from this truth to you of his nearest relation Exhortation you have heard it proved that the Lord setteth a higher price upon the meanest believer then all the world besides you have the experience of it in the Lord his honouring your father in his life and death and I believe you esteem it none of your least honours that you are descended from also honourable a root and that upon very good ground for to be heirs of so many promises and prayers which he paâ— up to the Lord for you is an invaluable treasure and portion Moses when it was put to his choice whether he would deny his Hebrew pedegree and he reputed an Egyptian even the son of Pharaoh's daughter and thereby have hopes of a kingdome or on the other side lose all the riches of Egypt by declaring himself of the posterity of Abraham saw cause enough to make choice of the latter rather then the former in like manner I am perswaded you see more ground to glory that you are descended from your fathers loins who was so gracious then if you had been born heirs to the greatest Potentate of the earth if he were gracelesse O therefore that now it might be your great care to see that your behaviour in the world may be worthy of so good a father Beware you do not degenerate from his practise or principles but le your conversation to God and mad be such that you may be a crown to his head that was so great a glory to yours Robora parentum referunt liberi as sickly children argue the parents weaknesse so a gracious posterity like pure streams demonstrate the purity of the fountain from whence they are derived Childrens grace and piety is not onely a comfort to parents whilest they live but also a glory unto them when they are dead so was Eliakim of whom you may reade Isa 22.22 where the Spirit of God affirm that he was a throne of glory to his fathers house I saw a letter which one of you since your fathers death wrote from London to your brother in the countrey wherein was this expression viz. that he ballancing his fathers gain and glory which now he injoyed in heaven against the greatness of his own losse by his death on earth he professed that if he might have him alive again with a wish he durst not desire it I liked the expression exceeding well because it preferred his fathers glory above his own content And therefore as you rejoyce in the increase of your fathers glory in heaven so labour the augmentation of it in earth in being with Eliakim a throne of glory to your fathers house Which you shall effect if with the Rechabites you shall strictly and punctually observe and follow all his holy commands and blessed examples after his departure in so doing both the Lord himself and all his people shall do to you as the Lord Isaiah 22. promiseth they should do to Eliakim viz. hang the glory of his fathers house upon him Abraham was a good father and the Jews did much glory in him but Abraham could not glory in the Jews as his children because they did no the works of Abraham their father In like manner you had an honourable father and you justly glory in him O let him also have cause to glory in you whilest the world may take notice that you both walk in the steps of his faith and do also his works Let me therefore exhort every one that hath any of his bloud in his veins and beareth his name before the world that you would become his representatives the world that he being dead in his own body yet he may live and walk in you Collect the jewells of his graces set them in rows on the breast-plate of your heart and so carry his image about the world in your lives that all spectatours that knew your father when they behold your conformity to him may say Surely this is that renowned Sir Nathaniel Barnardiston or one very like him All this I speak unto you in this day of the sad obsequies of your father that I may ingage you all who are the branches of this noble vine to become fruitfull boughs loaden with such clusters the fruit whereof may glad the heart of God and man And for that end I commend unto you next after the reading of the Bible above all other books the reading and remembrance of the history of your fathers life and graces the volume of his counsels and directions written in your hearts use all diligence in the daily observation of the solid principles and divine rules legible in his example and practise Boleslaus the fourth King of Poland used to hang his fathers picture in a plate of gold about his neck Cromerus lib. 5. and when he was to speak or act any thing or importance did usually pull it out view and kisse it wishing he might do nothing unworthy of his name The like do you in bearing his name for a remembrance before the world untill the reflection on his perfections as so many rich diamond casting forth their beauty upon your actions cause you to answer those great expectations of piety and sincerity which your birth education and profession have raised in the hearts and minds of all spectatours Conceive I beseech you that every one that looks upon you doth speak unto you as the people of Rome used to speak at the creation of their Consuls praesta nomen tuum make good your name By this course you shall in some measure make up the couatreys great losse in the death of your father and make way for your friends to comfort those sorrowfull hearts that mourn for his death Ambros in obit Theo. As Ambrose in his Funcrall oration for Theodosius thus cheared up his mourning subjects my friends said he let his comfort you in the death of Theodosius the father because he lives in his son Honorias so I may say Let this comfort thee O Suffolk in the losse of his worthy Patriot that his graces yet survive in his sonne Nay if you shall severally and joincly second your fathers piety integrity and zeal for the cause of God and your countrey I may then adde that consolation to your lamenting neighbours which Eusebius reports of Constantines children after their fathers departure they lived so holily that the people said they had now may Constantines for one before they had Constantine multiplied so we also hereby may say we have may Sir Nathaniels for one or Sir Nathaniel multiplied and inlarged whilest his children that inherit his lands and estate do also succeed him in his virtues and graces who account it he highest honour of their family that Religion be continued in a succession and multiplication therein And truely Gentlemen if it was esteemed the great honour of the Family of the Curii in Rome Aeliax lib. 3. that there arose out from that stock three excellent Oratours one succeeding
of the same I would have totally stopped my mouth and imposed an absolute silence thereon Onely let me further intreat you to consider that if the most of you by some dayes or houres occasionall injoyment of his presence in his life time discerned so much worth in him Near 200 persons met his corps almost 20 miles from his house and many thousands attended his Funerall that drew so great a company of the chiefest persons in the countrey to go so long a journey before and to come again so farre now to honour his dead corps to the grave then you may easily guesse that I who had the happinesse to be so near him and to be intimately acquainted with him and his family for 30 yeares together must needs have more perfect understanding and approved experience of his faith holmesse and constant gracious temper then others could and therefore what of a truth I know and undoubtedly discerned in him I dare not conceal for veritatem celare est aurum sepelire to conceal truth is to bury gold yea the gold of grace which is much more precious then the gold of Ophir which being truely though sparingly discovered will give us all cause to say of his life and death Euseb in vita constant as is reported of Constantine felix nativitas felicior vita felicissima mers his birth was good his life better and his death most glorious of all Now for the honour of his birth In his relation to his birth I place it not in the the ancient lines of his pedegree or the Antiquity of the Family the continued descent of to many noble ancestours Although it be true that from his progenitours he was one of the Top-branches amongst our Suffolkcedars and although I acknowledge to be thus descended and better both then the commonalty is a singular blessing of God to the persons upon whom it is conferred as appears by the Lords own words to David in 2 Sam. 7.9 I have made thee a name like the name of the great men of the earth yea if they be gracious great men are a great blessing to others also as Solomon's words import Eccles 10.17 Blessed art thou O land when thy prince is the some of nobles and not of an upstart Family Yet this is no other blessing but what is common to the worthlesse world as well as to the worthiest believe and so it can have no great excellencie in it all noble bloud without grace being tainted Gain was of the elder house and Abel of the younger It is my purpose therefore to shew how the Lord honoured him in his birth more then any unbeliever which was by his second birth Genere nobilis sanctitate nobilior whereby he received soul-nobilitie and became heir to the second Adam whose hens are born not of bloud nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man but of God John 1.13 And this his second birth was eminently honourable and remarkable above other in three particulars 1. In the time of his conversion 2. In the matter of his humiliation 3. In the foundation of his faith 1. For the time of his conversion it was when he was young 1 1. The time of his conversion the Lord began to cast in the seed of regeneration when he was at school the very time when others of his ranck and quality give up themselves to the greatest degrees of licentious wantonnesse and immoderare excesses pretending that the heat of nature and strength of the lusts of youth are their discharges for the same but at that very time did the Lord sease on him who from that day with Abel did offer his first-fruits unto God O how eminently and emphatically excellent it is for young Gentlemen to bear Christ's yoke in their youth when the world haunts them and nature prompts them and Satan baits the flesh and bloud of such men with most desireable things O then to be crucified and mortified is glorious Lam. 3.27 2. The matter of his humiliation was eminently remarkable 2 2. Occasion of his humiliation for whereas usually in the conversion of young men the Lord humbles them by charging upon their consciences some notorious actuall sinne it was otherwise with him for living more innoceutly then for the most part young Gentlemen do upon a time hearing that Text opened Psal 51.5 Behold I was born and conceived in sinne c. where the greatnesse and odiousnesse of originall sinne was pressed it pleased the Lord so deeply to affect his heart thereby as that ever after it was a means to abase all high thoughts of himself through his whole life and he was much more solidly and constantly broken for it then for all the fruits of it yea hereby much preserved from them for as they that are once stung with scorpions Plin. nat hist 1.7 are ever after priviledged from being stung with wasps and hornets so he that is first deeply humbled for the root mother and nurse of corruptions shall feldome have cause after to be wounded with the guilt of actuall transgressions 3. For the foundation of his faith 3 3 Foundation of his faith it was more remarkable then the rest for whereas most men ground their faith upon that which can onely be the proof of it I mean the evidences of their love so God and others being better taught upon the discovery of the all-sufficiency of Christs merit revealed in the Gospel and a third sort upon the generall offer tendering Christ unto them his faith was not onely built generally upon the evidences of Gods love to him but particularly upon the Gospel as it is the law of faith held forth unto him in that Text John 3.22 This is the command we have received from him that we believe in the name of his Son whence the preacher urging that in the Gospel there was not onely granted a liberty to believe in Christ if we pleased but a necessity imposed that required us to believe whether we will or no it pleased the Lord so to overpower his heart with the authority of the precept that he durst not refuse it but submitted unto it and so his confidence was in pure obedience to God which being the most evangelicall and sublime reception of Christ namely upon no other ground but the Lord his authoritative will was that which produced this honourable second birth in him wherein his faith was more established then most believers usually are all the dayes of their lives Secondly In relation to his life that his life was as gracious as his birth was remarkable you will certainly conclude if you compare the most exact descriptions of a gracious life mentioned in the Scripture with his practise after his conversion Whether you define a gracious life in Davids words Psal 119.1 Blessed are they that are undefiled in their way c. or in the practise of Zacharias Luc. 1.74 Serving God in
the sight of God and their betters 3. Lastly there was in him a blessed conjunction of those things that rarely meet in any other I mean both an admirable facility easinesse to be intreated with a great yieldingnesse of spirit even to inseriours when any good might be done thereby and yet also a strong resolute unmovablenesse and stedfastnesse of mind in opposing all evil in whomsoever superiour or other in the cause of the Lord so that he was truely that which is reported of Athanasius Magnes Adamas Nazianzen a loadstone for his sweetnesse in drawing on good an adamant for his courage and stoutnesse in suppressing evil In regard of the former I may say as it is said of Titus he was delicia humani generis the delights of mankind and in respect of the latter he was Nathaniel a true Israelite without guile The observation of these things in him rendred him not onely to me but to all that were intimately conversant with him like Chemnitius caput Veneris gloria Christianorum Melchier Ad in zira chem the beauty of grace and the glory of Christianity which as so many precious jewells adorned him and presented him gracious and honourable to all men whilest he lived and being dead as so many redolent flowers stuck upon his herse give such a pleasant and odoriserous savour in the nostrill of all spectatours that the memory of them shall ever remain in the hearts and mouths of all future generations who shall understand thereby how the Lord was pleased to honour him first with a spirituall birth and after with a gracious life and last of all with a most blessed death which now in the next place falls under our consideration And surely if their death be blessed that die in the Lord and rest from their labours their works following them Revel 14. if it be a blessed death to depart in peace with Simeon Luc. 2. our eyes beholding the salvation by Christ if it be a blessed death to die as Paul did Phil. 4. having finished our course and kept the faith or with Jacob blessing our children in the arms of our dearest Joseph then the consideration of the particulars following which attended his death will manifest to all that his death was as blessed as his life was gracious or his birth honourable The first whereof was his carefull preparation thereunto His death blessed for the space of two years before when he made his last will and testament and writ it with his own hand upon this very ground as he there expresses it that after he had so set his house in order he might have nothing in the world to look after or look upon but his blessed Saviour and Salvation by him In which last Testament of his he expresseth so much assurance and confidence of the Lords everlasting grace and love unto him as if at the same time with Simeon he had imbraced the Lord Jesus in his arms In the disposall of the severall portions to his posterity he doth withall annex and twist in so many heavenly counsels and precious instructions tending to their everlasting inheritance that it rather resembled our Saviours Testament conveighing the legacies of the covenant of grace or a heavenly Sermon then any politicall instrument to dispense onely earthly possessions A second observable thing in his death was his gracious welcome of the messenger of it As soon as ever there appeared on his side a small swelling in which none but himself conceived any danger Gracious courage in sicknesse he taking me to walk with him presently fell into discourse of the worth and immortality of the soul of the manner of its subsistence and actings when it was separated of the joyes of the other world and the vanity and emptinesse of all things in this as the things most sutable to his present condition and herewith he was so deeply and spiritually affected that at our parting he expressed himself in this manner unto me Sir I now much wonder that any man that fully believes these things to be realities and not mere notions being in my condition should be unwilling to die for my own part I will not be so flattered with any carnall content as to be desirous to live longer in this world where there is little hope left that the Lord hath any more work or service for me to do except it be to suffer for keeping a good conscience in witnessing against the apostasies and impieties of the times and therefore now it is a great favour of God to be sent for speedily Which passage I note because it was one of the last I had with him before his removall to London and also because I have certain intelligence he made the same profession to others after he came under the Physicians hands Where another thing is remarkable for his pains and infirmities growing so fast upon him that he was thereby debarred the benefit of publick ordinances He one Sabbath morning observing the persons in the Family were he lodged preparing themselves to joyn with the congregation of that place fell into a great passion of sorrow and wept very sore and with David poured out his very heart because he had gone with the multitude and led them to the house of God but now was necessitated to want the benefit of that which his soul so much thirsted for Hereupon he gave himself so much the more earnestly to the exercise of secret reading the Scripture meditation and prayer so long as his strength would hold out but one wave followed another so fast that he was disable thereby to be so frequent and constant in those secret duties of communion with the Lord as he desired for which he made many complaints to his sonnes and others as they came about him The week before he died he was perswaded in respect of the extremity of his pain once or twise to go to bed before Family prayer but the night following being again perswaded to it he told them he would not be intreated to do so any more for he said he was sure that he slept the worse those two nights for the want of it spiritually using that proverb whet it no let The day before his death his children being about him as Jacobs were he blessed them all with his prayers for them and gave these his last counsels unto them First he admonished them to take heed of worldlinesse and vain-glory shewing what a vast difference there was between a gracious humble man and a proud gracelesse man both in the estimation of God and man Secondly perswaded them to live in love and unity together yet so as they should ever count it their duty to watch over one another and never be afraid to tell one another of their faults lovingly and not to be mealy-mouthed as his expression was Thirdly that they should take heed of timorousnesse and shirking from the truth by reason of the oppofitions of the
the other what height of excellency must it needs be thought that the power of Regligion and holinesse is made successive in your stock from generation to generation The next application is to those in the Auditory whom the Lord by his providence hath raised by their birth 2 2 Use to Gentlemen breeding and education estate parts or offices above the rest Gentlemen I mean that account themselves and are also accounted by others of an higher ranck and quality then other whose presence here is occasioned by their respect and estimation of his noble Knight now to be interred To you I have a word of instruction from the doctrine already proved which I am not willing to omit because I see the greatest prophet that was born of woman John the Baptist when he perceived such Auditours come unto him which were not usually before him took then occasion to apply himself unto them Matth. 3. His practise shall be my warrant and incouragement to addresse my speech unto you at this time Gentlemen I would instruct and direct you how you may be good as well as great and become honourable before God hereafter as you are before men already and the onely way is this to adde the nobility of grace to the nobility of nature for seeing the meanest believer is of more reputation with God then all the world besides it doth follow that the way to true honour is to become a true believer By faith the elders obteined a good report not onely a crown of glory after their death but estimation and honour from God whilest they lived as is manifest the whole chapter before my Text. Faith makes the meanest believer of more worth than an Emperour Jacob a plain man by faith became a Prince yea a Prince with God Deo servire est regnare to serve God is to be a King You therefore that would be esteemed worthy precious must become gracious Oh how excellent precious doth godliness make those men in the eyes of the Lord whom birth and estate have made honourable in the estimation of men Religion doth ennoble their spirits and advance their mind unto the heavens as a precious Jewell set in gold makes that much more conspicucus which was beautifull before so holinesse addes to the splendour of birth and estate the enemelings of grace and glorie Be therefore humbly intreated to crowne the emmency of your biâ—th and fortunes with the glory of spirituall excellencies I am the more carnest and serious at this time because the present pattern before you shewes it possible and seasible for you and oh that his death might cause you to imitate him whose lâ—â—e was a light to guide you in the way I know that many Gentlemen think that a strict and holy life is onely for such as have little to do or to take to in the world He onely is to live by faith that hath nothing else to live on but for those who are born to great things in the world it is too low for them to stoop to Christs yoke Nay some of them who are not ashamed of their oaths blasphemies beastly uncleanness swinish excesses but glorie in them yet account sanctification of Subbath hearing the Word constancie in prayer to be their disgrace and esteeme it a disparagement to their credit to be accounted godly and religious and therefore purposely act that which they know is profane and impious lest they should be esteemed holy or conscientious Thus Augustine in his Confessions lib. 2. cap. 19. pudebat me non fuâ—sse impudentem c. I was ashamed of my modest and blushed that I was not past blushing And Salvian even with teares complaines of the Gentlemen of his time Oh! Deprov lib. 4. saith he such contempt and disgrace is put upon religion ut cogantur esse mali ne vide antur viles they are compelled to be evil least they should be esteemed base for religions sake I wish that this sin of contempt and scorn put upon religion had been buried in Salvian's dayes but are there not very many still of these great ones that think that their attendance upon the Lord Jesus in his Ordinances is a condescension of their greatness and abstain from religious performances merely in point of honour as too low a service for their Lordships Ladyships and VVorships The CENTVRION thought his house too meane and unworthy to receive Christ into it but these men think Christ house too meane and unworthy to receive them Doe any of the rulers believe do the Knights Esquires and Gentlemen follow the Lord Jesus and why do they not oh it is not for their place credit reputation so to do Oh! accursed pride and hellish loftiness is it the highest honour of the glorified Angels to be Christ his servants and ministring spirits to attend his members and is it the highest glory of the Trinitie to be accounted holy gracious pure abundant in goodness and shall sinfull dust and ashes because of a little precedency in birth or estate account holinesse purity goodness their dishonour and disparagement It was the saying of Ignatius antiquit as mea nobilitas mea solus Christus Christ is my only nobilitie and antiquitie but these say my nobility and antiquity is mine onely Christ and therefor think the only way to cast down themselves is to exalt Christ whereas you may throughly be convinced by the truth proved unto you that he only way to exalt your selves is to exalt Christ above your selves who raiseth the meanest of his saints to a greater worth then all the world besides You see Gentlemen that neither the Lord Jesus nor his servants do envie your honour or greatness much lesse disparage it but rather desire the advancement of it in the true way of preferment to glory without which it had been better for you to have been born and brought up in a cave or den and layn all your to have lived in your Palaces and been sed at your fullest tables for 1. Motives All your births and high estates at the best are no better things then the Lord bestowes on his greatest enemies and if not accompanied with grace and improved for God they are greatest miseries For these expose you to more temptations then poorer men as our Saviour Mat. 19. and the Apostle 1 Tim. 6. affirmeth they are nothing else then fewel to feed your Justs and provocations to a more impudent and uncontrouleable course of sins Who would boast in such a garment which how rich and pompous soever it appears without yet within fills the body with adayly brood of nastie sores and crawling vermin Such are most mens estates 2. The higher your places are the more notorious and conspicuous are your vices Greâ—mens offences are no more hid then the spots in the Moon or a sore in the face which is a greater deformitie then a wound or sore in another part of the body Nazianz. orat 1 de fug saith