World can witness when he saw occasion he used various Ways and Methods that his great end your Happiness might be attained 2. Be sure to follow his very good Example What kind of Children should the Children of such a Father be there would be a kind of monstrousness in being very grosly unlike to him As to his youngest Son who is a Minister of the Gospel I heartily wish tho it be an hard thing which I wish that a double portion of his Fathers Spirit may be vouchsafed to him 3. Be encouraged by this That your deceased Father has treasured up a stock of Prayers for you and you may expect a gracious return If you give your selves to Prayers God may answer his Supplications after his death in bestowing Temporal Spiritual and Eternal Benefits upon you To others that hear me this day I shall only give two words of Counsel Think much of your later end Let it be your great care that your end may be peace 1. Be all of you wise to consider your later end Death did set out against you as soon as you were born and it makes still nearer and nearer approaches to you every day and hour and moment of your lives Every step you take is a step towards the Grave Every moment of your time which passes away brings you nearer to Eternity God wishes you wise to consider your later end he will be much pleased to see you very earnest with him to make you so he is ready to teach you so to number your days that you may apply your hearts unto wisdom Psal 90. 12. The serious thoughts of death will quicken you in your Duties and break the force of Temptations Think of the time when you must leave the World that eagerness after the World may be abated To how good purpose will you live if with the Apostle you dye daily 1 Cor. 15. 31. 2. Let it be your care that your end may be peace Believe in Jesus the great Peace-maker between God and Man that you may joy in him because by him you have received the atonement Rom. 5. 11. Let your Faith be accompanied with Obedience and Love to the Laws of God Psal 119. 165. Great peace have they that love thy law and nothing shall offend them Value the inestimable Jewel of a good Conscience and take heed of every thing that may defile and wound it When the Apostle had the sentence of death in himself the testimony of his Conscience that by the grace of God he had had his Conversation in the World in simplicity and godly sincerity did fill him with Peace and Joy 2 Cor. 1. 9 12. Never be weary of well-doing that your Lord when he comes may find you so doing 'T is labour best bestowed when you are diligent that you may be found of him in peace without spot and blameless Several Passages concerning Mr. Lawrence out of Two Letters which were sent by Two Ministers Eminent for Learning and Godliness and both of them intimately acquainted with Him The First LETTER concerning Mr. Edward Lawrence MR. Lawrence was admitted into Magdalene Colledge in Cambridge in the Year 1645 and was Studious a Promoter of serious Godliness among the young Scholars and was so noted also for his Parts and Learning that we would have made him a Fellow But when he had taken his Degree of Batchellor of Arts some Years after he took the Degree of Master of Arts he being some ways engaged went into the Countrey and began to preach having been of a good Age when admitted about 18 as I remember and with much Acceptance He took up with Baschurch a Vicaridge of about 60 l. a Year where though if he had sought great things he might have been removed to a greater Place considering the Love and Esteem he had he continued till Bartholomew 1662 and then left his Station and Subsistence though he had a Wife and seven or eight Children and no Estate and oft used to say He lived upon the sixth of Matthew About the Year 79 the Quakers rising thereabout he Disputed with one of their Chief Ring-leaders and shamefully baffled him in the Judgment of the Multitudes of the Hearers and as appears by the Relation of it put out by the Quaker He was dangerously ill and upon his recovery put out his useful Book Of Christ's Power over bodily Diseases which though very good I then told him was below most of his Sermons he usually preached of which I had heard many How he was driven from Whitchurch Mr. H. who was then in those parts will I suppose punctually inform you and for these last four or five and twenty Years his Brethren in the City can give a good account of Him The Second LETTER AFter Mr. Lawrence his remove by the Bartholomew Act from Baschurch where he had been many Years a Faithful Minister of the Gospel of Christ he sojourn'd while with his Wife and Children at a Neighbouring Gentleman's House within the Parish who had a great Respect for him and was very Kind to him and he accounted it a great Mercy that though the Law had silenced him that he must not preach to his beloved Flock yet he had his Abode amongst them and might be many ways useful to them But when the Five Mile Act so called was to be put in Execution in March 66. he went to Tilstock a Village in Whitchurch Parish in the same County to sojourn there and there the Power of the Lord was with him greatly and made him Instrumental of much Good both to the Town and in the Neighbourhood the remembrance whereof is still sweet to many who are yet living As he had opportunity he preach'd to them both in Season and out of Season and which was more his Prudent Pious Conversation was a continual Sermon He had many Children and all with him and no visible Income wherewithal to buy them Bread yet the Lord was graciously pleased to make Provision both for him and them so that they did not want The sixth of Matthew as he was used to say did maintain him During his Abode there he buried a dearly beloved Daughter named Sarah which was a great Grief to him for she was grown up and began to be useful but it Comforted him that she finished Well and God gave him two Sons instead of her which repair'd the loss Another remove he had to Whitchurch Town and while he was there in May 1670 when the severe Act against Conventicles commenc'd in the same Month upon a Sabbath-day in the Afternoon he preach'd in a private House only to four and the Family where they were disturbed by the Minister himself Dr. M. F. in his own Person with others attending him and the Week following Convicted and Fined the Minister 10 l. because Poor the Master of the House 20 l. and two other of the Town 5 l. a piece and one Woman 5 s. Upon each of which Distress was made shortly after with the greatest Rigor They judging themselves wrong'd made their Appeal according to Law and in March following had a Tryal at Salop before Judge Twisden The Pretence against them was That a Daughter of the Family who was sixteen Years of Age but a few Days before coming home from Chester from an Uncle the had there was one present and being none of the Family of her Father made a fifth The Case was argu'd by Council and the Prosecutors made no other account but that the Jury would give their Verdict for the Justices who were the Defendants and lay treble Damages upon the Plantiffs which were intended to be made very great to their utter undoing But it pleased God in whose Hands are the Hearts of all Men without any Motion or Procurement of theirs to incline one of the Jurors to differ in the Verdict from the rest saying He would rather dye than say the Girl was none of her Father's Family This occasioned their stay together all Night and in the Morning being accused of some words spoken by him in their heat of Arguing to one of his Fellow-Jurors he was severely Rebuked and Fined 10 l. and the Cause referred to two Lawyers who never made any Decision of it so that each side sat down with his own Loss and not long after such of their Goods as were taken from them they had again but much demnified 'T was observed That one of the Prosecuting Justices dying during the Prosecution his Houshold-Goods were Proclaimed in the Town to be Sold and were Sold before Chapmen could be found that would buy the Distrained Goods The Informer that told he saw the Persons going into the House did afterwards beg his Bread from Door to Door This Event occasioned the remove of this Excellent Person out of his own Native Countrey where he dwelt among his own People to seek a Habitation elsewhere among Strangers and to London he went where God gave him Favour in the sight of many who sat down under his Ministry and with whom he ended his Days FINIS Lately Printed THe Cure of Distractions in attending upon God In several Sermons from 1 Cor. 7. 35. That we may attend upon the Lord without distraction The Love of the World cured In several Sermons preached upon 1 John 2. 15. Love not the world c. Both by Nathanael Vincent
him When the world which lives in wickedness and grows more and more wicked is hastening its own Judgment and Condemnation for the sake of the Upright ones that are therein 't is spared Though there was such an abominable Crew of Wicked men in Sodom which were sinners before the Lord exceedingly yet Sodom had stood undestroyed by Fire and Brimstone if ten righteous persons had been found therein Gen. 18. 32. when Abraham said Oh let not my Lord be angry and I will speak but this once peradventure ten righteous ones shall be found there and he said I will not destroy it for ten sake Nay One Moses stood in the Breach when the Sins of Israel had opened a wide Gap for the Wrath of God to break in upon them Psalm 106. 23. Therefore he said he would destroy them had not Moses his chosen stood before him in the breach to turn away his wrath lest he should destroy them However Infidels and ungodl ones may prate maliciously the Puritans of a Nation are very much the security of it Job 22. 30. He shall deliver the Island of the innocent or it may be translated The Innocent shall deliver the Island and it is delivered by the pureness of thy hands 2. Behold the Grace of God in the upright Man which makes him thus useful Both the esse and the operati of the new Creature is from Divine Grace by Grace the upright man is what he is and by the same Grace he does what he does Who ever laboured so abundantly as the Apostle Paul Whose Labours were more succeeded to the Glory of God to the Church's and the World's benefit than his were Yet he ascribes nothing to himself but gives unto Grace all the Glory 1 Cor. 15. 10. I laboured more abundantly than they all yet not I but the grace of God which was with me When you behold the upright man you must see God in him and with him of a truth Men are not to glory or to be gloried in but he that glorieth let him glory in the Lord 1 Cor. 1. 31. 3. Behold the upright man so as to desire and hope that the same Grace which made him upright may make you so Upright ones were not such by their first Birth but by their second The Apostle readily makes this acknowledgment Eph. 2. 3. Among whom also we all had our conversation in times past in the lusts of our flesh fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind and were by nature the children of wrath even as others Therefore concerning sincere Saints it must be said That they are born not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man but of God John 1. 13. And that God who of his own will begat them with the word of truth can easily also regenerate you by the the same means and by his own powerful Grace make more vessels of honour all upright ones are such out of the Mass of corrupted Nature In the fourth place I am to shew What of this perfect and upright Man our eye in a special manner should be upon and that is his end To look to the end of Persons and Things and likewise those things that are endless is a great piece of Wisdom By the upright man's End we are to understand his Dissolution and Death whereby he ceases to be any longer in this World Not that Death does make an end of him the Soul is redeemed from the power of the grave for God doth receives it Psalm 49. 15. and the Body shall not always be the Graves prisoner but the Union between these two constituent parts by Death is dissolved Now there are several things of the perfect and upright man which Death does put an end unto 1. Death puts an end to the upright man's Labour Labour in the Lord and for the Lord is the upright man's business in this World He has no time to waste neither is he allowed to be idle Working hard and living must run parallel Nay with allusion to what Caesar once said we may affirm Necesse est laborare non est necesse vivere Labouring is more necessary than living While the upright man lives he must be stedfast unmoveable always abounding in the doing of good But when Death comes it signifies to him that his Work is at an end Rev. 14. 13. Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth yea saith the spirit that they may rest from their labours and their works do follow them 2. Death puts an end to the upright man's Sorrows here in this World he is in his Minority and is under the Discipline of the Rod after Death he will not need it His gracious Father in great faithfulness consults the upright man's necessity and if need be he is in heaviness through manifold temptations 1 Pet. 1. 6. and yet still there is a mixture of mercy with the greatest severity the Son of God is with the sincere Saint in every Furnace and his Presence makes the Furnace both tolerable and purifying Under the heaviest Burthens everlasting Arms shall sustain him and well may he be comforted with the thoughts of everlasting Love But the end of his days puts a full period to his Troubles and Sorrows his Heart shall ake his Tongue complain his Eyes shall weep no more Rev. 7. 17. The Lamb which is in the midst of the Throne shall feed them and shall lead them unto living fountains of waters and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes 3. Death puts an end to the upright man's Conflicts His Life is a warfare he fights every step of his way to Heaven his Enemies are much stronger than he called Principalities and Powers whom he wrrstles with but he is furnished with the whole Armour of God and his strength lies in Christ the Captain of his Salvation 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Christ has encountred these Enemies in his own Person tried their force and triumphed over them and as he has his Followers at command so he can command Salvation for them Satan is a troublesome and unwearied Adversary and when the upright man is just going this Enemy may give him a blow at parting He usually endeavours to make a Saint's Death-bed uneasy and uncomfortable and sometimes he strives to lift up the perfect man with Spiritual Pride As the famous Knox of Scotland was tempted to an high Opinion of himself when he was near expiring because he had been so faithful in his ministry but he ascribed all that he was and did unto the Grace of God and Satan was quite soiled But when Death comes it removes the upright man out of Satan's reach He is made more than a conqueror through Christ who has loved him having overcome he sits down in that throne with his blessed Lord himself where he shall never be molested more with any of the Enemies of his Salvation 4. Death puts end to the upright man's natural
Cor. 4. 16. 2. The perfect Man is made pertaker of every Grace Moral Philosophers have observed a Concatenation of all moral Virtues that they are inseparable where one is indeed there are all of them There cannot be truly any Vertue in any man where any one Vice is allowed to be predominant 'T is a great truth concerning the Graces of the Spirit that they are all linked together There is no Grace insincerity in that man who ordinarily and presumptuously does what he knows to be evil in God's sight and willingly suffers tho it be but one Iniquity to have the dominion over him The Spirit of God works like himself and all Grace he works where he works any The Stone or Kernel of the Fruit tree has vertually the whole Tree in it and if it be sown in the Ground a Tree with Leaves and Fruit at length grows up from it We read of the seed of God 1 John 3. 9. and this Seed vertually has all Grace in it And this Seed does remain and Grace of every sort as there is occasion in some degree or other is produced into act and exercise In the perfect man's breast plate or if you will in his breast there is Faith and Love and Righteousness It is Hope that is his Helmet It is Humility that is both his Cloathing and Ornament and Zeal is not so much one single Grace as an high degree of all The Spirit of the Lord dwels in the perfect man and where the Spirit is and abides all his Graces are with him This is plainly intimated John 1. 16. Of his fulness we all have received and grace for grace There are several Interpretations of these Words but the truest is this Of Christ's fulness all sincere believers have received 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Grace answerable to every grace that is in Christ himself as the Child receives Limb for Limb from the Parent How truly Rich and Happy is he who has no Grace wanting and what a satisfaction is it to perceive plainly in himself that every Grace is growing 3. The perfect man prises all the promises of the New Covenant and esteems himself highly favoured in being Heir unto them all Hypocritical Professors and Wicked Men may put a value upon some promises as when the Lord promises to bless in the City and in the Field to bless in the fruit of the Body and of the Cattle and of the Ground to bless in the Basket and in the Store Deut. 28. 3 4 5. when he promises length of days and long life and that peace shall be added Prov. 3. 2. Nay one that is ungodly designing to die the death of the Righteous may put a value upon the promises of deliverance from the wrath to come and from eternal condemnation But the perfect man though he sets an estimate upon any Blessing which God has promised and values Temporal Mercies and Salvation from the Vengeance of eternal Fire Yet there are also other kind of promises he gladly embraces as the promise of an heart to know the Lord. Jer. 24. 7. I will give them an heart to know me that I am the Lord and they shall be my people and I will be their God for they shall return to me with their whole heart That promise also of an heart circumcised to love God is much valued and rested on by the perfect man Deut. 30. 6. The Lord thy God will circumcise thy heart and the heart of thy seed to love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul that thou mayst live So is that promise Ezek. 36. 25. Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you and ye shall be clean from all your filthiness and from all your idols I will cleanse you There is good reason that the promises of sanctification should be look'd upon as exceeding great and precious for by these the perfect man is made a partaker of the divine nature and escapes the corruption that is in the world through lust 2 Pet. 1. 4. 4. The perfect man hath a respect unto all God's commandments he does not chuse some and pass by others but readily receives every precept Psal 119. 6. Then shall I not be ashamed when I have respect unto all thy commandments He looks upon every Law with an eye to the Authority of the Lawgiver who has a right to rule him and has power to save and destroy John 4. 12. He looks upon the Law delivered on Mount Sinai as in force upon Mount Zion and that by faith the law is established Rom. 3. 31. The Apostle's manner of Expression carries in it a strong motive to Obedience 1 Thess 4. 2. For ye know what commandments we gave you by the Lord Jesus Commands are given by his Authority who is Lord of all and Obedience is urged for his sake who himself has obeyed and suffered for us and who is so ready to strengthen us to obey and to make what we do acceptable The perfect man has his eye upon God and Christ and cannot find in his Heart to cast any Command of theirs behind his Back that 's his perpetual wish that 's his daily groan Oh that my ways were directed to keep thy Statutes Oh let me not wander from thy Commandments Psal 119. 5 10. Whereas the unsound Professor is not reconciled to every Command nor indeed to any Though his Obedience seem exact in many respects yet offending in one point or other he is guilty of violating the whole law James 2. 10. His partial Obedience to the Commands shews he is not sincere in keeping any one of them If any were kept upon a right ground then every one of the Precepts would be kept upon the same ground 5. The perfect man keeps judgment and does righteousness at all times Psal 106. 3. He sticks to the Lord's testimonies and cleaves to the Lord himself with an unshaken purpose of heart even in times of great Apostacy and falling away He will not leave the Ship of the Church and put to shore when a storm of Persecution arises 't is better to be in the Vessel where Christ is though the Tempest be never so fierce and sore than trust to a sinful compliance with the men of the World The perfect man's goodness is not like the morning Cloud and the early Dew that goes away but his Righteousness is like a River Labitur labetur in omne volubilis aevum It holds on its course and keeps running continually He shews himself a Disciple indeed by still following his Master and abiding in his word John 8. 31. If ye continue in my word then are ye my Disciples indeed 6. The perfect man wishes and longs for a sinless perfection He really and earnestly desires to be as good as the Law would have him to be every whit as Righteous as the Commandment requires and when through Infirmity he breaks the Law he is troubled When the Apostle says This we wish were
Life Tho his Life on Earth is far from being a noxious and hurtful Vapour yet 't is a vapour which appeareth for a little time and then vanisheth away Jam. 4. 14. The Bodies of the Just must be brought down into the Grave as well as the Bodies of others that mankind and best of men may have a sensible Document how hateful Sin is to God upon all that have sinned death passes Rom. 5. 12. Tho the Bodies of the Saints are Members of Christ and Instruments of Righteousness to Holiness and the Temples of the Holy Ghost himself yet these Temples must be demolished and cast to the ground and for a while turned under it and after they have been so long imprisoned in the Grave how glorious will be the strength and love of Christ their Lord and Head in rescuing his Members all of them from under Death's Dominion and in totally abolishing Death it self and how will the power of the Spirit be manifested in rearing up his Temples out of the Dust and in making them so transcendently glorious and likewise so firm and durable that they shall stand and abide unto eternity Rom. 8. 11. If the spirit of him that raised up Christ from the dead dwell in you he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his spirit that dwelleth in you 5. Death puts an end to all that Corruption which remains in the upright Man Sin was the Parent of Death and at Death sin it self is totally destroyed The mortal and corruptible Body of the Saint shall at length put on Incorruption and Immortality but the body of Sin is annihilated and shall be no more he shall never complain of any evil present with him nor be troubled with any the least lustings of the flesh against the Spirit How contrary and offensive to the new Nature were the remainders of the old Man which is corrupt according to deceitful lusts But at Death the upright man when he puts off his earthly Tabernacle does quite put off the old Man not the least Member of that Body can remain unmortified and in what glorious perfection does he put on the Lord Jesus Christ He is perfecting Holiness while he lives 2 Cor. 7. 1. which intimates that at Death his Work and Labour to cleanse himself will be at an end and Holiness will be perfected And how beautiful and glorious will his separate Soul be in it s perfected and unspotted Purity In the fifth place The end of the perfect and upright man is remarkable as well as himself for his end is Peace The Scripture is true concerning him Eccl. 7. 1. The day of his death is better than the day of his birth He was born into a wicked and a wretched World but Death sends him to an everlasting Habitation of Bliss and Life and Glory His dying day may well be the joyfullest day that ever he lived because the last moment of his time is his entrance into a blessed Eternity He is indeed a Son of Peace and Death should not disturb it 1. The perfect and upright man dies in peace with God He is reconciled to God by the death of his Son How sure is Salvation upon such a Reconciliation The Enmity between God and him being slain by the Cross of Christ Eph. 2. 16. the Value and Virtue of Christ's Crucifixion must needs make Peace that is lasting The middle Wall of Partition that is thrown down shall never be reared up again The upright man's Sins are all removed from him as far as the East is from the West Psalm 103. 12. and he may as well imagine the two Poles that are so far distant should meet together as fear that any of his Sins which are not imputed to him should again be laid unto his charge Rom. 8. 33. Who shall lay any thing to the charge of Gods elect it is God that justifieth who is he that condemneth it is Christ that died Neither at Death nor Judgment shall any of their Sins be found against them that are upright A Covenant of Peace is made with them more firm than the strongest Hills and Mountains Isaiah 54. 10. The mountains shall depart and the hills be removed but my kindness shall not depart from thee nor the covenant of my peace be removed saith the Lord that hath mercy upon thee 2 The perfect and upright man dieth in peace with others If all things are to be done with charity 1 Cor. 16. 14 then dying must be in Charity likewise How can he dye in the love of God whose heart is full of malice and hatred to his Brother I remember what that blessed Martyr Bradford said at his Death I ask all the World forgiveness and I forgive all the World there was a great deal of Judgment and Grace in this Expression The World had dealt very hardly with him and was so furious as to burn him with Fire yet he forgave the Injury Thus the Protomartyr Stephen of old from his heart forgave his Persecutors and his last Prayer was for them that God would not lay their Sin and blood-guiltiness to their charge Acts 7. 60. When the heart is emptied of Wrath and Bitterness and desire of Revenge whatever Injuries have been received when peace has been pursued and there has been an universal Love to all Saints and in Obedience to Christ's Command it has been extended even to despightful Enemies here is a comfortable evidence of Peace with God and of an interest in his Love Forgive says Christ and you your selves shall be forgiven 3. The perfect and upright Man when he comes to dye has reason and good ground to have peace within himself I dare not affirm That every good Man concludes his Days with this Peace The Letters of Mr. Paul Bains discover a great measure of Grace and Holiness and an excellent Spirit in him yet he professes himself a great Stranger to the Sweetness of Religion and the Joys of the Holy Ghost that disconsolate humour of Melancholly possibly might be one reason of it Nay when he came to dye his Death-bed was uncomfortable and sadness remained upon his Spirit till he entred into the Joy of his Lord. Yet I am sure there is sufficient ground for peace within the perfect Man For Christ died that Death might be unstung and that Believers might not be terrified at it but triumph over it Through Death he destroyed the Devil as he had the Power of Death that is to make Death terrible and consequently deliver them who through the fear of death were all their life-time subject to bondage Heb. 2. 14 15. What a most desirable way of dying is this when Conscience has great Peace being purged and healed by the Blood of Christ When the God of Love and Peace speaks Peace to the departing Soul by his comforting Spirit And a Saint can say with righteous Simeon of old Luke 1. 29 30. Lord now lettest thou thy servant depart