body of any of his Saints in corruption for ever To what body shall Christ Jesus be loth to put to his hand to raise it from the grave then that put to his very God-head the Divinity it self to assume all our bodies when in one person he put on all mankinde in his Incarnation As when my true repentance hath re-ingraffed me in my God and re-incorporated me in my Savior no man may reproach me and say Thou wast a sinner So since all these dead bodies shall be restored by the power and are kept alive in the purpose of Almighty God we cannot say They are scarce that they were dead When time shall be no more when death shall be no more they shall renew or rather continue their being But yet beloved for this state of their grave for it becomes us to call it a state it is not an annihilation no part of Gods Saints can come to nothing as this state of theirs is not to be lamented as though they had lost any thing which might have conduced to their good by departing out of this world so neither is it a state to be joyed in so as that we should expose our selves to dangers unnecessarily in thinking that we want any thing conducing to our good which the dead enjoy As between two men of equal age if one sleep and the other wake all night yet they rise both of an equal age in the morning so they who shall have slept out a long night of many ages in the grave and they who shall be caught up in the clouds to meet the Lord Jesus in the aire at the last day shall enter all at once in their bodies into Heaven No antiquity no seniority for their bodies neither can their souls who went before be said to have been there a minute before ours because we shall all be in a place that reckons not by minutes Clocks and Sun-dials were but a late invention upon earth but the Sun it self and the earth it self was but a late invention in heaven God had been an infinite a super-infinite an unimaginable space millions of millions of unimaginable spaces in heaven before the Creation And our afternoon shall be as long as Gods forenoon for as God never saw beginning so we shall never see end but they whom we tread upon now and we whom others shall tread upon hereafter shall meet at once where though we were dead dead in our several houses dead in a sinful Egypt dead in our family dead in our selves dead in the Grave yet we shall be received with that consolation and glorious consolation you were dead but are alive Enter ye blessed into the Kingdom prepared for you from the beginning Amen A SERMON Preached at the Temple SERMON XXII Esther 4.16 Go and assemble all the Jews that are found in Shushan and fast ye for me and eat not nor drink in three days day nor night I also and my Maids will fast likewise and so I will go in to the King which is not according to the Law And if I perish I perish NExt to the eternal and coessential Word of God Christ Jesus the written Word of God the Scriptures concern us most and therefore next to the person of Christ and his Offices the Devil hath troubled the Church with most questions about the certainty of Scriptures and the Canon thereof It was late before the Spirit of God setled and established an unanime and general consent in his Church for the accepting of this Book of Esther For not onely the holy Bishop Melito who defended the Christians by an Apology to the Emperor removed this Book from the Canon of the Scripture One hundred and fifty years after Christ but Athanasius also Three hundred and forty years after Christ refused it too Yea Gregory Nazianzen though he deserved and had the stile and title of Theologus The Divine and though he came to clearer times living almost Four hundred years after Christ did not yet submit himself to an acceptation of this Book But a long time there hath been no doubt of it and it is certainly part of that Scripture which is profitable to teach 2 Tim. 3.16 to reprove to correct and to instruct in righteousness To which purpose we shall see what is afforded
so heavy nor so discomfortable a curse in the first as in the latter shutting not in the shutting of barrenness as in the shutting of weakness Esa 37 3. when Children are come to the birth and there is not strength to bring forth It is the exaltation of misery to fall from a near hope of happiness And in that vehement imprecation the Prophet expresses the highth of Gods anger Give them O Lord what wilt thou give them Osc 9 14. give them a mis-carrying womb Therefore as soon as we are men that is inanimated quickned in the womb though we cannot our selves our Parents have reason to say in our behalves Wretched man that he is who shall deliver him from this body of death for Ro. 7.24 even the womb is the body of death if there be no deliverer It must be he that said to Jeremy 1. 5. Before I formed thee I knew thee and before thou camest out of the womb I sanctified thee We are not sure that there was no kind of ship nor boat to fish in nor to pass by till God prescribed Noah that absolute forme of the Ark that word which the holy Ghost by Moses uses for the Ark is common to all kinds of boats Thebah and is the same word that Moses uses for the boat that he was exposed in that his mother laid him in an Ark of bullrushes Exo 2.3 But we are sure that Eve had no Midwife when she was delivered of Cain therefore she might well say Possedi virum a Domino Gen. 4.1 I have gotten a man from the Lord wholly intirely from the Lord it is the Lord that hath enabled me to conceive the Lord hath infus'd a quickning soul into that conception the Lord hath brought into the world that which himself had quickned without all this might Eve say my body had been but the house of death and Domini Domini sunt exitus mortis To God the Lord belong the issues of death But then this Exitus a morte is but Introitus in mortem this issue Exitus a moribus mundi this deliverance from that death the death of the womb is an entrance a delivering over to another death the manifold deaths of this world We have a winding sheet in our Mothers womb that grows with us from our conception and we come into the world wound up in that winding sheet for we come to seek a grave And as prisoners discharged of actions may lie for fees so when the womb hath discharged us yet we are bound to it by cords of flesh by such a string as that we cannot go thence nor stay there We celebrate our own funeral with cries even at our birth as though our threescore and ten years of life were spent in our Mothers labor and our Circle made up in the first point thereof We beg one Baptism with another a sacrament of tears and we come into a world that lasts many ages but we last not In domo patris saies our blessed Saviour speaking of heaven multae mansiones Jo. 14.2 there are many and mansions divers and durable so that if a man cannot possess a martyrs house he hath shed no blood for Christ yet he may have a confessors he hath been ready to glorifie God in the shedding of his blood And if a woman cannot possess a virgins house she hath embrac'd the holy state of marriage yet she may have a matrons house she hath brought forth and brought up children in the fear of God In domo patris In my Fathers house in heaven there are many mansions but here upon earth Mat. 8 20. The Son of man hath not where to lay his head saies he himself No terram dedit filiis hominum How then hath God given this earth to the Sons of men He hath given them earth for their materials to be made of earth and he hath given them earth for their grave and sepulture to return and resolve to earth but not for their possession Heb. 13.14 Here we havh no continuing City nay no Cottage that continues nay no we no persons no bodies that continue Whatsoever moved St. Hierome to call the journies of the Israelites in the wilderness Exo. 17.1 Mansions the word the word is nasang signifies but a journie but a peregrination even the Israel of God hath no mansions Gen. 47 9. but journies pilgrimages in this life By that measure did Jacob measure his life to Pharaoh The daies of the years of my pilgrimage And though the Apostle would not say morimer that whilst we are in the body we are dead yet he saies peregrinamur 2 Cor. 5 6. whilst we are in the body we are but in a pilgrimage and we are absent from the Lord. He might have said dead for this whole world is but an universal Church-yard but one common grave and the life and motion that the greatest persons have in it is but as the shaking of buried bodies in their graves by an earthquake That which we call life is but Hebdomada mortium a week of deaths seaven daies seaven periods of our life spent in dying a dying seaven times over and ther 's an end Our birth dies in Infancy and our infancy dies in youth and youth and the rest die in age and age also dies and determines all Nor do all these youth out of infancy or age out of youth arise so as a Phenix out of the ashes of another Phenix formerly dead but as a wasp or a serpent out of carrion or as a snake out of dung our youth is worse then our infancy and our age worse then our youth our youth is hungry and thirsty after those sins which our infancy knew not and our age is sorry and angry that it cannot pursue those sins which our youth did And besides all the way so many deaths that is so many deadly calamities accompany every condition and every period of this life as that death it self would be an ease to them that suffer them Upon this sense does Job wish 10. 18. that God had not given him an issue from the first death from the womb Wherefore hast thou brought me forth out of the womb O that I had given up the Ghost and no eye had seen me I should have been as though I had not been And not only the impatient Israelites in their murmuring would to God we had died by the hands of the Lord Ex. 16.3 in the land of Egypt but Eliah himself when he fled from Jezabel and went for his life as that Text saies under the juniper tree requested that he might die and said It is enough now O Lord take away my life 1 Reg. 19.4 So Jonah justifies his impatience nay his anger towards God himself Now O Lord take I beseech thee my life from me for it is better for me to die then to live And when God ask'd him dost thou well
nobis esse hic as St. Peter said there It is good to dwell here in this consideration of his death and therefore transfer we our Tabernacle our devotion through some of these steps which God the Lord made to his issue of death that day Take in his whole day from the hour that Christ eat the passover upon Thursday to the hour in which he died the next day Make this present day Conformitas that day in thy devotion and consider what he did and remember what you have done Before he instituted and celebrated the sacrament which was after the eating of the passover he proceeded to the act of humility to wash his Disciples feet even Peters who for a while resisted him In thy preparation to the holy and blessed sacrament hast thou with a sincere humilty sought a reconciliation with all the world even with those who have been averse from it and refused that reconciliation from thee If so and not else thou hast spent that first part of this his last day in a conformity with him After the sacrament he spent the time til night in prayer in preaching in Psalms Hast thou considered that a worthy receiving of the sacrament consists in a continuation of holiness after as wel as in a preparation before If so thou hast therein also conformed thy self to him so Christ spent his time till night At night he went into the garden to pray and he prayed prolixius He spent much time in prayer Luc. 22.24 How much because it is literally expressed that he praied there three several times and that returning to his Disciples after his first prayer and finding them asleep said could ye not watch with me one hour Mat. 26.40 it is collected that he spent three houres in prayer I dare scarce ask thee whither thou wentst or how thou disposedst of thy self when it grew dark and after last night If that time were spent in a holy recommendation of thy self to God and a submission of thy will to his that it was spent in a conformity to him In that time and in those prayers was his agony and bloody sweat I will hope that thou didst pray but not every ordinary and customary prayer but prayer actually accompanied with shedding of tears and dispositively in a readiness to shed blood for his glory in necessary cases puts thee into a corformity with him About midnight he was taken and bound with a kiss Art thou not too conformable to him in that Is not that too literally too exactly thy case At midnight to have been taken and bound with a kiss from thence he was carried back to Jerusalem first to Annas then to Caiphas and as late as it was there he was examined and buffeted and delivered over to the custody of those officers from whom he received all those irrâ—sions and violences the covering of his face the spitting upon his face the blasphemies of words and the smartness of blows which that Gospel mentions In which compass fell that Gallicinium that crowing of the Cock which called up Peter to his repentance How thou passedst all that time last night thou knowest If thou didst any thing then that needed Peters tears and hast not shed them let me be thy Cock do it now now thy Master in the unworthyest of his servants looks back upon thee Do it now Betimes in the morning as soon as it was day the Jews held a Councel in the high Priests house and agreed upon their evidence against him then carried him to Pilate who was to be his Judg. Didst thou accuse thy self when thou wak'dst this morning wast thou content to admit even fals accusations that is rather to suspect actions to have been sin which were not then to smother justifie such as were truly sins then thou spendst that hour in conformity to him Pilat found no evidence against him therefore to ease himself to pass a complement upon Herod Tetrarch of Galilee who was at that time at Jerusalem because Christ being a Galilean was of Herods jurisdiction Pilat sent him to Herod rather as a mad man then a malefactor Herod remanded him with scorns to Pilat to proceed against him this was about 8 of the Clock Hast thou been content to come to this inquisition this examination this agitation this cribration this pursuit of thy conscience to sift it to follow it from the sins of thy youth to thy present sins from the sins of thy bed to the sins of thy board and from the substance to the circumstance of thy sins that 's time spent like thy Saviours Pilat would have sav'd Christ by using the priviledg of the day in his behalf because that day one prisoner was to be delivered but they chose Barrabas He would have sav'd him from death by satisfying their fury with inflicting other torments upon him scourging and crowning with thorns loading him with many scornful ignominious contumelies but this redeem'd him not they press'd a crucifying Hast thou gone about to redeem thy sin by fasting by alms by disciplines mortifications in the way of satisfaction to the justice of God that will not serve that 's not the right way We press an utter crucifying of that sin that governs thee and that conforms thee to Christ Towards noon Pilat gave Judgment and they made such hast to execution as that by noon he was upon the Cross There now hangs that sacred body upon the cross re-baptiz'd in his own tears sweat and embalm'd in his own blood alive There are those bowels of compassion which are so conspicuous so manifested as that you may see them through his wounds There those glorious eyes grew faint in their light so as the Sun asham'd to survive them departed with his light too And there that Son of God who was never from us yet had now come a new way unto us in assuming our nature delivers that soul which was never out of his Fathers hands into his Fathers hands by a new way a voluntary emission thereof for though to this God our Lord belong these issues of death so that considered in his own contract he must necessarily dy yet at no breach nor battery which they had made upon his sacred body issues his soul but emisit he gave up the Ghost as God breath'd a soul into the first Adam so this second Adam breath'd his soul into God into the hands of God There we leave you in that blessed dependancy to hang upon him that hangs upon the cross There bath in his tears there suck at his wounds lie down in peace in his grave till he vouchsafe you a Resurrection an ascension into that Kingdome which he hath purchas'd for you with the inestimable price of his incorruptible blood Amen FINIS
exaltation That as man needed God and God would suffer for man so God should need man and man should suffer for God that after Gods general Commission fac hoc vives do this and thou shalt live I should receive and execute a new Commission Patere hoc vives abundantius suffer this and you shall have life and life more abundantly Joh. 10.10 as our Saviour speaks in the Gospel that when I shall ask my soul Davids question Psal 116.12 Quid retribuam what shall I render to the Lord I shall not rest in Davids answer Accipiam Calicem I will take the cup of salvation in applying his blood to my soul but proceed to an Effundam Calicem I will give God a Cup a cup of my blood that whereas to me the meanest of Gods servants it is honor enough to be believed for Gods sake God should be believed for my sake and his Gospel the better accepted because the feal of my blood is set to it that that dew which should water his plants the plants of his Paradise his Church should drop from my veines and that sea that red sea which should carry up his bark his Ark to the heavenly Jerusalem should flow from me This is that that poures joy even into my gladness and glory even into mine honor and peace even into my security that exaltes and improves every good thing Colos 1 24. Phil 2.17 every blessing that was in me before and makes even my creation glorious and my redemption precious and puts a farther value upon things inestimable before that I shall fulfil the sufferings of Christ in my flesh and that I shall be offerd up for his Church 1 Pet. 2.21 though not for the purchasing of it yet for the fencing of it though not by way of satisfaction as he was but by way of example and imitation as he was too Whether that be absolutely true or no which an Author of much curiosity in the Roman Church saies Pâ—rrecta in legem Not itio ultima that Inter tot millia millium amongst so many thousand thousands of Martyrs in the Primitive Church it cannot be said that ever one lack'd burial I know not whence he raises that certainly no Martyr ever lack'd a grave in the wounds of his Saviour no nor a tomb a monument a memorial in this life in that sense wherein our Saviour speaks in the Gospel That no man shall leave house Mar. 10.30 or Brother or wife for him but he shall receive an hundred fold in this life Christ does not mean he shall have a hundred houses or a hundred wives or a hundred Brethren but that that comfort which he lost in losing those things shall be multiplied to him in that proportion even in this life In which words of our Saviour as we see the dignity and reward of Martyrdome so we see the extent and latitude and compass of Martyrdome too that not only loss of life but loss of that which we love in this life not only the suffering of death but the suffering of Crosses in our life contracts the Name and entitles us to the reward of Martyrdome All Martyrdome is not a Smithfeild Martyrdome to burn for religion To suffer injuries and upon advantages offerd not to revenge those injuries is a Court Martyrdome To resist outward tentations from power and inward tentations from affections in matter of Judicature between party and party is a Westminster Martyrdome To seem no richer then they are not to make their states better when they make their private bargains with one another and to seem so rich as they are and not to make their states worse when they are call'd upon to contribute to publick services this is an Exchange-Martyrdome And there is a Chamber-Martyrdome a Bosome-Martyrdome too Habet pudicitia servata Martyrium suum Hierome Chastity is a dayly Martyrdome and so all fighting of the Lords battails all victory over the Lords Enemies in our own bowels all chearful bearing of Gods Crosses and all watchful crossing of our own immoderate desires is a Martyrdome acceptable to God and a true copy of our pattern Stephen so it be inanimated with that which was even the life and soul and price of all Stephens actions and passions that is fervent charity which is the last contemplation in which we propose him for your Example that as he you also may be just paymasters in discharging the debt which you owe the world in the signification of your Names and early Disciples and appliers of your selves to Christ Jesus and humble servants of his without inordinate ambition of high places and constant Martyrs 1 Cor. 15.31 in dying every day as the Apostles speaks and charitable intercessors and Advocates and Mediators to God even for your heaviest Enemies We have a story in the Ecclesiastical story of Nicephorus and Sapricius formerly great friends and after as great Enemies Charitas Nicephorus relented first and sued often for reconciliation to Sapricius but was still refused he was refused even upon that day when Sapricius being led out to execution as a Martyr for the Christian religion Nicephorus upon the way put himself in his way and upon his knees beg'd a reconciliation and obtained it not The effect of his uncharitableness was this Sapricius when he came to the stake recanted and renounced the christian religion and lost the crown of Martyrdome and Nicephorus who came forth upon another ocasion professed Christ and was receiv'd to the Coronation of Martyrdome Though I give my body to be burned and have not charity it profiteth me nothing saies the Apostle but if I have not charity I shall not be admitted to that Sacrifice to give my body to be burnt St. Augustine seems to have delighted himself with that saying for he saies it more then once Si Stephanus non orasset if St. Stephen had not praid for Saul the Church had had no Paul and may we not justly add to that If Stephen had not praid for Saul Heaven had had no Stephen or Stephen had had no Heaven suffering it self is but a stubborness and a rigid and stupid standing under an affliction it is not a humiliation a bending under Gods hand if it be not done in charity Stephen had a pattern and he is a pattern Christ was his and he is our Example ut hoc dicam tibi at te primo audivi saies St. Augustine in Stephen's person to Christ Lord thou taughtest me this prayer upon the cross receive it now from me as the Father receiv'd it from thee then He prayed for his enemies as for himself and thus much more earnestly for them then for himself that he prayed for himself standing and kneeling for them Stephen was the Plantiff and when he comes to his Nolo prosequi and to release what hath the Judg to say to the Defendant If a potent adversary oppress thee to ruine to death if