material and circumstantiate actions of Piety For these have great powers and influences even in Nature to restore health and preserve our lives Witness the sweet sleeps of temperate persons and their constant appetite which Timotheus the son of Conon observed when he dieted in Plato's Academy with severe and moderated diet They that sup with Plato are well the next day Witness the symmetry of passions in meek men their freedome from the violence of inraged and passionate indispositions the admirable harmony and sweetness of content which dwells in the retirements of a holy Conscience to which if we add those joys which they only understand truly who feel them inwardly the joys of the Holy Ghost the content and joys which are attending upon the lives of holy persons are most likely to make them long and healthful For now we live saith S. Paul if ye stand fast in the Lord. It would prolong S. Paul's life to see his ghostly children persevere in holiness and if we understood the joys of it it would do much greater advantage to our selves But if we consider a spiritual life abstractedly and in it self Piety produces our life not by a natural efficiency but by Divine benediction God gives a healthy and a long life as a reward and blessing to crown our Piety even before the sons of men For such as be blessed of him shall inherit the Earth but they that be cursed of him shall be cut off So that this whole matter is principally to be referred to the act of God either by ways of nature or by instruments of special providence rewarding Piety with a long life And we shall more fully apprehend this if upon the grounds of Scripture Reason and Experience we weigh the contrary Wickedness is the way to shorten our days 19. Sin brought Death in first and yet Man lived almost a thousand years But he sinned more and then Death came nearer to him for when all the World was first drowned in wickedness and then in water God cut him shorter by one half and five hundred years was his ordinary period And Man sinned still and had strange imaginations and built towers in the air and then about Peleg's time God cut him shorter by one half yet two hundred and odd years was his determination And yet the generations of the World returned not unanimously to God and God cut him off another half yet and reduced him to one hundred and twenty years And by Moses's time one half of the final remanent portion was pared away reducing him to threescore years and ten so that unless it be by special dispensation men live not beyond that term or thereabout But if God had gone on still in the same method and shortned our days as we multiplied our sins we should have been but as an Ephemeron Man should have lived the life of a Fly or a Gourd the morning should have seen his birth his life have been the term of a day and the evening must have provided him of a shroud But God seeing Man's thoughts were onely evil continually he was resolved no longer so to strive with him nor destroy the kinde but punish individuals onely and single persons and if they sinned or if they did obey regularly their life should be proportionable This God set down for his rule Evil shall 〈◊〉 the wicked person and He that keepeth the Commandments keepeth his own Soul but he that despiseth his own ways shall die 20. But that we may speak more exactly in this Probleme we must observe that in Scripture three general causes of natural death are assigned Nature Providence and Chance By these three I onely mean the several manners of Divine influence and operation For God only predetermines and what is changed in the following events by Divine permission to this God and Man in their several manners do cooperate The saying of David concerning Saul with admirable Philosophy describes the three ways of ending Man's life David said furthermore As the LORD liveth the LORD shall smite him or his day shall come to die or he shall descend into battel and perish The first is special Providence The second means the term of Nature The third is that which in our want of words we call Chance or Accident but is in effect nothing else but another manner of the Divine Providence That in all these Sin does interrupt and retrench our lives is the undertaking of the following periods 21. First In Nature Sin is a cause of dyscrasies and distempers making our bodies healthless and our days few For although God hath prefixed a period to Nature by an universal and antecedent determination and that naturally every man that lives temperately and by no supervening accident is interrupted shall arrive thither yet because the greatest part of our lives is governed by will and understanding and there are temptations to Intemperance and to violations of our health the period of Nature is so distinct a thing from the period of our person that few men attain to that which God had fixed by his first law and 〈◊〉 purpose but end their days with folly and in a period which God appointed 〈◊〉 with anger and a determination secondary consequent and accidental And therefore says David Health is far from the 〈◊〉 for they regard not thy statutes And to this purpose is that saying of Abenezra He that is united to God the Fountain of Life his Soul being improved by Grace communicates to the Body an establishment of its radical moisture and natural heat to make it more healthful that so it may be more instrumental to the spiritual operations and productions of the Soul and it self be preserved in perfect constitution Now how this blessing is contradicted by the impious life of a wicked person is easie to be understood if we consider that from drunken Surfeits come Dissolution of members Head-achs Apoplexies dangerous Falls Fracture of bones Drenchings and dilution of the brain Inslammation of the liver Crudities of the stomach and thousands more which Solomen sums up in general terms Who hath woe who hath sorrow who hath redness of eyes they that tarry long at the 〈◊〉 I shall not need to instance in the sad and uncleanly consequents of Lusts the wounds and accidental deaths which are occasioned by Jealousies by Vanity by Peevishness vain Reputation and Animosities by Melancholy and the despair of evil Consciences and yet these are abundant argument that when God so permits a man to run his course of Nature that himself does not intervene by an extraordinary 〈◊〉 or any special acts of providence but only gives his ordinary assistence to natural causes a very great part of men make their natural period shorter and by sin make their days miserable and few 22. Secondly Oftentimes Providence intervenes and makes the way shorter God for the iniquity of man not suffering Nature to take her course but stopping
said Tacitus out of Plato whose words are 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 It is naturally certain that the Cruelty of Tyrants torments themselves and is a hook in their nostrils and a scourge to their spirit and the pungency of forbidden Lust is truly a thorn in the flesh full of anguish and secret vexation Quid demens manifesta negas En pectus inustae Deformant maculae vitiisque inolevit imago said Claudian of Rusinus And it is certain to us and verified by the experience and observation of all wise Nations though not naturally demonstrable that this secret punishment is sharpned and promoted in degrees by the hand of Heaven the finger of the same hand that writ the Law in our Understandings 17. But the prevarications of the natural Law have also their portion of a special punishment besides the scourge of an unquiet spirit The man that disturbs his neighbour's rest meets with disturbances himself and since I have naturally no more power over my neighbour than he hath over me unless he descended naturally from me he hath an equal priviledge to defend himself and to secure his quiet by disturbing the order of my happy living as I do his And this equal permission is certainly so great a sanction and signature of the law of Justice that in the just proportion of my receding from the reasonable prosecution of my End in the same proportion and degree my own Infelicity is become certain and this in several degrees up to the loss of all that is of Life it self for where no farther duration or differing state is known there Death is ordinarily esteemed the greatest infelicity where something beyond it is known there also it is known that such prevarication makes that farther duration to be unhappy So that an affront is naturally punished by an affront the loss of a tooth with the loss of a tooth of an eye with an eye the violent taking away of another man's goods by the losing my own For I am liable to as great an evil as I infer and naturally he is not unjust that inflicts it And he that is drunk is a fool or a mad-man for the time and that is his punishment and declares the law and the sin and so in proportions to the transgressions of sobriety But when the first of the natural laws is violated that is God is disobeyed or dishonoured or when the greatest of natural evils is done to our Neighbour then Death became the penalty to the first in the first period of the World to the second at the restitution of the World that is at the beginning of the second period He that did attempt to kill from the beginning of Ages might have been resisted and killed if the assaulted could not else be safe but he that killed actually as Cain did could not be killed himself till the Law was made in Noah's time because there was no person living that had equal power on him and had been naturally injured while the thing was doing the assailant and the assailed had equal power but when it was done and one was killed he that had the power or right of killing his murtherer is now dead and his power is extinguished with the man But after the Floud the power was put into the hand of some trusted person who was to take the forfeiture And thus I conceive these natural reasons in order to their proper end became Laws and bound fast by the band of annexed and consequent penalties Metum prorsus noxam conscientiae pro foedere haberi said Tacitus And that fully explains my sence 18. And thus Death was brought into the world not by every prevarication of any of the Laws by any instance of unreasonableness 〈◊〉 in proportion to the evil of the action would be the evil of the suffering which in all cases would not arrive at death as every injury every intemperance should not have been capital But some things were made evil by a superinduced prohibition as eating one kinde of fruit some things were evil by inordination the first was morally evil the second was evil naturally Now the first sort brought in death by a prime sanction the second by degrees and variety of accident For every disobedience and transgression of that Law which God made as the instance of our doing him honour and obedience is an integral violation of all the band between him and us it does not grow in degrees according to the instance and subject matter for it is as great a disobedience to eat when he hath forbidden us as to offer to climb to Heaven with an ambitious Tower And therefore it is but reasonable for us to fear and just in him to make us at once suffer Death which is the greatest of natural evils for disobeying him To which Death we may arrive by degrees in doing actions against the reasonableness of Sobriety and Justice but cannot arrive by degrees of Disobedience to God or Irreligion because every such act deserves the worst of things but the other naturally deserves no greater evil than the proportion of their own inordination till God by a superinduced Law hath made them also to become acts of Disobedience as well as Inordination that is morally evil as well as naturally For by the Law saith S. Paul sin became exceeding sinful that is had a new degree of obliquity added to it But this was not at first For therefore saith S. Paul Before or until the Law sin was in the world but sin is not imputed when there is no Law meaning that those sins which were forbidden by Moses's Law were actually in the manners of men and the customs of the world but they were not imputed that is to such personal punishments and consequent evils which afterwards those sins did introduce because those sins which were only evil by inordination and discomposure of the order of man's end of living happily were made unlawful upon no other stock but that God would have man to live happily and therefore gave him Reason to effect that end and if a man became unreasonable and did things contrary to his end it was impossible for him to be happy that is he should be miserable in proportion But in that degree and manner of evil they were imputed and that was sanction enough to raise natural Reason up to the constitution of a Law 19. Thirdly The Law of Nature being thus decreed and made obligatory was a sufficient instrument of making man happy that is in producing the end of his Creation But as Adam had evil discourses and irregular appetites before he fell for they made him fall and as the Angels who had no Original sin yet they chose evil at the first when it was wholly arbitrary in them to do so or otherwise so did Man God made man upright and he sought out many inventions Some men were Ambitious and by incompetent means would make their brethren to be their
favourable And it is considerable that nothing is worse than Death but Damnation or something that partakes of that in some of its worst ingredients such as is a lasting Torment or a daily great misery in some other kind And therefore since no humane Law can bind a man to a worse thing than Death if Obedience brings me to death I cannot be worse when I disobey it and I am not so bad if the penalty of death be not expressed And so for other penalties in their own proportions This Discourse is also to be understood concerning the Laws of Peace not of War not onely because every disobedience in War may be punished with death according as the reason may chance but also because little things may be of great and dangerous consequence But in Peace it is observable that there is no humane positive superinduced Law but by the practice of all the world which because the 〈◊〉 of the Prince is certainly included in it is the surest interpretation it is dispensed withall by ordinary necessities by reason of lesser inconveniences and common accidents thus the not saying of our Office daily is excused by the study of Divinity the publishing the banns of Matrimony by an ordinary incommodity the Fasting-days of the Church by a little sickness or a journey and therefore much rather if my Estate and most of all if my Life be in danger with it and to say that in these cases there is no interpretative permission to omit the particular action is to accuse the Laws and the Law-giver the one of unreasonableness the other of uncharitableness 22. Fourthly These Considerations are upon the execution of the duty but even towards Man our obedience must have a mixture of the Will and choice like as our injunction of obedience to the Divine Command With good will doing service saith the Apostle for it is impossible to secure the duty of inferiours but by conscience and good will unless provision could be made against all their secret arts and concealments and escapings which as no providence can foresee so no diligence can cure It is but an eye-service whatsoever is compelled and involuntary nothing rules a man in private but God and his own desires and they give Laws in a Wilderness and accuse in a Cloister and do execution in a Closet if there be any prevarication 23. Fifthly But obedience to humane Laws goes no farther we are not bound to obey with a direct and particular act of Understanding as in all Divine Sanctions for so long as our Superiours are fallible though it be highly necessary we conform our wills to their innocent Laws yet it is not a duty we should think the Laws most prudent or convenient because all Laws are not so but it may concern the interest of humility and self-denial to 〈◊〉 subject to an inconvenient so it be not a sinful Command for so we must chuse an affliction when God offers it and give God thanks for it and yet we may cry under the smart of it and call to God for ease and remedy And yet it were well if inferiours would not be too busie in disputing the prudence of their Governours and the convenience of their Constitutions Whether they be sins or no in the execution and to our particulars we are concern'd to look to I say as to our particulars for an action may be a sin in the Prince commanding it and yet innocent in the person executing as in the case of unjust Wars in which the Subject who cannot ought not to be a Judge yet must be a Minister and it is notorious in the case of executing an unjust sentence in which not the Executioner but the Judge is only the unjust person and he that serves his Prince in an unjust War is but the executioner of an unjust sentence But what-ever goes farther does but undervalue the person slight the Government and unloose the golden cords of Discipline For we are not intrusted in providing for degrees so we secure the kind and condition of our actions And since God having derived rays and beams of Majesty and transmitted it in parts upon several states of men hath fixed humane authority and dominion in the golden candlestick of Understanding he that shall question the prudence of his Governour or the wisdom of his Sanction does unclasp the golden rings that tie the purple upon the Prince's shoulder he tempts himself with a reason to disobey and extinguish the light of Majesty by overturning the candlestick and hiding the opinion of his wisdom and understanding And let me say this He that is confident of his own understanding and reasonable powers and who is more than he that thinks himself wiser than the Laws needs no other Devil in the neighbourhood no tempter but himself to pride and vanity which are the natural parents of Disobedience 24. But a man's Disobedience never seems so reasonable as when the Subject is forbidden to do an act of Piety commanded indeed in the general but uncommanded in certain circumstances And forward Piety and assiduous Devotion a great and undiscreet Mortifier is often tempted to think no Authority can restrain the fervours and distempers of zeal in such holy Exercises and yet it is very often as necessary to restrain the indiscretions of a forward person as to excite the remissness of the cold and frozen Such persons were the Sarabaites spoken of by 〈◊〉 who were greater labourers and stricter mortifiers than the Religious in Families and Colledges and yet they endured no Superiour nor Laws But such customs as these are Humiliation without Humility humbling the body and exalting the spirit or indeed Sacrifices and no Obedience It was an argument of the great wisdom of the Fathers of the 〈◊〉 when they heard of the prodigious Severities exercised by 〈◊〉 Stylites upon himself they sent one of the Religious to him with power to enquire what was his manner of living and what warrant he had for such a rigorous undertaking giving in charge to command him to give it over and to live in a community with them and according to the common institution of those Religious families The Messenger did so and immediately 〈◊〉 removed his foot from his Pillar with a purpose to descend but the other according to his Commission called to him to stay telling him his station and severity was from God And he that in so great a Piety was humble and obedient did not undertake that Strictness out of singularity nor did it transport him to vanity for that he had received from the Fathers to make judgment of the man and of his institution whereas if upon pretence of the great Holiness of that course he had refused the command the spirit of the person was to be declared caitive and imprudent and the man 〈◊〉 from his troublesom and ostentous vanity 25. Our Fasts our Prayers our Watchings our Intentions of duty our frequent Communions and
Princes in the conspiracy of Dathan that 's for the Temporal And to encourage this Duty I shall use no other words than those of Achilles in Homer They that obey in this world are better than they that command in Hell A PRAYER for the Grace of Holy OBEDIENCE O Lord and Blessed Saviour Jesus by whose Obedience many became righteous and reparations were made of the ruines brought to humane Nature by the Disobedience of Adam thou camest into the world with many great and holy purposes concerning our Salvation and hast given us a great precedent of Obedience which that thou mightest preserve to thy Heavenly Father thou didst neglect thy Life and becamest obedient even to the death of the Cross O let me imit ate so blessed example and by the merits of thy Obedience let me obtain the grace of Humility and Abnegation of all my own desires in the clearest Renunciation of my Will that I may will and refuse in conformity to thy sacred Laws and holy purposes that I may do all thy will chearfully chusingly humbly confidently and continually and thy will may be done upon me with much mercy and fatherly dispensation of thy Providence Amen 2. LOrd let my Understanding adhere to and be satisfied in the excellent 〈◊〉 of thy Commandments let my Affections dwell in their desires and all my other Faculties be set on daily work for performance of them and let my love to obey thee make me dutiful to my Superiors upon whom the impresses of thy Authority are set by thine own hand that I may never despise their Persons nor refuse their Injunctions nor chuse mine own work nor murmur at their burthens nor dispute the prudence of the Sanction nor excuse my self nor pretend 〈◊〉 or impossibilities but that I may be 〈◊〉 in my desires and resigned to the will of those whom thou hast set over me that since all thy Creatures obey thy word I alone may not disorder the Creation and cancel those bands and intermedial links of Subordination whereby my duty should pass to 〈◊〉 and thy glory but that my Obedience being united to thy Obedience I may also have my portion in the 〈◊〉 of thy Kingdom O Lord and Blessed Saviour Jesus Amen Considerations upon the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple 1. THE Holy Virgin-Mother according to the Law of Moses at the expiration of a certain time came to the Temple to be purified although in her sacred Parturition she had contracted no Legal impurity yet she exposed her self to the publick opinion and common reputation of an ordinary condition and still amongst all generations she is in all circumstances accounted blessed and her reputation no tittle altered save only that it is made the more sacred by this testimony of her Humility But this we are taught from the consequence of this instance That if an End principally designed in any Duty should be supplied otherwise in any particular person the Duty is nevertheless to be observed and then the obedience and publick order is reason enough for the observation though the proper End of its designation be wanting in the single person Thus is Fasting designed for mortification of the flesh and killing all its unruly appetites and yet Married persons who have another remedy and a Virgin whose Temple is hallowed by a gift and the strict observances of Chastity may be tied to the Duty and if they might not then Fasting were nothing else but a publication of our impure desires and an exposing the person to the confidence of a bold temptation whilst the young men did observe the Faster to be tempted from within But the Holy Virgin from these acts of which in signification she had no need because she sinned not in the Conception nor was impure in the production expressed other Vertues besides Obedience such as were humble thoughts of her self Devotion and Reverence to publick Sanctions Religion and Charity which were like the pure leaves of the whitest Lily fit to represent the beauties of her innocence but were veiled and shadowed by that sacramental of the Mosaick Law 2. The Holy Virgin received the greatest favour that any of the Daughters of Adam ever did and knowing from whence and for whose glory she had received it returns the Holy Jesus in a Present to God again for she had nothing so precious as himself to make oblation of and besides that every first-born among the Males was holy to the Lord this Child had an eternal and essential Sanctity and until he came into the World and was made apt for her to make present of him there was never in the world any act of Adoration proportionable to the honour of the great God but now there was and the Holy Virgin made it when she presented the Holy Child Jesus And now besides that we are taught to return to God whatsoever we have received from him if we unite our Offerings and Devotions to this holy Present we shall by the merit and excellency of this Oblation exhibit to God an Offertory in which he cannot but delight for the combination's sake and society of his Holy Son 3. The Holy Mother brought five Sicles and a pair of Turtle-doves to redeem the Lamb of God from the Anathema because every first-born was to be sacrificed to God or redeemed if it was clean it was the poor man's price and the Holy Jesus was never set at the greater prices when he was estimated upon earth For he that was Lord of the Kingdom chose his portion among the poor of this World that he might advance the poor to the riches of his inheritance and so it was from his Nativity hither For at his Birth he was poor at his Circumcision poor and in the likeness of a sinner at his Presentation poor and like a sinner and a servant for he chose to be redeemed with an ignoble price The five Sicles were given to the Priest for the redemption of the Child and if the Parents were not able he was to be a servant of the Temple and to minister in the inferiour offices to the Priest and this was God's seizure and possession of him for although all the servants of God are his inheritance yet the Ministers of Religion who derive their portion of temporals from his title who live upon the Corban and eat the meat of the Altar which is God's peculiar and come nearer to his Holiness by the addresses of an immediate ministration are God's own upon another and a distinct challenge But because Christ was to be the Prince of another Ministry and the chief Priest of another Order he was redeemed from attending the Mosaick Rites which he came to 〈◊〉 that he might do his Father's business in establishing the Evangelical Only remember that the Ministers of Religion are but God's 〈◊〉 as they are not Lords of God's portion and therefore must dispense it like Stewards not like Masters so the People are 〈◊〉 their Patrons in paying nor
connivences there no protections or friendships or consideration or indulgences but Herod caus'd that his own child which was at nurse in the coasts of Bethlehem should bleed to death which made Augustus Caesar to say that in Heroa's house it were better to be a 〈◊〉 than a Child because the custome of the Nation did secure a Hog from Heroa's knife but no Religion could secure his Child The sword being thus made sharp by Herod's commission killed 14000 pretty Babes as the Greeks in their Calendar and the 〈◊〉 of AEthiopia do commemorate in their offices of Liturgy For Herod crafty and malicious that is perfectly Tyrant had caused all the Children to be gathered together which the credulous Mothers supposing it had been to take account of their age and number in order to some taxing hindred not but unwittingly suffered themselves and their Babes to be betrayed to an irremediable 〈◊〉 4. Then was 〈◊〉 that which was spoken by Jeremy the Prophet saying Lamentation and weeping and great mourning Rachel weeping for her children and would not be comforted All the synonyma's of sadness were little enough to express this great weeping when 14000 Mothers in one day saw their pretty Babes pouring forth their blood into that bosome whence not long before they had sucked milk and instead of those pretty smiles which use to entertain the fancy and dear affections of their Mothers nothing but affrighting shrieks and then gastly looks The mourning was great like the mourning in the valley of Hinnom and there was no comforter their sorrow was too big to be cured till it should lie down alone and rest with its own weariness 5. But the malice of Herod went also into the Hill-countrey and hearing that of John the son of Zachary great things were spoken by which he was designed to a great ministery about this young Prince he attempted in him also to rescind the Prophecies and sent a messenger of death towards him but the Mother's care had been early with him and sent him into desart places where he continued till the time appointed of his manifestation unto 〈◊〉 But as the Children of Bethlehem died in the place of Christ so did the Father of the Baptist die for his Child For Herod 〈◊〉 Zachary between the Temple and the Altar because he refused to betray his son to the fury of that rabid Bear Though some persons very eminent amongst the Stars of the Primitive Church report a Tradition that a place being separated in the Temple for Virgins Zachary suffered the Mother of our Lord to abide there after the Birth of her Holy Son affirming her still to be a Virgin and that for this reason not Herod but the Scribes and Pharisees did kill Zachary 6. Tertullian reports that the bloud of Zachary had so 〈◊〉 the stones of the pavement which was the Altar on which the good old Priest was sacrificed that no art or industry could wash the tincture out the dye and guilt being both indeleble as if because God did intend to exact of that Nation all the bloud of righteous persons from Abel to Zacharias who was the last of the Martyrs of the Synagogue he would leave a character of their guilt in their eyes to upbraid their Irreligion Cruelty and 〈◊〉 Some there are who affirm these words of our Blessed Saviour not to relate to any Zachary who had been already slain but to be a Prophecy of the last of all the Martyrs of the Jews who should be slain immediately before the destruction of the last Temple and the dissolution of the Nation Certain it is that such a Zachary the son of 〈◊〉 if we may believe Josephus was slain in the middle of the Temple a little before it was destroyed and it is agreeable to the nature of the Prophecy and reproof here made by our Blessed Saviour that from Abel to Zachary should take in all the righteous bloud from first to last till the iniquity was complete and it is not imaginable that the bloud of our Blessed Lord and of S. James their Bishop for whose death many of themselves thought God destroyed their City should be left out of the account which yet would certainly be left out if any other Zachary should be 〈◊〉 than he whom they last slew and in proportion to this Cyprian de 〈◊〉 expounds that which we read in the past tense to signifie the future ye slew i. e. shall slay according to the style often used by Prophets and as the Aorist of an uncertain signification will beat But the first great instance of the Divine vengeance for these Executions was upon Herod who in very few years after was smitten of God with so many plagues and tortures that himself alone seemed like an Hospital of the 〈◊〉 For he was tormented with a soft slow fire like that of burning Iron or the cinders of Yew in his body in his bowels with intolerable Colicks and Ulcers in his natural parts with Worms in his feet with Gout in his nerves with Convulsions 〈◊〉 of breathing and out of divers parts of his body issued out so impure and ulcerous a steam that the loathsomness pain and indignation made him once to snatch a knife with purpose to have killed himself but that he was prevented by a Nephew of his that stood there in his attendance 7. But as the flesh of Beasts grows callous by stripes and the pressures of the yoak so did the heart of Herod by the loads of Divine vengeance God began his Hell here and the pains of Hell never made any man less impious for Herod perceiving that he must now die first put to death his son Antipater under pretence that he would have poisoned him and that the last scene of his life might for pure malice and exalted spight out-do all the rest because he believed the Jewish nation would rejoyce at his death he assembled all the Nobles of the people and put them in prison giving in charge to his Sister Salome that when he was expiring his last all the Nobility should be slain that his death might be lamented with a perfect and universal sorrow 8. But God that brings to nought the counsels of wicked Princes turned the design against the intendment of Herod for when he was dead and could not call his Sister to account for disobeying his most bloudy and unrighteous commands she released all the imprisoned and despairing Gentlemen and made the day of her Brother's death a perfect Jubilee a day of joy such as was that when the Nation was delivered from the violence of Haman in the days of 〈◊〉 9. And all this while God had provided a Sanctuary for the Holy Child Jesus For God seeing the secret purposes of bloud which Herod had sent his Angel who appeared to Joseph in a dream saying Arise and take the young Child and his Mother and fly into Egypt and be thou there until I bring thee word
contagious 9. Thirdly And yet there is a degree of Mortification of spirit beyond this for the condition of our security may require that we not only deny to act our temptations or to please our natural desires but also to seek opportunities of doing displeasure to our affections and violence to our inclinations and not only to be indifferent but to chuse a contradiction and a denial to our strongest appetites to rejoyce in a trouble and this was the spirit of S. Paul I am exceeding joyful in all our tribulations and We glory in it Which joy consists not in any sensitive pleasure any man can take in asflictions and adverse accidents but in a despising the present inconveniences and looking through the cloud unto those great felicities and graces and consignations to glory which are the effects of the Cross Knowing that tribulation worketh patience and patience experience and experience hope and hope maketh not ashamed that was the incentive of S. Paul's joy And therefore as it may consist with any degree of Mortification to pray for the taking away of the Cross upon condition it may consist with God's glory and our ghostly profit so it is properly an act of this vertue to pray for the Cross or to meet it if we understand it may be for the interest of the spirit And thus S. Basil prayed to God to remove his violent pains of Head-ach but when God heard him and took away his pain and Lust came in the place of it he prayed to God to restore him his Head-ach again that cross was gain and joy when the removal of it was so full of danger and temptation And this the Masters of spiritual life call being crucified with Christ because as Christ chose the death and desired it by the appetites of the spirit though his flesh smarted under it and groaned and died with the burthen so do all that are thus mortified they place misfortunes and sadnesses amongst things eligible and set them before the eyes of their desire although the flesh and the desires of sense are factious and bold against such sufferings 10. Of these three degrees of interiour or spiritual Mortification the first is Duty the second is Counsel and the third is Perfection We sin if we have not the first we are in danger without the second but without the third we cannot be perfect as our heavenly Father is but shall have more of humane infirmities to be ashamed of than can be excused by the accrescencies and condition of our nature The first is only of absolute necessity the second is prudent and of greatest convenience but the third is excellent and perfect And it was the consideration of a wise man that the Saints in Heaven who understand the excellent glories and vast differences of state and capacities amongst beatified persons although they have no envy nor sorrows yet if they were upon earth with the same notion and apprehensions they have in Heaven would not for all the world lose any degree of Glory but mortifie to the greatest 〈◊〉 that their Glory may be a derivation of the greatest ray of light every degree being of compensation glorious and disproportionably beyond the inconsiderable troubles of the greatest Self-denial God's purpose is that we abstain from sin there is no more in the Commandment and therefore we must deny our selves so as not to admit a sin under pain of a certain and eternal curse but the other degrees of Mortification are by accident so many degrees of Vertue not being enjoyned or counselled for themselves but for the preventing of crimes and for securities of good life and therefore are parts and offices of Christian prudence which whosoever shall positively reject is neither much in love with Vertue nor careful of his own safety 11. Secondly But Mortification hath also some designs upon the Body For the Body is the Shop and Forge of the Soul in which all her designs which are transient upon external objects are framed and it is a good servant as long as it is kept in obedience and under discipline but he that breeds his servant delicately will find him contumacious and troublesome bold and confident as his son and therefore S. Paul's practice as himself gives account of it was to keep his body under and bring it into subjection lest he should become a 〈◊〉 away for the desires of the Body are in the same things in which themselves are satisfied so many injuries to the Soul because upon every one of the appetites a restraint is made and a law placed sor Sentinel that if we transgress the bounds fixt by the divine 〈◊〉 it becomes a sin now it is hard for us to keep them within compass because they are little more than agents merely natural and therefore cannot interrupt their act but covet and desire as much as they can without suspension or coercion but what comes from without which is therefore the more troublesome because all such restraints are against nature and without sensual pleasure And therefore this is that that S. Paul said When we were in the flesh the 〈◊〉 of sin which were by the Law did work in our members to bring forth fruit unto Death For these pleasures of the body draw us as loadstones draw iron not for love but for prey and nutriment it feeds upon the iron as the bodily pleasures upon the life of the spirit which is lessened and impaired according as the gusts of the flesh grow high and sapid 12. He that seeds a Lion must obey him unless he make his den to be his prison Our Lusts are as wild and as cruel Beasts and unless they feel the load of fetters and of Laws will grow unruly and troublesome and increase upon us as we give them food and satisfaction He that is used to drink high Wines is sick if he hath not his proportion to what degree soever his custom hath brought his appetite and to some men Temperance becomes certain death because the inordination of their desires hath introduced a custom and custom hath increased those appetites and made them almost natural in their degree but he that hath been used to hard diet and the pure stream his 〈◊〉 are much within the limits of Temperance and his desires as moderate as his diet S. Jerom affirms that to be continent in the state of Widowhood is barder than to keep our Firgin pure and there is reason that then the Appetite should be harder to be restrained when it hath not been accustomed to be denied but satisfied in its freer solicitations When a fontinel is once opened all the symbolical humours run thither and issue out and it is not to be stopped without danger unless the humour be purged or diverted So is the satisfaction of an impure desire it opens the issue and makes way for the emanation of all impurity and unless the desire be mortified
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. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 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 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 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 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 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 〈◊〉 to be for the remission of sins is called in the Jerusalem 〈◊〉 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 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 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 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 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 〈◊〉 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 〈◊〉 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 〈◊〉 into sin and risings again In
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 〈◊〉 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 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a Seal In whom also after that ye believed ye were sealed with that holy Spirit of Promise 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 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 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 God sits in the Soul when it is illuminated in 〈◊〉 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 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and the baptized 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 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 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 illuminated he calls after 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a receiving the knowledge of the truth and that you may perceive this to be wholly meant of Baptism the 〈◊〉 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 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the 〈◊〉 of God and the purpose of it we are taught by him Whosoever is 〈◊〉 of God that is he that is regenerated and entred into this New birth doth not 〈◊〉 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 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 power or 〈◊〉 even from the beginning renewing our Souls from the death of sin unto life For as our Mortification is 〈◊〉 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 〈◊〉 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 〈◊〉 Sin which is the sting of death and then we shall be partakers of a blessed Resurrection This we are taught by S. Paul 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 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
sayings of the Apostle of putting on Christ in Baptism putting on the new man c. for these only signifie 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or the design on God's part and the endeavour and duty on Man's we are then consigned to our Duty and to our Reward we undertake one and have a title to the other And though men of ripeness and Reason enter instantly into their portion of Work and have present use of the assistances and something of their Reward in hand yet we cannot conclude that those that cannot do it 〈◊〉 are not baptized rightly because they are not in capacity to put on the New man in Righteousness that is in an actual holy life for they may put on the New man in Baptism just as they are risen with Christ which because it may be done by Faith before it is done in real event and it may be done by Sacrament and design before it be done by a proper Faith so also may our putting on the New man be it is done sacramentally and that part which is wholly the work of God does only antedate the work of man which is to succeed in its due time and is after the 〈◊〉 of preventing grace But this is by the bye In order to the present Article Baptism is by 〈◊〉 called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a participation of the Lord's Resurrection 25. Fifthly and lastly By Baptism we are saved that is we are brought from death to life 〈◊〉 and that is the first Resurrection and we are brought from death to life hereafter by virtue of the Covenant of the state of Grace into which in Baptism we enter and are preserved from the second Death and receive a glorious and an eternal life He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved said our Blessed Saviour and According to his mercy he saved us by the washing of Regeneration and renowing of the Holy Ghost 26. After these great Blessings so plainly testified in Scripture and the Doctrine of the Primitive Church which are regularly consigned and bestowed in Baptism I shall less need to descend to temporal Blessings or rare contingencies or miraculous events or probable notices of things less certain Of this nature are those Stories recorded in the Writings of the Church that Constantine was cured of a Leprosie in Baptism Theodosius recovered of his disease being baptized by the Bishop of Thessalonica and a paralytick Jew was cured as soon as he became a Christian and was baptized by Atticus of CP and Bishop Arnulph baptizing a Leper also cured him said Vincentius Bellovacensis It is more considerable which is generally and piously believed by very many eminent persons in the Church that at our Baptism God assigns an Angel-Guardian for then the Catechumen being made a Servant and a Brother to the Lord of Angels is sure not to want the aids of them who pitch their tents round about them that fear the Lord and that this guard and ministery is then appointed when themselves are admitted into the inheritance of the Promises and their title to Salvation is hugely agreeable to the words of S. Paul Are they not all ministring spirits sent forth to minister to them who shall be heirs of Salvation where it appears that the title to the inheritance is the title to this ministery and therefore must begin and end together But I insist not on this though it seems to me hugely probable All these Blessings put into one Syllabus have given to Baptism many honourable appellatives in Scripture and other Divine Writers calling it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Sacramentum 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 salutis A New birth a Regeneration a Renovation a Chariot carrying us to God the great Circumcision a Circumcision made without hands the Key of the Kingdom the Paranymph of the Kingdom the Earnest of our inheritance the Answer of a good Conscience the Robe of light the Sacrament of a new life and of eternal Salvation 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 This is celestial water springing from the sides of the Rock upon which the Church was built when the Rock was smitten with the Rod of God 27. It remains now that we enquire what concerns our Duty and in what persons or in what dispositions Baptism produces all these glorious effects for the Sacraments of the Church work in the virtue of Christ but yet only upon such as are servants of Christ and hinder not the work of the Spirit of Grace For the water of the Font and the Spirit of the Sacrament are indeed to wash away our Sins and to purifie our Souls but not unless we have a mind to be purified The Sacrament works pardon for them that hate their sin and procures Grace for them that love it They that are guilty of sins must repent of them and renounce them and they must make a profession of the Faith of Christ and give or be given up to the obedience of Christ and then they are rightly disposed He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved saith Christ and S. Peter call'd out to the whole assembly Repent and be baptized every one of you Concerning this Justin Martyr gives the same account of the Faith and practice of the Church 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. Whosoever are perswaded and believe those things to be true which are delivered and spoken by us and undertake to live accordingly they are commanded to fast and pray and to ask of God remission for their former sins we also praying together with them and fasting Then they are brought to us where water is and are regenerated in the same manner of Regeneration by which we our selves are regenerated For in Baptism S. Peter observes there are two parts the Body and the Spirit that is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the putting away the 〈◊〉 of the flesh that is the material washing and this is Baptism no otherwise than a dead corps is a man the other is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the answer of a good conscience towards God that is the conversion of the Soul to God that 's the effective disposition in which Baptism does save us And in the same sence are those sayings of the Primitive Doctors to be understood Anima non lavatione sed 〈◊〉 sancitur The Soul is not healed by washing viz. alone but by the answer the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in S. Peter the correspondent of our part of the Covenant sor that 's the perfect 〈◊〉 of this unusual expression And the effect is attributed to this and denied to the other when they are distinguished So Justin Martyr affirms The only Baptism that can heal us is Kepentance and the knowledge of God For what need is there of that Baptism that can only 〈◊〉 the flesh and the body Be washed in your flesh from wrath and 〈◊〉 from envy and hatred and behold the body is pure And Clemens Alexandrinus upon that Proverbial saying 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉
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 〈◊〉 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 〈◊〉 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 〈◊〉 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 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 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 〈◊〉 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 〈◊〉 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 〈◊〉 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 〈◊〉 Omnem aetatem sanctificans per illam quae ad 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 similitudinem Omnes 〈◊〉 venit per semetipsum salvare omnes inquam qui per 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in Deum infantes parvulos 〈◊〉 juvenes seniores Ideo per 〈◊〉 venit 〈◊〉 infantibus infans factus sanctificans infantes in parvulis 〈◊〉 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 〈◊〉 traditionem ab Apostolis suscepit 〈◊〉 parvulis dare Baptismum The Church hath received a Tradition from the 〈◊〉 to give Baptism to Children And S. 〈◊〉 in his Epistle to 〈◊〉 gives account of this Article for being questioned by some less 〈◊〉 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. 〈◊〉 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 〈◊〉 of their stained nature the sanctification of their persons and the saving of their 〈◊〉 by their Infant Lord and elder Brother 32. Omnis 〈◊〉 anima 〈◊〉 in Adam censetur 〈◊〉 in Christo recenseatur 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 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 〈◊〉 enter into Heaven and therefore our Lord hath desined it Unless 〈◊〉 be born of Water and the Spirit ye cannot 〈◊〉 into the Kingdom of Heaven that is ye cannot be holy It was the argument of 〈◊〉 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 〈◊〉 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 〈◊〉 be forbidden who being new born hath 〈◊〉 nothing save only that being in the 〈◊〉 born of Adam in his first birth he hath contracted the contagion of an old death who therefore comes the easier to obtain 〈◊〉 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 whō 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 〈◊〉 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
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 〈◊〉 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 〈◊〉 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 〈◊〉 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
hand or foot or extinguish the offending eye rather than upon the support of a troublesome soot and by the light of an offending eye walk into ruine and a sad eternity where the worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched And so Jesus ended this chain of excellent Discourses 18. About this time was the Jews Feast of Tabernacles whither Jesus went up as it were in secret and passing through Samaria he found the inhabitants of a little village so inhospitable as to refuse to give him entertainment which so provoked the intemperate zeal of James and John that they would fain have called for fire to consume them even as Elias did But Jesus rebuked the furies of their anger teaching them to distinguish the spirit of Christianity from the ungentleness of the decretory zeal of Elias For since the Son of man came with a purpose to seek and save what was lost it was but an indiscreet temerity suddenly upon the lightest umbrages of displeasure to destroy a man whose redemption cost the effusion of the dearest bloud from the heart of Jesus But contrariwise Jesus does a Miracle upon the ten Leprous persons which came to him from the neighbourhood crying out with sad exclamations for help But Jesus sent them to the Priest to offer for their cleansing Thither they went and but one only returned to give thanks and he a stranger who with a loud voice glorified God and with humble adoration worshipped and gave thanks to Jesus 19. When Jesus had finished his journey and was now come to Jerusalem for the first days he was undiscerned in publick conventions but heard of the various opinions of men concerning him some saying he was a good man others that he 〈◊〉 the people and the Pharisees sought for him to do him a mischief But when they despaired of finding him in the midst of the Feast and the people he made Sermons openly in the midst of the Temple whom when he had convinced by the variety and divinity of his Miracles and Discourses they gave the greatest testimony in the world of humane weakness and how prevalent a prejudice is above the confidence and conviction of a demonstration For a proverb a mistake an error in matter of circumstance did in their understandings outweigh multitudes of Miracles and arguments and because Christ was of Galilee because they knew whence he was because of the Proverb that 〈◊〉 of Galilee comes no Prophet because the Rulers did not believe in him these outweighed the demonstrations of his mercy and his power and Divinity But yet very many believed on him and no man durst lay hands to take him for as yet his time was not come in which he meant to give himself up to the power of the Jews and therefore when the Pharisees sent Officers to seise him they also became his Disciples being themselves surprised by the excellency of his Doctrine 20. After this Jesus went to the mount of Olivet on the East of Jerusalem and the next day returned again into the Temple where the Scribes and Pharisees brought him a woman taken in the act of Adultery tempting him to give sentence that they might accuse him of severity or intermedling if he condemned her or of remisness and popularity if he did acquit her But Jesus found out an expedient for their difficulty and changed the Scene by bidding the innocent person among them cast the first stone at the Adulteress and then stooping down to give them fair occasion to withdraw he wrote upon the ground with his finger whilest they left the woman and her crime to a more private censure Jesus was left alone and the woman in the midst whom Jesus dismissed charging her to sin no more And a while after Jesus begins again to discourse to them of his Mission from the Father of his Crucifixion and exaltation from the earth of the reward of Believers of the excellency of Truth of spiritual Liberty and Relations who are the sons of Abraham and who the children of the Devil of his own eternal generation of the desire of Abraham to see his day In which Sermon he continued adding still new excellencies and confuting their malicious and vainer calumnies till they that they also might 〈◊〉 him took up stones to cast at him but he went out of the Temple going through the midst of them and so passed by 21. But in his passage he met a man who had been born blind and after he had discoursed cursorily of the cause of that Blindness it being a misery not sent as a punishment to his own or his parents sin but as an occasion to make publick the glory of God he to manifest that himself was the light of the World in all sences said it now and proved it by a Miracle for sitting down he made clay of spittle and anointing the eyes of the blind man bid him go wash in Siloam which was a Pool of limpid water which God sent at the Prayer of Isaiah the Prophet a little before his death to satisfie the necessities of his people oppressed with thirst and a strict siege and it stood at the foot of the mount Sion and gave its water at first by returns and periods always to the Jews but not to the enemies And those intermitted springings were still continued but only a Pool was made from the frequent effluxes The blind man went and washed and returned seeing and was incessantly vexed by the Pharisees to tell them the manner and circumstances of the cure and when the man had averred the truth and named his Physician giving him a pious and charitable testimony the Pharisees because they could not force him to disavow his good opinion of Jesus cast him out of the 〈◊〉 But Jesus meeting him received him into the Church told him he was CHRIST and the man became again enlightned and he believed and worshipped But the Pharisees blasphemed for such was the dispensation of the Divine mysteries that the blind should see and they which think they see clearly should become blind because they had not the excuse of ignorance to lessen or take off the sin but in the midst of light they shut their eyes and doted upon darkness and therefore did their sin remain 22. But Jesus continued his Sermon among the Pharisees insinuating reprehensions in his dogmatical discourses which like light shined and discovered error For by discoursing the properties of a good Shepherd and the lawful way of intromission he proved them to be thieves and robbers because they refused to enter in by Jesus who is the door of the sheep and upon the same ground reproved all those false Christs which before him usurped the title of Messias and proved his own vocation and office by an argument which no other shepherd would use because he laid down his life for his sheep others would take the fleece and eat the flesh but none but himself would die for his sheep but he would first
himself to his house who received him with gladness and repentance of his crimes purging his Conscience and filling his heart and house with joy and sanctity for immediately upon the arrival of the Master at his house he offered restitution to all persons whom he had injured and satisfaction and half of his remanent estate he gave to the poor and so gave the fairest entertainment to Jesus who brought along with him Salvation to his house There it was that he spake the Parable of the King who concredited divers talents to his servants and having at his return exacted an account rewarded them who had improved their bank and been faithful in their trust with rewards proportionable to their capacity and improvement but the negligent servant who had not meliorated his stock was punished with ablegation and 〈◊〉 to outer darkness And from hence sprang up that dogmatical proposition which is mysterious and 〈◊〉 in Christianity To him that hath shall be given and from him that hath not shall be taken away even what he hath After this going forth of Jericho he cured two blind men upon the way 5. Six days before Easter Jesus came to Bethany where he was feasted by Martha and Mary and accompanied by Lazarus who sate at the table with Jesus But Mary brought a pound of Nard Pistick and as formerly she had done again anoints the feet of Jesus and fills the house with the odour till God himself smelt thence a savour of a sweet-smelling sacrifice But Judas Iscariot the Thief and the Traitor repined at the vanity of the expence as he pretended because it might have been sold for three hundred pence and have been given to the poor But Jesus in his reply taught us that there is an opportunity for actions of Religion as well as of Charity Mary did this against the Burial of Jesus and her Religion was accepted by him to whose honours the holocaust of love and the oblations of alms-deeds are in their proper seasons direct actions of worship and duty But at this meeting there came many Jews to see Lazarus who was raised from death as well as to see Jesus and because by occasion of his Resurrection many of them believed on Jesus therefore the Pharisees deliberated about putting him to death But God in his glorious providence was pleased to preserve him as a trumpet of his glories and a testimony of the Miracle thirty years after the death of Jesus 6. The next day being the fifth day before the Passeover Jesus came to the foot of the mount of Olives and sent his Disciples to Bethphage a village in the neighbourhood commanding them to unloose an asse and a colt and bring them to him and to tell the owners it was done for the Master's use and they did so and when they brought the Asse to Jesus he rides on him to Jerusalem and the People having notice of his approach took branches of Palm-trees and went out to meet him strewing branches and garments in the way crying out Hosanna to the son of David Which was a form of exclamation used to the honour of God and in great Solemnities and signifies Adoration to the Son of David by the rite of carrying branches which when they used in procession about their Altars they used to pray Lord save us Lord prosper us which hath occasioned the reddition of Hoschiannah to be amongst some that Prayer which they repeated at the carrying of the Hoschiannah as if it self did signifie Lord save us But this honour was so great and unusual to be done even to Kings that the Pharisees knowing this to be an appropriate manner of address to God said one to another by way of wonder Hear ye what these men say For they were troubled to hear the People revere him as a God 7. When Jesus from the mount of Olives beheld Jerusalem he wept over it and foretold great sadnesses and infelicities futurely contingent to it which not only happened in the sequel of the story according to the main issues and significations of this Prophecy but even to minutes and circumstances it was verified For in the mount of Olives where Jesus shed tears over perishing Jerusalem the Romans first pitched their Tents when they came to its final overthrow From thence descending to the City he went into the Temple and still the acclamations followed him till the Pharisees were ready to burst with the noises abroad and the tumults of envy and scorn within and by observing that all their endeavours to suppress his glories were but like clapping their hands to veil the Sun and that in despight of all their stratagems the whole Nation was become Disciple to the glorious Nazarene And there 〈◊〉 cured certain persons that were blind and lame 8. But whilest he abode at Jerusalem certain Greeks who came to the Feast to worship made their address to Philip that they might be brought to Jesus Philip tells Andrew and they both tell Jesus who having admitted them discoursed many things concerning his Passion and then prayed a petition which is the end of his own Sufferings and of all humane actions and the purpose of the whole Creation Father glorifie thy Name To which he was answered by a voice from Heaven I have both glorified it and will glorifie it again But this nor the whole series of Miracles that he did the Mercies the Cures nor the divine Discourses could gain the Faith of all the Jews who were determined by their humane interest for many of the Rulers who believed on him durst not confess him because they loved the praise of men more than the praise of God Then Jesus again exhorted all men to believe on him that so they might in the same act believe on God that they might approach unto the light and not abide in darkness that they might obey the commandments of the Father whose express charge it was that Jesus should preach this Gospel and that they might not be judged at the last Day by the Word which they have rejected which Word to all its observers is everlasting life After which Sermon retiring to Bethany he abode there all Night 9. On the morrow returning to Jerusalem on the way being hungry he passed by a Fig-tree where expecting fruit he found none and cursed the Fig-tree which by the next day was dried up and withered Upon occasion of which preternatural event Jesus discoursed of the power of Faith and its power to produce Miracles But upon this occasion others the Disciples of Jesus in after-Ages have pleased themselves with phancies and imperfect descants as that he cursed this Tree in mystery and secret intendment it having been the tree in the eating whose fruit Adam prevaricating the Divine Law made an inlet to sin which brought in death and the sadnesses of Jesus's Passion But Jesus having entred the City came into the Temple and preached the Gospel and the chief Priests and
had been the excellency and exemplar Piety and prudence of the life of Jesus that if they pretended against him questions of their Law they were not capital in a Roman Court if they affirmed that he had moved the people to sedition and affected the Kingdom they saw that all the world would convince them of 〈◊〉 testimony At last after many attempts they accused him for a figurative speech a trope which they could not understand which if it had been spoken in a literal sence and had been acted too according to the letter had been so far from a fault that it would have been a prodigy of power and it had been easier to raise the Temple of Jerusalem than to raise the temple of his Body In the mean time the Lamb of God left his cause to defend it self under the protection of his heavenly Father not only because himself was determined to die but because if he had not those premisses could never have inferred it But this Silence of the Holy Jesus fulfilled a Prophecy it made his enemies full of murmur and amazement it made them to see that he despised the accusations as certain and apparent calumnies but that himself was fearless of the issue and in the sence of morality and mysteries taught us not to be too apt to excuse our selves when the semblance of a fault lies upon us unless by some other duty we are obliged to our defences since he who was most innocent was most silent and it was expedient that as the first Adam increased his sin by a vain apology the silence and sufferance of the second Adam should expiate and reconcile it 3. But Caiaphas had a reserve which he knew should do the business in that assembly he adjured him by God to tell him if he were the CHRIST The Holy Jesus being adjured by so sacred a Name would not now refuse an answer lest it might not consist with that honour which is due to it and which he always payed and that he might neither despise the authority of the High Priest nor upon so solemn occasion be wanting to that great truth which he came down to earth to perswade to the world And when three such circumstances concur it is enough to open our mouths though we let in death And so did our Lord confessed himself to be the CHRIST the Son of the living God And this the High Priest was pleased as the design was laid to call Blasphemy and there they voted him to die Then it was the High Priest rent his cloaths the veil of the Temple was rent when the Passion was finished the cloaths of the Priests at the beginning of it and as that signified the departing of the Synagogue and laying Religion open so did the rending the garments of Caiaphas prophetically signifie that the Priesthood should be rent from him and from the Nation And thus the personated and theatrical admiration at Jesus became the type of his own punishment and consigned the Nation to delition and usually God so dispenses his Judgments that when men personate the tragedies of others they really act their own 4. Whilest these things were acting concerning the Lord a sad accident happened to his servant Peter for being engaged in strange and evil company in the midst of danger surprised with a question without time to deliberate an answer to find subterfuges or to fortifie himself he denied his Lord shamefully with some boldness at first and this grew to a licencious confidence and then to impudence and denying with perjury that he knew not his Lord who yet was known to him as his own heart and was dearer than his eyes and for whom he professed but a little before he would die but did not do so till many years after But thus he became to us a sad example of humane infirmity and if the Prince of the Apostles fell so 〈◊〉 it is full of pity but not to be upbraided if we see the fall of lesser stars And yet that we may prevent so great a ruine we must not mingle with such company who will provoke or scorn us into sin and if we do yet we must stand upon our guard that a sudden motion do not surprise us or if we be arrested yet let us not enter farther into our sin like wild beasts intricating themselves by their impatience For there are some who being ashamed and impatient to have been engaged take sanctuary in boldness and a shameless abetting it so running into the darkness of Hell to hide their nakedness But he also by returning and rising instantly became to us a rare example of Penitence and his not lying long in the crime did facilitate this restitution For the spirit of God being extinguished by our works of darkness is like a taper which if as soon as the 〈◊〉 is blown out it be brought to the fire it sucks light and without trouble is re-enkindled but if it cools into death and stiffness it requires a longer stay and trouble The Holy Jesus in the midst of his own sufferings forgat not his servant's danger but was pleased to look upon him when the Cock crew and the Cock was the Preacher and the Look of Jesus was the Grace that made the Sermon effectual and because he was but newly fallen and his habitual love of his Master though interrupted yet had suffered no natural abatement he returned with the swiftness of an Eagle to the embraces and primitive affections of his Lord. 5. By this time suppose Sentence given Caiaphas prejudging all the Sanhedrim for he first declared Jesus to have spoken Blasphemy and the fact to be notorious and then asked their votes which whoso then should have denied must have contested the judgment of the High Priest who by the favour of the Romans was advanced Valerius Gratus who was President of Judaea having been his Patron and his Faction potent and his malice great and his heart set upon this business all which inconveniences none of them durst have suffered unless he had had the confidence greater than of an Apostle at that time But this Sentence was but like strong dispositions to an enraged fever he was only declared apt and worthy for death they had no power at that time to inflict it but yet they let loose all the fury of mad-men and insolency of wounded smarting souldiers and although from the time of his being in the house of Annas till the Council met they had used him with studied indignities yet now they renewed and doubled the unmercifulness and their injustice to so great a height that their injuries must needs have been greater than his Patience if his Patience had been less than infinite For thus Man's Redemption grows up as the load swells which the Holy Jesus bare for us for these were our portion and we having turned the flowers of Paradise into thistles should for ever have felt their infelicity had not Jesus paid the debt But
death even the death of the Cross Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him and given him a Name above every name Thus his present life was a state of merit and work and as a reward of it he was crowned with glory and immortality his Name was exalted his Kingdom glorified he was made the Lord of all the Creatures the first-fruits of the Resurrection the exemplar of glory and the Prince and Head of the Catholick Church and because this was his recompence and the fruits of his Humility and Obedience it is certain it was not a necessary consequence and a natural efflux of the personal union of the Godhead with the Humanity This I discourse to this purpose that we may not in our esteem lessen the suffering of our dearest Lord by thinking he had the supports of actual Glory in the midst of all his Sufferings For there is no one minute or ray of Glory but its fruition does outweigh and make us insensible of the greatest calamities and the spirit of pain which can be extracted from all the infelicities of this world True it is that the greatest beauties in this world are receptive of an allay of sorrow and nothing can have pleasure in all capacities The most beautious feathers of the birds of Paradise the Estrich or the Peacock if put into our throat are not there so pleasant as to the eye But the beatifick joys of the least glory of Heaven take away all pain wipe away all tears from our eyes and it is not possible that at the same instant the Soul of Jesus should be ravished with Glory and yet abated with pains grievous and 〈◊〉 On the other side some say that the Soul of Jesus upon the Cross suffered the pains of Hell and all the torments of the damned and that without such sufferings it is not imaginable he should pay the price which God's wrath should demand of us But the same that reproves the one does also reprehend the other for the Hope that was the support of the Soul of Jesus as it confesses an imperfection that is not consistent with the state of Glory so it excludes the Despair that is the torment proper to accursed souls Our dearest Lord suffered the whole condition of Humanity Sin only excepted and freed us from Hell with suffering those sad pains and merited Heaven for his own Humanity as the Head and all faithful people as the Members of his mystical Body And therefore his life here was only a state of pilgrimage not at all trimmed with beatifick glories Much less was he ever in the state of Hell or upon the Cross felt the formal misery and spirit of torment which is the 〈◊〉 of damned spirits because it was impossible Christ should despair and without Despair it is impossible there should be a Hell But this is highly probable that in the intension of degrees and present anguish the Soul of our Lord might feel a greater load of wrath than is incumbent in every instant upon perishing souls For all the sadness which may be imagined to be in Hell consists in acts produced from principles that cannot surpass the force of humane or Angelical nature but the pain which our Blessed Lord endured for the expiation of our sins was an issue of an united and concentred anger was received into the heart of God and Man and was commensurate to the whole latitude of the Grace Patience and Charity of the Word incarnate The Crucisixion Mark 15 25. Erat autem Hora tertia crucifixerunt eum Mark 15 25. And is was the third houre they crucified him The takeing down from the Cross. Luk. 23 50 And there was a man named Ioseph a Counsellour he was a good man a lust y e same had not consented to y e counsell deed of them 52. This man went unto Pilate begged y e Body of Iesus 53 And he took it down wrapped it in linen layd it in a Sepulehre that was hewn in stone wherein never man before was layd 6. And now behold the Priest and the Sacrifice of all the world laid upon the Altar of the Cross bleeding and tortured and dying to reconcile his Father to us and he was arrayed with ornaments more glorious than the robes of Aaron The Crown of Thorns was his Mitre the Cross his Pastoral staffe the Nails piercing his hands were in stead of Rings the ancient ornament of Priests and his flesh rased and checker'd with blew and bloud in stead of the parti-coloured Robe But as this object calls for our Devotion our Love and Eucharist to our dearest Lord so it must needs irreconcile us to Sin which in the eye of all the world brought so great shame and pain and amazement upon the Son of God when he only became engaged by a charitable substitution of himself in our place and therefore we are assured by the demonstration of sense and experience it will bring death and all imaginable miseries as the just expresses of God's indignation and hatred for to this we may apply the words of our Lord in the prediction of miseries to Jerusalem If this be done in the green tree what shall be done in the dry For it is certain Christ infinitely pleased his Father even by becoming the person made 〈◊〉 in estimate of Law and yet so great Charity of our Lord and the so great love and pleasure of his Father exempted him not from suffering pains intolerable and much less shall those escape who provoke and displease God and despise so great Salvation which the Holy Jesus hath wrought with the expence of bloud and so precious a life 7. But here we see a great representation and testimony of the Divine Justice who was so angry with sin who had so severely threatned it who does so essentially hate it that he would not spare his only Son when he became a conjunct person relative to the guilt by undertaking the charges of our Nature For although God hath set down in holy Scripture the order of his Justice and the manner of its manifestation that one Soul shall not perish for the sins of another yet this is meant for Justice and for Mercy too that is he will not curse the Son for the Father's fault or in any relation whatsoever substitute one person for another to make him involuntarily guilty But when this shall be desired by a person that cannot finally perish and does a mercy to the exempt persons and is a voluntary act of the suscipient and shall in the event also redound to an infinite good it is no deflection from the Divine Justice to excuse many by the affliction of one who also for that very suffering shall have infinite compensation We see that for the sin of Cham all his posterity were accursed the Subjects of David died with the Plague because their Prince numbred the people Idolatry is punished in the children of the fourth generation
his Disciples to verifie his Promise to make demonstration of his Divinity to lay some superstructures of his Church upon the foundation of his former Sermons to instruct them in the mysteries of his Kingdom to prepare them for the reception of the Holy Ghost and as he had in his state of Separation triumphed over Hell so in his Resurrection he set his foot upon Death and brought it under his dominion so that although it was not yet destroyed yet it is made his subject it hath as yet the condition of the Gibeonites who were not banished out of the land but they were made drawers of water and bewers of wood so is Death made instrumental to Christ's Kingdom but it abides still and shall till the day of Judgment but shall serve the ends of our Lord and promote the interests of Eternity and do benefit to the Church 8. And it is considerable that our Blessed Lord having told them that after three days he would rise again yet he shortened the time as much as was possible that he might verifie his own prediction and yet make his absence the less troublesome he rises early in the morning the first day of the week for so our dearest Lord abbreviates the days of our sorrow and lengthens the years of our consolation for he knows that a day of sorrow seems a year and a year of joy passes like a day and therefore God lessens the one and 〈◊〉 the other to make this perceived and that supportable Now the Temple which the Jews destroyed God raised up in six and thirty hours but this second Temple was more glorious than the first for now it was clothed with robes of glory with clarity agility and immortality and though like Moses descending from the mount he wore a veil that the greatness of his splendor might not render him unapt for conversation with his servants yet the holy Scripture affirms that he was now no more to see corruption meaning that now he was separate from the passibility and affections of humane bodies and could suffer S. Thomas to thrust his hand into the wound of his side and his singer into the holes of his hands without any grief or smart 9. But although the graciousness and care of the Lord had prevented all diligence and satisfied all desires returning to life before the most forward faith could expect him yet there were three Maries went to the grave so early that they prevented the rising of the Sun and though with great obedience they stayed till the end of the Sabbath yet as soon as that was done they had other parts of duty and affection which called with greatest importunity to be speedily satisfied And if Obedience had not bound the feet of Love they had gone the day before but they became to us admirable patterns of Obedience to the Divine Commandments For though Love were stronger than death yet Obedience was stronger than Love and made a rare dispute in the spirits of those holy Women in which the flesh and the spirit were not the litigants but the spirit and the spirit and they resisted each other as the Angel-guardian of the Jews resisted the tutelar Angel of Persia each striving who should with most love and zeal perform their charge and God determined And so he did here too For the Law of the Sabbath was then a Divine Commandment and although piety to the dead and to such a dead was ready to force their choice to do violence to their will bearing them up on wings of desire to the grave of the LORD yet at last they reconciled Love with Obedience For they had been taught that Love is best expressed in keeping of the Divine Commandments But now they were at liberty and sure enough they made use of its first minute and going so early to seek Christ they were sure they should find him 10. The Angels descended Guardians of the Sepulchre for God sent his guards too and they affrighted the Watch appointed by Pilate and the Priests but when the women came they spake like comforters full of sweetness and consolation laying aside their affrighting glories as knowing it is the will of their Lord that they should minister good to them that love him But a conversation with Angels could not satisfie them who came to look for the Lord of the Angels and found him not and when the Lord was pleased to appear to Mary Magdalen she was so swallowed up with love and sorrow that she entred into her joy and perceived it not she saw the Lord and knew him not For so from the closets of darkness they that immediately stare upon the Sun perceive not the beauties of the light and feel nothing but amazement But the voice of the Lord opened her eyes and she knew him and worshipped him but was denied to touch him and commanded to tell the Apostles for therefore God ministers to us comforts and revelations not that we may dwell in the sensible fruition of them our selves alone but that we communicate the grace to others But when the other women were returned and saw the Lord then they were all together admitted to the embracement and to kiss the feet of Jesus For God hath his opportunities and periods which at another time he denies and we must then rejoyce in it when he vouchsafes it and submit to his Divine will when he denies it 11. These good women had the first fruits of the apparition for their forward love and the passion of their Religion made greater haste to entertain a Grace and was a greater endearment of their persons to our Lord than a more sober reserved and less active spirit This is more safe but that is religious this goes to God by the way of understanding that by the will this is supported by discourse that by passions this is the sobriety of the Apostles the other was the zeal of the holy women and because a strong fancy and an earnest passion sixed upon holy objects are the most active and forward instruments of Devotion as Devotion is of Love therefore we find God hath made great expressions of his acceptance of such dispositions And women and less knowing persons and tender dispositions and pliant natures will make up a greater number in Heaven than the severe and wary and enquiring people who sometimes love because they believe and believe because they can demonstrate but never believe because they love When a great Understanding and a great Affection meet together it makes a Saint great like an Apostle but they do not well who make abatement of their religious passions by the severity of their Understanding It is no matter by which we are brought to Christ so we love him and obey him but if the production admit of 〈◊〉 that instrument is the most excellent which produces the greatest love and 〈◊〉 discourse and a sober spirit be in it self the best yet we do not always suffer that to be a
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 〈◊〉 have accidental eminences and priviledges sometimes 〈◊〉 to them beyond the temporal graces of the just and innocent as being such who not only 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 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 〈◊〉 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 〈◊〉 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 〈◊〉 more diligently and watch more carefully and redeem the 〈◊〉 and make amends for their omissions and oppose a good to the former evils beside the duties of the 〈◊〉 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 〈◊〉 of Sanctity than the even and moderate affections of just persons who as our Blessed Saviour's expression is 〈◊〉 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 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that 〈◊〉 than 〈◊〉 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. 〈◊〉 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 〈◊〉 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 〈◊〉 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 〈◊〉 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 〈◊〉 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 〈◊〉 of God and as we here live by Faith and lay them down with hope so the 〈◊〉 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
of ancient and later Authors it is referred to the Reign of Nero. 5. SUCH was the end of this miserable and unhappy Man Which no sooner came to the ears of the Emperor to whom by wicked artifices he had indeared himself but it became an occasion of hastning Peter's ruine The Emperor probably had before been displeased with Peter not only upon the account of the general disagreement and inconformity of his Religion but because he had so strictly pressed temperance and chastity and reclaimed so many Women in Rome from a dissolute and vicious life thereby crossing that wanton and lascivious temper to which that Prince was so immoderate a slave and vassal And being now by his means robbed of his dear favorite and companion he resolved upon revenge commanded Peter as also S. Paul who was at this time at Rome to be apprehended and cast into the Mamertine Prison where they spent their time in the exercises of Religion and especially in Preaching to the Prisoners and those who resorted to them And here we may suppose it was if not a little before that Peter wrote his second 〈◊〉 to the dispersed Jews wherein he indeavours to confirm them in the belief and practice of Christianity and to fortifie them against those poysonous and pernicious principles and practices which even then began to break in upon the Christian Church 6. NERO returning from Achaia and entring Rome with a great deal of pomp and triumph resolved now the Apostles should fall as a Victim and Sacrifice to his cruelty and revenge While the fatal stroke was daily expected the Christians in Rome did by daily prayers and importunities solicite S. Peter to make an escape and to reserve himself to the uses and services of the Church This at first he rejected as what would ill reflect upon his courage and constancy and argue him to be afraid of those sufferings for Christ to which he himself had so often perswaded others But the prayers and the tears of the People overcame him and made him yield Accordingly the next Night having prayed with and taken his farewell of the Brethren he got over the Prison-wall and coming to the City-Gate he is there said to have met with our Lord who was just entring into the City Peter asked him Lord whither art thou going from whom he presently received this answer I am come to Rome to be crucified a second time By which answer Peter apprehended himself to be reproved and that our Lord meant it of his death that he was to be recrucified in his Servant Whereupon he went back to the Prison and delivered himself into the hands of his Keepers shewing himself most ready and chearful to acquiesce in the will of God And we are told that in the stone whereon our Lord stood while he talked with Peter he left the impression of his Feet which stone has been ever since preserved as a very sacred Relique and after several translations was at length fixed in the Church of S. Sebastian the Martyr where it is kept and visited with great expressions of reverence and devotion at this day Before his suffering he was no question scourged according to the manner of the Romans who were wont first to whip those Malefactors who were adjudged to the most severe and capital punishments Having saluted his Brethren and especially having taken his last farewell of S. Paul he was brought out of the Prison and led to the top of the Vatican Mount near to Tybur the place designed for his Execution The death he was adjudged to was crucifixion as of all others accounted the most shameful so the most severe and terrible But he intreated the favour of the Officers that he might not be crucified in the ordinary way but might suffer with his Head downwards and his Feet up to Heaven affirming that he was unworthy to suffer in the same posture wherein his Lord had suffered before him Happy man as Chrysostom glosses to be set in the readiest posture of travelling from Earth to Heaven His Body being taken from the Cross is said to have been imbalmed by Marcellinus the Presbyter after the Jewish manner and was then buried in the Vatican near the Triumphal way Over his Grave a small Church was soon after erected which being destroyed by Heliogabalus his Body was removed to the Coemetery in the Appian way two Miles from Rome where it remained till the time of Pope Cornelius who re-conveyed it to the Vatican where it rested somewhat obscurely until the Reign of Constantine who out of the mighty reverence which he had for the Christian Religion caused many Churches to be built at Rome but especially rebuilt and inlarged the Vatican to the honour of S. Peter In the doing whereof Himself is said to have been the first that began to dig the Foundation and to have carried thence twelve Baskets of Rubbish with his own hands in honour as it should seem of the twelve Apostles He infinitely inriched the Church with Gifts and Ornaments which in every Age increased in 〈◊〉 and Riches till it is become one of the wonders of the World at this day Of whose glories stateliness and beauty and those many venerable Monuments of antiquity that are in it they who desire to know more may be plentifully satisfied by Onuphrius Only one amongst the rest must not be forgotten there being kept that very wooden Chair wherein S. Peter sat when he was at Rome by the onely touching whereof many Miracles are said to be performed But surely Baronius his wisdome and gravity were from home when speaking of this Chair and fearing that Heretiques would imagine that it might be rotten in so long a time he tells us that it 's no wonder that this Chair should be preserved so long when Eusebius affirms that the wooden Chair of S. James Bishop of Jerusalem was extant in the time of Constantine But the Cardinal it seems forgot to consider that there is some difference between three and sixteen hundred Years But of this enough S. Peter was crucified according to the common computation in the Year of Christ sixty nine and the 13th or as Eusebius the 14th of Nero how truly may be inquired afterwards SECT X. The Character of his Person and Temper and an Account of his Writings The description of S. Peter's person An account of his Temper A natural fervor and eagerness predominant in him Fierceness and animosity peculiarly remarkable in the Galileans The abatements of his Zeal and courage His humility and lowliness of mind His great love to and zeal for Christ. His constancy and resolution in confessing Christ. His faithfulness and diligence in his Office His Writings genuine and supposititious His first Epistle what the design of it What meant by Babylon whence it was dated His second Epistle a long time questioned and why Difference in the style no considerable objection Grotius his conceit of its
That he was an Hebrew of the Hebrews either because both his Parents were Jews or rather that all his Ancestors had been so They belonged to the Tribe of Benjamin whose Founder was the youngest son of the old Patriarch Jacob who thus prophesied of him Benjamin shall raven as a Wolf in the morning he shall devour the prey and at night he shall divide the spoil This prophetical character Tertullian and others after him will have to be accomplished in our Apostle As a ravening Wolf in the morning devouring the prey that is as a persecutor of the Churches in the first part of his life destroying the flock of God In the evening dividing the spoil that is in his declining and reduced age as Doctor of the Nations feeding and distributing to Christ's sheep 3. WE find him described by two names in Scripture one Hebrew and the other Latin probably referring both to his Jewish and Roman capacity and relation The one Saul a name frequent and common in the Tribe of Benjamin ever since the first King of Israel who was of that name was chosen out of that Tribe In memory whereof they were wont to give their Children this name at their Circumcision His other was Paul assumed by him as some think at his Conversion to denote his humility as others in memory of his converting Sergius Paulus the Roman Governour in imitation of the Generals and Emperors of Rome who were wont from the places and Nations that they conquered to assume the name as an additional honour and title to themselves as Scipio Africanus Caesar Germanicus Parthicus Sarmaticus c. But this seems no way consistent with the great humility of this Apostle More probable therefore it is what Origen thinks That he had a double name given him at his Circumcision Saul relating to his Jewish original and Paul referring to the Roman Corporation where he was born And this the Scripture seems to favour when it says Saul who also is called Paul Or if it was taken up by him afterwards it was probably done at his Conversion according to the custom and manner of the Hebrews who used many times upon solemn and eminent occasions especially upon their entering upon a more strict and religious course of life to change their names and assume one which they had not before 4. IN his Youth he was brought up in the Schools of Tarsus fully instructed in all the liberal Arts and Sciences whereby he became admirably acquainted with foreign and external Authors Together with which he was brought up to a particular Trade and course of life according to the great Maxim and principle of the Jews That He who teaches not his son a Trade teaches him to be a Thief They thought it not only fit but a necessary part of Education for their wisest and most learned Rabbins to be brought up to a manual Trade whereby if occasion was he might be able to maintain himself Hence as Drusius observes nothing more common in their writings than to have them denominated from their callings Rabbi Jose the Tanner Rabbi Jochanan the Shoomaker Rabbi Juda the Baker c. A custom taken up by the Christians especially the Monks and Asceticks of the Primitive times who together with their strict profession and almost incredible exercises of devotion each took upon him a particular Trade whereat he daily wrought and by his own hand-labour maintained himself And this course of life the Jews were very careful should be free from all suspicion of scandal 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as they call it a clean that is honest Trade being wont to say That he was happy that had his Parents imployed in an honest and commendable Calling as he was miserable who saw them conversant in any sordid and dishonest 〈◊〉 of life The Trade our Apostle was put to was that of Tent-making whereat he wrought for some particular reasons even after his calling to the Apostolate An honest but mean course of life and as Chrysostom observes an argument that his Parents were not of the nobler and better rank however it was an useful and gainful Trade especially in those war-like Countries where Armies had such frequent use of Tents 5. HAVING run through the whole circle of the Sciences and laid the sure foundations of humane Learning at Tarsus he was by his Parents sent to Jerusalem to be perfected in the study of the Law and put under the Tutorage of Rabban Gamaliel This Gamaliel was the son of Rabban Symeon probably presumed to be the same Symeon that came into the Temple and took Christ into his arms President of the Court of the Sanhedrim he was a Doctor of the Law a person of great wisdom and prudence and head at that time of one of the Families of the Schools at Jerusalem A man of chief eminency and authority in the Jewish Sanhedrim and President of it at that very time when our Blessed Saviour was brought before it He lived to a great age and was buried by 〈◊〉 the proselyte Author of the Chaldee Paraphrase one who 〈◊〉 loved and honoured him at his own vast expence and charge He it was that made that wise and excellent speech in the Sanhedrim in favour of the Apostles and their Religion Nay he himself is said though I know not why to have been a Christian and his sitting amongst the Senators to have been conniv'd at by the Apostles that he might be the better friend to their affairs Chrysippus 〈◊〉 of the Church of Jerusalem adds that he was brothers son to 〈◊〉 together with whom he and his son Abib were baptized by Peter and John This account he derives from Lucian a Presbyter also of that Church under John Patriarch of Jerusalem who in an Epistle of his still extant tells us that he had this together with some other things communicated to him in a Vision by Gamaliel himself Which if true no better evidence could be desired in this matter At the feet of this Gamaliel 8. Paul tells us he was brought up alluding to the custom of the Jewish Masters who were wont to sit while their Disciples and Scholars stood at their feet Which honorary custom continued till the death of this Gamaliel and was then left off Their own Talmud telling us That since old Rabban Gamaliel died the honour of the Law was perished 〈◊〉 and Pharisaism were destroyed which the Gloss thus explains That whilest he lived men were sound and studied the Law standing but he being dead weakness crept into the World and they were forced to sit 6. UNDER the Tuition of this great Master S. Paul was Educated in the knowledge of the Law wherein he made such quick and vast improvements that he soon out-stript his fellow-Disciples Amongst the various Sects at that time in the Jewish Church he was especially Educated in the Principles and Institutions of the Pharisees Of which Sect
of her incomparable beauty by the help of Simon the Magician a Jew of Cyprus ravished her from her Husbands bed and in defiance of all law and right kept her for his own Wife To these qualities he had added bribery and covetousness and therefore frequently sent for S. Paul to discourse with him expecting that he should have given him a considerable summ for his release and the rather probably because he had heard that S. Paul had lately brought up great summs of money to Jerusalem But finding no offers made either by the Apostle or his friends he kept him prisoner for two years together so long as himself continued Procurator of that Nation when being displaced by Nero he left S. Paul still in prison on purpose to 〈◊〉 the Jews and engage them to speak better of him after his departure from them 4. TO him succeeded Portius Festus in the Procuratorship of the Province at whose first coming to Jerusalem the High-Priest and Sanhedrim presently began to prefer to him an Indictment against S. Paul desiring that in order to his Trial he might be sent for up from Caesarea designing under this pretence that some Assassinates should lie in the way to murder him Festus told them that he himself was going shortly for Caesarea and that if they had any thing against S. Paul they should come down thither and accuse him Accordingly being come to Caesarea and sitting in open Judicature the Jews began to renew the Charge which they had heretofore brought against S. Paul Of all which he cleared himself they not being able to make any proof against him However Festus being willing to oblige the Jews in the entrance upon his Government asked him whether he would go up and be tried before him at Jerusalem The Apostle well understanding the consequences of that proposal told him that he was a Roman and therefore ought to be judged by their Laws that he stood now at Caesar's own Judgment-seat as indeed what was done by the Emperor's Procurator in any Province the Law reckoned as done by the Emperor himself and though he should submit to the Jewish Tribunal yet he himself saw that they had nothing which they could prove against him that if he had done any thing which really deserved capital punishment he was willing to undergo it but if not he ought not to be delivered over to his enemies who were before-hand resolved to take away his life However as the safest course he solemnly made his appeal to the Roman Emperor who should judge between them Whereupon Festus advising with the Jewish Sanhedrim received his appeal and told him he should go to Caesar. This way of appealing was frequent amongst the Romans introduced to defend and secure the lives and fortunes of the populacy from the unjust incroachments and over-rigorous severities of the Magistrates whereby it was lawful in cases of oppression to appeal to the people for redress and rescue a thing more than once and again setled by the Sanction of the Valerian Laws These appeals were wont to be made in writing by Appellatory Libels given in wherein was contained an account of the Appellant the person against whom and from whose Sentence he did appeal But where the case was done in open Court it was enough for the Criminal verbally to declare that he did appeal In great and weighty cases appeals were made to the Prince himself and that not only at Rome but in the Provinces of the Empire all Proconsuls and Governours of Provinces being strictly forbidden to execute scourge bind or put any badge of servility upon a Citizen or any that had the priviledge of a Citizen of Rome who had made his appeal or any ways to hinder him from going thither to obtain justice at the hands of the Emperor who had as much regard to the liberty of his Subjects says the Law it self as they could have of their good will and obedience to him And this was exactly S. Paul's case who knowing that he should have no fair and equitable dealing at the hands of the Governour when once he came to be swayed by the Jews his sworn and inveterate enemies appealed from him to the Emperor the reason why Festus durst not deny his demand it being a priviledge so often so plainly setled and confirmed by the Roman Laws 5. SOME time after King Agrippa who succeeded Herod in the Tetrarchate of 〈◊〉 and his Sister Bernice came to Caesarea to make a visit to the new-come Governour To him Festus gave an account of S. Paul and the great stir and trouble that had been made about him and how for his safety and vindication he had immediately appealed to Caesar. Agrippa was very desirous to see and hear him and accordingly the next day the King and his Sister accompanied with Festus the Governour and other persons of quality came into the Court with a pompous and magnificent retinue where the prisoner was brought forth before him Festus having acquainted the King and the Assembly how much he had been solicited by the Jews both at Caesarea and Jorusalem concerning the prisoner at the Bar that as a notorious Malefactor he might be put to death but that having found him guilty of no capital crime and the prisoner himself having appealed to Caesar he was resolved to send him to Rome but yet was willing to have his case again discussed before Agrippa that so he might be furnished with some material instructions to send along with him since it was very absurd to send a prisoner without signifying what crimes were charged upon him 6. HEREUPON Agrippa told the Apostle he had liberty to make his own defence To whom after silence made he particularly addressed his speech he tells him in the first place what a happiness he had that he was to plead before one so exactly versed in all the rites and customs the questions and the controversies of the Jewish Law that the Jews themselves knew what had been the course and manner of his life how he had been educated under the Institutions of the Pharisces the strictest Sect of the whole Jewish Religion and had been particularly disquieted and arraigned for what had been the constant belief of all their Fathers what was sufficiently credible in it self and plainly enough revealed in the Scripture the Resurrection of the dead He next gave him an account with what a bitter and implacable zeal he had formerly persecuted Christianity told him the whole story and method of his conversion and that in compliance with a particular Vision from Heaven he had preached repentance and reformation of life first to the Jews and then after to the Gentiles That it was for no other things than these that the Jews apprehended him in the Temple and designed to murder him but being rescued and upheld by a Divine power he continued in this testimony to this day asserting nothing but what was perfectly agreeable to Moses