For them it is very necessary for persecution or despightful usage offending God as by a disobedience to his precept so also by the sufferings it does inflict on man to forgive or require which that man hath right God does not use to put the injur'd person by this right or by its paramont Authority assume to pardon the mans part of the wrong but does retain the sin till that either in deed or desire do satisfied for or remitted there being 'till then an obstruction to Gods forgiveness for 'till then the man hath not repented but when the fufferer does pray for him in doing so he pleads that that obstruction is remov'd that his part is remitted and so leaves no bar in the way to that pardon which he begs for him of God and which that bar being gone the Lord is us'd to grant with all advantage the prayers of our Martyr in the seventh of the Acts are a demonstration to which the Fathers say the Church did owe not only her deliverance from all the violent intentions of Saul but all that Christianity which St. Paul planted the dying voice of that petition Lord lay not this sin to their charge was answered by that voyce from Heaven which converted Saul in his career of fury One prayer for a persecutor puts an end to persecution si Stephanus non or asset Ecclesia non habuiesset Paulum Jobs miserable comforters whose visits prov'd afflictions to him could not a tone themselves to God by their burnt offerings but Job must pray for them 42. Chr. 8. seven Bullocks and seven Rams cannot expiate but one petition from the sufferer will do it for him I will accept saith God and he accepted him not for them only but for himself for the Lord turned the Captivity of Job when he prayed for them vers 10. These intercessions speed sooner then direct supplications and such a petition is heard to our selves when 't is made for others And reason good for such requests lay the condition of our pardon before God making evidence of our performance and they cry for we forgive and so call for pardon And to encourage this procedure our Saviour before he did commend his own spirit into the hand of his Father he commended his Executioners to the mercies of his Father Our Martyr did not so indeed but first pray'd for himself Lord Jesus receive my Spirit Acts. 7. 59. But though Heaven opening he saw that Jesus standing at the right hand of God as ready to receive it yet his spirit would not leave his body so yet made him live yet to endure more stoning from his persecutors for whom he had not pray'd yet but when he once fell on his knees not beaten down by their storm but his Charity and pray'd Lord lay not this sin to their charge when he had said so he fell asleep v. 60. his Spirit taken hence as it were osculo pacis though by the most violent death and he lies down in a perpetual rest and peace that thus lies down in Love These are requests to breath out a soul into heaven in and heaven it self did open to receive that soul that came so wafred And now we are at the top of Christ's Mount the highest and the steepest point of christianity which view with that â—o which our Martyrs Spirit did ascend For it makes perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect it sets our heads within those higher and untroubled Regions wherein there are no Meteor-fires the flame of Passion cannot wing it thither for he that is above the power of injury discontent cannot look up to him it is with him as in the upper Orbs where there is only harmony and shine all is peace and love the state of heaven it self Now as it does happen to them that look down from great heights every Object below is dwarf'd And if the distance of the prospect be as great as that from Heaven to Earth they tell us this whole Globe would be but like a spot all being swallowed in it self so if from this great height of duty we should look down upon the World of Christianity would it not almost wholly disappear and vanish Something like a dark spot of it you may perchance behold stain'd and discolour'd with the Blood of Christians which their constant quarrels shed Some it may be dye that Blood in colours of Religion their Animosity is christened Zeal they kill only for Sacrifice thus they interpret and fulfill Christs precepts this they call holy love as if Christ when he bid his Disciples take no Staves with them meant they should carry Swords as if the love he had commanded we should have for them that are in errour if our enemies be so indeed were but to murder them forsooth out of their errours Next for the kindnesses that Christians do to those that hate them or have disoblig'd them they are God knows so little that no perspective can shew them from this height we are upon And yet 't is not for want of light we cannot see them 't is very rare men do those things in the dark for if they do not blazon them themselves the enemy whom they oblige must do it The distance also is too great to hear the prayers that are made for those that treat men with despiteful usage perhaps it is because they are put up in secret bur then what means the yelling of those curses That ill Language that is banded to and fro While none will be behind in the returns of these how far soever we are off like Thunder these are heard And thence you may behold them also tearing Christs wounds wider to mouth their swelling passion We may see their anger redden with his Blood and themselves spitting out that Blood by imprecations at the face of him that did provoke them we may see them raking Hell to word these prayers sending themselves thither in wishes that they may express them with more horrour The Hatreds and Revenges which men act on them that have offended them hates that seldom ever dye 'till themselves do which the Frost of the Grave onely cools yea many times they are rak'd up and keep their heat in the ashes live in the grave and are as long liv'd as the families which for the most part is more careful and tenacious of them than of their Inheritance The executions of these are often writ in Characters legible at utmost distance in this Mount of the Lord they may be seen but where now are the Christians of my Text and of this day There 's no appearance of them in the face of the whole Globe of our Profession nay worse it is scarce possible they should appear the Duties of loving enemies of returning affronts with kindnesses these are banisht thence other virtues are practic'd down but these are scorn'd and quarrel'd down 'T is become a base thing and not to be endur'd to be a Christian
which makes Death a miserable condition as it is the sting of the Serpent that makes him a poysonous creature so it is that which makes Death destructive For were Death the expiration of that little spark in the moving of our heart and if our spirit utterly vanisht as the soft air and were it as the Atheist in the Wise man says we are born at all adventure and shall be hereafter as tho we had never bin Death would be so far from all sting that it would be perfect rest and the end of troubles but Sin makes it onely the beginning of sorrows it changes the very nature of death by making that which seems to be the cessation of sensible function to be the very original of the sensibility of torments Then the Sinner doth begin indeed to feel when he dies Death were but the term of a miserable life did not Sin make it the birth of a more miserable life or death I know not whether to call it for it is of so strange a nature that the very uniting of a Sinner's body and soul which is the onely thing we call life God calls death Rev. 22. 13 14. And the sea gave up the dead which were in it and death and hell or the grave deliver'd up the dead which were in them that is the bodies to be joyn'd to the souls and they were judg'd every man according to their works and in that case all are cast into the lake of fire this is the second death Sin makes Resurrection to be dying and it must needs be so because as afflictions are in this life call'd death as St Paul saith in Deaths often so much more then may those torments of hell be call'd death So that in that death that Sin engages to it is necessary to live always that we may for ever die and it must be so because this makes us liable to the eternal indignation of the offended God which we were not capable of suffering were it not a death of this nature This is indeed death with a sting in it and it is the sense of this approaching that wounds the dying soul when it do's at once call to mind the wickedness of its past life and the wrath that do's await it when he recollects how sinful he hath bin and withall how hateful sin is to God so hateful that it was easier for God to send his Son to suffer death than to suffer sin to go unpunish'd then his own expectations sting and stab his very soul for if God did thus use his own Son how will he use me that have both sinn'd and trod under foot the death of that Son by going on wilfully in my sins Would you then my Brethren find out a way to make death easy and familiar to you you must pull out this sting The Jews say if Adam had continued righteous he should not have died but after a long happy life God would have taken up his soul to him with a kiss which they call osculum pacis he would have receiv'd that spirit which with his mouth he did inspire a kiss of taking leave here to meet in Heaven Wouldst thou have thy death to be the same thing 'T is but becoming righteous with the righteousness of Christ thro whom we have this Victory here in the Text the other part I am to speak to who giveth us the victory thro Jesus Christ our Lords where we have those that are partakers of the Victory and the means thro Jesus Christ our Lord and as to both these this I shall demonstrate over all those enimies in order who the us and how the Victory is gotten First the Law Now that Christ hath redeem'd us from the curse of the Law is said expresly and that by his being made a curse for us Gal. 3. 13. and what that curse of the Law was is set down in the tenth verse cursed is every one that continueth not in all things that are written in the book of the Law to do them which no man besides Christ did ever or can do and consequently all mankind lay under that same dreadful curse obnoxious to the wrath of God and the effects of everlasting indignation but Christ by undergoing that curse and by that means satisfying that strict Law procur'd an easier to be set us upon gentler terms not perfect and unsinning strict obedience which was impossible but instead thereof the Law of Faith obsequious Faith that works by love endeavors honestly and heartily and where it fails repents that is grieves and amends and perseveres in doing so For as St Paul assures us we are not under the Law but under Grace Rom. 6. 14. tho we be under the directions of it the duty of it is most indispensable vertue always yet we are not under those strict terms of it according to the tenor of that curse but in a state of favor under terms of grace where there is mercy pardon to be had upon repentance thro faith and where there is encouragement and aid to work that faith and that amendment in us And thus far the Victory accrues to all mankind for all that will accept these terms of this remedying Law of grace the other killing strict Law hath no power over them For the Gospel was commanded to be preach'd to and its terms offer'd every creature under heaven all mankind a victory this that could not be obtain'd but by Christ's bloud the grace and favor of these easier terms for our obedience valued equal with his life for to take of this curse cursed is every one that continueth not in all things that are written in the book of the law to do it these strict terms he himself was made a curse and 't will be certainly a most unkind return if that which he thought worth the dying for to get us we shall not think worth the accepting slight these blessed terms and do not care unless we can be free from all necessity of an endeavor freed from vertue too as well as Law But secondly the Law being as we have shew'd it is the strength of Sin in giving it a power to condemn us that Law being taken off that power also cannot but be taken off from Sin and by that means the great strengths of that Enimy defeated Accordingly St Paul do's tell the Romans c. 6. v. 14. Sin shall not have dominion over you that is it shall not have by vertue of the Law a power to condemn you for you are not under the Law but under grace are in that state where men are not condemn'd for every gross or heinous sin altho too long continued in but there is pardon to be had for them that will but faithfully endeavor to amend turn from their sins return to Christ receive him and his pardon and where there is also help to do this 't is a true state of grace so that unless men will resolve to force their own
Riotous that Eats to eat eats to hunger and provoke not satisfie how will he content himself there where their happiness is they shall neither hunger nor thirst or the Incendiaries that love to set all on fire what should they do there where there are no flames but such as kindle Seraphins so that flesh and blood not only shall not but cannot enjoy the Kingdom of God And why then should they long after or think of it Nay I would this unhappy Age and an unlucky axiome of Aristotles did not convince that they do think there are no such things Sensual pleasures are corruptive of Principles saith he and indeed where Damnation is the conclusion 't is a much quieter and more easie thing for Men of Wit and Understanding to deny the Principles than granting them to lie under the torture of being liable to such an inference they therefore that resolve to love this Life and all the sinful pleasures of it at the next step resolve there is no other Life And now this pamper'd and puft Flesh is got into the Psalmists Chair the Chair of Scorners and 't is one of the Luxuries of their life to scoff at them who are so foolish as to be Religious and to deny their flesh its present appetites and pleasures on such thin after-hopes here their Wit also is an Epicure and feasts and triumphs dictates and professes in that Chair 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the Chair of Pestilences as the LXX translate and very truly for such men shed a Sphere of Contagion about them and their Discourses are effluvia of the Plague and the breath of Pestilence But how to get Flesh down out of this Chair that 's the difficulty yet that my Text will tell us for all this progress of the Flesh is trasht and checkt by Sufferings for He that hath suffered hath ceast from Sin Which how I will briefly shew The Fleshes first Art was by immersing it self in the full Lawful use of Pleasures and by consequence in the immoderate to prevail with the Soul to find a gust in them and from a continued enjoyment to conclude them necessary and so from the importunities of a perpetual temper and an accustomed satisfaction to think of nothing else in this life Now it is plain Affliction made this Art unpracticable for that it did do so was every ones complaint it rob'd them of the immoderate and even of the lawful use of Pleasures it took off those customary Delights by which the mind was habituated and glued to them by not allowing them and made them so far from being necessary that they were not acquirable Thus by denying us even the Lawful use of them it stabs the Flesh in its first onset Indeed it does that for us which every man in every state of life in his most plentiful prosperity must sometimes do for himself that is Deny himself what he desires and might enjoy without offence Which he that does not do but constantly gives his Appetite every sort and degree of lawful thing it asks does teach it to crave on and be importunate and insolent and not endure to be resisted when it did always find him to be so obsequious to it If David never checkt Adonijah did not at any time displease him saying Why hast thou done so he easily takes confidence to say I will be King and step into the Throne 1 Kings i. 5 6. But he that mortifies sometimes that does acquaint even his most innocent desires with a denial how can unlawful ones assault him For can my Appetite hope to betray me into superfluities who have taught my self not to wish for necessaries Will he be tempted with Excesses or hearken to the invitations of Luxury that will not hear his bowels when they croak for bread Or he gape for intemperate satisfactions who will not let thirst call but shuts his mouth against it Why should he covet more that hath learnt to give away and want that which he hath Now Sufferings inflict this temper on us and acquaint us with the necessity of all this and in a while with the liking of it teach us Content without Lawful Delights yea by degrees make that content appear better than an assured enjoyment For were I offered the choice either of an uninterrupted Health or of a certain Cure in all Diseases sure I had rather never need a Potion than drink Antidote and Health it self And even so the lawful good things of this Life are at the best but Remedies and Reliefs never good but upon supposition Therefore while Affliction taught us to want it hath destroyed this Art of the Flesh. As for the Second Then the lulling asleep all sense or thoughts of any Life hereafter neither minding the fear of one or hopes of the other Affliction surely met with this too For Sufferings bring both the hereafters to remembrance the Sad one while every Punishment was an Essay and tast of that which is prepared for those that live after the Flesh and the more insupportable our Fiery Tryal was the more it caution'd us to beware of that Fire which is never quenched And for the other Life surely when our Condition was such that if we lookt unto the Earth behold nothing but Darkness and dimness of Anguish and darkness as of the shadow of Death we could not choose but turn away our Eyes and lift them up to Heaven When the Soul is thrown down by Oppression it mounts by a resiliency and with the force of pressure is crush'd Upwards or if the Load be heavy so as to make it grovel and lie prostrate it is but prest into the posture of Devotion When she 's disseised of all turn'd out of every possession then she begins to think of an abiding City and eternal Mansions For the Soul that is restless when it sees nothing here below to stay upon but all is hurried from her roams about for some hold to rest on and being able in that case to find nothing but God there she does grasp and cling and when the storms splits all enjoyments and devours Friends which â—â—ke enjoyments comfortable all perish in one wrack then she sees she must catch at him that sits above the Water-Floods I told you out of Job Affliction did discover better than Revelation and in the dimness of Anguish we might see more than by Vision and truly of two Visions which our Saviour gave to his most intimate Apostles Peter James and John the one of Glory on Mount Tabor the other of Sufferings in Gethsemane shewing in the one Heaven and Himself transfigured a glimpse of beatifical Vision and in the other Hell transfigured and a sad Scene of all its Agonies he thought this a more concerning sight for when they fell asleep at both at his Transfiguration Luke ix 32. Peter and they that were with him were heavy with sleep yet he does not rouse them up to behold his Glory when they did awake
words but they do them not And if they flash in Hell against their Vices in torrents of threatning Scripture they concern themselves no more than they would in the story of a new Eruption of Mount Aetna or Vesuvius Yea they do quench the Spirit and his fires do not like the deaf Adder stop their ears against his whisperings and the charms of Heaven that were a weaker and less valiant guilt but are Religious in hearing them curious that they may be spoke with all advantages to make it harder not to yield and live that so they may express more resolution to perish and with more courage and solemnity may sin and dye Nay more when God hath found an Art to draw themselves into a League and Combination against their Vices bound them in Sacraments to Virtue made them enter a Covenant of Piety and seal it in the Blood of God and by that foederal Rite with hands lift up and seizing on Christ's Body and with holy Vows oblige themselves to the performances or to the Threats of Gospel which they see executed in that Sacrament before their eyes see there death is the wages of iniquity they shew themselves its damned consequences while they behold it tear Christ's Body spill his Blood and Crucifie the Son of God yet neither will this frightful spectacle nor their own ties hold them from sin and ruine they break these bonds asunder to get at them The Wiseman says that wicked men seek death and make a Covenant with it and so it seems But sure they are strange wilful men that seek it at Gods Table in the Bread of Life that will wade through an Ocean of mercy to get at Perdition and find it in the Blood of Christ will drink Damnation in the Cup of blessing men that poyson Salvation to themselves They that contract thus for Destruction and tye it to them at the Altar with such sacred Rites and Articles are sure resolv'd and love to dye Fourthly God had provided other Guards to secure men from sin and Death the Censures of the Church of which this Time was the great Season and the discipline of abstinence we now use is a piteous relique all that the World will bear it seem But as the Lord appointed them they were so close a fence that our Saviour calls them Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven as if they lock'd us in the Path of Piety and Life and we must pick or break all that the Key of Heaven can make fast burst Locks as well as Vows before we can get out have liberty to sin God having bounded in the Christians race as that among the Grecians was which had a River on one side and Swords points all along the other so that Destruction dwelt about it on the borders And God hath mounded ours with the River of Hell the Lake of Fire and with these spiritual Swords as S. Cyprian and S. Hierome call the Censures But yet a Mound too weak alas to stand the Resolution and assaults of Vices now adays which do not onely make great breaches in the Fence but have quite thrown it down and slighted it and the Church dares not set it up again should she attempt it they would scoff it down Men will endure no bar in the way to Perdition they will have liberty of Ruine will not be guarded from it so far from brooking Censures they will suffer no Reproof nor Admonition not suffer one word betwixt them and Death eternal But Fifthly Though we will not let Almighty God restrain us with his Censures yet he will do it with his Rod and set the sharp stakes of Affliction in our walk to keep us in thus he makes sins sometimes inflict themselves and then we straight resolve to break off from them and while we suffer shame and feel destruction in the Vice we shrink and uncling And now the Sinner would not dye especially if his Precipitance have thrown him to the confines of the grave and while he took his full careers of Vice the fury of his course did drive him to the ports of Ruine and Death seemed to make close and most astonishing approaches when standing on the brink of the Abyss he takes a prospect of the dismal state that must receive him and his Vices then he trembles and flyes his apprehensions swoon his Soul hath dying qualms caused as much by the Nausea of sin as by the fear of Hell he is in agonies of passion and of Prayer both against his former courses he never will come near them more and now sure God hath catch'd him and his will is wholly bent another way now he will live the new life if God will grant him any But alas have we never seen when God hath done this for him stretch'd out his Arm of Power hal'd him from the brow of the Pit and set him further off how he does turn and drive on furiously in the very same path that leads to the same Ruine and he recovers into death eternal And now this Will is grown too strong for the Almighties powerful methods and frustrates the whole Counsel of God for his Salvation neglects his Calls and Importunacies whereby he warns him to consult his safety to make use of Grace in time not to harden his heart against his own mercies and perish in despight of mercy And when he can reject Gods Graces and his Judgments thus defie his Conscience and his own Experience too there is but one thing left wherein this Resolution can shew its courage and that is Sixthly His own present Interests All which the Sinner can break through and despise to get at Death It is so usual to see any of the gross wasting Vices when it is once espoused murder the Reputation and all those great concerns that do depend upon a mans Esteem eat out his Wealth and Understanding make him pursue pernicious ways and Counsels besot him and enslave him fill his life with disquiet shame and neediness and the sad consequents of that Contempt and all that 's Miserable and unpitied in this Life and yet the sin with all these disadvantages is lovely not to be divorc'd nor torn off from him that I were vain should I attempt to prove a thing so obvious I shall give but one instance of the power of the Will the violence and fury of its inclinations to Ruine The man who for anothers inadvertency possibly such as their own rules of Honour will not judg affront yea sometimes without any shadow of a provocation meerly becaue he will be rude does that upon which they must call one another to account and to their last account indeed at Gods dread Judgment-seat whither when he hath sacrific'd two Families it may be all their hopes and comforts in this Life two Souls which cost the Blood of God having assaulted Death when it was arm'd and at his heart and charged Damnation to take Hell by Violence he comes with his own
hold on any noble part take in some Nerve or Artery then he must cut the thread of Life that cuts it off So he must rent my heart indeed that tears my pleasures from me Life it self does seem to have so little salisfaction without them that it is a death to me to part with them Or else hath the Old Man no Soul is he all Flesh and hath Iniquity debas'd the whole of him so that his very Spirit is become Body of Sin so as that Wickedness should be our very Being be all one with us and I and my corruptions prove denominations of one importance signifie the very same so it is indeed Besides the carnal part that is sold under sin and consequently does deserve the Cross that punishment of Slaves the part also that is in the quite opposite extream that lusts against the flesh that must be made away Be ye 〈◊〉 ansform'd by the renewing of your mind Rom. xii 2. And if there be any sublimer and more deâ—â—â—cated past in that it must submit to the same Fate 〈…〉 in the spirit of your mind Ephes. iv 23. Corruption hath invaded that To 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the diviner ruling part is grown a slave to the Beast part of him it hath debauch'd its notions whereby it should discriminate good from evll so that now it can discern no natural difference between them but does measure both meerly by his present inclinations and concerns and the eternal Laws of Honesty are blotted our and principles of interest and irreligion rais'd there in the place and buttress'd by false reasonings and Discourses Now all these Fortresses of Vice that maintain and secure a man in sin must be demolish'd all such imaginations cast down and every high thing that exalteth it self against the knowledg of God and every thought brought into Captivity to the obedience of Christ That Spirit of the mind must be destroyed and we transformed into persons of new notions and reasonings But above all the remaining part of Man his own Will must be mortified which besides its natural 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by perverse inclinings to sollicitations of flesh is most corrupted and most dangerous in that which way soever it inclines it draws the whole Man after it If any thing in us be crucified in a Conformity to Christ it must be this for in that death wherein Christ offered up himself upon the Cross where although the Divine Nature gave the value 't was onely the Humane Nature made the Offering there it was the crucifying his own Will that above all other the ingredients made his Death a Sacrifice and the price of our Redemption God that had given him his Blood and Life might call for it again when and how he saw good and being due it was not properly a price that could be given him for sin but his free voluntary choice his being willing to endure the Agonies and Contempts of the Cross his stabbing his own natural desires with a resolute determination Not my will but thine be done This his own Will was his own Offering and such is ours if we be Crucified with Christ made conformable to his death if we present our selves a Sacrifice acceptable to the Lord for our will is not given up to him till it do perfectly comport with his but that it cannot do till we renounce our own desires till we have brought our selves to an indifference in outward things to such a resignation as she is storied to have had who being in her Sickness bid to choose whether she rather would have Health or Death made answer Vehementissimè desidero ut non facias voluntatem meam Domine this above all I desire that thou wilt not do my will I would have thee not do what I desire and would have So that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the whole of us the Spirit Soul and Flesh go to make up this Person and the body of Sin is the Old man entire I whole I am nothing but a mass of guilts my Senses are the bands of wickedness that procure for my evil inclinations my members are the weapons of unrighteousness my Body is a Body of Sin and Death and the affections of my Soul are Lusts its faculties are the powers of Sin yea and the Spirit of my mind that Breath of God is putrefied that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that Angel-part of me is fall'n and turn'd Apostate and however I be partly Son of Man and partly Son of God yet I am wholly Child of Wrath and so fit to be Crucified Which calls me to the next Enquiry to the nature of the duty here intended I am Crucified What is design'd by it S. Paul does perfectly declare Rom. vi 6. Our old man is crucified with Christ that the body of Sin might be destroyed that we should no longer serve sin So that it means a through Repentance and abandoning of former evil Courses A Duty which there are few men but in some instants of their life think absolutely necessary and persuade themselves they do perform it At some time or other they are forc'd to recollect and grow displeas'd and angry at their sins and have some sad reflections on them beg for mercy and forgiveness and do think of leaving them and when they have return'd to them again they shake the head and chafe and curse at their own weakness and renew their purposes it may be and do this as oft as such a Season as this is or other like occasions suggest it to or move them And with this they satisfie themselves and hope if God do please to take them hence in some such muddy gloomy fit of their Repentance all 's well Now shall we call this being Crucified are there Racks and Tortures in this discipline hath a Spear prick'd them to the heart and no blood nor no water no tears gush out thence hath it made no issue for some hearty Sorrow to purle out Indeed I must confess the Scripture does sometimes word the performance of this Duty in expressions that are not so sower but of an easier importance as first put off the Old Man as if all were but Garment put it off I say not as they strip'd our Saviour in order to his Scourgings and his Cross but intimating to us what an easie thing it is to cast off Sin for them who do begin with it betimes before it get too close to the heart 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. saith Theophyl even as easie as putting off thy Cloaths and thy Repentance is but as thy Shift thy change of life like changing thy Apparel But alas for all the easiness which this expression hints where the sins also lie in the Attire as besides emulation pride vainglory great uncharitableness and inhumanity cruel injustice and oppression often do when many are undone through want of those dues which do furnish other men with the excesses of this
their assistance and continued with them till such time as Sr. Antony Cope a loial young Gentleman of considerable quality and fortune in the County of Oxford prevail'd upon him to live in his family which he did for several years having liberty to go or stay as his occasions requir'd whereby he was enabled to step aside without notice upon messages from the King's friends which service he manag'd with great courage and dexterity After several difficult journies succesfully perform'd in the Winter before his Majesties happy restauration he was sent over into Flanders from whence returning with letters he upon his landing at Dover was seiz'd by a party of Soldiers who waited for him The Rebel's Spie who was emploied by them in his Majestie 's Court having given notice of his dispatch and describ'd particularly his person and his habit But notwithstanding this diligence of the Rebels Mr. Allestree had so much presence of mind to secure his letters and shift them into a faithful hand who took care of them The Soldiers according to their orders guarded him to London where he was examin'd by a Committee of the Council of Safety and charg'd with having correspondence with the King and having brought letters from him which they backt with several circumstances of his journy and threats of utmost severity in case he should persist in contumacy and not confess the truth But they not being able by questions to entrap nor menaces to fright Mr. Allestree to betray either himself or others he was sent Prisoner to Lambeth house which was then made a goal for the King's friends where by ill usage he contracted a sickness which was like to have cost him his life After the durance of about six or eight weeks his friends made means for his enlargement which was the easier obtain'd for that some of the Leaders of the Party seeing things move towards his Majestie 's restoration were willing by kindnesses to recommend themselves in case of a revolution among whom was the late Earl of Shaftsbury who was us'd to value himself that Mr. Allestree owed his preservation to him Mr. Allestree having obtain'd liberty return'd to Oxfordshire from whence after a short stay he went into Shropshire to see his Relations in his return from thence designing in his way to visit his excellent friend Dr. Hammond at Westwood near Worcester he at the gate met the body of that great man carrying to his burial which circumstance is therefore mention'd because that eminent Light of the English Church at his death gave this testimony not only of his kindness to Mr. Allestree but also of his esteem of his parts and learning that he left to him his Library of books as a Legacy well knowing that in his hands they would be useful weapons for the defence of that cause he had during life so vigorously asserted The King being happily return'd Mr. Allestree was soon after made Canon of Christ-Church where he cheerfully concurr'd to the attemt which was set on foot there for the repairing of those decaies and ruins which had bin made by the late Vsurpers for however those Godly Robbers who had invaded that Church and College suffer'd them both almost to drop upon their heads and without shame sawed down for firing the timber work of the North side of the great Quadrangle the legitimate Children were concern'd first to cloth their Mother's nakedness and not till that was provided for consider their own Mr. Allestree at the same time undertook one of the Lectures of the City thinking it might be a service to instil principles of Loialty there after the contrary infusions of schismatical rebel Teachers which for so many years had bin the Gospel of that place discountenanc'd by none of the Parochial Ministers besides Mr. Lamplugh the now Reverend Bishop of Exeter who had the courage and loialty there to own the Doctrines of the Church of England in the worst of times This Lecture Mr. Allestree continued for several years never receiving any part of the Salary belonging to it but ordering that it should be distributed among the poor While he emploied himself in popular preaching he was also call'd to the service of the Court being the King's Chaplain and also to the severer studies of Scholastical Learning in his exercise for the degree of Doctor and Moderator-ship in Divinity in the College and soon after upon the vacancy of the chair of that faculty to the laborious emploiment of Regius Professor in the Vniversity In the year 1665 the Provost-ship of Eton falling void that honorable and beneficial emploiment was by his Majestie 's especial grace and favor conferr'd upon him to the acceptance whereof he was not without difficulty induc'd and particularly the consideration that a great interest was made by a Lay man who probably might succeed upon the advantage of his refusal notwithstanding that the Provost there be actually the Parson of Eton Parish and presented to the Cure and instituted by the Bishop of Lincoln the Diocesan as all other parish Priests are so that as nothing could be more plainly sacrilegious and irregular in it self than such an usurpation by a Lay person so nothing could be a greater disservice to the Church than by an unseasonable modesty to make way for it Vpon these motives it was that Dr. Allestree became Provost of Eton and for the same reason it was that during his life he continued so never hearkning to any offer of preferment which might make a vacancy and repete the former hazarâ—d And it may be truly said that this was the greatest secular care that he carried with him into another world it being his dying request unto his friends to interpose with his sacred Majesty that he might have a Successor lawfully capable and who would promote the welfare of the College The Succession in the Chair he more timely secur'd for finding his health and particularly his eie sight exceedingly empair'd by the toil of that emploiment he resign'd it in the year 1679 and had the satisfaction to be succeeded by his friend Dr. Jane of whose abilities he had perfect knowledge But diseases are not cur'd by the removal of the causes which first occasion'd them and tho by the use of mineral waters in the Summer season and the taking of journies in the Autumn he for some time supported himself the decay continued and encreast upon him till it was form'd into a Dropsy the prevalence of which was so great and suddain that his Physicians advis'd him by all means to come up to London where he might be neer their inspection and care in compliance with whose desires more than from an expectation of cure he went thither and having taken a privat lodging submitted himself to the methods they propos'd in the mean time setling his litle temporal concerns but was more intent upon his everlasting interests employing those vacancies which his sickness gave in attending the offices of the Church constantly read
bliss which to conceive is to be as God and to enjoy is to be one with him And O thou Blessed Jesu the eternal Lord of all those comforts be favourable unto us thy servants that turn to thee with weeping and with mourning that do with hearty bewailing for our hardness desire thee to teach our souls with some compunction for those iniquities that did put thee to death and would ruin us to break our rocky hearts that they may stream out tears for those our sins which shed thy bloud and would cast us into eternal wailings and as thou hast humbled us into the dust and prostrated our very souls unto the ground to grant unto us to sit down in that dust and to bewail our own demerits which our very ruin can neither equal nor amend O suffer us not to be so obdurate as to prove unmoveable by all thy pressures insensible of our own miseries and sufferings and such as amidst the pains of sin do still retain the malice and the obstinacy and then at last by these thy methods and our greifs recover us from the follies of our lives close our eyes and withdraw our affections from the temting lightnesses and vanities of our conversations and fix our thoughts and appetites upon thy serious comforts those heavenly refreshments after so much sadness that we being reckon'd amongst them whom thou dost chasten put into the number of thy mourners whose share of sorrows are dispenc't in this life may have title to the inheritance of Sons the joys of blessedness and the portion of eternal consolations in the land of everlasting pleasures with thee the Lamb that wert slain and art therefore worthy to receive all honor power praise might majesty and dominion with the Father and the Holy Ghost now and for evermore SERMON VII OF THE CLEANSING POWER Of Christian HOPE 1 John 3. 3. Every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself as he is pure HOPE is of all others the most active passion setting all the rest of them and the whole man on work for who would ever do or desire any thing if he did not hope for some good by it It is this hope alone that employs all the men and all the professions of the world it is the wings of the Desires and Actions carrying them thro the greatest difficulties with courage and alacrity with Confidence and an unwearied Constancy Ad bonas spes pertinax animus est Never will a man leave so long as he does hope and of all hopes that of the Christian should be the most active because it aims at the highest good in comparison of which all other good things are but shadows For what are the pleasures of earth to the things of God not worthy to be the expressions no nor the foils of them Now we see the greater the hopes the more active men are in the pursuit of them for who is there that will take so much pains for a Cottage as for a Crown And is it not then a wonder that of all Hopes yet this Hope of Heaven should be the least effectual in the minds of men and of all pleasures those of God should least invite and least imploy us For what one is there that does not with more eager and constant industry pursue the hopes of profit or the hopes of pleasure than he does the hopes of Immortality and of Blessedness How few are there that do not spend more time and more endeavors take more and longer pains in their Sports than in their Religion which could not certainly be if they had not surer and greater hopes of joy from their sports than from Heaven for the greater hope would certainly set them the more on work No Heaven is a thing of no tast carries no profit no pleasure in the meaning of it for if it did it would employ them in the gaining of it and every one that had this hope would purify himself as he is pure Matth. 5. 8. If the inheritance of the Kingdom of God were as some were upon earth entail'd so that do they what they will they could not be put by it there were then some reason not to wonder wherefore we see men live in the broad way to Hell and yet then hope to come to Heaven and certainly nothing but such a perswasion as that can possibly lull men into such a wretchless security as they are possest with in a thing of this eternal consequence For if we should examin them the most sinful wretch of them all hath hopes to be sav'd yea he would not be able to stand under the burden and the horror of his own killing thoughts if he should but once despair of that so that hope he will and yet if he believe one jot of Scripture it is impossible for him to hope it For that bids him not be deceiv'd neither fornicators nor idolaters nor adulterers nor effeminate nor abusers of themselves with mankind nor theeves nor covetous nor drunkards nor revilers nor extortioners shall inherit the Kingdom of God So that he dares not not hope and yet if he do but ask himself he knows he cannot hope and what then makes him do it Certainly the opinion that such and such the inheritance is entail'd upon and be they what they will they shall have Heaven But alas they are mistaken in the nature of the inheritance we may read of many that were cast off and the Heir must be a servant as long as he is a child if he do not obey no hopes of his arriving at his inheritance when he is come to age St John here will dash all those vain hopes and will tell them as they cannot justly hope for none such as they can be possest of that inheritance and therefore 't is to no purpose for them to hope it So also that they do not indeed hope for if they did ever expect to arrive at Heaven they would not run on in a course that leads a clean contrary way The Apostle here propounds five Arguments to exhort them to the study of Piety to press after Holiness and to leave off their courses of sin I shall name them backwards First in the tenth verse if we be Christians we not onely will not but cannot sin Yea secondly we are indeed Children of the Devil if we do v. 8. Neither thirdly have we any Communion with Christ possibly or interest in his Righteousness v. 6 7. Nay fourthly they destroy the very end of Christ's coming into the world v. 5. Lastly in the front of all these neither can they hope to enjoy any of those glorious promises that God hath made to his Children those of giving them glory and immortality For he that hath this hope in him purifieth himself as he is pure In the handling of these words I shall shew you what it is to purify himself Secondly what kind of purity he is to strive after as he is pure Thirdly what the
the comfort died as soon as the smile the very memorial of them is perisht and there is nothing of them left alive but that now all is don I am never the better for them But the comforts of my devouter hours shall never die but when I go to die my self will be like life and immortality to me O the strange acquiescencies of soul in the Consideration the few hours that a man hath spent piously how they will calm death assist in agonies and releive from pains how such a Soul anticipates his Heaven The truth is to such an one death is welcom and life tho it have on it the shadow of death is full of comfort For when all the world about is Egypt a devout man tho he have but his chamber to retire to and his doors be shut upon him he lives in Goshen when the consuming fire did run upon the ground throughout the land there was no storm in Goshen Exod. 9. 26. and when flashes of judgment do burst in upon other persons 't is calm in the Praier-room When the destroying Angel had overrun every house in Egypt with death when there was nothing but carcasses and crying in each dwelling there was not one sick in Goshen Exod. 12. 30. When a thick darkness dwelt upon the Nation the Israelites had lights in all their dwellings Exod. 10. 23. and when a sad dark cloud does sit upon Gods Countenance and pour down inundations of tempest on a people yet then his face does shine in the Closets of devotion there he breaks in and does reveal his comforts God is so there as his Angel was at that time a Pillar of light to them and of cloud to those others Exod. 14. 20. and when in this their pilgrimage he takes off their chariot-wheels v. 25. that they drive heavily prest with the weight of afflictions and the heavier incumbrances of the World striving against the tide and torrent of troubles encountring nothing but rubs and crosses and having on no wheels none of Gods comforts to bear them up they march heavily till at last the waters overwhelm them when as to those others the waters were a wall on the right hand and on the left and to the devout persons the troubles of their times by making them retire into their chambers prove an occasion of security which brings on the next observation from the words hide thy self Whence we draw that Praiers and the exercises of Piety are in sad days the onely great security and the Devotion-chamber a sure hiding place from trouble And indeed where else should we take shelter but in our Sanctuary Where should we seek for refuge but at the horns of the Altar where we offer up the incense of our Praiers and the lifting up of our hands is as the evening Sacrifice I have told you to retire thus into your chambers is to enter Gods bed-chamber and where is safety to be had if it be not there Is there not full quietness and calm in the Lords withdrawing rooms Not to tell you that David plac't his Rock his Fortress his Castle his every word of safety upon this foundation not to reckon up an infinity of places besides Psalm 27. 5. and 61. 2 3 4 5. I shall onely say that 't is impossible for any Sermon to say better what I have to say for him that betakes himself to these secret rooms and nestles there nor more pertinent to a time of sickness and distress than the 91. Psalm hath spoke v. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 c. and to which 't were vanity if not Tautology to add Should I labour to evince this further I could prove strangely to you that good hearty devout Praiers are in time of danger a Security even to a Miracle Security from the fury of men when single Prayers did resist an Army when Moses's hand lifted up in his devotions slew more Amalekites than the armed hands of Joshua and all his Regiments stretcht out for when Moses lifted up his hand then Israel prevailed Exod. 17. 11. Security against the storm of Gods assault for a Praier of Moses is call'd a standing in the breach against the Lord when he came to destroy the People by a plague Psalm 106. 23. so God said he would destroy them had not Moses his chosen stood before him in the breach to turn away his wrathful indignation least he should destroy them They are terms of war and do express the desperatest act of Valour which war hath occasion for when wall and rampart could not resist the storm of shot but the Assault made its way thro stones and bulwarks then must courage become the Rampart maintain the breach and repulse the Assailants This is the danger and the glory of Valour and this very expression do's Scripture make use of to declare the force and courage of a zealous Praier When Gods indignation had storm'd the People when it had made a gap a breach to enter and overrun them in a moment and the Angel with his sword drawn was assaulting had began his deaths in steps Moses arm'd but with single Praier maintains the breach and turns away the Indignation Neither was this all for it did not onely beat off his fury but assail'd him also as it were took God captive and held him that he could not fall upon them For in the 32. Exod. 9 10. he cries to Moses it is a stiff-necked people now therefore let me alone that my wrath may wax hot against them and that I may consume them in a moment let me alone Hebr. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 dimitte me 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 permitte me ut invalescat Syr. nunc si permiseris mihi invalescet Arab. dimitte deprecationem tuam à facie mea Chald. Loose me and let me go suffer me let me alone that I may destroy them do not pray to me thy strong desires are as bonds and cords upon me loose me and do not hold me I can do nothing if thou pray my arm of power my stretcht our arm is held in it is restrain'd by thy strong cries thy violent sighs they cool my wrath that it cannot wax hot against them thy zeal it is irresistible do not therefore make use of it do not hinder me do not pray now let me alone and I will make of thee a greater Nation I will bribe thee to silence because my fury will not withstand thy Praiers if thou maintain the breach I shall not take this People now by storm be hir'd then to withdraw let me alone But Moses he would take no bribes from God but he besought the Lord his God as it follows there and the sudden effect of his Praier was the Lord repented of the evil which he thought to do unto his people Here 's the power of a fervent Praier it hath a kind of force on the Almighty a force that he does seem as it were afraid of would have prevented and
iniquities The sweats of soul under the sense of the burden of sin the labors of mortifying the flesh and crucifying the affections of putting the body of sin to death will justify this sense The new Birth also hath its pangs and the Child of God as he is not engendred by weak purposes faint resolutions so neither is he brought forth in a sigh or wish of mercy there is a labor in it In this expression you may see the nature of repentance the dawnings and first flashes of that Catholic Duty 't is not that easy thing to change my mind onely and begin to believe That that is not the best course I have hitherto trod in the way of Sinners not the safest and most pleasant path tho few of us will believe that neither is it that easy wish I would I had not don this act for when the pleasure 's gon and dead the memory of it is so unsatisfying if not loathsom that a man can hardly not wish it Nor yet is it that easy desire of mercy that saying Lord Lord. The Penitent they are the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 here they are such as even faint under a sense of the horror of their sins whose hearts are broken and wounded with that heavy galling weight of them If I should gather up the racks and tortures the Occultum quatiente animo tortore flagellum that self whip in the dark rooms and recesses of our thoughts conscience dealing with us by the discipline of mad men as knowing the sinner is not onely Solomons fool and Davids man without understanding but even St Pauls 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 mad-man the tacita sudant praecordia culpa which a Heathen can reckon up to us And add to these the Scripture expressions the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the pains of travel the labor of a woman in child-birth the agony of the Cross and the pangs of death the word repentance would bear them all and they would let us see that the Penitent is truly one that labors under a very heavy burden and so is invited here by our Savior Come Thirdly those that labor and are heavy laden may signify such as groan under a burden of afflictions and look upon them not as chastisements onely but inflictions and are even wearied and affrighted by them Thus those judgments which God did by his Prophets threaten to the Nations are in those Prophets called the burden of those Nations and the cross and calamities are often called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the labor in the Text 1 Tim. 4. 10. and generally all the troubles and difficulties of this life Rev. 14. 13. of which death is there made the rescue And I need make no application of this interpretation the words labor and heavy laden do in these daies sufficiently apply themselves I shall onely tell you that the whole sense of those words sum'd up make thus much Those that are heavy burdened with sins and the punishment of those sins afflictions and groan under the sense of both of them laboring earnestly to be rid and be delivered from both these are bid to come to Christ which is the invitation and what it means I am secondly to shew Come unto me And first in general the word used 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Come is not onely a word of exhortation but of great encouragement also in the doing so often used Come and let us kill him and then the inheritance shall be ours and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Come ye unto the wedding And indeed such is needful to the persons here spoken to the laboring heavy laden for them to take a journey if there be not the encouragement of some great advantage it will not sound like an invitation but an infliction and therefore our Savior besides the rest he promises used animating words even in the very call 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Therefore the whole invitation come unto me tho it be used in the Gospel and may very well signify come to me as to a Teacher and Instructer so Nicodemus is said to come to Christ and they are said to come to the light as that which was to reveal yea and that place in Isaiah 55. 3. whither our Savior do's much reflect when he useth this expression seems to import but so Encline your ear and come unto me hear c. yea and may so signify in this place the words going before being all things are given me of my father and no man knoweth the father but the son and he to whom the son will reveal him it then follows come to me as if he should say therefore if you desire to be instructed in the way to life come to me and tho you do labor under the load of many sins yet I will shew you a way how you shall find ease and rest and that way follows in the next verse take my yoke upon you and learn of me and ye shall be sure to find rest this is very natural yet because to give you rest is more than to shew you a way to it and so may seem a promise and a reward very apportioned to the duty rest to coming therefore it is most probable that come doth not onely signify come to me to learn your duty but that the come should be it self a duty and so I shall consider it and the expression come to me does in the Gospel signify a twofold duty 1. It signifies to obey and serve Thus very often most expresly in the Epistle to the Hebrews to come to God is to serve and worship him c. 11. 6. For he that cometh to God must believe that God is and that he is a rewarder of them that seek him and c. 7. 25. He is able to save them that come to God by him that serve God as he commandeth and enableth c. 10. 1. The sacrifices which they offered year by year could not make the comers thereunto perfect could not perfectly cleanse them that served God by them 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and the 22d verse there Let us come with a true heart worship him with unfeigned piety and obedience And the sense will be fully clear from the expressions that relate to it Seek the Lord draw near to him and then come to him To seek him is to enter upon such a course of life by which his favor is to be obtain'd and what it is you will see Isaiah 55. where when he had bid them come to him that they may do that he bids them seek him v. 6 7. Seek the Lord while he may be found let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts and let them return unto the Lord. Deut. 4. 29 30. But if from thence thou shalt seek the Lord thy God thou shalt find him if thou seek him with all thine heart and with all thy soul if thou turn to the Lord thy God and shalt be obedient
guards that are set about them to preserve them and break thro the strengths of grace and conquer all the strivings of Almighty God's compassion and goodness to them and beat off the very victory that Christ hath gain'd for them refuse all the kind offers of the Law of grace and chuse sin with damnation they are safe There is now as St Paul saith by the Law no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus to them who walk not after the Flesh but after the Spirit Rom. 8. 1. in which words we have both an assurance that the strengths of Sin are broken and the persons too are partakers of the Victory that are in Christ Jesus for as it is by him the Victory is gotten so it is in him that we must get an interest in it Now to be in Christ if as most certainly it doth it mean here as in other places where 't is said of Churches housholds and of single persons then it means the Christians so in Gal. 1. 22 the Churches of Judea that are in Christ i. e. that have received the Gospel and the Faith of Christ Rom. 16. 11. greet them that be of the houshold of Narcissus that are in the Lord i. e. that are Christians and the seventh verse who were in Christ before me i. e. were converted e're I was But it means Christians not in judgment and opinion onely but in life and practice such as are in Christ by St Pauls character and description of it in the 2 Cor. 5. 17. If any man be in Christ he is a new creature he lives the life of Christ as a member does the life of that of which it is a member and so he walks not after the Flesh but after the Spirit For as members live by the vertue of the influence of spirits from the head into them and walk after its directions so those that are in Christ his members they must walk live act and practise by the Spirit of Christ guided not by carnal appetite the lusts and the desires of the Flesh but by Christ's directions Such they are who have this Victory to whom there is no condemnation For as he adds Rom. 8. 2. The law of the Spirit of life that is in Christ Jesus sets us free from the law of sin and death and so there is thro him a Victory over the third last enimy Death in which freedom from Sin and Death two things are intimated 1. That Sin the sting of Death is taken away which being once removed Death is the softest thing that can be 't is but falling asleep so it is call'd v. 18. of this chapter faln asleep in Christ it is so far from being hurtful that it is the first great happiness that does befall us 2. That Death it self also shall be swallowed up in Victory that we shall be recovered from its powers and triumph over it in Immortality of blessed life For if we be in Christ his members and so live the life of Christ and consequently when we die die in the Lord then tho the body be dead and corruptible yet if the Spirit of life that is in Jesus be in us he that rais'd up Jesus from the dead shall also quicken our mortal bodies by his Spirit Rom. 8. 11. It is this life in him that verifies the saying of St Paul Eph. 2. 6. He hath raised us up and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ as sure as if we were already there for there we are already as his members in our head And to the full and personal enjoyment of the blessings of those heavenly places it is death that lets us in that vale of Achor is the door of hope and Canaan the grave the avenue to God's right hand that death 't is but the Pascha in St Bernard 't is our Passover a repast of bitter herbs indeed but at the going out of Egypt from the house of bondage And tho the body seem in death a piteous despicable thing sown in corruption dishonor as St Paul expresses yet death gives that a relation too to Christ the Prophet Isaiah brings in the Lord calling His dead 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 cadaver they my dead body shall aris◠saith he c. 26. 19. So that the corps of a good person is so far a member that 't is call'd the very body of his Savior into such a title Death translates it to such not to live onely but to die is Christ. And sure if they that die in him did live in him as none can die there where they did not live at all that is live as his members they that die in Christ must die his members But in the expression of the Prophet they do also die himself and are Christ's own dead body Death to such is as it were transfiguration and do's not so much strip and make them naked as cloath them and that with glory the shrowd may seem but their white wedding linnen and their dress for the marriage of the Lamb. Whoever is a faithfull sincere Christian if Death seem to make approaches to him arm'd with all his instruments of cruelty and terror charge him as assuredly as a Prophet could to set his house in order for he must die if he can say with Hezekiah in Isaiah 38. 3. Remember now O Lord how I have walked before thee in truth and with a perfect heart and have don that which is good in thy sight then if he have not fifty years yet he shall have a numberless Eternity added to his life and notwithstanding the dark solitude of the Grave to which he is retiring he shall have that which will accompany him to his infinite joy when he is torn from friends and all his dearest things do leave him yet he shall not be alone his faith and piety his vertues all go along with him and appear for him at that tribunal on the Judgment day All his relations even his bosom-guest the other half of his own soul forsake him bring him it may be to the grave and tho they carry blacks upon them to refresh and keep alive the memory of him yet in a while take comfort and forget yet the true conjugal affections of an untainted undefiled bed shall go along present the Soul white as a Virgin that 's unspotted And after this 't is in vain to say his riches will forsake him they go not so far as the grave afford nothing of themselves but the price of a sheet and coffin But then Charities will mount Alms will ascend as fast as the Spirit the wealth one piously bestow'd will meet him he shall eternally possess that which he gave away and tho his place know him no more they shall receive him into everlasting habitations Wherefore my beloved Brethren be ye stedfast unmovable always abounding in the work of the Lord which is the real way of giving thanks to God who giveth us the Victory SERMON XI
his Body and his Bloud is he himself Therefore thou didst receive him as verily as thou didst those and if the Sacramental food be thine then Christ is thine and thou maist say my God My Brethren it was the Bloud of Christ that purchased all the glorious mercies of the Gospel all the blessed expectations of a Christian that was the price of all the joys of Heaven that reconciled God to us bought us an interest in him and the happy enjoyments of himself for us and then if in the Sacrament Christ do give me his bloud when I can shew God that bring him the price of the remission of my sins the value of those glories even the bloud of Jesus come with the purchase-money in my hands that bought my interest in God cannot I say those are mine my Heaven and my God Yea when I can say O Lord Christ whom I have undertaken to obey my God whom I have vowed to serve and worship thou art even my flesh for there I ate thy flesh and thou becamest flesh of my flesh Thou art the portion of my cup when thy very bloud doth fill full my cup and so thou art my flesh and my bloud then surely I may say with Thomas here my Lord and my God O Holy and Eternal Savior who art made both Lord and Christ and by thy Resurrection didst manifest the Omnipotency of thy person the truth of thy Promises and open a way to the everlasting glory and salvation which thou hast prepared for them that give themselves up to serve and worship thee their Lord and God pour down that blessed influence of this thy Resurrection on our hearts in raising us from the death of sin to the life of Righteousness Be thou our Lord and Christ ruling us by thy laws saving us by thy grace and by thy Spirit applying the mercies of thy death and so making us partakers of thy Resurrection therein turning us from our iniquities hereafter in raising us to Glory O Lord we have this day made a Covenant of this with thee and signed the Articles of it in the bloud of our God swore to them at the Altar give us grace we beseech thee to use the strictest care and watchfulness in our endeavors to perform with thee Regard not how we have in times past onely mock'd thee sacredly in these performances O let it from this day be otherwise We have bin onely on a stage of Religion when we are at our devoutest performances and having turn'd our backs unto the Church turn'd them also to our duty put off the vizards of Religion and we untired our selves of all our Piety almost as soon as the exercises of it were don and howsoever we tied our selves our froward wills have bin too strong for all our obligations and burst out of them broke all thy bonds asunder and cast away thy cords from us altho we tied them with all things that were most solemn and most sacred vows and oaths and tied them before the body of our crucified Lord and Savior with the body and bloud of Christ in our hands as if we had no other desires no other cares that should do us good than as we were careful to keep those resolutions and vows and yet O Lord we did let them instantly loosen and slack pass by and fail Yea we did break them wilfully and would not be held in by thine or our own bonds O Lord if thou look upon us in this guilt sure thou wilt have no more to do with us such false and perjured vow-breakers But O look upon us in thine own bloud which thou hast bid us pour out still to establish and renew our Covenant with thee and let this Covenant wherein we have now taken thee to be our Lord and God and taken thee who art so in us remain inviolable be there then with thy Power and Autority subdue our hearts and our desires and bring them under the obedience of thy laws Thou that art God Almighty that didst conquer Death and Satan bring it to pass that none of them prevail against thee now in our Souls where thou art but use thy strength O Lord to drive their power thence that thy servants and thy people may not be enslaved to corruption and ruin nor thy Enimy gain souls from thee which thou hast purchased with thy bloud that we having attain'd thee for our Lord and God may claim the privileges of thy People here have the watches and cares and securities that thou laiest out upon thy Treasures and the Jewels of thy Crown and by thy body and thy bloud being made one with thee and thou being ours all things may be ours thy grace here and thy joys hereafter thy Spirit may be ours and thy Heaven ours and we in thee and thou in us may all enjoy thy Kingdom Power and Glory for ever SERMON XIII THE BELIEVERS CONCERN to pray for Faith Mark 9. 24. Lord I believe help thou my Vnbelief WHICH are the words of a poor parent passionately earnest and afflicted sadly for his child that from his infancy had bin tormented miserably by a Devil for which having sought help every way but finding none no not from Christ's Disciples at last he repairs to him himself beseeching him to have compassion on him and if he were able to relieve him To whom Christ replies that if he could believe then he could work the miracle and help his child all things being possible to be don for him that could believe but nothing otherwise whereupon strait way the father of the child cried out and said with tears Lord I believe help thou my unbelief In which words we have first the necessary Qualification that is to make all that had ever heard of Christ capable of having any benefit from Christ that is belief in him I believe And since Christ hath made this qualification absolutely necessary and by consequence must be suppos'd to have provided means sufficient to work in us that belief that he requires so peremtorily we shall then In the second place enquire how it comes to pass that they so often fail that men do either not believe or their Faith is so weak that much unbelief do's mix with it as in our Confessor here in the Text who tho he did profess he did believe yet withal acknowledges his unbelief And thirdly to prevent and remedy all that here is discovered whither we are to betake our selves for help and where alone 't is possible to find it and that is Christ himself who alone is able to repair in us whatever degree of true belief is wanting in us Lord help thou my unbelief and how he do's repair it And fourthly when it is repair'd to that due height what that degree is can make us capable of those benefits which he hath promis'd to bestow on true Believers and whether such believers can say with our man here I believe yet say too Help my unbelief First of
another occasion for God's remitting him not from his conscience which might alleviate the faults but by his being by the horror of his sins a greater instance of God's wonderful grace in forgiving v. 16. Howbeit for this cause I obtained mercy that in me first Jesus Christ might shew forth all long-suffering for a pattern to them which should hereafter believe in him to life everlasting God dealt most mercifully with me call'd me from heaven whilst I was persecuting him to be a prime object of his patience and longanimity and in order of time the first that was so miraculously call'd that so the wickedest of the Gentiles may in me have an example of hope of mercy if they shall come in to Christ. And will it now be fit my Brethren with this of S. Paul who notwithstanding such true pleas of conscience is forc'd to seek out for such motives of forgiveness and plead hard ignorance and unbelief and yet confess himself the cheif of sinners with this I say to parallel some actions of our daies that under the pretence of conscience which too hath no Law as that of S. Paul had tho then outdated will justify forbidden actions even against repentance men will not ask forgiveness where they can pretend conscience I could instance in a strange particular of one of my remembrance and my knowledg of the person and the story sufficiently notorious who because the Papists believing that to be Christ which indeed is bread worship it therefore thought in his conscience all kneeling at the Sacrament Idolatry and to that error adding the command Deut. 13. 6 7 8 9. cut off his brother's and his mother's head yea and when condemn'd to death by sentence of Law for the action would not be beaten from his hold but on the strength of that mistaken place went as boldly with that bloud on his hand and his soul to face the judgment seat as he could have don had he bin wash'd in Christ's own bloud and of this resolute fury the Zealots of our neighbor country of Scotland have made many recent instances in their reviv'd Ravilliacs See the sad issue of an erring conscience an action whose horror feinds would startle at such a perswasion do's make meritorious and yet God knows that erring consciences have brought the Parent of a Nation a thing of much direr guilt to the same state and yet that conscience must be admitted an excuse when God knows jealousies and suspicions have bin all the ground and all the rule for their determinations of conscience and yet on that stock alone they could misjudge and censure speak evil of and revile the actions of just Governors and do that which I dare not say When against all Laws both of God and man all ties sacred and civil obligations of oaths and duties that it may be impossible to plead ignorance men yet will act under the banner of such a thin conscience that never could produce any Law of God for its direction or its quiet and yet think themselves secure When a confident perswasion of heart God knows how taken up shall quite annual that command of Christ of taking up the Cross and change that state which he calls blessed suffering for righteousness sake if there were such a thing change it into so great a curse as men will rather embowel themselves in their brother's hearts involve a Nation in bloud and misery in guilt and ruin than not throw off the Cross from off their shoulders And now 't is to no purpose to observe that when perjury and sacriledg and breach of almost every Commandment in the Decalogue shall not only become tolerable but be the only character of a godly side by vertue of a thing call'd conscience surely S. Paul was a weak man that when he had don some such things out of a good and pure conscience yet calls himself the chief of sinners In like manner in the Church new religious fancies are bold to take upon them the holy face of conscience and then to quicken men into schisms and all uncharitable separations and factions withdrawing them from the obedience of them that have the spiritual rule over them not at all submitting themselves to them who by Gods appointment watch over their souls but rather flying in their faces at once with open disobedience loud reproches bitter censures and severe condemnations Others by having had mens persons in admiration and consequently their opinions suffer'd their models to be stampt upon their conscience and then that must justify Ecclesiastical parricides destroying their own fathers that begot them to the Church and at once cutting off the whole line of those progenitors that can derive their race from Christ a fairer stem and pedigree than most can shew But alas my Brethren if we shall grant that these opinions really possess their souls and that in the uprightness of their heart they did pursue them that neither interest nor faction nor having bin disoblig'd or having suffer'd hath pufft up a passion into conscience but that 't is all sincerity yet we have seen that cannot bear us out in such commissions 't is but an erring conscience still that animates a man into any breach of duty and if there be no other Law to warrant actions the conscience is so far from being able to justify them that while it errs it but entangles a man in the necessity of sinning leads him into such Labyrinths of guilt that whatever he do's he offends on one side if he do what his erring conscience dictates to him he sins against God's Law on the other side if he forbear he sins against God's Vicegerent his own conscience there is the guilt of his deed here is the guilt of his heart which do's oblige a man to follow that which it is sin to follow and which makes him he must and ought to do that which he must not nor ought to do And sure my Brethren the only application to such a conscience is to advise the laying it aside to rectify the error Good counsel that indeed but the hardest to be taken in the world for that a man may rectify he must know himself in an error and if he know that then he hath not an erring conscience this when it is strongly so doth not so much as doubt of his opinion and while he do's not doubt what temtation hath he so much as to set upon the rectifying I shall but name some means The first will be Praier for Divine illumination S. James has directed this if any man lacks wisdom let him ask of God that giveth to all men liberally and upbraideth not c. 1. 5. and our Savior has promis'd that he will give his Holy Spirit to them that ask him Luke 11. 13. whose office we know is to lead us into all truth John 16. 13. The second means will be not to be wanting to our selves not to shut our eies against or resist the truth Acts 28. 27.
to this rencounter of the object of its strong affections no rest but in the labors that work towards it no calm but in those violences And much of this there must be in Religion where the heart is set upon the hopes of it on heaven He must be eager in it as the covetous is on his gains the proud man on his pomps the pleasurist on his sports the Epicure on his excesses It is not possible a man should have no heart to that on which his heart is set He therefore that hath set his heart on heaven must be religious and holy and so it is concluded that the liberal-minded must needs be so The progress of which proof is this he whose heart is in heaven his conversation will be there his life will be Christian and holy he whose treasure is in heaven his heart is in heaven he that hath taken off his heart from the world and out of liberality of heart gives alms he laies his treasure up in heaven and then it is concluded that he is religious And this now may apply it self without my help to press it to you Ah my Brethren chuse and strive towards a vertue that will help you to all the rest that will calm and moderate your affections to this world and the dying follies of it and that will draw your hearts to heaven and set them on the world to come Who would not labor for one disposition of mind that comes with such a train of pieties that hath all Christianity in its attendance and brings all into the soul with it Who would not give alms if by doing so he give himself a shole of vertue to whom is this man bountiful but to himself indeed Here is a ground for men to beg after the fashion of Lombardy Be good to your self Sir and bestow an alms upon me for he indeed is good unto himself who what he gives laies up in heaven as a treasure for eternity and at the same time entertains the disposition to all piety in his heart receives all vertue into him I sahll not need to call in accessory proofs fetch in auxiliary motives tell you that works of charity are called good works in Scripture and the liberal man good So Rom. 5. 7. the good man signifies and Tit. 2. 5. where the women are commanded to be good it is merciful so works of mercy are call'd good works Acts. 9. 36. doing good Matt. 12. 12. Heb. 13. 16. good fruits James 3. 17. So to work good signifies Gal. 6. 9. and every good work 2 Cor. 9. 8. is works of mercy as if he did engross all goodness and that same vertue did fulfil the title Nay I tell you more that the merciful man and the perfect man are but two words for the same person Matt. 5. 48. Luke 6. 36. all Christianity is so sure appendant to this disposition of the heart when it is in the soul I tell you not when it is now and then in the actions that this alone is perfectness 't is entire lacking nothing And then here is a clear account why at the last great trial nothing should come upon account but charity that is the only thing the Judg takes cognizance of at the day of final doom When I was hungry ye gave me meat the words of everlasting Judgment pass only in relation to this nothing but charity do's come into that sentence for all the rest is implied in this and where the heart is liberal the whole life will be Christian this is an evidence will pass at God's Assise stand before the Searcher of the heart and reins And therefore it may well be a sign to us and make proof that this grace in the heart bounty of mind is a great evidence of a truly Christian heart the second Proposition Blessed Savior thou that wert all bounty to us that didst emty thy self to enrich us and didst chuse rather to die thy self than not relieve us when we were sick to everlasting death give us grace to be like-minded shed into our hearts this disposition of soul that will make us so remember thee a disposition that will make our affections even and moderate to things of this earth which by teaching us to part with wealth contentedly will work us out of the world and teach us not to be enamoured on the advantages of wealth not to be passionate for pomps or pleasures or for any superfluities which wealth procures which will set our hearts in heaven and lay up treasures for us there which if it rob us of the pomps and the magnificences of this world will give us for them pomps of piety the whole train of vertues a long attendance of graces if it deprives us of some heights or some excess of pleasures it will recompence with the satisfactions of relieving Christ in his members here and reigning with him hereafter in Kingdom SERMON XXII THE LIGHT OF THE BODY is the Eye Matt. 6. 22 23. The light of the body is the eye if therefore thy eye be single thy whole body shall be full of light But if thine eye be evill thy whole body shall be full of darkness If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness how great is that darkness PHILOSOPHY do's say that all vertues are so annext and tied together that it is not possible for any man to have any one truly and compleat but he must needs have all they are like pearls upon the necklace from which if any violence pull one the string is broke and all are shatter'd and disorder'd And S. James saith c. 2. 10. Whosoever shall offend in one point is guilty of all and sure the vertue of the Text makes good both these Positions if liberality of heart be that one point he that excludes it from his Soul shuts out the rest at once All the graces are as train to that leading vertue are its such close attendants that they must needs have the same fate and either dwell together in the heart or all together be thrust thence for if thine eie be single thy whole body shall be full of light but if thine eie be evil thy whole body shall be full of darkness An envious discontent uncharitable mind makes the whole life un-Christian and he that do's offend in that one point must needs be guilty of all and if Charity that bond of perfectness in S. Paul that tie of graces that do's unite them to it self and with each other if that be there all graces must be there and liberality of heart makes the life Christian for if thine eie be single thy whole body shall be full of light But I am now to shew you that bounty in the heart is a great Sign of a true Christian heart that that person who not out of easiness or modesty of constitution not knowing how to deny when he is askt nor out of inconsideration or vanity bestows an alms or else when importunities
tenth Commandment is the certain consequent of this disposition of mind or indeed rather it is but several instances of forbidding discontentedness with our own condition and in it Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife is not meant thou shalt not desire to commit adultery with her for that was forbidden in the seventh Commandment but as thou shalt not covet his house which do's not signify thou shalt not desire once to walk thro it or to sit and dine in it but thou shalt not desire the possession nor propriety of what is not thine own shalt not desire it should be thy house but be contented with thy lot so here thou shalt not be troubled that his wife or servant is not thy wife or servant and think it as fit thy Neighbor should enjoy the comforts of a happy wife if God have given him one or the pleasures and splendors of an estate or the advantages of a commodious servant as thou dost think it fit thou shouldest enjoy what is thine and not desire not only to be theif but not the owner of them be content with what is thine 4. All the Seditions and Rebellions in the world and those armies of Sins that attend them that wage their wars which are upheld by legions of villanies as numerous as those of men all the disturbances of States and Churches are but the effects of discontented spirits men that were unsatisfied with their condition desir'd a change and car'd not by what means they compast it They can charge thro seas of bloud and sin over the faces of men and conscience to get out of the condition which they are not well content with I could assign more sins that do attend a discontented heart when it hath opportunity to break into them all the effects of anger and of malice and of concupiscence and a whole shole of others are in its train but that I must reserve one word for Envy 2. Envy to say all in one word however slight a thing we may esteem it For to envy at another person 's having better qualities or greater dignities or richer furnitures or wider estates or handsomer provisions this we think do's no mischief to the persons and therefore is no crying crime Yet besides that it is more unjust than hatred or than malice for these have still pretences that do look like reason I cannot hate a man but because he do's me some wrong and that is some reason for I hate his injustice but envy hath not any least pretence Is it a wrong to me because that person is better qualified or better endowed Is he unjust because he is rich or learned or well provided and yet for this I envy him Besides this I say to stab it with one thrust Envy hath all the vices and all the ruins in the world for its issue all sin and all damnation is its brood The Devil envied man's felicity and therefore temted him and so man lost Original Righteousness and he lost Paradise and he envies his recovery by Christ and therefore temts him still until he ruin him eternally Whatever guilt and whatever misery is in the world hence it springs it is a feind-like devilish humor And now would you take the prospect of these two qualities discontent and envy Lucifer was not satisfied with his condition and he was therefore cast from Heaven and all his fellow Angels became Devils and then he envied man's condition and chang'd his Paradise into everlasting misery These two qualities rob'd Heaven it self of those inhabitants that should have fill'd it and the Son of God himself and peopled Hell it made Angels become Feinds it made God die and made men damn'd and there is enough for that 3. Covetousness I am sure I can say no more of that than what S. Paul hath said nor more to my purpose 1. Tim. 6. 6 7 8 9 10. Godliness with contentment is great gain for we brought nothing into this world and it is certain we can carry nothing out and having food and raiment let us be therewith content But they that will be rich fall into a temtation and a snare and into many foolish and hurtfull lusts which drown men in destruction and perdition for the love of mony is the root of all evil which while some coveted after they have erred from the faith and pierced themselves thro with many sorrows And oh that three such dismal qualities with their accursed trains should breed in that same little part the eie An evil eie is the womb wherein they are conceiv'd and if that one small faculty be so fruitful in guilt and in destructions how shall we reckon the whole man Miserable men that we are who shall deliver us from a whole body of death and from the state of those deaths and from darkness in which this evil eie engages us A darkness which our Savior could not otherwise express but by astonishment How great is that darkness A darkness great indeed because 't is wilfully incurable no state do's so withstand the light as this The Sun of Righteousness the Day-spring from on high that came to visit us could strike the light thro darkness and make the shadow of death bright Luke 1. 79. that did shed light that was a glory Luke 2. 32. could not yet break in upon a Country clouded with this humor his Miracles and he were both desired to withdraw could have no least Reception when interest and profit came to be toucht and a Legion of Devils that did plot together could contrive no surer means to keep out Christ himself than by setting up an evil eie to look upon him and his Miracles than by engaging this greedy affection against him and that but in a small instance We read a strange story Matt. 8. 28. Marke the contrivance and the policy the Devils knowing that Christ would cast them out of the two possessed men and by that Miracle so far show forth his power that it would probably bring all the Country to believe on him they desir'd to prevent this and thereupon fall on this project which might incense the men of that Country against him and in order to it they besought Christ that if he did cast them out he would suffer them to go into the herd of Swine and tho he seldom wrought any destructive Miracles yet that the people might see the virulency of these Devils how destructive they were if not restrain'd by his omnipotent goodness and so they might understand the mercy don to those that were possessed and likewise see the mercy now approching to their Country by the coming of Christ if they will accept of it and withal to try whether their love to their Swine was greater than that to their own souls he permitted the Devils to go into the Swine he would not restrain them and they went into them They who fed the Swine gave to the owners notice of their loss and did let them know
as the Swine were drowned on the one side so two men possessed with Devils were recovered and that Christ had don this since his coming thither Hereupon the whole City as being very much concern'd in that which had happen'd came out to meet and see Jesus who did such Miracles and instead of being wrought on by his cure on the men to desire his continuance among them the consideration of the loss of their Swine made them desire and beseech him that he would depart out of their Coasts Behold an equal Enemy to Christ and all his Miracles an Enemy that was too hard for them even a little worldly advantage The Senate of Hell hath no project like this to keep out Religion as this making Religion thwart an interest rather no Christianity than abate gain or greatness or any earthly satisfaction rather the Swine than Christ himself But we have a worse instance yet than this and more comprehensive as to our purpose An evil eie could not endure to see the Son of God alive and when the second Person of the Godhead was to be betraied and crucified the Devil had no other passion to employ on that design but these same discontent and envy and a greedy mind and all these but at little trifles We find that Judas bore the purse and S. John saies that he robb'd it John 12. 6. was deceitful in the discharge of his office of relieving the poor Now it happen'd that a woman spent a box of precious ointment upon Christ at which Judas was discontent and envied it his Master Matt. 16. 8. Mark 14. 4 5. he murmur'd and had indignation at it saies the places his evil eie could not endure to see such a sum should pass his purse of which yet he could have purloin'd but very little for the sum was not great and missing that for very envy for it was immediatly upon it Mark 14. 10. his own covetous heart by the Devil's suggestion put him upon his project of gain to make some advantage by delivering Christ to the hands of the Jews and upon his consenting to this suggestion the Devil was permitted by God to have this power over him to enter into him John 13. 2. and doing so incited him to make a bargain with the Rulers of the Sanhedrim their great Council and with their Officers to deliver up Jesus unto them and he yielding to his incitation and after Christ's talking with him and telling him distinctly of it and the sin and danger attending it Mark 14. 21. and his not yet relenting the Devil entred into him again more forcibly than before John 13. 27. hurried him to the speedy execution and he went and covenanted with them that he should have thirty shekels Matt. 26. 15. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Luke 22. 6. and thanked them altho it were a low and a vile sum as could be the price of a slave Exod. 21. 32. yet Judas thankt them for the offer so covetous he was and glad of an occasion to get mony We see the Devil enters at an evil eie if that be envious Satan gets in strait at that eie himself in person and he possesses hearts set upon gain and then no wonder if the Kingdom of darkness be in such an heart when as the King of Hell the Devil dwells there Satan entred into him and when he was there what design hath he to fill an heart with nothing but that of getting mony this is effect enough of his possession The Devil hath don work enough in such a heart as he is entred into really if he but make it set upon desire of mony tho it be but a trifle of gain but three pounds fifteen shillings But Lord God what will not a worldly heart adventure on what will not a mind undertake which envies at another and is greedy for it self When such an one did set Judas upon betraying Christ for almost nothing one vanity one sport one dress one sin's engagement to damnation costs a man more than what an envious covetous Soul did sell the Son of God the Ransom of Mankind the price of all the Souls in the whole world for yea and was thankful for it too so low so fordid and so base a soul it is that loves increase And now my Brethren there is no need that I should tell you that you must bring no evil eie to the Lord's Table to see his body crucified and his bloud poured out in the Sacrament no discontents no murmurs no envious intentions nor covetous desires must come near that for they were these betraied him If such a soul come thither Judas is there again the things that sold him come again to tear his body and to shed his bloud And do you think that such shall be receiv'd and entertain'd by Christ Oh no the bread of the Sacrament will be their Sop and not Christ but the Devil enters into such Oh sure no heart so fit to come to that same feast as the charitable those that feed him he will feed and I could tell you charity the offertory I mean an offering for the poor was used as an essential part of the Sacrament and was a service of so high esteem that preparation was requir'd for it as for the Sacrament and by the first Councils men guilty of gross sins might not offer their charities would not be receiv'd by the Church Yea and there was an excommunication from this duty and to be excluded from bringing their gifts for the poor was a greater censure than to be shut out from the Sermon or the Praiers But these are things our world do's not take notice of nor will understand to be censur'd from liberality and to be excommunicate from bounty and that receiving of mens alms should be a grace and an indulgence to the givers are talks that men now have no notions of nor much care for But let them be sure no time so proper for our relieving the members of Christ as when the body of Christ is relieving us to life eternal no occasion more urgent for us to contribute towards the clothing of the naked body of Christ than when Christ is clothing us with the crimson glorious garment of his Righteousness no opportunity more pressing than this to visit his sick members than when he administring to us 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 nothing do's preach Charity like a Sacrament nor no Sacrament more than this at the time of his Incarnation when the Son of God did so exhaust himself for us as to emty immensity of God-head into a span of weak poor helpless flesh to become really one of the meanest objects of compassion one that had no revenue in the world but Charity for while he liv'd he had not an hole to put his head in nor when he died a grave to put his body in but as thro all his life his sustenance was alms so at his death his burying place was alms too and yet this was
let their strictnesses take in some temporal aim besides as Reputation with their Party or getting Praise or Wealth they serve Mammon or Fame with Gods Religion and make the very Worship of the Lord be the Idolatry of Covetousness or of Honour If Jehu in his Executions on Ahab and his Family intend the cutting off the Regal Line as well as Baals worship and with their Blood to purple his own Royalty though God did bid him shed that blood yet does it stain his Soul with crimson guilt and God will punish him for his Obedience I will visit the blood of Jezreel upon the House of Jehu Hos. i. 4. But he that lets a vicious aim mix with his Vertue and does good to an ill end addresses Gods Religion to the Devil and makes Christ minister to Belial he does sin multipliedly both in his vicious intention and in debauching Vertue to serve Vice and he might much more innocently not have been Pious Neither is that Vertue or Heart sincere whose intentions are not purely and meerly vertuous but intend to compass some Religious end by means that are not lawful For such intentions are not clean but mixt with Vice and 't is sure I cannot please God with such kind of holy meanings If Saul will sacrifice with the Sheep and Oxen he was bid to destroy his very worship loseth him the Throne of Israel Nor an I serve God with such Pieties God never does require an action which he sees I cannot compass without sin for he requires no man to sin for that were to command me to break his Commands and I were bound to disobey him in obedience to him Shall I speak wickedly for God saith Job and then shall I do so Such Religious intentions the justice of those ends will never qualifie me for Gods goodness when it but makes Damnation just to me for so S. Paul affirms Rom. iii. 5 6 7 8. In fine if there be any wickedness in the heart it gives so foul a tincture to whatever pious actions we perform that they become sin to us 'T is true Prayer is as the Incense David says and the lifting up of our hands is like the Evening Sacrifice but if the heart of him that Prays have any heats of Malice in it truly that man does light his Incense with strange fire kindles his sacrifice with the flames of Hell for so S. James does call those heats He that gives God any of his performances and hath a naughty Heart like Nadab and Abihu he presents his Offering in an unhallowed Censer and all his holy worship will get nothing else from Heaven for him but a consuming fire as theirs did He that will offer any thing to God must take a care it be not tainted with such mixtures which spoil all the Religion making it not sincere and also spoil the Heart by making it not clean and undefiled The last remaining sense A Clean and undefiled Heart Of those things which our Saviour says defile the man some are meerly sins of the Heart such as may be consummated within the Soul and for the perpetration of which a spirit is sufficient to it self such are Pride especially spiritual pride the sin of those that think none holy as themselves and cast the black doom of Reprobation upon all that do not comply with their Opinions and interests such also are uncontentedness with our estates inward repinings at the dispositions of Providence concerning us black malice bitter envyings Now in these as the mind does need no outward members to consummate them requires no accessary Organs to work them out so neither does it require any outward accessary guilt to make them liable to condemnation we know 't was one sin of the spirit onely that made Angels Devils If a foul body be abominable to the Lord shall a foul spirit be less odious he that defiles his Soul offends God in a much nearer concern of his because that speaks nearer relation to him than the Body this was only his workmanship made out of Earth the Spirit was created out of himself a foul body is but filthy Clay but he that does pollute his Soul does putresie the Breath of God and stains a beam of the Divinity The other sort of things that are said to come from the Heart and to Defile are those which S. Paul calls works of the Flesh such as if they be committed must be committed outwardly Murders Drunkenness Revellings Revenge Wrath and Contentions Seditions Factions Schisms all Vncleannesses c. In these indeed the Heart can be but partial Actor the utmost it can do is to desire and to intend them and to contrive and manage the designs of compassing them which yet Providence or the Innocence of others may put out of the reach of mans power or his own temporal fears may make him not dare to set upon them though he do cherish the desires Now if they be obstructed from committing most men use to conclude gently of their guilts while they do keep within the Heart the Execution of them is the onely thing that does look mortal and till the sin be perfected there is no death in it And truly I confess that as it happens many times on a sudden surprize of soul when a bright gilded temptation strikes the heart and dazles the mind we see that the Will rushes on it instantly consents and wishes heartily yet within a while the Spirit does recover out of the surprize puts by the thrusts of fancy and the stabs of the temptation and that Will languishes and dies like a velleity as if it had been nothing but a woulding and now the man would not by any means consent to the commission In this case though there be a guilt to be repented of and cleansed with many tears yet this is Innocence in the comparison but if the Will purpose contrive and do its utmost it is the same to the man as if he had committed 'T were easie to demonstrate this that whatsoever evil thing a man intends and does fixedly resolve he is guilty of though he do nothing or though the thing he chance to do be never so much lawful Those sayings of St. Paul I know and am persuaded by the Lord Jesus that there is no meat unclean of it self but to him that esteemeth any thing unclean to him it is unclean Rom. xiv 14. and he that doubteth is damned if he eat ver 23. These could have no truth in them unless the heart by choosing and pursuing to the utmost any thing that it does judg unlawful incurr'd the guilt of that unlawfulness even to Damnation and all that meerly by it self without the Action which in that case had nothing sinful in it A weight that is upheld by a mans hand and otherwise would rush down to the earth does surely gravitate as much it is as heavy though it do not fall quite down as if it did and were it let alone
God alone for thus expiation of sins was wrought Even so to make that expiation mine besides reliance on it I must transcribe the Copy of the Sufferings of that Son transplant the Garden of Gethsemane into my breast If his Soul be sorrowful even unto Death my Soul must be afflicted too Humiliations must prostrate me upon my face to deprecate that Fire and Brimstone burning Tempest that is the portion of the Sinners Cup saith David O my Father let this Cup pass from me The lustful Feavers of my blood must excern themselves in cold sweat of fear and grief in Agonies of Penitence and my excessive draughts not onely make me to cry out I thirst but give me Vinegar and Gall to drink sorrow as bitter as my riotous egestions have been my Oaths that have struck through the Name of God must pierce my Soul with grief as pungent as his Thorns and Nails In a word I must so afflict my Soul as to crucifie the body of sin and nail it to his Cross. And this is that which in its own proportion was required of the Jews this Day here in the Text to the work of which Day how the Afflicting of the Soul in both the given senses does contribute was my Second and the next Enquiry Secondly What this Day was the Verse before the Text informs us it was their Day of Expiation or Atonement Now that the Jews esteem Fasting and Humiliation expiatory Sacrifices appears from a Form of Prayer which even yet they use on such a day where he that fasted says O Lord the Governour of all the World I have now finished my Fast before thee thou knowest that when we had a Temple standing the man that sinned was bound to expiate it by a Sacrifice the Blood of which was poured out and the Altar consumed the Fat to make amends for his offence but now by reason of our many wickednesses we have neither a Temple Altar or Priest to make Atonement for us I beseech thee therefore O Lord my God the God of my Fathers to accept of that little portion of my own Flesh and Blood which this days Fasting hath torn from me in lieu of a Sin-offering and be thou reconciled unto me for thy mercies sake Thus when he cannot give a Lamb for his Transgression he gives some of himself he offers Hunger for Shewbread and Thirst for a Drink-offering he consecrates a Meal instead of a Beast and sheds a sower fasting sigh for Incense and this he hopes God will accept as Sacrifice And truly the Text says no day of Expiation could be kept without it Nor does the Scripture want great instances of its effect towards Atonement of Gods wrath How when Judgment was given on a Nation or Person and Execution going out against them yet this revers'd the Sentence Ahab is a great proof of this 1 King xxi 27. And it came to pass when Ahab heard those words that he rent his Clothes and put Sackcloth upon his flesh and Fasted and lay in Sackcloth and went softly And the word of the Lord came unto Elijah the Tishbite saying Seest thou how Ahab humbleth himself before me Because he humbleth himself before me I will not bring the evil in his days On Fasting-day secured a Life the weaknesses it brought upon the body upheld it against all Gods threats Vengeance pronounc'd and coming out against him falls to ground if Ahab humble and afflict his Soul Gods stretch'd out Arm will not strike Sackcloth nor wound through Fasting Garments One fit of it removes his Judgments a whole Age and had it been sincere and persevering how had it wip'd them out to everlastingness Ninive is another instance of the practice and success of this even among the Heathens Nor should it seem to have less Efficacy among Christians The Primitive Fathers call these severities Satisfaction for sin and Compensations the Price with which they are bought off the things that cover them and blot them out and which Propitiate and appease God for them not in their sense who force up these Expressions to a strange height of meaning and yet have quite beat down the Practice as to the publique wholesom use of them out of the Church But though these sayings assign not the Power and just Efficacy of that discipline in it self yet they do the acceptance and effect of it by virtue of Christs Satisfaction A Fainting Body cannot bear indeed the weight of our iniquities nor will lowest prostrations in the dust bury them in the dust or Tears alone blot out our Guilt but Christ having done that which is effectual to all this and requiring no more of thee to make that thine as he does every where most solemnly avow but faithful humbling of thy self in an afflictive sorrow for what 's past and so to mortifie as to work out Repentance the doing this is doing what he does require and consequently will accept These satisfie the Command and therefore God though not by a condignity of performance yet as Conditions which his Covenant of Grace hath set us which when they are fulfilled then God is satisfied thy sins are expiated and thou art pardoned And so in this lower sense these are thy Satisfactions with which God is well pleased And thus these self Afflictions of the Sinner supply Gods Indignation and divert it They leave no place nor business for it and by these short severities upon himself he does make void he does expunge the Sentence of eternal Torments saith Tertullian As thou becomest severe against thy self so will the Lord abate of his severities and he will spare and he will pity thee in that he sees thou wilt not spare thy self How can he choose but be appeased towards thee when he shall see thee executing his Sentence even upon thy own self and punishing his Enemies although they be thy Members so that by this means thou dost censure thy self into Gods Absolutions afflict thy self into his Pardons and dost condemn thy self into eternal Life Our Church says the same thing That in the Primitive Church there was a Godly Discipline that at the beginning of Lent such Persons as were notorious Sinners were put to open Pennance and punished in this World that their Souls might be saved in the Day of the Lord and she does wish if her wishes be of any force and value when her Orders and Constitutions are not that Discipline could be restored But this I shall not press if all those whom the Primitive Church Condemned or S. Paul sentenced were so used if every Schismatick that lies tearing himself and others off from the Lords Body were rejected and if the Fornicator that joyns himself to his unclean Accomplice were disjoined from Christ and not suffered to make his members be the members of an Harlot if every scandalous debauching Offender that lies corrupting Christs Body spreading Contagion thrusting the Gangreen forward were cut off and these and all
the rest delivered up to Satan alas what part would Christ have left of his own Body Sed illos defendit numerus junctaeque umbone phalanges and that I fear too in more senses than the Poet means Therefore I shall not urge the Churches Wish but onely see whether the Statute in the Text says any thing to this and whether the for ever do reach us Which is my Third and last Enquiry Thirdly Divers of the Jews Rites are said to be and be prescribed for ever although those very Rites and the whole oeconomy of their Covenant were to be chang'd and cease among other Reasons as the Fathers say because they foresignifie and point at things in the new Covenant which were to last till Covenants and Rites shall be no more and so their meaning and signification was to be for ever Now truly that their Expiation Performances those which I am upon did so the whole Epistle to the Hebrews is employ'd to prove the Margin of your Bibles in this Chapter so refer you to the places that I shall not need to make it out Christ did fulfill the Temple and the Altar part yea and the refuse outcast part of the Atonement satisfied the Religion and the contempt of that days Offices He was the whole true Expiation Now does this Expiation as theirs did require afflicting of the Soul in its attendance or was that but a Ceremony of their Rite and though a Jew must mourn and Fast to see his sin killing a Beast and when he does behold his wickedness eating up a Goat for a Sin-offering he must deny himself his daily bread and suffer thirst if his Iniquities drink but the blood of Bullocks yet when we behold ours embrew themselves in the Blood of the Son of God not onely lay hands and Confessions on his Head but drive Thorns into it make him cry out almost despair and Die we need not be concern'd so much as to do ought of that either in order to the better Celebration of that Expiation or on the very day of it Indeed if we consider most mens practices it would appear most probable that if we were to expiate our sins as the Jews did by sacrificing of our Flocks not of our Jesus those satisfactions would more afflict our Souls and more restrain our Vices than that which was made for us by the Death of Christ and how can this be rectified unless by some severities upon our selves we give our selves a piercing sense of what our sin deserves and grateful apprehensions of what our Surety suffer'd for us When in sad private earnest I have thought fit to Afflict my Soul with some austere mortifications and when my fainting Spirits are scarce able to sustain my Body that sinks under the load of it self then I may have some tender apprehensions of that weight that sunk the Son of God and 't was my weight that he fell under But he that cannot think fit to revenge a year of follies and of Vices with a few weeks severer life sure thinks his Saviour suffered much in vain quorsum perditio haec why must the Blood of God be paid for sin when I cannot afford a little self-denial for it Why such great Agonies of the Holy Jesus when I cannot find in my heart to bear a little strictness for it But I could easily deduce were I not to suppose it done before that sure as if the Church had thought a Statute had annext these two for ever they have been joyn'd from the beginnings of our Christianity it was the Fast that did attend our Saviours sufferings that in part caused the Contest about Easter which Polycarpe S. John's Disciple manag'd and then there was a Fast so soon and he that tells us this Irenaeus Scholar to that Polycarpe says some observ'd it many days some forty days also if we can take the Antient Ruffinus's authority but for a Comma And if the Antient Fathers do expound aright Christ himself thought that men were interested so much in his Death that they would Fast by reason of it When the Bridegroom is taken from them then shall they Fast in those days Upon which words they say the Season was determin'd to this Duty by the Gospel But they may say so who knew how to persuade men to take up restraints of strictest discipline and of severest Piety But we cannot engage them into Order or from Scandal they made them fast we cannot make them temperate Blessed Saviour what kind of Christians didst thou hope for thy Disciples of whom thou wer't so confident they would so concern themselves in thy Passion as to Fast because of it when in our times Christians will not be kept from their Excesses by it not in those days of Fasting which thy Primitive followers did Celebrate with abstinencies that did almost mortifie indeed and slay the Body of Flesh as well as Sin and we in imitation of them in answer of thy confidences will not abate a Meal nor an intemperance will eat and Riot too and make a Lent of Bacchanals Thus we prepare load for thy Day of Passion sin on to add weight to thy Cross and yet we our selves will not be humbled under them It is in vain to tell men thou expectest they should mortifie that it will spirit their Repentance for they will have no kind of Penitence for sin but such as will let them return to sin again suffer no discipline with which their Vices too cannot consist for they can scarce live if they make not themselves chearful with them even in this time of Sadness and in sight of the Memorial of thy sufferings for them Indeed when I consider how this Season is hodg'd in from Vice by all Gods Indignation threatned at first suffered at last pronounc'd in Commination executed in Passion Ashwednesday gave us all Gods Curses against Sinners all which Good Friday shews inflicted on our Saviour Thus we began Cursed are the Vnmerciful the Fornicators and Adulterers the Covetous persons Worshippers of Images Slanderers Drunkards and Extortioners and we shall see the Son of God made this Curse for them yea we our selves said Amen to all as testifying that that Curse is due to all When I consider this I say I cannot choose but be astonish'd to behold how men can break through all Gods Curses and their own to get at Vice first seal Gods Maledictions then provoke and incur them instantly as if they lov'd and would commit a Rape upon Perdition as if because men have so long in Oaths beg'd God to damn them and he hath not done it yet they would now do it in their Prayers too make their Devotions as well as Imprecations consign them to the wrath of God He that does love cursing thus in the Passive sense surely as David says it shall come unto him it shall be unto him as the Garment that covereth him it shall enter into his bowels like Water and like Oyl into his
Bones Psal. Cix 17 18 19. And truly amongst those things which we did Curse there are that will fulfill all that most literally the Riots of thy gaudy bravery that make thee gripe extort spend thy own Wealth and other mens undo thy self and Creditors be sordid and in Debt meerly to furnish trappings to dress thy self for others eyes and may be sins these bring a Curse to cover thee as does thy Garment yea and they gird it to thee The draughts of thy Intemperance carry the malediction down into the Bowels like Water yea like the Wine into the very Spirits There is another of them too that will conveigh the Curse like Oil into the Bones till it eat out the marrow and leave nothing but it self to dwell within them yea till it putrefie the Bones till it prevent the Grave and Judgment too while the living Sinner invades the rottenness of the one and torments of the other and then the Lents and abstinencies that the sin prescribes shall be observed exactly onely to qualifie them for more sin and condemnation may be at the best but to recover them from what it hath inflicted when â—et alas they are too soft and tender the Lord knows to endure any â—rities to work out their Repentance and Atonement and yet sure â—se the Sinner does go through have nothing to commend them which these others do not much more abound with If those are not grievous to thee because they are so wholesom and though it be a miserable thing to go through all their painful squalid methods yet how disgustful soever by the benefit of their Cure they excuse their offensiveness and ingratiate the present injury they do the Flesh by the succeeding health they help thee to and by the Death they do secure thee from Why sure to omit that the other have all these advantages none have so calm and so establish'd health as the abstemious and continent and their mind is still serene their temper never clouded but besides this the Christians bitter Potions do purge away that sickness that would end in Death eternal his fastings starve that worm that otherwise would gnaw the Soul immortally his weepings quench the everlasting burnings yea there is chearful Pleasure in the midst of these severities when God breaks in in Comforts into them The Glory of the Lord appears in that Cloud too that is upon the penitent sad heart when he is drench'd in tears the Holy Ghost the Comforter does move upon those waters and breaths Life and Salvation into them and he who is the Vnction pours Oil into those wounds of the Spirit and we are never nearer Heaven than when we are thus prostrate in the lowest dust and when our Belly cleaveth unto the ground in humble penitence then we are at the very Throne of Grace And this our light afflicting of the Soul which is but for a moment does work for us a far more exceeding weight of Glory To which c. The Fourth SERMON Preached at WHITE-HALL October 12. 1662. JOHN XV. 14. Ye are my Friends if ye do whatsoever I Command you THE words are a conditional Assertion of Christ's concerning his Apostles and in them all Christians And they do easily divide themselves into two parts The First is a positive part wherein there is a state of great and Blessed advantage which they are declared to be in present possession of In these words Ye are my Friends In which there are two things that make up that advantage 1. A Relation 2. The Person related to Friends and My Friends The Second is a Conditional part wherein there are the terms upon which that Possession is made over and which preserve the Right and Title to them in these words If ye do whatsoever I command you in which there are two things required as Conditions I. Obedience If ye do what I command you II. That Obedience Universal If ye do whatsoever I command you The first thing that offers it self to our consideration is the Relation Friends It is a known common-place Truth that a Friend is the most useful thing that is in whatsoever state we are It is the Soul of life and of content If I be in prosperity We know abundance not enjoy'd is but like Jewels in the Cabinet useless while they are there It is indeed nothing but the opinion of Prosperity But 't is not possible to enjoy abundance otherwise than by communicating it a man possesseth plenty onely in his Friends and hath fruition of it meerly by bestowing it If I be in adversity to have a person whom I may intrust a trouble to whose bosom is as open and as faithful to me as 't is to his own thoughts to which I may commit a swelling secret this is in a good measure to unlade and to pour out my sorrow from me thus I divide my grievances which would be insupportable if I did not disburthen my self of some part of them Now there is no bosom so safe as that where friendship lodges take Gods Opinion in the case Deut. xiii 6. If thy Brother the Son of thy Mother or thy Son or thy Daughter or the Wife of thy bosom or thy Friend that is as thine own Soul This is the highest step in the Gradation And there is all the reason in the World for though Parent and Child are as near one to other as any thing can be to part of it self Husband and Wife are but two different names of the same one yet these may become bitter and unkind A Parent may grow cross or a Child refractory a Mother may be like the Ostrich in the Wilderness throw off her bowels with her burthen and an ungracious Son is constant pangs and travail to his Mother his whole life gives her after-throws which are most deadly Dislikes also may rest within the Marriage-Bed and lay their heads upon two wedded Pillows but none of these unkindnesses can untie the Relation that ends not where the bitterness begins he is a Parent still though froward and a Child though stubborn but a true Friend can be nothing but kind it does include a dearness in its essence which is so inseparable from it that they begin and end together A man may be an Husband without loving but cannot be a lover that is a Friend without loving And sure to have no one Friend in this Life no one that is concerned in any of my interests or me my self none that hath any cares or so much as good wishes for me is a state of a most uncomfortable prospect The Plague that keeps Friends at a distance from me while I live out of the sphere of my infection and after gives me Death hath yet less of Malignity than this that leaves me the Compassions the Prayers all the solitary Comforts all indeed but the outward entertainments of my Friends that though it shut the Door against all company yet puts a Lord have Mercy on the Door But this
and deprecates and when he durst not meet the apprehensions wilt thou stand the storm see what a sting death hath when it makes out-lets for such clots and globes of Blood and stings the Soul so too that it pours out it self in Sweat And then he sinks again under the deprecation of it and prays that that Cup may pass from him Blessed Saviour when thou hadst just now made thy Death thy Legacy thy Sacrament dost thou intreat to scape this death if this Cup pass from thee what will the Cup of Blessing profit us thou hadst but now bequeathed a Cup to us which was the New Testament in thy Blood and now wilt thou not shed that Blood But dost thou refuse thy Cup Oh 't was a Cup of deadly Wine red with God Indignation poison'd with Sin And can the Sinner thirst for the Abyss of this the Lake that hath no bottom and when he goes again and prays the same words the third time be yet not onely so supine as not ask to scape it seldom and very sleight in any Prayer or wish against it but also so resolv'd to have it as to gape that he may swill it down to everlastingness Follow him from that Garden and you see him even dying under his Cross he cannot bear that when it is laden with sin who yet upholdeth all things by the word of his Power 'T is said the time will come when the Sinner will cry out to the Hills to fall on him any weight but that of iniquity the burden of that is intolerable 't is easier for him to bear a Mountain than a Vice and yet Christ saith he hath a beam in his Eye and can he shrink at any weight whose part that is most sensible tender to an expression can bear that which shoulders must fall under onely Pillars can sustain Oh yes that which did sink the shoulders of Omnipotence Then the Mountains rather and the Rocks to cover but in vain they will not cover for thy very Groans will rent them Christ's were so sad that his did they tore the Rocks and that which is much more inflexible the Monuments Death started at them and the bonds of the Grave loosened and the Dust was frighted into Resurrection and more the Hypostatick Union seem'd rent by them the God to have forsaken his own Person And can the Sinner hope to stand this shock will the courage of his Iniquity make his heart harder than those Rocks more insensible than the Grave and better able to endure than he that was a God and will you die into this state eternally which it was necessary for him to have the assistance of Divinity in his Person that he might be able to endure one day and which yet notwithstanding made one day intolerable The sum is this a Person so desiring Death and yet so dreading it and sinking under the essays of it and this Person the Son of God and that dread meerly because there was sin in the Death for if this were not in the cause no Martyr but had born death with more courage but that Son of God all this as it does leave no Reason for the Sinners choice of death Eternal so neither doth it leave a possibility of bearing it And if so give me leave in God's Name to Expostulate the last imployment of these words Why will ye die After this killing Prospect while the damp of it is on you let my Bowels debate with you which yearn more over you than they did over my Beloved Son in whom I was well pleased when I have sent my only Son God one with my own Self to be made Man that he might suffer what was necessary to be suffer'd to preserve you from eternal sufferings when I have laid on him that was brought up with me from everlasting and that was daily my Delight all your Iniquities and my own Indignation that so you might be freed from both When I have found out made an Expiation with which I am more pleased than ever your transgressions offended me which hath quite blotted out your sins and my Displeasure when your Redemption from death is made the Ransom paid the Price is in my hand why do you then refuse your selves your own Eternal Blessedness which was thus dearly purchas'd and is ready for you Why will you seize that Indignation which you are redeemed from and force those sufferings on your selves which have been laid already and inflicted on another 'T is a small thing that you refuse me the return of my Expence that which I gave my Son for but do you renounce Happiness because my Love and Blood is in it and will you die because you may and I desire you should live when my Son went from the essential felicities of my Bosom to embrace Agonies and dy'd for you why will you also die as you have slain his Person will you Crucifie his Kindness too and crucifie your selves rather than have it and having us'd him most despightfully will you therefore use his favours so and not let his Death and Passion do you any good contemn his methods of Salvation his divine Acts of making you for ever Blessed is your Saviour and Life it self so hateful to you and after such Redemption of your persons is there no redemption of your Will from perishing nothing of value that can bribe your choice against it nothing that can betroth you into a desire of Life and take you off from your resolves to die had I set no advantage on the other side if sin had sweetned misery to your Palate it had been no such great despite and contradiction to Appetite but when Heaven and the Joys of God are in the Scale against it to prefer Misery is Wretchless beyond aggravation Oh why will you rather die Those very things that tempt your Wills were they abstracted from the death they do inveigle you into were they sincere and innocent if they were set against that Life that blessed life immortal Life would vanish quite in the comparison when you should see they are but frolicks of delight that never take you but when you are turn'd up to them in moods and fits and the complacencies you take in them are but starts of Appetite that swells and breaks out to them and then falls again and so the pleasures die even in the birth and therefore cannot satisfie indeed do but disquiet an immortal appetite such as man's is so that it were impossible to choose a life these rather although there were no misery annex'd to them if you consider'd For it were to resolve that a few drops were more than an immence Ocean of Delight a Moment longer than Eternity a Part were bigger than the Whole an Atome greater than an Infinite Now there is nothing then that can prefer these to your choice but the Death only and Oh will ye without and against all Temptation Will ye die O thou my Soul take
kind when the sins therefore lie in the Attire and they may put them off without a Metaphor yet it is so hard that it cannot be done sometimes the worth of a whole Province hangs upon a slender thread about a Neck a Patrimony thrust upon one joint of one least Finger and these warts of a Rock or a Shell-fish with the appendages eat out Estates and starve poor Creditors for whom indeed they should command these stones to be made bread but that 's a Miracle too stubborn for their Vertue And then how will they proceed to the next expression of this Duty Circumcise your selves to the Lord and take away the foreskin of your hearts Jer. iv 4. These are harder and more bloody words they differ in the pain and anguish that they put us to as much as to uncloath and flea would do It appears indeed this punishment of fleaing often went before the Cross. To 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saith Ctesias of one having his Skin pull'd off he was Crucified And the scourges in some measure did inflict this on our Saviour when they put off his Cloaths they strip'd his Skin also left him no covering but some rags of that which whipping had torn from his flesh Yet this expression sounds harsher when it bids us circumcise the foreskin of our hearts and tear it from thence flea that When long Conversation with the pleasures of a sin hath not onely given them Regallias but hath made them necessary to us so as that we cannot be without them when Custom craves with greater feaver than our thirst when if we want it we have qualms saintings of Soul as if the life were in that blood of the grape when men can part as easily with their own bowels as the Luxuries that feed them if you take away their Dishes then you take their Souls which dwell in them when the sins of the Bed are as neâ—dful and refreshing as the sleeps of it when to bid a man not look not satisfie his lustful eye is every jot as cruel as that other Iâ— thine eye offend thee pluck it out For if he must no more find pleasure in his sight he hath no use of it yea if this be indeed a kindness not to leave him Eyes to be to him the same as Appetite to Tantalus that which he must not satisfie and is his hell 'T is easie if the Lust be got no further than the Eye to pull them out together but if through that it shoot into the Blood and Spirits mix heats with those if it enwrap the heart twist with its strings and warm the Soul with its desires so that it Spirit all the motions all the thoughts and wishes of the heart when it is thus to make the heart to stifle its own motions stab its thoughts and strangle all its wishes to untwist and disentangle and to tear it thence if this be to be Circumcised with the Circumcision of Christ and he that hath not the sign of this the Seal of the New Covenant as he that in the Old had not the other was must be cut off our long habituated hardned Sinners must not think that there is any thing of true Repentance in their easie perfunctory sleight performances there is something like Death in the Duty which yet is required of us farther under variety of more severe expressions for we are bid thirdly to slay the Body of Sin Rom. vi 6. to mortifie our members Col. iii. 5. and to Crucifie Gal. vi 14. which how it may be done the next consideration of S. Paul's condition in the Text and my next part declare I am Crucified with Christ that is first as he was by being made conformable to his Death And truly should we trace him through all the stages of his Passion we should hardly find one passage but is made to be transcribed by us in dealing with our sins First he began it with Agony when his Soul was exceeding heavy for it labour'd with such weight of indignation as did make the Son of God to sink under the meer apprehension And he was sorrowful unto Death so as that his whole Body did weep Blood The Sinners passion his Repentance is exactly like it it begins always with grief and sense of weight whoever is regenerate was conceiv'd in sorrow and brought forth with pangs and the Child of God too is born weeping And for loads the Church when she does call us to shew forth this Death of Christ as if she did prescribe that very Agony requires that we should find that Garden at the Altar makes us say we are heartily sorry for our misdoings the remembrance of them is grievous unto us the burden of them is intolerable So that the Sinner's Soul must be exceeding heavy too Secondly There he is betrayed by his own domestick sold for the poorest Price imaginable as a Slave for thirty pieces of silver I shall not mind you what unworthy things the love of Money does engage men to to sell a Christ a Saviour and a God! and rather than stand out at such a base rate as we scorn to buy a sin at every single act 's engagement to Damnation costs more than the Ransom of the World is sold for and the Blood of God is purchas'd cheaper than any one opportunity of Vice does stand us in But I onely mind you here that he shall have a better hire that will but be a Judas to his own iniquities do but betray the Regent sins deliver them up and thou shalt have everlasting Heaven Thirdly We find him next carried before the High Priest And the strictest times of Christianity would serve their sins so to receive his doom upon them to be excommunicated into Reformation But I shall not urge how we can discover to a Physician our shames all our most putrid Guilts as well as Ulcers and make him our Confessor in our most secret sins neither will I be inquisitive why the Physicians of our souls are balk'd but will pass this part of the Conformity and follow Christ to Pontius Pilate And for this part we our selves are fitted the whole furniture of a Judicial Court all that makes up both Bench and Bar is born within us God hath given us a Conscience whereby we are a Law to our selves Rom. ii We have 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which the Jews did want such evidence as is sufficient to condemn us the same Conscience that is privy to our doings and stands by our thoughts and sees through our intentions is a thousand witnesses And that there may be a Prosecutor our own thoughts accuse us saith S. Paul and if we will give them way will aggravate each Circumstance of guilt and danger bark and howl and cry as loud against us as the Jews did against Christ for Sin is of so murthering a guilt it will be sure to slay it self and that he may not want his deserved Ruin the Sinner makes his
likeness of his death by being made conformable to that in crucifying of our sins we are inoculated as it were and both together ingraffed in into the Cross and so there is deriv'd to us the vertue of that Stem that Root of Expiation and Atonement and by this insertion being as the same S. Paul says Phil. iii. 9. found in him we have his Righteousness That poor Soul that does throw himself down in the strict humiliations of Repentance at the footstool of the Cross and there beholds his Saviour dying for him and that is himself by Penitence incorporated into him graffed into his Death and planted in his very Passion as Origen and Thomas interpret He may take confidence to say Behold Lord if the satisfactions of thy Eternal Justice be acceptable to thee if the blood of God that is offer'd up without spot be a well-pleasing Sacrifice look down at once on thy Messiah and on my poor Soul turn not thy face from me for whatever my guilts are I have an equal Sacrifice those are my satisfactions and that blood my Offering the Passion and propitiation of the Cross are 〈◊〉 I am Crucified with Christ. We have gone through all the Parts all the Considerations of this Expression and have no more now to take notice of but this that all of them must go together that they never are fulfill'd asunder but he only whom the efficacy of the Cross of Christ hath wrought on to the Crucifying of sin he onely hath the satisfactions of the Cross imputed to him he is planted with ingraffed into Christ For if any man be i◠Christ he is a new creature old things are done away 2 Cor. v. 17. Whosoever is not such he hath no interest in the Jesus of that day He may perchance in some one of those easie Saviours which these times afford wherein Opinions call'd holy or a sanctify'd Faction give such interests and to be in a party is to be in Christ or else he may depend upon that Christ that may be had with meer Dependance that is ours if we persuade our selves he is so Now sure he that is persuaded he is Christ's is either truly so persuaded or else falsly if but falsly that will not advantage him for God will never save a man for believing a lye but that he should truly be persuaded so without this Duty is impossible for he that is Christ's hath crucified the Flesh with the Affections and Lusts therefore by good Logick he that hath not crucified them is not Christ's and evidently whosoever is not crucified at all he is not crucified with Christ. And sure I need not put you in remembrance that the man in whom sin reigns and whensoever his Lusts and Passions bid him go he goeth or come he cometh or do this he doeth it that the body of sin is not crucified in him that which were nailed and fetter'd on the Cross and slain there could not command and rule him so Or if sins dominion be not so absolute but God hath got some footing so as that his Law hath power in the man's mind so as to make him make resistances against his sin and he dislikes it but alas commits it still yet what he does allows not but returns to do it at the next Temptation afterwards would fain be good yet does not find how to perform something governs in his members leading that Law in his mind into captivity to the law of sin this man although he hath the body of death yet 't is not crucified and slain for it does live and exercise the greatest tyranny upon him forces him to serve and to obey against his mind it overcomes his own heart and all inclinations to good and conquers God within him Till men have left off the custom of the works of sin and all gross deeds of the flesh it were as vain to prove they are not crucified as that he is alive that walks and eats Those works they are the fruits of the flesh the off-spring of its lusts and were that crucified and we by likeness to Christ's death planted into the Cross we could no more produce them than that dead Tree the Cross could bear fruit or than a Carcass could have heat to generate the Grave become a Womb or the dust bring forth Secondly Yea more they perform not the outward actions of life who have but the image of death on them and a man asleep works not yet is alive his fancy and his inwards work and if sin be onely kept from breaking out and men commit not gross deeds of the flesh but yet indulge to these things in imagination and the heart cherish them in phansie and design and wish onely restrain the practice or indulge to spiritual wickednesses you may as well say that a man is dead because he does not walk abroad because he keeps within doors and lives only in his Closet or his Bed Chamber as say that sin is crucified which while it stirs but in the heart it is not dead Thirdly Once more we part from all acquaintance with the dead the Corps of one that had the same Soul with us howsoever we may have some throes of grief to leave it yet we put it from us we admit it to no more embraces but if 't were the loathsom Carcass of a Villain Traytor that was Executed we turn from the sight as from a Fiend it is a detestable and accursed spectacle And so he that hath put his Body of sin to death would have great aversations to it yea how dear soever it had been he would no more endure the least acquaintance with it than he would go seek for his old conversations in the Chambers of Death he would shun the sight of any the most bosom custom as he would the Ghost of his dead Friend he would abandon it as a most ghastly dreadful spectacle he would also bury these his dead out of his sight Thus he must needs be dispos'd that hath crucified his Old man And they that are thus dead with Christ shall also live with him yea those that are thus crucified with him he hath already rais'd up together and hath made them sit together in Heavenly places in Christ Jesus There already in their cause and in their right and pledge and there hereafter in effect and full enjoyment The Tenth SERMON Preached at CHRIST-CHURCH IN OXFORD Novemb. 5. 1665. LUKE IX 55. Ye know not what manner of Spirit ye are of THE state of that great Controversie which the words suppose between the Jews and the Samaritans as it then stood seems briefly thus Those that were planted in the Regions of Samaria by Salmaneser however great Idolaters at first having admitted in a while the God of Israel among their Gods and after having an High Priest of Aaron's Line a Temple too built on that place where Abraham and the Fathers of the Hebrews friends of God did chuse to offer Sacrifice and on that
account of Christ or of Religion is most inconsistent with the Spirit of the Gospel For it was the Spirit of Elias who destroyed those whom the Magistrate did send that Christ opposes here the Spirit of the Gospel to in this severe rebuke ye know not what manner of Spirit ye are of The other warm Apostle meets a greater check in the like case S. Peter's zeal that they say made him chief of the Apostles as it made him promptest to confess the Lord so it did heat him to be readiest to defend him as fiery to use his Sword as his Tongue for his Master But his Master will not let a Sword be drawn in his own cause put up again thy Sword into his place The God of our Religion will not be defended by Treason and from Murder by the wounding of another nor will his Religion suffer a Sword out of the sheath against the Power of the Magistrate no not in behalf of Christ himself but goes beyond its proper bounds to threaten things that are not Gospel punishments even excision in this life to them that do attempt it They that take the Sword shall perish with the Sword Here the Gospel becomes Law and turns zealot for the Magistrate though persecuting Christ himself Our Saviour does not think it sharp enough to tell S. Peter that he did not know what Spirit he was of for when this Disciple would have kept these sufferings from his Master onely by his counsel he replies to him get thee behind me Satan He was then of that manner of Spirit therefore now that he does so much worse when he attempts to keep them from him with a Sword and drawn against the Power as if Christ did not know how to word what Spirit such attempts did savour of he does not check and rebuke now but threaten and denounce And 't is obvious to observe that this same Peter who would needs be fighting for his Master in few hours with most cursed imprecations forswears him And so irregular illegal violences for Religion usually flame out into direct opposition to that they are so zealous for fly in the face of that Religion they pretend to strive for to let us see they do not rise from Divine Zeal and from true Piety but from Hypocrisie Ambition Revenge or Interest and that warm shine that kindles there pretended Angels of Light is but a flash of Hell a glory about a fiend Therefore afterwards none was more forward than S. Peter was to press submission to the Magistrate though most unjustly persecuting for Religion talks of no Fire but the fiery trial then in Epist. 1. Cap. iv and If ye suffer for the Name of Christ the Spirit of glory and of God resteth upon you he knows what manner of Spirit such are of When they are in the place of Dragons then the Holy Ghost and God is with them when the darkness of the shadow of death is on their Souls even then the Spirit of glory resteth on them Accordingly the after-Fathers urge the same not onely towards Heathen Emperours but relaps'd Hereticks and Apostates As Julian and Constantius Valens Valentinian and upon the same account S. Ambrose says Spiritus Sanctus id locutus est in vobis Rogamus Auguste non Pugnamus The Holy Spirit spake these words in you we beg O Valentinian we oppose not And S. Greg. Nazianzen says to do so was the Christian Law most excellently ordained by the Spirit of God who knew best to temper his Law with the mixture of what is profitable to us and honest in it self They knew what manner of Spirit that of Christianity was It does assume no power to inflict it self 'T is not commission'd to plant it self with violence or destroy those that refuse or oppose it It wages War indeed with Vices not with men And in the Camp of our Religion as once in Israel there is no Sword found but with Saul and Jonathan his Son onely the Princes Sword Our Spirit is the Dove no Bird of prey that nor indeed of gall or passion If Christian Religion be to be writ in Blood 't is in that of its own confessors onely if mens false Opinions make no parties nor mischiefs in the State we are not to make them Martyrs to their false Opinions and if they be not so happy as to be Orthodox send them down to Hell directly tear out one anothers Souls to tear out that which we think an Errour Sure they must not root out smutted Corn that must not root out Poppy we may let that which is a little blasted grow if we must let the Tares and Darnel grow The Soldiers would not crucifie Christ's Coat nor make a rent there where they could find no seam But now men strive so for the Coat that they do rent his Flesh to catch it and to gain an inclosure of the name of Christians tear all other members from the Body of Christ care not to sacrifice a Nation to a supposed Errour will attempt to purge away what they call dross in a Furnace of consuming flame The Christian Spirit 's fiery Tongues must kindle no such heats but his effusions call'd Rivers came to quench such fires Effusions that were mistaken sor new wine indeed but never look'd like Blood Nor are they that retain to this Spirit those that have him call'd down on them in their Consecration impowered for such uses When Christ sent his Disciples to convert the World Behold saith he I send you forth as Lambs among Wolves And sure that does not sound like giving a Commission to tear and worry those that would not come into the Flock The Sheep were not by that impowered to devour the Wolves Our Lords directions to his Apostles when a City would not receive their Doctrine was shake off the dust of your feet let nothing of theirs cleave to you have no more to do with them cast off the very dust that setled on your Sandals as you pass'd their Streets And surely then we must be far from animating to give ruin to and seize the Sword the Scepter and the Thrones of Kings if they refuse to receive Christ or his Kingdom or his Reformation or his Vicar If I must not have the dust of any such upon my feet I must not have their Land in my possession their Crowns on my head their Wealth in my Coffers their Blood upon my hands nor their Souls upon my Sword It will be ill appearing so when we come to give an account how we have executed our Commission and shall be ask'd did I send you to inflict the Cross or preach it to save mens Souls or to destroy their lives yea and Souls too And when in those Myriads of Souls that have perish'd in the desolations which such occasions have wrought their Blood shall cry from under the Altar as being sacrific'd to that Duty and Religion which was the
interpose to hinder it and hide the possibilities of mercy from their eyes that they may never see them nor recover What can then become of those for whom God does contrive that they shall not escape when instead of those bowels that did make him swear he would not have the sinner die but would have him return and live he puts on so much indignation at such Sinners as to take an order they shall not repent and take an order that they shall be damn'd And yet all this is onely to those men who being dull of hearing the suggestions of the Spirit and not willing to give entertainment to his holy motions grieve him so that they repell and drive him quite away and so by consequence onely make way for the Devil Whereas there are others that directly call him force him to them ravish and invade occasions to serve him Some there are that study how to disbelieve and with great labour and contrivance work out arguments and motives to persuade themselves to Atheism Others practise discipline and exercise themselves to be engag'd in Vice Some dress so as to lay baiâ—s snares to entrap Temptation that they may be sure it may not pass them Others feed high to invite and entertain the Tempter do all that is possible to make him come and to assure him that he must prevail when they have made it most impossible for themselves to stand and to resist Some there are indeed whom he does not overcome so easily but is put to compound with them takes them upon Articles for when he would ingage them to a sin to which he sees they have great inclinations with some fears he is fain to persuade them to repent when they have done to lay hold upon the present opportunity and not let the satisfaction escape them but be sorry after and amend For where these resolutions of Repentance usher in transgression there we may be sure it is the Devil that suggests those resolutions But if he can get admittance once thus by prevailing with a person to receive him upon purposes of after-Penitence he is sure to prosper still in his attempts upon the same condition For Repentance will wash out another sin if he commit it and so on And it is evident that by this very train he does draw most men on through the whole course of sin and life For never do they till they see themselves at the last stage begin repenting When they are to grapple with Death's forces then they are to set upon resisting of the Devil And when they are grown so weak that their whole Soul must be imployed to muster all its spirits all their strength but to beat off one little spot of phlegm that does besiege the avenues of breath the ports of life and sally at it and assault it once again and a third many times and yet with all the sury of its might cannot break through nor beat off that little clot of spittle when it is thus yet then are they to wrestle with and Conquer Principalities and Powers all the Rulers of the utter darkness pull down the strong holds of sin within cast down imaginations and every high thing that did exalt it self against the knowledg of God and bring into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ and with those feeble hands that they are scarcely able to lift up in a short wish or prayer they must do all this resist the Devil and take Heaven by force Now sure to put it off to such a fatal season is a purpose of a desperate concern In God's Name let us set upon the doing it while there is something left of Principle and vigor in us ere we have so griev'd Gods Spirit that he do resolve to leave us utterly and before the Devil have so broke us to his yoke that we become content and pleas'd to do his drudgery We deceive our selves if we think to do it with more ease when Constitution is grown weaker as if then Temptations would not be so â—rong For the Habits will be then confirm'd Vice grown Heroical and we wholly in the power of Satan dead and sensless under it not so much as stirring to get out But if we strive before he have us in his clutches we have an Enemy that can vanquish none but those who consent to and comply and confederate with him those that will be overcome So that if we resist he must be Conquer'd and Temptation must be conquer'd too for he will flie and then by consequence must cease to trouble and molest us This is the sure way to be rid of Temptations to put to flight the great Artificer and Prince of them subdue and overcome him and our selves And to him that overcometh thus Christ will grant to sit with him on his Throne as He also overcame and sate down with his Father on his Throne To which c. The Fourteenth SERMON Preached at WHITE-HALL Last Wednesday in LENT 1667 8. PHILIPP III. 18. For many walk of whom I have told you often and now tell you even weeping that they are the Enemies of the Cross of Christ. THough many by the Cross of Christ here understand any sort of Suffering for the sake of Christ or Religion it being usual with the Scripture to entitle Christ to every evil that befals a man for doing of his duty yet others looking on it properly as that on which Christ himself suffered by the Enemies of the Cross understand those that set themselves against the whole design and influence of Christ's death upon it Now to name that in few words the Cross of Christ not onely is one of the greatest Props on which our Faith of the whole Gospel leans which it establisheth the truth of as Christs Bloud shed upon it was the sanction of the Covenant on Gods part who by that federal Rite of shedding Bloud engag'd himself and we may certainly assure our selves he cannot fail to make good whatsoever he hath promised in that Covenant who would give the Bloud of his own only Son who was so holy and who was himself to Seal that Covenant and his Bloud is therefore called the Bloud of the Everlasting Covenant But besides this extrinsick influence of it all the blessed Mercies also of the Gospel are the Purchase of this Cross and all the main essential duties of the Gospel are not onely Doctrines of the Cross such as it directs and does inforce but the Cross also hath an immediate efficacy in the working of them in us For S. Paul saith by the Cross of Christ the World is Crucified to me and I unto the World On it the Flesh is also crucified with the Affections and Lusts And to say all that comprehensive Duty of the Gospel Self-denial is but another word for taking up the Cross And then as for the Mercies of the Gospel on the Cross the satisfaction for our sins was made the Price of
our Redemption paid and that effected There was wrought our Reconciliation with our God Lastly that was the consideration upon which Grace was bestowed whereby we are enabled to perform our duty With good reason therefore S. Paul calls the Gospel 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the word or Doctrine of the Cross so that the Enemies of the Cross of Christ are in a word the Enemies of Christianity and so the blessed Polycarpe in his Epistle to these same Philippians seems to understand it And they that walk as Enemies to it are such as do not onely hate the Duties of the Gospel those especially which the Cross directly does inforce but their course of life is order'd so as to break the very Frame and Power of Christianity they set themselves against all that Christ came to do upon and by the Cross resist and wage War with the Doctrines and by consequence oppose the mercies of it The words being thus explain'd I have no more to do but onely answer two Enquiries which they give occasion for The first is What sort of men those are that walk as Enemies to the Cross and wherein their hostility does express it self The second is What the danger and the sadness is of that condition that they should make S. Paul think it necessary frequently to warn them of it and to do it now with so much passion For many walk saith he of whom I have told you often and now tell you even weeping c. First for the first And here I shall not strive to give you in a perfect list of all that walk as Enemies to the Cross but shall take that which S. Paul hath made ready to my hands in the next words And first the Enemies which he brings up in the front are the Sensualists the Men whose God is their Belly Secondly They whose glory is in their shame Thirdly Who mind Earthly things to which as being their confederates and near Allyes I shall add Fourthly Those that he reckons up in the 1 Cor. i. the wise men of this World First The Sensualists That Men who diligently mind the serving of their appetite in Meats and Drinks that study and contrive its pleasure and with industry have learn'd and practise Arts of Luxury and in those have set up their delights that these should be accounted Enemies of the Cross of Christ there is but too much reason For their course of life is perfect opposition to that Cross and to the whole design of Christianity and to the very being of all Vertue For since Vertue is but moderation and restraint of Appetites and Passions and since sensuality indulges and does raise and heat them since the whole design of Christianity is to mortifie the deeds of the Body those our members upon earth that Body of Sin and Death and since Voluptuousness quickens pampers and does make them vigorous lastly since the Doctrines and the Influences of the Cross of Christ do aim at Crucifying the flesh with its Affections and Lusts and Luxuries do gorge and make them ramping sure the Enmity is too apparent to be prov'd It is the business of Religion to instruct and frame men into reasonable Creatures God himself chose to die upon the Cross that we might live like Men here and then afterwards die into Sons of God and become equal to the Angels He suffered on the Tree that we might be renewed into that constitution which the Tree of Knowledg did disorder and debauch Before Man aâ—e of that his lower Soul was in perfect subordination to his mind and every motion of his appetite did attend the dictates of his Reason and obey them with that resignation and ready willingness which our outward faculties do execute the Wills commands with then any thing however grateful to the senses was no otherwise desired than as it serv'd the regular and proper ends and uses of his making there was a rational harmony in all the tendencies of all his parts and that directed modulated by the rules and hand of God that made them In fine then Grace was Nature Vertue Constitution Now to reduce us to this state as near as possible is the business of Religion as it had been in some kind the attempt also of Philosophy But this it can in no degree effect but as it does again establish the subordination of the sensual to the reasonable part within us That is till by denying satisfactions to the Appetite which is now irregular and disorderly in its desires we have taught it how to want them and to be content without them and by that means have subdu'd its inclinations or by taking down the Body have abated of its powers and its provocations and where it is stubborn heady and rebellious there by cutting off provisions from the flesh and by sharp methods vanquish'd and reduc'd it into a condition of Obedience and whenever that is also necessary weakens so that insolent untam'd part of our selves that we make it lie fainting groveling at our feet these are the Doctrines of the Cross and this the method of its Discipline And withal by those rational and divine heavenly encouragements which above all Doctrines in the World our Christianity suggests and furnisheth with infinite advantage have so fortified the mind that it resumes its principality governs and carries on the lower Soul in its obedience to Duty easily without resistance as they say the higher Heaven moves the inferiour Orbs along with it although their proper tendencies are contrary At leastwise if impressions from without or inbred inclinations stir raise passions and mutinies yet the mind keeps so much power that they shall not beat it off and force it from its prosecutions of good nor shall unless by a surprize engage its consent in the pursuit of evil This is that which Religion aims at thus to make us men teach us to live according to our nature to put Reason in the Throne and vindicate the Spirit from the tyranny of its own Vassal flesh But sensuality is most perfect opposition to this whole design for it renverses that subordination without which there is no possibility of Vertue as I shew'd you and it puts that whether Lust or Passion in the Throne which either constitution conversation or whatever accident did give possession of our inclinations to And makes the strangest prodigy of Centaure where the Beast is uppermost and rides the man where the Beast is God indeed for the sensual man acknowledges no other God but his own belly so S. Paul does character him here And truly if we look on the attendances and careful services he gives it and how studiously and wholly he does consecrate himself to please it one would think it most impossible he should have any other God but if we number the drink-offerings and meat-offerings the whole Hecatombs he gives it and whereas other Deities had onely some peculiar appropriate Creatures for their Sacrifices how this Votary rifles
the practice of those men who minding Earthly things and all their wisdom lying as to them they therefore think themselves concern'd to represent the Doctrines of the Cross which does so contradict their wisdom as meer madness and the Cross it self as the Ensign of folly And accordingly they do treat it en ridicul and make the proper Doctrines of it the strict duties of Religion matter for their jests and bitter scoffs They character Religion as a worship that befits a God whose shape the Primitive persecutors painted Christ in Deus Onochaetes as if Christianity were proper Homage onely to an Asses person as Tertullian words it And the Votaries transform'd by this their service and made like the God they worship were what they were call'd then Asinarii creatures onely fit for burthen to bear what they magnifie a Cross and scorns No persecutions are so mortal as those that Murther the reputation of a thing or person not so much because when that is fallen once then they cannot hope to stand as because those murder after death and poison memory killing to immortality They were much more kind to Religion and more innocent that cloath'd the Christians in the skins of Bears and Tygers that so they might be worried into Martyrdom Than they that cloath their Christianity in fools Coat that so it may be laugh'd to death go out in ignominy and into contempt If to sport with things of sacred and Eternal consequence were to be forgiven yet to do it with the Cross of Christ Thus to set that out as foolishness which is the greatest mystery the Divine wisdom hath contriv'd to make mercy and truth meet together righteousness and peace kiss each other to make sin be punish'd yet the Sinner pardoned Thus to play and sin upon those dire expresses of Gods indignation against sin are things of such a sad and dangerous concern that S. Paul could not give a caution against them but with tears For many walk saith he of whom I have told you often and now tell you even weeping c. Which calls me to my last Consideration Indeed the Cross of Christ does represent Almighty God in so severe a shape and gives the lineaments of so fierce displeasures against sin as do exceed all comprehension There was a passion in Christs Prayer to prevent his Passion when he deprecated it with strong cries and tears yea when his whole body wept tears as of bloud to deprecate it and yet he cryed more dreadfully when he did suffer it The Nails that bor'd his Hands the Spear that pierc'd his Heart and made out-lets for his Bloud and Spirits did not wound him as that sting of death and torments sin did which made out-lets for God to forsake him and which drove away the Lord that was himself out of him Neither did his God forsake him only but his most Almighty attributes were engag'd against him Gods Holiness and Justice were resolv'd to make Christ an example of the sad demerit of Iniquity and his hatred of it Demerit so great as was valuable with the everlasting punishment of the World fal'n Angels and fal'n Men for to that did it make them liable Now that God might appear to hate it at the rate of its deservings it was very necessary that it should be punish'd if not by the execution of that sentence on Mankind as on the Devils yet by something that might be proportionable to it so to let us see the measures God abhors it by to what degrees the Lord is just and holy by those torments torments answerable to those attributes Now truly when we do reflect on this we cannot wonder if the Sinner be an enemy to the Cross and hate the prospect of it which does give him such a perfect copy of his expectations when our Saviours draught which he so trembled at shall be the everlasting portion of his Cup For if God did so plague the imputation of Iniquity how will he torment the wilful and impenitent commission of it But then when we consider those torments were the satisfaction for the sins of man methinks the Sinner should be otherwise affected to them Christ by bearing the Cross gave God such satisfaction as did move him in consideration thereof to dispence with that strict Law which having broken we were forfeit to eternal Death and to publish an act of Grace whereby he does admit all to pardon of sins past and to a right to everlasting Life that will believe on him forsake their sins and live true Christians He there appears the Lamb of God that taketh away the sins of the World for that he does as being a Lamb slain then he was our Sacrifice and that Cross the Altar And the humbled Sinner that repents for notwithstanding satisfaction God will not accept a Sinner that goes on by all those Agonies his holiness would not be justified if when he had forsaken and tormented his own Son for taking sin upon him he should yet receive into his favour and his Heaven Sinners that will not let go but will retain their sins but the penitent may plead this expiation Lo here I poor Soul prostrate at the footstool of the Cross lay hold upon the Altar here 's my Sacrifice on which my fins are to be charg'd and not on me although so foul I am I cannot pour out tears sufficient to cleanse me yet behold Lord and see if there ever were any Sorrow like the sorrow of thy Son wherewith thou didst afflict him for these sins of mine And here is Bloud also his Bloud to wash me in and that Bloud is within the Vail too now and that my Offering taken from the Cross up to thy Throne thou hast accepted it and canst not refuse it now my Advocate does plead it and claims for me the advantage of the Cross. Now that men should be Enemies to this and when they are forfeit to eternal Ruine hate that which is to redeem the forfeiture that they should trample on the Cross whereon their satisfactions were wrought tread down the Altar which they have but to lay hold on and be safe wage war with beat off and pursue a Lamb that Lamb of God that comes to take away their sins and make a spoil and slaughter of their Sacrifice hostilely spill upon the ground that Bloud that was appointed for their Bloud upon the Altar for their blood of sprinkling and was to appear in Heaven for them If men resolve to be on terms of Duel with their God and scorn that Satisfaction shall be made for them by any other way than by defiance and although their God do make the satisfactions for them to himself yet not endure it but chuse quarrel rather this is so perverse and fatal an hostility as no tears are sufficient to bewail But possibly men sleight these satisfactions because some terms are put upon them which they know not how to comport with the merits of the
in conscience to that superior to depart from their own Judgment and to yield and sign their assent to his determinations Witness the matter of Jansenius Yea their great Cardinal is positive that If the Pope could err so far as to call evil good good evil to prohibit vertues or command vices the Church were bound in conscience to believe those vices good and honest and those vertues evil So far he Indeed if that Church be the Mother and Nurse of all Christians 't is from her breasts only they must seek the sincere Milk of the word Now that she is so they must take her word as Children do their Parents words that they are so And indeed this is properly to receive the Doctrine as a little Child not judge nor reason not examin but believe it And such legendary doctrines as well as Histories which they deliver are most fit to be receiv'd by such as Children Yet as if this had been the proper method among Christians always in S. Austin's time we find the Manichees derided Christianity that discipline of Faith because by that men were commanded to believe and were not taught how to distinguish truth from falshood by clear reason and again that it requires us to assent before we have a reason for it And long before that Celsus did advise the Christians to receive no doctrines but on the account of reason credulity being the inlet to deceit saying they that without grounds believe are like those that admire and â—e satisfied with juglers and take appearances and sleight of hand for truth adding many of the Christians neither would receive nor give a reason of their faith but us'd to say 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 do not you examin but believe 't is your faith shall save you and as if from the beginning it were so we cannot but have heard the story of that man that reading Genesis where Moses says In the beginning God created the Heaven and the Earth And he said let there be light and there was light c. Swore at him saying this Barbarian only asserted boldly but prov'd nothing As if Argument and Reason never had place in the Jewish or the Christian Religion only those who were the inâ—titutors of each Religion did deliver it others had no more to do but to believe it that is to receive it as a little Child Whether these reproaches and the Oath of these known enemies may go for proofs that it was so I shall not now enquire But it is certain on the other side S. Paul requires of his new Christian Corinthians that they be not Children in understanding that they be in malice Children but in understanding Men. Now a Man and a Child differ not in this that the one hath an understanding reasonable soul and the other hath not but in that the one cannot use his understanding or his reason and the other where he acts as man does So that our Religion in requiring that we be in understanding men does require of us that we use our reason in it And since assenting to a thing as truth is an Act of the highest faculty of the soul of man as it is properly and truly reasonable namely as it understands and judges it is not possible a man should really believe a thing unless he satisfie himself that he hath reason for so doing Yea whether that be true or not which many men so eagerly contend for that the will though free is bound and cannot choose but will that which appears best at that time it wills yet it is sure that he who with his understanding which is not free in her apprehensions and judgments but must necessarily embrace that which hath most evidence of truth He I say who really assents to any proposition does satisfie himself that he hath better and more cogent reasons for that then the contrary And therefore it is impossible that any man can verily believe a thing which he is throughly convinc't is contrary to clear and evident right reason for he cannot have a better reason for the thing that is so and were it possible for any man to believe so there could be neither grounds nor Rules for such a ones belief for there is nothing in the World so false and so absur'd although he were assur'd it were so but he might assent to it for whatever demonstrations could be offer'd why he should not yet it seems he might believe against acknowledg'd evident truth and reason but this were onely wish or fancy and imagination not belief And to prevent such Childish weak credulity was the great work and care of Christ so far is he from requiring we should be as Children in this kind For when he was ascended up to heaven he gave some Apostles some Evangelists some Pastors and Teachers he shed down the Holy Spirit and his gifts that we might not be as Children tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of Doctrine Eph. 4. 14. First For want of rational grounds instable in our Faith as Children are in body and in judgment also taking all appearances for truths If men were only to believe there must needs be as great variety of Religions as of teachers And though God hath appointed that some Church should be as perfectly infalliable as that of Rome pretends to be yet since there are so many Churches and the true one therefore could be known no otherwise then by some marks there must be disquisition before Faith and men must reason and examin ere they can believe upon good grounds for were they to receive Religion as a little Child be nurst up with the Doctrine as with milk a Child we know may suck infection from the poyson'd breast of an unwholesom mother or some other person for it knows not to distinguish and so may be nurst to death A soul like theirs that is but rasa tâ—bula white paper is as fitted to receive the mark of the beast as the inscription of the living God just as the first hand shall impress Therefore we are bid not to believe every Spirit not every Teacher though he come with gifts pretend and seem to be inspir'd but try them and our Saviour forewarn'd the Jews of false Christs that should come with signs and wonders Something therefore must be known first and secur'd before the understanding can be thus oblig'd to give up its assent and Captivate every thought into obedience as S. Paul directs Now what that was here to the hearers in the Text is easily collected namely that he was the Christ that does require it And S. Paul expresses it in the forecited place where he says we must bring into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ to wit of that Christ who as he does himself profess that if he had not done among them the works which no other had done they had not had sin John 15. 24. If his
our selves de malo conjuncto for as appetite is implanted for the use of him in whom it is implanted so it is not proper to it to have any aversation to evil except it be some way evil to him whose appetite hath that aversation and to greive at misery I must some way conceive it to concern my self Now then as he that does not conceive himself a member of a Church nor a fellow member nor any way relating to it he cannot truly greive so he that does not greive declares no communion with it he is another thing a member quite cut off or dead and so stupid and insensible Such a judgment doest thou pass upon thy self whoever doest not mourn outlawest and excommunicatest thy self neither belongst to Church nor State nor yet to Christ. 2. As thou hast no charity to thy Brother nor to thy afflicted Mother so neither hast thou any love to God whose glory tho it be asserted by the punishment of a sinful Land or Church he is also still dishonor'd by the sins which do then reign and to which he does permit for the most part the punishment of sin and that power and authority or discipline which divisions in the Church cut short hath for its consequent all unbridled looseness and profaness Blasphemy and Atheisme the calamities of a State are embitter'd by all sorts of licences that grow when Government is weakn'd to see a whole Land mourn with the dark purple of its bloud all which bloud as it is the punishment of that Nation so it is the guilt also to see the wickedness of a Kingdom plagu'd with the ruin of many thousands of men's lives and thousands of souls too that fell in actual iniquity and yet to think that this plague is the greatest wickedness of all arm'd with the most crying sins that are that the very punishment must call for punishment and revenge of it self and help to make up the measure of judgment that the sentence of desolation may be irreversible and utter to see two inundations overflow the Land two abysses of bloud and guilt and one deep calling upon another to meet and swallow us and bury us in their graves of sin and deep ruin yea to see iniquity become impudent and sin triumphant which is the great sign of utter ruin as it was to the Jews an omen worse than Comets or Blazing-stars the dismal voice of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 yea and in this ruin too I do not see how any will well free themselves from guilt for if they be the ruiners they are the great spoilers the sinners if the ruined they have contributed to make those others the sinful inflicters and if in all this there be not matter for a little mourning if God dishonor'd souls destroi'd lives perishing Church ruining and nothing but sin flourishing and ourselves not unguilty and if this be not an object for our tears we are the most uncharitable most obdurate creatures in the world Niobe's stone is not fit to be our embleme for that stone could sweat tears we are more rock than that which Moses struck whom the rod of God cannot make weep we are next degree to Lucifer himself for onely Hell is sure at ease to see its company increase 3. Lastly this not mourning in the judgment of a Nation is a sin which God does most heavily characterize and threaten Amos 6. 1 6 7 8. Isaiah 22. when the Prophet had describ'd how it should be in the day of desolation v. 4 5. then because they did not do it see the judgment v. 12 13 14. yea this very thing that men are insensible is as it were the very last judgment on a Nation and the sign of utter rejection Jer. 16. 5 6 7. But how can this duty of mourning consist with those so frequent Gospel-Commands to rejoyce in utmost afflictions James 1. 2 3. Count it all joy when ye fall into diverse temtations knowing this that the trying of your faith worketh patience and St Paul most often 'T is true indeed we are to rejoyce in them because they are Gods methods of bettering us by them he does purge ad cleanse us Isaiah 4. 4 5. and c. 1. 25 27. Redeem'd with judgment even with the judgment that I shall execute upon them But then 1. What reason have we to mourn also that we are such foul sinners as to need such ways of purging that Christs death should not have motive enough in it to turn us from iniquity that his bloud should not be sufficient laver enough to wash us but our own must be pour'd out also that our air should be so infected that nothing but an universal conflagration can purify that we should be such refractory stubborn persons whom nothing but wounding will do good upon nothing but ruin will reduce But then 2. How are we more to mourn that this very method should not be able to reduce us that we will run upon lashes swords and deaths to sin that in the midst of judgments and against them too we commit iniquity that every stripe does encrease our reckoning add to our iniquities no possible method left to reduce them whom correction will not make sensible but our villanies grow up with our sufferings and our sins are fatned by our bloud as the land is Yea lastly how are we to mourn that to the rest of our sins this also is added by us of not mourning at our judgments but using all possible means to prevent it to lay a sleep the sense of any judgment that is upon the Nation to be so far from bestowing one hour of sadness upon those so grand motives to it that they do all they can to keep it from them and if those judgments happen to some they look upon it carelesly as a thing that does not concern rather as a matter onely of rejoycing if to others whom they wish well to they search out wine and vice to quench and to divert the memory and thought of it to drown sad news in sadder sin this is to labor hard lest sadness and a virtue should creep upon me to search out means to assist me to keep Gods last method from doing any good upon me this is one cause of greatest judgment Isaiah 5. 11 12 13 14. The second and indeed the great exercise of this duty in the text is to mourn for our sins and First for the infirmities of our nature that stain that we were born with that engagement to death that we brought into the world with us and which is a clog and weight upon us throughout the whole course of our lives to disable us from doing our duty as we ought Secondly for the sins of our habits whereby we have advanc't those infirmities into customs made a covenant with that death to which we were born engag'd and our whole practice is the exercise of those things whose wages is death eternal or if we are not gon so far
in vicious customes yet for the gross foul acts which men sometimes commit those unkind stabs and wounds to our own souls those cruel self-murders these all are to be daily mourn'd for Now I shall onely name a few reasons why we should mourn and so stir us up to it 1. Because onely in this and in relation to this is greif of any use at all God and Nature they say made nothing in vain now if it were not for our sins greif would be almost in vain a certain sign that this passion must be emploi'd upon our sins ut propter hujus tantum sublationem sit concessa saith St Chrysostom For does any man loose a child why if he greive to death will his mourning raise him Is thy Estate taken from thee why thou art sad upon it but will thy tears recover it But hast thou sin'd and dost thou truly mourn and greive for it why thy tears do wash away thy sin and blot out thine offence So that mourning being every where else preposterous and unprofitable was clearly intended to be spent upon our sins 2. What ingratitude is it to thy Savior not to find in thine heart to mourn for those sins for which he did die the Son of God did sweat and pray and cry and shed a torrent of bloud and water and suffer death for those very sins of thine and mine which we think so slightly of that we will not shed a tear for them O my Brethren if there is in us any love of that our Jesus or indeed of our selves we would now transplant the Agonies and make them ours and sweat out a few drops of sorrow to cure us of those feavors of our sins 3. Yea it is a very trouble to our God that we do not greive he mourns to see that we will not mourn Hosea 13. 14. when God had complain'd before of Ephraim what a foolish child it was that it did not repent he tells them there that if they had don so I would have ransom'd them from the power of the grave not I will for the very next verse contradicts that I would have redeem'd them from death O death I had bin thy grave O grave I had bin thy destruction but comfort is hid from mine eies repentance we read but the word bears and the sense requires comfort as if the eies of the Lord were therefore full of tears because Ephraim's were not and he could not receive comfort if Ephraim did not mourn and if we do not mourn God will comfort himself some other way concerning us to our greif Isaiah 1. 24. Therefore thus saith the Lord the Lord of Hosts the Mighty one of Israel ah I will ease me of mine adversaries 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the very word before I will be comforted by reason of mine adversaries how why I will avenge me of mine enimies Ah my Brethren when God is to be comforted by his vengeance upon us when he can find no ease but in our ruin and destruction and that he calls his comfort in relation to the non-mourning impenitent where shall we find ease and comfort then And then methinks this should scare us into the use of this fright us out of that stupid lethargy in sinning which does so dull us in it makes us so senseless of it and the danger we are in by reason of it that we cannot bestow one day in weeping mourning and fasting no nor indeed an hour of serious sadness upon an age of sin a whole life of iniquity the very next step of this into which we shall be sure to fall is the greatest sin and judgment in the world it is that spoken of as a character of the foulest Heathens Ephes. 4. 18. 19. Having their understandings darkned being alienated from the life of God thro the ignorance that is in them because of the blindness that is in their heart who being past feeling have given themselves over to lasciviousness to work all uncleaness with greediness rather because of the brawny hardness of their hearts which are become callous insensible of any admonitions stings and greif but dead to all sense of sin and having put off all fear of it and who these are he tells you in the next words 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 such as when they do the foulest acts are not toucht with any greif for having don them but like dead members of the body that are forsaken by the vital spirits if you lash or prick or lance them they feel no pain even so these whose consciences are retir'd a sleep they do not mourn for any of their foulest actions which is the very height of impiety for such do strait give themselves over to all filthiness to work all uncleaness with greediness This is the effect of not mourning and then how do they deserve and provoke this judgment who if at any time their conscience begin to twinge them for any of their sins they presently divert their thoughts lest the mourning in the text should creep upon them and they should grow sad These men dread their virtue they are afraid of becoming pious and to avoid the way to heaven is their design and contrivance they come not so near duty as the wicked in hell have not so much repentance as the damned have for there is sorrow for their sins weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth I should 2dly encourage those that do thus mourn but the text does that sufficiently they are blessed and they shall be comforted First they are blest for this mourning it is the great effect and sign of this Spiritual life that man's sickness hath not yet kill'd him who is sensible of it who greives by reason of the anguish of it and he is not dead who feels the weight of it and mourns for it Secondly if it be true it draws such a train of virtues after it as it made St Paul rejoyce that he had made the Corinthians sad 2 Cor. 9 10 11. and then this very same verse will assure them of the comfort hereafter for all the Gospel-promises are assur'd upon the terms of repentance which this Godly sorrow is the first link of and does draw after it then if there be any comfort in the company of myriads of Saints and Angels if we dare take Christ's judgment if he had any tast who suffer'd so many mourning fits that liv'd a life of tears here that often wept but never laught yea a life of horrid suffering and yet thought those comforts a full glorious recompence to him for all those sufferings and therefore may well be to us for a few tears if there be any joy in the beatifical vision and in heaven they shall be comforted that mourn when as I told you out of Revelations all tears shall be wip'd from their eyes there shall be no more trouble nor sorrow nor crying nor pain And yet this is but the Negative part of their eternity of
shoot at such a mark behind which a man stands but he must kill the man if he intend to shoot he do's intend to kill No he may pray for such an end that God would find expedients to bring it about but must not set wickedness on work to do it God do's not need the aids of sin to promote his glory or service And therefore 3. A truly Religious intention of a good end purely as it is good cannot suffer a man to chuse an evil means of working towards it It is not possible that he should do it for he that do's chuse a means unto an evil end intends it only as 't is useful to that end and otherwise he could not like nor pitch upon it but sin cannot be useful to a vertuous action as it is vertuous but perfectly repugnant to it I may exact and gripe oppress deceive and many more such things that so I may be rich and have to give to them that want but I cannot do those things truly intending the Religion of charity because that would not suffer me to do them Those actions are perfectly contradictions to its nature they ruinate the very being of a vertue as it is in obedience to God for a man cannot disobey God in obedience to him and therefore are not useful to it as it is a virtue nor chosen so but on some other motive The man that heaps by fraud and by oppression intending to build hospitals intends thereby to build himself a monument and leave as great a name behind him as he do's treasure may be but if he truly had intended charity he had not been uncharitable for charity The man that do's intend to be a daily constant person in the public exercises of Religion and travail up and down to get the opportunities if when he do's begin to think how he is to prosecute those intentions and so considers that then he must neglect his calling greatly and impoverish may be break himself and family if he then set down with himself I may allow my self some arts of thriving take ways of getting greater gains in my commodities then are fit for others that do not give God so much of their time or I will restrain my hand as to the poor for if Religion to God take away so considerable a part of what I should gain charity to the poor hath no reason to have a great share too in what I have and so leave off to be a doer that he may be a hearer or do that which is not justifiable use some deceitful methods or be not merciful and these are no strange things they say 'T is clear this man do's not intend towards the real power of religion for that would not allow him such waies to it which are so far from useful to it that they are perfect oppositions to its nature but either the repute of a professor or the being own'd as of a party or some such motive lurks under the visor of Religion it may be undiscern'd by him who minds that fair appearance of a good end so intently as not to search and try the whole intention the means as well as aim For such means however they may contribute to the action of Religion and vertue in the general yet they cannot be useful to the Religion or the vertue of the action nay do they not contribute sin more then their own to the intention 'T is a hard question and tho indeed it be apparent that he that chuseth an ill way only to bring about a good intent do's not like or chuse that ill for it self and would not embrace it if it were not drest and varnisht with the adornments and the paint of a well meaning and consequently is not so malicious as they that chuse sin barefac't in its own shape and colours yet when to do so is so directly against the very nature of piety against reason and command and hath so harsh a sentence as S. Paul do's thunder out against them that shall entertain such a doctrine that truly I do not know what to say to them that notwithstanding that dare practise it I 'am sure the wise man saith Eccles. 34. 20. He that bringeth an offering of the goods of the poor doth as one that killeth the Son before the Fathers eyes an offence that to the Father that hath more then his sons death in it it strikes him also thro the eyes and would make his own sight his murderers do's make it to be his torment and defies his displeasure chusing to spite him to his face and some such aggravation it should seem vice carries in it when it comes into Religion as it do's when it thrusts into our holy intentions as means to pious ends However it be I 'me sure I 've said enough to prove that truly good intentions cannot take in evil means and that such means when they are taken in make the intention mixt and unholy and therefore far from pure and so have don the second thing and let you know what is required to make a Religious intention singly purely so The third follows 3. That from such a single eye the body shall be light that such good hearty meanings do make the actions good and holy or are accepted as such actions The former part that actions regulated by intentions compleatly Religious are Religious needs no proof because our actions derive theis guilt or their Religiousness from thence there can be nothing there to blame for when the end is good and the means good then all is so But I would tell you such intentions have a privilege beyond this of making outward actions acceptable to the Lord for where we do endeavor in pursuance of such intentions and cannot bring them into act there those intentions are in Gods sight as the actions themselvs he do's so value them and so he will reward them For God accepts the will for deed and if there be first a willing mind it is accepted according to that a man hath and not according to that he hath not 2 Cor. 8. 4. Here thy good meaning if it put forth it self according to thy power is compleat performance here is a way the meanest soul may be an Heroe in Religion there is no bounds that can be set to holy meanings My actions may be fetter'd in ty'd by impossibilities that I cannot perform such holy deeds as others but my intentions are free as Angels I can mean heartily and intend to the utmost and by such an art the poor widow that gave nothing but the expression of the meanest poverty did yet give more then they that bestow'd treasures because in two mites she meant to give her utmost and at such rates God will reward them too Those good intentions that sincerely mind Gods glory shall themselvs reap glory even before the action shall From resurrection to eternity is time enough to reward holy actions but before that betwixt death and
judgment the soul shall be rewarded with the blessing of its intentions As it did often do its part in piety without the body so it shall have a crown before the body shall forestal happiness and for a while it shall alone be blessed as oftentimes it hath been vertuous alone in good intentions when it could not act 4. But all this is not strange that the great mercy of our God should so interpret to our advantage our designs of piety as to impute good meanings to our glory as if they were good doings and consequently where the intentions are holy the actions must be holy and where this eye is clear the body must have light but 't will be very strange if a clear eye make the whole body full of light illustrate those performances which have no relation to the soul. Most of the actions of our life are common and indifferent serve only the necessities or recreations of nature and how can these be holy Why yes by pure Religious intentions a man may sanctify all the actions of his life and if thine eye be single thy whole body shall be full of light Whether you eat or drink or whatsoever you do do all to the glory of God saith S. Paul 1 Cor. 10. 31. Every therefore the most common action may be intended to Gods glory and then 't is sanctified That the Lord should look for honor from the devout performances of our strictest Religion 't is no wonder for therefore he requires them but that when in the meanest instance I do serve my self in doing so I should be able to give glory to my God is sure by vertue of some strange stratagem some Divine elixar that will so transmute things why a good meaning will do this To shew thee how when thou goest about the employments of thy lawful calling have but good thoughts about thee good intentions in them and the actions of thy calling are for the uses of grace and thy necessities do prove thy vertue As for instance when thou labourest do but consider to what pains sin hath put thee sells thee thy bread for sweat for if man had not sin'd Eden had furnish't him with all the delicacies of Paradise without his care or contribution and he had had the fruits of the tree of life without the pains of planting any thing 't is sin that gives thee all this toil and then do but resolve to use this as an argument to thy self to make thee hate the cause of so much trouble I will sure labour most against that which hath so chang'd and debas'd my condition and which do's aim to make me far more miserable to eternity If I am weary of my work e're night what shall I be of everlastingness of torment If little thirsty heats and drops of sweat offend me what will unquenchable feavors and what a lake of brimstone And think again upon the mercies of thy God who offers thee at the rate of easier endeavors the food that lasteth to eternal life the calling of a Christian being the least painful and yet it brings the greatest fruits the price of that high calling being blessedness if thou but labor in it If thou be sustaining the necessities of nature in meat and drink look up to him that do's provide for them and resolve only not to use his blessings to his dishonor by excesses not to spew his mercies out into his face again but use them as assistances of nature to enable thee for such emploiments as his providence hath assign'd to thee And in thy recreations also do but take notice thankfully how God hath provided for delights too how he hath not only brought forth bread to strengthen man but wine to make his heart glad and oyl to make him a cheerful countenance and instruments of sport to delight him and but acknowledg all these things to God and intend with thy self to use them only to his ends Thy calling either to provide for thy subsistence here that thou may'st serve him or to do good to others Thy meals for preservation of that life which he hath lent thee for his uses and recreations for refreshment and for health and make no doubt if nothing do interpose to spoil these instances that thou art serving God in all of these that thy most secular actions are thus make spiritual imploiments by being dedicated so to God undertaken in his fear and intended for the uses of his providence so that if whensoever thou art going about any thing thou do but ask thy self why thou do'st set upon it and can'st but make a good intention look towards it and resolve only to let it serve such ends resolve not to transgress in it the bounds that God hath set thee either of time or measure and to make all subordinate and to assist towards piety some way or other and then sometimes with eyes lift up call for and look for a blessing down upon thee in it and by this means the action is sanctified so thou dost consecrate thy deeds to God and he accepts thy meaning in it as an offering to him the action is adopted into the stock of Religion meant to God and so thy whole life may be made pious by such good intentions and thus thy single eye makes thy whole body full of light And this consideration alone might apply it self with pressingness upon us Shall I think God not easy to be serv'd when I may teach my recreations to serve him Shall I think Heaven placed out of my possibilities when I can learn my sports to wing me towards it Religion sure is not so very difficult when a good honest meaning can transmute every action of my life into Religion and then who would not at such easy rates change his imployments which he must do and his sports which he will do into pieties when it is don by putting good intentions into them by good thoughts and ejaculations engaging God along in them But the last words do urge an application which I promised in one word But if thine eye be evil thy whole body is full of darkness My brethren if ill intentions have so destructive an influence upon our actions that when the end is foolish tho the action I practise be a vertue yet that aim do's defeat it of its vertuosness it loseth all its tast of piety and an ill enddo's debauch it into vice as I have prov'd and so for want of a good meaning I either lose my Religion or my Religion becomes sin unto me Unhappy I that when with such intentions I practise duty I lose the pleasures or the profits of the sins I might have practis'd every jot as innocently and much more usefully as to those ends and I lose the duty and by the very duty I purchase condemnation enjoy neither the vice I do omit nor yet the piety I practise nor any thing but the sad sentence of they have their reward And on the
and his Brother's blood upon his Soul to seize his Sentence Go ye Cursed into everlasting Fire 'T is plain against all Interests of this World and the World to come this man will dye And yet this is one of the laudable and generous Customs of the Age. Neither doth this man stand alone the desperate Rebel would come into the Induction that without any hopes sets all on fire to consume all here and to begin his Flames hereafter But I have said enough to prove the Resoluteness of a Sinners Will which is so great indeed that it is this especially which does enhance the guilt of sin into the merit of an endless punishment this persevering obstinacy does deserve Hell and make it just For whatsoever inequality there is betwixt the short-liv'd pleasures of a sin which dye while they are tasted and put out themselves and those eternal never-dying retributions of Vengeance As sure there is also betwixt the life of Man and several of those petty felonies that forfeit it yet the Law does not murder when it Executes I might have instanc'd in the gathering sticks upon the Sabbath day in Israel For since the preservation of publique safety and propriety is valuable with the lives of many men and to secure that and affright the Violation it was necessary to affix such punishments to such offences they that know the penalty and wilfully meerly to feed their other Vices run upon it justly suffer it So that Man might not rob himself of that Immortal Glory which God had ordain'd him when he did see it absolutely necessary thus to hedge Vice with Eternal Death And as he set Angels and Flaming Swords to keep him out of Paradise so to set Fiends and Flames to guard Hell from him and to entail those Torments on Man's sin which he had prepared for the Devil and sealed the Deed in the Blood of his Son If notwithstanding men renounce the blessedness and against all their Interests and Obligations in spight of all the Arts and Powers of Heaven they will have the Torments and what they never would attempt for Paradise invade those flames to get to Hell 't is very just that God should let them have it should not break his Decrees dispence with Holy Laws so confirm'd meerly to gratifie those that are obstinate for ruine and against his whole Gospel quench Hell fires because men are resolv'd to run into them This Will does as it were even the Scales betwixt the Sin and the Damnation equal the pleasure to the punishment and fill the distance from a moment to Eternity But though this Will do clear God's Justice yet it does not satisfie his Reason he seems astonish'd at the choice God himself cannot find a Ground for such a Resolution and therefore does enquire Why will ye dye Which is God's question and my second Part. It is the present pleasure sin does tempt your sensuality withal whose agitations are so quick and strong that they surprize or break the forces of your Reason and your Principles put the Mind in disorder and then seize it with such violence as to lead it captive to the Law of Sin and Death 'T is true indeed thus both of them had their original so they prevail'd in Paradise for when the Woman saw the Tree was good for food and pleasant to the eye and a Tree to be desired to make one wise she took thereof and she did eat although she knew that God had said In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely dye Gen. iii. But there was generous pleasure here such as tempted the Soul assaulted it with the appearances of Wisdom and divine Knowledg Ye shall be as Gods Gen. iii. 5. And sure 't is no great wonder if the proper pleasures of the mind ingage it therefore when God would give a Precept liable to a Temptation of being broke he laid it in the sphere of those things that delight the Soul of Knowledg but far be it that those of sensuality should ever have prevail'd Man may yield to the pleasure of being like God but for pleasure to make himself a Beast is contradiction to Nature For pleasure is but satisfaction of our appetites and the more natural the inclination is the higher and more powerful that Nature and the desire eagerer so much the more delightful is the satisfaction Now it is certain that the reasonable faculty the Soul or Spirit is the highest and most proper nature of a man In all the rest he 's not a step remov'd from Beasts unless it be in shape but in the accurateness of his senses is below them far and therefore must be so in sensual satisfactions but in his Soul he borders upon Angels and does come towards God Now then that Soul being mans peculiar nature the highest part of him It follows its delights Spiritual reasonable Joys must needs be the most natural and most proper for it most conform'd to it and therefore the most taking with it This may be cleared most irrefragably A Beast hath several ingredients of Nature in his making he is an heavy body and a Vegetable and he hath also Sense which is his highest nature Now though the onely inclination of heavy bodies be to fall down to the Earth and this be also natural to a Beast we do not find that 't is his greatest pleasure sure he had rather feed than tumble in the Pasture his chief delight lies in the satisfaction of his chiefest faculties wherein he does excel his Senses and as Beasts differ and transcend in these so do their pleasures also differ and exceed A man also as Aristotle says does live a threefold Life At first he is but a Plant-man a growing span of living Creature and he 's born only into Animality a Life of Sense and at last educated into reasonable Now the delights of his first Stages whilst onely Vegetation and Sense live although proportioned to those states yet have no savour to the mind he grows through Nuts and Rattles to the use of Reason and the pleasures of it also these must keep even with the growing faculties and become higher rational and manly Which if they do not but the man still dwell upon the satisfaction of sense he does confound the Stages contradict the progresses of Nature he hath the age and strength of Reason but to play the Child with to exert it in those things that are but a Man's Rattles hath the sagacity of an Intelligence meerly to find out how to be a brute with greater luxury and rellish Come therefore shew me now the sins which the delights of Reason do betray you to and I 'le admit the Plea But if you live your own reverse that you may dye renounce all your own pleasures first that so you may renounce the joys of God and Heaven and fall from Nature that you may fall into Hell this case hath no pretence and those pleasures cannot toll man on to