to be quitted But it is S. Chrysostom's Simile As a Lamb sucking the breast of its dam and Mother moves the head from one part to another till it hath found a distilling fontinel and then it fixes till it be satisfied or the ãâã cease dropping so should we in Meditation reject such materials as are barren like the tops of hills and six upon such thoughts which nourish and refresh and there dwell till the nourishment be drawn forth or so much of it as we can then temperately digest 14. Fifthly In Meditation strive rather for Graces than for Gifts for affections in the way of Vertue more than the overslowings of sensible Devotion and therefore if thou findest any thing by which thou mayest be better though thy spirit do not actually rejoyce or find any gust or relish in the manducation yet chuse it greedily For although the chief end of Meditation be Affection and not Determinations intellectual yet there is choice to be had of the Affections and care must be taken that the affections be desires of Vertue or repudiations and aversions from something criminal not joys and transportations spiritual comforts and complacencies for they are no part of our duty sometimes they are encouragements and sometimes rewards sometimes they depend upon habitude and disposition of body and seem great matters when they have little in them and are more bodily than spiritual like the gift of tears and yerning of the bowels and sometimes they are illusions and temptations at which if the Soul stoops and be greedy after they may prove like Hippomenes's golden Apples to Atalanta retard our course and possibly do some hazard to the whole race And this will be nearer reduced to practice if we consider the variety of matter which is fitted to the Meditation in several states of men travelling towards Heaven 15. For the first beginners in Religion are imployed in the mastering of their first Appetites casting out their Devils exterminating all evil customs lessening the proclivity of habits and countermanding the too-great forwardness of vicious inclinations and this which Divines call the Purgative way is wholly spent in actions of Repentance Mortification and Self-denial and therefore if a penitent person snatches at Comforts or the tastes of sensible Devotion his Repentance is too delicate it is but a rod of Roses and Jessamine If God sees the spirit broken all in pieces and that it needs a little of the oyl of gladness for its support and restitution to the capacities of its duty he will give it but this is not to be designed nor snatched at in the Meditation Tears of joy are not good expressions nor instruments of Repentance we must not gather grapes from thorns nor figs from thistles no refreshments to be looked for here but such only as are necessary for support and when God sees they are let not us trouble our selves he will provide them But the Meditations which are prompt to this Purgative way and practice of first beginners are not apt to produce delicacies but in the sequel and consequent of it Afterwards it brings forth the pleasant fruit of righteousness but for the present it hath no joy in it no joy of sense though much satisfaction to Reason And such are Meditations of the Fall of Angels and Man the Ejection of them from Heaven of our Parents from Paradise the Horrour and obliquity of Sin the Wrath of God the severity of his Anger Mortification of our body and spirit Self-denial the Cross of Christ Death and Hell and Judgment the terrours of an evil Conscience the insecurities of a Sinner the unreasonableness of Sin the troubles of Repentance the Worm and sting of a burthened spirit the difficulties of rooting out evil Habits and the utter abolition of Sin if these nettles bear honey we may fill our selves but such sweetnesses spoil the operations of these bitter potions Here therefore let your addresses to God and your mental prayers be affectionate desires of Pardon humble considerations of our selves thoughts of revenge against our Crimes designs of Mortification indefatigable solicitations for Mercy expresses of shame and confusion of face and he meditates best in the purgative way that makes these affections most operative and high 16. After our first step is taken and the punitive part of Repentance is resolved on and begun and put forward into good degrees of progress we then enter into the Illuminative way of Religion and set upon the acquist of Vertues and the purchase of spiritual Graces and therefore our Meditations are to be proportioned to the design of that imployment such as are considerations of the Life of Jesus Examples of Saints reasons of Vertue means of acquiring them designations of proper exercises to every pious habit the Eight Beatitudes the gifts and fruits of the Holy Ghost the Promises of the Gospel the Attributes of God as they are revealed to represent God to be infinite and to make us Religious the Rewards of Heaven excellent and select Sentences of holy persons to be as incentives of Piety These are the proper matter for Proficients in Religion But then the affections producible from these are love of vertue desires to imitate the Holy Jesus affections to Saints and holy persons conformity of choice subordination to God's will election of the ways of Vertue satisfaction of the Understanding in the ways of Religion and resolutions to pursue them in the midst of all discomforts and persecutions and our mental prayers or entercourse with God which are the present emanations of our Meditations must be in order to these affections and productions from those and in all these yet there is safety and piety and no seeking of our selves but designs of Vertue in just reason and duty to God and for his sake that is for his commandment And in all these particulars if there be such a sterility of spirit that there be no end served but of spiritual profit we are never the worse all that God requires of us is that we will live well and repent in just measure and right manner and he that doth so hath meditated well 17. From hence if a pious Soul passes to affections of greater sublimity and intimate and more immediate abstracted and immaterial love it is well only remember that the love God requires of us is an operative material and communicative love If ye love me keep my Commandments so that still a good life is the effect of the sublimest Meditation and if we make our duty sure behind us ascend up as high into the Mountain as you can so your ascent may consist with the securities of your person the condition of infirmity and the interests of your duty According to the saying of ãâã Our empty saying of ãâã and reciting verses in honour of his Name please not God so well as the imitation of him does advantage to us and a devout ãâã pleases the Spouse better than an idle Panegyrick Let your work
God at first designed to us And therefore as our Baptism is a separation of us from unbelieving people so the descent of the Holy Spirit upon us in our Baptism is a consigning or marking us for God as the Sheep of his pasture as the Souldiers of his Army as the Servants of his houshold we are so separated from the world that we are appropriated to God so that God expects of us Duty and Obedience and all Sins are acts of Rebellion and Undutifulness Of this nature was the sanctification of Jeremy and John the Baptist from their mothers womb that is God took them to his own service by an early designation and his Spirit marked them to a holy Ministery To this also relates that of S. Paul whom God by a decree separated from his mother's womb to the Ministery of the Gospel the ãâã did antedate the act of the Spirit which did not descend upon him until the day of his Baptism What these persons were in order to exteriour Ministeries that all the faithful are in order to Faith and Obedience consigned in Baptism by the Spirit of God to a perpetual relation to God in a continual service and title to his Promises And in this sence the Spirit of God is called ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã a Seal In whom also after that ye believed ye were sealed with that holy Spirit of Promise ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã The Water washes the body and the Spirit seals the Soul viz. to a participation of those Promises which he hath made and to which we receive a title by our Baptism 22. Secondly The second effect of the Spirit is Light or Illumination that is the holy Spirit becomes unto us the Author of holy thoughts and firm perswasions and sets to his seal that the Word of God is true into the belief of which we are then baptized and makes Faith to be a Grace and the Understanding resigned and the Will confident and the Assent stronger than the premises and the Propositions to be believed because they are beloved and we are taught the ways of Godliness after a new manner that is we are made to perceive the Secrets of the Kingdom and to love Religion and to long for Heaven and heavenly things and to despise the World and to have new resolutions and new perceptions and new delicacies in order to the establishment of Faith and its increments and perseverance ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã God sits in the Soul when it is illuminated in ãâã as if he sate in his Throne that is he rules by a firm perswasion and intire principles of Obedience And therefore Baptism is called in Scripture ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã and the baptized ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã illuminated Call to mind the former days in which you were illuminated and the same phrase is in the 6. to the Hebrews where the parallel places expound each other For that which S. Paul calls ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã illuminated he calls after ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã a receiving the knowledge of the truth and that you may perceive this to be wholly meant of Baptism the ãâã expresses it still by Synonyma's Tasting of the heavenly gift and made partakers of the Holy Ghost sprinkled in our hearts from an evil conscience and washed in our bodies with pure water all which also are a syllabus or collection of the several effects of the graces bestowed in Baptism But we are now instancing in that which relates most properly to the Understanding in which respect the Holy Spirit also is called Anointing or Unction and the mystery is explicated by S. John The Anointing which ye have received of him abideth in you and ye need not that any man teach you but as the same Anointing teacheth you of all things 23. Thirdly The Holy Spirit descends upon us in Baptism to become the principle of a new life to become a holy seed springing up to Holiness and is called by S. John ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã the ãâã of God and the purpose of it we are taught by him Whosoever is ãâã of God that is he that is regenerated and entred into this New birth doth not ãâã sin for his seed remaineth in him and he cannot sin because he is born of God The Spirit of God is the Spirit of life and now that he by the Spirit is born anew he hath in him that principle which if it be cherished will grow up to life to life eternal And this is the Spirit of Sanctification the victory over the World the deletery of Concupiscence the life of the Soul and the perpetual principle of Grace sown in our spirits in the day of our Adoption to be the sons of God and members of Christ's body But take this Mystery in the words of S. Basil. There are two Ends proposed in Baptism to wit to abolish the body of Sin that we may no more bring forth fruit unto death and to live in the Spirit and to have our fruit to Sanctification The Water represents the image of death receiving the body in its bosom as in a Sepulchre but the quickning Spirit sends upon us a vigorous ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã power or ãâã even from the beginning renewing our Souls from the death of sin unto life For as our Mortification is ãâã in the water so the Spirit works life in us To this purpose is the discourse of S. Paul having largely discoursed of our being baptized into the death of ãâã he adds this as the Corollary of all He that is dead is freed from sin that is being mortified and buried in the waters of Baptism we have a new life of Righteousness put into us we are quitted from the dominion of Sin and are planted together in the likeness of Christ's Resurrection that henceforth we should not serve sin 24. Fourthly But all these intermedial Blessings tend to a glorious Conclusion for Baptism does also consign us to a holy Resurrection It takes the sting of death from us by burying us together with Christ and takes ãâã Sin which is the sting of death and then we shall be partakers of a blessed Resurrection This we are taught by S. Paul ãâã ãâã ye not that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his Death For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his Death we shall be also in the likeness of his Resurrection That declares the real event in its due season But because Baptism consigns it and admits us to a title to it we are said with S. Paul to be risen with Christ in Baptism Buried with him in Baptism wherein also you are risen with him through the faith of the operation of God which hath raised him from the dead Which expression I desire to be remembred that by it we may better understand those other
desertions and anguish of spirit expecting all should work together for the best according to the promise if you can strengthen your selves in God when you are weakest believe when you see no hope and entertain no jealousies or suspicions of God though you see nothing to make you confident then and then only you have Faith which in conjunction with its other parts is able to save your Souls For in this precise duty of trusting God there are the rays of hope and great proportions of Charity and Resignation 17. The summ is that pious and most Christian sentence of the Author of the ordinary Gloss To believe in God through Jesus Christ is by believing to love him to adhere to him to be united to him by Charity and Obedience and to be incorporated into Christ ' s mystical body in the Communion of Saints I conclude this with a collation of certain excellent words of S. Paul highly to the present purpose Examine your selves Brethren whether ye be in the Faith prove your own selves Well but how Know you not your own selves how that Jesus Christ is in you except ye be Reprobates There 's the touchstone of Faith If Jesus Christ dwells in us then we are true Believers if he does not we are Reprobates we have no Faith But how shall we know whether Christ be in us or no Saint Paul tells us that too If Christ be in you the body is dead by reason of sin but the spirit is life because of righteousness That 's the Christian's mark and the Characteristick of a true Believer A death unto sin and a living unto righteousness a mortified body and a quickned spirit This is plain enough and by this we see what we must trust to A man of a wicked life does in vain hope to be saved by his Faith for indeed his Faith is but equivocal and dead which as to his purpose is just none at all and therefore let him no more deceive himself For that I may still use the words of S. Paul This is a faithful saying and these things I will that thou affirm constantly that they which have believed in God might be careful to maintain good works For such and such only in the great scrutiny for Faith in the day of Doom shall have their portion in the bosom of faithful Abraham The PRAYER I. O Eternal GOD ãâã of all Truth and Holiness in whom to believe is life eternal let thy Grace descend with a mighty power into my Soul beating down every strong hold and vainer imagination and bringing every proud thought and my confident and ignorant understanding into the obedience of Jesus Take from me all disobdience and refractoriness of spirit all ambition and private and baser interests remove from me all prejudice and weakness of perswasion that I may wholly resign my Understanding to the perswasions of Christianity acknowledging Thee to be the principle of Truth and thy Word the measure of Knowledge and thy Laws the rule of my life and thy Promises the satisfaction of my hopes and an union with thee to be the consummation of Charity in the fruition of Glory Amen II. HOly JESUS make me to acknowledge thee to be my Lord and Master and my self a Servant and Disciple of thy holy Discipline and Institution let me love to sit at thy feet and suck in with my ears and heart the sweetness of thy holy Sermons Let my Soul be shod with the preparation of the Gospel of Peace with a peaceable and docile disposition Give me great boldness in the publick Confession of thy Name and the Truth of thy Gospel in despite of all hostilities and temptations And grant I may always remember that thy Name is called upon me and I may so behave my self that I neither give scandal to others nor cause disreputation to the honour of Religion but that thou mayest be glorified in me and I by thy mercies after a strict observance of all the holy Laws of Christianity Amen III. O Holy and ever-Blessed SPIRIT let thy gracious influences be the perpetual guide of my rational Faculties Inspire me with Wisdom and Knowledge spiritual Understanding and a holy Faith and sanctifie my Faith that it may arise up to the confidence of Hope and the adherencies of Charity and be fruitful in a holy Conversation Mortifie in me all peevishness and pride of spirit all heretical dispositions and whatsoever is contrary to sound Doctrine that when the eternal Son of God the Author and Finisher of our Faith shall come to make scrutiny and an inquest for Faith I may receive the Promises laid up for them that believe in the Lord Jesus and wait for his coming in holiness and purity to whom with the Father and thee O Blessed Spirit be all honour and eternal adoration payed with all sanctity and joy and Eucharist now and for ever Amen SECT XI Of CHRIST's going to Jerusalem to the Passeover the first time after his Manifestation and what followed till the expiration of the Office of John the Baptist. The Visitation of the Temple Marke 11. 15. And Iesus went into y e Temple began to cast out them that sold bought in y e Temple and overthrew the tables of the money changers 16. And would not suffer that any man should carry any vessel through the Temple The Conference with Nicodemus Iohn 3. 9. Nicodemus answered said unto him How can these things be 10. Iesus answered and sayd unto him Art thou a Master of Israel and knowest not these things 1. IMmediately after this Miracle Jesus abode a few days in Capernaum but because of the approach of the great Feast of Passeover he ascended to Jerusalem and the first publick act of record that he did was an act of holy Zeal and Religion in behalf of the honour of the Temple For divers Merchants and Exchangers of money made the Temple to be the Market and the Bank and brought Beasts thither to be sold for sacrifice against the great Paschal Solemnity At the sight of which Jesus being moved with zeal and indignation made a whip of cords and drave the Beasts out of the Temple overthrew the accounting Tables and commanded them that sold the Doves to take them from thence For his anger was holy and he would mingle no injury with it and therefore the Doves which if let loose would be detrimental to the owners he caused to be fairly removed and published the Religion of Holy places establishing their Sacredness for ever by his first Gospel-Sermon that he made at Jerusalem Take these things hence Make not my Father's House a house of merchandise for it shall be called a house of Prayer to all Nations And being required to give a sign of his Vocation for this being an action like the Religion of the Zelots among the Jews if it was not attested by something extraordinary might be abused into an excess of liberty he only foretold the
represented in ceremony by the Immersion appointed to be the Rite of that Sacrament And then it is that God pours forth together with the Sacramental waters a salutary and holy fountain of Grace to wash the Soul from all its stains and impure adherences And therefore this first access to Christ is in the style of Scripture called Regeneration the New Birth Redemption Renovation Expiation or Atonement with God and Justification And these words in the New Testament relate principally and properly to the abolition of sins committed before Baptism For we are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Jesus Christ Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation to declare his Rightcousness for the remission of sins that are past To declare I say at this time his righteousness And this is that which S. Paul calls Justification by Faith that boasting might be excluded and the grace of God by Jesus made exceeding glorious For this being the proper work of Christ the first entertainment of a Disciple and manifestation of that state which is first given him as a favour and next intended as a duty is a total abolition of the precedent guilt of sin and leaves nothing remaining that can condemn we then freely receive the intire and perfect effect of that Atonement which Christ made for us we are put into a condition of innocence and favour And this I say is done regularly in Baptism and S. Paul expresses it to this sense after he had enumerated a series of Vices subjected in many he adds and such were some of you but ye are washed but ye are sanctified There is nothing of the old guilt remanent when ye were washed ye were sanctified or as the Scripture calls it in another place Ye were redeemed from your vain conversation 5. For this Grace was the formality of the Covenant Repent and believe the Gospel Repent and be converted so it is in S. Peter's Sermon and your sins shall be done away that was the Covenant But that Christ chose Baptism for its signature appears in the Parallel Repent and be baptized and wash away your sins For Christ loved his Church and gave himself for it That he might sanctifie and cleanse it with the washing of water by the Word That he might present it to himself a glorious Church not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing but that it should be holy and without blemish The Sanctification is integral the Pardon is universal and immediate 6. But here the process is short no more at first but this Repent and be baptized and wash away your sins which Baptism because it was speedily administred and yet not without the preparatives of Faith and Repentance it is certain those predispositions were but instruments of reception actions of great facility of small employment and such as supposing the person not unapt did confess the infiniteness of the Divine mercy and fulness of the redemption is called by the Apostle a being justified freely 7. Upon this ground it is that by the Doctrine of the Church heathen persons strangers from the ãâã of grace were invited to a confession of Faith and dereliction of false Religions with a promise that at the very first resignation of their persons to the service of Jesus they should obtain full pardon It was S. Cyprian's counsel to old Demetrianus Now in the evening of thy days when thy Soul'is almost expiring repent of thy sins believe in Jesus and turn Christian and although thou art almost in the embraces of death yet thou shalt be comprehended of immortality Baptizatus ad horam securus bine exit saith S. Austin A baptized person dying immediately shall live eternally and gloriously And this was the case of the Thief upon the Cross he confessed Christ and repented of his sins and begged pardon and did acts enough to facilitate his first access to Christ and but to remove the hindrances of God's favour then he was redeemed and reconciled to God by the death of Jesus that is he was pardoned with a full instantaneous integral and clear Pardon with such a pardon which declared the glory of God's mercies and the infiniteness of Christ's merits and such as required a more reception and entertainment on man's part 8. But then we having received so great a favour enter into Covenant to correspond with a proportionable endeavour the benefit of absolute Pardon that is Salvation of our Souls being not to be received till the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord all the intervall we have promised to live a holy life in obedience to the whole Discipline of Jesus That 's the condition on our part And if we prevaricate that the mercy shewn to the blessed Thief is no argument of hope to us because he was saved by the mercies of the first access which corresponds to the Remission of sins we receive in Baptism and we shall perish by breaking our own promises and obligations which Christ passed upon us when he made with us the Covenant of an intire and gracious Pardon 9. For in the precise Covenant there is nothing else described but Pardon so given and ascertained upon an Obedience persevering to the end And this is clear in all those places of Scripture which express a holy and innocent life to have been the purpose and design of Christ's death for us and redemption of us from the former estate Christ bare our sins in his own body on the tree that we being dead unto sins should live unto righteousness by whose stripes ye are healed Exinde from our being healed from our dying unto sin from our being buried with Christ from our being baptized into his death the end of Christ's dying for us is that we should live unto righteousness Which was also highly and prophetically expressed by S. Zachary in his divine Ecstasie This was the oath which he sware to our Fore-father Abraham That he would grant unto us that we being delivered out of the hands of our Enemies might serve him without fear In holiness and righteousness before him all the days of our life And S. Paul discourses to this purpose pertinently and largely For the grace of God that bringeth Salvation hath appeared to all men Teaching us that denying ungodliness and worldly lusts Hi sunt Angeli quibus in lavacro renunciavimus saith Tertullian Those are the evil Angels the Devil and his works which we deny or renounce in Baptism we should live soberly righteously and godly in this present world that is lead a whole life in the pursuit of universal holiness Sobriety Justice and Godlinèss being the proper language to signifie our Religion and respects to God to our neighbours and to our selves And that this was the very end of our dying in Baptism and the design of Christ's manifestation of
our Redemption he adds Looking for that blessed hope and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Who gave himself for us to this very purpose that he might redeem us from all iniquity and purifie unto himself a peculiar people zealous of good works Purifying a people peculiar to himself is cleansing it in the Laver of Regeneration and appropriating it to himself in the rites of Admission and Profession Which plainly designs the first consignation of our Redemption to be in Baptism and that Christ there cleansing his Church from every spot or wrinkle made a Covenant with us that we should renounce all our sins and he should cleanse them all and then that we should abide in that state Which is also very explicitely set down by the same Apostle in that divine and mysterious Epistle to the Romans How shall we that are dead to sin live any longer therein Know ye not that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death Well what then Therefore we are buried with him by Baptism into his death that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father even so we also should walk in newness of life That 's the end and mysteriousness of Baptism it is a consignation into the Death of Christ and we die with him that once that is die to sin that we may for ever after live the life of righteousness Knowing this that our old man is crucified with him that the body of sin might be destroyed that henceforth we should not serve sin that is from the day of our Baptism to the day of our death And therefore God who knows the weaknesses on our part and yet the strictness and necessity of conserving Baptismal grace by the Covenant Evangelical hath appointed the auxiliaries of the Holy Spirit to be ministred to all baptized people in the holy Rite of Confirmation that it might be made possible to be done by Divine aids which is necessary to be done by the Divine Commandments 10. And this might not be improperly said to be the meaning of those words of our Blessed Saviour He that speaks a word against the Son of man it shall be forgiven him but he that speaks a word against the Holy Ghost it shall not be forgiven him That is those sins which were committed in Infidelity before we became Disciples of the Holy Jesus are to be remitted in Baptism and our first profession of the Religion but the sins committed after Baptism and Confirmation in which we receive the Holy Ghost and by which the Holy Spirit is grieved are to be accounted for with more severity And therefore the Primitive Church understanding our obligations according to this discourse admitted not any to holy Orders who had lapsed and fallen into any sin of which she could take cognisance that is such who had not kept the integrity of their Baptism but sins committed before Baptism were no impediments to the susception of Orders because they were absolutely extinguished in Baptism This is the nature of the Covenant we made in Baptism that 's the grace of the Gospel and the effect of Faith and Repentance and it is expected we should so remain For it is nowhere expressed to be the mercy and intention of the Covenant Evangelical that this Redemption should be any more than once or that Repentance which is in order to it can be renewed to the same or so great purposes and present effects 11. But after we are once reconciled in Baptism and put intirely into God's favour when we have once been redeemed if we then fall away into sin we must expect God's dealing with us in another manner and to other purposes Never must we expect to be so again justified and upon such terms as formerly the best days of our Repentance are interrupted not that God will never forgive them that sin after Baptism and recover by Repentance but that Restitution by repentance after Baptism is another thing than the first Redemption No such intire clear and integral determinate and presential effects of Repentance but an imperfect little growing uncertain and hazardous Reconciliation a Repentance that is always in production a Renovation by parts a Pardon that is revocable a Salvation to be wrought by fear and trembling all our remanent life must be in bitterness our hopes allayed with fears our meat attempered with Coloquintida and death is in the pot as our best actions are imperfect so our greatest Graces are but possibilities and aptnesses to a Reconcilement and all our life we are working our selves into that condition we had in Baptism and lost by our relapse As the habit lessens so does the guilt as our Vertues are imperfect so is the Pardon and because our Piety may be interrupted our state is uncertain till our possibilities of sin are ceased till our fight is finished and the victory therefore made sure because there is no more fight And it is remarkable that S. Peter gives counsel to live holily in pursuance of our redemption of our calling and of our escaping from that corruption that is in the world through Lust lest we lose the benefit of our purgation to which by way of antithesis he opposes this Wherefore the rather give diligence to make your calling and election sure And if ye do these things ye shall never fall Meaning by the perpetuating our state of Baptism and first Repentance we shall never fall but be in a sure estate our calling and election shall be sure But not if we fall if we forget we were purged from our old sins if we forfeit our calling we have also made our election unsure movable and disputable 12. So that now the hopes of lapsed sinners relie upon another bottom And as in Moses's Law there was no revelation of Repentance but yet the Jews had hopes in God and were taught the succours of Repentance by the Homilies of the Prophets and other accessory notices So in the Gospel the Covenant was established upon Faith and Repentance but it was consigned in Baptism and was verifiable onely in the integrity of a following holy life according to the measures of a man not perfect but sincere not faultless but heartily endeavoured but yet the mercies of God in pardoning sinners lapsed after Baptism was declared to us by collateral and indirect occasions by the Sermons of the Apostles and the Commentaries of Apostolical persons who understood the meaning of the Spirit and the purposes of the Divine mercy and those other significations of his will which the blessed Jesus left upon record in other parts of his Testament as in Codicills annexed besides the precise Testament it self And it is certain if in the Covenant of Grace there be the same involution of an after-Repentance as there is of present Pardon upon past Repentance and future Sanctity it is impossible to
thither but yet worshipped God at home and used their own Rites and Ceremonies Every seventh day they publickly met in their Synagogues where the younger seating themselves at the feet of the elder one reads some portions out of a Book which another eminently skilled in the principles of their Sect expounds to the rest their dogmata like the Philosophy of the Ancients being obscurely and enigmatically delivered to them instructing them in the rules of piety and righteousness and all the duties that concerned God others or themselves They industriously tilled and cultivated the ground and lived upon the fruits of their own labours had all their revenues in common there being neither rich nor poor among them Their manners were very harmless and innocent exact observers of the rules of Justice somewhat beyond the practice of other men As for that branch of them that lived in Egypt whose excellent Manners and Institutions are so particularly described and commended by Philo and whom ãâã and others will needs have to have been Christians converted by S. Mark we have taken notice of elsewhere in S. Mark' s Life We find no mention of them in the History of the Gospel probably because living remote from Cities and all places of publick concourse they never concerned themselves in the actions of Christ or his Apostles What their principles were in matters of speculation is not much material to enquire their Institutions mainly referring to practice Out of a great regard to wisdom and vertue they neglected all care of the body renounced all conjugal embraces abstained very much from Meats and Drinks some of them not eating or drinking for three others for five or six days together accounting it unbecoming men of such a Philosophical temper and genius to spend any part of the day upon the necessities of the body Their way they called ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã worship and their rules ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã doctrines of wisdom their contemplations were sublime and speculative and of things beyond the ordinary notions of other Sects they traded in the names and mysteries of Angels and in all their carriages bore a great shew of modesty and humility And therefore these in all likelihood were the very persons whom S. Paul primarily designed though not excluding others who espoused the same principles when he charges the ãâã to let no man ãâã them of their reward in a voluntary humility and worshipping of Angels intruding into those things which he hath not seen vainly puffed up by his ãâã mind that being dead to the rudiments of the World they should no longer ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã be subject to these dogmata or ordinances such as Touch not taste not handle not the main principles of the Essenian Institution being the commandments and doctrines of men which things have indeed a shew of wisdom in will-worship and humility and neglecting of the body not in any honour to the satisfying of the ãâã Besides these three greater there were several other lesser Sects in the Jewish Church such as the Herodians supposed to have been either part of Herod's guard or a combination of men who to ingratiate themselves with the Prince maintained Herod to be the Messiah and at their own charge celebrated his Coronation-days as also the Sabbath when they used to set lighted Candles crowned with Violets in their windows an opinion which S. ãâã justly laughs at as trifling and ridiculous Probably they were a party that had ãâã Herod's interest and endeavoured to support his new-gotten Soveraignty For Herod being a stranger and having by the Roman power usurped the Kingdom was generally hateful and burdensom to the people and therefore beside the assistance of a foreign power needed some to stand by him at home They were peculiarly ãâã in pressing people to pay Tribute to Caesar Herod being obliged as S. Hierom observes by the Charter of his Soveraignty to look after the Tribute due to Caesar and they could not do him a more acceptable service by this means endearing him to his great Patrons at Rome In matters of opinion they seem to have sided with the Sadducees what S. Matthew calls the leaven of the Sadducees S. Mark stiles the leaven of Herod Probable it is that they had drawn Herod to be of their principles that as they asserted his right to the Kingdom he might favour and maintain their impious opinions And 't is likely enough that men of so debauched manners might be easily tempted to take shelter under principles that so directly served the purposes of a bad life Another Sect in that Church were the Samaritans the posterity of those who succeeded in the room of the ten captivated Tribes a mixture of Jews and Gentiles they held that nothing but the ãâã was the Word of God that Mount Gerizim was the true place of publick and solemn worship that they were the descendents of Joseph and heirs of the Aaronical Priesthood and that no dealing or correspondence was to be maintained with strangers nor any unclean thing to be touched The Karraeans were a branch of the Sadducees but rejected afterwards their abominable and unsound opinions they are the true Textualists adhering only to the writings of Moses and the Prophets and expounding the Scripture by it self peremptorily disowning the absurd glosses of the Talmud and the idle Traditions of the Rabbins insomuch that they admit not so much as the Hebrew points into their Bibles accounting them part of the Oral and Traditionary Law for which reason they are greatly hated by the rest of the Jews They are in great numbers about ãâã and in other places at this day There was also the Sect of the Zealots frequently mentioned by Josephus a Generation of men insolent and ungovernable ãâã and savage who under a pretence of extraordinary zeal for God and the honour of his Law committed the most enormous outrages against God and Man but of them we have given an account in the Life of S. Simon the Zealot And yet as if all this had not been enough to render their Church miserable within it self their sins and intestine divisions had brought in the Roman power upon them who set Magistrates and Taskmasters over them depressed their great ãâã put in and out Senators at pleasure made the Temple pay tribute and placed a Garrison at hand to command it abrogated a great part of their Laws and stript them so naked both of Civil and Ecclesiastical Order and Authority that they had not power left so much as to put a man to death All evident demonstrations that Shiloh was come and the Scepter departed that the Sacrifice and Oblation was to cease the Messiah being cut off who came to finish transgression to make an end of sins to make reconciliation for iniquity and to bring in everlasting righteousness SECT III. Of the EVANGELICAL Dispensation The gradual revelations concerning the Messiah John the Baptist Christ's forerunner His extraordinary
die but if ye through the Spirit do mortifie the deeds of the body ye shall live This first Mortification is the way of life if it continues but its continuance is not fecured till we are advanced towards life by one degree more of this Death For this condition is a state of a daily and dangerous warfare and many inrodes are made by sin and many times hurt is done and booty carried off for he that is but thus far mortified although his dwelling be within the Kingdom of Grace yet it is in the borders of it and hath a dangerous neighbourhood If we mean to be safe we must remove into the heart of the Land or carry the war farther off 6. Secondly We must not only be strangers here but we must be dead too dead unto the World that is we must not only deny our Vices but our Passions not only contradict the direct immediate Perswasion to a sin but also cross the Inclination to it So long as our Appetites are high and full we shall never have peace or safety but the dangers and insecurities of a full War and a potent Enemy we are always disputing the Question ever strugling for life but when our Passions are killed when our desires are little and low then Grace reigns then our life is hid with Christ in God then we have fewer interruptions in the way of Righteousness then we are not so apt to be surprised by sudden eruptions and transportation of Passions and our Piety it self is more prudent and reasonable chosen with a freer election discerned with clearer understanding hath more in it of Judgment than of Fancy and is more spiritual and Angelical He that is apt to be angry though he be habitually careful and full of observation that he sin not may at some time or other be surprised when his guards are undiligent and without actual expectation of an enemy but if his Anger be dead in him and the inclination lessened to the indisferency and gentleness of a Child the man dwells safe because of the impotency of his Enemy or that he is reduced to Obedience or hath taken conditions of peace He that hath refused to consent to actions of Uncleanness to which he was strongly tempted hath won a victory by sine force God hath blessed him well but an opportunity may betray him instantly and the sin may be in upon him unawares unless also his desires be killed he is betrayed by a party within David was a holy person but he was surprised by the sight of Bathsheba for his freer use of permitted beds had kept the fire alive which was apt to be put into a flame when so fair a beauty reflected through his eyes But Joseph was a Virgin and kept under all his inclinations to looser thoughts opportunity and command and violence and beauty did make no breach upon his spirit 7. He that is in the first state of Pilgrimage does not mutiny against his Superiors nor publish their faults nor envy their dignities but he that is dead to the world sees no fault that they have and when he hears an objection he buries it in an excuse and rejoyces in the dignity of their persons Every degree of Mortification endures reproof without murmur but he that is quite dead to the world and to his own will feels no regret against it and hath no secret thoughts of trouble and unwillingness to the suffering save only that he is sorry he deserv'd it For so a dead body resists not your violence changes not its posture you plac'd it in strikes not his striker is not moved by your words nor provoked by your scorn nor is troubled when you shrink with horror at the sight of it only it will hold the head downward in all its situations unless it be hindred by violence And a mortified spirit is such without indignation against scorn without revenge against injuries without murmuring at low offices not impatient in troubles indifferent in all accidents neither transported with joy nor deprest with sorrow and is humble in all his thoughts And thus he that is dead saith the Apostle is justified from sins And this is properly a state of life in which by the grace of Jesus we are restored to a condition of order and interiour beauty in our Faculties our actions are made moderate and humane our spirits are even and our understandings undisturbed 8. For Passions of the sensitive Soul are like an Exnalation hot and dry born up from the earth upon the wings of a cloud and detained by violence out of its place causing thunders and making eruptions into lightning and sudden fires There is a Tempest in the Soul of a passionate man and though every wind does not shake the earth nor rend trees up by the roots yet we call it violent and ill weather if it only makes a ãâã and is harmless And it is an inordination in the spirit of a man when his Passions are tumultuous and mighty though they do not determine directly upon a sin they discompose his peace and disturb his spirit and make it like troubled waters in which no man can see his own figure and just ãâã portions and therefore by being less a man cannot be so much a Christian in the midst ãâã so great indispositions For although the Cause may hallow the Passion and if a man be very angry for God's cause it is Zeal not Fury yet the Cause cannot secure the Person from violence transportation and inconvenience When Elisha was consulted by three Kings concerning the success of their present Expedition he grew so angry against idolatrous soram and was carried on to so great degrees of disturbance that when for Jehosaphat's sake he was content to enquire of the Lord he called for a minstrel who by his harmony might re-compose his disunited and troubled spirit that so he might be apter sor divination And sometimes this zeal goes besides the intention of the man and beyond the degrees of prudent or lawful and ingages in a sin though at first it was Zeal for Religion For so it happened in Moses at the waters of Massah and Meribah he spake foolishly and yet it was when he was zealous for God and extremely careful of the people's interest For his Passion he was hindred from entring into the Land of Promise And we also if we be not moderate and well-tempered even in our ãâã for God may like Moses break the Tables of the Law and throw them out of our hands with zeal to have them preserved for Passion violently snatches at the Conclusion but is inconsiderate and incurious concerning the Premises The summ and purpose of this Discourse is that saying of our Blessed Saviour He that will be my Disciple must deny himself that is not only desires that are sinful but desires that are his own pursuances of his own affections and violent motions though to things not evil or in themselves
Man if they pass through an even and an indifferent life towards the issues of an ordinary and necessary course they are little and within command but if they pass upon an end or aim of difficulty or ambition they duplicate and grow to a ãâã and we have seen the even and temperate lives of indifferent persons continue in many degrees of Innocence but the Temptation of busie designs is too great even for the best of dispositions 7. But these Temptations are crasse and material and soon discernible it will require some greater observation to arm against such as are more spiritual and immaterial For he hath Apples to cousen Children and Gold for Men the Kingdoms of the World for the Ambition of Princes and the Vanities of the World for the Intemperate he hath Discourses and fair-spoken Principles to abuse the pretenders to Reason and he hath common Prejudices for the more vulgar understandings Amongst these I chuse to consider such as are by way of Principle or Proposition 8. The first great Principle of Temptation I shall note is a general mistake which excuses very many of our crimes upon pretence of Infirmity calling all those sins to which by natural disposition we are inclined though by carelesness and evil customs they are heightned to a habit by the name of Sins of infirmity to which men suppose they have reason and title to pretend If when they have committed a crime their Conscience checks them and they are troubled and during the interval and abatement of the heats of desire resolve against it and commit it readily at the next opportunity then they cry out against the weakness of their Nature and think as long as this body of death is about them it must be thus and that this condition may stand with the state of Grace And then the Sins shall return periodically like the revolutions of a Quartan Ague well and ill for ever till Death surprizes the mistaker This is a Patron of sins and makes the Temptation prevalent by an authentick instrument and they pretend the words of S. Paul For the good that I would that I do not but the evil that I would not that I do For there is a law in my members ãâã against the law of my mind bringing me into captivity to the law of Sin And thus the ãâã of Sin is mistaken for a state of Grace and the imperfections of the Law are miscalled the affections and necessities of Nature that they might seem to be incurable and the persons apt for an excuse therefore because for Nature there is no absolute cure But that these words of S. Paul may not become a ãâã of death and instruments of a temptation to us it is observable that the Apostle by a siction of person as is usual with him speaks of himself not as in the state of Regeneration under the Gospel but under the ãâã obscurities insufficiencies and imperfections of the Law which indeed he there contends to have been a Rule good and holy apt to remonstrate our misery because by its prohibitions and limits given to natural desires it made actions before indifferent now to be sins it added many curses to the breakers of it and by an ãâã of contrariety it made us more desirous of what was now unlawful but it was a Covenant in which our Nature was restrained but not helped it was provoked but not sweetly assisted our Understandings were instructed but our Wills not sanctified and there were no suppletories of Repentance every greater sin was like the fall of an Angel irreparable by any mystery or express recorded or enjoyned Now of a man under this Govenant he describes the condition to be such that he understands his Duty but by the infirmities of Nature he is certain to fall and by the helps of the Law not strengthened against it nor restored after it and therefore he calls himself under that notion a miserable man sold under sin not doing according to the rules of the Law or the dictates of his Reason but by the unaltered misery of his Nature certain to prevaricate But the person described here is not S. Paul is not any justified person not so much as a Christian but one who is under a state of direct opposition to the state of Grace as will manifestly appear if we observe the antithesis from S. Paul's own characters For the Man here named is such as in whom sin wrought all concupiscence in whom sin lived and slew him so that he was dead in trespasses and sins and although he did delight in the Law after his inwardman that is his understanding had intellectual complacencies and satisfactions which afterwards he calls serving the Law of God with his mind that is in the first dispositions and preparations of his spirit yet he could act nothing for the law in his members did inslave him and brought him into captivity to the law of sin so that this person was full of actual and effective lusts he was a slave to sin and dead in trespasses But the state of a regenerate person is such as to have ãâã the flesh with the affections and lusts in whom sin did not reign not only in the mind but even also not in the mortal body over whom sin had no dominion in whom the old man was crucified and the body of sin was destroyed and sin not at all served And to make the antithesis yet clearer in the very beginning of the next Chapter the Apostle saith that the spirit of life in Christ Jesus had made him free from the law of sin and death under which law he complained immediately before he was sold and killed to shew the person was not the same in these so different and contradictory representments No man in the state of Grace can say The evil that I would not that I do if by evil he means any evil that is habitual or in its own nature deadly 9. So that now let no man pretend an inevitable necessity to sin for if ever it comes to a custom or to a great violation though but in a single act it is a condition of Carnality not of spiritual life and those are not the infirmities of Nature but the weaknesses of Grace that make us sin so frequently which the Apostle truly affirms to the same purpose The flesh lusteth against the Spirit and the Spirit against the flesh and these are contrary the one to the other so that ye cannot or that ye do not do the things that ye would This disability proceeds from the strength of the flesh and weakness of the spirit For he adds But if ye be led by the Spirit ye are not under the Law saying plainly that the state of such a combate and disability of doing good is a state of a man under the Law or in the flesh which he accounts all one but every man that is sanctified
to him are forgiven not his own but the ãâã of another man None ought to be driven from Baptism and the Grace of God who is ãâã ãâã gentle and pious unto all and therefore much less Infants who more ãâã our aid and more need the Divine mercy because in the first beginning of their birth crying and ãâã they can do nothing but call for mercy and relief ãâã this reason it was saith ãâã that they to whom the secrets of the Divine ãâã were committed ãâã ãâã their ãâã because there was born with them the impurities of sin which did need material Ablution as a Sacrament of spiritual purification For that it may appear that our sins have a proper analogy to this Sacrament the Body it self is called the ãâã of ãâã and therefore the washing of the Body is not ineffectual towards the great work of Pardon and abolition Indeed after this Ablution there remains ãâã or the material part of our misery and sin For Christ by his death only took away that which when he did die for us he bare in his own body upon the tree Now Christ only bare the punishment of our sin and therefore we shall not die for it but the material part of the sin Christ bare not Sin could not come so near him it might make him sick and die but not disordered and stained He was pure from Original and Actual sins and therefore that remains in the body though the guilt and ãâã be ãâã off and changed into advantages and grace and the Actual are ãâã by the Spirit of Grace descending afterwards upon the Church and sent by our Lord to the same purpose 33. But it is not rationally to be answered what S. Ambrose says Quia omnis peccato ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã For it were strange that sin and misery should seize upon the innocent and most ãâã persons and that they only should be left without a Sacrament and an instrument of expiation And although they cannot consent to the present susception yet neither do they refuse and yet they consent as much to the grace of the Sacrament as to the prevarication of Adam and because ãâã ãâã under this it were but reason they should be relieved by that And it ãâã ãâã as Gregory ãâã ãâã that they should be consigned and sanctified without their own knowledge than to die without their being sanctified for so it happened to the ãâã ãâã of Israel and if the conspersion and washing the door-posts with the bloud of a Lamb did sacramentally preserve all the first-born of Goshen it cannot ãâã thought impossible or unreasonable that the want of understanding in Children should hinder them from the blessing of a Sacrament and from being redeemed and washed with the bloud of the Holy Lamb who was ãâã for all from the beginning of the world 34. After all this it is not inconsiderable that we say the Church hath great power and authority about the Sacraments which is observable in many instances She appointed what persons she pleased and in equal power made an unequal dispensation and ministery The Apostles first dispensed all things and then they left off exteriour ministeries to attend to the Word of God and Prayer and S. Paul accounted it no part of his office to Baptize when he had been separated by imposition of hands at Antioch to the work of Preaching and greater ministeries and accounted that act of the Church the act of Christ saying Christ sent me not to baptize but to preach the Gospel They used various forms in the ministration of Baptism sometimes baptizing in the name of Christ sometimes expresly invocating the Holy and ever-Blessed Trinity one while ãâã baptize ãâã as in the Latine Church but in the Greek Let the servant of Christ be baptized And in all Ecclesiastical ministeries the Church invented the forms and in most things hath often changed them as in Absolution Excommunication And sometimes they baptized people under their profession of Repentance and then taught them as it happened to the Goaler and his family in whose case there was no explicit Faith ãâã in the mysteries of Religion so far as appears and yet he and not only he but all his house were baptized at that hour of the night when the Earthquake was terrible and the ãâã was pregnant upon them and this upon their Master's account as it is likely but others were baptized in the conditions of a previous Faith and a new-begun Repentance They baptized in Rivers or in Lavatories by dipping or by sprinkling for so we find that S. Laurence did as he went to martyrdom and so the Church did sometimes to Clinicks and so it is highly convenient to be done in Northern Countries according to the Prophecy of ãâã So shall ãâã sprinkle many Nations according as the typical expiations among the Jews were usually by sprinkling And it is fairly relative to the mystery to the sprinkling with the ãâã of Christ and the watering of the furrows of our Souls with the dew of Heaven to make them to bring forth fruit unto the Spirit and unto Holiness The Church sometimes dipt the Catechumen three times sometimes but once Some Churches use Fire in their Baptisms so do the Ethiopians and the custom was ancient in ãâã places And so in the other Sacrament sometimes they stood and sometimes kneeled and sometimes received it in the mouth and sometimes in the hand one while in ãâã another while in unlevened bread sometimes the wine and water were mingled sometimes they were pure and they admitted some persons to it sometimes which at other times they rejected sometimes the Consecration was made by one form sometimes by another and to conclude sometimes it was given to Infants sometimes not And she had power so to do for in all things where there was not a Commandment of Christ expressed or implied in the nature and in the end of the Institution the Church had power to alter the particulars as was most expedient or conducing to edification And although the after-Ages of the Church which refused to communicate Infants have ãâã some little things against the lawfulness and those Ages that used it found out some pretences for its ãâã yet both the one and the other had liberty to follow their own necessities so in all things they followed Christ. Certainly there is ãâã more reason why Insants may be Communicated than why they may not be Baptized And that this discourse may ãâã to its first intention although there is no record extant of any Church in the world and from the Apostles days inclusively to this very day ever refused to Baptize their Children yet if they had upon any present reason they might also change ãâã practice when the reason should be ãâã and therefore if there were nothing else in it yet the universal practice of all Churches in all Ages is abundantly sufficient to determine us and to
nature and manner of the present communication Only this last because it is more malicious and a declension from a greater grace is something like the fall of Angels And of this the Emperour Julian was a sad example 19. But as these are degrees immediately next and a little less so the hopes of pardon are the more visible Simon Magiss spake a word or at least thought against the Holy Ghost he thought he was to be bought with mony Concerning him S. Peter pronounced Thou art in the gall of bitterness and in the bond of iniquity Yet repent pray God if perhaps the thought of thine heart may be forgiven thee Here the matter was of great difficulty but yet there was a possibility ãâã at least no impossibility of recovery declared And therefore S. Jude bids us of some to have compassion making a difference and others save with fear pulling them out of the fire meaning that their condition is only not desperate And still in descent retaining the same proportion every lesser sin is easier pardoned as better consisting with the state of Grace the whole Spirit is not destroyed and the body of sin is not introduced Christ is not quite ejected out of possession but like an oppressed Prince still continues his claim and such is his mercy that he will still do so till all be lost or that he is provoked by too much violence or that Antichrist is put in substitution and sin reigns in ãâã mortal body So that I may use the words of Saint John These things I write unto you that ' you sin not But if any man sin we have an Advocate with the ãâã Jesus Christ the Righteous And he is a propitiation for our sins and not for ours only but for the sins of the whole world That is plainly Although the design of the Gospel be that we should erect a Throne for Christ to reign in our spirits and this doctrine of Innocence be therefore preached that ye sin not yet if one be overtaken in a fault despair not Christ is our Advocate and he is the Propitiation he did propitiate the Father by his death and the benefit of that we receive at our first access to him but then he is our Advocate too and prays perpetually for our perseverance or restitution respectively But his purpose is and he is able so to do to keep you from falling and to present you faultless before the presence of his Glory 20. This consideration I intend should relate to all Christians of the world And although by the present custom of the Church we are baptized in our infancy and do not actually reap that fruit of present Pardon which persons of a mature age in the primitive Church did for we yet need it not as we shall when we have past the calentures of Youth which was the time in which the wisest of our Fathers in Christ chose for their Baptism as appears in the instance of S. Ambrose S. Austin and divers others yet we must remember that there is a Baptism of the Spirit as well as of water and when-ever this happens whether it be together with that Baptism of water as usually it was when only men and women of years of discretion were baptized or whether it be ministred in the rite of Confirmation which is an admirable suppletory of an early Baptism and intended by the Holy Ghost for a corroborative of Baptismal grace and a defensative against danger or that lastly it be performed by an internal and merely spiritual Ministery when we by acts of our own election verifie the promise made in Baptism and so bring back the Rite by receiving the effect of Baptism that is when-ever the filth of our flesh is washt away and that we have the answer of a pure conscience towards God which S. Peter affirms to be the true Baptism and which by the purpose and design of God it is expected we should not defer longer than a great reason or a great necessity enforces when our sins are first explated and the sacrifice and death of Christ is made ours and we made God's by a more immediate title which at some time or other happens to all Christians that pretend to any hopes of Heaven then let us look to our standing and take heed lest we fall When we once have tasted of the heavenly gift and are made partakers of the Holy Ghost and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the world to come that is when we are redeemed by an actual mercy and presential application which every Christian that belongs to God is at some time or other of his life then a fall into a deadly crime is highly dangerous but a relapse into a contrary estate is next to desperate 21. I represent this sad but most true Doctrine in the words of S. Peter If after they have escaped the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ they are again entangled therein and overcome the latter end is worse with them than the beginning For it had been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness than after they have known it to turn from the holy Commandment delivered unto them So that a relapse after a state of Grace into a state of sin into confirmed habits is to us a great sign and possibly in it self it is more than a sign even a state of reprobation and final abscission 22. The summ of all is this There are two states of like opposite terms First Christ redeems us from our vain conversation and reconciles us to God putting us into an intire condition of Pardon Favour Innocence and Acceptance and becomes our Lord and King his Spirit dwelling and reigning in us The opposite state to this is that which in Scripture is called a crucifying the Lord of Life a doing despite to the Spirit of grace a being entangled in the pollutions of the world the Apostasie or falling away an impotency or disability to do good viz. of such who cannot cease from sin who are slaves of sin and in whom sin reigns in their bodies This condition is a full and integral deletery of the first it is such a condition which as it hath no Holiness or remanent affections to Vertue so it hath no hope or revelation of a mercy because all that benefit is lost which they received by the death of Christ and the first being lost there remains no more sacrifice for sins but a certain fearful expectation of Judgment But between these two states stand all those imperfections and single delinquencies those slips and falls those parts of recession and apostasie those grievings of the Spirit and so long as any thing of the first state is left so long we are within the Covenant of grace so long we are within the ordinary limits of mercy and the Divine compassion we are in possibilities of
the wicked in a proportionable manner to the contrary purpose he shortens their days and takes a way their possibilities and opportunities when the time of Repentance is past because he will not do violence to their Wills and this lest they should return and be converted and I should heal them so that it is evident some persons are by some acts of God after a vicious life and the frequent rejection of the Divine grace at last prevented from mercy who without such courses and in contrary circumstances might possibly do acts of Repentance and return and then God would healthem 4. Let their purposes and vows be never so sincere in the principle yet since a man who is in the state of Grace may again fail of it and forget he was purged from his old sins and every dying sinner did so if ever he was washed in the laver of Regeneration and sanctified in his spirit then much more may such a sincere purpose fail and then it would be known to what distance of time or state from his purpose will God give his final sentence Whether will he quit him because in the first stage he will correspond with his intention and act his purposes or condemn him because in his second stage he would prevaricate And when a man does fail it is not because his first principle was not good for the Holy Spirit which is certainly the best principle of spiritual actions may be extinguished in a man and a sincere or hearty purpose may be lost or it may again be recovered and be lost again so that it is as unreasonable as it is unrevealed that a sincere purpose on a death-bed shall obtain pardon or pass for a new state of life Few men are at those instants and in such pressures hypocritical and vain and yet to perform such purposes is a new work and a new labour it comes in upon a new stock differing from that principle and will meet with temptations difficulties and impediments and an honest heart is not sure to remain so but may split upon a rock of a violent invitation A promise is made to be faithful or unfaithful ex post ãâã by the event but it was sincere or insincere in the principle only if the person promising did or did not respectively at that time mean what he said A sincere promise many times is not truly performed 42. Concerning all the other acts which it is to be supposed a dying person can do I have only this consideration If they can make up a new Creature become a new state be in any sence a holy life a keeping the Commandments of God a following of peace and holiness a becoming holy in all conversation if they can arrive to the lowest sence of that excellent condition Christ intended to all his Disciples when he made keeping the Commandments to be the condition of entring into life and not crying Lord Lord but doing the will of God if he that hath served the Lusts of the flesh and taken pay under all God's enemies during a long and malicious life can for any thing a dying person can do be said in any sence to have lived holily then his hopes are fairly built if not they rely upon a sand and the ãâã of Death and the Divine displeasure will beat ãâã violently upon them There are no suppletories of the Evangelical Covenant If we walk according to the Rule then shall peace and righteousness kiss each other if we have sinned and prevaricated the Rule Repentance must bring us into the ways of Righteousness and then we must go on upon the old stock but the deeds of the ãâã must be mortified and Christ must dwell in us and the Spirit must reign in us and Vertue must be habitual and the habits must be confirmed and this as we do by the Spirit of Christ so it is hallowed and accepted by the grace of God and we put into a condition of favour and redeemed from sin and reconciled to God But this will not be put off with single acts nor divided parts nor newly-commenced purposes nor fruitless sorrow it is a great folly to venture Eternity upon dreams so that now let me represent the condition of a dying person after a vicious life 43. First He that considers the srailty of humane bodies their incidences and aptness to sickness casualties death sudden or expected the condition of several diseases that some are of too quick a sense and are intolerable some are dull stupid and Lethargical then adds the prodigious Judgments which fall upon many sinners in the act of sin and are marks of our dangers and God's essential justice and severity and that security which possesses such persons whose lives are vicious and that habitual carelesness and groundless confidence or an absolute inconsideration which is generally the condition and constitution of such minds every one whereof is likely enough to confound a persevering sinner in miseries eternal will soon apprehend the danger of a delayed Repentance to be infinite and unmeasurable 44. Secondly But suppose such a person having escaped the antecedent circumstances of the danger is set fairly upon his Death-bed with the just apprehension of his sins about him and his addresses to Repentance consider then the strength of his Lusts that the sins he is to mortifie are inveterate habitual and confirmed having had the growth and stability of a whole life that the liberty of his Will is impaired the Scripture saying of such persons whose eyes are full of lust and that cannot cease from sin and that his servants they are whom they obey that they are slaves to sin and so not sui juris not at their own dispose that his Understanding is blinded his Appetite is mutinous and of a long time used to rebell and prevail that all the inferiour Faculties are in disorder that he wants the helps of Grace proportionable to his necessities for the longer he hath continued in sin the weaker the Grace of God is in him so that in effect at that time the more need he hath the less he shall receive it being God's rule to give to him that hath and from him that hath not to take even what he hath then add the innumerable parts and great burthens of Repentance that it is not a Sorrow nor a Purpose because both these suppose that to be undone which is the only necessary support of all our hopes in Christ when it is done the innumerable difficult cases of Conscience that may then occur particularly in the point of Restitution which among many other necessary parts of Repentance is indispensably required of all persons that are able and in every degree in which they are able the many Temptations of the Devil the strength of Passions the impotency of the Flesh the illusions of the spirits of darkness the tremblings of the heart the incogitancy of the mind the implication and
and therefore less likely to deceive for which reason it is said that he shall deceive if it were possible the very elect that is therefore not possible because that by which he insinuates himself to others is by the elect the Church and chosen of God understood to be his sign and mark of discovery and a warning And therefore as the Prophecies of Jesus were an infinite verification of his Miracles so also this Prophecy of Christ concerning Antichrist disgraces the reputation and faith of the Miracles he shall act The old Prophets foretold of the Messias and of his Miracles of power and mercy to prepare for his reception and entertainment Christ alone and his Apostles from him foretold of Antichrist and that he should come in all Miracles of deception and lying that is with true or false Miracles to perswade a lie and this was to prejudice his being accepted according to the Law of Moses So that as all that spake of Christ bade us believe him for the Miracles so all that foretold of Antichrist bade us disbelieve him the rather for his and the reason of both is the same because the mighty and surer word of Prophecy as S. Peter calls it being the greatest testimony in the world of a Divine principle gives authority or reprobates with the same power They who are the predestinate of God and they that are the praesciti the foreknown and marked people must needs stand or fall to the Divine sentence and such must this be acknowledged for no enemy of the Cross not the Devil himself ever foretold such a contingency or so rare so personal so voluntary so unnatural an event as this of the great Antichrist 12. And thus the Holy Jesus having shewed forth the treasures of his Father's Wisdom in Revelations and holy Precepts and upon the stock of his Father's greatness having dispended and demonstrated great power in Miracles and these being instanced in acts of Mercy he mingled the glories of Heaven to transmit them to earth to raise us up to the participations of Heaven he was pleased by healing the bodies of infirm persons to invite their spirits to his Discipline and by his power to convey healing and by that mercy to lead us into the treasures of revelation that both Bodies and Souls our Wills and Understandings by Divine instruments might be brought to Divine perfections in the participations of a Divine nature It was a miraculous mercy that God should look upon us in our bloud and a miraculous condescension that his Son should take our nature and even this favour we could not believe without many Miracles and so contrary was our condition to all possibilities of happiness that if Salvation had not marched to us all the way in Miracle we had perished in the ruines of a sad eternity And now it would be but reasonable that since God for our sakes hath rescinded so many laws of natural establishment we also for his and for our own would be content to do violence to those natural inclinations which are also criminal when they derive into action Every man living in the state of Grace is a perpetual Miracle and his Passions are made reasonable as his Reason is turned to Faith and his Soul to Spirit and his Body to a Temple and Earth to Heaven and less than this will not dispose us to such glories which being the portion of Saints and Angels and the nearest communications with God are infinitely above what we see or hear or understand The PRAYER O Eternal Jesu who didst receive great power that by it thou mightest convey thy Father's mercies to us impotent and wretched people give me grace to believe that heavenly Doctrine which thou didst ratifie with arguments from above that I may fully assent to all those mysterious Truths which integrate that Doctrine and Discipline in which the obligations of my duty and the hopes of my felicity are deposited And to all those glorious verifications of thy Goodness and thy Power add also this Miracle that I who am stained with Leprosie of sin may be cleansed and my eyes may be opened that I may see the wondrous things of thy Law and raise thou me up from the death of sin to the life of righteousness that I may for ever walk in the land of the living abhorring the works of death and darkness that as I am by thy miraculous mercy partaker of the first so also I may be accounted worthy of the second Resurrection and as by Faith Hope Charity and Obedience I receive the fruit of thy Miracles in this life so in the other I may partake of thy Glories which is a mercy above all Miracles Lord if thou wilt thou canst make me clean Lord I believe help mine unbelief and grant that no ãâã or incapacity of mine may hinder the wonderful operations of thy Grace but let it be thy first Miracle to turn my water into wine my barrenness into fruitfulness my aversations from thee into unions and intimate adhesions to thy infinity which is the fountain of mercy and power Grant this for thy mercie 's sake and for the honour of those glorious Attributes in which thou hast revealed thy self and thy Father's excellencies to the world O Holy and Eternal Jesu Amen The End of the Second Part. ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã THE HISTORY OF THE Life and Death OF THE HOLY JESUS BEGINNING At the Second Year of his PREACHING until his ASCENSION WITH CONSIDERATIONS and DISCOURSES upon the several parts of the Story And PRAYERS fitted to the several MYSTERIES THE THIRD PART Seneca apud Lactant. lib. 6. c. 17. Hic est ille homo qui sive toto corpore tormenta patienda sunt sive flamma ore recipienda est sive extendenda per patibulum manus non quaerit quid patiatur sed quà m bene LONDON Printed by R. Norton for R. Royston 1675 TO The Right Honourable and Vertuous Lady The LADY FRANCES Countess of CARBERY MADAM SInce the Divine Providence hath been pleased to bind up the great breaches of my little fortune by your Charity and Nobleness of a religious tenderness I account it an excellent circumstance and handsomeness of condition that I have the fortune of S. Athanasius to have my Persecution relieved and comforted by an Honourable and Excellent Lady and I have nothing to return for this honour done to me but to do as the poor Paralyticks and infirm people in the Gospel did when our Blessed Saviour cured them they went and told it to all the Countrey and made the Vicinage full of the report as themselves were of health and joy And although I know the modesty of your person and Religion had rather do favours than own them yet give me leave to draw aside the curtain and retirement of your Charity for I had rather your vertue should blush than my unthankfulness make me ashamed Madam I intended by this Address not onely to return you spirituals for
that is to come That is plain And although Christ revealed his Father's mercies to us in new expresses and great abundance yet he took nothing from the world which ever did in any sense invite Piety or indear Obedience or cooperate towards Felicity And ãâã the Promises which were made of old are also presupposed in the new and mentioned by intimation and implication within the greater When our Blessed Saviour in seven of the Eight Beatitudes had instanced in new Promises and Rewards as Heaven Seeing of God Life eternal in one of them to which Heaven is as certainly consequent as to any of the rest he did chuse to instance in a temporal blessing and in the very words of the Old Testament to shew that that part of the old Covenant which concerns Morality and the rewards of Obedience remains firm and included within the conditions of the Gospel 16. To this purpose is that saying of our Blessed Saviour Man liveth not by bread alone but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God meaning that besides natural means ordained for the preservation of our lives there are means supernatural and divine God's Blessing does as much as bread nay it is Every word proceeding out of the ãâã of God that is every Precept and Commandment of God is so for our good that it is intended as food and Physick to us a means to make us live long And therefore God hath done in this as in other graces and issues Evangelical which he purposed to continue in his Church for ever He first gave it in miraculous and extraordinary manner and then gave it by way of perpetual ministery The Holy Ghost appeared at first like a prodigy and with Miracle he descended in visible representments expressing himself in revelations and powers extraordinary but it being a Promise intended to descend upon all Ages of the Church there was appointed a perpetual ministery for its conveyance and still though without a sign or miraculous representment it is ministred in Confirmation by imposition of the Bishop's hands And thus also health and long life which by way of ordinary benediction is consequent to Piety Faith and Obedience Evangelical was at first given in a miraculous manner that so the ordinary effects being at first confirmed by miraculous and extraordinary instances and manners of operation might for ever after be confidently expected without any dubitation since it was in the same manner consigned by which all the whole Religion was by a voice from Heaven and a verification of Miracles and extraordinary supernatural effects That the gift of healing and preservation and restitution of life was at first miraculous needs no particular probation All the story of the Gospel is one entire argument to prove it and amongst the fruits of the Spirit S. Paul reckons gifts of healing and government and helps or exteriour assistences and advantages to represent that it was intended the life of Christian people should be happy and healthful for ever Now that this grace also descended afterwards in an ordinary ministery is recorded by S. James Is any man sick amongst you let him call for the Elders of the Church and let them pray over him anointing him with oyl in the name of the Lord that was then the ceremony and the blessing and effect is still for the prayer of faith shall save the sick and the Lord shall raise him up For it is observable that the blessing of healing and recovery is not appendent to the Anealing but to the Prayer of the Church to manifest that the ceremony went with the first miraculous and extraordinary manner yet that there was an ordinary ministery appointed for the daily conveyance of the blessing the faithful prayers offices of holy Priests shall obtain life and health to such persons who are receptive of it and in spiritual and apt dispositions And when we see by a continual flux of extraordinary benediction that even some Christian Princes are instruments of the Spirit not only in the government but in the gifts of healing too as a reward for their promoting the just interests of Christianity we may acknowledge our selves convinced that a holy life in the faith and obedience of Jesus Christ may be of great advantage for our health and life by that instance to entertain our present desires and to establish our hopes of life eternal 17. For I consider that the fear of God is therefore the best antidote in the World against sickness and death because it is the direct enemy to sin which brought in sickness and death and besides this that God by spiritual means should produce alterations natural is not hard to be understood by a Christian Philosopher take him in either of the two capacities 2. For there is a rule of proportion and analogy of effects that if sin destroys not only the Soul but the Body also then may Piety preserve both and that much rather for if sin that is the effects and consequents of sin hath abounded then shall grace superabound that is Christ hath done us more benefit than the Fall of Adam hath done us injury and therefore the effects of sin are not greater upon the body than either are to be restored or prevented by a pious life 3. There is so near a conjunction between Soul and Body that it is no wonder if God meaning to glorifie both by the means of a spiritual life suffers spirit and matter to communicate in effects and mutual impresses Thus the waters of Baptism purifie the Soul and the Holy Eucharist not the symbolical but the mysterious and spiritual part of it makes the Body also partaker of the death ãâã Christ and a holy union The flames of Hell whatsoever they are torment accursed Souls and the stings of Conscience vex and disquiet the Body 4. And if we consider that in the glories of Heaven when we shall live a life purely spiritual our Bodies also are so clarified and made spiritual that they also become immortal that state of Glory being nothing else but a perfection of the state of Grace it is not unimaginable but that the Soul may have some proportion of the same operation upon the Body as to conduce to its prolongation as to an antepast of immortality 5. For since the Body hath all its life from its conjunction with the Soul why not also the perfection of life according to its present capacity that is health and duration from the perfection of the Soul I mean from the ornaments of Grace And as the blessedness of the Soul saith the Philosopher consists in the speculation of honest and just things so the perfection of the Body and of the whole Man consists in the practick the exercise and operations of Vertue 18. But this Problem in Christian Philosophy is yet more intelligible and will be reduced to certain experience if we consider good life in union and concretion with particular
are God's tokens marks upon the body of insected persons and declare the malignity of the disease and bid us all beware of those determined crimes 6. Thirdly But then in these and all other accidents we must first observe from the cause to the effect and then judge from the effect concerning the nature and the degree of the cause We cannot conclude This family is lessened beggered or extinct therefore they are guilty of Sacrilege but thus They are Sacrilegious and God hath blotted out their name from among the posterities therefore this Judgment was an express of God's anger against Sacrilege the Judgment will not conclude a Sin but when a Sin infers the Judgment with a legible character and a prompt signification not to understand God's choice is next to stupidity or carelesness Arius was known to be a seditious heretical and dissembling person and his entrails descended on the earth when he went to cover his feet it was very suspicious that this was the punishment of those sins which were the worst in him But he that shall conclude Arius was an Heretick or Seditious upon no other ground but because his bowels gushed out begins imprudently and proceeds uncharitably But it is considerable that men do not arise to great crimes on the sudden but by degrees of carelesness to lesser impieties and then to clamorous sins And God is therefore said to punish great crimes or actions of highest malignity because they are commonly productions from the spirit of Reprobation they are the highest ascents and suppose a Body of sin And therefore although the Judgment may be intended to punish all our sins yet it is like the Syrian Army it kills all that are its enemies but it hath a special commission to fight against none but the King of Israel because his death would be the dissolution of the Body And if God humbles a man for his great sin that is for those acts which combine and consummate all the rest possibly the Body of sin may separate and be apt to be scattered and subdued by single acts and instruments of mortification and therefore it is but reasonable in our making use of God's Judgments upon others to think that God will rather strike at the greatest crimes not only because they are in themselves of greatest malice and iniquity but because they are the summe total of the rest and by being great progressions in the state of sin suppose all the rest included and we by proportioning and observing the Judgment to the highest acknowledge the whole body of sin to lie under the curse though the greatest only was named and called upon with the voice of thunder And yet because it sometimes happens that upon the violence of a great and new occasion some persons leap into such a sin which in the ordinary course of sinners uses to be the effect of an habitual and growing state then if a Judgment happens it is clearly appropriate to that one great crime which as of it self it is equivalent to a vicious habit and interrupts the acceptation of all its former contraries so it meets with a curse such as usually God chuses for the punishment of a whole body and state of sin However in making observation upon the expresses of God's anger we must be careful that we reflect not with any bitterness or scorn upon the person of our calamitous Brother left we make that to be an evil to him which God intends for his benefit if the Judgment was medicinal or that we increase the load already great enough to sink him beneath his grave if the Judgment was intended for a final abscission 7. Fourthly But if the Judgments descend upon our selves we are to take another course not to enquire into particulars to find out the proportions for that can only be a design to part with just so much as we must needs but to mend all that is amiss for then only we can be secure to remove the Achan when we keep nothing within us or about us that may provoke God to jealousie or wrath And that is the proper product of holy fear which God intended should be the first effect of all his Judgments and of this God is so careful and yet so kind and provident that fear might not be produced always at the expence of a great suffering that God hath provided for us certain prologues of Judgment and keeps us waking with alarms that so he might reconcile his mercies with our duties Of this nature are Epidemical diseases not yet arrived at us prodigious Tempests Thunder and loud noises from Heaven and he that will not fear when God speaks so loud is not yet made soft with the impresses and perpetual droppings of Religion Venerable Bede reports of S. Chad that if a great gust of Wind suddenly arose he presently made some holy ejaculation to beg favour of God for all mankind who might possibly be concerned in the effects of that Wind but if a Storm succeeded he fell prostrate to the earth and grew as violent in Prayer as the Storm was ãâã at Land or Sea But if God added Thunder and Lightning he went to the Church and there spent all his time during the Tempest in reciting Litanies Psalms and other holy Prayers till it pleased God to restore his favour and to seem to forget his anger And the good Bishop added this reason Because these are the extensions and stretchings forth of God's hand and yet he did not strike but he that trembles not when he sees God's arm held forth to strike us understands neither God's mercies nor his own danger he neither knows what those horrours were which the People saw from mount Sinai nor what the glories and amazements shall be at the great day of Judgment And if this Religious man had seen Tullus Hostilius the Roman King and Anastasius a Christian Emperor but a reputed Heretick struck dead with Thunderbolts and their own houses made their urns to keep their ashes in there could have been no posture humble enough no Prayers devout enough no place holy enough nothing sufficiently expressive of his fear and his humility and his adoration and Religion to the almighty and infinite power and glorious mercy of God sending out his Emissaries to denounce war with designs of peace A great Italian General seeing the sudden death of Alfonsus Duke of Ferrara kneeled down instantly saying And shall not this sight make me religious Three and twenty thousand fell in one night in the Assyrian Camp who were all slain for Fornication And this so prodigious a Judgement was recorded in Scripture for our example and affrightment that we should not with such freedom entertain a crime which destroyed so numerous a body of men in the darkness of one evening Fear and Modesty and universal Reformation are the purposes of God's Judgments upon us or in our neighbourhood 8. Fifthly Concerning Judgments happening to a Nation or a Church the
their friends and consider not that their friends are bound to accept the trouble as themselves to accept the sickness that to tend the sick is at that time allotted for the portion of their work and that Charity receives it as a duty and makes that duty to be a pleasure And however if our friends account us a burthen let us also accept that circumstance of affliction to our selves with the same resignation and indifferency as we entertain its occasion the Sickness it self and pray to God to enkindle a flame of Charity in their breasts and to make them compensation for the charge and trouble we put them to and then the care is at an end But others excuse their discontent with a more religious colour and call the disease their trouble and affliction because it impedes their other parts of Duty they cannot preach or study or do exteriour assistences of Charity and Alms or acts of Repentance and Mortification But it were well if we could let God proportion out our work and set our task let him chuse what vertues we shall specially exercise and when the will of God determines us it is more excellent to endure afflictions with patience equanimity and thankfulness than to do actions of the most pompous Religion and laborious or expensive Charity not only because there is a deliciousness in actions of Religion and choice which is more agreeable to our spirit than the toleration of sickness can be which hath great reward but no present pleasure but also because our suffering and our imployment is consecrated to us when God chuses it and there is then no mixture of imperfection or secular interest as there may be in other actions even of an excellent Religion when our selves are the chusers And let us also remember that God hath not so much need of thy works as thou hast of Patience Humility and Resignation S. Paul was far a more considerable person than thou canst be and yet it pleased God to shut him in prison for two years and in that intervall God secured and promoted the work of the Gospel and although ãâã was an excellent Minister yet God laid a sickness upon him and even in his disease gave him work enough to do though not of his own chusing And therefore fear it not but the ends of Religion or Duty will well enough proceed without thy health and thy own eternal interest when God so pleases shall better be served by Sickness and the Vertues which it occasions than by the opportunities of Health and an ambulatory active Charity 18. When thou art resigned to God use fair and appointed means for thy Recovery trust not in thy spirit upon any instrument of health as thou art willing to be disposed by God so look ãâã for any event upon the stock of any other cause or principle be ruled by the Physician and the people appointed to tend thee that thou neither become troublesome to them nor give any sign of impatience or a peevish spirit But this advice only means that thou do not disobey them out of any evil principle and yet if Reason be thy guide to chuse any other aid or sollow any other counsel use it temperately prudently and charitably It is not intended for a Duty that thou shouldst drink Oil in stead of Wine if thy Minister reach it to thee as did Saint Bernard nor that thou shouldst accept a Cake tempered with Linseed-oil in stead of Oil of Olives as did F. Stephen mentioned by ãâã but that thou tolerate the defects of thy servants and accept the evil accidents of thy disease or the unsuccessfulness of thy Physician 's care as descending on thee from the hands of God Asa was noted in Scripture that in his sickness he sought not to the Lord but to the Physicians Lewis the XI of France was then the miserablest person in his Kingdom when he made himself their servant courting them with great pensions and rewards attending to their Rules as Oracles and from their mouths waited for the sentence of life or death We are in these great accidents especially to look upon God as the disposer of the events which he very often disposes contrary to the expectation we may have of probable causes and sometimes without Physick we recover and with Physick and excellent applications we grow worse and worse and God it is that makes the remedies unprosperous In all these and all other accidents if we take care that the sickness of the Body derive not it self into the Soul nor the pains of one procure impatience of the other we shall alleviate the burthen and make it supportable and profitable And certain it is if men knew well to bear their sicknesses humbly towards God charitably towards our Ministers and chearfully in themselves there were no greater advantage in the world to be received than upon a sick bed and that alone hath in it the benefits of a Church of a religious Assembly of the works of Charity and labour And since our Soul 's eternal well-being depends upon the Charities and Providence and Veracity of God and we have nothing to show for it but his word and Goodness and that is infinitely enough it is but reason we be not more nice and scrupulous about the usage and accommodation of our Body if we accept at God's hand sadness and driness of affection and spiritual desertion patiently and with indifferency it is unhandsome to express our selves less satisfied in the accidents about our body 19. But if the Sickness proceed to Death it is a new charge upon our spirits and God calls for a final and intire Resignation into his hands And to a person who was of humble affections and in his life-time of a mortified spirit accustomed to bear the yoke of the Lord this is easie because he looks upon Death not only as the certain condition of Nature but as a necessary transition to a state of Blessedness as the determination of his sickness the period of humane inselicities the last change of condition the beginning of a new strange and excellent life a security against sin a freedom from the importunities of a Tempter from the tyranny of an imperious Lust from the rebellion of Concupiscence from the disturbances and tempests of the Irascible faculty and from the fondness and childishness of the Concupiscible and S. Ambrose says well the trouble of this life and the dangers are so many that in respect of them Death is a remedy and a fair proper object of desires And we finde that many Saints have prayed for death that they might not see the Persecutions and great miseries incumbent upon the Church and if the desire be not out of Impatience but of Charity and with resignation there is no reason to reprove it Elias prayed that God would take his life that he might not see the evils of Ahab and Jezebel and their vexatious intendments against the
parent of as great Religion as the good women make their fancy their softness and their passion 12. Our Blessed Lord appeared next to Simon and though he and John ran forthtogether and S. John outran Simon although Simon Peter had denied and forsworn his Lord and S. John never did and followed him to his Passion and his death yet Peter had the savour of seeing Jesus first Which some Spiritual persons understand as a testimony that penitent ãâã have accidental eminences and priviledges sometimes ãâã to them beyond the temporal graces of the just and innocent as being such who not only ãâã ãâã against the remanent and inherent evils even of repented sins and their aptnesses to relapse but also because those who are true Penitents who understand the infiniteness of the Divine mercy and that for a sinner to pass from death to ãâã from the state of sin into pardon and the state of Grace is a greater gift and a more excellent and improbable mutation than for a just man to be taken into glory out of gratitude to God and indearment ãâã so great a change added to a fear of returning to such danger and misery will re-enforce all their industry and double their study and ãâã more diligently and watch more carefully and redeem the ãâã and make amends for their omissions and oppose a good to the former evils beside the duties of the ãâã imployment and then commonly the life of a holy Penitent is more holy active zealous and impatient of Vice and more rapacious of Vertue and holy actions and arises to greater ãâã of Sanctity than the even and moderate affections of just persons who as our Blessed Saviour's expression is ãâã no Repentance that is no change of state nothing but a perseverance and an improvement of degrees There is more joy in heaven before the Angels of God over ãâã ãâã that ãâã than ãâã ninety nine just persons that need it not for where sin hath abounded there doth grace super abound and that makes joy in Heaven 13. The Holy Jesus having received the affections of his most passionate Disciples the women and S. ãâã puts himself upon the way into the company of two good men going to Emmaus with troubled spirits and a reeling faith shaking all its upper building but leaving some of its foundation firm To them the Lord discourses of the necessity of the Death and Resurrection of the ãâã and taught them not to take estimate of the counsels of God by the designs and proportions of man for God by ways contrary to humane judgment brings to pass the purposes of his eternal Providence The glories of Christ were not made pompous by humane circumstances his Kingdom was spiritual he was to enter into Felicities through the gates of Death he refused to do Miracles before ãâã and yet did them before the people he confuted his accusers by silence and did not descend from the Cross when they offered to believe in him if he would but ãâã them to be perswaded by greater arguments of his power the miraculous circumstances of his Death and the glories of his Resurrection and by walking in the secret paths of Divine election hath commanded us to adore his footsteps to admire and revere his Wisdom to be satisfied with all the events of Providence and to rejoyce in him if by Afflictions he makes us holy if by Persecutions he supports and enlarges his Church if by Death he brings us to life so we arrive at the communion of his Felicities we must let him chuse the way it being sufficient that he is our guide and our support and our exceeding great reward For therefore Christ preached to the two Disciples going to ãâã the way of the Cross and the necessity of that passage that the wisdom of God might be glorified and the conjectures of man ashamed But whilest his discourse lasted they knew him not but in the breaking of bread he discovered himself For he turned their meal into a Sacrament and their darkness to light and having to his Sermon added the Sacrament opened all their discerning faculties the eyes of their body and their understanding too to represent to us that when we are blessed with the opportunities of both those instruments we want no exteriour assistence to guide us in the way to the knowing and enjoying of our Lord. 14. But the Apparitions which Jesus made were all upon the design of laying the foundation of all Christian Graces for the begetting and establishing Faith and an active Confidence in their persons and building them up on the great fundamentals of the Religion And therefore he appointed a general meeting upon a mountain in Galilee that the number of witnesses might not only disseminate the same but establish the Article of the Resurrection for upon that are built all the hopes of a Christian and if the dead rise not then are we of all men most miserable in quitting the present possessions and entertaining injuries and affronts without hopes of reparation But we lay two gages in several repositories the Body in the bosome of the earth the Soul in the ãâã of God and as we here live by Faith and lay them down with hope so the ãâã is a restitution of them both and a state of re-union And therefore although the glory of our spirits without the body were joy great enough to make compensation for mere than the troubles of all the world yet because one shall not be glorified without the other they being of themselves incomplete substances and God having revealed nothing clearly concerning actual and complete felicities till the day of Judgment when it is promised our bodies shall rise therefore it is that the Resurrection is the great Article upon which we rely and which Christ took so much care to prove and ascertain to so many persons because if that should be disbelieved with which all our felicities are to be received we have nothing to establish our Faith or entertain our Hope or satisfie our desires or make retribution for that state of secular inconveniences in which by the necessities of our nature and the humility and patience of our Religion we are engaged 15. But I consider that holy Scripture onely instructs us concerning the life of this world and the life of the Resurrection the life of Grace and the life of Glory both in the body that is a life of the whole man and whatsoever is spoken of the Soul considers it as an essential part of man relating to his whole constitution not as it is of it self an intellectual and separate substance for all its actions which are separate and removed from the body are relative and incomplete Now because the Soul is an incomplete substance and created in relation to the Body and is but a part of the whole man if the Body were as eternal and incorruptible as the Soul yet the separation of the one from the other would be
Hell that follows it It was to be celebrated with a Male-lamb without blemish taken out of the Flock to note the Lamb of God that takes away the sins of the World who was taken from among men a Lamb without blemish and without spot holy harmless and separate from sinners The Door-posts of the House were to be sprinkled with the blood of the Lamb to signifie our security from the Divine vengeance by the blood of sprinkling The Lamb was to be roasted and eaten whole typifying the great sufferings of our blessed Saviour who was to pass through the fire of Divine wrath and to be wholly embrac'd and entertain'd by us in all his Offices as King Priest and Prophet None but those that were clean and circumcised might eat of it to shew that only true believers holy and good men can be partakers of Christ and the merits of his Death It was to be eaten standing with their Loins girt and their staff in their hand to put them in mind what haste they made out of the house of bondage and to intimate to us what present diligence we should use to get from under the empire and tiranny of sin and Satan under the conduct and assistance of the Captain of our Salvation The eating of it was to be mixed with bitter herbs partly as a memorial of that bitter servitude which they underwent in the Land of Egypt partly as a type of that repentance and bearing of the cross duties difficult and unpleasant which all true Christians must undergo Lastly it was to be eaten with unleavened Bread all manner of leaven being at that time to be banished out of their Houses with the most critical diligence and curiosity to represent what infinite care we should take to cleanse and purifie our hearts to purge ãâã the old leaven that we may be a new lump and that since Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us therefore we should keep the Feast the Festival commemoration of his Death not with old leaven neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth 6. THE Places of their Publick Worship were either the Tabernacle made in the Wilderness or the Temple built by Solomon between which in the main there was no other difference than that the Tabernacle was an ambulatory Temple as the Temple was a standing Tabernacle together with all the rich costly Furniture that was in them The parts of it were three the Holiest of all whither none entred but the High-Priest and that but once a Year this was a type of Heaven the holy place whither the Priests entred every Day to perform their Sacred Ministrations and the outward Court whither the People came to offer up their Prayers and Sacrifices In the Sanctum Sanctorum or Holiest of all there was the Golden Censer typifying the Merits and Intercession of Christ the Ark of the Covenant as a representation of him who is the Mediator of the Covenant between God and man the Golden Pot of Manna a type of our Lord the true Manna the Bread that came down from Heaven the Rod of Aaron that budded signifying the Branch of the Root of Jesse that though our Saviour's Family should be reduced to a state of so much meanness and obscurity as to appear but like the trunk or stump of a Tree yet there should come forth a rod out of this stem of Jesse and a branch grow out of his roots which should stand for an Ensign of the People and in him should the Gentiles trust And within the Ark were the two Tables of the Covenant to denote him in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge and who is the end and perfection of the Law Over it were the Cherubims of glory shadowing the Mercy-seat who looking towards each other and both to the Mercy-seat denoted the two Testaments or Dispensations of the Church which admirably agree and both direct to Christ the Mediator of the Covenant The Propitiatory or Mercy-seat was the Golden covering to the Ark where God vailing his Majesty was wont to manifest his Presence to give Answers and shew Himself reconciled to the People herein eminently ãâã our Blessed Saviour who interposes between us and the Divine Majesty whom God hath set forth to be a Propitiation through faith in his blood for the remission of sins so that now we may come boldly to the Throne of Grace and find mercy to help us Within the Sanctuary or the Holy Place was the Golden ãâã with Seven Branches representing Christ who is the Light of the World and who enlightens every one that comes into the World and before whose Throne there are said to be seven Lamps of Fire which are the seven spirits of God The Table compassed about with a Border and a Crown of Gold denoting the Ministry and the Shew-bread set upon it shadowing out Christ the Bread of Life who by the Ministry of the Gospel is offered to the World here also was the Golden Altar of Incense whereon they burnt the sweet ãâã Morning and Evening to signifie to us that our Lord is the true Altar by whom all our Prayers and Services are rendred the odour of a sweet smell acceptable unto God to this the Psalmist refers Let my Prayer be set forth before thee as incense and the ãâã up of my hands as the Evening Sacrifice The third part of the Tabernacle as also of the Temple was the Court of Israel wherein stood the Brazen Altar upon which the Holy Fire was continually preserved by which the Sacrifices were consumed one of the Five great Prerogatives that were wanting in the second Temple Here was the Brazen Laver with its Basis made of the brazen Looking-glasses of the Women that assembled at the Door of the Tabernacle wherein the Priests washed their Hands and their Feet when going into the Sanctuary and both they and the People when about to offer Sacrifice to teach us to purifie our hearts and to cleanse our selves ãâã all filthiness of flesh and spirit especially when we approach to offer up our services to Heaven hereunto David alludes I will wash mine hands in innocency so will I compass thine Altar O Lord. Solomon in building the Temple made an addition of a fourth Court the Court of the Gentiles whereinto the unclean Jewes and Gentiles might enter and in this was the Corban or Treasury and it is sometimes in the New Testament called the Temple To these Laws concerning ãâã Place of Worship we may reduce those that relate to the holy Vessels and Utensils of the Tabernacle and the Temple Candlesticks Snuffers Dishes c. which also had their proper mysteries and significations 7. THE stated times and seasons of their worship are next to be considered and they were either Daily Weekly Monthly or Yearly Their Daily worship was at the time of the Morning and the Evening Sacrifice their Weekly solemnity
with the thing it self which they supposed would be a federal Rite under the dispensation of the Messiah but only quarrelled with him for taking upon him to administer it when yet he denied himself to be one of the prime Ministers of this new state They said unto him why baptizest thou then if thou be not that Christ nor ãâã neither that ãâã Either of which had he owned himself they had not questioned his right to enter Proselytes by this way of Baptism It is called the Baptism of Repentance this being the main qualification that he required of those who took it upon them as the fittest means to dispose them to receive the Doctrine and Discipline of the Messiah and to intitle them to that pardon of sin which the Gospel brought along with it whence he is said to baptize in the Wilderness and to preach the Baptism of repentance for the remission of sins And the success was answerable infinite Multitudes flocking to it and were baptized of him in Jordan confessing their sins Nor is it the least part of his happiness that he had the honour to baptize his Saviour which though modestly declined our Lord put upon him and was accompanied with the most signal and miraculous attestations which Heaven could bestow upon it 5. AFTER his Preparatory Preachings in the Wilderness he was called to Court by Herod at least he was his frequent Auditor was much delighted with his plain and impartial Sermons and had a mighty reverence for him the gravity of his Person the strictness of his Manners the freedom of his Preaching commanding an awe and veneration from his Conscience and making him willing in many things to reform But the bluntness of the holy Man came nearer and touched the King in the tenderest part smartly reproving his adultery and incestuous embraces for that Prince kept Herodias his Brother Philip's Wife And now all corrupt interests were awakened to conspire his ruine Extravagant Lusts love not to be controll'd and check'd Herodias resents the asfront cannot brook disturbance in the pleasures of her Bed or the open challenging of her honour and therefore by all the arts of Feminine subtlety meditates revenge The issue was the Baptist is cast into Prison as the praeludium to a sadder fate For among other pleasures and scenes of mirth performed upon the King's Birth-day Herod being infinitely pleased with the Dancing of a young Lady Daughter of this Herodias promised to give her Her request and solemnly ratified his promise with an Oath She prompted by her Mother asks the Head of John the Baptist which the King partly out of a pretended reverence to his Oath partly out of a desire not to be interrupted in his unlawful pleasures presently granted and it was as quickly accomplished Thus died the Holy man a man strict in his conversation beyond the ordinary measures of an Anchoret bold and resolute faithful and impartial in his Office indued with the power and spirit of Elias a burning and a shining light under whose light the Jews rejoyced to sit exceedingly taken with his temper and principles He was the happy Messenger of the Evangelical tidings and in that respect more than a Prophet a greater not arising among them that were born of Women In short he was a Man loved of his Friends revered and honoured by his Enemies Josephus gives this character of him that he was a good man and pressed the Jews to the study of vertue to the practice of picty towards God and justice and righteousness towards men and to joyn themselves to his Baptism which he told them would then become effectual and acceptable to God when they did not only cleanse the body but purifie the mind by goodness and vertue And though he gives somewhat a different account of Herod's condemning him to dic from what is assigned in the Sacred History yet he confesses that the Jews universally looked upon the putting him to death as the cause of the miscarriage of Herod's Army and an evident effect of the Divine vengeance and displeasure The Jews in their Writings make honourable mention of his being put to death by Herod because reproving him for the company of his Brother Philip's Wife stiling him Rabbi Johanan the High-Priest and reckoning him one ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã of the wise men of Israel Where he is called High-Priest probably with respect to his being the Son of Zachariah Head or Chief of one of the XXIV Families or courses of the Priests who are many times called Chief or High-Priests in Scripture 6. THE Evangelical state being thus proclaimed and ushered in by the Preaching and Ministry of the Baptist our Lord himself appeared next more fully to publish and confirm it concerning whose Birth Life Death and Resurrection the Doctrine he delivered the Persons he deputed to Preach and convey it to the World and its success by the Ministry of the Apostles large particular accounts are given in the following work That which may be proper and material to observe in this place is what the Scripture so frequently takes notice of the excellency of this above the preceding dispensations especially that brought in by Moses so much magnified in the Old Testament and so passionately admired and adhered to by the Jews at this day Jesus is the Mediator ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã as the Apostle calls it of a better Covenant And better it is in several regards besides the infinite difference between the Persons who were imployed to introduce and settle them Moses and our Lord. The preheminence eminently appears in many instances whereof we shall remark the most considerable And first the Mosaick dispensation was almost wholly made up of types and shadows the Evangelical has brought in the truth and substance The Law was given by Moses but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. Their Ordinances were but shadows of good things to come sensible representations of what was to follow after the Body is Christ the perfection and accomplishment of their whole ritual Ministration Their Ceremonies were Figures of those things that are true the Land of Canaan typified Heaven Moses and Joshua were types of the Blessed Jesus and the Israelites after the flesh of the true Israel which is after the Spirit and all their Expiatory Sacrifices did but represent that Great Sacrifice whereby Christ offered up himself and by his own bloud purged away the sins of mankind indeed the most minute and inconsiderable circumstances of the Legal Oeconomy were intended as little lights that might gradually usher in the state of the Gospel A curious Artist that designs a famous and excellent piece is not wont to complete and finish it all at once but first with his Pencil draws some rude lines and rough draughts before he puts his last hand to it By such a method the wise God seems to have delivered the first draughts and Images of those things by Moses to the Church the substance
receive Honour but to seek it for desigus of pride and complacency or to make it rest in our hearts But when the hand of Vertue receives the honour and transmits it to God from our own head the desires of Nature are sufficiently satisfied and nothing of Religion contradicted And it is certain by all the experience of the world that in every state and order of men he that is most humble in proportion to that state is if all things else be symbolical the most honoured person For it is very observable that when God designed man to a good and happy life as the natural end of his creation to verifie this God was pleased to give him objects sufficient and apt to satisfie every appetite I say to satisfie it naturally not to satisfie those extravagancies which might be accidental and procured by the irregularity either of Will or Understanding not to answer him in all that his desires could extend to but to satisfie the necessity of every appetite all the desires that God made not all that man should make For we see even in those appetites which are common to men and beasts all the needs of Nature and all the ends of creation are served by the taking such proportions of their objects which are ordinate to their end and which in man we call Temperance not as much as they naturally can such as are mixtures of sexes merely for production of their kind eating and drinking for needs and hunger And yet God permitted our appetites to be able to extend beyond the limits of the mere natural design that God by restraining them and putting the setters of Laws upon them might turn natural desires into Sobriety and Sobriety into Religion they becoming servants of the Commandment And now we must not call all those swellings of appetites Natural inclination nor the satisfaction of such tumours and excrescencies any part of natural felicities but that which does just cooperate to those ends which perfect humane Nature in order to its proper End For the appetites of meat and drink and pleasures are but intermedial and instrumental to the End and are not made for themselves but first for the End and then to serve God in the instances of Obedience And just so is the natural desire of Honour intended to be a spur to Vertue for to Vertue only it is naturally consequent or to natural and political Superiority but to desire it beyond or besides the limit is the swelling and the disease of the desire And we can take no rule for its perfect value but by the strict limits of the natural End or the superinduced End of Religion in positive restraints 35. According to this discourse we may best understand that even the severest precepts of the Christian Law are very consonant to Nature and the first Laws of mankind Such is the Precept of Self-denial which is nothing else but a confining the Appetites within the limits of Nature for there they are permitted except when some greater purpose is to be served than the present answering the particular desire and whatsoever is beyond it is not in the natural order to Felicity it is no better than an itch which must be scratched and satisfied but it is unnatural But for Martyrdom it self quitting our goods losing lands or any temporal interest they are now become as reasonable in the present constitution of the world as taking unpleasant potions and suffering a member to be cauterized in sickness or disease And we see that death is naturally a less evil than a continual torment and by some not so resented as a great disgrace and some persons have chosen it for sanctuary and remedy And therefore much rather shall it be accounted prudent and reasonable and agreeable to the most perfect desires of Nature to exchange a House for a Hundred a Friend for a Patron a short Affliction for a lasting Joy and a temporal Death for an eternal Life For so the question is stated to us by him that understands it best True it is that the suffering of losses afflictions and death is naturally an evil and therefore no part of a natural Precept or prime injunction But when God having commanded instances of Religion Man will not suffer us to obey God or will not suffer us to live then the question is Which is most agreeable to the most perfect and reasonable desires of Nature to obey God or to obey man to fear God or to fear man to preserve our bodies or to preserve our Souls to secure a few years of uncertain and troublesome duration or an eternity of a very glorious condition Some men reasonably enough chuse to die for considerations lower than that of a happy Eternity therefore Death is not such an evil but that it may in some cases be desired and reasonably chosen and in some be recompensed at the highest rate of a natural value And if by accident we happen into an estate in which of necessity one evil or another must be suffered certainly nothing is more naturally reasonable and eligible than to chuse the least evil and when there are two good things propounded to our choice both which cannot be possessed nothing is more certainly the object of a prudent choice than the greater good And therefore when once we understand the question of Suffering and Self-denial and Martyrdom to this sence as all Christians do and all wise men do and all Sects of men do in their several perswasions it is but remembring that to live happily after this life is more intended to us by God and is more perfective of humane nature than to live here with all the prosperity which this state affords and it will evidently follow that when violent men will not let us enter into that condition by the ways of Nature and prime intendment that is of natural Religion Justice and Sobriety it is made in that case and upon that supposition certainly naturally and infallibly reasonable to secure the perfective and principal design of our Felicity though it be by such instruments which are as unpleasant to our senses as are the instruments of our restitution to Health since both one and the other in the present conjunction and state of affairs are most proportionable to Reason because they are so to the present necessity not primarily intended to us by God but superinduced by evil accidents and the violence of men And we not only find that Socrates suffered death in attestation of a God though he flattered and discoursed himself into the belief of an immortal reward De industria consultae aequanimitatis non de fiducia compertae veritatis as Tertullian says of him but we also find that all men that believed the Immortality of the Soul firmly and unmoveably made no scruple of exchanging their life for the preservation of Vertue with the interest of their great hope for Honour sometimes and oftentimes for their Countrey 36. Thus the
these impurities and vanities Jesus hath redeemed all his Disciples and not only thrown out of his Temples all the impure rites of Flora and Cybele but also the trifling and unprofitable ceremonies of the more sober Deities not only Vices but useless and unprofitable Speculations and hath consecrated our Head into a Temple our Understanding to Spirit our Reason to Religion our Study to Meditation and this is the first part of the Sanctification of our Spirit 6. And this was the cause Holy Scripture commands the duty of Meditation in proportion still to the excellencies of Piety and a holy life to which it is highly and aptly instrumental Blessed is the man that meditates in the Law of the Lord day and night And the reason of the Proposition and the use of the Duty is expressed to this purpose Thy words have I hid in my heart that I should not sin against thee The placing and fixing those divine Considerations in our understandings and hiding them there are designs of high Christian prudence that they with advantage may come forth in the expresses of a holy life For what in the world is more apt and natural to produce Humility than to meditate upon the low stoopings and descents of the Holy Jesus to the nature of a Man to the weaknesses of a Child to the poverties of a Stable to the ignobleness of a Servant to the shame of the Cross to the pains of Cruelty to the dust of Death to the title of a Sinner and to the wrath of God By this instance Poverty is made honourable and Humility is sanctified and made noble and the contradictions of nature are amiable and ãâã for a wise election Thus hatred of sin shame of our selves confusion at the sense of humane misery the love of God confidence in his Promises desires of Heaven holy resolutions resignation of our own appetites ãâã to Divine will oblations of our selves Repentance and mortification are the proper emanations from Meditation of the sordidness of sin our proneness to it our daily miseries as issues of Divine vengeance the glories of God his infinite unalterable Veracity the satisfactions in the vision of God the rewards of Piety the rectitude of the Laws of God and perfection of his Sanctions God's supreme and paternal Dominion and his certain malediction of sinners and when any one of these Considerations is taken to pieces and so placed in the rooms of application that a piece of duty is conjoyned to a piece of the mystery and the whole office to the purchase of a grace or the extermination of a vice it is like opening our windows to let in the Sun and the Wind and Holiness is as proportioned an effect to this practice as Glory is to a persevering Holiness by way of reward and moral causality 7. For all the Affections that are in Man are either natural or by chance or by the incitation of Reason and discourse Our natural affections are not worthy the entertainments of a Christian they must be supernatural and divine that put us into the hopes of Perfection and Felicities and these other that are good unless they come by Meditation they are but accidental and set with the evening Sun But if they be produced upon the strengths of pious Meditation they are as perpetual as they are reasonable and excellent in proportion to the Piety of the principle A Garden that is watered with short and sudden showrs is more uncertain in its fruits and beauties than if a Rivulet waters it with a perpetual distilling and constant humectation And just such are the short emissions and unpremeditated resolutions of Piety begotten by a dash of holy rain from Heaven whereby God sometimes uses to call the careless but to taste what excellencies of Piety they neglect but if they be not produced by the Reason of Religion and the Philosophy of Meditation they have but the life of a Fly or a tall Gourd they come into the World only to say they had a Being you could scarce know their length but by measuring the ground they cover in their fall 8. For since we are more moved by material and sensible objects than by things merely speculative and intellectual and generals even in spiritual things are less perceived and less motive than particulars Meditation frames the understanding part of Religion to the proportions of our nature and our weakness by making some things more circumstantiate and material and the more spiritual to be particular and therefore the more applicable and the mystery is made like the Gospel to the Apostles Our eyes do see and our ears do hear and our hands do handle thus much of the word of life as is prepared for us in the Meditation 9. First And therefore every wise person that intends to furnish himself with affections of Religion or detestation against a Vice or glorifications of a Mystery still will proportion the Mystery and fit it with such circumstances of fancy and application as by observation of himself he knows aptest to make impression It was a wise design of Mark Antony when he would stir up the people to revenge the death of Caesar he brought his body to the pleading-place he shewed his wounds held up the rent mantle and shewed them the garment that he put on that night in which he beat the Nervii that is in which he won a victory for which his memory was dear to them he shewed them that wound which pierced his heart in which they were placed by so dear a love that he made them his heirs and left to their publick use places of delight and pleasure and then it was natural when he had made those things present to them which had once moved their love and his honour that grief at the loss of so honourable and so lov'd a person should succeed and then they were Lords of all their sorrow and revenge seldom slept in two beds And thus holy Meditation produces the passions and desires it intends it makes the object present and almost sensible it renews the first passions by a fiction of imagination it passes from the Paschal Parlour to Cedron it tells the drops of sweat and measures them and finds them as big as drops of bloud and then conjectures at the greatness of our sins it fears in the midst of Christ's Agonies it hears his groans it spies Judas his Lantern afar off it follows Jesus to Gabbatha and wonders at his innocence and their malice and feels the strokes of the Whip and shrinks the head when the Crown of Thorns is thrust hard upon his holy brows and at last goes step by step with Jesus and carries part of the Cross and is nailed fast with sorrow and compassion and dies with love For if the Soul be principle of its own actions it can produce the same effects by reflex acts of the Understanding when it is assisted by the Imaginative part as when it sees the thing
under the Gospel is led by the Spirit and walks in the Spirit and brings forth the fruits of the Spirit It is not our excuse but the aggravation of our sin that we fall again in despite of so many resolutions to the contrary And let us not flatter our selves into a confidence of sin by supposing the state of Grace can stand with the Custom of any sin for it is the state either of an animalis homo as the Apostle calls him that is a man in pure naturals without the clarity of divine Revelations who cannot perceive or understand the things of God or else of the carnal man that is a person who though in his mind he is convinced yet he is not yet freed from the dominion of sin but only hath his eyes opened but not his bonds loosed For by the perpetual analogy and frequent expresses in Scripture the spiritual person or the man redeemed by the spirit of life in Christ Jesus is free from the Law and the Dominion and the Kingdom and the Power of all sin For to be carnally minded is death but to be spiritually minded is life and peace 10. But sins of Infirmity in true sence of Scripture signifie nothing but the sins of an unholy and an unsanctified nature when they are taken for actions done against the strength of resolution out of the strength of natural appetite and violence of desire and therefore in Scripture the state of Sin and the state of Infirmity is all one For when we were yet without strength in due time Christ died for the ungodly saith the Apostle the condition in which we were when Christ became a sacrifice for us was certainly a condition of sin and enmity with God and yet this he calls a being without strength or in a state of weakness and infirmity which we who believe all our strength to be derived from Christ's death and the assistance of the holy Spirit the fruit of his Ascension may soon apprehend to be the true meaning of the word And in this sence is that saying of our Blessed Saviour The whole have no need of a Physician but they that are weak for therefore Christ came into the world to save sinners those are the persons of Christ's Infirmary whose restitution and reduction to a state of life and health was his great design So that whoever sin habitually that is constantly periodically at the revolution of a temptation or frequently or easily are persons who still remain in the state of sin and death and their intervals of Piety are but preparations to a state of Grace which they may then be when they are not used to countenance or excuse the sin or to flatter the person But if the intermediate resolutions of emendation though they never run beyond the next assault of passion or desire be taken for a state of Grace blended with infirmities of Nature they become destructive of all those purposes through our mistake which they might have promoted if they had been rightly understood observed and cherished Sometimes indeed the greatness of a Temptation may become an instrument to excuse some degrees of the sin and make the man pitiable whose ruine seems almost certain because of the greatness and violence of the enemy meeting with a natural aptness but then the question will be whither and to what actions that strong Temptation carries him whether to a work of a mortal nature or only to a small irregularity that is whether to death or to a wound for whatever the principle be if the effect be death the man's case was therefore to be pitied because his ruine was the more inevitable not so pitied as to excuse him from the state of death For let the Temptation be never so strong every Christian man hath assistances sufficient to support him so as that without his own yielding no Temptation is stronger than that grace which God offers him for if it were it were not so much as a sin of infirmity it were no sin at all This therefore must be certain to us When the violence of our Passions or desires overcomes our resolutions and fairer purposes against the dictate of our Reason that indeed is a state of Infirmity but it is also of sin and death a state of Immortification because the offices of Grace are to crucifie the Old man that is our former aud impurer conversation to subdue the petulancy of our Passions to reduce them to reason and to restore Empire and dominion to the superiour Faculties So that this condition in proper speaking is not so good as the Infirmity of Grace but it is no Grace at all for whoever are Christ's have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts those other imperfect ineffective resolutions are but the first approaches of the Kingdom of Christ nothing but the clarities of lightning dark as ãâã as light and they therefore cannot be excuses to us because the contrary weaknesses as we call them do not make the sin involuntary but chosen and pursued and in true speaking is the strength of the Lust not the infirmity of a state of Grace 11. But yet there is a condition of Grace which is a state of little and imperfect ones such as are called in Scripture Smoaking flax and bruised reeds which is a state of the first dawning of the Sun of Righteousness when the lights of Grace new rise upon our eyes and then indeed they are weak and have a more dangerous neighbourhood of Temptations and desires but they are not subdued by them they sin not by direct election their actions criminal are but like the slime of Nilus leaving rats half formed they sin but seldom and when they do it is in small instances and then also by surprise by inadvertency and then also they interrupt their own acts and lessen them perpetually and never do an act of sinfulness but the principle is such as makes it to be involuntary in many degrees For when the Understanding is clear and the dictate of Reason undisturbed and determinate whatsoever then produces an irregular action excuses not because the action is not made the less voluntary by it for the action is not made involuntary from any other principle but from some defect of Understanding either in act or habit or faculty For where there is no such defect there is a full deliberation according to the capacity of the man and then the act of election that follows is clear and full and is that proper disposition which makes him truly capable of punishment or reward respectively Now although in the first beginnings of Grace there is not a direct Ignorance to excuse totally yet because a sudden surprise or an inadvertency is not always in our power to prevent these things do lessen the election and freedom of the action and then because they are but seldom and never proceed to any length of time or any great instances of
crime and are every day made still more infrequent because Grace growing stronger the observation and advertency of the spirit and the attendance of the inner man grows more effectual and busie this is a state of the imperfection of Grace but a state of Grace it is And it is more commonly observed to be expressed in the imperfection of our good actions than in the irregularity of bad actions and in this sence are those words of our Blessed Saviour The Spirit ãâã is willing but the flesh is weak which in this instance was not expressed in sin but in a natural imperfection which then was a recession from a civility a not watching with the Lord. And this is the only Infirmity that can consist with the state of Grace 12. So that now we may lay what load we please upon our Nature and call our violent and unmortified desires by the name of an imperfect Grace but then we are dangerously mistaken and flatter our selves into an opinion of Piety when we are in the gall of bitterness so making our misery the more certain and irremediable because we think it needs nothing but a perpetuity and perseverance to bring us to Heaven The violence of Passion and Desires is a misery of Nature but a perfect principle of Sin multiplying and repeating the acts but not lessening the malignity But sins of Infirmity when we mean sins of a less and lower malice are sins of a less and imperfect choice because of the unavoidable imperfection of the Understanding Sins of Infirmity are always infirm sins that is weak and imperfect in their principle and in their nature and in their design that is they are actions incomplete in all their capacities but then Passions and periodical inclinations consisting with a regular and determined and actual understanding must never be their principle for whatsoever proceeds thence is destructive of spiritual life and inconsistent with the state of Grace But sins of infirmity when they pretend to a less degree of malignity and a greater degree of excuse are such as are little more than sins of pure and inculpable ignorance for in that degree in which any other principle is mixt with them in the same degree they are criminal and inexcusable For as a sin of infirmity is pretended to be little in its value and malignity so it is certain if it be great in the instance it is not a sin of infirmity that is it is a state or act of death and absolutely inconsistent with the state of Grace 13. Secondly Another Principle of Temptation pregnant with sin and fruitful of monsters is a weaker pretence which less wary and credulous persons abuse themselves withall pretending as a ground for their confidence and incorrigible pursuance of their courses that they have a Good meaning that they intend sometimes well and sometimes not ill and this shall be sufficient to sanctifie their actions and to hallow their sin And this is of worse malice when Religion is the colour for a War and the preservation of Faith made the warrant for destruction of Charity and a Zeal for God made the false light to lead us to Disobedience to Man and hatred of Idolatry is the usher of Sacriledge and the ãâã of Superstition the introducer of Profaneness and Reformation made the colour for a Schism and Liberty of conscience the way to a ãâã and saucy Heresie for the End may indeed hallow an indifferent action but can never make straight a crooked and irregular It was not enough for Saul to cry for God and the Sacrifice that he spared the fat flocks of Amalek and it would be a strange zeal and forwardness that rather than the Altar of incense should not smoak will burn Assa foetida or the marrow of a man's bones For as God will be honoured by us so also in ways of his own appointment for we are the makers of our Religion if we in our zeal for God do what he hath forbidden us And every sin committed for Religion is just such a violence done to it as it seeks to prevent or remedy 14. And so it is if it be committed for an end or pretence of Charity as well as of Religion We must be curious that no pretence engage us upon an action that is certainly criminal in its own nature Charity may sometimes require our Lives but no obligation can endear a Damnation to us we are not bound to the choice of an eternal ruine to save another Indeed so far as an Option will go it may concern the excrescences of Piety to chuse by a tacite or express act of volition to become Anathema for our brethren that is by putting a case and fiction of Law to suppose it better and wish it rather that I should perish than my Nation Thus far is charitable because it is innocent for as it is great love to our Countrey so it is no uncharitableness to our selves for such Options always are ineffective and produce nothing but rewards of Charity and a greater glory And the Holy Jesus himself who only could be and was effectively accursed to save us got by it an exceeding and mighty glorification and S. Paul did himself advantage by his charitable Devotion for his Countreymen But since God never puts the question to us so that either we or our Nation must be damned he having xt every man's final condition upon his own actions in the vertue and obedience of Christ if we mistake the expresses of Charity and suffer our selves to be damned indeed for God's glory or our Brethrens good we spoil the Duty and ruine our selves when our Option comes to act But it is observable that although Religion is often pretended to justifie a sin yet Charity is but seldom which makes it full of suspicion that Religion is but the cover to the Death's-head and at the best is but an accusing of God that he is not willing or not able to preserve Religion without our irregular and impious cooperations But however though it might concern us to wish our selves rather ãâã than Religion or our Prince or our Country should perish for I find no instances that it is lawful so much as to ãâã it for the preservation of a single friend yet it is against Charity to bring such a ãâã to ãâã and by sin to damn our selves really for a good end either ãâã Religion or Charity 15. Let us therefore serve God as he hath ãâã the way for all our accesses to him being acts of his free concession and grace must be by his ãâã designation and appointment We might as well have chosen what shape our ãâã should be of as of what instances the substance of our Religion should consist 16. Thirdly a third Principle of Temptation is an opinion of prosecuting actions of Civility Compliance and Society to the luxation of a point of Piety and ãâã Duty and good natures persons of humane and sweeter dispositions are
one day doing his devotions kissed his God after the manner of Worshippers and burnt his lips It was not in the power of that false and imaginary Deity to cure the real hurt he had done to his devoutest worshipper Just such a fool is he that kisses a danger though with a design of vertue and hugs an opportunity of sin for an advantage of Piety he burns himself in the neighbourhood of the flame and twenty to one but he may perish in its embraces And he that looks out a danger that he may overcome it does as did the Persian who ãâã the Sun looked upon him when he prayed him to cure his sore eyes The Sun may as well cure a weak eye or a great burthen knit a broken arm as a danger can do him advantage that seeks such a combate which may ruine him and after which he rarely may have this reward that it may be said of him he had the good ãâã not to perish in his folly It is easier to prevent a mischief than to cure it and besides the pain of the wound it is infinitely more full of ãâã to cure a broken leg which a little care and observation would have preserved whole To recover from a sin is none of the ãâã labours that concern the sons of men and therefore it concerns them rather not to enter into such a narrow strait from which they can never draw back their head without leaving their hair and skin and their ears behind If God please to try us he means us no hurt and he does it with great reason and great mercy but if we go to try our selves we may mean well but not wisely For as it is simply unlawful for weak persons to seek a Temptation so for the more perfect it is dangerous We have enemies enough without and one of our own within but we become our own tempter when we run out to meet the World or invite the Devil home that we may throw holy water upon his flames and call the danger nearer that we may run from it And certainly men are more guilty of many of their temptations than the Devil through their incuriousness or ãâã doing as much mischief to themselves as he can For he can but offer and so much we do when we run into danger Such were those Stories of S. Antony provoking the Devil to battel If the Stories had been as true as the actions were rash ridiculous the Story had ãâã a note of indiscretion upon that good man though now I think there is nothing but a mark of ãâã and ãâã on the Writer 26. Secondly Possibly without ãâã we may be engaged in a ãâã but then we must be diligent to resist the first Beginnings For when our strength is yet intire and unabated if we suffer our selves to be overcome and consent to its ãâã and weakest attempts how shall we be able to resist when it hath tired our contestation and wearied our patience when we are weaker and prevailed upon and the Temptation is stronger and triumphant in many degrees of victory By how much a Hectick Feaver is harder to be cured than a Tertian or a Consumption of the Lungs than a little Distillation of Rheum upon the throat by so much is it harder to prevail upon a ãâã Lust than upon its first insinuations But the ways of resisting are of a different consideration proportionably to the nature of the crimes 27. First If the Temptation be to crimes of Pleasure and Sensuality let the resistance be by flight For in case of Lust even to consider the arguments against it is half as great Temptation as to press the arguments for it For all considerations of such allurements make the Soul perceive something of its relish and entertain the fancy Even the pulling pitch from our cloaths defiles the fingers and some adherences of pleasant and carnal sins will be remanent even from those considerations which stay within the circuit of the flames though but with purpose to quench the fire and preserve the house Chastity cannot suffer the least thought of the reproaches of the spirit of impurity and it is necessary to all that will keep their purity and innocence against sensual Temptations to avoid every thing that may prejudice decorum Libanius ãâã Sophister reports that a Painter being one day desirous to paint Apollo upon a Laurelboard the colours would not stick but were rejected out of which his fancy found out this extraction That the ãâã Daphne concerning whom the Poets feign that flying from Apollo who attempted to ãâã her she was turned into a Laurel-tree could not endure him even in painting and rejected him after the loss of her sensitive powers And indeed chaste Souls do even to death resent the least image and offer of impurity whatsoever is like a sin of uncleanness he that means to preserve himself chaste must avoid as he would avoid the sin in this case there being no difference but of degrees between the inward Temptation and the Crime 28. Secondly If the Temptation be to crimes of troublesome and preternatural desires or intellectual nature let the resistance be made ãâã ãâã by a perfect fight by the amassing of such arguments in general and remedies in particular which are apt to become deleteries to the Sin and to abate the Temptation But in both these instances the resistance must at ãâã be as soon as the attempt is lest the violence of the Temptation out-run our powers for if against our full strength it hath prevailed to the first degrees its progress to a complete victory is not so improbable as were its successes at the first beginnings But to serve this and all other ends in the resisting and subduing a Temptation these following Considerations have the best and most universal influence 29. First Consideration of the Presence of God who is witness of all our actions and a revenger of all Impiety This is so great an instrument of fear and Religion that whoever does actually consider God to be present and considers what the first consideration signifies either must be restrained from the present Temptation or must have thrown off all the possibilities and aptnesses for Vertue such as are Modesty and Reverence and holy Fear For if the face of a Man scatters all base machinations and we dare not act our crimes in the Theatre unless we be impudent as well as criminal much more does the sense of a present Deity fill the places of our heart with veneration and the awe of Religion when it is throughly apprehended and actually considered We see not God he is not in our thoughts when we run into darkness to act our impurities For we dare not commit Adultery if a Boy be present behold the Boy is sent off with an excuse and God abides there but yet we commit the crime it is because as Jacob said at Bethel God was in that place and we knew
ages that is washed off quickly in the Holy Font and an eternal debt paid in an instant For so sure as the Egyptians were drowned in the Red Sea so sure are our Sins washed in this Holy floud for this is a Red Sea too these waters signifie the bloud of Christ These are they that have washed their Robes and made them white in the bloud of the Lamb. ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã The Bloud of Christ cleanseth us the Water cleanseth us the Spirit purifies us the Bloud by the Spirit the Spirit by the Water all in Baptism and in pursuance of that Baptismal state These three are they that bear record in Earth the Spirit the Water and the Bloud ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã these three agree in one or are to one purpose they agree in Baptism and in the whole pursuance of the assistances which a Christian needs all the days of his life And therefore S. Cyrill calls Baptism ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã the Antitype of the Passions of Christ it does preconsign the death of Christ and does the infancy of the work of Grace but not weakly it brings from death to life and though it brings us but to the birth in the New life yet that is a greater change than is in all the periods of our growth to manhood to a perfect man in Christ Jesus 18. Fifthly Baptism does not only pardon our sins but puts us into a state of Pardon for the time to come For Baptism is the beginning of the New life and an admission of us into the Evangelical Covenant which on our parts consists in a sincere and timely endeavour to glorifie God by Faith and Obedience and on God's part he will pardon what is past assist us for the future and not measure us by grains and scruples or exact our duties by the measure of an Angel but by the span of a man's hand So that by Baptism we are consigned to the mercies of God and the Graces of the Gospel that is that our Pardon be continued and our Piety be a state of Repentance And therefore that Baptism which in the Nicene Creed we ãâã to be for the remission of sins is called in the Jerusalem ãâã The Baptism of Repentance that is it is the entrance of a new life the gate to a perpetual change and reformation all the way continuing our title to and hopes of forgiveness of sins And this excellency is clearly recorded by S. Paul The kindness and love of God our Saviour towards man hath appeared Not by works of righteousness which we have done that 's the formality of the Gospel-Covenant not to be exacted by the strict measures of the Law but according to his mercy he saved us that is by gentleness and remissions by pitying and pardoning us by relieving and supporting us because he remembers that we are but dust and all this mercy we are admitted to and is conveyed to us ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã by the laver of Regeneration and the renewing of the Holy Ghost And this plain evident Doctrine was observed explicated and urged against the Messalians who said that Baptism was like a razor that cuts away all the sins that were past or presently adhering but not the sins of our future life ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã This Sacrament promises more and greater things It is the earnest of future good things the type of the Resurrection the communication of the Lord's Passion the partaking of his Resurrection the robe of Righteousness the garment of Gladness the vestment of Light or rather Light it self And for this reason it is that Baptism is not to be repeated because it does at once all that it can do at an hundred times for it admits us to the condition of Repentance and Evangelical mercy to a state of Pardon for our infirmities and sins which we timely and effectually leave and this is a thing that can be done but once as a man can begin but once he that hath once entred in at this gate of Life is always in possibility of Pardon if he be in a possibility of working and doing after the manner of a man that which he hath promised to the Son of God And this was expresly delivered and observed by S. Austin That which the Apostle says Cleansing him with the washing of water in the word is to be understood that in the same Laver of Regeneration and word of Sanctification all the evils of the regenerate are cleansed and healed not only the sins that are past which are all now remitted in Baptism but also those that are contracted afterwards by humane ignorance and infirmity not that Baptism be repeated as often as we sin but because by this which is once administred is brought to pass that pardon of all sins not only of those that are past but also those which will be committed afterwards is obtained The Messalians denied this and it was part of their Heresie in the undervaluing of Baptism and for it they are most excellently confuted by Isidore Pelusiot in his third Book 195 Epistle to the Count Hermin whither I refer the Reader 19. In proportion to this Doctrine it is that the Holy Scripture calls upon us to live a holy life in pursuance of this grace of Baptism And S. Paul recalls the lapsed Galatians to their Covenant and the grace of God stipulated in Baptism Ye are all children of God by faith in Jesus Christ that is heirs of the promise and Abraham's seed that promise which cannot be disannulled encreased or diminished but is the same to us as it was to Abraham the same before the Law and after Therefore do not you hope to be ãâã by the Law for you are entred into the Covenant of Faith and are to be justified thereby This is all your hope by this you must stand for ever or you cannot stand at all but by this you may for you are God's children by Faith that is not by the Law or the Covenant of Works And that you may remember whence you are going and return again he proves that they are the Children of God by ãâã in Jesus Christ because they have been baptized into Christ and so put on Christ. This makes you Children and such as are to be saved by Faith that is a Covenant not of Works but of Pardon in Jesus Christ the Author and Establisher of this Covenant For this is the Covenant made in Baptism that being justified by his grace we shall be heirs of life eternal for by grace that is by favour remission and forgiveness in Jesus Christ ye are saved This is the only way that we have of being justified and this must remain as long as we are in hopes of Heaven for besides this we have no hopes and all this is stipulated and consigned in Baptism and is of force after our ãâã into sin and risings again In
as many persons and in as many capacities and in the same dispositions as the Promises were applied and did relate in Circumcision to the same they do belong and may be applied in Baptism And let it be remembred That the Covenant which Circumcision did sign was a Covenant of Grace and ãâã the Promises were of the Spirit or spiritual it was made before the Law and could not be rescinded by the Legal Covenant nothing could be added to it or taken from it and we that are partakers of this grace are therefore partakers of it by being Christ's servants united to Christ and so are become Abraham's seed as the Apostle at large and prosessedly proves in divers places but especially in the fourth to the ãâã and the third to the Galatians And therefore if Infants were then admitted to it and consigned to it by a Sacrament which they understood not any more than ours do there is not any reason why ours should not enter in at the ordinary gate and door of grace as well as they Their Children were circumcised the eighth day but were instructed afterwards when they could enquire what these things meant Indeed their Proselytes were first taught then circumcised so are ours baptized but their Infants were consigned first and so must ours 16. Thirdly In Baptism we are born again and this Infants need in the present circumstances and for the same great reason that men of age and reason do For our natural birth is either of it self insufficient or is made so by the Fall of Adam and the consequent evils that Nature alone or our first birth cannot bring us to Heaven which is a supernatural end that is an end above all the power of our Nature as now it is So that if Nature cannot bring us to Heaven Grace must or we can never get thither if the first birth cannot a second must but the second birth spoken of in Scripture is Baptism A man must be born of ãâã and the Spirit And therefore Baptism is ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã the laver of a new birth Either then Infants cannot go to Heaven any way that we know of or they must be baptized To say they are to be left to God is an excuse and no answer for when God hath opened the door and calls that the entrance into Heaven we do not leave them to God when we will not carry them to him in the way which he hath described and at the door which himself hath opened we leave them indeed but it is but helpless and destitute and though God is better than man yet that is no warrant to us what it will be to the children that we cannot warrant or conjecture And if it be objected that to the New birth are required dispositions of our own which are to be wrought by and in them that have the use of Reason Besides that this is wholly against the Analogy of a New birth in which the person to be born is wholly a passive and hath put into him the principle that in time will produce its proper actions it is certain that they that can receive the new birth are capable of it The effect of it is a possibility of being saved and arriving to a supernatural felicity If Infants can receive this effect then also the New birth without which they cannot receive the effect And if they can receive Salvation the effect of the New birth what hinders them but they may receive that that is in order to that effect and ordained only for it and which is nothing of it self but in its institution and relation and which may be received by the same capacity in which one may be created that is a passivity or a capacity obediential 17. Fourthly Concerning pardon of sins which is one great effect of Baptism it is certain that ãâã have not that benefit which men of sin and age may receive He that hath a sickly stomach drinks wine and it not only refreshes his spirits but cures his stomach He that drinks wine and hath not that disease receives good by his wine though it does not minister to so many needs it refreshes though it does not cure him and when oyl is poured upon a man's head it does not always heal a wound but sometimes makes him a chearful countenance sometimes it consigns him to be a King or a Priest So it is in Baptism it does not heal the wounds of actual sins because they have not committed them but it takes off the evil of Original sin whatsoever is imputed to us by Adam's prevarication is washed off by the death of the second Adam into which we are baptized But concerning original sin because there are so many disputes which may intricate the Question I shall make use only of that which is confessed on both sides and material to our purpose Death came upon all men by Adam's sin and the necessity of it remains upon us as an evil consequent of the Disobedience For though death is natural yet it was kept off from man by God's favour which when he lost the banks were broken and the water reverted to its natural course and our nature became a curse and death a punishment Now that this also relates to Infants so far is certain because they are sick and die This the Pelagians denied not But to whomsoever this evil descended for them also a remedy is provided by the second Adam That as in Adam all die even so in Christ shall all be made alive that is at the day of Judgment then death shall be destroyed In the mean time Death hath a sting and a bitterness a curse it is and an express of the Divine anger and if this sting be not taken away here we shall have no participation of the final victory over death Either therefore Infants must be for ever without remedy in this evil consequent of their Father's sin or they must be adopted into the participation of Christ's death which is the remedy Now how can they partake of Christ's death but by Baptism into his death For if there be any spiritual way ãâã it will by a stronger argument admit them to Baptism for if they can receive spiritual effects they can also receive the outward Sacrament this being denied only upon pretence they cannot have the other If there be no spiritual way extraordinary then the ordinary way is only left for them If there be an extraordinary let it be shewn and Christians will be at rest concerning their Children One thing only I desire to be observed That Pelagius denied Original Sin but yet denied not the necessity of Infants Baptism and being accused of it in an Epistle to Pope Innocent the First he purged himself of the suspicion and allowed the practice but denied the inducement of it which shews that their arts are weak that think Baptism to be useless to Infants if they be not formally guilty of the prevarication of Adam
By which I also gather that it was so universal so primitive a practice to baptize Infants that it was greater than all pretences to the contrary for it would much have conduced to the introducing his opinion against Grace and Original Sin if he had destroyed that practice which seemed so very much to have its greatest necessity from the doctrine he denied But against Pelagins and against all that follow the parts of his opinion it is of good use which S. Austin Prosper and Fulgentius argue If Infants are punished for Adam's sin then they are also guilty of it in some sence Nimis enim impium est hoc de Dei sentire ãâã quòd à praevaricatione liberos cum reis ãâã esse ãâã So Prosper Dispendia quae slentes nascendo testantur dicito quo merito sub ãâã ãâã judice ãâã sinullum peccatum ãâã arrogentur said S. Austin For the guilt of it signifies nothing but the obligation to the punishment and he that feels the evil consequent to him the sin is imputed not as to all the same dishonour or moral accounts but to the more material to the natural account and in Holy Scripture the taking off the punishment is the pardon of the sin and in the same degree the punishment is abolished in the same God is appeased and then the person stands upright being reconciled to God by his grace Since therefore Infants have the punishment of sin it is certain the sin is imputed to them and therefore they need being reconciled to God by Christ and if so then when they are baptized into Christ's Death and into his Resurrection their sins are pardoned because the punishment is taken off the sting of natural death is taken away because God's anger is removed and they shall partake of Christ's Resurrection which because Baptism does signifie and consign they also are to be baptized To which also add this appendent Consideration That whatsoever the Sacraments do consign that also they do convey and minister they do it that is God by them does it lest we should think the Sacraments to be mere illusions and abusing us by deceitful ineffective signs and therefore to Infants the grace of a title to a Resurrection and Reconciliation to God by the death of Christ is conveyed because it signifies and consigns this to them more to the life and analogy of resemblance than Circumcision to the Infant sons of Israel I end this Consideration with the words of ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã Our birth by Baptism does cut off every unclean appendage of our natural birth and leads us to a celestial life And this in Children is therefore more necessary because the evil came upon them without their own act of reason and choice and therefore the grace and remedy ought not to stay the leisure of dull Nature and the formalities of the Civil Law 18. Fifthly The Baptism of Insants does to them the greatest part of that benefit which belongs to the remission of sins For Baptism is a state of Repentance and Pardon for ever This I suppose to be already proved to which I only add this Caution That the Pelagians to undervalue the necessity of Supervening grace affirmed that Baptism did minister to us Grace sufficient to live perfectly and without sin for ever Against this S. Jerome sharply declaims and affirms Baptismum praeterita donare peccata non suturam servare justitiam that is non statim justum facit omni plenum justitiâ as he expounds his meaning in another place Vetera peccata conscindit novas virtutes non tribuit dimittit à carcere dimisso si laboraverit praemia pollicetur Baptism does not so forgive future sins that we may do what we please or so as we need not labour and watch and fear perpetually and make use of God's grace to actuate our endeavours but puts us into a state of Pardon that is in a Covenant of Grace in which so long as we labour and repent and strive to do our duty so long our infirmities are pitied and our sins certain to be pardoned upon their certain conditions that is by virtue of it we are capable of Pardon and must work for it and may hope it And therefore Infants have a most certain capacity and proper disposition to Baptism for sin creeps before it can go and little undecencies are soon learned and malice is before their years and they can do mischief and irregularities betimes and though we know not when nor how far they are imputed in every month of their lives yet it is an admirable art of the Spirit of grace to put them into a state of Pardon that their remedy may at least be as soon as their necessity And therefore Tertullian and Gregory Nazianzen advised the Baptism of Children to be at three or four years of age meaning that they then begin to have little inadvertencies and hasty follies and actions so evil as did need a Lavatory But if Baptism hath an influence upon sins in the succeeding portion of our life then it is certain that their being presently innocent does not hinder and ought not to retard the Sacrament and therefore Tertullian's Quid festinat innocens aetas ad remissionem peccatorum What need Innocents hasten to the remission of sin is soon answered It is true they need not in respect of any actual sins for so they are innocent but in respect of the evils of their nature derived from their original and in respect of future sins in the whole state of their life it is necessary they be put into a state of Pardon before they sin because some sin early some sin later and therefore unless they be baptized so early as to prevent the first sins they may chance die in a sin to the pardon of which they have âât derived no title from Christ. 19. Sixthly The next great effect of Baptism which Children can have is the Spir it of Sanctification and it they can be baptized with Water and the Spirit it will be sacriledge to rob them of so holy treasures And concerning this although it be with them as S. Paul says of Heirs The Heir so long as he is a child differeth nothing from a Servant though he be Lord of all and Children although they receive the Spirit of Promise and the Spirit of Grace yet in respect of actual exercise they differ not from them that have them not at all yet this hinders not but they may have them For as the reasonable Soul and all its Faculties are in Children Will and Understanding Passions and Powers of Attraction and Propulsion yet these Faculties do not operate or come ahead till time and art observation and experience have drawn them forth into action so may the Spirit of Grace the principle of Christian life be infused and yet lie without action till in its own day it is drawn forth For in every Christian there are three
natural nor gracious neither original nor derivative And well may we lament the death of poor babes that are ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã concerning whom if we neglect what is regularly prescribed to all that enter Heaven without any difference expressed or case reserved we have no reason to be comforted over our dead children but may weep as they that have no hope We may hope when our neglect was not the hinderance because God hath wholly taken the matter into his own hand and then it cannot miscarry and though we know nothing of the Children yet we know much of God's goodness but when God hath permitted it to us that is offered and permitted Children to our ministery what-ever happens to the Innocents we may well fear ãâã God will require the Souls at our hands and we cannot be otherwise secure but that it will be said concerning our children which S. Ambrose used in a case like this Anima illa potuit salva fieri si habuisset purgationem This Soul might have gone to God if it had been purified and washed We know God is good infinitely good but we know it is not at all good to tempt his goodness and he tempts him that leaves the usual way and pretends it is not made for him and yet hopes to be at his journey's end or expects to meet his Child in Heaven when himself shuts the door against him which for ought he knows is the only one that stands open S. Austin was severe in this Question against unbaptized Infants therefore he is called durus Pater Infantum though I know not why the original of that Opinion should be attributed to him since S. Ambrose said the same before him as appears in his words before quoted in the margent 25. And now that I have enumerated the Blessings which are consequent to Baptism and have also made apparent that Infants can receive these Blessings I suppose I need not use any other perswasions to bring Children to Baptism If it be certain they may receive these good things by it it is certain they are not to be hindred of them without the greatest impiety and sacriledge and uncharitableness in the world Nay if it be only probable that they receive these Blessings or if it be but possible they may nay unless it be impossible they should and so declared by revelation or demonstratively certain it were intolerable unkindness and injustice to our pretty Innocents to let their crying be unpitied and their natural misery eternally irremediable and their sorrows without remedy and their Souls no more capable of relief than their bodies of Physick and their death left with the sting in and their Souls without Spirits to go to God and no Angel-guardian to be assigned them in the Assemblies of the faithful and they not to be reckoned in the accounts of God and God's Church All these are sad stories 26. There are in Scripture very many other probabilities to perswade the Baptism of Infants but because the places admit of divers interpretations the Arguments have so many diminutions and the certainty that is in them is too fine for ãâã understandings I have chosen to build the ancient Doctrines upon such principles which are more easie and certain and have not been yet sullied and rifled with the contentions of an adversary This only I shall observe That the words of our Blessed Lord Unless a man be born of Water and the Spirit he cannot enter into the Kingdom of Heaven cannot be expounded to the exclusion of Children but the same expositions will also make Baptism not necessary for men for if they be both necessary ingredients Water and the Spirit then let us provide water and God will provide the Spirit if we bring wood to the Sacrifice he will provide a Lamb. And if they signifie distinctly one is ordinarily as necessary as the other and then Infants must be baptized or not be saved But if one be exegetical and explicative of the other and by Water and the Spirit is meant only the purification of the Spirit then where is the necessity of Baptism ãâã men It will be as the other Sacrament at most but highly convenient not simply necessary and all the other places will easily be answered if this be avoided But however these words being spoken in so ãâã a manner are to be used with fear and reverence and we must be infallibly sure by some certain infallible arguments that ãâã ought not to be baptized or we ought to fear concerning the ãâã of these decretery words I shall only add two things by way of Corollary to this Discourse 27. That the Church of God ever since her ãâã ãâã ãâã hath for very many Ages consisted almost wholly of Assemblies of them who have been ãâã in their Infancy and although in the ãâã callings of the Gentiles the chiefest and most frequent Baptisms were of converted and ãâã persons and believers yet from the beginning also the Church hath baptized the Infants of Christian Parents according to the Prophecy of Isaiah Behold I will list up my hands to the Gentiles and set up a standard to the people and they shall bring thy sons in their arms and thy daughters shall be carried upon their shoulders Concerning which I shall not only bring the testimonies of the matter of ãâã but either a report of an Apostolical Tradition or some Argument from the Fathers which will make their testimony more effectual in all that shall relate to the Question 28. The Author of the Book of Ecclesiastical Hierarchy attributed to S. Denis the ãâã takes notice that certain unholy persons and enemies to the Christian Religion think it a ridiculous thing that Infants who as yet cannot understand the Divine Mysteries should be partakers of the Sacraments and that Professions and Abrenunciations should be made by others for them and in their names He answers that Holy men Governours of Churches have so taught having received a Tradition from their Fathers and Elders in Christ. By which answer of his as it appears that he himself was later than the Areopagite so it is so early by him affirmed that even then there was an ancient Tradition for the Baptism of Infants and the use of Godfathers in the ministery of the Sacrament Concerning which it having been so ancient a Constitution of the Church it were well if men would rather humbly and modestly observe than like scorners deride it in which they shew their own folly as well as immodesty For what ãâã or incongruity is it that our Parents natural or spiritual should stipulate for us when it is agreeable to the practice of all the laws and transactions of the world an effect of the Communion of Saints and of Christian Oeconomy For why may not Infants be stipulated for as well as we All were included in the stipulation made with Adam he made a losing bargain for himself and we smarted for his folly and if the
faults of Parents and Kings and relatives do bring evil upon their Children and subjects and correlatives it is but equal that our children may have benefit also by our charity and ãâã But concerning making an agreement for them we find that God was confident concerning Abraham that he would teach his children and there is no doubt but Parents have great power by strict education and prudent discipline to efform the minds of their children to Vertue ãâã did expresly undertake for his houshold I and my house will serve the Lord and for children we may better do it because till they are of perfect choice no Government in the world is so great as that of Parents over their children in that which can concern the parts of this Question for they rule over their Understandings and children know nothing but what they are told and they believe it infinitely And it is a rare art of the Spirit to engage Parents to bring them up well in the ãâã and admonition of the Lord and they are persons obliged by a superinduced band they are to give them instructions and holy principles as they give them meat And it is certain that Parents may better stipulate for their Children than the Church can for men and women For they may be present Impostors and Hypocrites as the Church story tells of some and consequently are ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã not really converted and ineffectively baptized and the next day they may change their resolution and grow weary of their Vow and that is the most that Children can do when they come to age and it is very much in the Parents whether the Children shall do any such thing or no. purus insons Ut me collandem si vivo charus amicis Causa fuit Pater his Ipse mihi custos incorruptissimus omnes Circum Doctores aderat quid multa pudicum Qui primus virtutis honos servavit ab omni Non solùm facto verùm opprobrio quoque turpi ob hoc nunc Laus illi debetur à me gratia major For education can introduce a habit and a second nature against which Children cannot kick unless they do some violence to themselves and their inclinations And although it fails too ãâã when-ever it fails yet we pronounce prudently concerning future things when we have a less influence into the event than in the present case and therefore are more unapt persons to stipulate and less reason in the thing it self and therefore have not so much reason to be confident Is not the greatest prudence of Generals instanced in their foreseeing ãâã events and guessing at the designs of their enemies concerning which they have less reason to be confident than Parents of their childrens belief of the Christian Creed To which I add this consideration That Parents or Godfathers may therefore safely and prudently promise that their Children shall be of the Christian Faith because we not only see millions of men and women who not only believe the whole Creed only upon the stock of their education but there are none that ever do renounce the Faith of their Country and breeding unless they be violently tempted by ãâã or weakness antecedent or consequent He that sees all men almost to be Christians because they are bid to be so need not question the fittingness of Godfathers promising in behalf of the Children for whom they answer 29. And however the matter be for Godfathers yet the tradition of baptizing Infants passed through the hands of ãâã Omnem aetatem sanctificans per illam quae ad ãâã ãâã similitudinem Omnes ãâã venit per semetipsum salvare omnes inquam qui per ãâã ãâã in Deum infantes parvulos ãâã juvenes seniores Ideo per ãâã venit ãâã infantibus infans factus sanctificans infantes in parvulis ãâã c. Christ did sanctifie every age by his own susception of it and similitude to it For he came to save all men by himself I say all who by him are born again unto God infants and children and boys and young men and old men He was made an Infant to Infants sanctifying Infants a little one to the little ones c. And Origen is express ãâã traditionem ab Apostolis suscepit ãâã parvulis dare Baptismum The Church hath received a Tradition from the ãâã to give Baptism to Children And S. ãâã in his Epistle to ãâã gives account of this Article for being questioned by some less ãâã persons whether it were lawful to baptize Children before the eighth day he gives account of the whole Question And a whole Council of sixty six Bishops upon very good reason decreed that their Baptism should at no hand be deferred though whether six or eight or ten days was no matter so there be no danger or present necessity The whole Epistle is worth the reading 30. But besides these Authorities of such who writ before the starting of the Pelagian Questions it will not be useless to bring the discourses of them and others I mean the reason upon which the Church did it both before and after 31. ãâã his Argument was this Christ took upon him our Nature to sanctific and to save it and passed through the several periods of it even unto death which is the symbol and effect of old age and therefore it is certain he did sanctifie all the periods of it and why should he be an Infant but that Infants should receive the crown of their age the ãâã of their stained nature the sanctification of their persons and the saving of their ãâã by their Infant Lord and elder Brother 32. Omnis ãâã anima ãâã in Adam censetur ãâã in Christo recenseatur ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã Every Soul is accounted in Adam till it be new accounted in Christ and so long as it is accounted in Adam so long it is unclean and we know no unclean thing ãâã enter into Heaven and therefore our Lord hath desined it Unless ãâã be born of Water and the Spirit ye cannot ãâã into the Kingdom of Heaven that is ye cannot be holy It was the argument of ãâã which the rather is to be received because he was one less favourable to the Custom of the Church in his time of baptizing Infants which Custom he noted and acknowledged and hath also in the preceding discourse fairly proved And indeed that S. Cyprian may superadd his symbol God who is no accepter of persons will also be no accepter of ages For if to the greatest delinquents ãâã long before against God remission of sins be given when afterwards they believe and from Baptism and from Grace no man is forbidden how much more ought not an ãâã be forbidden who being new born hath ãâã nothing save only that being in the ãâã born of Adam in his first birth he hath contracted the contagion of an old death who therefore comes the easier to obtain ãâã of sins because
Resurrection of his body after three days death but he expressed it in the metaphor of the Temple Destroy this Temple and I will build it again in three days He spake of the Temple of his Body and they understood him of the Temple at Jerusalem and it was never rightly construed till it was accomplished 2. At this publick Convention of the Jewish Nation Jesus did many Miracles published himself to be the Messias and perswaded many Disciples amongst whom was Nicodemus a Doctor of the Law and a Ruler of the Nation he came by night to Jesus and affirmed himself to be convinced by the Miracles which he had seen for no man could do those miracles except God be with him When Jesus perceived his understanding to be so far disposed he began to instruct him in the great secret and mysteriousness of Regeneration telling him that every production is of the same nature and condition with its parent from flesh comes flesh and corruption from the Spirit comes spirit and life and immortality and nothing from a principle of nature could arrive to a supernatural end and therefore the only door to enter into the Kingdom of God was Water by the manuduction of the Spirit and by this Regeneration we are put into a new capacity of living a spiritual life in order to a spiritual and supernatural end 3. This was strange Philosophy to Nicodemus but Jesus bad him not to wonder for this is not a work of humanity but a fruit of God's Spirit and an issue of Predestination For the Spirit bloweth where it listeth and is as the wind certain and notorious in the effects but secret in the principle and in the manner of production And therefore this Doctrine was not to be estimated by any proportions to natural principles or experiments of sense but to the secrets of a new Metaphysick and abstracted separate Speculations Then Christ proceeds in his Sermon telling him there are yet higher things for him to apprehend and believe for this in respect of some other mysteriousness of his Gospel was but as Earth in comparison of Heaven Then he tells of his own descent from Heaven foretells his Death and Ascension and the blessing of Redemption which he came to work for mankind he preaches of the Love of the Father the Mission of the Son the rewards of Faith and the glories of Eternity he upbraids the unbelieving and impenitent and declares the differences of a holy and a corrupt Conscience the shame and fears of the one the confidence and serenity of the other And this is the summ of his Sermon to Nicodemus which was the fullest of mystery and speculation and abstracted sences of any that he ever made except that which he made immediately before his Passion all his other Sermons being more practical 4. From Jerusalem Jesus goeth into the Country of Judaea attended by divers Disciples whose understandings were brought into subjection and obedience to Christ upon confidence of the divinity of his Miracles There his Disciples did receive all comers and baptized them as John at the same time did and by that Ceremony admitted them to the Discipline and Institution according to the custom of the Doctors and great Prophets among the Jews whose Baptizing their Scholars was the ceremony of their Admission As soon as John heard it he acquitted himself in publick by renewing his former testimony concerning Jesus affirming him to be the Messias and now the time was come that Christ must increase and the Baptist suffer diminution for Christ came from above was above all and the summ of his Doctrine was that which he had heard and seen from the Father whom God sent to that purpose to whom God had set his seal that he was true who spake the words of God whom the Father loved to whoÌ he gave the Spirit without measure and into whose hands God had delivered all things this was he whose testimony the world received not And that they might know not only what person they sleighted but how great Salvation also they neglected he summs up all his Sermons and finishes his Mission with this saying He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life and he that believeth not on the Son shall not see life but the wrath of God abideth on him 5. For now that the Baptist had fulfilled his Office of bearing witness unto Jesus God was pleased to give him his writ of ease and bring him to his reward upon this occasion John who had so learned to despise the world and all its exteriour vanities and impertinent relations did his duty justly and so without respect of persons that as he reproved the people for their prevarications so he spared not Herod for his but abstaining from all expresses of the spirit of scorn and asperity mingling no discontents interests nor mutinous intimations with his Sermons he told Herod it was not lawful for him to have his Brother's wife For which Sermon he felt the furies and malice of a woman's spleen was cast into prison and about a year after was sacrificed to the scorn and pride of a lustful woman and her immodest daughter being at the end of the second year of Christ's Preaching beheaded by Herod's command who would not retract his promise because of his honour and a rash vow he made in the gayety of his Lust and complacencies of his riotous dancings His head was brought up in a dish and made a Festival-present to the young girl who gave it to her mother a Cruelty that was not known among the Barbarisms of the worst of people to mingle banquetings with bloud and sights of death an insolency and inhumanity for which the ãâã Orators accused Q. Flaminius of Treason because to satisfie the wanton cruelty of Placentia he caused a condemned slave to be killed at supper and which had no precedent but in the furies of Marius who caused the head of the Consul Antonius to be brought up to him in his Feasts which he handled with much pleasure and insolency 6. But God's Judgments which sleep not long found out Herod and marked him for a Curse For the Wise of Herod who was the Daughter of Aretas a King of Arabia Petraea being repudiated by paction with Herodias provoked her Father to commence a War with Herod who prevailed against Herod in a great Battel defeating his whole Army and forcing him to an inglorious flight which the Jews generally expounded to be a Judgment on him for the unworthy and barbarous execution and murther of John the Baptist God in his wisdom and severity making one sin to be the punishment of another and neither of them both to pass without the signature of a Curse And Nicephorus reports that the dancing daughter of Herodias passing over a frozen lake the ice brake and she fell up to the neck in water and her head was parted from her body by the violence of the fragments shaked by the water and
with an issue of bloud twelve years without hope of remedy from art or nature and therefore she runs to Jesus thinking without precedent upon the confident perswasions of a holy Faith that if she did but touch the hem of his garment she should be whole She came trembling and full of hope and reverence and touched his garment and immediately the ãâã of her unnatural emanation was stopped and reverted to its natural course and offices S. Ambrose says that this woman was Martha But it is not likely that she was a Jewess but a Gentile because of that return which she made in memory of her cure and honour of Jesus according to the Gentile rites For Eusebius reports that himself saw at Caesarea Philippi a Statue of ãâã representing a woman kneeling at the feet of a goodly personage who held his hand out to her in a posture of granting her request and doing favour to her and the inhabitants said it was erected by the care and cost of this woman adding whether out of truth or easiness is not certain that at the pedestal of this Statue an usual plant did grow which when it was come up to that maturity and height as to arrive at the fringes of the brass monument it was medicinal in many dangerous diseases So far Eusebius Concerning which story I shall make no censure but this that since S. Mark and S. Luke affirm that this woman before her cure had spent all her substance upon Physicians it is not easily imaginable how she should become able to dispend so great a summ of money as would purchase two so great Statues of brass and if she could yet it is still more unlikely that the Gentile Princes and Proconsuls who searched all places publick and private and were curiously diligent to destroy all honorary monuments of Christianity should let this alone and that this should escape not only the diligence of the Persecutors but the fury of such Wars and changes as happened in Palestine and that for three hundred years together it should stand up in defiance of all violences and changeable fate of all things However it be it is certain that the Book against Images published by the command of Charles the Great 850 years ago gave no credit to the story and if it had been true it it more than probable that Justin Martyr who was born and bred in Palestine and Origen who lived many years in Tyre in the neighbourhood of the place where the Statue is said to stand and were highly diligent to heap together all things of advantage and reputation to the Christian cause would not have omitted so notable an instance It is therefore likely that the Statues which Eusebius saw and concerning which he heard such stories were first placed there upon the stock of a heathen story or Ceremony and in process of time for the likeness of the figures and its capacity to be translated to the Christian story was by the Christians in after-Ages attributed by a fiction of fancy and afterwards by credulity confidently applied to the present Narrative 21. When Jesus was come to the Ruler's house he found the minstrels making their funeral noises for the death of Jairus's daughter and his servants had met him and acquainted him of the death of the child yet Jesus turned out the minstrels and entred with the parents of the child into her chamber and taking her by the hand called her and awakened her from her sleep of death and commanded them to give her to eat and enjoyned them not to publish the Miracle But as ãâã suppressed by violent detentions break out and rage with a more impetuous and rapid motion so it happened to Jesus who endeavouring to make the noises and reports of him less popular made them to be ãâã for not only we do that most greedily from which we are most restrained but a great merit enamell'd with humility and restrained with modesty grows more beautious and florid up to the heights of wonder and glories 22. As he came from Jairus's house he cured two blind men upon their petition and confession that they did believe in him and cast out a dumb Devil so much to the wonder and amazement of the people that the Pharisees could hold no longer being ready to burst with envy but said he cast out Devils by help of the Devils Their malice being as usually it is contradictory to its own design by its being unreasonable nothing being more sottish than for the Devil to divide his kingdom upon a plot to ruine his certainties upon hopes future and contingent But this was but the first eruption of their malice all the year last past which was the first year of Jesus's Preaching all was quiet neither the Jews nor the Samaritans nor the Galileans did malign his Doctrine or Person but he preached with much peace on all hands for this was the year which the Prophet Isaiah called in his prediction the acceptable year of the Lord. Ad SECT XII Considerations upon the Entercourse happening between the Holy Jesus and the Woman of Samaria The Woman of Samaria Iohn 4 7. There cemeth a woman of Samaria to draw water Iesus saith unto her giue me to drink 9. Then saith the Woman of Samaria unto him How is it that thou being a Iew askest drink of me which am a woman of Samaria The great draught of Fishes Luk. 5. 4. 5. etc. He said unto Simon Let down your nets for a draught And they enclosed a great multitude of fishes and when Simon Peter saw it he fell down att Jesus knees for he was astonished all that were with him at the draught of the fishes And Jesus said to Simon Fear not from henceforth thou shalt catch men 1. WHen the Holy Jesus perceiving it unsafe to be at Jerusálem returned to Galilee where the largest scene of his Prophetical Office was to be represented he journeyed on foot through Samaria and being weary and faint hungry and thirsty he sate down by a Well and begged water of a Samaritan woman that was a Sinner who at first refused him with some incivility of language But he in stead of returning anger and passion to her rudeness which was commenced upon the interest of a mistaken Religion preached the coming of the Messias to her unlock'd the secrets of her heart and let in his Grace and made a fountain of living water to spring up in her Soul to extinguish the impure flames of Lust which had set her on fire burning like Hell ever since the death of her fifth Husband she then becoming a Concubine to the sixth Thus Jesus transplanted Nature into Grace his hunger and thirst into religious appetites the darkness of the Samaritan into a clear revelation her Sin into Repentance and Charity and so quenched his own thirst by relieving her needs and as it was meat to him to do his Father's will so it was drink to
proportionable reception of his and hath also commanded us to ask pardon all days of our life even in our daily offices and to beg it in the measure and rule of our own Charity and Forgiveness to our Brother And therefore God in his infinite wisdom foreseeing our frequent relapses and considering our infinite infirmities appointed in his Church an ordinary ministery of Pardon designing the Minister to pray for sinners and promising to accept him in that his advocation or that he would open or shut Heaven respectively to his act on earth that is he would hear his prayers and verifie his ministery to whom he hath committed the word of Reconciliation This became a duty to Christian Ministers Spiritual persons that they should restore a person overtaken in a fault that is reduce him to the condition he begins to lose that they should pray over sick persons who are also commanded to confess their sins and God hath promised that the sins they have committed shall be forgiven them Thus S. Paul absolved the incestuous excommunicate Corinthian in the person of Christ he forgave him And this also is the confidence S. John taught the Christian Church upon the stock of the excellent mercy of God and propitiation of Jesus If we confess our sins he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all ãâã Which discourse he directs to them who were Christians already initiated into the Institution of Jesus And the Epistles which the Spirit sent to the Seven Asian Churches and were particularly addressed to the Bishops the Angels of those Churches are exhortations some to Perseverance some to Repentance that they may return from whence they are fallen And the case is so with us that it is impossible we should be actually and perpetually free from sin in the long succession of a busie and impotent and a tempted conversation And without these reserves of the Divine grace and after-emanations from the Mercy-seat no man could be saved and the death of Christ would become inconsiderable to most of his greatest purposes for none should have received advantages but newly-baptized persons whose Albs of Baptism served them also for a winding-sheet And therefore our Baptism although it does consign the work of God presently to the baptized person in great certain and intire effect in order to the remission of what is past in case the Catechumen be rightly disposed or hinders not yet it hath also influence upon the following periods of our life and hath admitted us into a lasting state of Pardon to be renewed and actually applied by the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper and all other Ministeries Evangelical and so long as our Repentance is timely active and affective 18. But now although it is infinitely certain that the gates of Mercy stand open to sinners after Baptism yet it is with some variety and greater difficulty He that renounces Christianity and becomes Apostate from his Religion not by a seeming abjuration under a storm but by a voluntary and hearty dereliction he seems to have quitted all that Grace which he had received when he was illuminated and to have lost the benefits of his Redemption and former expiation And I conceive this is the full meaning of those words of S. Paul which are of highest difficulty and latent sense For it is impossible for those who were once enlightned c. if they shall fall away to renew them again unto Repentance The reason is there subjoyned and more clearly explicated a little after For if we sin wilfully after we have received the knowledge of the truth there remains no more sacrifice for sins For he hath counted the bloud of the Covenant wherewith he was sanctified an unholy thing and hath done despite to the Spirit of Grace The meaning is divers according to the degrees of apostasie or relapse They who fall away after they were once enlightned in Baptism and felt all those blessed effects of the sanctification and the emanations of the Spirit if it be into a contradictory state of sin and mancipation and obstinate purposes to serve Christ's enemies then there remains nothing but a fearful expectation of Judgment but if the backsliding be but the interruption of the first Sanctity by a single act or an unconformed unresolved unmalicious habit then also it is impossible to renew them unto Repentance viz. as formerly that is they can never be reconciled as before integrally fully and at once during this life For that Redemption and expiation was by Baptism into Christ's death and there are no more deaths of Christ nor any more such sacramental consignations of the benefit of it there is no more sacrifice for sins but the Redemption is one as the Sacrifice is one in whose virtue the Redemption does operate And therefore the Novatians who were zealous men denied to the first sort of persons the peace of the Church and remitted them to the Divine Judgment The Church her self was sometimes almost as zealous against the second sort of persons lapsed into capital crimes granting to them Repentance but once by such disciplines consigning this truth That every recession from the state of Grace in which by Baptism we were established and consigned is a farther step from the possibilities of Heaven and so near a ruine that the Church thought them persons fit to be transmitted to a Judicature immediately Divine as supposing either her power to be too little or the others malice too great or else the danger too violent or the scandal insupportable For concerning such persons who once were pious holy and forgiven for so is every man and woman worthily and aptly baptized and afterwards fell into dissolution of manners extinguishing the Holy Ghost doing despite to the Spirit of Grace crucisying again the Lord of Life that is returning to such a condition from which they were once recovered and could not otherwise be so but by the death of our dearest Lord I say concerning such persons the Scripture speaks very suspiciously and to the sense and signification of an infinite danger For if the speaking a word against the Holy Ghost be not to be pardoned here nor hereafter what can we imagine to be the end of such an impiety which crucifies the Lord of Life and puts him to an open shame which quenches the Spirit doing despite to the Spirit of Grace Certainly that is worse than speaking against him And such is every person who falls into wilful Apostasie from the Faith or does that violence to Holiness which the other does to Faith that is extinguishes the sparks of Illumination quenches the Spirit and is habitually and obstinately criminal in any kind For the same thing that ãâã was in the first period of the world and Idolatry in the second the same is Apostasie in the last it is a state wholly contradictory to all our religious relation to God according to the
fight when we contend earnestly against them and resist them unto bloud if need be that 's being pure as he is pure But besides this positive rejection of all evil and perpetually contesting against sin we must pursue the interests of Vertue and an active Religion 27. And besides this saith S. Peter giving all diligence add to your Faith Vertue to your Vertue Knowlege and to Knowledge Temperance and to Temperance Patience and to Patience Godliness and to Godliness Brotherly kindness and to Brotherly kindness Charity All this is an evident prosecution of the first design the holiness and righteousness of a whole life the being clear from all spots and blemishes a being pure and so presented unto Christ for upon this the Covenant being founded to this all industries must endeavour and arrive in their proportions For if these things be in you and abound they shall make that you be neither barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. But he that lacketh these things is blind and hath forgotten he was purged from his old sins that is he hath lost his Baptismal grace and is put from the first state of his Redemption towards that state which is contradictory and destructive of it 28. Now because all these things are in latitude distance and divisibility and only injoyn a sedulity and great endeavour all that we can dwell upon is this That he who endeavours most is most secure and every degree of negligence is a degree of danger and although in the intermedial condition between the two states of Christianity and a full impiety there is a state of recovery and possibility yet there is danger in every part of it and it increases according as the deflection and irregularity comes to its height position state and finality So that we must give all diligence to work out our Salvation and it would ever be with fear and trembling with fear that we do not lose our innocence and with trembling if we have lost it for fear we never recover or never be accepted But Holiness of life and uninterrupted Sanctity being the condition of our Salvation the ingredient of the Covenant we must proportion our degrees of hope and confidence of Heaven according as we have obtained degrees of Innocence or Perseverance or Restitution Only this As it is certain he is in a state of reprobation who lives unto sin that is whose actions are habitually criminal who gives more of his consent to wickedness than to Vertue so it is also certain he is not in the state of God's favour and Sanctification unless he lives unto righteousness that is whose desires and purposes and endeavours and actions and customs are spiritual holy sanctified and obedient When sin is dead and the spirit is life when the Lusts of the flesh are mortified and the heart is purged from an evil conscience and we abound in a whole Systeme of Christian Vertues when our hearts are right to God and with our affections and our wills we love God and keep his Commandments when we do not only cry Lord Lord but also do his will then Christ dwells in us and we in Christ. Now let all this be taken in the lowest sence that can be imagined all I say which out of Scripture I have transcribed casting away every weight laying aside all malice mortifying the deeds of the flesh crucifying the old man with all his affections and lusts and then having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust besides this adding vertue to vertue till all righteousness be fulfilled in us walking in the light putting on the Lord Jesus purifying our selves as God is pure following peace with all men and holiness resisting unto bloud living in the Spirit being holy in all manner of conversation as he is holy being careful and excellent in all conversation and godliness all this being a pursuit of the first design of Christ's death and our reconcilement can mean no less but that 1. We should have in us no affection to a sin of which we can best judge when we never chuse it and never fall under it but by surprise and never lie under it at all but instantly recover judging our selves severely and 2. That we should chuse Vertue with great freedom of spirit and alacrity and pursue it earnestly integrally and make it the business of our lives and that 3. The effect of this be that sin be crucified in us and the desires to it dead flat and useless and that our desires of serving Christ be quick-spirited active and effective inquisitive for opportunities apprehensive of the offer chearful in the action and persevering in the employment 29. Now let a prudent person imagine what infirmities and over-sights can consist with a state thus described and all that does no violence to the Covenant God pities us and calls us not to an account for what morally cannot or certainly will not with great industry be prevented But whatsoever is inconsistent with this condition is an abatement from our hopes as it is a retiring from our duty and is with greater or less difficulty cured as are the degrees of its distance from that condition which Christ stipulated with us when we became his Disciples For we are just so restored to our state of grace and favour as we are restored to our state of purity and holiness Now this redintegration or renewing of us into the first condition is also called Repentance and is permitted to all persons who still remain within the powers and possibilities of the Covenant that is who are not in a state contradictory to the state and portion of Grace but with a difficulty increased by all circumstances and incidences of the crime and person And this I shall best represent in repeating these considerations 1. Some sins are past hopes of Pardon in this life 2. All that are pardoned are pardoned by parts revocably and imperfectly during this life not quickly nor yet manifestly 3. Repentance contains in it many operations parts and imployments its terms and purpose being to redintegrate our lost condition that is in a second and less perfect sence but as much as in such circumstances we can to verifie our first obligations of innocence and holiness in all manner of conversation and godliness 30. Concerning the first it is too sad a consideration to be too dogmatical and conclusive in it and therefore I shall only recall those expresses of Scripture which may without envy decree the article such as are those of S. Paul that there is a certain sort of men whom he twice describes whom it is impossible to renew again unto Repentance or those of S. Peter such whose latter end is worse than the beginning because after they once had escaped the pollutions of the world they are intangled therein such who as our Blessed Saviour threatens shall never be forgiven in this world nor in the world to come
Shepherd in the ãâã Afterwards they admitted Pictures but not before the time of Constantine for in the Council of Eliberis they were forbidden And in succession of time the scruples lessened with the danger and all the way they signified their belief to be that this Commandment was only so far retained by Christ as it relied upon natural reason or was a particular instance of the great Commandment that is Images were forbidden where they did dishonour God or lessen his reputation or estrange our duties or became Idols or the direct matter of superstitious observances charms or senseless confidences but they were permitted to represent the Humanity of Christ to remember Saints and Martyrs to recount a story to imprint a memory to do honour and reputation to absent persons and to be the instruments of a relative civility and esteem But in this particular infinite care is to be taken of Scandal and danger of a forward and zealous ignorance or of a mistaking and peevish confidence and where a Society hath such persons in it the little good of Images must not be violently retained with the greater danger and certain offence of such persons of whom consideration is to be had in the cure of Souls I only add this that the first Christians made no scruple of saluting the Statues of their Princes and were confident it made no intrenchment upon the natural prohibition contained in this Commandment because they had observed that exteriour inclinations and addresses of the body though in the lowest manner were not proper to God but in Scripture found also to be communicated to Creatures to Kings to Prophets to Parents to Religious persons and because they found it to be death to do affront to the Pictures and Statues of their Emperors they concluded in reason which they also saw verified by the practice and opinion of all the world that the respect they did at the Emperor's Statue was accepted as a veneration to his person But these things are but sparingly to be drawn into Religion because the customs of this world are altered and their opinions new and many who have not weak understandings have weak Consciences and the necessity for the entertainment of them is not so great as the offence is or may be 18. Thou shalt not take the Name of the Lord thy God in vain This our Blessed Saviour repeating expresses it thus It hath been said to them of old time Thou shalt not for swear thy self to which Christ adds out of Num. 30. 2. But thou shalt perform thy Oaths unto the Lord. The meaning of the one we are taught by the other We must not invocate the Name of God in any promise in vain that is with a Lie which happens either out of levity that we change our purpose which at first we really intended or when our intention at that instant was fallacious and contradictory to the undertaking This is to take the Name of God that is to use it to take it into our mouths for vanity that is according to the perpetual style of Scripture for a Lie Every one hath spoken vanity to his neighbour that is he hath lied unto him for so it follows with flattering lips and with a double heart and swearing deceitfully is by the Psalmist called lifting up his soul unto vanity And Philo the Jew who well understood the Law and the language of his Nation renders the sence of this Commandment to be to call God to witness to a Lie And this is to be understood only in Promises for so Christ explains it by the appendix out of the Law Thou shalt perform thy Oaths For lying in Judgment which is also with an Oath or taking God's Name for witness is forbidden in the Ninth Commandment To this Christ added a farther restraint For whereas by the Natural Law it was not unlawful to swear by any Oath that implied not Idolatry ãâã the belief of a false God I say any grave and prudent Oath when they spake a grave truth and whereas it was lawful for the ãâã in ordinary entercourse to swear by God so they did not swear to a Lie to which also swearing to an impertinency might be reduced by a proportion of reason and was so accounted of in the practice of the Jews but else and in other cases they us'd to swear by God or by a Creature respectively for they that swear by him shall be commended saith the Psalmist and swearing to the Lord of Hosts is called speaking the language of Canaan Most of this was rescinded Christ forbad all swearing not only swearing to a Lie but also swearing to a truth in common affairs not only swearing commonly by the Name of God but swearing commonly by Heaven and by the Earth by our Head or by any other Oath only let our speech be yea or nay that is plainly affirming or denying In these I say Christ corrected the licence and vanities of the Jews and Gentiles For as the Jews accounted it Religion to name God and therefore would not swear by him but in the more solemn occasions of their life but in trifles they would swear by their Fathers or the Light of Heaven or the Ground they trode on so the Greeks were also careful not to swear by the Gods lightly much less fallaciously but they would swear by any thing about them or near them upon an occasion as vain as their Oath But because these Oaths are either indirectly to be referred to God and Christ instances in divers or else they are but a vain testimony or else they give a Divine honour to a Creature by making it a Judge of truth and discerner of spirits therefore Christ seems to forbid all forms of Swearing whatsoever In pursuance of which law Basilides being converted at the prayers of Potamiaena a Virgin-Martyr and required by his fellow-souldiers to swear upon some occasion then happening answered it was not lawful for him to swear for he was a Christian and many of the Fathers have followed the words of Christ in so severe a sence that their words seem to admit no exception 19. But here a grain of salt must be taken lest the letter destroy the spirit First it is certain the Holy Jesus forbad a custom of Swearing it being great irreligion to despise and lessen the Name of God which is the instrument and conveyance of our Adorations to him by making it common and applicable to trifles and ordinary accidents of our life He that swears often many times swears false and however lays by that reverence which being due to God the Scripture determines it to be due at his Name His Name is to be loved and feared And therefore Christ commands that our communication be yea yea or nay nay that is our ordinary discourses should be simply affirmative or negative In order to this Plutarch affirms out of Phavorinus that the
her in the midst of her journey Against this David prayed O my God cut me ãâã off in the midst of my days But in this there is some variety For God does it sometimes in mercy sometimes in judgment The righteous die and no man regardeth not considering that they are taken away from the evil to come God takes the righteous man hastily to his Crown lest temptation snatch it from him by interrupting his hopes and sanctity And this was the case of the old World For from Adam to the Floud by the Patriarchs were eleven generations but by Cain's line there were but eight so that Cain's posterity were longer liv'd because God intending to bring the Floud upon the World took delight to rescue his elect from the dangers of the present impurity and the future Deluge Abraham lived five years less than his son Isaac it being say the Doctors of the Jews intended for mercy to him that he might not see the iniquity of his Grandchild ãâã And this the Church for many Ages hath believed in the case of baptized Infants dying before the use of Reason For besides other causes in the order of Divine Providence one kind of mercy is done to them too for although their condition be of a lower form yet it is secured by that timely shall I call it or untimely death But these are cases extraregular ordinarily and by rule God hath revealed his purposes of interruption of the lives of sinners to be in anger and judgment for when men commit any signal and grand impiety God suffers not Nature to take her course but strikes a stroke with his own hand To which purpose I think it a remarkable instance which is reported by ãâã that for 3332 years even to the twentieth Age there was not one example of a Son that died before his Father but the course of Nature was kept that he who was first born in the descending line did die first I speak of natural death and therefore Abel cannot be opposed to this observation till that Terah the father of Abraham taught the People to make Images of clay and worship them and concerning him it was first remarked that Haran died before his father Terah in the land of his nativity God by an unheard-of Judgment and a rare accident punishing his newly-invented crime And when-ever such ãâã of a life happens to a vicious person let all the world acknowledge it for a Judgment and when any man is guilty of evil habits or unrepented sins he may therefore expect it because it is threatned and designed for the lot and curse of such persons This is threatned to Covetousness Injustice and Oppression As a Partridge sitteth on eggs and hatcheth them not so he that getteth riches and not by right shall leave them in the midst of his days and at his end shall be a Fool. The same is threatned to Voluptuous persons in the highest caresses of delight and Christ told a parable with the same design The rich man said Soul take thy ease but God answered O fool this night shall thy Soul be required of thee Zimri and Cozbi were slain in the trophies of their Lust and it was a sad story which was told by Thomas Cantipratanus Two Religious persons tempted by each other in the vigour of their youth in their very first pleasures and opportunities of sin were both struck dead in their embraces and posture of entertainment God smote Jeroboam for his Usurpation and Tyranny and he died Saul died for Disobedience against God and asking counsel of a Pythonisse God smote ãâã with a Leprosie for his profaneness and distressed ãâã sorely for his Sacrilege and sent a horrid disease upon Jehoram for his Idolatry These instances represent Voluptuousness and Covetousness Rapine and Injustice Idolatry and Lust Profaneness and Sacrilege as remarked by the signature of exemplary Judgments to be the means of shortening the days of man God himself proving the Executioner of his own fierce wrath I instance no more but in the singular case of Hananiah the false Prophet Thus saith the LORD Behold I will cut thee from off the face of the earth this year thou shalt die because thou hast taught Rebellion against the LORD That is the curse and portion of a false Prophet a short life and a suddén death of God's own particular and more immediate ãâã 23. And thus also the sentence of the Divine anger went forth upon criminal persons in the New Testament Witness the Disease of Herod Judas's Hanging himself the Blindness of ãâã the Sudden death of Ananias and Sapphira the Buffetings with which Satan ãâã the bodies of persons excommunicate Yea the blessed Sacrament of CHRIST's Body and Bloud which is intended for our spiritual life if it be unworthily received proves the cause of a natural death For this cause many are weak and sickly among you and many are fallen asleep saith S. Paul to the ãâã Church 24. Thirdly But there is yet another manner of ending man's life by way of Chance or Contingency meaning thereby the manner of God's Providence and event of things which is not produced by the disposition of natural causes nor yet by any particular and special act of God but the event which depends upon accidental causes not so certain and regular as Nature not so conclusive and determined as the acts of decretory Providence but comes by disposition of causes irregular to events rare and accidental This David expresses by entring into battel and in this as in the other we must separate cases extraordinary and rare from the ordinary and common Extraregularly and upon extraordinary reasons and permissions we find that holy persons have miscarried in battel So the ãâã fell before Benjamin and Jonathan and ãâã and many of the Lord's champions fighting against the Philistines but in these deaths as God served other ends of Providence so he kept to the good men that fell all the mercies of the Promise by giving them a greater blessing of event and compensation In the more ordinary course of Divine dispensation they that prevaricate the Laws of God are put out of protection God withdraws his special Providence or their tutelar Angel and leaves them exposed to the influences of Heaven to the power of a Constellation to the accidents of humanity to the chances of a Battel which are so many and various that it is ten thousand to one a man in that case never escapes and in such variety of contingencies there is no probable way to assure our safety but by a holy life to endear the Providence of God to be our Guardian It was a remarkable saying of Deborah The Stars sought in their courses ãâã in their orbs against Sisera Sisera fought when there was an evil Aspect or malignant influence of Heaven upon him For even the smallest thing that is in opposition to us is enough to turn the
the flames of Hell that men may serve God without the incentives of hope and fear and purely for the love of God Whether the Woman were onely imaginative and sad or also zealous I know not But God knows he would have few Disciples if the arguments of invitation were not of greater promise than the labours of Vertue are of trouble And therefore the Spirit of God knowing to what we are inflexible and by what we are made most ductile and malleable hath propounded Vertue clothed and dressed with such advantages as may entertain even our Sensitive part and first desires that those also may be invited to Vertue who understand not what is just and reasonable but what is profitable who are more moved with advantage than justice And because emolument is more felt than innocence and a man may be poor for all his gift of ãâã the Holy Jesus to endear the practices of Religion hath represented Godliness unto us under the notion of gain and sin as unfruitful and yet besides all the natural and reasonable advantages every Vertue hath a supernatural reward a gracious promise attending and every Vice is not only naturally deformed but is made more ugly by a threatning and horrid by an appendent curse Henceforth therefore let no man complain that the Commandments of God are impossible for they are not onely possible but easie and they that say otherwise and do accordingly take more pains to carry the instruments of their own death than would serve to ascertain them of life And if we would do as much for Christ as we have done for Sin we should find the pains less and the pleasure more And therefore such complainers are without excuse for certain it is they that can go in foul ways must not say they cannot walk in fair they that march over rocks in despight of so many impediments can travel the even ways of Religion and Peace when the Holy Jesus is their Guide and the Spirit is their Guardian and infinite felicities are at their journey's end and all the reason of the world political oeconomical and personal do entertain and support them in the travel of the passage The PRAYER O Eternal Jesus who gavest Laws unto the world that man-kind being united to thee by the bands of Obedience might partake of all thy glories and felicities open our understanding give us the spirit of discerning and just apprehension of all the beauties with which thou hast enamelled Vertue to represent it beauteous and amiable in our eyes that by the allurements of exteriour decencies and appendent blessings our present desires may be entertained our hopes promoted our affections satisfied and Love entring in by these doors may dwell in the interiour regions of the Will O make us to love thee for thy self and Religion for thee and all the instruments of Religion in order to thy glory and our own felicities Pull off the visors of Sin and discover its deformities by the lantern of thy Word and the light of the Spirit that I may never be bewitched with sottish appetites Be pleased to build up all the contents I expect in this world upon the interests of a vertuous life and the support of Religion that I may be rich in Good works content in the issues of thy Providence my Health may be the result of Temperance and severity my Mirth in spiritual emanations my Rest in Hope my Peace in a good Conscience my Satisfaction and acquiescence in thee that from Content I may pass to an eternal Fulness from Health to Immortality from Grace to Glory walking in the paths of Righteousness by the waters of Comfort to the land of everlasting Rest to feast in the glorious communications of Eternity eternally adoring loving and enjoying the infinity of the ever-Blessed and mysterious Trinity to whom be glory and ãâã and dominion now and for ever Amen DISCOURSE XVI Of Certainty of Salvation 1. WHen the Holy Jesus took an account of the first Legation and voyage of his Apostles he found them rejoycing in priviledges and exteriour powers in their authority over unclean spirits but weighing it in his balance he found the cause too light and therefore diverted it upon the right object Rejoyce that your names are written in Heaven The revelation was confirmed and more personally applied in answer to S. Peter's Question We have for saken all and followed thee what shall we have therefore Their LORD answered Ye shall sit upon twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel Amongst these persons to whom Christ spake Judas was he was one of the Twelve and he had a throne allotted for him his name was described in the book of life and a Scepter and a Crown was deposited for him too For we must not judge of Christ's meaning by the event since he spake these words to produce in them Faith comfort and joy in the best objects it was a Sermon of duty as well as a Homily of comfort and therefore was equally intended to all the Colledge and since the number of Thrones is proportioned to the number of men it is certain there was no exception of any man there included and yet it is as certain Judas never came to sit upon the throne and his name was blotted out of the book of life Now if we put these ends together that in Scripture it was not revealed to any man concerning his final condition but to the dying penitent Thief and to the twelve Apostles that twelve thrones were designed for them and a promise made of their inthronization and yet that no man's final estate is so clearly declared miserable and lost as that of Judas one of the Twelve to whom a throne was promised the result will be that the election of holy persons is a condition allied to duty absolute and infallible in the general and supposing all the dispositions and requisites concurring but fallible in the particular if we fall off from the mercies of the Covenant and prevaricate the conditions But the thing which is most observable is that if in persons so eminent and priviledged and to whom a revelation of their Election was made as a particular grace their condition had one weak leg upon which because it did rely for one half of the interest it could be no stronger than its supporters the condition of lower persons to whom no revelation is made no priviledges are indulged no greatness of spiritual eminency is appendent as they have no greater certainty in the thing so they have less in person and are therefore to work out their salvation with great fears and tremblings of spirit 2. The purpose of this consideration is that we do not judge of our final condition by any discourses of our own relying upon God's secret Counsels and Predestination of Eternity This is a mountain upon which whosoever climbs like Moses to behold the land of Canaan at great distances may please his eyes or
more fallible in the application whether we have not mingled some little minutes of malice in the body of infirmities and how much will bear excuse and in what time and to what persons and to what degrees and upon what endeavours we shall be pardoned So that all the interval between our losing baptismal grace and the day of our death we walk in a cloud having lost the certain knowledge of our present condition by our prevarications And indeed it is a very hard thing for a man to know his own heart And he that shall observe how often himself hath been abused by confidences and secret imperfections and how the greatest part of Christians in name only do think themselves in a very good condition when God knows they are infinitely removed from it and yet if they did not think themselves well and sure it is unimaginable they should sleep so quietly and walk securely and consider negligently and yet proceed ãâã he that considers this and upon what weak and false principles of Divinity men have raised their strengths and perswasions will easily consent to this that it is very easie for men to be deceived in taking estimate of their present condition of their being in the state of Grace 5. But there is great variety of men and difference of degrees and every step of returning to God may reasonably add one degree of hope till at last it comes to the certainty and top of hope Many men believe themselves to be in the state of Grace and are not many are in the state of Grace and are infinitely fearful they are out of it and many that are in God's favour do think they are so and they are not deceived And all this is certain For some sin that sin of Presumption and Flattery of themselves and some good persons are vexed with violent fears and temptations to despair and all are not and when their hopes are right yet some are strong and some are weak for they that are well perswaded of their present condition have perswasions as different as are the degrees of their approach to innocence and he that is at the highest hath also such abatements which are apt and proper for the conservation of humility and godly ãâã I am guilty of nothing saith S. Paul but I am not hereby justified meaning thus Though I be innocent for ought I know yet God who judges otherwise than we judge may find something to reprove in me It is God that judges that is concerning my degrees of acceptance and hopes of glory If the person be newly recovering from a state of sin because his state is imperfect and his sin not dead and his lust active and his habit not quite extinct it is easie for a man to be too hasty in pronouncing well He is wrapt up in a cloak of clouds hidden and encumbred and his brightest day is but twilight and his discernings dark conjectural and imperfect and his heart is like a cold hand newly applied to the fire full of pain and whether the heat or the cold be strongest is not easie to determine or like middle colours which no man can tell to which of the extremes they are to be accounted But according as persons grow in Grace so they may grow in confidence of their present condition It is not certain they will do so for sometimes the beauty of the tabernacle is covered with goats hair and skins of beasts and holy people do infinitely deplore the want of such Graces which God observes in them with great complacency and acceptance Both these cases say that to be certainly perswaded of our present condition is not a Duty Sometimes it is not possible and sometimes it is better to be otherwise But if we consider of this Certainty as a Blessing and a Reward there is no question but in a great and an eminent Sanctity of life there may also be a great confidence and fulness of perswasion that our present being is well and gracious and then it is certain that such persons are not deceived For the thing it self being sure if the perswasion answers to it it is needless to dispute of the degree of certainty and the manner of it Some persons are heartily perswaded of their being reconciled and of these some are deceived and some are not deceived and there is no sign to distinguish them but by that which is the thing signified a holy life according to the strict rules of Christian Discipline tells what persons are confident and who are presumptuous But the certainty is reasonable in none but in old Christians habitually holy persons not in new Converts or in lately lapsed people for concerning them we find the Spirit of God speaking with clauses of restraint and ambiguity a perhaps and who knoweth and peradventure the thoughts of thy heart may be forgiven thee God may have mercy on ãâã And that God hath done so they only have reason to be confident whom God hath blessed with a lasting continuing Piety and who have wrought out the habits of their precontracted vices 6. But we find in Scripture many precepts given to holy persons being in the state of Grace to secure their standing and perpetuate their present condition For He that endureth unto the end he only shall be saved said our Blessed Saviour and He that standeth let him take heed lest he fall and Thou standest by Faith be not high-minded but fear and Work out your Salvation with fear and trembling Hold fast that ãâã hast and let no man take the crown from thee And it was excellent advice for one Church had lost their first love and was likely also to lose their crown And S. Paul himself who had once entred within the veil and seen unutterable glories yet was forced to endure hardship and to fight against his own disobedient appetite and to do violence to his inclinations for fear that whilest he preached to others himself should become a cast-away And since we observe in holy story that Adam and Eve fell in Paradise and the Angels fell in Heaven it self stumbling at the very jewels which pave the streets of the celestial Jerusalem and in Christ's family one man for whom his Lord had prepared a throne turned Devil and that in the number of the Deacons it is said that one turned Apostate who yet had been a man full of the Holy Ghost it will lessen our train and discompose the gayeties of our present confidence to think that our securities cannot be really distinguished from danger and uncertainties For every man walks upon two legs one is firm invariable constant and eternal but the other is his own God's Promises are the objects of our Faith but the events and final conditions of our Souls which is consequent to our duty can at the best be but the objects of our Hope And either there must in this be a less certainty or
or dearest invitations to Vice and deny our selves lawful things than that lawful things should betray us to unlawful actions And this rule is the measure of Charity our neighbour's Soul ought to be dearer unto us than any temporal priviledge It is lawful for me to eat herbs or fish and to observe an ascetick diet But if by such austerities I lead others to a good opinion of Montanism or the practices of Pythagoras or to believe flesh to be impure I must rather alter my diet than teach him to sin by mistaking me S. Paul gave an instance of eating flesh sold in the shambles from the Idol Temples to eat it in the relation of an Idol-sacrifice is a great sin but when it is sold in the shambles the property is altered to them that understand it so But yet even this Paul would not do if by so doing he should encourage undiscerning people to eat all meat conveyed from the Temple and offered to Devils It is not in every man's head to distinguish formalities and to make abstractions of purpose from exteriour acts and to alter their devotions by new relations and respects depending upon intellectual and Metaphysical notions And therefore it is not safe to do an action which is not lawful but after the making distinctions before ignorant and weaker persons who swallow down the bole and the box that carries it and never ãâã their apple or take the core out If I by the law of Charity must rather quit my own goods than suffer my brother to perish much rather must I quit my priviledge and those superstructures of favour and grace which Christ hath given me beyond my necessities than wound the spirit and destroy the Soul of a weak man for whom Christ died It is an inordinate affection to love my own case and circumstances of pleasure before the soul of a Brother and such a thing are the priviledges of Christian liberty for Christ hath taken off from us the restraints which God had laid upon the Jews in meat and Holy-days but these are but circumstances of grace given us for opportunities and cheap instances of Charity we should ill die for our brother who will not lose a meal to prevent his sin or change a dish to save his Soul And if the thing be indifferent to us yet it ought not to be indifferent to us whether our brother live or die 8. Fourthly And yet we must not to please peevish or froward people betray our liberty which Christ hath given us If any man opposes the lawfulness and licence of indifferent actions or be disturbed at my using my priviledges innocently in the first case I am bound to use them still in the second I am not bound to quit them to please him For in the first instance he that shall cease to use his liberty to please him that says his liberty is unlawful encourages him that says so in his false opinion and by complying with him gives the Scandal and he who is angry with me for making use of it is a person that it may be is crept in to spy out and invade my liberty but not apt to be reduced into sin by that act of mine which he detests for which he despises me and so makes my person unapt to be exemplar to him To be angry with me for doing what Christ hath allowed me and which is part of the liberty he purchased for me when he took upon himself the form of a servant is to judge me and to be uncharitable to me and he that does so is beforehand with me and upon the active part he does the Scandal to me and by offering to deprive me of my liberty he makes my way to Heaven narrower and more encumbred than Christ left it and so places a stumbling-stone in my way I put none in his And if such peevishness and discontent of a Brother engages me to a new and unimposed yoke then it were in the power of my enemy or any malevolent person to make me never to keep Festival or never to observe any private Fast never to be prostrate at my Prayers nor to do any thing but according to his leave and his humour shall become the rule of my actions and then my Charity to him shall be the greatest uncharitableness in the world to my self and his liberty shall be my bondage Add to this that such complying and obeying the peevishness of discontented persons is to no end of Charity for besides that such concessions never satisfie persons who are unreasonably angry because by the same reason they may demand more as they ask this for which they had no reason at all it also incourages them to be peevish and gives fewel to the passion and seeds the wolf and so encourages the sin and prevents none 9. Fifthly For he only gives Scandal who induces his Brother directly or collaterally into sin as appears by all the discourses in Scripture guiding us in this Duty and it is called laying a stumbling-block in our Brother's way a wounding the Conscience of our weak Brother Thus Balaam was said to lay a Scandal before the sons of Israel by tempting them to Fornication with the daughters of Moab Every evil example or imprudent sinful and unwary deportment is a Scandal because it invites others to do the like leading them by the hand taking off the strangeness and insolency of the act which deters many men from entertaining it and it gives some offers of security to others that they shall escape as we have done besides that it is in the nature of all agents natural and moral to assimilate either by proper efficiency or by counsel and moral invitements others to themselves But this is a direct Scandal and such it is to give money to an idle person who you know will be drunk with it or to invite an intemperate person to an opportunity of excess who desires it always but without thee wants it Indirectly and accidentally but very criminally they give Scandal who introduce persons into a state of life from whence probably they pass into a state of sin so did the ãâã who married their daughters to the idolatrous Moabites and so do they who intrust a Pupil to a vicious Guardian For although God can preserve children in the midst of flames without scorching yet if they sindge their hair or scorch their flesh they that put them in are guilty of the burning And yet farther if persons so exposed to danger should escape by miracle yet they escape not who expose them to the danger They who threw the Children of the Captivity into the furnace were burnt to death though the Children were not hurt and the very offering a person in our trust to a certain or probable danger foreseen and understood is a likely way to pass sin upon the person so exposed but a certain way to contract it in our selves it is directly against Charity for no man
Breach of publick faith desending Pirates and the like When a publick Judgment comes upon a Nation these things are to be thought upon that we may not think our selves acquitted by crying out against Swearing and Drunkenness and Cheating in manufactures which unless they be of universal dissemination and made national by diffusion are paid for upon a personal score and the private infelicities of our lives will either expiate or punish them severely But while the People mourns for those sins of which their low condition is capable sins that may produce a popular Fever or perhaps the Plague where the misery dwells in Cottages and the Princes often have indemnity as it was in the case of David yet we may not hope to appease a War to master a Rebellion to cure the publick Distemperatures of a Kingdom which threaten not the People only or the Governours also but even the Government it self unless the sins of a more publick capacity be cut off by publick declarations or other acts of national Justice and Religion But the duty which concerns us all in such cases is that every man in every capacity should enquire into himself and for his own portion of the Calamity put in his own symbol of Emendation for his particular and his Prayers for the publick interest in which it is not safe that any private persons should descend to particular censures of the crimes of Princes and States no not towards God unless the matter be notorious and past a question but it is a sufficient assoilment of this part of his duty if when he hath set his own house in order he would pray with indefinite significations of his charity and care of the publick that God would put it into the hearts of all whom it concerns to endeavour the removal of the sin that hath brought the exterminating Angel upon the Nation But yet there are sometimes great lines drawn by God in the expresses of his anger in some Judgments upon a Nation and when the Judgment is of that danger as to invade the very Constitution of a Kingdom the proportions that Judgments many times keep to their sins intimate that there is some National sin in which either by diffusion or representation or in the direct matter of sins as false Oaths unjust Wars wicked Confederacies or ungodly Laws the Nation in the publick capacity is delinquent 12. For as the Nation hath in Sins a capacity distinct from the sins of all the People inasmuch as the Nation is united in one Head guarded by a distinct and a higher Angel as Persia by Saint Michael transacts affairs in a publick right transmits insluence to all particulars from a common fountain and hath entercourse with other collective Bodies who also distinguish from their own particulars so likewise it hath Punishments distinct from those infelicities which vex particulars Punishments proportionable to it self and to its own Sins such as are Change of Governments of better into worse of Monarchy into Aristocracy and so to the lowest ebb of Democracy Death of Princes Infant Kings Forein Invasions Civil Wars a disputable Title to the Crown making a Nation tributary Conquest by a Foreiner and which is worst of all removing the Candlestick from a People by extinction of the Church or that which is necessary to its conservation the several Orders and Ministeries of Religion and the last hath also proper sins of its own analogy such as are false Articles in the publick Confessions of a Church Schism from the Catholick publick Scandals a general Viciousness of the Clergy an Indifferency in Religion without warmth and holy fires of Zeal and diligent pursuance of all its just and holy interests Now in these and all parallel cases when God by Punishments hath probably marked and distinguished the Crime it concerns publick persons to be the more forward and importunate in consideration of publick Irregularities and for the private also not to neglect their own particulars for by that means although not certainly yet probably they may secure themselves from falling in the publick calamity It is not infallibly sure that holy persons shall not be smitten by the destroying Angel for God in such deaths hath many ends of mercy and some of Providence to serve but such private and personal emendations and Devotions are the greatest securities of the men against the Judgment or the evil of it preserving them in this life or wasting them over to a better Thus many of the Lord's champions did fall in battel and the armies of the ãâã did twice prevail upon the juster People of all Israel and the Greek Empire hath declined and shrunk under the fortune and power of the Ottoman Family and the Holy Land which was twice possessed by Christian Princes is now in the dominion of unchristened Saracens and in the production of these alterations many a gallant and pious person suffered the evils of war and the change of an untimely death 13. But the way for the whole Nation to proceed in cases of epidemical Diseases Wars great Judgments and popular Calamities is to do in the publick proportion the same that every man is to do for his private by publick acts of Justice Repentance Fastings pious Laws and execution of just and religious Edicts making peace quitting of unjust interests declaring publickly against a Crime protesting in behalf of the contrary Vertue or Religion and to this also every man as he is a member of the body politick must co-operate that by a Repentance in diffusion help may come as well as by a Sin of universal dissemination the Plague was hastened and invited the rather But in these cases all the work of discerning and pronouncing concerning the cause of the Judgment as it must be without asperity and only for designs of correction and emendation so it must be done by Kings and Prophets and the assistence of other publick persons to whom the publick is committed Josua cast lots upon Achan and discovered the publick trouble in a private instance and of old the Prophets had it in commission to reprove the popular iniquity of Nations and the consederate sins of Kingdomes and in this Christianity altered nothing And when this is done modestly prudently humbly and penitently oftentimes the tables turn immediately but always in due time and a great Alteration in a Kingdome becomes the greatest Blessing in the world and fastens the Church or the Crown or the publick Peace in bands of great continuance and security and it may be the next Age shall feel the benefits of our Sufferance and Repentance And therefore as we must endeavour to secure it so we must not be too decretory in the case of others or disconsolate or diffident in our own when it may so happen that all succeeding generations shall see that God pardoned us and loved us even when he smote us Let us all learn to fear and walk humbly The Churches of Laodicea and the Colossians suffered
he did and the expresses of his power saying He saved others himself he cannot save others saying Let him come down from the Cross if he be the King of the Jews and we will believe in him and others according as their Malice was determined by phancy and occasion added weight and scorn to his pains and of the two Malefactors that were crucified with him one reviled him saying If thou be the CHRIST save thy self and us And thus far the Devil prevailed undoing himself in riddle provoking men to do despite to Christ and to heighten his Passion out of hatred to him and yet doing and promoting that which was the ruine of all his own Kingdom and potent mischiefs like the Jew who in indignation against Mercury threw stones at his Image and yet was by his Superiour judged idolatrous that being the manner of doing honour to the Idol among the Gentiles But then Christ who had upon the Cross prayed for his enemies and was heard of God in all that he desired felt now the beginnings of success For the other Thief whom the present pains and circumstances of Jesus's Passion had softned and made believing reproved his fellow for not fearing God confessed that this death happened to them deservedly but to Jesus causelesly and then prayed to Jesus Lord remember me when thou comest into thy Kingdom Which combination of pious acts and miraculous Conversion Jesus entertained with a speedy promise of a very great felicity promising that upon that very day he should be with him in Paradise 33. Now there were standing by the Cross the Mother of Jesus and her Sister and Mary Magdalen and John And Jesus being upon his Death-bed although he had no temporal estate to bestow yet he would make provision for his Mother who being a Widow and now childless was likely to be exposed to necessity and want and therefore he did arrogate John the beloved Disciple into Marie's kindred making him to be her adopted Son and her to be his Mother by fiction of Law Woman behold thy son and Man behold thy Mother And from that time forward John took her home to his own house which he had near mount Sion after he had sold his inheritance in Galilee to the High Priest 34. While these things were doing the whole frame of Nature seemed to be dissolved and out of order while their LORD and Creator suffered For the Sun was so darkened that the Stars appeared and the Eclipse was prodigious in the manner as well as in degree because the Moon was not then in Conjunction but full and it was noted by Phlegon the freed man of the Emperor Hadrian by Lucian out of the Acts of the Gauls and Dionysius while he was yet a Heathen excellent Scholars all great Historians and Philosophers who also noted the day of the week and hour of the day agreeing with the circumstances of the Cross. For the Sun hid his head from beholding such a prodigy of sin and sadness and provided a veil for the nakedness of Jesus that the women might be present and himself die with modesty 35. The Eclipse and the Passion began at the sixth hour and endured till the ninth about which time Jesus being tormented with the unsufferable load of his Father's wrath due for our sins and wearied with pains and heaviness cried out My God my God why hast thou forsaken me and as it is thought repeated the whole two and twentieth Psalm which is an admirable Narrative of the Passion full of Prayer and sadness and description of his pains at first and of Eucharist and joy and prophecy at the last But these first words which it is certain and recorded that he spake were in a language of it self or else by reason of distance not understood for they thought he had called for Elias to take him down from the Cross. Then Jesus being in the agonies of a high Fever said I thirst And one ran and filled a spunge with vinegar wrapping it with hyssop and put it on a reed that he might drink The Vinegar and the Spunge were in Executions of condemned persons set to stop the too violent issues of bloud and to prolong the death but were exhibited to him in scorn mingled with gall to make the mixture more horrid and ungentle But Jesus tasted it only and refused the draught And now knowing that the Prophecies were fulfilled his Father's wrath appeased and his torments satisfactory he said It is finished and crying with a loud voice Father into thy hands I commend my spirit he bowed his head and yielded up his spirit into the hands of God and died hastning to his Father's glories Thus did this glorious Sun set in a sad and clouded West running speedily to shine in the other world 36. Then was the veil of the Temple which separated the secret Mosaick Rites from the eyes of the people rent in the midst from the top to the bottom and the Angels Presidents of the Temple called to each other to depart from their seats and so great an Earthquake happened that the rocks did rend the mountains trembled the graves opened and the bodies of dead persons arose walking from their coemeteries to the Holy City and appeared unto many and so great apprehensions and amazements happened to them all that stood by that they departed smiting their breasts with sorrow and fear and the Centurion that ministred at the execution said Certainly this was the Son of God and he became a Disciple renouncing his military imployment and died a Martyr 37. But because the next day was the Jews Sabbath and a Paschal Festival besides the Jews hastened that the bodies should be taken from the Cross and therefore sent to ãâã to hasten their death by breaking their legs that before Sun-set they might be taken away according to the Commandment and be buried The souldiers therefore came and brake the legs of the two Thieves but espying and wondring that Jesus was already dead they brake not his legs for the Scripture foretold that a bone of him should not be broken but a souldier with his lance pierced his side and immediately there streamed out two rivulets of Water and Bloud But the Holy Virgin-Mother whose Soul during this whole passion was pierced with a sword and sharper sorrows though she was supported by the comforts of Faith and those holy Predictions of his Resurrection and future glories which Mary had laid up in store against this great day of expence now that she saw her Holy Son had suffered all that our necessities and their malice could require or inflict caused certain ministers with whom she joyned to take her dead Son from the Cross whose Body when she once got free from the nails she kissed and embraced with entertainments of the nearest vicinity that could be expressed by a person that was holy and sad and a Mother weeping for her dead Son 38. But she was highly
and pleasure 2. Love desires to do all good to its beloved object and that is the greatest love which gives us the greatest blessings And the Sacrament therefore is the argument of his greatest love for in it we receive the honey and the honey-comb the Paschal Lamb with his bitter herbs Christ with all his griefs and his Passion with all the salutary effects of it 3. Love desires to be remembred and to have his object in perpetual representment And this Sacrament Christ designed to that purpose that he who is not present to our eyes might always be present to our spirits 4. Love demands love again and to desire to be beloved is of it self a great argument of love And as God cannot give us a greater blessing than his Love which is himself with an excellency of relation to us superadded so what greater demonstration of it can he make to us than to desire us to love him with as much earnestness and vehemency of desire as if we were that to him which he is essentially to us the author of our being and our blessing 5. And yet to consummate this Love and represent it to be the greatest and most excellent the Holy Jesus hath in this Sacrament designed that we should be united in our spirits with him incorporated to his body partake of his Divine nature and communicate in all his Graces and Love hath no expression beyond this that it desires to be united unto its object So that what Moses said to the men of Israel What nation is so great who hath God so nigh unto them as the Lord our God is in all things for which we call upon him we can enlarge in the meditation of this Holy Sacrament for now the Lord our God calls upon us not only to be nigh unto him but to be all one with him not only as he was in the Incarnation flesh of our flesh and bone of our bone but also to communicate in spirit in grace in nature in Divinity it self 7. Upon the strength of the premisses we may sooner take an estimate of the Graces which are conveyed to us in the reception and celebration of this Holy Sacrament and Sacrifice For as it is a Commemoration and representment of Christ's Death so it is a commemorative Sacrifice as we receive the symbols and the mystery so it is a Sacrament In both capacities the benefit is next to infinite First For whatsoever Christ did at the Institution the same he commanded the Church to do in remembrance and repeated rites and himself also does the same thing in Heaven for us making perpetual Intercession for his Church the body of his redeemed ones by representing to his Father his death and sacrifice there he sits a high Priest continually and offers still the same one perfect sacrifice that is still represents it as having been once finished and consummate in order to perpetual and never-failing events And this also his Ministers do on earth they offer up the same Sacrifice to God the sacrifice of the Cross by prayers and a commemorating rite and representment according to his holy Institution And as all the effects of Grace and the titles of glory were purchased for us on the Cross and the actual mysteries of Redemption perfected on earth but are applied to us and made effectual to single persons and communities of men by Christ's Intercession in Heaven so also they are promoted by acts of Duty and Religion here on earth that we may be workers together with God as S. Paul expresses it and in virtue of the eternal and all-sufficient Sacrifice may offer up our prayers and our duty and by representing that sacrifice may send up together with our prayers an instrument of their graciousness and acceptation The Funerals of a deceased friend are not only performed at his first interring but in the monthly minds and anniversary commemorations and our grief returns upon the fight of a picture or upon any instance which our dead friend desired us to preserve as his memorial we celebrate and exhibite the Lora's death in sacrament and symbol and this is that great express which when the Church offers to God the Father it obtains all those blessings which that sacrifice purchased Themistocles snatch'd up the son of King Admetus and held him between himself and death to mitigate the rage of the King and prevailed accordingly Our very holding up the Son of God and representing him to his Father is the doing an act of mediation ãâã advantage to our selves in the virtue and efficacy of the Mediatour As Christ is a Priest in Heaven for ever and yet does not sacrifice himself afresh nor yet without a sacrifice could he be a Priest but by a daily ministration and intercession represents his sacrifice to God and offers himself as sacrificed so he does upon earth by the ministery of his servants he is offered to God that is he is by Prayers and the Sacrament represented or offered up to God as sacrificed which in effect is a celebration of his death and the applying it to the present and future necessities of the Church as we are capable by a ministery like to his in Heaven It follows then that the celebration of this Sacrifice be in its proportion an instrument of applying the proper Sacrifice to all the purposes which it first designed It is ministerially and by application an instrument propitiatory it is Eucharistical it is an homage and an act of adoration and it is impetratory and obtains for us and for the whole Church all the benefits of the sacrifice which is now celebrated and applied that is As this Rite is the remembrance and ministerial celebration of Christ's sacrifice so it is destined to do honour to God to express the homage and duty of his servants to acknowledge his supreme dominion to give him thanks and worship to beg pardon blessings and supply of all our needs And its profit is enlarged not only to the persons celebrating but to all to whom they design it according to the nature of Sacrifices and Prayers and all such solemn actions of Religion 8. Secondly If we consider this not as the act and ministery of Ecclesiastical persons but as the duty of the whole Church communicating that is as it is a ãâã so it is like the Springs of Eden from whence issue many Rivers or the Trees of celestial Jerusalem bearing various kinds of Fruit. For whatsoever was offered in the Sacrifice is given in the Sacrament and whatsoever the Testament bequeaths the holy Mysteries dispense 1. He that ãâã my ãâã and drinketh my bloud abideth in me and ãâã in him Christ in his Temple and his resting-place and the worthy Communicant is in Sanctuary and a place of protection and every holy Soul having feasted at his Table may say as S. Paul ãâã live yet not I but Christ liveth in me So that to live is Christ Christ is
our life and he dwells in the body and the spirit of every one that eats Christ's flesh and drinks his bloud Happy is that man that sits at the Table of Angels that puts his hand into the dish with the King of all the Creatures and feeds upon the eternal Son of God joyning things below with things above Heaven with Earth Life with Death that mortality might be swallowed up of life and Sin be destroyed by the inhabitation of its greatest Conqueror And now I need not enumerate any particulars since the Spirit of God hath ascertained us that Christ enters into our hearts and takes possession and abides there that we are made Temples and celestial mansions that we are all one with our Judge and with our Redeemer that our Creator is bound unto his Creature with bonds of charity which nothing can dissolve unless our own hands break them that Man is united with God and our weakness is fortified by his strength and our miseries wrapped up in the golden leaves of glory 2. Hence it follows that the Sacrament is an instrument of reconciling us to God and taking off the remanent guilt and stain and obligations of our sins This is the ãâã that was shed for you for the remission of sins For there is no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus And such are all they who worthily eat the flesh of Christ by receiving him they more and more receive remission of sins redemption sanctification wisdom and certain hopes of glory ãâã as the Soul touching and united to the flesh of Adam contracts the stain of original misery and imperfection so much the ãâã shall the Soul united to the flesh of Christ receive pardon and purity and all those blessed emanations from our union with the Second Adam But this is not to be understood as if the first beginnings of our pardon were in the holy Communion for then a man might come with his impurities along with him and lay them on the holy Table to stain and pollute so bright a presence No first Repentance must ãâã the ways of the Lord and in this holy Rite those words of our Lord are verified He that is justified let him be justified ãâã that is here he may receive the increase of Grace and as it grows so sin dies and we are reconciled by nearer unions and approximations to God 9. Thirdly The holy Sacrament is the pledge of Glory and the earnest of Immortality for when we have received him who hath overcome Death and henceforth dies no more he becomes to us like the Tree of life in Paradise and the consecrated Symbols are like the seeds of an eternal duration springing up in us to eternal life nourishing our spirits with Grace which is but the prologue and the infancy of Glory and differs from it only as a Child from a Man But God first raised up his Son to life and by giving him to us hath also consigned us to the same state for our life is hid with Christ in God When we lay down and cast aside the impurer robes of flesh they are then but preparing for glory and if by the only touch of Christ bodies were redintegrate and restored to natural perfections how shall not we live for ever who eat his flesh and drink his bloud It is the discourse of S. Cyril Whatsoever the Spirit can convey to the body of the Church we may expect ãâã this Sacrament for as the Spirit is the instrument of life and action so the bloud of Christ is the conveyance of his Spirit And let all the mysterious places of holy Scripture concerning the effects of Christ communicated in the blessed Sacrament be drawn together in one Scheme we cannot but observe that although they are so expressed as ãâã their meaning may seem intricate and involved yet they cannot be drawn to any meaning at all but it is as glorious in its sense as it is mysterious in the expression and the more intricate they are the greater is their purpose no words being apt and proportionate to signifie this spiritual secret and excellent effects of the Spirit A veil is drawn before all these testimonies because the people were not able to behold the glory which they cover with their curtain and Christ dwelling in us and giving us his flesh to ãâã and his bloud to drink and the hiding of our life with God and the communication of the body of Christ and Christ being our life are such secret glories that as the fruition of them is the portion of the other world so also is the full perception and understanding of them for therefore God appears to us in a cloud and his glories in a veil that we understanding more of it by its concealment than we can by its open face which is too bright ãâã our weak eyes may with more piety also entertain the greatness by these indefinite and mysterious significations than we can by plain and direct intuitions which like the Sun in a direct ray enlightens the object but confounds the organ 10. I should but in other words describe the same glories if I should add That this holy Sacrament does enlighten the spirit of Man and clarifie it with spiritual discernings and as he was to the two Disciples at ãâã so also to other faithful people Christ is known in the breaking of bread That it is a great defence against the hostilities of our ghostly enemies this Holy Bread being like the Cake in ãâã 's Camp overturning the tents of ãâã That it is the relief of our sorrows the antidote and preservative of Souls the viand of our journey the guard and passe-port of our death the wine of Angels That it is more healthful than Rhubarb more pleasant than Cassia That the Betele and ãâã of the ãâã the Moly or Nepenthe of Pliny the Lirinon of the ãâã the Balsam of ãâã the Manna of Israel the Honey of Jonathan are but weak expressions to tell us that this is excellent above Art and Nature and that nothing is good enough in Philosophy to become its ãâã All these must needs fall very short of those plain words of Christ This is my Body The other may become the ecstasies of Piety the transportation of joy and wonder and are like the discourse of S. ãâã upon mount Tabor he was resolved to say some great thing but he knew not what but when we remember that the Body of our Lord and his Bloud is communicated to us in the Bread and the Chalice of blessing we must sit down and rest our selves for this is the mountain of the Lord and we can go no farther 11. In the next place it will ãâã our enquiry to consider how we are to prepare our selves For at the gate of life a man may meet with death and although this holy Sacrament be like Manna in which the obedient find the relishes of Obedience the chaste of
Purity the meek persons of Content and Humility yet vicious and corrupted palats find also the gust of death and Coloquintida The Sybarites invited their women to their solemn sacrifices a full year before the solemnity that they might by previous dispositions and a long foresight ãâã with gravity and fairer order the celebration of the rites And it was a reasonable answer of Pericles to one that ask'd him why he being a Philosophical and severe person came to a wedding trimmed and adorned like a Paranymph I come adorned to an adorned person trimmed to a Bridegroom And we also if we come to the marriage of the Son with the Soul which marriage is celebrated in this sacred Mystery and have not on a wedding garment shall be cast into outer darkness the portion of undressed and unprepared souls 12. For from this Sacrament are excluded all unbaptized persons and such who lie in a known sin of which they have not purged themselves by the apt and proper instruments of Repentance For if the Paschal Lamb was not to be eaten but by persons pure and clean according to the sanctifications of the Law the Son of God can less endure the impurities of the Spirit than God could ãâã the uncleannesses of the Law S. Paul hath given us instruction in this First let a man examine himself and so let him eat For he that eats and drinks unworthily eats and drinks damnation to himself not discerning the Lord's body That is although in the Church of Corinth by reason of the present Schism the publick Discipline of the Church was neglected and every man permitted to himself yet even then no man was disobliged from his duty of private Repentance and holy preparations to the perception of so great a mystery that the Lord's body may be discerned from common nutriment Now nothing can so unhallow and desecrate the rite as the remanent affection to a sin or a crime unrepented of And Self-examination is prescribed not for it self but in order to abolition of sin and death for it self is a relative term and an imperfect duty whose very nature is in order to something beyond it And this was in the Primitive Church understood to so much severity that if a man had relapsed after one publick Repentance into a ãâã crime he was never again readmitted to the holy Communion and the Fathers of the Council of ãâã call it a mocking and jesting at the Communion of our Lord to give it once again after a Repentance and a relapse and a second or third postulation And indeed we use to make a sport of the greatest instruments of Religion when we come to them after an habitual vice whose face we have it may be wetted with a tear and breathed upon it with a sigh and abstained from the worst of crimes for two or three days and come to the Sacrament to be purged and to take our rise by going a little back from our sin that afterwards we may leap into it with more violence and enter into its utmost angle This is dishonouring the body of our Lord and deceiving our selves Christ and Belial cannot cohabit unless we have left all our sins and have no fondness of affection towards them unless we hate them which then we shall best know when we leave them and with complacency entertain their contraries then Christ hath washed our feet and then he invites us to his holy Supper Hands dipt in bloud or polluted with unlawful gains or stained with the spots of flesh are most unfit to handle the holy body of our Lord and minister nourishment to the Soul Christ loves not to enter into the mouth full of cursings oathes blasphemies revilings or evil speakings and a heart full of vain and vicious thoughts stinks like the lake of Sodom he finds no rest there and when he enters he is vexed with the unclean conversation of the impure inhabitants and flies from thence with the wings of a Dove that he may retire to pure and whiter habitations S. Justin Martyr reckoning the predispositions required of every faithful soul for the entertainment of his Lord says that it is not lawful for any to eat the Eucharist but to him that is washed in the laver of regeneration sor the remission of sins that believes Christ's Doctrine to be true and that lives according to the Discipline of the Holy Jesus And therefore S. Ambrose refused to minister the holy Communion to the Emperor Theodostus till by publick Repentance he had reconciled himself to God and the society of faithsul people after the furious and cholerick rage and slaughter committed at Thessalonica And as this act was like to cancellating and a circumvallation of the holy mysteries and in that sence and so far was a proper duty sor a Prelate to whose dispensation the rites are committed so it was an act of duty to the Emperor of paternal and tender care not of proper authority or jurisdiction which he could not have over his Prince but yet had a care and the supravision of a Teacher over him whose Soul S. Ambrose had betrayed unless he had represented his indisposition to communicate in expressions of Magisterial or Doctoral authority and truth For this holy Sacrament is a nourishment of spiritual life and therefore cannot with effect be ministred to them who are in the state of spiritual death it is giving a Cordial to a dead man and although the outward rite be ministred yet the Grace of the Sacrament is not communicated and therefore it were well that they also abstained from the rite it self For a fly can boast of as much priviledge as a wicked person can receive from this holy Feast and oftentimes pays his life sor his access to sorbidden delicacies as certainly as they 13. It is more generally thought by the Doctors of the Church that our Blessed Lord administred the Sacrament to Judas although he knew he sold him to the Jews Some others deny it and suppose Judas departed presently after the sop given him before he communicated However it was Christ who was Lord of the Sacraments might dispense it as he pleased but we must minister and receive it according to the rules he hath since described but it becomes a precedent to the Church in all succeeding Ages although it might also have in it something extraordinary and apter to the first institution for because the fact of Judas was secret not yet made notorious Christ chose rather to admit him into the rites of external Communion than to separate him with an open shame for a fault not yet made open For our Blessed Lord did not reveal the man and his crime till the very time of ministration if Judas did communicate But if Judas did not communicate and that our Blessed Lord gave him the sop at the Paschal Supper ãâã at the interval between it and the institution of his own it is certain that
little irregularities and so many great imperfections that it will appear the more necessary to repair the breaches and lesser ruines by such acts of Piety and Religion because every Communication is intended to be a nearer approach to God a ãâã step in Grace a progress towards glory and an instrument of perfection and therefore upon the stock of our spiritual interests for the purchase of a greater hope and the advantages of a growing Charity ought to be frequently received I end with the words of a pious and learned person It is a vain fear and an imprudent ãâã that procrastinates and desers going to the Lord that calls them they deny to go to the fire pretending they are cold and refuse Physick because they need it The PRAYER O Blessed and Eternal Jesus who gavest thy self a Sacrifice for our sins thy Body for our spiritual food thy ãâã to nourish our spirits and to quench the flames of Hell and Lust who didst so love us who were thine enemies that thou desiredst to reconcile us to thee and becamest all one with us that we may live the same life think the same thoughts love the same love and be partakers of thy Resurrection and Immortality open every window of my Soul that I may be full of light and may see the excellency of thy Love the merits of thy Sacrifice the bitterness of thy Passion the glories and virtues of the mysterious Sacrament Lord let me ever hunger and thirst after this instrument of Righteousness let me have no gust or relish of the unsatisfying delights of things below but let my Soul dwell in thee let me for ever receive thee spiritually and very frequently communicate with thee sacramentally and imitate thy Vertues pionsly and strictly and dwell in the pleasures of thy house eternally Lord thou hast prepared a table for me against them that trouble me let that holy Sacrament of the Eucharist be to me a defence and shield a nourishment and medicine life and health a means of sanctification and spiritual growth that I receiving the body of my dearest Lord may be one with his mystical body and of the same spirit united with indissoluble bonds of a strong Faith and a holy Hope and a never-failing Charity that from this veil I may pass into the visions of eternal clarity from eating thy Body to beholding thy face in the glories of thy everlasting Kingdom O Blessed and Eternal Jesus Amen Considerations upon the Accidents happening on the Vespers of the Passion The Prayer in the Garden Luk 22. 41. And he was withdrawn from them about a stones cast kneeled down prayed 42 Saying Father if thou be willing remove this Cup from me nevertheless not my will but thine be done 43 And there appeared an Angel from heaven strengthening him Iudas betrayeth Christ Mat 26. 47. And while he yet spake Lo. Iudas one of the twelue came and with him a great multitude with swords and staves from the chief Preists Elders of the people 48. Now he that be trayed him gave them a sign saying whomsoever I shall kiss that same is he hold him fast 49. And forthwith he came to Iesus and said Haile Master and kissed him 1. WHen Jesus had supped and sang a Hymn and prayed and exhorted and comforted his Disciples with a Farewell-Sermon in which he repeated ãâã of his former Precepts which were now apposite to the present condition and re-inforced them with proper and pertinent arguments he went over the brook Cedron and entred into a Garden and into the prologue of his Passion chusing that place for his Agony and satisfactory pains in which the first scene of humane misery was represented and where he might best attend the offices of Devotion preparatory to his Death Besides this he therefore departed from the house that he might give opportunity to his Enemies surprise and yet not incommodate the good man by whose hospitality they had eaten the Paschal Lamb so that he went like a Lamb to the slaughter to the Garden as to a prison as if by an agreement with his persecutors he had expected their arrest and stayed there to prevent their farther enquiry For so great was his desire to pay our Ransom that himself did assist by a forward patience and active opportunity towards the persecution teaching us that by an active zeal and a ready spirit we assist the designs of God's glory though in our own sufferings and secular infelicities 2. When he entred the Garden he left his Disciples at the entrance of it calling with him only Peter James and John he withdrew himself from the rest about a stone 's cast and began to be exceeding heavy He was not sad till he had called them for his sorrow began when he pleased which sorrow he also chose to represent to those three who had seen his Transfiguration the earnest of his future Glory that they might see of how great glory for our sakes he disrobed himself and that they also might by the confronting those contradictory accidents observe that God uses to dispense his comforts the irradiations and emissions of his glory to be preparatives to those sorrows with which our life must be allayed and seasoned that none should refuse to partake of the sufferings of Christ if either they have already felt his comforts or hope hereafter to wear his crown And it is not ill observed that S. Peter being the chief of the Apostles and Doctor of the Circumcision S. John being a Virgin and S. James the first of the Apostles that was martyred were admitted to Christ's greatest retirements and mysterious secrecies as being persons of so singular and eminent dispositions to whom according to the pious opinion of the Church especially Coronets are prepared in Heaven besides the great Crown of rightcousness which in common shall beautifie the heads of all the Saints meaning this that Doctors Virgins and Martyrs shall receive even for their very state of life and accidental Graces more eminent degrees of accidental Glory like as the Sun reflecting upon a limpid fountain receives its rays doubled without any increment of its proper and natural light 3. Jesus began to be exceeding sorrowful to be sore amazed and sad even to death And because he was now to suffer the pains of our sins there began his Passion whence our sins spring From an evil heart and a prevaricating spirit all our sins arise and in the spirit of Christ began his sorrow where he truly felt the full value and demerit of Sin which we think not worthy of a tear or a hearty sigh but he groaned and fell under the burthen But therefore he took upon him this sadness that our imperfect sorrow and contrition might be heightned in his example and accepted in its union and consederacy with his And Jesus still designed a farther mercy for us for he sanctified the passion of Fear and hallowed natural sadnesses that we might not
think the infelicities of our nature and the calamities of our temporal condition to become criminal so long as they make us not omit a duty or dispose us to the election of a crime or force us to swallow a temptation nor yet to exceed the value of their impulsive cause He that grieves for the loss of friends and yet had rather lose all the friends he hath than lose the love of God hath the sorrow of our Lord for his precedent And he that fears death and trembles at its approximation and yet had rather die again than sin once hath not sinned in his fear Christ hath hallowed it and the necessitous condition of his nature is his excuse But it were highly to be wished that in the midst of our caresses and levities of society in our festivities and triumphal merriments when we laugh at folly and rejoyce in sin we would remember that for those very merriments our Blessed Lord felt a bitter sorrow and not one vain and sinful laughter but cost the Holy Jesus a sharp pang and throe of Passion 4. Now that the Holy Jesus began to taste the bitter Cup he betook him to his great Antidote which himself the great Physician of our Souls prescribed to all the world to cure their calamities and to make them pass from miseries into vertue that so they may arrive at glory he prays to his heavenly Father he kneels down and not only so but falls flat upon the earth and would in humility and fervent adoration have descended low as the centre he prays with an intension great as his sorrow and yet with a dereliction so great and a conformity to the Divine will so ready as if it had been the most indifferent thing in the world for him to be delivered to death or from it for though his nature did decline death as that which hath a natural horrour and contradiction to the present interest of its preservation yet when he looked upon it as his heavenly Father had put it into the order of Redemption of the World it was that Baptism which he was straitned till he had accomplished And now there is not in the world any condition of prayer which is essential to the duty or any circumstances of advantage to its performance but were concentred in this one instance Humility of spirit lowliness of deportment importunity of desire a fervent spirit a lawful matter resignation to the will of God great love the love of a Son to his Father which appellative was the form of his address perseverance he went thrice and prayed the same prayer It was not long and it was so retired as to have the advantages of a sufficient solitude and opportune recollection for he was withdrawn from the most of his Disciples and yet not so alone as to lose the benefit of communion for Peter and the two Boanerges were near him Christ in this prayer which was the most fervent that he ever made on earth intending to transmit to all the world a precedent of Devotion to be transcribed and imitated that we should cast all our cares and empty them in the bosom of God being content to receive such a portion of our trouble back again which he assigns us for our spiritual emolument 5. The Holy Jesus having in a few words poured out torrents of innocent desires was pleased still to interrupt his Prayer that he might visit his charge that little flock which was presently after to be scattered he was careful of them in the midst of his Agonies they in his sufferings were fast asleep He awakens them gives them command to watch and pray that is to be vigilant in the custody of their senses and obervant of all accidents and to pray that they may be strengthened against all incursions of enemies and temptations and then returns to prayer and so a third time his Devotion still encreasing with his sorrow And when his Prayer was full and his sorrow come to a great measure after the third God sent his Angel to comfort him and by that act of grace then only expressed hath taught us to continue our Devotions so long as our needs last It may be God will not send a Comsorter till the third time that is after a long expectation and a patient ãâã and a lasting hope in the interim God supports us with a secret hand and in his own time will refresh the spirit with the visitations of his Angels with the emissions of comfort from the Spirit the Comforter And know this also that the holy Angel and the Lord of all the Angels stands by every holy person when he prays and although he draws before his glories the curtain of a cloud yet in every instant he takes care we shall not perish and in a just season dissolves the cloud and makes it to distill in holy dew and drops sweet as Manna pleasant as Nard and wholsome as the breath of Heaven And such was the consolation which the Holy Jesus received by the ministery of the Angel representing to Christ the Lord of the Angels how necessary it was that he should die for the glory of God that in his Passion his Justice Wisdom Goodness Power and Mercy should shine that unless he died all the World should perish but his bloud should obtain their pardon and that it should open the gates of Heaven repair the ruine of Angels establish a holy Church be ãâã of innumerable adoptive children to his Father whom himself should make heirs of glory and that his Passion should soon pass away his Father hearing and granting his Prayer that the Cup should pass speedily though indeed it should pass through him that it should be attended and followed with a glorious Resurrection with eternal rest and glory of his Humanity with the exaltation of his Name with a supreme dominion over all the world and that his Father should make him King of Kings and Prince of the Catholick Church These or whatsoever other comforts the Angel ministred were such considerations which the Holy Jesus knew and the Angel knew not but by communication from that God to whose assumed Humanity the Angel spake yet he was pleased to receive comfort from his servant just as God receives glory from his creatures and as he rejoyces in his own works even because he is good and gracious and is pleased so to do and because himself had caused a voluntary sadness to be interposed between the habitual knowledge and the actual consideration of these discourses and we feel a pleasure when a friendly hand lays upon our wound the plaister which our selves have made and applies such instruments and considerations of comfort which we have in notion and an ineffective habit but cannot reduce them to act because no man is so apt to be his own comforter which God hath therefore permitted that our needs should be the occasion of a mutual Charity 6. It was a great season for
this instance there was a rare mixture of effects as there was in Christ of Natures the voice of a Man and the power of God For it is observed by the Doctors of the Primitive Ages that from the Nativity of our Lord to the day of his Death the Divinity and Humanity did so communicate in effects that no great action passed but it was like the Sun shining through a cloud or a beauty with a thin veil drawn over it they gave illustration and testimony to each other The Holy Jesus was born a tender and a crying Infant but is adored by the Magi as a King by the Angels as their GOD. He is circumcised as a Man but a name is given him to signifie him to be the SAVIOUR of the World He flies into Egypt like a distressed Child under the conduct of his helpless Parents but as soon as he enters the Country the Idols fall down and confess his true Divinity He is presented in the Temple as the Son of man but by Simeon and Anna he is celebrated with divine praises for the MESSIAS the SON OF GOD. He is baptized in Jordan as a Sinner but the Holy Ghost descending upon him proclaimed him to be the well-beloved of God He is hungry in the Desart as a Man but sustained his body without meat and drink for forty days together by the power of his Divinity There he is tempted of Satan as a weak Man and the Angels of light minister unto him as their supreme Lord. And now a little before his death when he was to take upon him all the affronts miseries and exinanitions of the most miserable he receives testimonies from above which are most wonderful For he was tranfigured upon Mount Tabor entred triumphantly into Jerusalem had the acclamations of the people when he was dying he darkned the Sun when he was dead he opened the sepulchres when he was fast nailed to the Cross he made the earth to tremble now when he suffers himself to be apprehended by a guard of Souldiers he strikes them all to the ground only by replying to their answer that the words of the Prophet might be verified Therefore my people shall know my Name therefore they shall know in that day that I am he that doth speak behold it is I. 10. The Souldiers and servants of the Jews having recovered from their fall and risen by the permission of Jesus still persisted in their enquiry after him who was present ready and desirous to be sacrificed He therefore permitted himself to be taken but not his Disciples for he it was that set them their bounds and he secured his Apostles to be witnesses of his suffering and his glories and this work was the Redemption of the world in which no man could have an active share he alone was to tread the wine-press and time enough they should be called to a fellowship of sufferings But Jesus went to them and they bound him with cords and so began our liberty and redemption from slavery and sin and cursings and death But he was bound faster by bands of his own his Father's Will and Mercy Pity of the world Prophecies and Mysteries and Love held him fast and these cords were as strong as death and the cords which the Souldiers malice put upon his holy hands were but symbols and figures his own compassion and affection were the morals But yet he undertook this short restraint and condition of a prisoner that all sorts of persecution and exteriour calamities might be hallowed by his susception and these pungent sorrows should like bees sting him and leave their sting behind that all the sweetness should remain for us Some melancholick Devotions have from uncertain stories added sad circumstances of the first violence done to our Lord That they bound him with three cords and that with so much violence that they caused bloud to start from his tender hands That they ãâã then also upon him with a violence and incivility like that which their Fathers had used towards Hur the brother of Aaron whom they choaked with impure spittings into his throat because he refused to consent to the making a golden Calf These particulars are not transmitted by certain Records Certain it is they wanted no malice and now no power for the Lord had given himself into their hands 11. S. Peter seeing his Master thus ill used asked Master shall we strike with the sword and before he had his answer cut off the ear of Malchus Two swords there were in Christ's family and S. Peter bore one either because he was to kill the Paschal Lamb or according to the custom of the Country to secure them against beasts of prey which in that region were frequent and dangerous in the night But now he used it in an unlawful war he had no competent authority it was against the Ministers of his lawful Prince and against our Prince we must not draw a sword for Christ himself himself having forbidden us as his kingdom is not of this world so neither were his defences secular he could have called for many legions of Angels for his guard if he had so pleased and we read that one Angel slew 185000 armed men in one night and therefore it was a vast power which was at the command of our Lord and he needs not such low auxiliaries as an army of Rebels or a navy of Pirates to ãâã his cause he first lays the foundation of our happiness in his sufferings and hath ever since supported Religion by patience and suffering and in poverty and all the circumstances and conjunctures of improbable causes Fighting for Religion is certain to destroy Charity but not certain to support Faith S. Peter therefore may use his keys but he is commanded to put up his sword and he did so and presently he and all his fellows fairly ran away and yet that course was much the more Christian for though it had in it much infirmity yet it had no malice In the mean time the Lord was pleased to touch the ear of Malchus and he cured it adding to the first instance of power in throwing them to the ground an act of miraculous mercy curing the wounds of an enemy made by a friend But neither did this pierce their callous and obdurate spirits but they led him in uncouth ways and through the brook Cedron in which it is said the ruder souldiers plunged him and passed upon him all the affronts and rudenesses which an insolent and cruel multitude could think of to signifie their contempt and their rage And such is the nature of evil men who when they are not softned by the instruments and arguments of Grace are much hardned by them such being the purpose of God that either Grace shall cure sin or accidentally increase it that it shall either pardon it or bring it to greater punishment for so I have seen healthful medicines abused by the incapacities of a
he bearing them upon his tender body with an even and excellent and dispassionate spirit offered up these beginnings of sufferings to his Father to obtain pardon even for them that injured him and for all the World 6. Judas now seeing that this matter went farther than he intended it repented of his fact For although evil persons are in the progress of their iniquity invited on by new arguments and supported by confidence and a careless spirit yet when iniquity is come to the height or so great a proportion that it is apt to produce Despair or an intolerable condition then the Devil suffers the Conscience to thaw and grow tender but it is the tenderness of a Bile it is soreness rather and a new disease and either it comes when the time of Repentance is past or leads to some act which shall make the pardon to be impossible and so it happened here For Judas either impatient of the shame or of the sting was thrust on to despair of pardon with a violence as hasty and as great as were his needs And Despair is very often used like the bolts and bars of Hell-gates it ãâã upon them that had entred into the suburbs of eternal death by an habitual sin and it secures them against all retreat And the Devil is forward enough to bring a man to Repentance provided it be too late and Esau wept bitterly and repented him and the five foolish Virgins lift up their voice aloud when the gates were shut and in Hell men shall repent to all eternity But I consider the very great folly and infelicity of Judas it was at midnight he received his money in the house of Annas betimes in that morning he repented his bargain he threw the money back again but his sin stuck close and it is thought to a ãâã eternity Such is the purchace of Treason and the reward of Covetousness it is cheap in its offers momentany in its possession unsatisfying in the fruition uncertain in the stay sudden in its ãâã horrid in the remembrance and a ruine a certain and miserable ruine is in the event When Judas came in that sad condition and told his miserable story to them that set him on work they ãâã him go away unpitied he had served their ends in betraying his Lord and those that hire such servants use to leave them in the disaster to shame and to sorrow and so did the Priests but took the money and ãâã to put it into the treasury because it was the price of bloud but they made no scruple to take it from the treasury to buy that bloud Any thing seems lawful that serves the ends of ambitious and bloudy persons and then they are scrupulous in their cases of Conscience when nothing of Interest does intervene for evil men make Religion the servant of Interest and sometimes weak men think that it is the ãâã of ãâã Religion and suspect that all of it is a design because many great Politicks make it so The end of the Tragedy was that Judas died with an ignoble death marked with the circumstances of a horrid Judgment and perished by the most infamous hands in the world that is by his own Which if it be confronted against the excellent spirit of S. Peter who did an act as contradictory to his honour and the grace of God as could be easily imagined yet taking sanctuary in the arms of his Lord he lodged in his heart for ever and became an example to all the world of the excellency of the Divine Mercy and the efficacy of a holy Hope and a hearty timely and an operative Repentance 7. ãâã now all things were ready for the purpose the High Priest and all his Council go along with the Holy Jesus to the house of Pilate hoping he would verifie their Sentence and bring it to execution that they might ãâã be rid of their fears and enjoy their sin and their reputation quietly S. ãâã ãâã that the High Priest caused the Holy Jesus to be led with a cord about his neck and in memory of that the Priests for many Ages ãâã a stole about theirs But the Jews did it according to the custom of the Nation to signifie he was condemned to death they desired Pilate that he would crucifie him they having ãâã him worthy And when Pilate enquired into the particulars they gave him a general and an indefinite answer If he were not guilty we would not have brought him ãâã thee they intended not to make Pilate Judge of the cause but ãâã of their cruelty But Pilate had not learned to be guided by an implicite faith of such persons which he knew to be malicious and violent and therefore still called for instances and arguments of their Accusation And that all the world might see with how great unworthiness they prosecuted the ãâã they chiefly there accused him of such crimes upon which themselves condemned him not and which they knew to be false but yet likely to move Pilate if he had been passionate or inconsiderate in his sentences He offered to make himself a King This ãâã happened at the entry of the Praetorium for the ãâã who made no conscience of killing the King of Heaven made a conscience of the external customs and ceremonies of their Law which had in them no interiour sanctity which were apt to separate them ãâã the Nations and remark them with characters of Religion and abstraction it would defile them to go to a Roman Forum ãâã a capital action was to be judged and yet the effusion of the best bloud in the world was not esteemed against their ãâã so violent and blind is the spirit of malice which turns humanity into ãâã wisdom into craft diligence into subornation and Religion into Superstition 8. Two other articles they alledged against him but the first concerned not Pilate and the second was involved in the third and therefore he chose to examine him upon this only of his being a King To which the Holy Jesus answered that it is true he was ãâã King indeed but not of this world his Throne is Heaven the Angels are his Courtiers and the ãâã Creation are his Subjects His Regiment is spiritual his ãâã are the Courts of Conscience and Church-tribunals and at Dooms-day the Clouds The Tribute which he demands are conformity to his Laws Faith ãâã and Charity no other Gabels but the duties of a holy Spirit and the expresses of a religious Worship and obedient Will and a consenting Understanding And in all this Pilate thought the interest of ãâã was not invaded For certain it is the Discipline of Jesus confirmed it much and supported it by the strongest pillars And here Pilate saw how impertinent and malicious their Accusation was And we who declaim against the unjust proceedings of the Jews against our dearest Lord should do well to take care that we in accusing any of our Brethren either with malicious purpose or with
with purple and crowned him with thorns and put a cane in his hand for a scepter and bowed their knees before him and saluted him with mockery with a Hail King of the Jews and ãâã beat him and spate upon him and then Pilate brought him forth and shewed this sad spectacle to the people hoping this might move them to compassion who never loved to see a man prosperous and are always troubled to see the same man in misery But the Earth which was cursed for Adam's sake and was sowed with thorns and thistles produced the full harvest of them and the Second Adam gathered them all and made garlands of them as ensigns of his Victory which he was now in pursuit of against Sin the Grave and Hell And we also may make our thorns which are in themselves ãâã and dolorous to be a Crown if we bear ãâã patiently and unite them to Christ's Passion and offer them to his honour and bear them in his cause and rejoyce in them for his sake And indeed after such a grove of ãâã growing upon the head of our Lord to see one of Christ's members soft delicate and effeminate is a great indecency next to this of seeing the Jews use the King of glory with the greatest reproach and infamy 12. But nothing prevailing nor the Innocence of Jesus nor his immunity from the sentence of Herod nor the industry and diligence of Pilate nor the misery nor the sight of the afflicted Lamb of God at last for so God decreed to permit it and Christ to ãâã it Pilate gave sentence of death upon him having first washed his hands of which God served his end to declare the Innocence of his Son of which in this whole process he was most curious and suffered not the least probability to adhere to him yet Pilate served no end of his nor preserved any thing of his innocence He that ãâã upon a Prince and cries Saving your honour you are a Tyrant and he that strikes a man upon the face and cries him mercy and undoes him and says it was in jest does just like that person that sins against God and thinks to be excused by saying it was against his Conscience that is washing our hands when they are stained in bloud as if a ceremony of purification were enough to cleanse a soul from the stains of a spiritual impurity So some refuse not to take any Oath in times of Persecution and say it obliges not because it was forced and done against their wills as if the doing of it were washed off by protesting against it whereas the protesting against it declares me criminal if I rather chuse not death than that which I profess to be a sin But all the persons which cooperated in this death were in this life consigned to a fearful judgment after it The Jews took the bloud which Pilate seemed to wash off upon themselves and their children and the bloud of this Paschal Lamb stuck upon their forehead and marked them not to escape but to fall under the sword of the destroying Angel and they perished either by a more hasty death or shortly after in the extirpation and miserable ruine of their Nation And Pilate who had a less share in the crime ãâã ãâã a black character of a secular Judgment for not long after he was by Vitellius the President of Syria sent to Rome to answer to the crimes objected against him by the Jews whom to please he had done so much violence to his Conscience and by ãâã sentence he was banished to Vienna deprived of all his honours where he lived ingloriously till by impatience of his calamity he killed himself with his own hand And thus the bloud of Jesus shed for the Salvation of the world became to them a Curse and that which purifies the Saints stuck to them that shed it and mingled it not with the tears of Repentance to be a leprosie loathsome and incurable So Manna turns to worms and the wine of Angels to Vineger and Lees when it is received into impure vessels or tasted by wanton palats and the Sun himself produces Rats and Serpents when it reflects upon the dirt of Nilus The PRAYER O Holy and immaculate Lamb of God who wert pleased to ãâã shame and sorrow to be brought before tribunals to be accused maliciously betrayed treacherously condemned unjustly and scourged most ãâã suffering the most severe and most unhandsome inflictions which could be procured by potent subtle and extremest malice and didst ãâã this out of love greater than the love of Mothers more affectionate than the tears of joy and pity dropt from the eyes of most passionate women by these fontinels of bloud issuing forth life and health and pardon upon all thine enemies teach me to apprehend the baseness of Sin in proportion to the greatest of those calamities which my sin made it necessary for thee to susfer that I may hate the cause of thy ãâã and adore thy mercy and imitate thy charity and copy ãâã thy patience à nd humility and love thy person to the uttermost extent and degrees of my affections Lord what am I that the eternal Son of God should ãâã one stripe for me But thy Love is infinite and how great a misery is it to provoke by sin so great a mercy and despise so miraculous a goodness and to do fresh despite to the Son of God But our sins are innumerable and our infirmities are mighty Dearest Jesu pity me for I am accused by my own Conscience and am found guilty I am stripped naked of my Innocence and bound fast by Lust and tormented with stripes and wounds of enraged Appetites But let thy Innocence excuse me the robes of thy Righteousness cloath me thy Bondage set me free and thy Stripes heal me that thou being my Advocate my Physician my Patron and my Lord I may be adopted into the union of thy Merits and partake of the efficacy of thy Sufferings and be crowned as thou art having my sins changed to vertues and my thorns to rays of glory under thee our Head in the participations of Eternity O Holy and immaculate Lamb of God Amen DISCOURSE XX. Of Death and the due manner of Preparation to it 1. THE Holy Spirit of God hath in Scripture revealed to us but one way of preparing to Death and that is by a holy life and there is nothing in all the Book of Life concerning this exercise of address to Death but such advices which suppose the dying person in a state of Grace S. James indeed counsels that in sickness we should send for the Ministers Ecclesiastical and that they pray over us and that we confess our sins and they shall be forgiven that is those prayers are of great efficacy for the removing the sickness and taking off that punishment of sin and healing them in a certain degree according to the efficacy of the ministery and the dispositions or capacities of the sick person But
him honours the Emperour Conrade the Second when he triumphed after the conquest of Italy had a joy bigger than their heart and their phancy swelled it till they burst and died Death can enter in at any door ãâã of Nice died with excessive laughter so did the Poet Philemon being provoked to it only by seeing an Asse eat sigs And the number of persons who have been found suddenly dead in their beds is so great that as it ingages many to a more certain and regular devotion for their Compline so it were well it were pursued to the utmost intention of God that is that all the parts of Religion should with zeal and assiduity be entertained and finished that as it becomes wise men we never be surprised with that we are sure will sometime or other happen A great General in Italy at the sudden death of Alsonsus of Ferrara and Lodovico ãâã at the sight of the sad accident upon Henry II. of France now mentioned turned religious and they did what God intended in those deaths It concerns us to be curious of single actions because even in those shorter periods we may expire and ãâã our Graves But if the state of life be contradictory to our hopes of Heaven it is like affronting of a Cannon ãâã a beleaguer'd Town a month together it is a contempt of safety and a rendring all Reason useless and unprofitable but he only is wise who having made Death familiar to him by expectation and daily apprehension does at all instants go forth to meet it The wise Virgins went forth to meet the Bridegroom for they were ready Excellent therefore is the counsel of the Son of Sirach Use Physick or ever thou be sick ãâã Judgment examine thy self and in the day of visitation thou shalt finde mercy Humble thy self before then be sick and in the time of sins shew Repentance Let nothing hinder thee to pay thy ãâã in due time and defer not until death to be justified 5. Secondly I consider that it osten happens that in those few days of our last visitation which many Men design for their Preparation and Repentance God hath expressed by an exteriour accident that those persons have deceived themselves and neglected their own Salvation S. Gregory reports of Chrysaurius a Gentleman in the Province of ãâã rich vicious and witty lascivious covetous and proud that being cast upon his Death-bed he phansied he saw evil spirits coming to arrest him and drag him to Hell He fell into great agony and trouble shrieked out called for his son who was a very religious person flattered him as willing to have been rescued by any thing but perceiving his danger increase and grown desperate he called loud with repeated clamours Give me respite but till the morrow and with those words he died there being no place left ãâã his Repentance though he sought it carefully with tears and groans The same was the case of a drunken Monk whom Venerable Bede mentions Upon his Death bed he seemed to see Hell opened and a place assigned him near to Caiaphas and those who crucified our dearest Lord. The religious persons that stood about his Bed called on him to repent of his sins to implore the mercies of God and to trust in Christ But he answered with reason enough This is no time to change my life the sentence is passed upon me and it is too late And it is very considerable and sad which Petrus Damianus tells of Gunizo a sactious and ambitious person to whom it is said the Tempter gave notice of his approaching death but when any Man preached Repentance to him out of a strange incuriousness or the spirit of reprobation he seemed like a dead and unconcerned person in all other discourses he was awake and apt to answer For God had shut up the gates of Mercy that no streams should issue forth to quench the flames of Hell or else had shut up the gates of reception and entertainment that it should not enter either God denies to give them pardon when they call or denies to them a power to call they either cannot pray or God will not answer Now since these stories are related by Men learned pious and eminent in their generations and because they served no design but the ends of Piety and have in them nothing dissonant from revelation or the frequent events of Providence we may upon their stock consider that God's Judgements and visible marks being set upon a state of Life although they happen but seldom in the instances yet they are of universal purpose and signfication Upon all Murtherers God hath not thrown a thunder-bolt nor broke all sacrilegious persons upon the wheel of an inconstant and ebbing estate nor spoken to every Oppressor from Heaven in a voice of thunder nor cut off all Rebels in the first attempts of insurrection But because he hath done so to some we are to look upon those Judgments as Divine accents and voices of God threatning all the same crimes with the like events and with the ruines of eternity For though God does not always make the same prologues to death yet by these few accidents happening to single persons we are to understand his purposes concerning all in the same condition it was not the person so much as the estate which God then remarked with so visible characters of his displeasure 6. And it seems to me a wonder that since from all the records of Scripture urging the uncertainty of the day of death the horrour of the day of Judgment the severity of God the dissolution of the world the certainty of our account still from all these premisses the Spirit of God makes no other inference but that we watch and stand in a readiness that we live in all holy conversation and godliness and that there is no one word concerning any other manner of an essentially-necessary Preparation none but this yet that there are Doctrines commenced and Rules prescribed and Offices set down and Suppletories invented by Curates of Souls how to prepare a vicious person and upon his Death-bed to reconcile him to the hopes and promises of Heaven Concerning which I desire that every person would but enquire where any one promise is recorded in Scripture concerning such addresses and what Articles CHRIST hath drawn up between his Father and us concerning a Preparation begun upon our Death-bed and if he shall find none as most certainly from Genesis to the Revelation there is not a word concerning it but very much against it let him first build his hopes upon this proposition that A holy life is the onely Preparation to a happy death and then we can without danger proceed to some other Considerations 7. When a good man or a person concerning whom it is not certain he hath lived in habitual Vices comes to die there are but two general ways of entercourse with him the one to keep him from
Prophets of the Lord. And S. Austin upon the Incursion of the Vandals into Africa called his Clergy together and at their Chapter told them he had prayed to God either to deliver his People from the present calamity or grant them patience to bear it or that he would take him out of the world that he might not see the miseries of his Diocese adding that God had granted him the last and he presently fell sick and died in the siege of his own Hippo. And if Death in many cases be desirable and for many reasons it is always to be submitted to when God calls And as it is always a misery to fear death so it is very often a sin or the effect of sin If our love to the world hath fastened our affections here it is a direct sin and this is by the son of Sirach noted to be the case of rich and great personages How bitter O death is thy remembrance to a man that is at rest in his possessions But if it be a fear to perish in the ruines of Eternity they are not to blame for fearing but that their own ill lives have procured the fear And yet there are persons in the state of Grace but because they are in great imperfection have such lawful fears of Death and of entring upon an uncertain Sentence which must stand eternally irreversible be it good or bad that they may with piety and care enough pray David's prayer O spare me a little that I may recover my strength before I go hence and be no more seen But in this and in all other cases Death must be accepted without murmur though without fear it cannot A man may pray to be delivered from it and yet if God will not grant it he must not go as one hal'd to execution but if with all his imperfect fears he shall throw himself upon God and accept his sentence as righteous whether it speak life or death it is an act of so great excellency that it may equal the good actions of many succeeding and surviving days and peradventure a longer life will be yet more imperfect and that God therefore puts a period to it that thou mayest be taken into a condition more certain though less eminent However let not the fears of Nature or the fear of Reason or the fears of Humility become accidentally criminal by a murmur or a pertinacious contesting against the event which we cannot hinder but ought to accept by an election secondary rational and pious and upon supposition that God will not alter the sentence passed upon thy temporal life always remembring that in Christian Philosophy Death hath in it an excellency of which the Angels are not capable For by the necessity of our Nature we are made capable of dying for the Holy Jesus and next to the privilege of that act is our willingness to die at his command which turns necessity into vertue and nature into grace and grace to glory 20. When the sick person is thus disposed let him begin to trim his wedding-garment and dress his Lamp with the repetition of acts of Repentance perpetually praying to God for pardon of his sins representing to himself the horror of them the multitude the obliquity being helped by arguments apt to excite Contrition by repetition of penitential Psalms and holy Prayers and he may by accepting and humbly receiving his sickness at God's hand transmit it into the condition of an act or effect of ãâã acknowledging himself by sin to have deserved and procured it and praying that the punishment of his crimes may be here and not reserved for the state of Separation and for ever 21. But above all single acts of this exercise we are concerned to see that nothing of other mens Goods stick to us but let us shake it off as we would a burning coal ãâã our flesh for it will destroy us it will carry a curse with us and leave a curse behind us Those who by thy means or importunity have become vicious exhort to Repentance and holy life those whom thou hast cozened into crimes restore to a right understanding those who are by violence and interest led captive by thee to any undecency restore to their liberty and encourage to the prosecution of holiness discover and confess thy fraud and unlawful arts cease thy violence and give as many advantages to Vertue as thou hast done to Viciousness Make recompence for bodily wrongs such as are wounds dismembrings and other disabilities restore every man as much as thou canst to that good condition from which thou hast removed him restore his Fame give back his Goods return the Pawn release ãâã and take off all unjust invasions or surprises of his Estate pay Debts satisfie for thy fraud and injustice as far as thou canst and as thou canst and as soon or this alone is weight enough no less than a Mil-stone about thy Neck But if the dying man be of God and in the state of Grace that is if he have lived a holy life repented seasonably and have led a just sober and religious conversation in any acceptable degree it is to be supposed he hath no great account to make for unpretended injuries and unjust detentions for if he had detained the goods of his neighbour fraudulently or violently without amends when it is in his power and opportunity to restore he is not the man we suppose him in this present Question and although in all cases he is bound to restore according to his ability yet the act is less excellent when it is compelled and so it seems to be if he have continued the injustice till he is forced to quit the purchace However if it be not done till then let it be provided for then And that I press this duty to pious persons at this time is only to oblige them to a diligent scrutiny concerning the lesser omissions of this duty in the matter of fame or lesser debts or spiritual restitution or that those unevennesses of account which were but of late transaction may now be regulated and that whatsoever is undone in this matter from what principle soever it proceeds whether of sin or only of forgetfulness or of imperfection may now be made as exact as we can and are obliged and that those excuses which made it reasonable and lawful to defer Restitution as want of opportunity clearness of ability and accidental inconvenience be now laid aside and the action be done or provided for in the midst of all objections and inconvenient circumstances rather than to omit it and hazard to perform it 22. Hither also I reckon resolutions and forward purposes of emendation and greater severity in case God return to us hopes of life which therefore must be re-inforced that we may serve the ends of God and understand all his purposes and make use of every opportunity every sickness laid upon us being with a design of drawing us nearer
shame and unworthiness he submitted to the death of the Cross and by his voluntary acceptation and tacite volition of it made it equivalent to as great a punishment of his own susception he shewed an incomparable modesty begging but for a remembrance only he knew himself so sinful he durst ask no more he reproved the other Thief for Blasphemy he confessed the world to come and owned Christ publickly he prayed to him he hoped in him and pitied him shewing an excellent Patience in this sad condition And in this I consider that besides the excellency of some of these acts and the goodness of all the like occasion for so exemplar Faith never can occur and until all these things shall in these circumstances meet in any one man he must not hope for so safe an Exit after an evil life ãâã the confidence of this example But now Christ had the key of Paradise in his hand and God blessed the good Thief with this opportunity of letting him in who at another time might have waited longer and been tied to harder conditions And indeed it is very probable that he was much advantaged by the intervening accident of dying at the same time with Christ there being a natural compassion produced in us towards the partners of our miseries For Christ was not void of humane passions though he had in them no imperfection or irregularity and therefore might be invited by the society of misery the rather to admit him to participate his joys and S. Paul proves him to be a merciful high Priest because he was touched with a feeling of our infirmities the first expression of which was to this blessed Thief Christ and he together sate at the Supper of bitter herbs and Christ payed his symbol promising that he should that day be together with him in Paradise 12. By the Cross of Christ stood the Holy Virgin Mother upon whom old Simeon's Prophecy was now verified for now she felt a sword passing through her very soul she stood without clamour and womanish noises sad silent and with a modest grief deep as the waters of the abysse but smooth as the face of a pool full of Love and Patience and Sorrow and Hope Now she was put to it to make use of all those excellent discourses her Holy Son had used to build up her spirit and fortifie it against this day Now she felt the blessings and strengths of Faith and she passed from the griefs of the Passion to the expectation of the Resurrection and she rested in this Death as in a sad remedy for she knew it reconciled God with all the World But her Hope drew a veil before her Sorrow and though her Grief was great enough to swallow her up yet her Love was greater and did swallow up her grief But the Sun also had a veil upon his face and taught us to draw a curtain before the Passion which would be the most artificial expression of its greatness whilest by silence and wonder we confess it great beyond our expression or which is all one great as the burthen and baseness of our sins And with this veil drawn before the face of Jesus let us suppose him at the gates of Paradise calling with his last words in a loud voice to have them opened that the King of glory might come in The PRAYER O Holy Jesus who for our sakes didst suffer incomparable anguish and pains commensurate to thy Love and our Miseries which were infinite that thou mightest purchase for ãâã blessings upon Earth and an inheritance in Heaven dispose us by Love Thankfulness Humility and Obedience to receive all the benefit of thy Passion granting unto us and thy whole Church remission of all our sins integrity of mind health of body competent maintenance peace in our days a temperate air fruitfulness of the earth unity and integrity of Faith extirpation of Heresies reconcilements of Schisms destruction of all wicked counsels intended against us and bind the hands of Rapine and Sacriledge that they may not destroy the vintage and root up the Vine it self Multiply thy Blessings upon us sweetest Jesus increase in us true Religion sincere and actual devotion in our Prayers Patience in troubles and whatsoever is necessary to our Soul's health or conducing to thy Glory Amen II. O Dearest Saviour I adore thy mercies and thy incomparable love expressed in thy so voluntary susception and affectionate suffering such horrid and sad Tortures which cannot be remembred without a sad compassion the waters of bitterness entred into thy Soul and the storms of Death and thy Father's anger broke thee all in pieces and what shall I do who by my sins have so tormented my dearest Lord what Contrition can be great enough what tears sufficiently expressive what hatred and detestation of my crimes can be equal and commensurate to those sad accidents which they have produced Pity me O Lord pity me dearest God turn those thy merciful eyes towards me O most merciful Redeemer for my sins are great like unto thy Passion full of sorrow and shame and a burthen too great for me to bear Lord who hast done so much for me now only speak the word and thy servant shall be whole Let thy Wounds heal me thy Vertues amend me thy Death quicken me that I in this life suffering the cross of a sad and salutary Repentance in the union and merits of thy ãâã and Passion may die with thee and rest with thee and rise again with thee and live with thee for ever in the possession of thy Glories O dearest Saviour Jesus Amen SECT XVI Of the Resurrection and Ascension of JESUS The Burial of Iesus Mat 27 57 When the even was come there came a rich man of Arimathea named Jo seph who also himself was Jesus Disciple he went to Pilate beggd the body of Jesus Then Pilate commanded the body to be delivered And when Ioseph had taken the body he wrapped it in a clean linen cloth layd it in his own new tomb which he had hewen out in y e rock The Resurrection of Iesus Mat 28 2 And behold there was a great earthquake for the Angel of the Lord descended from heaven came rolled back y e stone from the doore and sate upon it And for feare of him the keepers did shake became as dead men And the Angel sayd unto the woman Fear not ye for I know that ye seek Iesus that was crucified He is not here for he is Risen as he sayd 1. WHile it was yet early in the morning upon the first day of the week Mary Magdalen and Mary the mother of James and Salome brought sweet spices to the Sepulchre that they might again embalm the Holy Body for the rites of Embalming among the Hebrews used to last forty days and their love was not satisfied with what Joseph had done They therefore hastned to the grave and after they had expended their money and bought the
spices then begin to consider who shall remove the stone but yet they still go on and their love answers the objection not knowing how it should be done but yet resolving to go through all the difficulties but never remember or take care to pass the guards of Souldiers But when they came to the Sepulchre they found the Guard affrighted and removed and the stone rolled away for there had a little before their arrival been a great Earthquake and an Angel descending from Heaven rolled away the stone and sate upon it and for fear of him the guards about the tomb became astonished with fear and were like dead men and some of them ran to the High Priests and told them what happened But they now resolving to make their iniquity safe and unquestionable by a new crime hire the Souldiers to tell an incredible and a weak fable that his Disciples came by night and stole him away Against which accident the wit of man could give no more security than themselves had made The women entred into the Sepulchre and missing the body of Jesus Mary Magdalen ran to the eleven Apostles complaining that the body of our Lord was not to be found Then Peter and John ran as fast as they could to see for the unexpectedness of the relation the wonder of the story and the sadness of the person moved some affections in them which were kindled by the first principles and sparks of Faith but were not made actual and definite because the Faith was not raised to a flame they looked into the Sepulchre and finding not the body there they returned By this time Mary Magdalen was come back and the women who stayed weeping for their Lord's body saw two Angels sitting in white the one at the head and the other at the ãâã at which unexpected sight they trembled and bowed themselves but an Angel bid them not to fear telling them that Jesus of Nazareth who was crucified was also risen and was not there and called to mind what Jesus had told them in Galilee concerning his Crucifixion and Resurrection the third day 2. And Mary Magdalen turned her self back and saw Jesus but supposing him to be the Gardiner she said to him Sir if thou have born him hence tell me where thou hast laid him and I will take him away But Jesus said unto her Mary Then she knew his voice and with ecstasie of joy and wonder was ready to have crushed his feet with her imbraces but he commanded her not to touch him but go to his Erethren and say I ascend unto my Father and to your Father to my God and your God Mary departed with satisfaction beyond the joys of a victory or a full vintage and told these things to the Apostles but the narration seem'd to them as talk of abused and phantastick persons About the same time Jesus also appeared unto Simon Peter Towards the declining of the day two of his Disciples going to Emmans sad and discoursing of the late occurrences Jesus puts himself into their company and upbraids their incredulity and expounds the Scriptures that Christ ought to suffer and rise again the third day and in the breaking of bread disappeared and so was known to them by vanishing away whom present they knew not And instantly they hasten to Jerusalem and told the Apostles what had happened 3. And while they were there that is the same day at evening when the Apostles were assembled all save Thomas secretly for fear of the Jews the doors being shut Jesus came and stood in the midst of them They were exceedingly troubled supposing it had been a Spirit But Jesus confuted them by the Philosophy of their senses by feeling his ãâã and bones which spirits have not For he gave them his benediction shewing them his hands and his feet At which sight they rejoyced with exceeding joy and began to be restored to their indefinite hopes of some future felicity by the returns of their Lord to life and there he first breathed on them giving them the holy Ghost and performing the promise twice made before his death the promise of the Keys or of binding and loosing saying Whose soever sins ye remit they are remitted to them and whose soever sins ye retain they are retained And that was the second part of Clerical power with which Jesus instructed his Disciples in order to their great Commission of Preaching and Government ãâã These things were told to Thomas but he believed not and resolved against the belief of it unless he might put his finger into his hands and his hand into his side Jesus therefore on the Octaves of his Resurrection appeared again to the Apostles met together and makes demonstration to Thomas in conviction and reproof of his unbelief promising a special benediction to all succeeding Ages of the Church for they are such who saw not and yet have believed 4. But Jesus at his early appearing had sent an order by the women that the Disciples should go into ãâã and they did so after a few days And Simon Peter being there went a fishing and six other of the Apostles with him to the Sea of Tiberias where they laboured all night and caught nothing Towards the morning Jesus appeared to them and bad them cast the net on the right side of the ship which they did and inclosed an hundred and fifty three great fishes by which prodigious draught John the beloved Disciple perceived it was the Lord. At which instant Peter threw himself into the Sea and went to Jesus and when the rest were come to shore they din'd with broiled fish After dinner Jesus taking care for those scattered sheep which were dispersed over the face of the earth that he might gather them into one Sheepfold under one ãâã asked Peter Simon son of Jonas lovest thou me more than these Peter answered Yea Lord thou that knowest all things knowest that I love thee Then Jesus said unto him Feed my Lambs And Jesus asked him the same question and gave him the same Precept the second time and the third time for it was a considerable and a weighty imployment upon which Jesus was willing to spend all his endearments and stock of affections that Peter owed him even upon the care of his little Flock And after the intrusting of this charge to him he told him that the reward he should have in this world should be a sharp and an honourable Martyrdom and withall checks at Peter's curiosity in busying himself about the temporal accidents of other men and enquiring what should become of John the beloved Disciple Jesus answered his question with some sharpness of reprehension and no satisfaction If I will that he tarry till I come what is that to thee Then they phansied that he should not die But they were mistaken for the intimation was expounded and verified by S. John's surviving the destruction of Jerusalem for after the attempts of persecutors and the miraculous escape
Christ and took them as testimonies of that truth for the affirmation of which the High Priest had condemned our dearest Lord and although the heart of the Priest rent not even then when rocks did tear in pieces yet the people who saw the Passion ãâã their breasts and returned and confessed Christ. 3. The graves of the dead were opened at the Death but the dead boies of the Saints that slept arose not till the Resurrection of our Lord for he was the first fruits and they followed him as instant witnesses to publish the Resurrection of their Head which it is possible they declared to those to whom they appeared in the Holy City And amongst these the curiosity or pious credulity of some have supposed Adam and Eve Abraham Isaac and Jacob who therefore were ãâã to be buried in the Land of Promise as having some intimation or hope that they might be partakers of the earliest glories of the Messias in whose ãâã and distant expectation they lived and died And this calling up of company from their graves did publish to all the world not only that the Lord himself was risen according to his so ãâã and repeated predictions but that he meant to raise up all his servants and that all who believe in him should be partakers of the Resurrection 4. When the souldiers observed that Jesus was dead out of spite and impotent ineffective malice one of them pierced his holy side with a spear and the rock being smitten it gushed out with water and ãâã streaming forth two Sacraments to refresh the Church and opening a gate that all his brethren might enter in and dwell in the heart of God And so great a love had our Lord that he suffered his heart to be opened to shew as Eve was formed from the side of Adam so was the Church to be from the side of her Lord receiving from thence life and spiritual nutriment which he ministred in so great abundance and suffered himself to be pierced that all his bloud did stream over us until he made the fountain dry and reserved nothing of that by which he knew his Church was to live and move and have her being Thus the stream of Bloud issued out to become a fountain for the Sacrament of the Chalice and Water gushed out to fill the Fonts of Baptism and Repentance The Bloud being the testimony of the Divine Love calls upon us to die for his love when he requires it and the noise of the Water calls upon us to ãâã our spirits and present our Conscience to Christ holy and pure without spot or wrinkle The Bloud running upon us makes us to be of the cognation and family of God and the Water quenches the flames of Hell and the fires of Concupiscence 5. The friends and Disciples of the Holy Jesus having devoutly composed his Body to Burial anointed it washed it and condited it with spices and perfumes laid it in a Sepulchre hewen from a rock in a Garden which saith ãâã was therefore done to represent that we were by this death returned to Paradise and the Gardens of pleasures and Divine favours from whence by the prevarication of Adam man was expelled Here he finished the work of his Passion as he had begun it in a Garden and the place of sepulchre being a Rock serves the ends of pious succeeding Ages for the place remains in all Changes of government of Wars of Earthquakes and ruder accidents to this day as a ãâã of the Sepulchre of our dearest Lord as a sensible and proper confirmation of the perswasions of some persons and as an entertainment of their pious phancy and religious affections 6. But now it was that in the dark and undiscerned mansions there was a scene of the greatest joy and the ãâã horrour represented which yet was known since the first falling of the morning stars Those holy souls whom the Prophet Zechary calls prisoners of hope ãâã in the lake where there is no water that is no constant stream of joy to refresh their present condition yet supported with certain showers and gracious visitations from God and illuminations of their hope now that they saw their Redeemer come to change their condition and to improve it into the neighbourhoods of glory and clearer revelations must needs have the joy of intelligent and beatified understandings of redeemed captives of men forgiven after the sentence of death of men satisfied after a tedious expectation enjoying and seeing their Lord whom for so many Ages they had expected But the accursed spirits seeing the darkness of their prison shine with a new light and their Empire invaded and their retirements of horrour discovered wondered how a man durst venture thither or if he were a GOD how he should come to die But the Holy Jesus was like that body of light receiving into himself the reflexion of all the lesser rays of joy which the Patriarchs felt and being united to his ãâã of felicity apprehended it yet more glorious He now felt the effects of his bitter Passion to return upon him in Comforts every hour of which was abundant recompence for three hours Passion upon the Cross and became to us a great precedent to invite us to a toleration of the acts of Repentance Mortification and Martyrdom and that in times of suffering we live upon the stock and expence of Faith as remembring that ãâã few moments of infelicity are infinitely paid with every minute of glory and yet that the glory which is certainly consequent is so lasting and perpetual that it were enough in a lower joy to make amends by its continuation of eternity And let us but call to mind what thoughts we shall have when we die or are dead how we shall then without prejudice consider that if we had done our duty the trouble and the affliction would now be past and nothing remain but pleasures and felicities eternal and how infinitely happy we shall then be if we have done our duty and how miserable if not all the pleasures of sin disappearing and nothing surviving but a certain and everlasting torment Let us carry alway the same thoughts with us which must certainly then intervene and we shall meet the Holy Jesus and partake of his joys which over-flowed his holy Soul when he first entred into the possession of those excellent fruits and effects of his Passion 7. When the third day was come the Soul of Jesus returned from Paradise and the visitation of separate spirits and re-entred into his holy Body which he by his Divine power did redintegrate filling his veins with bloud healing all the wounds excepting those five of his hands feet and side which he reserved as Trophies of his victory and argument of his Passion And as he had comforted the Souls of the Fathers with the presence of his Spirit so now he saw it to be time to bring comfort to his Holy Mother to re-establish the tottering Faith of
helped by none comforted by none and he makes himself a companion of Devils to everlasting ages but in the judgment of Repentance and Tribunal of the Church the penitent sinner is prayed for by a whole army of militant Saints and causes joy to all the Church triumphant And to establish this Tribunal in the Church and to transmit pardon to penitent sinners and a salutary judgment upon the person and the crime and to appoint Physicians and Guardians of the Soul was one of the designs and mercies of the Resurrection of Jesus And let not any Christian man either by false opinion or an unbelieving spirit or an incurious apprehension undervalue or neglect this ministery which Christ hath so sacredly and solemnly established Happy is he that dashes his sins against the rock upon which the Church is built that the Church gathering up the planks and fragments of the shipwreck and the shivers of the broken heart may re-unite them pouring Oil into the wounds made by the blows of sin and restoring with meekness gentleness care counsel and authority persons overtaken in a fault For that act of Ministery is not ineffectual which God hath promised shall be ratified in Heaven and that Authority is not contemptible which the Holy Jesus conveyed by breathing upon his Church the Holy Ghost But Christ intended that those whom he had made Guides of our Souls and Judges of our Consciences in order to counsel and ministerial pardon should also be used by us in all cases of our Souls and that we go to Heaven the way he hath appointed that is by offices and ministeries Ecclesiastical 17. When our Blessed Lord had so confirmed the Faith of the Church and appointed an Ecclesiastical Ministery he had but one work more to do upon earth and that was the Institution of the holy Sacrament of Baptism which he ordained as a solemn Initiation and mysterious Profession of the Faith upon which the Church is built making it a solemn Publication of our Profession the rite of Stipulation or entring Covenant with our Lord the solemnity of the Paction Evangelical in which we undertake to be Disciples to the Holy Jesus that is to believe his Doctrine to fear his Threatnings to rely upon his Promises and to obey his Commandments all the days of our life and he for his part actually performs much and promises more he takes off all the guilt of our preceding days purging our Souls and making them clean as in the day of innocence promising withall that if we perform our undertaking and remain in the state in which he now puts us he will continually assist us with his Spirit prevent and attend us with his Grace he will deliver us from the power of the Devil he will keep our Souls in merciful joyful and safe custody till the great Day of the Lord he will then raise our Bodies from the Grave he will make them to be spiritual and immortal he will re-unite them to our Souls and beatifie both Bodies and Souls in his own Kingdom admitting them into eternal and unspeakable glories All which that he might verifie and prepare respectively in the presence of his Disciples he ascended into the bosome of God and the eternal comprehensions of celestial Glory The PRAYER O Holy and Eternal Jesus who hast overcome Death and triumphed over all the powers of Hell Darkness Sin and the Grave manifesting the truth of thy Promises the power of thy Divinity the majesty of thy Person the rewards of thy Glory and the mercies and excellent designs of thy Evangelical Kingdom by thy glorious and powerful Resurrection preserve my Soul from eternal death and make me to rise from the death of Sin and to live the life of Grace loving thy Perfections adoring thy Mercy pursuing the interest of thy Kingdom being united to the Church under thee our Head conforming to thy holy Laws established in Faith entertained and confirmed with a modest humble and certain Hope and sanctified by Charity that I engraving thee in my heart and submitting to thee in my spirit and imitating thee in thy glorious example may be partaker of thy Resurrection which is my hope and my desire the support of my Faith the object of my Joy and the strength of my Confidence In thee Holy Jesus do I trust I confess thy Faith I believe all that thou hast taught I desire to perform all thy injunctions and my own undertaking my Soul is in thy hand do thou support and guide it and pity my infirmities and when thou shalt reveal thy great Day shew to me the mercies and effects of thy Advocation and Intercession and Redemption Thou shalt answer for me O Lord my God for in thee have I trusted let me never be confounded Thou art just thou ãâã merciful thou art gracious and compassionate thou hast done miracles and prodigies of favour to me and all the world Let not those great actions and sufferings be ineffective but make me capable and receptive of thy Mercies and then I am certain to receive them I am thine O save me thou art mine O Holy Jesus O dwell with me for ever and let me dwell with thee adoring and praising the eternal glories of God the Father Son and Holy Ghost Amen THE END ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã THE TABLE OF The Life of CHRIST Where are more Numbers than one the first Number denotes the Page the latter the Number of the Section A. ABsolution of dying Persons of what benefit 407. 23. Whether to be given to all that desire it 408. 24. Acceptable Year of the Lord what it means 186. 22. Actions of Jesus confuted his Accusers 390. 2. Acts of Vertue to be done by sick and dying Persons 405 406. 19 20. Accusation of Criminals not to be aggravated odiously 393. 8. It ought to be onely for purposes of Charity ibid. Accusation of innocent persons ought to be born patiently by the innocent 393. 9. Accusation of Jesus 352. 24. Adam buried in Golgotha 354. 31. Adoption of Sons 316. 7. Advent of our Lord must be entertained with joy 156. 3. Adultery made more criminal under the Gospel than under the Law 249. 37 c. Adultery of the eyes 250. 36. Adrian the Emperour built a Temple to Venus and Adonis in the place of Christ's Birth 14. 6. Agony of Jesus in the Garden 350. 20. Agesilaus was more commended for his modesty and obedience than for his prosperous good Conduct 50. 25. Albes or white garments wore by the Church and why 393. 9 10. Alms intended for a defensative against Covetousness 258. 1. Ordinarily to be according to our ability ibid. Sometimes beyond in what cases ibid. Necessities of all indigent people are the object of our Alms 259. 3. Manner of Alms an office of Christian prudence ibid. The two Altars in Solomon's Temple what they did represent 83. 4. Ambitious seeking Ecclesiastical Dignities very criminal 96. 2. Ambition is
Praef. n. 40. Recidivation or Relapse into a state of sin unpardonable and how 156. Reproachful Language prohibited 247. Reprehension of evil Persons may be in Language properly expressive of the Crime ibid. Resisting evil in what sence lawful 225. Reverence of posture to be used in Prayer 271. 23. Remedies against Anger 248. 35. Repetition of Prayers 270. Relations secular must be quitted for Religion in what sence 320. They must not hinder Religious Duties 236. Reformation begins ill if it begins with Sacrilege 171. 5. Reward propounded in the beginning and end of Christian Duties 222. It makes the labour easie 295. 1. Restitution to the state of Grace is divisible and by parts 314. Restitution made by Zacchaeus 346. 4. Resurrection proved and described by Jesus 348. 11. All Relations of Kindred or ãâã cease then ibid. Resurrection of Jesus 393. Given for a sign 160. 279. It is the support of Christianity 428. Resignation of himself to be made by a dying or sick person 405. 17. Rich men less disposed for reception of Christianity 29. Riches are surest and to best purposes obtained by Christianity 301. 10. Rites of Burial among the Jewes lasted Fourty days 419. S. SArabaitae great Mortifiers but not obedient 49. 24. Sacrilege a robbing of God 52. Saints to inherit the Earth in what sence 224. 9. Sacraments ineffectual without the conjunction of something moral 97. They operate by way of Prayers ibid. Sacrament of the Lord's Supper instituted 349. 17. It s manner ibid. To be received Fasting 272. Of the Presence of Christ's Body in it 370. 3. Sabbath of the Jewes abolished 327. 28. 243. 25. Primitive Christians kept both the Sabbath and the Lord's Day 243. 24. Second Sabbath after the first what it means 290. 2. Sabbatick pool streamed onely upon the Sabbath 327. 28. Salome presented John Baptist's Head to her Mother 169. She was killed with Ice ibid. Samaritans were Schismaticks 182. 3. They hated the Jewes ibid. They were cast in their Appeal to Ptolemy ibid. Samaritan ãâã a Concubine after the death of her fifth Husband 187. 1. Scandal cannot be given by any thing that is our Duty 328. 334. 13. Sin of Scandal and the indiscretion of Scandal 330. 6. Scandalous persons who 328. 334. 13. No Man can say that himself is scandalized 333. 10. The Rules Measure and Judgement of Scandal 328. Between a Friend and an Enemy how we are to doe in the question of Scandal 334. 12. Scandal how to be avoided in making and executing Laws 334. 14. State of Separation 423. 429. 15. The Pool of Siloam 325. 21. Scorn must not be cast upon our calamitous Brother 339. Secular Persons tied to a frequent Communion 379. 19. Secular and Spiritual Objects their difference 380. 21. Serapion's Reproof of a young proud Monk 366. 7. Sepulchre of Jesus sealed 501. 39. Sermon of Christ upon the Mount 183. 11. His Farewell-Sermon 350. 19. Severity to our selves and Gentleness to others a Duty 324. 17. Sensuality Vide Temptations Simon' s name changed 151. 2. His Wifes Mother cured 184. 12. Simeon Stylites commended for Obedience 49. 24. Simon Magus brought a new Sin into the world 104. 6. Sins of Infirmity Vide ãâã Sins small in themselves are made great when they come by design 44. 12. When they are acted by deliberation ibid. When they are often repeated and not interrupted by Repentance ibid. 13. When they are ãâã 45. 14. Sin pleasant at the first bitter in the end 159. It carries a whip with it 170. They are forgiven when the Punishment is remitted 184. After Pardon they may return in guilt 211. It is more troublesome than Vertue is 297. 4. Not cared for unless it be difficult 299. 6. It shortens our lives naturally 305. 19. It made Jesus weep 359. To be accounted as great Blemishes to our selves as we account them to others 365. 6. Sinners Prayers not heard in what sence 266. 13. Sinners in need are to be relieved 258. Sinners are Fools 310. 28. State of Sin totally opposed to the Mercies of the Covenant 200. Sin against the Holy Ghost what it is 201. 10. Simplicity of Spirit a Christian Duty 157. Shame of Lust more violent to Nature than the Severities of Continence 295. The good Shepherd 325. Shepherds by Night watchful had a Revclation of Christ 29. Spiritual Shepherds must be watchful ibid. Spiritual Sadness is often a Mercy and a Grace 236. When otherwise 160. Spiritual persons apt to be tempted to Pride 86 100. Spiritual Mourning 224. Spiritual Pleasures distinguished from Temporal 191. Spiritual good things how to be prayed for 266. 262. Spiritual ãâã 360. 8. Spirit makes Religion ãâã 295. It is the earnest of Salvation 316. Spirit of Adoption ibid. It is quenched by some ibid. Spirit is ãâã to be offered to God 176. Solemnities of Christ's Kingdom 392. Souldiers plunged Jesus into the Brook Cedron 388. 11. They pierced his Side 355. They mock and beat Him 351. 353. They cover his Face at his Attachment 351. They fell to the ground at the glory of his Person ibid. Sun's Eclipse at the Passion miraculous 354. Stones of the Temple of what bigness 348. 12. Star at Christ's Birth moved irregularly 27. 9. That the Star appearing to the Wise Men was an Angel the Opinion of the Greeks 27. 8. Swine kept by the Jews and why 194 Statue of Brass erected by the Woman cured of her Bloudy issue 185. 20. Success of our endeavours depends on God 196. 5. Sudden Joys are dangerous 196. 7. Schism to be avoided in the Occasions 194. Swearing in common Talk a great Crime 304. By Creatures forbidden ibid. Suits at Law with what Cautions permitted 264. Syrophoenician importunate with Jesus for her Daughter 321. 6. Solomon's Porch a fragment of the first Temple 327. 29. Sweat of Christ in the Agony as great as drops of Bloud 350. 20. 385. 6. T. TAble with Nails fastned to Christ's Garment when he bore the Cross 413. 2. Teachers of others should be exemplary 33. 79. They should learn first of their Superiours 75. Not to make too much haste into the Imployment 79. Teresa à Jesu her Vow 235. 22. Temporal Priviledges inferiour to Spiritual 292. Temporal good things how to be prayed for 261. Temptation not alwayes a sign of immortification 91. Not to be voluntarily entred into 91. 110. Not alwayes an argument of GOD's Disfavour 97. 361. It is every Man's Lot 105. Not alwayes to be removed by Prayer 102. The several manners of Temptation ibid. Remedies against it 112. 29. seq 1. Consideration 1. Of the Presence of God 112. 29. 1. Consideration 2. Of Death 114. 34. 2. Prayer 115. 37. Temple of Jerusalem how many High-Priests it had in Succession 303. 14. Transmigration of Souls maintained by the Pharisees 321. 8. Tribute to be paid 347. Traitor discovered by a Sop 350. Trinity meeting at the ãâã of our Blessed Lord by some manners of exteriour
XLVIII in the sixth year of Claudius if not somewhat sooner for S. Paul's ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã does not necessarily imply that Fourteen years were completely past ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã signifying circa as well as post but that it was near about that time This being granted and if it be not it is easie to make it good then three things amongst others will follow from it First That whereas according to Bellarmine and Baronius S. Peter after his first coming to Rome which they place Ann. XLIV and the second of Claudius was seven years before he returned thence to the Council at Jerusalem they are strangely out in their story there being but three or at most four years between his going thither and the celebration of that Council Secondly That when they tell us that S. Peter's leaving Rome to come to the Council was upon the occasion of the decree of Claudius banishing all Jews out of the City this can no ways be For Orosius does not onely ãâã but prove it from Josephus that Claudius his Decree was published in the Ninth Year of his Reign or Ann. Chr. LI. Three Years at least after the Celebration of the Council Thirdly That when Baronius tells us that the Reason why Peter went to Rome after the breaking up of the Synod was because Claudius was now dead he not daring to go before for fear of the Decree this can be no reason at all the Council being ended at least Three Years before that Decree took place so that he might ãâã have gone thither without the least danger from it It might further be shewed if it were necessary that the account which even they themselves give us is not very consistent with it self So fatally does a bad cause draw Men whether they will or no into Errours and Mistakes 5. THE truth is the learned Men of that Church are not well agreed among themselves to give in their verdict in this case And indeed how should they when the thing it self affords no solid foundation for it Onuphrius a man of great learning and industry in all matters of antiquity and who as the writer of Baronius his life insorms us designed before Baronius to write the History of the Church goes a way by himself in assigning the time of S. Peter's founding his See both at Antioch and Rome For finding by the account of the sacred story that Peter did not leave ãâã for the Ten first Years after our Lord's Aseension and consequently could not in that time erect his See at Antioch he affirms that he went first to Rome whence returning to the Council at Jerusalem he thence went to Antioch where he remained Seven Years till the Death of Claudius and having spent almost the whole Reign of Nero in several parts of Europe returned in the last of Nero's Reign to Rome and there dyed An opinion for which he is sufficiently chastised by Baronius and others of that Party And here I cannot but remarque the ingenuity for the learning sufficiently commends it self of Monsieur l'alois who freely confesses the mistake of Baronius Petavius c. in making Peter go to Rome Ann. XLIV the Second Year of Claudius when as it is plain says he from the History of the Acts that Peter went not out of Judaea and Syria till the Death of Herod Claudii Ann. IV. Two whole Years after Consonant to which as he observes is what Apollonius a Writer of the Second Century reports from a Tradition current in his time that the Apostles did not depart asunder till the Twelfth Year after Christ's Ascension our Lord himself having so commanded them In confirmation whereof let me add a passage that I meet with in Clemens of Alexandria where from S. Peter he records this Speech of our Saviour to his Apostles spoken probably either a little before his Death or after his Resurrection ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã If any Israelite shall repent and believe in God through my Name his sins shall be forgiven him after twelve years Go ye into the World lest any should say we have not heard This passage as ordinarily pointed in all Editions that I have seen is scarce capable of any tolerable sence for what 's the meaning of a penitent Israelite's being pardoned after twelve years It is therefore probable yea certain with me that the stop ought to be after ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã and ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã joyned to the following clause and then the sence will run clear and smooth If any Jew shall repent and believe the Gospel he shall be pardoned but after twelve years go ye into all the World that none may pretend that they have not heard the sound of the Gospel The Apostles were first to Preach the Gospel to the Jews for some considerable time Twelve Years after Christ's Ascension in and about Judaea and then to betake themselves to the Provinces of the Gentile-World to make known to them the glad tidings of Salvation exactly answerable to the Tradition mentioned by Apollonius Besides the Chronicon Alexandrinum tells us that Peter came not to Rome till the Seventh Year of Claudius Ann. Christi XLIX So little certainty can there be of any matter wherein there is no truth Nay the samo excellent Men before mentioned does not stick elsewhere to profess he wonders at Baronius that he should make Peter come from Rome banished thence by Claudius his Edict to the Synod at Jerusalem the same Year viz. Ann. Claudii 9. a thing absolutely inconsistent with that story of the Apostles Acts recorded by S. Luke wherein there is the space of no less than Three Years from the time of that Synod to the Decree of Claudius It being evident what he observes that after the celebration of that Council S. Paul went back to Antioch afterwards into Syria and Cilicia to Preach the Gospel thence into Phrygia Galatia and Mysia from whence he went into Macedonia and first Preached at Philippi then at Thessalonica and Beraea afterwards stay'd some consider time at Athens and last of all went to Corinth where he met with Aquila and Priscilla lately come from Italy banished Rome with the rest of the Jews by the Decree of Claudius all which by an easie and reasonable computation can take up no less than Three Years at least 6. THAT which caused Baronius to split upon so many Rocks was not so much want of seeing them which a Man of his parts and industry could not but in a great measure see as the unhappy necessity of defending those ãâã principles which he had undertaken to maintain For being to make good Peter's five and twenty years presidency over the Church of Rome he was forced to confound times and dislocate stories that he might bring all his ends together What foundation this story of Peter's being five and twenty years Bishop of Rome has in antiquity I find not unless it sprang from
justified upon terms of perfect and intire obedience there is now no other way but this That the promise by the Faith of Christ be given to all them that believe i. e. this Evangelical method of justifying sincere believers Besides the Jewish Oeconomy was deficient in pardoning sin and procuring the grace and favour of God it could only awaken the knowledge of sin not remove the guilt of it It was not possible that the blood of Bulls and Goats should take away sin all the ãâã of the Mosaick Law were no further available for the pardon of sin than merely as they were founded in and had respect to that great sacrifice and expiation which was to be made for the sins of mankind by the death of the Son of God The Priests though they daily ministred and oftentimes offered the same sacrifices yet could they never take away sins No that was reserved for a better and a higher sacrifice even that of our Lord himself who after he had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever sat down on the right hand of God having completed that which the repeated sacrifices of the Law could never effect So that all men being under guilt and no justification where there was no remission the Jewish Oeconomy being in it self unable to pardon was incapable to justifie This S. Paul elsewhere declared in an open Assembly before Jews and Gentiles Be it known unto you men and brethren that through this man Christ Jesus is preached unto you forgiveness of sins And by him all that believe are justified from all things from which ye could not be justified by the Law of Moses 13. FOURTHLY He proves that Justification by the Mosaick Law could not stand with the death of Christ the necessity of whose death and sufferings it did plainly evacuate and take away For if righteousness come by the Law then Christ is dead in vain If the Mosaical performances be still necessary to our Justification then certainly it was to very little purpose and altogether unbecoming the wisdom and goodness of God to send his own Son into the World to do so much for us and to suffer such exquisite pains and tortures Nay he tells them that while they persisted in this fond obstinate opinion all that Christ had done and suffered could be of no advantage to them Stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free and be not again intangled in the yoke of bondage the bondage and servitude of the Mosaick rites Behold ãâã Paul solemnly say unto you That if you be Circumcised Christ shall profit you nothing For I testifie again to every man that is Circumcised that he is a debtor to do the whole Law Christ is become of none effect to you whosoever of you are justified by the Law ye are fallen from grace The summ of which argument is That whoever lay the stress of their Justification upon Circumcision and the observances of the Law do thereby declare themselves to be under an obligation of perfect obedience to all that the Law requires of them and accordingly supersede the vertue and efficacy of Christ's death and disclaim all right and title to the grace and favour of the Gospel For since Christ's death is abundantly sufficient to attain its ends whoever takes in another plainly renounces that and rests upon that of his own chusing By these ways of reasoning 't is evident what the Apostle drives at in all his discourses about this matter More might have been observed had I not thought that these are sufficient to render his design especially to the unprejudiced and impartial obvious and plain enough 14. LASTLY That S. Paul's discourses about Justification and Salvation do immediately refer to the controversie between the Orthodox and Judaizing Christians appears hence that there was no other controversie then on foot but concerning the way of Justification whether it was by the observation of the Law of Moses or only of the Gospel and the Law of Christ. For we must needs suppose that the Apostle wrote with a primary respect to the present state of things and so as they whom he had to deal with might and could not but understand him Which yet would have been impossible for them to have done had he intended them for the controversies which have since been bandied with so much zeal and fierceness and to give countenance to those many nice and subtil propositions those curious and elaborate schemes which some men in these later Ages have drawn of these matters 15. FROM the whole discourse two Consectaries especially plainly follow I. Consect That works of Evangelical obedience are not opposed to Faith in Justification By works of Evangelical obedience I mean such Christian duties as are the fruits not of our own power and strength but God's Spirit done by the assistance of his grace And that these are not opposed to Faith is undeniably evident in that as we observed before Faith as including the new nature and the keeping God's commands is made the usual condition of Justification Nor can it be otherwise when other graces and vertues of the Christian life are made the terms of pardon and acceptance with Heaven and of our title to the merits of Christ's death and the great promise of eternal life Thus Repentance which is not so much a single Act as a complex body of Christian duties Repent and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins and ye shall receive the Holy Ghost Repent and be converted that your sins may be blotted out So Charity and forgiveness of others Forgive if ye have ought against any that your Father also which is in Heaven may forgive you your trespasses For if ye forgive men their trespasses your heavenly Father also will forgive you But if ye forgive not men their trespasses neither will your Father forgive yours Sometimes Evangelical obedience in general God is no respecter of persons but in every Nation he that feareth him and worketh righteousness is accepted with him If we walk in the light as God is in the light we have fellowship one with another and the bloud of Jesus Christ his Son cleanses us from all sin What priviledge then has Faith above other graces in this matter are we justified by Faith We are pardoned and accepted with God upon our repentance charity and other acts of Evangelical obedience Is Faith opposed to the works of the Mosaick Law in Justification so are works of Evangelical obedience Circumcision is nothing and uncircumcision is nothing but the keeping of the Commandments of God Does Faith give glory to God and set the crown upon his head Works of Evangelical obedience are equally the effects of Divine grace both preventing and assisting of us and indeed are not so much our works as his So that the glory of all must needs be intirely resolved into the grace of God nor can any
destroy himself but live and enjoy with him the pleasures of this life The Apostle told him that he should have with him eternal joys if renouncing his execrable idolatries he would heartily entertain Christianity which he had hitherto so successfully preached amongst them That answered the Proconsul is the very reason why I am so earnest with you to sacrifice to the Gods that those whom you have every where seduced may by your example be brought to return back to that ancient Religion which they have forsaken Otherwise I 'le cause you with exquisites tortures to be crucified The Apostle replied That now he saw it was in vain any longer to deal with him a person incapable of sober counsels and hardned in his own blindness and folly that as for himself he might do his worst and if he had one torment greater than another he might heap that upon him The greater constancy he shewed in his sufferings for Christ the more acceptable he should be to his Lord and Master AEgeas could now hold no longer but passed the sentence of death upon him and Nicephorus gives us some more particular account of the Proconsul's displeasure and rage against him which was that amongst others he had converted his wife Maximilla and his brother Stratocles to the Christian Faith having cured them of desperate distempers that had seised upon them 7. THE Proconsul first commanded him to be scourged seven Lictors successively whipping his naked body and seeing his invincible patience and constancy commanded him to be crucified but not to be fastned to the Cross with Nails but Cords that so his death might be more lingring and tedious As he was led to execution to which he went with a chearful and composed mind the people cried out that he was an innocent and good man and unjustly condemned to die Being come within sight of the Cross he saluted it with this kind of address That he had long desired and expected this happy hour that the Cross had been consecrated by the body of Christ hanging on it and adorned with his members as with so many inestimable Jewels that he came joyfull and triumphing to it that it might receive him as a disciple and follower of him who once hung upon it and be the means to carry him safe unto his Master having been the instrument upon which his Master had redeemed him Having prayed and exhorted the people to constancy and perseverance in that Religion which he had delivered to them he was fastned to the Cross whereon he hung two days teaching and instructing the people all the time and when great importunities in the mean while were used to the Proconsul to spare his life he earnestly begged of our Lord that he might at this time depart and seal the truth of his Religion with his bloud God heard his prayer and he immediately expired on the last of November though in what year no certain account can be recovered 8. THERE seems to have been something peculiar in that Cross that was the instrument of his martyrdom commonly affirmed to have been a Cross decussate two pieces of Timber crossing each other in the middle in the form of the letter X hence usually known by the name of S. Andrew's Cross though there want not those who affirm him to have been crucified upon an Olive Tree His body being taken down and embalmed was decently and honourably interred by Maximilla a Lady of great quality and estate and whom Nicephorus I know not upon what ground makes wise to the Proconsul As for that report of Gregory Bishop of Tours that on the Anniversary day of his Martyrdom there was wont to flow from S. Andrew's Tomb a most fragrant and precious oyl which according to its quantity denoted the scarceness or plenty of the following year and that the sick being anointed with this oyl were restored to their former health I leave to the Readers discretion to believe what he please of it For my part if any ground of truth in the story I believe it no more than that it was an exhalation and sweating sorth at some times of those rich costly perfumes and ointments wherewith his Body was embalmed after his crucisixion Though I must confess this conjecture to be impossible if it be true what my Author adds that some years the oyl burst out in such plenty that the stream arose to the middle of the Church His Body was afterwards by Constantine the Great solemnly removed to Constantinople and buried in the great Church which he had built to the honour of the Apostles Which being taken down some hundred years after by Justinian the Emperor in order to its reparation the Body was found in a wooden-Coffin and again reposed in its proper place 9. I SHALL conclude the History of this Apostle with that Encomiastick Character which one of the Ancients gives of him S. Andrew was the first-born of the Apostolick Quire the main and prime pillar of the Church a rock before the rock ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã the foundation of that foundation the first-fruits of the beginning a caller of others before he was called himself he preached that Gospel that was not yet believed or entertained revealed and made known that life to his brother which he had not yet perfectly learn'd himself So great treasures did that one question bring him Master where dwellest thou which he soon perceived by the answer given him and which he deeply pondered in his mind come and see How art thou become a Prophet whence thus Divinely skilful what is it that thou thus soundest in Peter's ears We have found him c. why dost thou attempt to compass him whom thou canst not comprehend how can he be found who is Omnipresent But he knew well what he said We have found him whom Adam lost whom Eve injured whom the clouds of sin have hidden from us and whom our transgressions had hitherto made a stranger to us c. So that of all our Lord's Apostles S. Andrew had thus far the honour to be the first Preacher of the Gospel The End of S. Andrew's Life THE LIFE OF S. JAMES the Great St. Iames Major He being the Son of Zebedee was at the Command of Herod beheaded at Hierusalem Ad. 122 St. James the Great his Martyrdom Act. 12. 1 2. About that time Herod the King streched forth his hands to vex certain of the Church And he killed James the brother of John with y e sword S. James why surnamed the Great His Country and kindred His alliance to Christ. His Trade and way of Life Our Lord brought up to a Manual Trade The quick reparteé of a Christian Schoolmaster to Libanius His being called to be a Disciple and great readiness to follow Christ. His election to the Apostolick Office and peculiar favours from Christ. Why our Lord chose some few of the Apostles to be witnesses of the more private passages of his
Epistles to the seven Churches of Asia all planted or at least cultivated by him the doctrine in it suitable to the Apostolick spirit and temper evidently bearing witness in this case That which seems to have given ground to doubt concerning both its Author and authority was its being long before it was usually joyned with the other Books of the holy Canon for containing in it some passages directly levell'd at Rome the Seat of the Roman Empire others which might be thought to symbolize with some Jewish dreams and ãâã it might possibly seem fit to the prudence of those Times for a while to suppress it Nor is the conjecture of a learned Man to be despised who thinks that it might be intrusted in the keeping of John the Presbyter Scholar to our Apostle whence probably the report might arise that he who was only the Keeper was the Author of it 15. HIS Gospel succeeds written say some in Patmos and published at Ephesus but as Irenaeus and others more truly written by him after his return to Ephesus composed at the earnest intreaty and sollicitation of the Asian Bishops and Embassadors from several Churches in order whereunto he first caused them to proclaim a general Fast to seek the blessing of Heaven on so great and solemn an undertaking which being done he set about it And if we may believe the report of Gregory Bishop of Tours he tells us that upon a Hill near Ephesus there was a Proseucha or uncovered Oratory whither our Apostle used often to retire for Prayer and Contemplation and where he obtained of God that it might not Rain in that Place till he had finished his Gospel Nay he adds that even in his time no shower or storm ever came upon it Two causes especially contributed to the writing of it the one that he might obviate the early heresies of those times especially of Ebion Cerinthus and the rest of that crew who began openly to deny Christ's Divinity and that he had any existence before his Incarnation the reason why our Evangelist is so express and copious in that subject The other was that he might supply those passages of the Evangelical History which the rest of the Sacred Writers had omitted Collecting therefore the other three Evangelists he first set to his Seal ratifying the truth of them with his approbation and consent and then added his own Gospel to the rest principally insisting upon the Acts of Christ from the first commencing of his Ministery to the Death of John the Baptist wherein the others are most defective giving ãâã any account of the first Year of our Saviour's Ministry which therefore he made up in very large and particular Narrations He largely records as Nazianzen observes our Saviour's discourses but takes little notice of his Miracles probably because so fully and particularly related by the rest The subject of his writing is very sublime and mysterious mainly designing to prove Christ's Divinity eternal pre-existence creating of the World c. Upon which account Theodoret stiles his Gospel ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã a Theology which humane understandings can never fully penetrate and find out Thence generally by the Ancients he is resembled to an Eagle soaring aloft within the Clouds whither the weak eye of Man was unable to follow him hence peculiarly honoured with the title of The Divine as if due to none but him at least to him in a more eminent and extraordinary manner Nay the very Gentile-Philosophers themselves could not but admire his Writings Witness Amelius the famous Platonist and Regent of Porphyries School at Alexandria who quoting a passage out of the beginning of S. John's Gospel sware by Jupiter that this Barbarian so the proud Greeks counted and called all that differed from them had hit upon the right notion when he affirmed that the Word that made all things was in the beginning and in place of prime dignity and authority with God and was that God that created all things in whom every thing that was made had according to its nature its life and being that he was incarnate and clothed with a body wherein he manifested the glory and magnificence of his nature that after his death he returned to the repossession of Divinity and became the same God which he was before his assuming a body and taking the humane nature and flesh upon him I have no more to observe but that his Gospel was afterwards translated into Hebrew and kept by the Jews ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã among their secret Archives and Records in their Treasury at Tiberias where a Copy of it was found by one Joseph a Jew afterwards converted and whom ãâã the Great advanced to the honour of a Count of the Empire who breaking open the Treasury though he missed of mony found ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã Books beyond all Treasure S. Matthew and S. John's Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles in Hebrew the reading whereof greatly contributed towards his Conversion 16. BESIDES these our Apostle wrote three Epistles the first whereof is Catholick calculated for all times and places containing most excellent rules for the conduct of the Christian life pressing to ãâã and purity of manners and not to rest in a naked and empty profession of Religion not to be led away with the crafty insinuations of Seducers antidoting Men against the poyson of the Gnostick-principles and practices to whom it is not to be doubted but that the Apostle had a more particular respect in this Epistle According to his wonted modesty he conceals his name it being of more concernment with ãâã Men what it is that is said than who it is that says it And this Epistle Eusebius tells us was universally received and never questioned by any anciently as appears ãâã S. Augustin inscribed to the Parthians though for what reason I am yet to learn unless as we hinted before it was because he himself had heretofore Preached in those Parts of the World The other two Epistles are but short and directed to particular Persons the one a Lady of honourable Quality the other the charitable and hospitable Gaius so kind a friend so courteous an entertainer of all indigent Christians These Epistles indeed were not of old admitted into the Canon nor are owned by the Church in Syria at this Day ascribed by many to the younger John Disciple to our Apostle But there is no just cause to question who was their Father seeing both the Doctrine phrase and design of them do sufficiently challenge our Apostle for their Author These are all the Books wherein it pleased the Holy Spirit to make use of S. John for its Pen man and Secretary in the composure whereof though his stile and character be not florid and elegant yet is it grave and simple short and perspicuous Dionysius of Alexandria tells us that in his Gospel and first Epistle his phrase is more neat and
Evangelists about his name the one stiling him by his proper name the other by his relative and paternal title To all this if necessary I might add the consent of Learned men who have given in their suffrages in this matter that it is but the same person under several names But hints of this may suffice These arguments I confess are not so forcible and convictive as to command assent but with all their circumstances considered are suffioient to incline and sway any mans belief The great and indeed only reason brought against it is what S. Augustine objected of old that it is not probable that our Lord would chuse Nathanael a Doctor of the Law to be one of his Apostles as designing to confound the wisdom of the World by the preaching of the Ideot and the unlearned But this is no reason to him that considers that this objection equally lies against S. Philip for whose skill in the Law and Prophets there is as much evidence in the History of the Gospel as for Nathanael's and much stronglier against S. Paul than whom besides his abilities in all humane Learning there were few greater Masters in the Jewish Law 3. THIS difficulty being cleared we proceed to a more particular account of our Apostle By some he is thought to have been a Syrian of a noble extract and to have derived his pedigree from the Ptolomies of Egypt upon no other ground I believe than the more analogy and sound of the name 'T is plain that he as the rest of the Apostles was a Galilean and of Nathanael we know it is particularly said that he was of Gana in Galilee The Scripture takes no notice of his Trade or way of life though some circumstances might seem to intimate that he was a Fisherman which Theoderet affirms of the Apostles in general and another particularly reports of our Apostle At his first coming to Christ supposing him still the same with Nathanael he was conducted by Philip who told him that now they had found the long-look'd for Messiah so oft foretold by Moses and the Prophets Jesus of Nazareth the son of Joseph And when he objected that the Messiah could not be born at Nazareth Philip bids him come and satisfie himself At his first approach our Lord entertains him with this honourable character that he was an Israelite indeed a man of true simplicity and integrity as indeed his simplicity particularly appears in this that when told of Jesus he did not object against the meanness of his Original the low condition of his Parents the narrowness of their fortunes but only against the place of his birth which could not be Nazareth the Prophets having peremptorily foretold that the Messiah should be born at Bethlehem By this therefore he appeared to be a true Israelite one that waited for redemption in Israel which from the date of the Scripture-predictions he was assured did now draw nigh Surprized he was at our Lord's salutation wondring how he should know him so well at first sight whose face he had never seen before But he was answered that he had seen him while he was yet under the Fig-tree before Philip called him Convinc'd with this instance of our Lord's Divinity he presently made this confession That now he was sure that Jesus was the promised Messiah the Son of God whom he had appointed to be the King and Governour of his Church Our Saviour told him that if upon this inducement he could believe him to be the Messiah he should have far greater arguments to confirm his faith yea that ere long he should behold the Heavens opened to receive him thither and the Angels visibly appearing to wait and attend upon him 4. CONCERNING our Apostles travels up and down the World to propagate the Christian Faith we shall present the Reader with a brief account though we cannot warrant the exact order of them That he went as far as India is owned by all which surely is meant of the hither India or the part of it lying next to Asia Socrates tells us 't was the India bordering upon AEthiopia meaning no doubt the Asian AEthiopia whereof we shall speak in the life of S. Thomas Sophronius calls it the Fortunate India and tells us that here he left behind him S. Matthew's Gospel whereof Ensebius gives a more particular relation That when Pantaenus a man famous for his skill in Philosophy and especially the Institutions of the Stoicks but much more for his hearty affection to Christianity in a devout and zealous imitation of the Apostles was inflamed with a desire to propagate the Christian Religion unto the Eastern Countries he came as far as India it self Here amongst some that yet retained the knowledge of Christ he found S. Matthew's Gospel written in Hebrew left here as the tradition was by S. Bartholomew one of the twelve Apostles when he preached the Gospel to these Nations 5. AFTER his labours in these parts of the World he returned to the more Western and Northern parts of Asia At Hieropolis in Phrygia we find him in company with S. Philip instructing that place in the principles of Christianity and convincing them of the folly of their blind Idolatries Here by the enraged Magistrates he was at the same time with Philip designed for Martyrdom in order whereunto he was fastned upon the Cross with an intent to dispatch him but upon a sudden conviction that the Divine Justice would revenge their death he was taken down again and dismissed Hence probably he went into Lycaonia the people whereof Chrysostom assures us he instructed and trained up in the Christian discipline His last remove was to Albanople in Armenia the Great the same no doubt which Nicephorus calls Urbanople a City of Cilicia a place miserably over-grown with Idolatry from which while he sought to reclaim the people he was by the Governour of the place commanded to be crucified which he chearfully underwent comforting and confirming the Convert Gentiles to the last minute of his life Some add that he was crucified with his head downwards others that he was flead and his skin first taken off which might consist well enough with his Crucifixion excoriation being a punishment in use not only in Egypt but amongst the Persians next neighbours to these Armenians as Ammianus Marcellinus assures us and Plutarch records a particular instance of Mesabates the Persian Eunuch first flead alive and then crucified from whom they might easily borrow this piece of barbarous and inhumane cruelty As for the several stages to which his Body removed after his death first to Daras a City in the borders of Persia then to Liparis one of the AEolian Islands thence to Beneventum in Italy and last of all to Rome they that are fond of those things and have better leisure may enquire Hereticks persecuted his memory after his death no less than Heathens did his person while
as now it is that which we call natural death and supposing that God should preserve the Body for ever or restore it at the day of Judgment to its full substance and perfect organs yet the man would be dead for ever if the Soul for ever should continue separate from the Body So that the other life that is the state of Resurrection is a re-uniting Soul and Body And although in a Philosophical sence the Resurrection is of the Body that is a restitution of our flesh and bloud and bones and is called Resurrection as the entrance into the state of Resurrection may have the denomination of the whole yet in the sence of Scripture the Resurrection is the restitution of our life the renovation of the whole man the state of Re-union and untill that be the man is not but he is dead and onely his essential parts are deposited and laid up in trust and therefore whatsoever the Soul does or perceives in its incomplete condition is but to it as embalming and honourable funerals to the Body and a safe monument to preserve it in order to a living again and the felicities of the intervall are wholly in order to the next life And therefore if there were to be no Resurrection as these intermedial joys should not be at all so as they are they are but relative and incomplete and therefore all our hopes all our felicities depend upon the Resurrection without it we should never be persons men or women and then the state of Separation could be nothing but a phantasm trees ever in blossome never bearing fruit corn for ever in the blade eggs always in the shell a hope eternal never to pass into fruition that is for ever to be deluded for ever to be miserable And therefore it was an elegant expression of S. Paul Our life is hid with Christ in God that is our life is passed into custody the dust of our body is numbred and the Spirit is refreshed visited and preserved in celestial mansions but it is not properly called a Life for all this while the man is dead and shall then live when Christ produces this hidden life at the great day of restitution But our faith of all this Article is well wrapt up in the words of S. John Beloved now we are the Sons of God and it doth not yet appear what we shall be but we know that when he shall appear we shall be like him for we shall see him as he is The middle state is not it which Scripture hath propounded to our Faith or to our Hope the reward is then when Christ shall appear but in the mean time the Soul can converse with God and with Angels just as the holy Prophets did in their Dreams in which they received great degrees of favour and revelation But this is not to be reckoned any more than an entrance or a waiting for the state of our Felicity And since the glories of Heaven is the great fruit of Election we may consider that the Body is not predestinate nor the Soul alone but the whole Man and until the parts embrace again in an essential complexion it cannot be expected either of them should receive the portion of the predestinate But the article and the event of future things is rarely set in order by Saint Paul But ye are come into the mount Sion and to the City of the living God the heavenly Jerusalem and to an innumerable company of Angels To the general assembly and Church of the first born which are written in heaven and to God the Judge of all and then follows after this general assembly after the Judge of all appears to the spirits of just men made perfect that is re-united to their bodies and entring into glory The beginning of the contrary Opinion brought some new practices and appendent perswasions into the Church or at least promoted them much For those Doctors who receding from the Primitive belief of this Article taught that the glories of Heaven are fully communicated to the Souls before the day of Judgment did also upon that stock teach the Invocation of Saints whom they believed to be received into glory and insensibly also brought in the opinion of Purgatory that the less perfect Souls might be glorified in the time that they assigned them But the safer opinion and more agreeable to Piety is that which I have now described from Scripture and the purest Ages of the Church 16. When Jesus appeared to the Apostles he gave them his Peace for a Benediction and when he departed he left them Peace for a Legacy and gave them according to two former promises the power of making Peace and reconciling Souls to God by a ministerial act so conveying his Father's mercy which himself procured by his Passion and actuates by his Intercession and the giving of his Grace that he might comply with our infirmities and minister to our needs by instruments even and proportionate to our selves making our brethren the conduits of his Grace that the excellent effect of the Spirit might not descend upon us as the Law upon Mount Sinai in expresses of greatness and terrour but in earthen vessels and images of infirmity so God manifesting his power in the smalness of the instrument and descending to our needs not only in giving the grace of Pardon but also in the manner of its ministration And I meditate upon the greatness of this Mercy by comparing this Grace of God and the blessing of the Judgment and Sentence we receive at the hand of the Church with the Judgment which God makes at the hour of death upon them who have despised this mercy and neglected all the other parts of their duty The one is a Judgment of mercy the other of vengeance In the one the Devil is the Accuser and Heaven and earth bear witness in the other the penitent sinner accuses himself In that the sinner gets a pardon in the other he finds no remedy In that all his good deeds are remembred and returned and his sins are blotted out in the other all his evil deeds are represented with horrour and a sting and remain for ever In the first the sinner changes his state for a state of Grace and only smarts in some temporal austerities and acts of exteriour mortification in the second his temporal estate is changed to an eternity of pain In the first the sinner suffers the shame of one man or one society which is sweetned by consolation and homilies of mercy and health in the latter all his sins are laid open before all the world and himself confounded in eternal amazement and confusions In the judgment of the Church the sinner is honoured by all for returning to the bosome of his Mother and the embraces of his heavenly Father in the judgment of vengeance he is laughed at by God and mocked by accursed spirits and perishes without pity In this he is prayed for by none
it self but in order to certain ends 272. 1. Why Jesus fasted Forty Dayes 128. 9. Vide Disc. of Fasting per tot Fear hallowed by Christ's fear 384. 3. It is the first of Graces 171. 5. Farewell-Sermon made by Jesus 350. 19. Flaminius condemned to Death for wanton Cruelty 168. 5. Fornication against the Law of God in all Ages 249. 37. Permitted to Strangers among the Jews ibid. Forgiving Injuries a Christian duty 252. G. GAdara built by Pompey 184. 15. Full of Sepulchres and Witches ibid. Gabriel ministers to the exaltation of his inferiours 3. 4. Galilaeans why slain by Pilate and what they were 326. 27. Garden why chosen for the place of the Agony 364. 383. 2. Gentleness a duty of Christians 323. 16. Giacchetus of Geneva his Death in the midst of his Lust 338. 5. God his Gifts effects of Predestination 156. 5. Those Gifts how to be prayed for 261 264. Consideration of his Presence a good remedy against Temptations 112. 29. The Vision of God preserveth the Blessed Souls from Sin ibid. 30. GOD's method in bringing us to him and treating us after 32. 4. He gives his Servants more than they look for 155. He gives more Grace to them that use the first well ibid. 32. 6. He rejoyces in his own works of mercy 187. 1. And in ours 227. 13. He requires not always the greatest degree of Vertue 234. 11. He is never wanting in necessaries to us 32. He changeth his purpose of the death of a Man for several reasons 308. 24. He works his ends by unlikely means 427. GOD certainly supports those in their necessities who are doing his work 68. 3. Gold and Frankincense and Myrrhe what signification they had in the gift of the Magi 34. 11. 28. 12. Grace it helps our Faculties but creates no new ones 31. 2. It works severally at several times 32. Being refused it hardens our Hearts 387. 369. Government supported by Christianity 68. 7. Gospel and the Law how they differ 193. 3. 296. 232. 3. H. HAsty persons and actions always unreasonable sometimes criminal 15. 1. Herod mock'd by the Magi 65. 1. 84. 1. His stratagem to surprize all the male children 66. The cause why he slew Zecharias 66. 5. Caesar's saying concerning him 66. 3. He felt the Divine vengeance 67. 6. His Malice near his Death defeated 67. 7. He pretended Religion to his secret design 68. 1. He slew 14000 Infants 66. 4. Fear of the Child Jesus proceeded from his mistake 70. 7. The Tetrarch overthrown by the King of Arabia 169. 6. His reception of Christ 352. 26. Is careless of inquiring after Christ 393. 9. Herodians what they were 290. 3. Herodias Daughter beheaded with Ice 169. 6. She and Herod banished ibid. Heron the Monk abused with an illusion 61. 23. Herminigilda refused to communicate with an Arian Bishop 188. 2. Hereticks served their ends of Heresie upon Women upon whom also they served their Lust 189. 5. Heroical actions of Repentance at our Death-bed more prevalent than any other hope then left 217. 49. Health promised and consigned in the Gospel by Miracles and by an ordinary Ministery 304. 15 16. There were two High-Priests the one President of the Rites of the Temple the other of the great Council 351. 23. Honour done to us to be returned to God 9. 6. It is due to what the Supreme power separates from common usages 172. 3. How it is to be estimated 253. 5. Honourable and Sacred all one 173. S. Hilarion a great Faster 273. 2. S. Hierom's advice concerning Fasting ibid. Holy Ghost descending upon Jesus at his Baptism 94. 3. Holiness of Religious places 172. It is a great preservative of Life 302. 13. Hope of Salvation encreases according to degrees of holy walking 315. Necessary in our Prayers 267. House of John Mark consecrated into a Church 174. 5. Hosanna what it signifies 347. 6. Onely sung to God ibid. Humane Nature by the Incarnation exalted above the Angels 3. Humane infirmity to be pitied not to be upbraided 384. Humility of Jesus 14. The surest way to Heaven 37. Of the Baptist 68. It makes good men more honourable 186. Its excellencies 302. 11 12. 367. Its Properties and Acts 364. seq Humility of the young Mar. of Castilion 367. 9. Hunger after Righteousness 373. 11. Hunger and Thirst spiritual how they differ ibid. Its Acts and Reward ibid. Husbands converted by their Wives 189. 3. J. JAirus begs help of Jesus for his Daughter 185. 20. His Daughter restored to Life 186. 21. Jesus discoursing wonderfully with the Doctors 75. 1. He wrought in the Carpenter's Trade before and after Joseph's death 76. 6. Baptized by John 93. 1. Attended by good Angels in the Wilderness 95. Was angry when the Devil tempted him to dishonour God 95. 8. 101. 15. He slept in a Storm 184. 14. Preached the first Year in peace 186. 22. Appeared several times after his Resurrection 419. He was known in the breaking of Bread ibid. He had but two days of Triumph all his Life 359. 5. And they both allayed with Sorrow ibid. 360. He was used inhospitably at Jerusalem ibid. Infinitely loving 360. He received all his Disciples with a Kiss 386. 8. Civil to his Enemies and beneficial to his Friends ibid. He was stripp'd naked and why 394. 10. He came eating and drinking and why 291. He invites all to him ibid. The Pharisees report him mad 291. He refused to be made a King 319. 1. Transfigured 322. 13. He shamed the Accusers of the Adulteress 324. 20. He teaches his Disciples to pray the second time 326. 26. Refuses to judge a Title of Land ibid. Blesseth ãâã 327. 30. The Price of him 349. 14. All his great Actions in his Life had a mixture of Divinity and Humanity 387. 9. He was not compelled to bear the transverse Beam of the Cross 354. 30. He wept for Lazarus 345. And over Jerusalem 347. 7. Answered the Pharisees concerning Tribute to Caesar 347. 10. Prayed against the bitter Cup 450. 20. Smitten upon the Face 351. Accused of Blasphemy before the High-Priest ibid. Of Treason bëfore Pilate 352. 26. Nailed with Four Nails 354. 31. Provided for his Mother after his Death 355. 33. Recited the two and twentieth Psalm or part of it upon the Cross ibid. He felt the first Recompence of his Sorrows in the state of Separation 426. At the Resurrection he did redintegrate all his Body but the five Wounds ibid. He arose with a glorified Body 427. But veil'd with a Cloud of common Appearance ibid. Jewish Women hoped to be the Mother of the Messias 2. 5. Jews looked to be justified by external Innocence 243. 26. They were scrupulous in Rites careless of Moral Duties 392. 7. Could not put any Man to Death at Easter 352. 26. They eat not till the Solemnities of their Festival is over 272. 1. Jezabel pretended Religion to her design of Murther and Theft 68. 1. Illusions come often in likeness
of Visions 61. 23. Sins of Infirmity explicated 105. 10. seq Intentions though good excuse not evil Actions 107. 13. Incontinence destroys the Spirit of Government 189. 5. Instruments weak and unlikely used by GOD to great purposes 197. Incarnation of Jesus instrumental to God's Glory and our Peace 31. Inevitable Infirmities consistent with a state of Grace 207. Injuries great and little to be forgiven 252. Intention of Spirit how necessary in our Prayers 267. 17. Images their Lawfulness or unlawfulness considered 237. 16. Admitted into the Church with difficulty and by degrees 237. 16. Images of Jupiter and Diana Cyndias did ridiculous and weak Miracles 279. 7. Imprisonment sanctified by the binding of Jesus 387. Ingratitude of Judas 360. 9. John the Baptist his Life and Death 66. 5. 77. 78. and 79. 93. 292. 18. His Baptism 93. Whether the form of it were in the Name of Christ to come ibid. Joyes spiritual increase by communication 156. 3. Joyes of Eternity recompense all our Sorrowes in every instant of their fruition 426. Joyes sudden and violent are to be allayed by reflexion on the vilest of our Sins 196. 7. John Patriarch of Alexandria appeased the anger of Patricius 245. 30. Innocence is security against evil Actions 10. Justice of GOD in punishing Jesus cleared 415. 7 8. Several degrees of Justification answerable to several degrees of Faith 162. 7. Judgment of Life and Death is to be only by the supreme Power or his Deputy 253. A Jew condemned of Idolatry for throwing stones though in detestation at the Idol of Mercury 354. 32. Judging our Brother how far prohibited 260. 5. Judas's name written in Heaven and blotted ãâã again 313. 1. His manner of death 352. 25. Ingrateful 360. 8. He valued the Ointment at the same rate he sold his Lord 361. 11. He enjoyed his Money not Ten Hours 386. 7. Julian desired but could not be a Magician 361. 10. Judgment of GOD upon Sinners their causes and manner 336. 1. seq Judgments National 340. 8. Not easily understood by Men 339. 5. Joseph of Arimath embalmed the Body of Jesus 356. 38. Whether Judas received the Holy Sacrament 375. 13. K. KIng and Church have the same Friends and Enemies 336. Kingdom of Christ not of this World 352. What it is 392. 8. Kingdom of God what 263. 5. Kingdom of Grace and Glory ibid. A King came to Jesus in behalf of his Son 182. 6. Kings specially to be prayed for 365. 13. King's Enemies how to be prayed against ibid. To Kill the assaulting Person in what cases lawful 253. 3. L. LAws evil make a National Sin 341. 10. Law of Nature Vide Pref. per tot 20. 7. Laws of Man to be obeyed but not always to be thought most reasonable 42. 7. 48. 21. Laws of God and Man in respect of the greatness of the subject matter compared 46. 49. Laws of Men bind not to Death or an insufferable Calamity rather than not to break them 48. 21. Laws of Superiours not to be too freely disputed by Subjects 49. 23. Laws of order to be observed even when the first reason ceases 52. 1. It is not safe to do all that is lawful 45. 15 16. Law and Gospel how differ 194. 3. 232. 3. 295. S. Paul often by a Fiction of Person speaks of himself not as in the state of Regeneration under the Gospel but as under the imperfections of the Law 104. 8. Law of Nature perfected by Christianity Pref. Law of Moses a Law of Works how 232. Law of Jesus a Law of the Spirit and not of Works in what sence ibid. Law-Suits to be managed charitably 256. When lawful to be undertaken ibid. Lazarus restored to Life 345. 2. Leonigildus kill'd his Daughter for not communicating with the Arians 188. 2. Leven of Herod what 321. 8. Lepers cured 324. 18. Sent to the Priest ibid. Unthankful ibid. The Levantine Churches afflicted the cause uncertain 338. 4. S. Laurence his Gridiron less hot than his Love 358. 2. 7. ãâã 17. Life of Man cut off for Sin 303. 305. It hath several periods ibid. 274. Good life necessary to make our Prayers acceptable 266. 13. A comparison between a Life in Solitude and in Society 80. 5. Lord's Supper the greatest of Christian Rites 369. It manifests God's Power 371. 4. His Wisdome and his Charity 371. 5 6. It is a Sacrament of Union 371. 5 6. A Sacrament and a Sacrifice in what sence 372. 7. As it is an act of the Ecclesiastical Officer of what efficacy 373. 8. It is expressed in mysterious words when the value is recited 373. Not to be administred to vicious persons 374. 12. Whether persons vicious under suspicion only are to be deprived of it 376. 13. How to be received 377. 15. What deportment to be used after it 378. 17. To be received by dying Persons 407. 23. Of what benefit it is to them ibid. Love and Obedience Duties of the first Commandment 234. 8. Love and Obedience reconciled 427. 9. Love of God its extension 234. 9. It s intension ibid. n. 11. Love the fulfilling of the Law explicated 233. 5. It consists in latitude 236. 13. It must exclude all affection to sin ibid. 14. Signs of true love to God 236. 14. Love to God with all our hearts possible and in what sence ibid. Love of God and love of money compared 361. 11. Lord's Day by what authority to be observed 244. 24. And how ibid. Lucian's Cynick an Hypocrite 366. 7. Likeness to God being desired at first ruined us now restores us 364. 3. Lying in that degree is criminal as it is injurious 250. 40. M. MArriage honoured by Christ's presence and the first Miracle 154. Hallowed to a Mystery 158. 8. Marriage-breakers are more criminal now than under Moses's Law 158. The smaller undecencies must be prevented or deprecated Of Martyrdom 229. 18. Magi at the sight of Christ's Poverty renounce the World and retire into Philosophy 28. 13. Mary a Virgin alwayes 14. 2. An excellent Personage 2 3. 8. She conceived Jesus without Sin and brought him forth without Pain 13. Her joy at the Prophecies concerning her Son attempered with Predictions of his Passion 30. 4. Full of Fears when she lost Jesus 73. 1. She went to the Temple to pray and there found him ibid. Full of Piety in Her countenance and deportment 113. 32. She converted many to thoughts of Chastity by her countenance and aspect ibid. Mary Magdalen's Story 377. 9. 360. 5. 391. 9. 346. 5. 349. 13. Mary's Choice preferred 326. 26. Mark for sook Jesus upon a Scandal taken but was reduced by S. Peter 320. 3. Malchus an Idumaean Slave smote Jesus on the Face 389. 1. Meditation described 54. It turns the understanding into spirit 55. Its Parts Actions manner of Exercise Fruits and Effects Disc. 3. per tot 54. Men ought not to run into the Ministery till they are called 99. 3.