Two SERMONS BY GEO. HALL Late Fellow of Kings Coledge in Cambridge LONDON Printed by J. O. for Anth. Hall and are to be sold at his shop in St. Dunstans Church-yard 1641. GEN 3.19 In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat thy bread till thou returne to the earth GOD Almightie the great and sole Builder of heaven and earth in those six dayes in which his goodnesse did first reconcile the odds betweene being and not being calling the possible world into act made these and but these two natures the necessarie and the voluntarie to the former as being voyd of reason and therefore not capable of any positive Law he gave no precept hee set Nature to them a rule and furnisht them with faculties determined and if there be no impediment in second causes necessitated to such or such actions tending to such or such ends To the latter as being endowed with freedome and a power indifferent to both extremes to doe or not to doe to doe this or that good or ill He expressely gave in charge what if hee tendered his life hee should not doe and therefore hee had no sooner pronounced him Lord of the whole earth but knowing how proper it is for happinesse to forget her selfe and how safe for Monarchs to remember that they are dependantly and subordinately great in the proper tone of a Law-Giver Legum enim authoritas ratione suasoria vile est tels him flatly Of the fruit of the tree which is in the middest of the garden thou shalt not eat The tree is now forbidden and that by the Lord and Maker of it from henceforth for Adam to taste it shall be disobedience shall bee intemperance shall bee injustice the least of which shall not dwell in Paradise they make too great a stir in the soule and are too turbulent to reside in him whom God created as a Citie at unitie in it selfe there was no insurrection of the sensitive appetite against the will no deformitie betweene the will and reason the intellect directed the will commanded the members executed In a word there was a neat and harmonious consent of all the faculties with reason and of reason with God thus was man at peace with God and with himselfe But like as from the quietnesse of the aire the Philosopher suspects an earth-quake mee thinks the man that had not read this book should have read so much in the book of Nature tane so much from politick rules as to fore-see a declension of things at perfection to fear most a rebellion in a State most composed such was the state of Adam and with such successe in the same day were his affections quiet and tumultuous his will which that day had well given up her name revolted from the regiment of reason judge you how voluntarily fallen in that the left her leader and yet her selfe blind I ask not whence this desertion who permitting who instigating This is enough for me this will bring me to my text if I tell how the evill of sin lets in the evill of paine and that I find in the sacred History that our first parents did eat and this probable in the schoole that they were both created both stood and both fell and both in one day Let both these two great lights on earth answer to those two in heaven and then behold the eclipse that Hesychius Milesius speaks of {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} The Sun was darkened and the Moone withdrew her light but happy you superiour lights whose eclipses are not sins the defects and anomies of humane actions are scann'd at the bar of justice and bearing a guilt upon the offendent will not be expiated but by suffering for let the man but taste of the prohibited fruit and he shall heare a voyce from heaven that voyce which breaketh the Cedars of Libanus thundring out wrath and this sad doom In the sweat of thy face c. The generals in the text are three first the sufferer thou secondly his sufferings to eat his bread in the sweat of his face thirdly the terme of his sufferings till thou returne to the earth Since there is so necessary dependancie of morall acts upon intention it is a good rule which the Philosopher gives in the first of his Rhetorick {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} Not to look so much to the letter of the Law as the mind of the Law-giver The expresse prohibition of eating was to one but intended for all one man our first father did eat and sin the sin ran downe to his sons and to the sons of their sons and to those that did descend from them to all nations sexes conditions times and ages of the world to the man that shall last see the Sun set In the day that thou shalt eat thou shalt dye the death as it sayes more kinds of death than one so more that should dye than one and to dust thou shalt returne was more than a personall sentence for all men were dead in one and were gathered to their fathers as to a living sepulcher larger and more common than that which Abraham bought of Ephron the son of Zoar which was but for him and for his house so that it seemes to have a great deale of mind that which the Jewes so talk of that Abraham Isaac and Jacob were buried in the same cave with Adam Now if posteritie dyed with him then it sinned with him and then shall suffer and labour with him Sane hoc iniquum videtur sayes Bodinus parentum culpam in liberos derivari Does not Sylla heare ill for the sonnes of Proscripts Can a man be guiltie of that which was done before he was Ask the Schoole Is it not the nature of sinne to bee voluntarie Does it not require knowledge counsell consent election If not why then is not the Wolfe called unjust that devoures the Lamb Why is not hee cited to Areopagus as well as Mars Why doe not Princes promulgate their Lawes in the Desarts and compell the affections of the wild Asse to a meane as well as ours But {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} Arist. Moral lib. 3. The Law-giver hath an eye to what is voluntarie and unvoluntarie to the former by the rule of distributive justice hee sets out rewards and punishments to the latter neither reward nor punishment How then does God punish the sin of the first man in his posteritie that personally had done neither good nor ill How could they conceive and bring forth sin who yet themselves were not conceived or call it a sin shall it be a mortall sin {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} Who blames a man for being borne blind That does the Judge of the great Court of heaven and earth and surely the Almightie does not pervert justice it is not with him as with those Romane Praetors Jus dicunt cum iniqua decernunt For like as by a politicall union many families become
of the Historie that man is of the earth witnesse the like qualities of his nutriment his sinking in the water melancholy his compact flesh the drynesse of his bones the constancy of his figure and that which is not of least moment the base worldling that has fixt his eyes on the earth and by his life-preaching Gentilisme does sacrifice at Vesta's Altars and calls her the mother of gods and men it may be Lucretius read his Pedigree where hee tells of men whom the earth after certaine conversions of the heaven growne big brought forth and nursed with her owne milke But let the Poet dreame of prodigious birthes we know that God made man of the earth I doe not say as some did fetcht from the foure extremities of the earth to shew that his Dominion and the world had the same bounds but of earth First that wee might the more joy in our Ascension to heaven and glorifie our Maker for raising our heavie bodies to so high a place above the Ayre above the Fire above the Moon and though Leucippus taught {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} that the Orb of the Sunne was the supreame Orb above the Sunne above all the Starres except those that praysed him in the morning Iob. 38. The blessed Angels whose early harmony eccho'd to the harmony of the new borne world Secondly of earth that we might have from whence to raise our soules but not why to raise our Crests that great ones might not look too big on the poore but resemble in this that glorious Planet the bright eye of the World the Sun the higher it is the lesse it looks that they might consider the humble shrub lives in Mount Lebanon as well as the stately Cedar and many times lives longer alway safer that 't is somecimes in States as in nature that gives to lighter bodies the higher place that all faces are drawn in dust though some in illustrious dust that very Cyrus who in his time was writ {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} now begs his memorie as Strabo writes {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} O man I am Cyrus he that stiled himselfe great from the Empire of the earth stood but like the Embleme of inconstancie with his foot upon a Globe a slippery Globe earth upon earth he and poor Diogenes lived both but for a time and both in a time though not both in a Tub and Plutarch sayes they dyed both in one day Death you see makes no difference and Christ himselfe seemes to make none 't is noted to this purpose that on the mount there appeared with him Moses and Elias the one in his younger yeares was a mightie man in Aegypt after a leader of Gods people the other alway poore cold and hungrie cloathed with Goats haire Away then with that Knave Lisippus that must needs paint Alexander with a Thunder-bolt in his hand with Caligula that set his head on Jupiters shoulders and with Darius that by all meanes must bee a god though but for thirtie dayes better was that speculation of Philip the Macedonian who on a time falling and viewing in the dust his length cryed out Lord what a little portion of earth is not content with the whole earth he well took notice that as he had falne on the earth so hee came from the earth which is my first part and should returne to the earth which is my second {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} Rhet. 2. Arist. who knowes not that he shall dye to consult about an escape were {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} seriously to deliberate what course a man might take that the Sun should nor rise or set I have read of Temples dedicated to Feares but that no people did ever consecrate a Priest or Temple to death as being well knowne to bee inexorable who have not heard of the gates of Death who knowes not that they lye open and that for him yet because Evills that may bee farre off doe not much affect and wee while the bloud runs hot in our veines put farre from us that frozen and benumbed age as if eternall Hebe or Youth fild our Cups as Poets say shee does their Joves it will not be out of place or time in the middle of Summer to admonish of Winter 't was the Devills policy in old time to have the dead buried without the Walls out of sight that the living might not lay it to heart he that steeres well must sit at the end of his Boat and 't is the good Politician {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} when danger is farre off then to suppose it neate in this respect it cannot bee out of season this is my second part our returne to the earth The whole man came not from earth and therefore cannot returne to the earth the soule shall goe to places deputed to her the body to the earth one and the same our Mother our Nurse our House our Tombe that these two should part proceeds from causes Morall and Naturall the Morall cause is sinne that made a separation of God from the soule then followed a separation of the soule from the body for God made not Death neither taketh the Potter pleasure in bruising an earthen Pitcher two things I may safely say cannot God make a God and Sin of these take the word properly he has no Idea The Naturall causes of Death are either externall or internall exrernall O that I could number them I should then learne to number my dayes the internall cause is the mutuall conflict of contrarie qualities the brain being cold the Stomack and the Liver hot the Bones drie and the Reines moyst the soule comes from the Father of Spirits it selfe a Spirit into a body whose principles exercise naturall and irreconcileable enmitie me thinks at her first entrance into an house so divided against it selfe she should looke about her like that fellow in Libanius that comming home and finding painted on his Wall two ready and instructed Armies cries out {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} who has made my house a Military Campe The members of every mans body are at continuall Warre wee may bee at peace with forraine enemies our domestick are alway in armes 'T is false that Solinus writes of a people in Iurie that are so equally mixt their temper so arithmeticall without excesse defect or jarre ut aeternagons sit cessantibus puerperiis that there is alway the same number of people and yet no children borne Who shall make me believe that Iurie or any part or Jurie is exempted from death since life it selfe our Lord and Saviour Jesus did dye in Jurie Death erects her Trophies as well in Iuries as Greece and in Greece as Scythia her victories are here above her Captives lie below God made the face of the earth to bee inhabited sin and death the bowells this is the place of them that live that of them that have lived Thus
is the earth the common receptacle of the living and of the dead other Elements serve us in our life her service continues after death when our funerall fires have turn'd us to ashes when the Aire our Breath hath left us and the water belcht us up shee is to our tossed bodies a shore to our bodies turn'd to ashes an Urne to our bodies out of breath a place of Repose a Seat to rest in Thus much of my second part our returne to the earth I now come to our returne as the end of evills Hercules his Pillars were the terme of his Travailes the terme of his life was the terme of his labours Life and Labour goe hand in hand death and rest hence some did conclude it the prime good not to be borne the next to dye speedily Plinie thought so well of death that he conceived no other end of venemous Herbes than to rid men out of life siquando taedio esset when it grew wearisome But seek not said Solomon death in the errour of your lives Death is not to bee hastened and need not bee feared never did Pinace arrive at the blessed Islands that first passed not through the straights of Death God and Nature have set them between us and home There is a place sayes Iob meaning the grave where there is no order and yet this for our comfort there is no tumultuous confusion for Pompey and Caesar are at peace the Senate and the people nay Rome and Carthage Fortune there rules no Orbe anger and revenge lye chained up and they that divide the Empire of our living world pride ambition injustice fraud covetousnesse oppression have not so much as one little Province 'T was well done of Nature that condemned us not to any long stay here that cuts off our sins with our thred and our paines with our lives for did not men weep oftner before the floud than after and did not old Priamus shed more teares than young Troilus to all that float upon the troubled waves of this world there is one common and universall Haven the haven of death and yet even there in the very haven doe all men suffer ship-wrack which casts me on my fourth and last part the discourse on death as death is an evill Sin and the punishment of sin are members adequally dividing humane evils the former presupposed no evill or privation it presupposed imperfection in him that sinned as mutabilitie of will which is no evill or privation for it is universally actually in all individuals but no privation is actually affirmed of the whole species the later presupposed evill an inordination in free actions or omissions called Malum culpae which in Gods justice is payed with that other called Malum poenae the evill of punishment to which member I reduce the hate of Nature the last enemy the last of evils Death but not the least Can that be the least of evils which is so abhorred of all those appetites which God hath printed in the soule to wit the naturall animall and rationall Does not the nutritive facultie earnestly labour to maintaine us in being {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} sayes Aristotle Mor. 1. even when wee are asleep Does not the irascible defend our being and the concupiscible together with the generative propagate it Does not that universall facultie as Suarez cals it the will love and desire the being and well being of all inferiour parts Shew mee but any thing of the most obscure being that desires not to maintaine that being and I shall the sooner with the Egyptians believe two Gods that made the nature of things the one good the other bad Stay then take notice see and be amazed too to see by what strange wayes and windings the derived rivers become tributarie to the sea all things flow from the deep of divine goodnesse see how hee fetches them back againe hee hath made them all at least by some analogie to love him in that they love themselves for they are drops of the bucket and so much as they love themselves which are by participation so much they must needs love him which is of himselfe they cannot love to bee but they must love him who swallowes up in his infinitenesse of being all being whose nature and essence it is to be let me tell you of a paradox if there bee any in afflicted Jobs case that weep that they died not from the womb that blesse the barren mother and the paps that never gave suck even these the damned spirits and unhappie soules out of a meere love to their being desire not to be such is our love to our being and God himselfe glories to say of himselfe I am and yet this our being does death as far as it can destroy Againe can that bee the least of evils which drownes in teares the eyes of widdowes and orphans that leaves the streets as a green field and changes the palaces of Princes into lodges of Bats and Owles that had not God for a father not Nature for a mother till she was adulterate that is ushered in by a thousand evils the sword pestilence and famine excesse in labour excesse in pleasure lingring griefe and sudden mirth with a thousand more Now that death is a passage from these to a more blessed mansion from these cloudy regions to those enlightned by the Lord God it is no thank to death death is still the ruine of Nature the demolisher of Gods Worke this is the goodnesse and power of God who will raise us againe out of the dust and the dark grave and then will blesse us and shew us the light of his countenance and say in the end of the world as hee said in the beginning let there be light and there shall bee light a light that no Cloud from thenceforth shall dim that shall never set to which light hee lighten us who lighteth every man nay who is that very light and for Iesus Christ his sake our onely Lord and Saviour Amen FINIS The second Sermon ECCELES. 12.1 Remember now thy Creatour in the dayes of thy youth THE Text naturally falls into these parts First an act Remember Secondly the object of that act and that first in a generall notion as the Creatour Secondly in a speciall with this restraint or appropriation thy Creatour Thirdly the time when set forth three wayes First in thy youth Secondly in the dayes of thy youth Thirdly now in the dayes of thy youth First of the act Remember But because the memorie of any thing does of necessitie suppose the former knowledge of that here comes in another act layd downe by way of supposition that we know God First then of this supposed Supremum in homine sayes S. August de Civit. Dei attingit supremum in mundo The noblest faculty in the little world man reacheth to the noblest thing in the great world God the builder of heaven and earth When God in the creation did
it was not sealed in this world we must be wrought here and sifted and squared for the house of God or no where for after this life shall cease the noyse of the hammer the Axe and the Chisill the day is for action whether good or ill the night commeth in which no man worketh for that reason remember thy Creator here and for this remember him here in thy youth because it is uncertaine whether thou shalt ever be old none are old which were not young many are young which shall not bee old Times and ages God as a wise dispenser has kept in his owne hands to the intent that wee might suspect a shorter thred of life and yet not despaire of a longer There is a time to be borne and a time to dye sayes Solomon marke his language here is birth and death but no talke of life as if in a new way of Philosophy he would make a passage ab extremo ad extremum sine medio as if wee were to spring immediately out of our mothers wombe out of our swadling Clouts into our winding sheet But suppose it were so that thou hadst a long lease of thy life and wert forc't to go to thy grave as a sheafe of Wheat into the Barne ripe and in a good age suppose thou hadst a promise to see thy childrens children and their Children yet were it extreame impiety to deferre thy repentance to thy later dayes to give thy beautie and youth to thy pleasure and thy wrinckles and gray haires to thy God Hast thou not read hath it not beene told thee that God will have no pleasure in thy leavings the halt the lame the bleare-eyed and the blind are these fit offerings on his Altar Besides how unjust is this to play away the strength of thine age and then to lay the burden of all thy sinnes upon thy old and decrepit age which God knowes is a burden to it selfe whose knees tremble and shake under as many diseases as sinnes O Lord that back that so stoops under threescore yeares how shall it sinke under the sins of threescore yeares the sinnes I say whose weight hee full well knowes that calls to us Come unto mee all you that are heavie laden for this I call heaven and earth and hell to witnesse for the earth sunk under the sins of Corah Dathan and Abiram the first sinne weighed the apostate Angels to hell and now is another hell to them and the sinne of man weighed downe from heaven to earth The Son of God who on the Mount of Olives sweat drops of bloud under the load of our iniquities and when hee bare them on the Crosse hee cryed out in the anguish of his soule heaven and earth bewayling the extreame weight that lay upon him for the Sunne shut his eye and the whole Land of Iurie became as a close mourner for it was wrapt in a blacke Mantle of Darknesse from the sixt even unto the ninth houre is this then a burthen for thine old age for crazie and faint limbes then let a Pigmie a Dwarfe twitch up Mount Aetna at the roots and strut away with it on his shoulders Besides all this doe but thinke of the many and certaine miseries of that age Nonius Marcellus coats three places out of Aecius Pacuvius and Titinnius where senium is put for Malum as if it were one and the same thing to be old and miserable adde hither the decay of Senses conscience of an ill-acted life the feare to dye and yet wearinesse to live with Chiliads and Iliads more of evills Ministers to the first I tremble to say the second death Beyond all this there are some vices naturall to old age as jealousie peevishnesse morositie loquacitie their present life being but a vaine repetition or memorie of their former {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} they live by memorie saies Arist. I add hither also Covetousnesse so proper to this age that the Philosopher therfore cals it {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} uncurable because {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} old age and everie impotencie breeds it whether it bee that when the gifts of body and minde faile wee catch at those of fortune as our last refuge like men halfe drowned that missing of better hold catch at strawes or weeds which reason Aquinas on that place gives or whether it be {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} which is the Philosophers one Reason in 2. of his Rhetor because old men by experience best know how necessary those eternalls are and yet how hardly got how easily lost This is that that makes them when they are even at their journies end breake their Asses backs with laying on new provision not much unlike Rivers that then runne biggest and gather most waters when they come nearest to the Sea to their owne home Lastly how hardly does gray-headed sinne leave a sinner This is that Aegyptian Tyrant that Pharaoh that will not let Israel goe it is continuance in sinne that makes an earnest sinner our first sinnes are with some reluctancy some checks some gripes our later with delight happy is hee that dashes those Brats those little ones against the Stone as it is in Psalme one hundred thirtie sixe Some Interpreters by little one doe there understand sinne in its Infancy and by the Stone the Rock the Corner stone CHRIST JESUS How hardly is the iniquity of our Heeles shooke off Cassiodorus expounds our Heeles our later Age and the difficultie proceeds partly from the Devill to insidiaberis calcaneo said God to the Serpent thou shalt lye in wait for his Heele partly from the sinner hee is an old a grave sinner hardly cureable not as if the Balme of Gilead failed not as if GOD wanted mercie for he ran to meet the Prodigall afarre off and Saint Iohn saw Ierusalem with twelve Gates open to the East three to the West three to the North three and to the South three but because God in Iustice hardens such sinners not positively but negatively that is Non impertiendo malitiam sed non impertiendo gratiam sayes Lumbard not by making them evill but by not making them good leaving them stupid bed-ridden and speechlesse sinners without sence without motion not able to doe or say so much as the Prodigall did I will rise or I would rise and goe to my Father Hence now I passe to the second particular In the dayes of thy youth Why in the dayes of our youth more than in the yeares of our youth They that have set us out the shortest time for youth allow us from foureteene to thirtie foure but this is to put us in minde of uncertaintie of life as if our youth was but for a few dayes or like as at the end of the day comes evening and then darke night so at the end of our youth comes old Age and then Death Or it may bee without violence to the Text you may take in the