himself on this wise What-ever my case is now sure I was made in the image of God placed under the eye of his Providence as it were of his Family and Table Heaven and Earth ministred to me I was Lord of the lower and Favourite of the upper World as if the one was made on purpose to exercise and divert me and the other to receive and reward me I have a nature capable of immortality and had eternal life designed for me as the inheritance of a Son and my task of obedience was as easie and honourable as my hopes were glorious For I had no hard burthen laid upon me nothing required of me but what was proportionable to my powers and agreeable to the reason of my mind no restraint was laid upon my passions but such as was evidently both necessary for the World and good for my self that it could not be drawn into an argument of harshness and severity in God nor make apology for my transgression All my faculties were whole and intire I was neither tempted by necessity nor oppressed by any fate I was therefore happy enough and why am I not so still It is true that humane nature hath miscarried since it came out of the hands of God and I carry the Skar of that common Wound yet is the dammage of the first Adam so repaired by the second that mankind is left inexcusable in all its actual transgressions but especially in a dissolute and impenitent course of rebellion Besides I see others whose circumstances were in all points the same with mine and their difficulties and temptations no less to live holily and comfortably having either escaped the too common pollutions of the world by an early compliance with the grace of God or at least quickly recovered themselves by repentance I find therefore that I might have lived in the light of God's countenance in serenity of mind quiet of conscience sense of my own integrity and comfortable hopes of unspeakable glory in contemplation of which I might have defied death and lived in Heaven upon Earth but I have been meerly fooled by my own incogitancy and undone by my own choice For proceeds he 2. I have forfeited all this by sinning against God and been so sottish as to prefer the satisfaction of my own humour before all the aforesaid felicities I have been ingratefull towards my great benefactour broken the law of my Creation confronted the wisedom of the most High been insolent towards a mighty Majesty violated just and righteous commandments sinned against light knowledge and conscience added presumption to folly wilfullness to weakness despised counsels exhortations promises assistances my sins are many in number horrible in their aggravations deadly in their continuance and my perseverance in them By this means I have not onely wrought disorder in the world but disordered my own Soul spoiled my own powers suffered passion to get head of my reason clouded my understanding and so by former sins rendered it in a manner necessary that I sin still For when I would doe good evil is present with me I find a law in my members rebelling against the law of my mind and carrying me into captivity to the law of sin O wretched man that I am who shall deliver me from this body of death I have driven away the good Spirit of God and put my self under the power of Satan become his slave and drudge I know nothing now of the comforts of innocence of the joy of a good Conscience mine is a continual torture to me I have lost the light of God's countenance and the very thoughts of him are dreadfull to me by all which together life is a burden and yet the thoughts of death are intolerable Such reflections and considerations as these break the very heart of a sinner and resolve him into sighs and tears 3. BUT this is not the worst of the case for in the third place he considers what is like to be the issue of this This miserable life saith the sinner cannot last always death will arrest me shortly and present me before a just Tribunal the grave will e're ong cover me but not be able to conceal me for I must come to Judgment Methinks I hear already the sound of the last Trump Let the dead arise let them come to judgment I see the Angels as Apparitors gathering all the world together and presenting them before that dreadfull Tribunal How shall I be able with my guilty Conscience to appear upon that huge Theatre before God Angels and Men Methinks I see the Devil standing at my right hand to aggravate those faults which he prompted me to the commission of I behold the Books opened and all the debaucheries extravagancies and follies of my whole life laid open Christ the Judge of all the World coming in flaming fire to take vengeance upon them that have not known him nor obeyed his Gospel How shall I endure his presence how shall I escape his eye I cannot elude his judgment nor evade his sentence come then ye Rocks and fall upon me and ye Mountains cover me from the face of the Lamb and from him that sitteth upon the Throne But the Rocks rend in sunder the Sea and the Earth disclose their dead the Earth dissolves the Heavens vanish as a Scroll and I hear the dreadfull Sentence Depart ye cursed into everlasting fire prepared for the Devil and his Angels Methinks I hear Christ Jesus thus upbraiding me You have listened to the Devil and not to me I would have saved you but you would not be ruled by me you have chosen the way of death now therefore you shall be filled with your own ways I forewarned you what would be the issue of your courses but you would have your full swing of pleasure for the present whatever came of it hereafter you laughed at judgment and it is come in earnest you have had your time of jollity and sensual transports and now your portion is weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth O therefore saith the sinner that I had never been born cursed be the day that brought me forth and the Sun that shone upon me would the womb had been my grave and I had never seen the light Thus my guilty Conscience anticipates its own punishment and I am tormented before my time 4. BUT is there no hope left must I lie down thus in sorrow and despair These things I may justly expect but they are not yet incumbent upon me I am yet alive and they say there is hopes in the land of the living the door is not yet shut against me Hell hath not yet closed her mouth upon me I have heard God is a mercifull God and thereupon I presumed hitherto and abused his goodness but sure his mercies are above the measure of a man if they be infinite like himself he hath more goodness then I have ingratitude Possibly there may be some hope left in the bottom of this
not be wanting to him But for the latter namely the doing or willing that which is evil there is nothing more requisite but the will it self provided God extraordinarily interpose not to hinder it THESE things premised I am not aware of the least suspicion that can lie against what we are asserting namely that a necessary and principal ingredient of sin is the voluntarinesse thereof and of the truth hereof the proofs are as many and pregnant as the absurdities of the contrary are manifest For what ground can there be imaginable why God should use exhortations and persuasions reproofs and expostulations with men for sin if it were not in their power to withstand it wherefore should he upbraid them for their wilfullnesse condemn them for stubbornnesse and after all severely punish them for what they could not help If the insupportable weight of necessity lies upon them or some latent and irresistible cause overpower them they are patients rather then agents and deserve pity rather then blame or punishment It was a discreet saying of Porphyry A man that is moved by force onely is properly enough said to be where he was as if he had not been moved at all For whatsoever seeming alteration necessity and violence may make for the present when once the force is over every thing returns to its own nature again and is what it was before but without doubt in all moral consideration man is reasonably to be interpreted to be in that state all the while where he was by his own choice and would have continued had not force expulsed him And Seneca said very well Necessity is the great sanctuary of humane infirmity which whosoever can lay claim to obtains protection for it perfectly excuses all the faults it commits Whatever can justly be pretended to be necessary if it be evil is a natural one and not a moral and an unhappinesse or punishment rather then a sin So the Romans judged also in a well known case It is the free mind which onely is capable of guilt dull matter and body whatsoever is passive cannot be blamed because they cannot chuse NEITHER is it possible any man should repent of doing what he could not but doe or of omitting to doe what was never in his power to effect no more then that he cannot fly like a Bird or move like an Angel What remorse or shame or trouble of conscience can there be that a man is not another kind of creature then he was made that he did what was natural and necessary for him to doe or for such things as may indeed be said to be done by him and yet not be his act that is the act of a man because he could not doe otherwise God hath set up Conscience as his Vicegerent and a judge within us but as we said before it is not so absolute as to judge without a Law so neither can it be so unjust and absurd as to condemn and torture without conviction of guilt And though there is no doubt of the prerogative of God to impose what Laws he pleases yet we have the manifold security of his goodnesse wisedom and justice besides his truth and faithfullnesse that he will not oppresse us with his sovereignty but in all his dispensations will consider our frame and circumstances and remember that we are but dust and ashes IN short if there be any so absurd as to affirm sin to be any way necessary to all other absurdities they bring in the surly paradox of the Stoicks and make all sins equal representing the most pitiable infirmities of humane nature equal to the most dissolute enormities they infinitely increase the number of sins but take off the weight and guilt render it little more then a notion and teach men to have no horrid apprehensions of it They excuse man and lay the fault if there be any somewhere else but wherever that is it will revolve at last upon God blessed for ever § 4. BUT I persuade my self I need not proceed further in exaggerating this matter wherefore both to close and to confirm what I have said I will only subjoin the Authority of the Apostle S. James in that remarkeable passage of his Epistle Chap. 1. vers 13 14 15. wherein he describes the conception formation growth perfection and nativity of sin The words are these Let not any man say when he is tempted I am tempted of God for God is not tempted of evil neither tempteth he any man But every man is tempted when he is drawn away of his own lust and inticed Then when lust hath conceived it bringeth forth sin and sin when it is finished bringeth forth death Upon which let me crave leave to use the liberty of this lesse strict Paraphrase As if he had said Let no man imagine that God by any act of his providence provokes or prompts or much lesse puts any necessity upon men to sin for as he by the perfection of his divine nature is infinitely above the reach of any temptation to act it himself so it is so contrary to him that he abhorrs it wherever it is and therefore can by no means contribute to it nor have any hand in the production of it And though several of his designs suppose it and his providence be exercised about the regulation of it yet this is no argument that he either ordained it or effects it For his wisedom is sufficient to inable him to see through all the series of causes and to foreknow what they are pregnant with and what they will in their respective times be delivered of without peremptory determination of them thereunto And again although it be true that sin could not have been in the world unlesse he had thought fit to permit it yet it is never the more by him since it takes its rise from nothing else but the unhappy use of that great blessing and priviledge of liberty which he endowed rational creatures withal Would you then understand more particularly the generation of this sponte-nascent take it thus FIRST then you are to know that the great and wise Creatour of all things for weighty reasons thought fit to create mankind of a middle nature and condition betwixt purely spirituall beings and the inferiour world of meer animal and natural making him participate of both and agreeably hereunto endowed him both with intellectual and sensitive powers The former whereof namely the intellectual were to enable him to serve his Creatour to render him capable of noble and excellent delights and that he might by them order and govern the inferiour and sensitive faculties And these latter were given him partly to relax his mind by a moderate and seasonable condescension to the sweetnesse of the senses but principally to be a field and exercise for those active vigorous and noble capacities of the mind AGAIN Secondly you are to consider that as that wise and benign Majesty never made any thing but
the world because he cannot attain it for he finds it in his power to arrive at much and in his temper to need but little and so is truely above it THESE with their inseparable companion Industry are as it were the roots of a Patrimony which not only keep it alive and flourishing but also make it fruitfull and multiply but the contrary vices are such sottish sins that they destroy the very stock they grow upon and undermine their own foundation that is they eat out themselves and that which raised them and should have maintained them And which is yet worse they do not only starve themselves but cut off a man's retreat and cast him into a condition that he could not live comfortably if he should return to sobriety For it is in this case as Cicero said of Dionysius of Syracuse He had lived so wickedly and exercised so much tyranny and cruelty that having procured the common hatred of mankind it was too late to think of redintegrating himself by taking up and changing his course His wickedness had been too great to let his conversion be believed real and his injuries too many to hope for security in a way of mildness Scelus scelere protegendum est he must now go on and justify or at least protect his former villanies by more and greater SO it is with voluptuous persons by a long habit they have made excesses almost necessary to their bodies and such excesses do so harrass men's fortunes that they cannot long correspond with such unreasonable occasions together herewith ease and sloth the concommitants of luxury do so relax men's nerves and infeeble their constitution that they are rendered incapable of supplying the defects of their fortune by their own industry so that between the necessity of expending much and the impossibility of gaining any thing the difficulties of returning to sobriety become as great and discouraging as the pleasures of riots are charming and bewitching HENCE it comes to pass that such men usually reason with themselves as the unjust Steward in the Gospel Dig I cannot and to beg I am ashamed wherefore they must apply themselves to some remedy as desperate as the disease some bold and daring course some great and horrible sin must relieve them out of the straits former wickedness hath cast them into And thus the Prodigal having spent all joins himself to a Citizen Who this Citizen is S. Jerone tells us it is the Devil he is the busy Negotiatour of this World that goes about seeking whom he may devour and is ready to list those into his service who having mispent their Talents are by a vicious necessity disposed for his purposes For such as have forfeited their own liberty are fit to be his slaves such as have driven away the good Spirit shall be sure to be haunted with this evil spirit And they that have put out their own eyes and blinded their minds are fit subjects of the kingdom of darkness NONE but such as have been accustomed to debauch their own faculties and stifle their Consciences can yield him ready obedience But those that have sotted themselves with sensuality are swollen with pride or malice or by some vicious habit or other have lost the command of themselves and the protection of the Almighty these fall readily into his snare and according to the phrase of the Apostle are taken captive by him at his will And the use he puts them to we shall see in the next particular For 5. THE Prodigal is put to feed Swine It is amongst the great calamities of a riotous life that first it effeminates men by soft indulgencies whilst their fortunes hold out and then afterwards breaks their spirits when adversity befalls them by a shamefull reflexion upon their beastly folly And between these two such men are seldome or never after capable of any generous and manly employment from whence it comes to pass that they are ordinarily by the just judgment of God condemned either to the most ridiculous and contemptible or to the most sordid and vile offices And such we may be sure will be the case of the Mystical Prodigal being now become a slave to Satan IT was a sad instance of the tyranny and insolence of the Devil over apostate mankind that he fooled them to such a base abjection of mind as to give him a kind of religious worship appearing to them under the form of a Goat or some other the most infamous of brute Creatures This is too well known to have been commonly done amongst the Pagans and it seems probable that this vile Idolatry was invented and required by that malicious spirit not more to affront the Almighty by intercepting his worship then to scorn and insult over humane nature by such a sordid prostitution But it is not onely Idolatry but all kind of sin is the Devil's work And whosoever renders himself up to the power of any sin doth his drudgery as truely as those poor abused Heathens for though he doth not with the same formalities ridiculously bow himself to a beast he doth the same thing in effect when he prostitutes himself to brutality What more ignoble thing then for him that hath an immortal Soul an understanding Mind and free faculties by which he is fit for the conversation of God and Angels to forget all this and humble himself to serve a beast Nor is it any matter of difference whether a man serve his own beast or another man's I mean the beast within him or without him some beast or other every vicious man serves HE that indulges rage and passion ministers to a Tiger and he that addicts himself to sordid craft and subtlety worships a Fox He that basely plays the Hypocrite serves the Dog or the Hyaena He that gives himself up to lasciviousness worships a Goat and he that is a servant of meat and drink makes a God of his Belly and very properly may be said to serve Swine IT is a well known passage in Plato where he supposes that when men's Souls are departed from their present Bodies they are adjudged to actuate and inform some such Creatures as they had most resembled in their humour and practice whilst they were alive but without such a transmigration after death which we are sure is both false and ridiculous all vicious men may be said to be transformed in this life as aforesaid for though they retain the outward shape they have the inside and temper of Brutes But it is not the onely calamity of serving the Devil that a man must debase his nature to the vilest condition in compliance with his commands for there is this farther instance of the severity of that Aegyptian Taskmaster that he puts those that are under his power to make brick without straw I mean God in just judgment permitting it so to be the Devil drives so furiously towards man's destruction that he will ordinarily prompt and hurry them on
be as it may it is true in the present case that the first point of true practical wisedom is gained by studying a man's self and by making himself the subject of his meditations For as there is nothing wherein we betray more folly nothing by which we shipwreck our Consciences and lose our selves so fatally as by permitting our selves to run adrift without Card or Compass Port or Pilot so on the other hand there is nothing gives greater hopes of recovery then being able and disposed to collect our selves to call in our thoughts by serious consideration and reflection To which purpose it was worthily said by Philo That the source of all our danger and the first reason of our miscarriages lay in our running on with the boisterous tide of passion and the first hopes of safety was in being able to stay our selves and soberly to reason the matter But we have greater authority for it then Philo's For upon defect of this God himself lays the blame of men's ruine and in this he places the first signs of recovery So we find him complaining of his people Israel as in a very desperate condition Isa 1. 3. My people will not consider and therefore often calls upon them by the Prophets in these words Thus saith the Lord of hosts Consider your ways But most emphatically doth he express himself Isa 46. 8. Remember and shew your selves men bring it again to mind O ye transgressours And it is very observable that in that famous Chapter Ezek. 18. where above any other passage in the Old Testament God most solemnly proclaims and ratifies the efficacy of repentance he describes the first lines at least of it to consist in consideration vers 14. A Son that considereth c. Again vers 28. Because he considereth and turneth c. To all these adde the advice of the Psalmist Psal 4. 4. Stand in awe and sin not commune with your own hearts upon your bed and be still As if the serious treating with our selves was the onely way both to stifle the temptation to and to extinguish the guilt of sin The Septuagint render the last phrase of the Psalmist 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 q. d. consider so seriously with your selves at your best retirements the evil of your ways and the danger of your course that you may feel remorse and compunction The Chaldee Targum paraphraseth thus Let your hearts concur with your mouths in saying your prayers and think of the God of death q. d. Affect your hearts seriously in secret with a deep apprehension of the danger of sin AND if we look into the N. Testament nothing can more illustriously set forth this which we are asserting then those two Parables of our Saviour Luk. 14. 28. c. of the man that intends to build a Tower and a King going to war In both which the design of our Saviour is to shew that serious debating and prudent forecasting all the difficulties of the whole course of Christianity is no less necessary to him that intends successfully to undertake it then those grave deliberations of Princes or projections of private persons when the one intends to enter into a dangerous war and the other a costly building IF indeed conversion to God were nothing else but a meer melancholy qualm or a fright if I say repentance were only a Paroxysm of devotion and the Divine Majesty so soft and easy as to be taken with an agony of mind or a kind of love-fit then an inconsiderate man might be esteemed a penitent But repentance being nothing less then the change of a man's whole temper and life the entring into a whole course of severe and constant vertue the subduing our most potent passions the denying our selves some of the most pleasant gratifications of flesh and bloud the breaking off old and radicated customs and habits it must be absolutely necessary that whosoever goes through with it do maturely consider the enterprize and call in all his force for the atchievement of it OR again if a man could be so vain and unreasonable as to hope that God would save men by force doe violence to their natures over-bear or supersede their faculties and plant grace in their hearts by a meer act of his omnipotency and new make them after the manner he created them at first without their own concurrence then indeed there would be no use of consideration and it would be as fruitless and unnecessary to contribute any endeavour as impossible to make any opposition But those that dream at this rate neither understand God nor themselves neither what is fit for him to confer nor for them to expect They know not what vertue means nor apprehend whence comfort arises they consider not what a righteous judgment to come supposes nor what the very notion of reward and punishment speaks they make no difference between free and natural Agents and condomn themselves to senseless and stupid Machines in hopes to be made Saints per saltum and to come at Heaven such a way as never any man did or can doe that is without their own endeavour OR lastly if a man could perswade himself that themeans of grace viz. the Word and Sacraments did use to work physically upon men and made them good ex opere operato as some speak after the manner of food and medicine to the Body which take place whether men consider it or no and oftentimes work the better the less the mind is employed in thinking of that or any thing else upon such a supposition there were no reason why any man should put himself to the trouble of that we have been speaking of But on the contrary it is most certain that all the means of grace have effect upon men's Souls no otherwise then by awakening the sense of the mind and making men considerative and then men's hard hearts are made contrine by operating upon themselves as the Diamond is known to be cut by its own dust For it is as impossible that Sermons Counsels or any other discourses should edify the mind of a man unless his understanding bring them close and make application of them to his Conscience by the way of consideration as it is for a man's Body to be nourished by meats who hath no digestive faculty to be or cured by medicine where all the powers of nature are extinguished In short to think otherwise is to turn devotion into conjuring and all the divine institutions into charms and amulets AND all this is so true that nothing can be objected to it but what will convince the objector of utter strangeness and unacquaintedness with converting grace for we may safely appeal either to the experience of every such convert as we are speaking of or to the observation of all those who have taken notice of others in that condition whether any thing hath been more remarkably visible in such a Crists then a pensive serious and considerative temper And it
address of the Holy Spirit which we are considering of these are only the motions or visits which he vouchsafes to make pendente lite or whilst it is yet undetermined to whom men will ultimately belong That therefore which we are concerned about is the peculiar priviledge of very good men such as have cherished the motions entertained the visits and complied with the intimations of the Holy Spirit and when it is come to that from thenceforth he doth not visit them in transitu only or call upon them but resides and inhabits with them and becomes as it were a constant principle a Soul of their Souls in short they are the temples of the Holy Ghost THIS I take to be that which our Saviour means Jo. 14. 23. If any man love me he will keep my word and my Father will love him and we will come unto him and make our abode with him and that also of St. John in the name of our Saviour Rev. 3. 20. Behold I stand at the door and knock which phrase signifies the previous and more ordinary motions of his grace And if any man open to me i. e. if men attend to my admonitions and invitations and break off their custom of sin which barrs the door of their Souls against me then I will come in and sup with him c. i. e. then I will be a familiar guest or inhabitant with him and this is both interpreted and confirmed by St. Paul 1 Cor. 3. 16. Know ye not that ye are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you i. e. being sanctified and made fit for the residence of that heavenly Guest he hath taken possession of you as his house and temple and more expresly yet by St. John 1 Ep. 3 24. He that keepeth his commandments dwelleth in him and he in him and hereby we know that he abideth with us by his Spirit which he hath given us § II. NOW this inhabitation or residence of the Holy Spirit is called a Seal and men are said to be sealed by the Holy Spirit because as seals use to denote propriety so God hereby marks out as it were such men for his own i. e. as those that he hath a peculiar concern about those that have an interest in him and he in them and this is of wonderfull comfort and advantage especially in these four respects 1. THE Spirit thus inhabiting men gives them a title not only to God's care and providence but to an inheritance of Sons to a participation of that unspeakable felicity wherewith himself is eternally happy and glorious So the Apostle concludes in the forementioned place Eph. 1. 13 14. After ye believed ye were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise which is the earnest of our inheritance untill the time of the purchased possession q. d. We are hereby assured of Heaven and glory hereafter though we are not yet in possession of it or this is the pledge of our adoption upon which the inheritance is intailed Hence it is that the same Apostle Rom. 8. 11. makes this an assured argument of our resurrection But if the Spirit of him that raised Jesus from the dead dwell in you he that raised Jesus from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you q. d. You cannot lie under the power of death and the bonds of the grave but God will assert you to life and immortality because you have a principle of life the Holy Spirit in you which will as surely revive you as it raised Jesus from the dead for by his residence in you you are marked out as belonging to God and thereby he hath taken possession of you for himself WHEN God owned the Tabernacle amongst the Jews built by Moses and after that the Temple built by Solomon and solemnly dedicated to him for his House or Palace wherein to dwell amongst that people it pleased him as it were to take livery and seisin by the cloud which on the behalf of the Divine Majesty hovered over them and was therefore not improperly called by the Jews the Shekinah or dwelling presence and God was said to dwell between the Cherubims because there this symbol of the divine presence subsisted And as in the Christian Church all those miracles which the primitive Christians were inabled to perform were principally to assure their minds that God owned them and although they were destitute of humane help and persecuted both by Jews and Gentiles yet God was with them in which respect the Holy Ghost is called the Comforter so often by our Saviour I say in those miraculous effusions of the Holy Spirit the cloud as it were sate over the mercy-seat in the Christian Church which was now departed from the Temple of the Jews and denoted the collection of believers both of Jews and Gentiles united under Christ Jesus to be now God's peculiar houshold and family So also to all holy men in all Ages God is present by his Spirit by which they become Temples of the Holy Ghost upon which the Apostle pronounces peremptorily Rom. 8. 9. If any man have not the Spirit of Christ he is none of his Which I understand in this sense q. d. He is not arrived at the excellent state of Christianity that hath not experience of the residence of God's Holy Spirit in him ONLY this is to be remembred that this residence of the Holy Spirit in good men which we speak of is not to be judged of by miraculous effects nor are such to be expected now because those were proper only for the first Ages when whilst the Church was under persecuting Emperors and in its infancy God thought fit by such prodigious displays of his power and presence to make all the world see his concern for it and that as I said before he had taken possession of it but ordinarily and especially in the case of private Christians the presence of the Spirit with them discovers it self by such effects as these following For 2. THE Spirit of God though he doth not work miracles now yet doth he not meerly take up his residence in the hearts of holy men but actuates them prompts them forward in all good actions helps and strengthens them in their duty and inflames their resolution and zeal in all brave and generous enterprizes in respect of which we are said to be lead by the Spirit to live and walk in the Spirit Which is not so to be understood as if what good was done the Spirit did it for men nor much less as if he hurried men on whensoever they did well and so for defect of such motion were liable to bear the blame of their irregularities when they did evil for as on the one side he never moves but to that which is certainly good and agreeable to the standing rules of Scripture and natural reason so neither on the other hand when he incites to any such thing doth he overpower
formerly a great sinner himself and hath known by sad experience the deplorableness of that condition and found mercy at God's hands methinks such a person should with warm affections and tender bowels awaken that man into an apprehension of his danger who is in the condition he himself hath escaped and incourage him to try those mercies of God which he himself hath experimented For if either a righteous man that never needed repentance i. e. such a change of his whole state as we have been speaking of should be less sensible of such a man's case or especially if a proud self-applauding Pharisee despise him yet it will by no means become a Convert to be without compassion For besides all other arguments to this purpose it may be such a man may have just cause to consider whether his own example when he did goe on in the way of sin had not that pernicious contagion as to infect or confirm this man in his wickedness which he sees him now lie under and then it will not be only charity but justice which will oblige him to this duty IT was the opinion if I remember rightly of St. Basil that in Hell the torments of the damned are daily increased in proportion as the evil seed of their corrupt doctrine or the evil example which they sowed whilst they were alive fructifies upon earth but whether that be so or no it is certain men's sins are aggravated by the mischief they do to others as well as by other circumstances and therefore every such Penitent as we speak of must think it his duty and concern to indeavour to hinder the propagation of sin and to stop the infection in others as well as to destroy the malignity of it in himself § II. NOW there are many ways which an honest heart will find out of doing this we are recommending without taking upon him to be a Preacher Solomon tells us A wicked man speaketh with his feet and teacheth with his fingers that is though he say nothing with his lips all his life and actions do teach and instruct the world in wickedness and there is no question but that holy men may most effectually recommend vertue to others by their own practice and example Example insinuates gently works insensibly but powerfully as almost all great Engines do it relieves men's modesty and yet shames their sloth it kindles emulation presses upon ingenuity recommends the excellency convinces the necessity demonstrates the possibility of vertue Besides that there are a great many of the most curious lines thereof that are not to be described by the pencil or that can be expressed by words but are to be observed in the life and conversation of good men For this reason amongst others it pleased God to send our Saviour not only to preach the divine life to the world but to live and converse with men that by his example he might more plainly convince them of it and for this cause also we solemnly thank God for the examples of all holy men that have gone before us AND besides example there are many opportunities and advantages which good men have of propagating a sense of piety and Religion such as the authority of Parents influence of benefactours interest of relations convenience of travelling together society of commerce and all other bonds of conversation Every of which a mind inflamed with the love of God and compassion to the Souls of men will find usefull to this purpose And this was the course Moses advised Israel for the keeping up a sense of God and his Laws in their minds and the propagation of it to posterity Deut. 6. 6 7. These words which I command thee this day shall be in thine heart and thou shalt teach them diligently to thy Children and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house and when thou walkest by the way and when thou liest down and when thou risest up c. And for the incouragement of all good men in this business besides the great honour it is to be subservient to God in so important an affair and besides the unspeakable comfort to our own Consciences If by converting a sinner from the evil of his way we save a Soul from death and cover a multitude of sins Jam. 5. 20. and that by such an act of zeal we have also the happiness to efface our own former miscarriages Besides all this I say in present we shall also advance our own glory and crown hereafter for in the words of the Prophet Daniel They that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the Firmament and they that turn many to righteousness as the Stars for ever and ever Daniel 12. 3. IT were very easy to inlarge on this subject but that which is most pertinent and the peculiar consideration of this place is to shew the particular aptness of those that have themselves been converted from a wicked life to be instrumental of recovering others which I will briefly give account of in the following particulars and so dismiss this point And in order to this § III. IN the first place it is considerable that those that are of sickly constitutions are generally observed to be more pitifull and compassionate to the infirm then those robust and healthy persons that scarce ever knew what sickness meant and those that have long languished under any painfull infirmity and at last have recovered are both the best able and most willing to give advice to others under the same distemper Upon which account it hath been the custom of some Nations who had no professed Physicians to bring their sick out into the Market-place where all persons that came were obliged by Law to take notice of them that by this means the experience of one that had escaped a disease might afford a relief to him that now laboured under it And so it is reasonable to think that those who have been sick in sin and of sin heretofore must needs by their own experience know the baits that allure men the charms that bewitch them the fallacies of Sathan that impose upon them the folly and perverseness that defixes men in that unhappy estate the workings of passion the regret of Conscience the thoughts and reasonings the objections the prejudices and the very inside of other men in that condition And therefore as God commands Israel Exod. 23. 9. Thou shalt not oppress a stranger for ye know the heart of a stranger seeing ye were strangers in the land of Aegypt i. e. they knew what injuries oppressions insolencies and affronts a stranger was exposed to and what fears anxieties and jealousies he must needs be always under and therefore it having been their own case they ought to think it reasonable to pity such so in the present case the Convert is furnished both with more observations to render him serviceable to the conversion of Souls and more compassion to apply and make use of his experience to
spoil and triumph of the Prince of darkness now by the wonderfull power of the Almighty this is raised up again out of its own ashes or out of whatever more desperate estate it might seem to be in and united to the Soul its old inmate again that so the whole man may be happy This is a point of felicity which as it is not naturally due to men but depends upon a voluntary act of the divine goodness so also it can no otherwise be proved but by divine revelation And those that were destitute of that light whatever raised apprehensions they might have of future rewards and the happiness of the other life could never with all their Philosophy make any discovery of this nay it was so far out of the rode of their thoughts that it is a well known story of Synesius who for his learning and piety was made of a Philosopher a Christian Bishop that he confessed his Philosophy represented this point as utterly incredible to him upon which account he desired to be excused that dignity in the Church and for the generality of the greatest Pagan wits they laughed at and derided this doctrine when it was preached by the Apostles And indeed the thing it self is so very wonderfull that had we not the plain and infallible promise of him to whom nothing is impossible and therewithall a satisfaction to our reason that he that could bring all things out of nothing at first may well be supposed able to effect other things also above our apprehension it would stagger Christian Faith it self to assent to it therefore for the manner of doing it we must leave that to him but for the matter it is as I said as certain as divine testimony can make it and being believed is of unspeakable consolation FOR what can be more comfortable then to be asserted from the power of the grave and rescued from death and mortality to have our Soul refitted with Organs and all the bodily powers awakened again so as to lose nothing by our fall when death shall like a faithfull depositary restore us our whole selves perfect and intire Is not the Spring very pleasant after a sharp and severe Winter wherein though the seeds of all things have been preserved yet they have been benummed and rendred inactive wherein the Heavens frowned the Sea wrinkled her face and the Earth grew effete and barren as if her youth was over to see now God renewing the face of all things rendring them their wonted vigour and cloathing them with their former verdure to observe the Sea smoothing her brow the Fields smile every thing gay and glorious and Heaven and Earth singing by way of Antiphone's to each other in praise of their great Creatour and in a word whole Nature triumphing as in a resurrection from the dead But now to see man after diseases had acted all their spite upon him and death had defloured his beauty and bound up all his powers and the grave had held him long in possession wherein his body had undergone a thousand changes from flesh to earth from earth to grass from grass to the substance of this or that beast c. and after all this to see him restored again fresh and glorious sprightly and vigorous like a Giant refreshed with wine and this same body to be united to its proper Spirit by more firm and indissoluble ligaments and be again usefull for all its offices and purposes how happy must this meeting how great must this joy be and not much unlike that we had lately before us in the Parable when the long sorrowfull and indulgent Father recovers his lost and deplored Son I do not doubt but that the Souls of men when they are separated from their Bodies are able to understand and perform some of their most proper and spiritual functions for I see no reason why the Soul should so much depend upon matter as to be utterly inactive without it especially when I consider that whilst we are in the Body we govern it prescribe to it deny it expose it to hardship and sometimes act directly cross to the interest of it and besides this we find that there are some things which our mind takes notice of which the Bodily faculties could give no intelligence of and other things which our mind apprehends at first before the exercise of any faculty at all as in first principles c. All which were it necessary to insist upon that point now would afford sufficient arguments to convince the mistake of those that assert the sleep of the Soul during its state of separation Nay I make no question but that the Souls of good men are in the actual perception and enjoyment of some measures of happiness before the resurrection for besides that if it were not so it would very much abate their joys here and so be apt to take off the edge of their endeavours but most certainly it would marvellously glue men to this life and make them extreamly unwilling to die besides this I say and all other arguments of that nature the holy Scripture is so clear and express in several places touching this point that a man may almost with as good confidence deny the world to come as disbelieve this AMONGST the rest I will only offer these two passages to the Reader 's consideration viz. Phil. 1. 21 22. 2. Cor. 5. 1 4. In the first the Apostle speaks on this wise I am in a strait betwixt two having a desire to depart and to be with Christ which is far better Nevertheless to abide in the flesh is more needfull for you q. d. I cannot tell whether to desire to live longer or to die sooner being prest with arguments on both sides for if I consult my self and my own good it is doubtless better for me to die and to enter presently into happiness but then if I consult your convenience it were better I should live longer in the world to be serviceable to your edification Now I think it is evident that if the Apostle could have supposed that he should have entered into a state of silence after death and not presently been in the fruition of bliss there could have been no strait in the case nor any dispute but that it was better to live still in the world and continue in the comforts of a good Conscience and of doing good to others rather then to fall into a state of insensibility and inactivity IN the other place the same Apostle expresses himself thus For we know that if this earthly house of our tabernacle were dissolved we have a building of God an house not made with hands but eternall in the Heavens For we that are in this tabernacle do groan being burdened not that we would be uncloathed but cloathed upon that mortality may be swallowed up of life q. d. We are well assured that from such time as these Bodies of ours are dissolved by death which were
relish and remembrance of good things past makes the succession of evil most pungent and intolerable Nay which is more the very fears and expectation of this vicissitude makes the sense of the greatest present flat and insignificant IT would questionless be a great relief to the Souls in Hell and a remission of their torments if they could conceive any hopes of emerging at last out of that condition and it would be a great abatement of the joys of Heaven if any suspicion should enter there that possibly that felicity might one time or other expire But this is the very Hell of Hell that there is not the least crany through which to spy light beyond those dark regions no hopes but they that come thither are for ever abandoned by God and made the triumphs of his vengeance And it is the glory of coelestial glory the crown of the Heavenly Kingdom that it is eternal that the river of life is inexhaustible that the glorious enjoyments of that blessed state never fail and that men shall ever live to enjoy them O Eternal eternal that word speaks Seas of comfort and a boundless glory it fills us with wonder and astonishment it is that which we cannot comprehend and therefore fit to be the supream happiness Eternal life is all the world and more then ten thousand worlds in one word It is higher then the Heavens greater then the Universe it is all things It is the flower of joy the quintessence of comfort the pinnacle of glory the crown of blessedness the very soul and spirit of Heaven It is all miracle all ecstasy all that we can wish all that we can receive all that God can give nay all that he himself can enjoy BUT the wonder rises higher yet if we consider who it is that is made the subject of this blessed eternity If it had been some glorious Angelical Being who was by nature removed from all matter out of the reach of bodily contagion or infirmity a pure bright shining intellect or if it had been man that had never faln from Paradise that had contracted no sickliness and infirmity no disorder of passions nor violence of humours nor other presage of mortality or especially if it had been a man that never had voluntarily sinned against his Maker but such an one as by prudent management and subjugation of his Body under all the difficulties he is thereby exposed to had merited some extraordinary favour at God's hand if I say any of these had been the case eternal life had been less admirable BUT that man cloathed with a Body clogged with flesh that faln and degenerate man nay sickly infirm man a meer bundle of a thousand diseases the triumph of death and the prisoner of the grave that he should become the subject of eternity and be placed in a condition out of the reach of fate beyond the sphere of chance and contingency above mortality where no time shall wear him away no violence shall touch him no strife of principles shall gradually work his destruction WHEN the everlasting Springs are dried up that he should have life in himself when the Mountains shall be removed the Earth abolished and the Heavens pass away as a smoak that he should survive all this and be fresh and vigorous to a thousand Ages and feel a perpetual motion a constant circulation of the principles of life and joy in himself this is the wonder of all wonders and here we may cry out 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 O the height and depth and breadth of the power and goodness of God NOTWITHSTANDING all these multitudes of wonders this shall be done for besides that the Divine Majesty made the Soul of an immortal nature from the beginning that it cannot perish but by an act of his Omnipotency he will be so far from destroying it violently that he will everlastingly irradiate it by his own vital Spirit and thereby perpetually improve that energy he first gave it and then for the Body that shall be sublimed to such a purity and perfection that it shall admit of no corruptive fermentation nothing shall weaken weary or disorder it but it shall be plainly indissoluble as the Soul it self This is the third step of Heavens glory but there is a fourth yet behind which must not be forgotten And that is 4. THE consideration of the incomparably sweet and blessed society there to be enjoyed When God had first made man and placed him in the terrestrial Paradise where to the perfection of his nature he had furnished him also with all things of necessary use or delightfull entertainment he considered yet that it was not good for man to be alone and therefore provided a companion for him for in the midst of all affluence of other things solitude is most uncomfortable to humane nature insomuch that it is not to be doubted but that any man in his right wits would rather chuse very mean and hard circumstances in society then the most plentifull and commodious with seclusion from the conversation of men like himself For society not only relieves men's impotency and secures them against danger but fortifies the spirits and raises the parts of men as we see by daily experience and above all it eases the burdens and multiplies the joys of humane life and touching this last as the Earth is not so much warmed and inriched by the direct as by the reflected beams of the Sun so we find by experience that there is no happy accident or success equally refreshes us in its direct contingency as when we perceive it in the rebound or sally and find other men especially our Friends take notice of it and reflect it upon us And for this reason it is that though the world be full enough of men yet men not content with that common alliance enter besides into more strict confederations which we call Friendships which are therefore not unfitly called by some body sal societatis infirmitatis praesidium vitae humanae portus as if life was not only an unsafe but an insipid and flat thing without Friendship AND this is not only so amongst men but something of it is discoverable even amongst those higher and more noble Beings the Angels themselves touching whom though some have been too phantastical and boldly intruded into things they understand not peremptorily defining their distinct Orders and Colledges yet it 's plain enough that God placed not them in solitude but made several Orders and Societies of them and accordingly they find delight in one another not only in the mutual assistance they give each other in the discharge of their Ministeries here below but in joyning together in blessed Quires above to admire and praise their ever glorious Creatour And perhaps it is not impertinent to add this also that even the Divine Majesty it self who by reason of his infinite perfections is seipso contentus and can have no need of any thing without or besides himself