it does require is very obvious Lord is a word of power and autority it requires service and obedience Nothing more frequent in the Prophets than when they have from God severely worded their commands to add this sanction I am the Lord and as applied to Christ St Paul does say I serve the Lord Christ. A servant is the necessary relative to a Lord and truly doing what he doth command was the use he assigned of all that power he had given him teaching them to observe whatever I have commanded And truly if those Scriptures be remembred which secure his Autority thus let us know that Power was the reward of his sufferings and he endured them partly for the Title 's sake therefore says as much and Heb. 12. 2. For the joy that was set before him he endured the cross despising the shame and is set down at the right hand of God did all this that he might gain that place or if that be not plain enough then this is most express Rom. 14. 9. For to this end Christ both died and rose and revived that he might be Lord both of the dead and the living Verse 8. That whether we live we live unto the Lord and whether we die we die unto the Lord that is that both our life might be consecrated to him our lives spent on his service and our deaths be at his command and this was part of the end of his death And then I appeal to your own hearts for what end think you he did so desire and obtain this power Do you think when he was set at the right hand of God he was exalted onely to a name that by all those sufferings he did acquire but a bare title to be call'd Lord of Lords as he is call'd Rev. 19. 16. but neither to look after our obedience nor indeed to set us any law to obey as some would have it Was this power so dear to him as that he would suffer all those torments to compass it and yet when he hath it that it should be so little regarded by him as to suffer us to neglect contemn it to go on in a continued course of disobedience to all his precepts to rebel against his Power never submit our appetites to it but let every lording passion fly in his face every lust defy his Autority let us be proud against that Lord be higher than our duties and all the temper of virtues and let every ebullition of our proud wrath trample on a statute back'd with hell-fire yea and so believe that his death should procure us an impunity in doing this What a wretched mistake is this to think his bloud which purchased him a power to command us should purchase us a leave to disobey him This is to make Christ's bloud divided against it self and to make it spill and dash it self That we should go on in a course of iniquity or allow our selves some peevish vices and stop our own consciences and a Preacher's mouth with saying Christ died for us when as 't is clear he died that he might be Lord that is that we might live and dy to him do both at his command and canst thou think that that death will excuse thee for not obeying which was undertaken for that very end that thou mightest obey him Christ died to be thy Lord and thou wilt have that death a plea for thee when thou obeyest sin and the Devil his greatest Enimies His Cross was his very Ensign and Standard against these Enimies his Passion was his grappling with them and his death his Victory And yet thou dost again submit to their authority becomest a subject to their power and settest them Lord over thee and fetchest the justification of this thy defection from that death and victory and that is the same thing as to make them of no autority nor power yea the captivity and ruin of those Enimies to be the reason of thy obeying them to excuse thy disservice to Christ by saying he is thy Lord and for thy rebellion and waging war with him pretend thou dost it under his own standard No certainly his Title claims Obedience and does assure thee thou must serve This is the first thing what thou must do The second what thou maist expect from it is easily discover'd that is wages For he will recompence every man according to his deeds Rom. 2. 6. To them who by patient continuance in well doing seek for glory and honor and immortality eternal life v. 7. And glory honor and peace to every man that doth good v. 10. For he is the Lord of glory the Prince of peace and Lord of life the Scripture saith in a word to sum up both what his Title doth require and what we may expect from it it saith Service and it saith Wages and both are set down in that to the Heb. 5. 9. He is the Author of eternal salvation to all them that obey him and both here are applied to him who does in earnest owne the relation to this Title and can say in truth My Lord the next part and first of the applying what it does require Service as it is the assuring of performance My Lord. And truly had we not entred any voluntary obligation and had we not contracted formally to take him for our Lord and not onely owned all that the relation does import to be due from us but engaged also to render it yet he is to us both 1. By an Original right he made us and there is not a workman in the world hath so much right to require the uses of his own handy-work to dispose of that same utensil which himself shap'd or fram'd as the Lord hath to require our service Did I perchance furnish the Lord with some materials for my self or did I find any piece towards my making contribute any least thing to my being then let me claim somthing for my share in my self and by the rule of fellowship with God have some use of my self to my self and as to that let him not be my Lord. But there is no such thing he called me into being out of the infinite resistance of vacuity and nothing He gave me body soul and every power and faculty and he upholds every motion and inclination of those faculties and gives me opportunities and objects for them There is no considerability of any thing within me is from my self but entirely owes its being from his store and comes from the Almighty and then what least imaginable pretence or plea can I have why every motion and inclination both of soul and body should not be bound to look towards his service and every action and thought acknowledge him My Lord. And 2. By purchased Title He did redeem us from the service of those cruel Lords Sin and the Devil whose service is unreasonable and unmanly slavery and whose wages is eternal ruin and he bought the right and title to our service
words but they do them not And if they flash in Hell against their Vices in torrents of threatning Scripture they concern themselves no more than they would in the story of a new Eruption of Mount Aetna or Vesuvius Yea they do quench the Spirit and his fires do not like the deaf Adder stop their ears against his whisperings and the charms of Heaven that were a weaker and less valiant guilt but are Religious in hearing them curious that they may be spoke with all advantages to make it harder not to yield and live that so they may express more resolution to perish and with more courage and solemnity may sin and dye Nay more when God hath found an Art to draw themselves into a League and Combination against their Vices bound them in Sacraments to Virtue made them enter a Covenant of Piety and seal it in the Blood of God and by that foederal Rite with hands lift up and seizing on Christ's Body and with holy Vows oblige themselves to the performances or to the Threats of Gospel which they see executed in that Sacrament before their eyes see there death is the wages of iniquity they shew themselves its damned consequences while they behold it tear Christ's Body spill his Blood and Crucifie the Son of God yet neither will this frightful spectacle nor their own ties hold them from sin and ruine they break these bonds asunder to get at them The Wiseman says that wicked men seek death and make a Covenant with it and so it seems But sure they are strange wilful men that seek it at Gods Table in the Bread of Life that will wade through an Ocean of mercy to get at Perdition and find it in the Blood of Christ will drink Damnation in the Cup of blessing men that poyson Salvation to themselves They that contract thus for Destruction and tye it to them at the Altar with such sacred Rites and Articles are sure resolv'd and love to dye Fourthly God had provided other Guards to secure men from sin and Death the Censures of the Church of which this Time was the great Season and the discipline of abstinence we now use is a piteous relique all that the World will bear it seem But as the Lord appointed them they were so close a fence that our Saviour calls them Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven as if they lock'd us in the Path of Piety and Life and we must pick or break all that the Key of Heaven can make fast burst Locks as well as Vows before we can get out have liberty to sin God having bounded in the Christians race as that among the Grecians was which had a River on one side and Swords points all along the other so that Destruction dwelt about it on the borders And God hath mounded ours with the River of Hell the Lake of Fire and with these spiritual Swords as S. Cyprian and S. Hierome call the Censures But yet a Mound too weak alas to stand the Resolution and assaults of Vices now adays which do not onely make great breaches in the Fence but have quite thrown it down and slighted it and the Church dares not set it up again should she attempt it they would scoff it down Men will endure no bar in the way to Perdition they will have liberty of Ruine will not be guarded from it so far from brooking Censures they will suffer no Reproof nor Admonition not suffer one word betwixt them and Death eternal But Fifthly Though we will not let Almighty God restrain us with his Censures yet he will do it with his Rod and set the sharp stakes of Affliction in our walk to keep us in thus he makes sins sometimes inflict themselves and then we straight resolve to break off from them and while we suffer shame and feel destruction in the Vice we shrink and uncling And now the Sinner would not dye especially if his Precipitance have thrown him to the confines of the grave and while he took his full careers of Vice the fury of his course did drive him to the ports of Ruine and Death seemed to make close and most astonishing approaches when standing on the brink of the Abyss he takes a prospect of the dismal state that must receive him and his Vices then he trembles and flyes his apprehensions swoon his Soul hath dying qualms caused as much by the Nausea of sin as by the fear of Hell he is in agonies of passion and of Prayer both against his former courses he never will come near them more and now sure God hath catch'd him and his will is wholly bent another way now he will live the new life if God will grant him any But alas have we never seen when God hath done this for him stretch'd out his Arm of Power hal'd him from the brow of the Pit and set him further off how he does turn and drive on furiously in the very same path that leads to the same Ruine and he recovers into death eternal And now this Will is grown too strong for the Almighties powerful methods and frustrates the whole Counsel of God for his Salvation neglects his Calls and Importunacies whereby he warns him to consult his safety to make use of Grace in time not to harden his heart against his own mercies and perish in despight of mercy And when he can reject Gods Graces and his Judgments thus defie his Conscience and his own Experience too there is but one thing left wherein this Resolution can shew its courage and that is Sixthly His own present Interests All which the Sinner can break through and despise to get at Death It is so usual to see any of the gross wasting Vices when it is once espoused murder the Reputation and all those great concerns that do depend upon a mans Esteem eat out his Wealth and Understanding make him pursue pernicious ways and Counsels besot him and enslave him fill his life with disquiet shame and neediness and the sad consequents of that Contempt and all that 's Miserable and unpitied in this Life and yet the sin with all these disadvantages is lovely not to be divorc'd nor torn off from him that I were vain should I attempt to prove a thing so obvious I shall give but one instance of the power of the Will the violence and fury of its inclinations to Ruine The man who for anothers inadvertency possibly such as their own rules of Honour will not judg affront yea sometimes without any shadow of a provocation meerly becaue he will be rude does that upon which they must call one another to account and to their last account indeed at Gods dread Judgment-seat whither when he hath sacrific'd two Families it may be all their hopes and comforts in this Life two Souls which cost the Blood of God having assaulted Death when it was arm'd and at his heart and charged Damnation to take Hell by Violence he comes with his own
lives and so prepar'd themselves for Baptism on Easter Eve for that was their most solemn time as Tertullian do's assure us in the 2d Century just when that death and passion into which they were baptiz'd was celebrated Diem Baptismo solenniorem Pascha praestat cum Passio Domini in qua tinguimur odimpleta est And that they did prepare for it with watchings fastings weepings and all rigid mortifying discipline and before him Justin M. And they had in the Greek Church their forty daies for these severities and a while too in the Roman in St Hierom's time and Pope Siricius it was so but quickly sunk into this single weeks performances But in all those times they had their scrutinies their strict examinations to try whether their performances were real and sincere So nice and so severe a thing they thought it to become a Christian. The man was to be mortifi'd and die into the very name But now God knows as for the former discipline for Penitents one Church hath lost it and the other hath debaucht it into Pageantry and taught it to countenance and bolster mens continuance in Sin and minister to vice So for the other discipline too if that did import that Baptism hath such engagements in it men in every Church live now as if they either never had been Christian'd or had never known or had perfectly forgot the obligations of that Sacrament the thing which St Paul reproves here by his question Know you not c. And which therefore 't is impossible there can be a more proper time to call to your Remembrance then this is before you are to celebrate that death you were baptiz'd into Now to inform such he disputes here very closely The sum is this They that are dead to Sin cannot live any longer in it Now as Christs Death was a death to Sin for in that he died he died unto Sin once v. 10. i. e. there was an efficacy in that death of his to put an end to all the powers of Sin which being so it was impossible he could dye more then once but must be alive always afterwards to God So in like manner whoever is baptiz'd he is baptiz'd into the likeness of that death v. 5. namely into a death to Sin inasmuch as by solemn profession and express undertaking he do's die to it for he renounces it and if he answer that his undertaking do's so really and really as Christ died once so as to live always afterwards to God engaging himself to keep Gods holy will and commandments and to walk in the same all the days of his life So that the words suggest these things to be discours'd of 1. Christs death was a death to Sin 2ly They that are baptiz'd are baptiz'd into that death namely into a death to Sin 3ly They that are baptiz'd into that death are to die as Christ did i. e. to die to Sin once so as to live always afterwards to God 1. Christs death was a death to Sin i. e. there was an efficacy in Christs death to put an end to all the powers of Sin And here I mean not that extrinsic efficacy of his death as it confirm'd the Covenant of the Gospel whose rewards and punishments engage us against all those powers nor as his blood did also purchase grace whereby we are enabled to resist them but the direct influence of that death tends to destroy all the power that the Devil World or Flesh had either to command us or condemn us The Scripture tells us that by Death he destroy'd him that had the power of Death i. e. the Devil Heb. 2. 14. Christ tells us he hath overcome the world for us John 16. 23. and St Paul says by his Cross the World is crucify'd to us and assures us that God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and a Sacrifice for Sin condemned Sin in the flesh that the Righteousness of the Law might be fulfill'd in us Rom. 8. 3. Which place discovers how all was effected namely as he was a Sacrifice for Sin and that not only as that Sacrifice did consecrate him to and install him in a power to pardon Sins upon Repentance and so whomsoever by vertue of that motive he took off from serving Sin from them he took away the guilt of it but as that Sacrifice did take away the guilt of Sin from us by bearing it in his own body on the tree the direct consequence of which as to its tendency and efficacy is that we being dead to sin might live to righteousness And in both these manners by his stripes we are healed I do not mean to entertain you with the controversy that there is on the account of these two Schemes concerning the effects and uses of the death of Christ. Only I cannot choose but wonder why it should be said to be unjust in God to lay upon him the iniquity of us all so as that he bore death as the punishment due to sin by making satisfaction for us Sinners For I would gladly know to whom the wrong were don in this that makes the injustice and on whose part it was unjust not on his part that made the satisfaction sure For whether it be wrong to force an innocent person without his consent to suffer for the guilty I shall not dispute But here Christ gave himself for us Tit. 2. 14. and had power to do so John 10. 18. And having power to lay down his life and power to take it up again if he had so much love and pity for lost mankind as to lay it down for three days to prevent their everlasting death and misery no justice certainly nay no self-love forbids this Much less was there wrong don to them for whom the satisfaction was made unless eternal redemtion and eternal blessedness purchas'd at such dear rates with such infinite kindness be accounted injuries Nor yet was it unjust in him that did receive it for none charge it upon that account That death which all confess Christ did justly submit to God most justly might accept since he could so dispose it as not only by it to work the Salvation of those whom it was undertaken for but also the advancement of his humane Nature that did undergo it to the highest pitch of glory to all power in heaven and earth Phil. 2. 9. and withal thereby declare his own Righteousness Rom. 3. 26. and work the honor also of his other glorious attributes And therefore if there had bin no injustice as they say altho Sin had bin pardon'd without any Satisfaction much less could the receiving this be a wrong to him Indeed it seems as if there had bin no right don him by it because he furnisht all that makes the satisfaction and he could not receive it therefore since he gave the value to it And 't is most true in compensation of rights of real possessions and
in vicious customes yet for the gross foul acts which men sometimes commit those unkind stabs and wounds to our own souls those cruel self-murders these all are to be daily mourn'd for Now I shall onely name a few reasons why we should mourn and so stir us up to it 1. Because onely in this and in relation to this is greif of any use at all God and Nature they say made nothing in vain now if it were not for our sins greif would be almost in vain a certain sign that this passion must be emploi'd upon our sins ut propter hujus tantum sublationem sit concessa saith St Chrysostom For does any man loose a child why if he greive to death will his mourning raise him Is thy Estate taken from thee why thou art sad upon it but will thy tears recover it But hast thou sin'd and dost thou truly mourn and greive for it why thy tears do wash away thy sin and blot out thine offence So that mourning being every where else preposterous and unprofitable was clearly intended to be spent upon our sins 2. What ingratitude is it to thy Savior not to find in thine heart to mourn for those sins for which he did die the Son of God did sweat and pray and cry and shed a torrent of bloud and water and suffer death for those very sins of thine and mine which we think so slightly of that we will not shed a tear for them O my Brethren if there is in us any love of that our Jesus or indeed of our selves we would now transplant the Agonies and make them ours and sweat out a few drops of sorrow to cure us of those feavors of our sins 3. Yea it is a very trouble to our God that we do not greive he mourns to see that we will not mourn Hosea 13. 14. when God had complain'd before of Ephraim what a foolish child it was that it did not repent he tells them there that if they had don so I would have ransom'd them from the power of the grave not I will for the very next verse contradicts that I would have redeem'd them from death O death I had bin thy grave O grave I had bin thy destruction but comfort is hid from mine eies repentance we read but the word bears and the sense requires comfort as if the eies of the Lord were therefore full of tears because Ephraim's were not and he could not receive comfort if Ephraim did not mourn and if we do not mourn God will comfort himself some other way concerning us to our greif Isaiah 1. 24. Therefore thus saith the Lord the Lord of Hosts the Mighty one of Israel ah I will ease me of mine adversaries 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the very word before I will be comforted by reason of mine adversaries how why I will avenge me of mine enimies Ah my Brethren when God is to be comforted by his vengeance upon us when he can find no ease but in our ruin and destruction and that he calls his comfort in relation to the non-mourning impenitent where shall we find ease and comfort then And then methinks this should scare us into the use of this fright us out of that stupid lethargy in sinning which does so dull us in it makes us so senseless of it and the danger we are in by reason of it that we cannot bestow one day in weeping mourning and fasting no nor indeed an hour of serious sadness upon an age of sin a whole life of iniquity the very next step of this into which we shall be sure to fall is the greatest sin and judgment in the world it is that spoken of as a character of the foulest Heathens Ephes. 4. 18. 19. Having their understandings darkned being alienated from the life of God thro the ignorance that is in them because of the blindness that is in their heart who being past feeling have given themselves over to lasciviousness to work all uncleaness with greediness rather because of the brawny hardness of their hearts which are become callous insensible of any admonitions stings and greif but dead to all sense of sin and having put off all fear of it and who these are he tells you in the next words 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 such as when they do the foulest acts are not toucht with any greif for having don them but like dead members of the body that are forsaken by the vital spirits if you lash or prick or lance them they feel no pain even so these whose consciences are retir'd a sleep they do not mourn for any of their foulest actions which is the very height of impiety for such do strait give themselves over to all filthiness to work all uncleaness with greediness This is the effect of not mourning and then how do they deserve and provoke this judgment who if at any time their conscience begin to twinge them for any of their sins they presently divert their thoughts lest the mourning in the text should creep upon them and they should grow sad These men dread their virtue they are afraid of becoming pious and to avoid the way to heaven is their design and contrivance they come not so near duty as the wicked in hell have not so much repentance as the damned have for there is sorrow for their sins weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth I should 2dly encourage those that do thus mourn but the text does that sufficiently they are blessed and they shall be comforted First they are blest for this mourning it is the great effect and sign of this Spiritual life that man's sickness hath not yet kill'd him who is sensible of it who greives by reason of the anguish of it and he is not dead who feels the weight of it and mourns for it Secondly if it be true it draws such a train of virtues after it as it made St Paul rejoyce that he had made the Corinthians sad 2 Cor. 9 10 11. and then this very same verse will assure them of the comfort hereafter for all the Gospel-promises are assur'd upon the terms of repentance which this Godly sorrow is the first link of and does draw after it then if there be any comfort in the company of myriads of Saints and Angels if we dare take Christ's judgment if he had any tast who suffer'd so many mourning fits that liv'd a life of tears here that often wept but never laught yea a life of horrid suffering and yet thought those comforts a full glorious recompence to him for all those sufferings and therefore may well be to us for a few tears if there be any joy in the beatifical vision and in heaven they shall be comforted that mourn when as I told you out of Revelations all tears shall be wip'd from their eyes there shall be no more trouble nor sorrow nor crying nor pain And yet this is but the Negative part of their eternity of
this Attribute and therefore praies Help me O Lord for I am weak Our want is argument enough to those bowels whose business is to extend and diffuse themselves Yea the Gospel expresses in that manner also the Ruler there saith My daughter lies at the point of death 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that thou maiest come and lay thy hands on her as if our wants were nothing else but his opportunities Yea Christ himself hath taught us ground for this confidence in the very Praier he hath taught us 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Give us our bread if it be ours what need we go to beg and pray for it Why our bread Why certainly because we are in extreme need of it we cannot live without it therefore we go to pray for it so that want is possession in Christ's esteem and when we are in need then we may go to Christ and call it ours He observes that himself here when he makes our sinful misery the onely motive to his Invitation Come unto me all ye that labor But then secondly in the second sense of the words those that are affected with the sense of their sins that groan under and are humbled and brought low with the weight of their iniquities that discern them to be truly heavy loads and to be the true cause of faintings and languishing of Soul these are the onely disposed persons to come to Christ in both the senses of that phrase of Coming First as it signifies to turn from their evil ways and walk in those paths that lead to him For as long as men apprehend no danger in their courses how can we expect that they should leave them While they onely tast the sweets and pleasures of sin whilest the Devil smooths and strews their way and makes one temtation receive another and by the perpetuated vanity makes one sin a divertisement to another so that none can clog but each doth recreate and one iniquity refresh him whom another hath wearied how is it to be lookt for that these men should quarrel with their pleasures and forsake these delights and advantages of iniquity Nay alas we see when iniquity is become so cruel as to punish it self and sin is its own Executioner as adultery drunkeness covetousness and ambition oft are so just as to severely torture them that serve them if notwithstanding that we see men chuse and embrace those sins that bring their Hell with them are of such desperate appetites as to long for torments how can we hope that any will forsake their sins before they find them toilsom burdens before they begin to see them in their own deformed infernal shapes to discern their hooks and prongs their brimstone-flames and worm with which they will eternally torment us They must be scar'd and mated before ever they will forsake those things that flow with wanton delicacy and luxuriant delight and therefore we see very few ever begin seriously to repent before their last death-beds when the evil day is come then that time is in which thou shalt say I have no pleasure in them when the keepers of the house shall tremble i. e. the hands shall shake with guilt or with infirmity with palsey or with fear thou wilt then hate their gripings the bribery that they have bin the instruments of how will men contemn their former excesses their full riots and their draughts that overflowed like seas that had their tides and refluxes when the grinders shall cease because they are few when the mouth is toothless as unable to chew as the stomach is to digest meat and the pitcher shall be broken at the fountain and the wheel at the cistern the bladder ceases to do his office stopt up by stranguries or leaky with diabetes punishments that old age and living faster than nature design'd bring along with it very proportionate to that sin if you understand it Or how will they hate the foul inordinacies of unchast beds when the grashopper shall be a burden and desire shall fail rupture and hernias and ulcers shall seize the lower ventricle But these are all expressions that belong to that last day and made use of by the wise Preacher that had tried the vanity and emtiness and the vexation and burden of them to make us take up a little sooner Ecclesiastes 12. the 6 first verses And when those that look out of the windows shall be darkened when the curtains of thy bed and of thy eyes shall be drawn and that utter darkness begin to represent it self with which our Savior paints the lower region when Hell from below is removed at his approach opening her mouth wide to swallow him whom the vast weight of his iniquity is ready to sink into it O then his sin is his greatest sickness and his horror doth more disjoint him than death it self O for a little life-time now to spend in piety which before he counted the most unpleasant impertinency that could be nor could be rectified till these apprehensions which onely sense will work in most too late be wrought in him there being no other way to make us leave and come but by looking upon death in the iniquity which certainly is there that having bin a murderer from the beginning In the second sense as to come to Christ signifies to rest and devolve our selves upon him this laboring is a necessary preparative it is the sense of our misery without him that must drive us to him the weight of that Legal curse that lies upon us all that must make us run to him that was made a curse for us Who would either value or fly to a Savior that is not first convinc'd that he wants help Can you perswade the mad man in the feaver to betake himself to the Physician He thinks you have more need that counsel him It is the drowning man that clings and grasps and when he sees himself ready to perish rather than want something to catch hold of his roming hand do's even catch that water that do's strangle him and he do's grasp his own ruin Any rest to a falling man and we never truly and seriously can depend upon Christ till we thus apprehend our selves sinking and find our selves tired and fainting under the load of our iniquities No nor secondly on Christ's part will he receive any that are not thus qualified For will he think you forgive the sins of those that do as yet love those sins or will he strive to ease them of their iniquities that find no burden in them but rather that of a full pleasure No surely he will not envy them so much their delights but let them enjoy their beloved ruin Is it fit Christ should invite those men who do yet cherish those sins that slew him or that he should receive into his bosom those iniquities that put him to death No certainly till we can hate those sins which he could die for and till we find weight in those iniquities
their lusts advance but their lusts are their plague and torment them and they extremely hate and curse those things which they do passionately desire Now that habitual Sinner his sins they are his emploiment his delight too he longs as those other but he satisfies also and finds pleasure in them and then if those others be fit company for the Devils onely canst thou believe thy self fit company for Christ that he should bid thee come to him No begin to act thy Hell a little sooner account them here thy torments hate them in time perceive them to be burdens while they may be laid down and then come unto Christ and he will give thee rest And evermore O Lord give us of thy rest a rest from sin here and a rest from misery eternally Yea O Lord give us to labor and to find trouble under that intolerable burden of our guilt that we may with eager hast fly to the refreshment that we perverse obdurate Sinners whom thy mercies cannot invite our own miseries may force to be happy and tho our wickednesses are multiplied into an infinite mass and weight yet despise us not when we fall under them for thou didst invite us to come and bring all that load to thee despise us not tho heavy laden for thou thy self didst bear this weight and didst die under it And O thou who didst thy self thus suffer by reason of this load pity us that labor with it ease us of the burden of our former guilt free us from the slavery of our iniquity from bearing any longer Sathan's loads then shall we at last sit down with thee in the Land of everlasting rest deliver'd from all weights but that eternal weight of glory and resting from all labors save that of praising thee and ascribing all Honor Power Praise Might Majesty and Dominion to Father Son and holy Ghost for evermore SERMON X. OF THE CHRISTIANS VICTORY Over Death Sin and the Law 1 Cor. 15. 57. Thanks be to God which giveth us the victory thro our Lord Jesus Christ. THE words are the close of an 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Song of joy and triumph for a victory Now a victory supposeth Enimies and the verse before names them and the Text shews us the means that they art conquer'd by and who they are that are partakers of the Victory I shall declare and treat of both 1. The Enimies here mention'd and we may account them three if that which gives both aid and strength to fortifies our Enimy be so as sure it is 1. Here is Death which sin arms with a sting and do's envenome it 2. Sin it self empower'd and strengthned by the Law 3. That Law also In the second place here are the means by which the Victory is gotten and for whom us the victory thro Jesus In handling all which I shall shew First that the Law gives Sin all its strength and how it do's so 2ly That Sin is the sting of Death and how it is so 3ly That by Christ both the Law which is the strength of Sin is taken away and Sin which is the sting of Death pull'd out and so both Sin and Death so weaken'd that they cannot hurt now and they shall be swallowed up in perfect victory and who they are all this is don for Of these all in this order which I crave leave to speak to directly without any least diverting from the Text or Subject First I am to speak of the first preparations that are made against us in behalf of our Enimies and that is to shew you that the Law gives all the strength to Sin which it hath and how it do's so Sin hath its very being from Law it being 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the transgression of the Law 1 John 3. 4. and Sin is not imputed where there is no Law Rom. 5. 13. yea where there is no Law there is no transgression c. 4. 15. But this is not all for in the Law besides the Precepts there is also Sanction and it lays a twofold obligation first to duty secondly upon transgression to punishment 1. To duty and that perfect and unsinning strict obedience for the terms are these Cursed is he that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the Law to do them And to this the whole man is oblig'd the soul as well as body caro spiritus Dei res est saith Tertull. God made the soul as well as body one 's his creature as much as the other and the one hath as much reason then to pay him honor and obedience as the other if indeed the spirit hath not much more to obey him in its own motions and actings than in those of the body which are onely under it and guided by it So that thoughts are criminal against this Law as well as doings by them the Soul fulfils its part of the transgression more it may be than its own share while it robs the Flesh seizes its satisfactions and makes them her own against her nature And indeed whatever part the Law is broken and transgrest by 't is transgression and sin still whether by the mind for lust when it hath conceived onely sin is then begotten James 1. 15. or by the tongue for of every idle word we must give an account at the day of Judgment Matth. 12. 36. and by thy words thou shalt be condemn'd Or lastly by the works So that according to the Tenor of this strict and severe Law whatever we can do or indeed whatever we do not is Sin besides commissions that are sinful there is still defect and so transgression in our thoughts our words and deeds even in the best and in not doing also there 's omission and so failing But besides this severe obligation of the Law to duty upon this our faileur there is a severer obligation 2. To punishment for every sin is cursed as we saw Upon this account the Law saith St Paul worketh wrath Rom. 4. 15. we are children of wrath Eph. 2. 3. whose inheritance is destruction and who are of right to possess onely the sad issues of God's indignation for to this the Law condemns us all by reason of our Sins and upon that account the Law is said to be the strength of Sin Because by force and vertue of this threatning of the Law we that have sinned are therefore liable and obnoxious to the condemnation of it And this I take to be the meaning of that place Rom. 7. 7 8 9 10. I had not known sin but by the law for I had not known concupiscence except the law had said thou shalt not covet But sin taking occasion by the commandment wrought in me all manner of concupiscence for without the law sin was dead but when the commandment came sin revived and I died and the commandment which was ordain'd to life I found to be unto death The Apostle's drift here is not to evince how the
commandment begets sin but how it makes sin condemning begets death and therefore I believe they are mistaken who expound sin taking occasion by the commandment wrought in me all manner of concupiscence as if it meant the Law onely prohibiting but not quelling sin in me the more it was restrain'd the more it wrought all manner of concupiscence in me especially since there was no punishment assign'd to that sin in the Law it took advantage thence more powerfully to engage me in the pursuit of all my lusts since thence I might have hop't without any fear of punishment to pursue them For this seems perfectly to thwart his aim which was to shew us how the Law wrought condemnation and inflicted death by threatning it It seems to mean I had not onely not known sin to be so dangerous but I had not known some things to be sins and by consequence condemning things but by the Law particularly I had not known concupiscence to be so had not the Law said thou shalt not covet The next words do not seem intended to declare how the Commandment work sin that being brought in by the by as it were thus but sin the corruption of my nature 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 had wrought in me all manner of concupiscence all actual lusts and wickednesses 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 got advantage over me or strength against me by the Law which he there proves for without the law sin is dead not as to stirring in us by its sinful motions sure corruption would not fail to do that and more if there were no check but dead had no strength nor power to condemn me For it follows when the commandment came sin reviv'd got strength to do that and I died was sentenc'd to death by it and the commandment which was ordain'd to life could I have obey'd it I found to be unto death by condemning me to death for my transgression of it For sin by the Commandment 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 getting advantage over me slew me not onely made me liable to death but by its guilt envenoming that death for the sting of death is sin which that it is and how it is so is the second thing I am to speak to Sin is the sting of death which I could make appear two manner of ways in relation to two senses that may be given to the words both pertinent and the one but the Anticipation of the other The first is this Sin is the sting of death 't is Sin makes the thoughts of death pungent and stinging the wicked man cannot think of his last dying day without horrors the onely imagination of a sickness stings him because he is conscious to himself of sin and he knows that that after Death cometh the Judgment and he dares not think of beholding the face of his Judg with his guilt upon him To prove this to you I shall not need to fetch any heathen Testimonies that call the Conscience of Sin a whip a sting a goad a lancing knife things that gash and prick and gall and fret all words of all kinds of terrifying punishment but if there be any gross customary Sinner that now hears me I shall need no other way of proof but by appealing to his own conscience whether when he comes hot from his iniquity he dares entertain the thought of dying And why not Alas he is too deep in arrears to venture upon account with so impartial a Judg books must be laid open if he come there the closet curtain sins nay the bosom villanies must be displaied and every one receive his doom he hath heard that all the refuge of a deplored Sinner at that great and terrible Day of the Lord is but to fly unto the Mountains to cover him and to the Rocks to hide him A wretched hope for how shall the Hills hide him whose iniquities are like Mountains or how shall the rocks cover him whose rebellions are like the great deep as the Scripture words it To such a person Death and Judgment are words of too dangerous a sense and it 's easier for him as many do to resolve there is no such thing as one of them than to think of them and go merrily on in sinning For tell me what is the design of that variety of iniquities in which thou dost ingulf thy self that circle of sins wherein one relieves and succeeds another Sure by such a perpetuity of diversified delights to stave off those severer thoughts which if there were an intermission of sinning or a nauseating of one sin for want of variety would creep in the noise of our riots is not to please the ear but to drown the barking of our consciences When the Sinner's candle is put out if weariness in wickedness do not at once close up his eyes and thoughts if the dark solitary night do but suggest some melancholly thoughts into him how do's he tumble up and down as if he thought to role away from his imagination and he do's ransack his fancy and call up the memory of his past sins about him to entertain himself with all and keep out the torturing remembrance of that sad Day which the Scripture calls putting far from them the evil day for the truth is he dares not give it place least it should happen to him as to a man upon a pointed precipice as himself is indeed situated to whom the apprehension would be as mortal as the danger and he would tumble down for fear of falling So here his sin adds such sharps to the imagination of death that he dares not entertain the thought And if Sin be such a sting in the onely thought of death that the mere remembrance of it is insupportable the use is very natural by the frequent calling of death to mind to stop the current of sin For if the wicked cannot endure to think of death he that does think on it cannot well go on to be wicked Remember thy latter end and thou shalt not do amiss I would give this counsel Think thou art to die while doing it The original of the Turks Turbant which was but by continual wearing of his winding sheet by wrapping his head in his grave-cloaths to have always a shrowd and death upon his thoughts and the Philosophers defining their wisdom to be but contemplatio mortis are not such pregnant inforcers of this use as this practical apprehension of it The man that liv'd among the Tombs tho he had a legion of Devils in him yet when he saw Jesus afar off he ran and worshipped him Mark 5. 6. The sight of graves and conversation with monuments will make even Demoniacks Religious and is so far from thrusting Praiers out of the Liturgy of Burial that it brings the very Devils on their knees But there is yet another and a fuller sense of these words which St Paul repeats out of the LXX translation of Hosea 13. 14. tho not verbatim for there insteed of 〈◊〉
〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and signifies O Death where is thy plea by which thou didst attaint men before God's Tribunal where is the right thou hadst over all men to seize and take possession of them what 's become of the sentence that was awarded thee by which all of us were adjudg'd to be thy bond-slaves where is that punishment which thou didst inflict upon us all and by it ruin us To all these rights Sin did entitle thee O Death or as it is here in the Text Sin is thy sting whatsoever power thou hast of hurting man as the Scorpion's venom lies in his sting that power Sin hath given thee and in that it lies without Sin Death were no plague and it is this that makes Death insupportable Now to prove this I need not urge more than what I have already said for if Sin be a sting in the very thought of Death much more pungent will it be when Death it self approaches when the Feaver shall lay hold upon the bloud not onely to revenge the former heats of that lustful or that riotous bloud but to be dawnings of those eternal Burnings which do await the Sinners and shall do more than represent unto thee the heats of that unquenchable brimstone which is to be thy lot and which already doth begin to flash in upon thee Which part of thee do's labor with the more intolerable Feaver thy Body or thy Soul Alas the frost of the Grave would seem to thee a Julip a cool refreshment onely if Sin did not make thee look upon the grave as a downlet to that bottomless pitt which is the lake of fire that is not quencht Nothing possibly can keep an unrepentant Sinner that on his death-bed apprehends his guilt from the horror of despair from being his own Devil and suffering his own Hell in his own bosom upon earth I shall demonstrate this invincibly to you that Sin do's and nothing else do's make Death most insupportable when it approaches Now to evince this my Argument is none other than our Blessed Savior himself in whose Passion the onely imputation of guilt seems to have rais'd the greatest contradictions imaginable If you look upon him preparing for his Passion it seems his onely and most pleasing design as he came into the world for that end so his whole life before it was but a Prologue to it onely a walk to mount Calvary it was his extreme desire I have a baptism to be baptiz'd with baptiz'd indeed with fire and his own clotted sweat of bloud yet this Baptism how am I streightened till it be accomplished Luke 12. 50. He had longing throws after it he did as much desire it as a woman to be deliver'd of her burden Nay it was his contrivance he did lay plots that he might not escape it for when a glorious Miracle had broke from him that did extort the confession of his Deity from Men and Devils he charges these to hold their peace and bids the other tell it no man one reason of which was least the knowing him to be the Son of God should hinder him from suffering He gives it himself Luke 9. 21 22. he straitly charg'd and commanded them to tell no man that thing saying the Son of man must suffer many things and be rejected now should they know I were the Son of God they would not crucify the Son of glory You see what care he takes least he should not suffer and just before his passion he come in triumph to Jerusalem with songs and joy about him as if Death were the onely pleasant thing and his passion so desirable that he would go ride to meet it which he never did at any other time And add to all this that the person was the Son of God to whom nothing could be truly insupportable yet when this person comes to meet it see how he entertain it his soul is exceeding sorrowfull he fell on his face to pray against it and while he was in this condition an Angel from Heaven came to strenthen him yet he is still in an agony and prays more earnestly and his sweat was like drops of bloud Now 't was the sense of Sin upon him that made his bloud run out in clotts as it were flying from that sense it was the apprehensions of the guilt imputed to him and the wrath which he knew was due to it did make him apprehend his God who was himself was gon from him made him cry out My God my God why hast thou forsaken me Now to say that all this dread were from the mere apprehension of death were horrid blasphemy the meanest Martyr was never guilty of so much weakness No 't was from the sense of the iniquity that was upon it 't was because he was made sin for us he was a man of sorrows saith the Prophet Isaiah because in representation he was a man of sins for he bore our iniquities saith the same Prophet c. 53. The Lord had laid upon him the iniquities of us all and therefore he was oppressed And so I have made appear that Sin is the sting of Death more than if your selves did feel it by an experimental despair for it is more that Sin should make Death terrible to the Son of God than that it should make it insupportable to you And therefore before Death seize you and prostrate you into his dust this consideration may humble you into the dust and ashes of Repentance this I say if Sin were a sting that made Death so insupportable to Christ what will it be to us If the apprehension of it when it came arm'd onely with the imputation of our guilt for he himself knew no sin was so terrible to the Son of God how shall we stand under it when it brings all our own iniquities to seize upon us If he that was a person of the Trinity could not bear the weight how shall we sink under it That which made our Jesus in an agony as if he meant to pour out his soul in his sweat and pray and roar and die will certainly be to us most infinitely beyond sufferance Alas what then will be our hope We have certainly none except we can by Faith and Repentance rid our selves of this Sin which is the sting of Death and makes it to be thus intolerable which how it comes to pass I must now shew 2. Why and how Sin is the sting of Death Sin may seem very properly to be call'd a sting of Death for it was the Serpent that brought Death into the World and Sin was that by which he did inflict it now a sting is a Serpent's proper instrument and a venomous sting it was that could blast Paradise and shed destruction there where the Tree of life bore fruit But that is not all the reason why it should be call'd the sting of Death because it makes us obnoxious to Death but it is that
which makes Death a miserable condition as it is the sting of the Serpent that makes him a poysonous creature so it is that which makes Death destructive For were Death the expiration of that little spark in the moving of our heart and if our spirit utterly vanisht as the soft air and were it as the Atheist in the Wise man says we are born at all adventure and shall be hereafter as tho we had never bin Death would be so far from all sting that it would be perfect rest and the end of troubles but Sin makes it onely the beginning of sorrows it changes the very nature of death by making that which seems to be the cessation of sensible function to be the very original of the sensibility of torments Then the Sinner doth begin indeed to feel when he dies Death were but the term of a miserable life did not Sin make it the birth of a more miserable life or death I know not whether to call it for it is of so strange a nature that the very uniting of a Sinner's body and soul which is the onely thing we call life God calls death Rev. 22. 13 14. And the sea gave up the dead which were in it and death and hell or the grave deliver'd up the dead which were in them that is the bodies to be joyn'd to the souls and they were judg'd every man according to their works and in that case all are cast into the lake of fire this is the second death Sin makes Resurrection to be dying and it must needs be so because as afflictions are in this life call'd death as St Paul saith in Deaths often so much more then may those torments of hell be call'd death So that in that death that Sin engages to it is necessary to live always that we may for ever die and it must be so because this makes us liable to the eternal indignation of the offended God which we were not capable of suffering were it not a death of this nature This is indeed death with a sting in it and it is the sense of this approaching that wounds the dying soul when it do's at once call to mind the wickedness of its past life and the wrath that do's await it when he recollects how sinful he hath bin and withall how hateful sin is to God so hateful that it was easier for God to send his Son to suffer death than to suffer sin to go unpunish'd then his own expectations sting and stab his very soul for if God did thus use his own Son how will he use me that have both sinn'd and trod under foot the death of that Son by going on wilfully in my sins Would you then my Brethren find out a way to make death easy and familiar to you you must pull out this sting The Jews say if Adam had continued righteous he should not have died but after a long happy life God would have taken up his soul to him with a kiss which they call osculum pacis he would have receiv'd that spirit which with his mouth he did inspire a kiss of taking leave here to meet in Heaven Wouldst thou have thy death to be the same thing 'T is but becoming righteous with the righteousness of Christ thro whom we have this Victory here in the Text the other part I am to speak to who giveth us the victory thro Jesus Christ our Lords where we have those that are partakers of the Victory and the means thro Jesus Christ our Lord and as to both these this I shall demonstrate over all those enimies in order who the us and how the Victory is gotten First the Law Now that Christ hath redeem'd us from the curse of the Law is said expresly and that by his being made a curse for us Gal. 3. 13. and what that curse of the Law was is set down in the tenth verse cursed is every one that continueth not in all things that are written in the book of the Law to do them which no man besides Christ did ever or can do and consequently all mankind lay under that same dreadful curse obnoxious to the wrath of God and the effects of everlasting indignation but Christ by undergoing that curse and by that means satisfying that strict Law procur'd an easier to be set us upon gentler terms not perfect and unsinning strict obedience which was impossible but instead thereof the Law of Faith obsequious Faith that works by love endeavors honestly and heartily and where it fails repents that is grieves and amends and perseveres in doing so For as St Paul assures us we are not under the Law but under Grace Rom. 6. 14. tho we be under the directions of it the duty of it is most indispensable vertue always yet we are not under those strict terms of it according to the tenor of that curse but in a state of favor under terms of grace where there is mercy pardon to be had upon repentance thro faith and where there is encouragement and aid to work that faith and that amendment in us And thus far the Victory accrues to all mankind for all that will accept these terms of this remedying Law of grace the other killing strict Law hath no power over them For the Gospel was commanded to be preach'd to and its terms offer'd every creature under heaven all mankind a victory this that could not be obtain'd but by Christ's bloud the grace and favor of these easier terms for our obedience valued equal with his life for to take of this curse cursed is every one that continueth not in all things that are written in the book of the law to do it these strict terms he himself was made a curse and 't will be certainly a most unkind return if that which he thought worth the dying for to get us we shall not think worth the accepting slight these blessed terms and do not care unless we can be free from all necessity of an endeavor freed from vertue too as well as Law But secondly the Law being as we have shew'd it is the strength of Sin in giving it a power to condemn us that Law being taken off that power also cannot but be taken off from Sin and by that means the great strengths of that Enimy defeated Accordingly St Paul do's tell the Romans c. 6. v. 14. Sin shall not have dominion over you that is it shall not have by vertue of the Law a power to condemn you for you are not under the Law but under grace are in that state where men are not condemn'd for every gross or heinous sin altho too long continued in but there is pardon to be had for them that will but faithfully endeavor to amend turn from their sins return to Christ receive him and his pardon and where there is also help to do this 't is a true state of grace so that unless men will resolve to force their own
by except we will walk on in darkness unto the land of utter darkness But as a lanthorn is no guidance to the blind and a light is of use only where there is an eye so Gods commandments can have no influence upon nor give direction or assistance to our waies except this eye of the mind be enlightned by them for it is Conscience that is the conveiance to all duty to the heart of man that cannot set up obedience but as the Conscience do's press it on it that conveys the immediate obligation My Conscience tells me this I must forbear that I must practise Yea where there was no law to give direction the eye of Conscience looking o're the frame of man a creature reasonable in his making could strait see a necessity of doing things agreable to right reason and viewing the materials of the pile saw he was built of Soul as well as body of of an immortal Spirit as well as a carnal part knew that his life was to be order'd to the uses of the Spirit as well as of the flesh and more indeed that being the better part and easily could gather hence that man was not to serve his lower brutish part the body so as to discompose his soul and when it did so did condemn him for the doing of it And upon this S. Paul affirms Rom. 2. 14 15. When the Gentiles that have not the Law do by nature the things contained in the Law they having not the Law are a Law unto themselves which shew the work of the Law written on their hearts their Conscience bearing them witness Which says that tho the rest of the world had not the Revelation of Gods will and Law as the Jews had yet from the dictats of their reason and the notions of good and evil implanted in them their conscience did oblige them unto the performance of such things as the Law required and upon such performance or omission without any other Law did either excuse them as men that did not culpably wander out of those paths which the light and Eye that God had planted in them did direct them in or else accuse them as transgressors and render them obnoxious to punishment And so it did before the Law So Rom. 5. 13 14. For until the Law sin was in the world but sin is not imputed where there is no Law Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adams transgressions First after Adams time till Moses before the giving of the Law men fin'd and tho it be true that sin is not charg'd to punishment but where there is a Law to forbid it under that penalty and therefore it might be thought that sin without the Law would not have brought death into the world yet from Adam till Moses death reign'd men died that had not sinn'd as Adam did against an express actual precept promulgated as his was and establish't with a positive threat of death but died because they had sinn'd against the laws of their nature the principles of duty that were put into their making which Conscience prest upon their practise and whose guidance they would not follow they pull'd death upon themselvs in the errors of their waies 'T was by the equity of this that when the wickedness of men grew great in the earth the floud grew so too an inundation of waters overspread it when sin had once don so and iniquity against the dictates of conscience struck all the world at once with death except eight persons Conscience therefore where there is law and also where there is none is the great director of our actions and to this I shall apply our Saviors discourse dividing not the Text but Conscience and in the several members verifying what our Savior he reaffirms 1. Conscience either respecteth actions to be don or actions already don First as it respecteth actions to be don telling us this we must do that we must forbear so first as it answers to the single Eye it denotes the pure Conscience the enlightned Eye of the mind as S. Paul calls it that is a truly well inform'd Conscience a Conscience that judges according to its rule and to this I shall first tell you what is the entire rule of conscience and consequently when it s dictates are right when it informs me truly this I must do that I must forbear 2. Prove to you that all our actions that are regulated by such a well inform'd conscience are good and honest so that if this eye be single the whole body shall be full of light If the conscience be pure the man's holy and so the first part of the text is proved 2. As it answers to the evil eye so it denotes an evil conscience a conscience that do's not give true judgment of duty ill inform'd And this either First wholly so and then 't is reprobate sense such as that of them that call good evil and evil good from which men are stil'd 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 1 Tim. 4. 2. or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saith Phavorinus Rom. 1. 31. Or secondly but in part and then 't is either first an erring conscience or secondly a doubtful conscience or thirdly a scrupulous conscience to which also several others will fall in And I shall shew you how every of these do's mislead a man into the dark The scrupulous raiseth clouds and mists about him dark errors and discomforts too the doubtful do's instead of guiding leave him so puzl'd that he knows not which way to be-take himself and the erring conscience lights him into the pit takes him by the hand to thrust him down guides him into a necessity of sin and the no conscience the reprobate sense it is a darkness somwhat worse then that the blackness of Hell here All this I shall do in order Upon the other part conscience as it relates to actions already don so it do's testify and in so doing either excuse or accuse Rom. 2. 15. Now tho conscience in the other former respect hath indeed the greater influence upon our practise and so to it the text do's more directly answer yet this latter having some also in order to the making future actions holy by repentance for when once the soul hath shipwrack't on a sin and she is ready to sink and perish there is no plank on which she can escape but repentance Now 't is this Eye that must look out for that 't is an accusing conscience that must set him upon Repentance this hurry's him about and will not let him rest 'till he get upon the plank that 's fastned to the Anchor even the Anchor of hope by which until it be secur'd a good conscience never is at quiet Because I intend to say but little to this I shall dispatch it now And that in order to its actions excusing and accusing And first if conscience be the
Miracles but to assist our Worldliness Ambitions and Lusts to be our opportunities of Vice and provocation of him And being thus affronted and refused his Enemy preferr'd not this God but Barrabas any the vilest thing for Friend rather than Christ must he not needs be more our Enemy than heretofore And if he be that question will concern us Are we stronger than God It should behove us not to fall out with him till we are See how he does prepare himself for the Encounter Wisd. v. Taking his Jealousie for Armour putting on Justice severe and vindicative Justice as a Breastplate and his Wrath sharpening as a Sword and arming all the Creatures for Auxiliaries Alas when Omnipotence does express it self as scarcely strong enough for Execution but Almightiness will be armed also for Vengeance will assume Weapons call in Aids for fury who shall stand it Will our Friends think you keep it off us and secure us did we consider how uneasie God accounts himself till he begin the Storm while he keeps off his Plagues from overrunning such a Land we would expect them every moment and they must come Ah says he I will ease me of mine Adversaries and avenge me of mine Enemies and then in what condition are we if God can have no ease but in our ruine if he does hunger and thirst after it go to his Vengeance as to a Feast And if you read the 25th Chapter of Isaiah you will find there a rich Bill of Fare which his Revenge upon his Enemies does make view the sixth Verse He that enjoys his morsels that lays out his Contrivances and studies on his Dishes so as if he meant to cram his Soul let him know what delight soever he finds when he hath spoiled the Elements of their Inhabitants to furnish his own Belly and not content with Natures Delicacies neither hath given them forc'd Fatnesses changing the very flesh into a marrow suppling the Bones almost into that Oyl that they were made to keep all â—his delight the Lord by his expressions does seem to take in his dread Executions on his Enemies a sinful People And if the vicious Friendships of the World have so much more attractive than Christ's love and favour and the happy consequences of it as to counterpoise all the danger of such enmity you may joyn hands with them But if His be the safer and more advantageous then hearken to his Propositions and beseechings for He does beg it of you As he treated this reconciliation in his Blood so he does in Petitions too For saith S. Paul We are Ambassadours for Christ as if God did beseech you by us we pray you in Christ's stead Be you reconciled and then be Generous towards your GOD and Saviour and having brought him as it were upon his knees reduc'd him to entreaties be friends and condescend to him and your own Happiness If He be for you take no care then who can be against you His Friendship will secure you not onely from your Enemies but from Hostility it self for when a man's ways please the Lord he will make even his Enemies to be at peace with him Prov. xvi 7. He will reconcile all but Vices And afterwards see what a blessed throng of Friends we shall be all initiated into Heb. xii 23. To an innumerable company of Angels to the general Assembly and Church of the First-born that are written in Heaven to God the Judg of all and to the Spirits of Just men made perfect and to Jesus the Mediatour of the new Covenant c. And of this blest Corona we our selves shall be a noble and a glorious part inflamed all with that mutual love that kindles Seraphims and that streams out into an heavenly glory filling that Region of immortal love and blessedness and being Friends that is made one with Father Son and Holy Ghost that Trinity of Love we shall enjoy what we do now desire to ascribe to them All Honour Glory Power Majesty and Dominion for evermore Amen The Fifth SERMON Preached at WHITE-HALL Third Wednesday in LENT EZECH XXXIII 11. Why will ye Dye THE Words are part of a Debate which God had with the sinful House of Israel in which there are three things offer themselves to be considered First The Sinners Fate and Choice He will Die That 's his End yea 't is his Resolution he will die Secondly Gods inquiry for the Ground of this he seems astonished at the Resolution and therefore reasons with them about this their so mad choice and questions Why will ye dye Which words are also Thirdly The debate of his Affections the reasoning of his Bowels and a most passionate Expostulation with them on account of that their Resolution Why will ye dye which as it is addrest by God directly to the House of Israel so it would fit a Nation perverse as that which mutinies against Miracles and Mercies is false to God Religion and their own Interests led by a Spirit of giddiness and frenzy unsteddy in all things but resolutions of Ruine that would tear open their old Wounds to let out Life and they will dye And though the Lord be pleased to work new prodigies of mercy for us and to say unto us in despite of all our Enemies both Forein and Domestick Live The use we make of all is onely to debauch the Miracles and make Gods Mercies help to fill the measure of our Judgments live as if we would try all the ways to Ruine and since God will thus deliver us from dangers we would call for them some other way But to prescribe to these is above the attempt of my endeavours May the blessed Spirit of Wisdom and Understanding the Spirit of Holiness and Peace and Order breath on their Counsels whom this is committed to I shall bend my Discourse to the Conviction of Sinners in particular and treat upon the words as if they had been spoke to us under the Gospel The first thing which my Text and God supposeth is the Sinners Fate and Choice He will dye Even the second Death for it is appointed for all men once to dye and then cometh the Judgment which shall sentence him to another death that is immortal in which he and his misery must live for ever that is he must die everlastingly Such is first his Fate That Sin and Death are of so near so complicated a relation as that though they were Twins the birth and Issue of one Womb and moment yet they are also one anothers Off-spring and beget each other while Sin bringeth forth Death as S. James saith and is the Parent of Perdition and yet the Man of Sin is the Son of Perdition as S. Paul saith and Iniquity is but destruction's birth onely itself derived And that this Death and Perdition is Eternal in the most sad sense of the word there are a thousand Texts that say This is the Message of God in the mouth and Blood
Law And we shall find a reason for this way of working in that prayer of the same King David Help me O Lord my God O save me according to thy mercies that they may know that this is thy hand and that thou Lord hast don it When our distresses are beyond the succors of means power and counsels if deliverance come we must needs know 't is from above The Prophet speaks of men as apt to sacrifice to their net and burn incense to their drag with which they catch ascribing their successes to themselves But when the Apostles use their net all night and can take nothing then if one upon the shore whom they know not bid them cast in and they do catch strait one of them crieth out it is the Lord. When out of a desperate condition of affairs we see hope drawn we know it is the day spring from on high Whatever several of the late discoverers of the Popish conspiracy may have said or don to disparage their evidence and the credit of what they testify or men Popishly affected have contriv'd to make it be disbeliev'd yet surely while the trial and the letters of the late apostate busy Factor for the party remain upon record it will be manifest as the light that there was a practice and endeavor to subvert the present establishment in Church and State and introduce the superstition and tyranny of Rome among us And that God will be further gracious in the sending forth his light to discover and to disappoint their dire attemts there is ground to hope because it always was the ordinary method of his working making the day of Extremity the day of Salvation 1. In the Jewish Church and Nation And here I shall not mention their deliverance from the Egyptian bondage tho it be a demonstration of my Proposition but name that from the designs of Haman who had satisfied the King their Laws and their Religion and their Worship differ'd from those of all people 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saith Josephus and that were still occasions to embroile the State that if he would give order they should be destroi'd he would bring 10000 talents near two millions of our mony into the Exchequer whereupon the King allows him to make what declarations he shall please against them and signs an Edict to his Governors and his Lieutenants for the massacring the whole Nation which might easily be don the Jews then being in captivity and mixt among them Mordecay adviseth Ester to present her self before the King remonstrate the injustice of the fact that being death to do she would decline it but as one acquainted with Gods methods Mordecai does answer her think not with thy self that thou shalt escape in the Kings house more then all the Jews for if thou altogether holdest thy peace at this time then shall there enlargement and deliverance arise to the Jews from another place here is a pregnant instance of the assurance of my text but thou and thy fathers house shall be destroi'd And who knoweth whether thou art come to the Kingdom for such a time as this Hereupon she and her Nation fast and pray and she adventures and God gives her favor with the King and he reverses all and the whole Nation on that very day it was to perish is secur'd and the design returns upon their heads that plotted it on all their Enimies I need name no more but there is one pregnant one on which there lies an imputation from great men I mean when throout that Nation their Religion was so persecuted that it was almost extinct false Heathen worship planted in its place possessed the Temple and the Sanctuary and all was profan'd by Antiochus Epiphanes the state so lively propheci'd of by the Prophet Daniel Now when it was thus there was so universal a defection as already had subverted the whole Government Religion and almost the whole Nation God stirs up the Spirit of the Maccabbees on that day three years that all was profan'd ' was again purified and they deliver'd I instance so least that which Grotius satih that nothing can defend that action of the Maccabbees besides extreme certain necessity and what our Thorndike saith 't is manifest the Arms which they took up against their lawful Soveraign are by God approv'd and their Faith commended Hebr. 11. least these should misguide men it may be seasonable to declare that it is plain Antiochus Epiphanes altho he call that land his Kingdom was not then their rightful King for after Alexanders death the first that got possession of it was the King of Egypt It was after violently taken indeed from him by the King of Syria the Jews gave up themselves to the protection of Antiochus the Great but he gave it in dowry to the King of Egypt with his daughter so parted with all right whatever right the Kings of Syria could be suppos'd to have Antiochus Epiphanes had none of that as being not a lawful King of any place usurping from his Nephew the right Heir and with all injurious angry violence when he was driven out of Egypt the attaques Jerusalem and enters it and sets up all the Heathen Exercises and Religion and forbids Gods Worship ravages and spoils and murders all refusers till the Maccabbees oppos'd his fury and till Judas three years after as I said restor'd all having fought against a violent Aggressor not his rightful Prince and he is by Grotius made the very man that typ'd out Christ and was seen by the Prophet in Isaiah 63. Who is he that cometh from Edom with dyed garments from Bozra to which he makes Judas Maccabeus answer I that defend Gods Worship and the true Religion against Antiochus and all his power and to save my People cast my self upon extremest hazards Once more when Caius Emperor of Rome had sent Petronius into Syria charging him to make war on the Jews and by all utmost force to make thew condescend to let his image the statue of himself I mean be set up in their Temple at Jerusalem the Jews when he came into Syria to their Country met him several thousands several times with supplications and entreaties to divert him if they could from doing it But he declaring his Commission to them let them see it was not possible for him to contradict the Emperor and they declar'd also since he durst not transgress the commands of the Emperor he must not think it strange if they durst not transgress Almighty Gods command resolving to endure whatever should be inflicted on the rather then violate that Doing this often and in multitudes Petronius askt them whether they did mean on that account to fight with Caesar and make war against him they repli'd they would not fight but they could die on that account and prostrating themselves and offering their naked throats shew'd their readiness to entertain their death and this for
our selves de malo conjuncto for as appetite is implanted for the use of him in whom it is implanted so it is not proper to it to have any aversation to evil except it be some way evil to him whose appetite hath that aversation and to greive at misery I must some way conceive it to concern my self Now then as he that does not conceive himself a member of a Church nor a fellow member nor any way relating to it he cannot truly greive so he that does not greive declares no communion with it he is another thing a member quite cut off or dead and so stupid and insensible Such a judgment doest thou pass upon thy self whoever doest not mourn outlawest and excommunicatest thy self neither belongst to Church nor State nor yet to Christ. 2. As thou hast no charity to thy Brother nor to thy afflicted Mother so neither hast thou any love to God whose glory tho it be asserted by the punishment of a sinful Land or Church he is also still dishonor'd by the sins which do then reign and to which he does permit for the most part the punishment of sin and that power and authority or discipline which divisions in the Church cut short hath for its consequent all unbridled looseness and profaness Blasphemy and Atheisme the calamities of a State are embitter'd by all sorts of licences that grow when Government is weakn'd to see a whole Land mourn with the dark purple of its bloud all which bloud as it is the punishment of that Nation so it is the guilt also to see the wickedness of a Kingdom plagu'd with the ruin of many thousands of men's lives and thousands of souls too that fell in actual iniquity and yet to think that this plague is the greatest wickedness of all arm'd with the most crying sins that are that the very punishment must call for punishment and revenge of it self and help to make up the measure of judgment that the sentence of desolation may be irreversible and utter to see two inundations overflow the Land two abysses of bloud and guilt and one deep calling upon another to meet and swallow us and bury us in their graves of sin and deep ruin yea to see iniquity become impudent and sin triumphant which is the great sign of utter ruin as it was to the Jews an omen worse than Comets or Blazing-stars the dismal voice of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 yea and in this ruin too I do not see how any will well free themselves from guilt for if they be the ruiners they are the great spoilers the sinners if the ruined they have contributed to make those others the sinful inflicters and if in all this there be not matter for a little mourning if God dishonor'd souls destroi'd lives perishing Church ruining and nothing but sin flourishing and ourselves not unguilty and if this be not an object for our tears we are the most uncharitable most obdurate creatures in the world Niobe's stone is not fit to be our embleme for that stone could sweat tears we are more rock than that which Moses struck whom the rod of God cannot make weep we are next degree to Lucifer himself for onely Hell is sure at ease to see its company increase 3. Lastly this not mourning in the judgment of a Nation is a sin which God does most heavily characterize and threaten Amos 6. 1 6 7 8. Isaiah 22. when the Prophet had describ'd how it should be in the day of desolation v. 4 5. then because they did not do it see the judgment v. 12 13 14. yea this very thing that men are insensible is as it were the very last judgment on a Nation and the sign of utter rejection Jer. 16. 5 6 7. But how can this duty of mourning consist with those so frequent Gospel-Commands to rejoyce in utmost afflictions James 1. 2 3. Count it all joy when ye fall into diverse temtations knowing this that the trying of your faith worketh patience and St Paul most often 'T is true indeed we are to rejoyce in them because they are Gods methods of bettering us by them he does purge ad cleanse us Isaiah 4. 4 5. and c. 1. 25 27. Redeem'd with judgment even with the judgment that I shall execute upon them But then 1. What reason have we to mourn also that we are such foul sinners as to need such ways of purging that Christs death should not have motive enough in it to turn us from iniquity that his bloud should not be sufficient laver enough to wash us but our own must be pour'd out also that our air should be so infected that nothing but an universal conflagration can purify that we should be such refractory stubborn persons whom nothing but wounding will do good upon nothing but ruin will reduce But then 2. How are we more to mourn that this very method should not be able to reduce us that we will run upon lashes swords and deaths to sin that in the midst of judgments and against them too we commit iniquity that every stripe does encrease our reckoning add to our iniquities no possible method left to reduce them whom correction will not make sensible but our villanies grow up with our sufferings and our sins are fatned by our bloud as the land is Yea lastly how are we to mourn that to the rest of our sins this also is added by us of not mourning at our judgments but using all possible means to prevent it to lay a sleep the sense of any judgment that is upon the Nation to be so far from bestowing one hour of sadness upon those so grand motives to it that they do all they can to keep it from them and if those judgments happen to some they look upon it carelesly as a thing that does not concern rather as a matter onely of rejoycing if to others whom they wish well to they search out wine and vice to quench and to divert the memory and thought of it to drown sad news in sadder sin this is to labor hard lest sadness and a virtue should creep upon me to search out means to assist me to keep Gods last method from doing any good upon me this is one cause of greatest judgment Isaiah 5. 11 12 13 14. The second and indeed the great exercise of this duty in the text is to mourn for our sins and First for the infirmities of our nature that stain that we were born with that engagement to death that we brought into the world with us and which is a clog and weight upon us throughout the whole course of our lives to disable us from doing our duty as we ought Secondly for the sins of our habits whereby we have advanc't those infirmities into customs made a covenant with that death to which we were born engag'd and our whole practice is the exercise of those things whose wages is death eternal or if we are not gon so far
the comfort died as soon as the smile the very memorial of them is perisht and there is nothing of them left alive but that now all is don I am never the better for them But the comforts of my devouter hours shall never die but when I go to die my self will be like life and immortality to me O the strange acquiescencies of soul in the Consideration the few hours that a man hath spent piously how they will calm death assist in agonies and releive from pains how such a Soul anticipates his Heaven The truth is to such an one death is welcom and life tho it have on it the shadow of death is full of comfort For when all the world about is Egypt a devout man tho he have but his chamber to retire to and his doors be shut upon him he lives in Goshen when the consuming fire did run upon the ground throughout the land there was no storm in Goshen Exod. 9. 26. and when flashes of judgment do burst in upon other persons 't is calm in the Praier-room When the destroying Angel had overrun every house in Egypt with death when there was nothing but carcasses and crying in each dwelling there was not one sick in Goshen Exod. 12. 30. When a thick darkness dwelt upon the Nation the Israelites had lights in all their dwellings Exod. 10. 23. and when a sad dark cloud does sit upon Gods Countenance and pour down inundations of tempest on a people yet then his face does shine in the Closets of devotion there he breaks in and does reveal his comforts God is so there as his Angel was at that time a Pillar of light to them and of cloud to those others Exod. 14. 20. and when in this their pilgrimage he takes off their chariot-wheels v. 25. that they drive heavily prest with the weight of afflictions and the heavier incumbrances of the World striving against the tide and torrent of troubles encountring nothing but rubs and crosses and having on no wheels none of Gods comforts to bear them up they march heavily till at last the waters overwhelm them when as to those others the waters were a wall on the right hand and on the left and to the devout persons the troubles of their times by making them retire into their chambers prove an occasion of security which brings on the next observation from the words hide thy self Whence we draw that Praiers and the exercises of Piety are in sad days the onely great security and the Devotion-chamber a sure hiding place from trouble And indeed where else should we take shelter but in our Sanctuary Where should we seek for refuge but at the horns of the Altar where we offer up the incense of our Praiers and the lifting up of our hands is as the evening Sacrifice I have told you to retire thus into your chambers is to enter Gods bed-chamber and where is safety to be had if it be not there Is there not full quietness and calm in the Lords withdrawing rooms Not to tell you that David plac't his Rock his Fortress his Castle his every word of safety upon this foundation not to reckon up an infinity of places besides Psalm 27. 5. and 61. 2 3 4 5. I shall onely say that 't is impossible for any Sermon to say better what I have to say for him that betakes himself to these secret rooms and nestles there nor more pertinent to a time of sickness and distress than the 91. Psalm hath spoke v. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 c. and to which 't were vanity if not Tautology to add Should I labour to evince this further I could prove strangely to you that good hearty devout Praiers are in time of danger a Security even to a Miracle Security from the fury of men when single Prayers did resist an Army when Moses's hand lifted up in his devotions slew more Amalekites than the armed hands of Joshua and all his Regiments stretcht out for when Moses lifted up his hand then Israel prevailed Exod. 17. 11. Security against the storm of Gods assault for a Praier of Moses is call'd a standing in the breach against the Lord when he came to destroy the People by a plague Psalm 106. 23. so God said he would destroy them had not Moses his chosen stood before him in the breach to turn away his wrathful indignation least he should destroy them They are terms of war and do express the desperatest act of Valour which war hath occasion for when wall and rampart could not resist the storm of shot but the Assault made its way thro stones and bulwarks then must courage become the Rampart maintain the breach and repulse the Assailants This is the danger and the glory of Valour and this very expression do's Scripture make use of to declare the force and courage of a zealous Praier When Gods indignation had storm'd the People when it had made a gap a breach to enter and overrun them in a moment and the Angel with his sword drawn was assaulting had began his deaths in steps Moses arm'd but with single Praier maintains the breach and turns away the Indignation Neither was this all for it did not onely beat off his fury but assail'd him also as it were took God captive and held him that he could not fall upon them For in the 32. Exod. 9 10. he cries to Moses it is a stiff-necked people now therefore let me alone that my wrath may wax hot against them and that I may consume them in a moment let me alone Hebr. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 dimitte me 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 permitte me ut invalescat Syr. nunc si permiseris mihi invalescet Arab. dimitte deprecationem tuam à facie mea Chald. Loose me and let me go suffer me let me alone that I may destroy them do not pray to me thy strong desires are as bonds and cords upon me loose me and do not hold me I can do nothing if thou pray my arm of power my stretcht our arm is held in it is restrain'd by thy strong cries thy violent sighs they cool my wrath that it cannot wax hot against them thy zeal it is irresistible do not therefore make use of it do not hinder me do not pray now let me alone and I will make of thee a greater Nation I will bribe thee to silence because my fury will not withstand thy Praiers if thou maintain the breach I shall not take this People now by storm be hir'd then to withdraw let me alone But Moses he would take no bribes from God but he besought the Lord his God as it follows there and the sudden effect of his Praier was the Lord repented of the evil which he thought to do unto his people Here 's the power of a fervent Praier it hath a kind of force on the Almighty a force that he does seem as it were afraid of would have prevented and
guards that are set about them to preserve them and break thro the strengths of grace and conquer all the strivings of Almighty God's compassion and goodness to them and beat off the very victory that Christ hath gain'd for them refuse all the kind offers of the Law of grace and chuse sin with damnation they are safe There is now as St Paul saith by the Law no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus to them who walk not after the Flesh but after the Spirit Rom. 8. 1. in which words we have both an assurance that the strengths of Sin are broken and the persons too are partakers of the Victory that are in Christ Jesus for as it is by him the Victory is gotten so it is in him that we must get an interest in it Now to be in Christ if as most certainly it doth it mean here as in other places where 't is said of Churches housholds and of single persons then it means the Christians so in Gal. 1. 22 the Churches of Judea that are in Christ i. e. that have received the Gospel and the Faith of Christ Rom. 16. 11. greet them that be of the houshold of Narcissus that are in the Lord i. e. that are Christians and the seventh verse who were in Christ before me i. e. were converted e're I was But it means Christians not in judgment and opinion onely but in life and practice such as are in Christ by St Pauls character and description of it in the 2 Cor. 5. 17. If any man be in Christ he is a new creature he lives the life of Christ as a member does the life of that of which it is a member and so he walks not after the Flesh but after the Spirit For as members live by the vertue of the influence of spirits from the head into them and walk after its directions so those that are in Christ his members they must walk live act and practise by the Spirit of Christ guided not by carnal appetite the lusts and the desires of the Flesh but by Christ's directions Such they are who have this Victory to whom there is no condemnation For as he adds Rom. 8. 2. The law of the Spirit of life that is in Christ Jesus sets us free from the law of sin and death and so there is thro him a Victory over the third last enimy Death in which freedom from Sin and Death two things are intimated 1. That Sin the sting of Death is taken away which being once removed Death is the softest thing that can be 't is but falling asleep so it is call'd v. 18. of this chapter faln asleep in Christ it is so far from being hurtful that it is the first great happiness that does befall us 2. That Death it self also shall be swallowed up in Victory that we shall be recovered from its powers and triumph over it in Immortality of blessed life For if we be in Christ his members and so live the life of Christ and consequently when we die die in the Lord then tho the body be dead and corruptible yet if the Spirit of life that is in Jesus be in us he that rais'd up Jesus from the dead shall also quicken our mortal bodies by his Spirit Rom. 8. 11. It is this life in him that verifies the saying of St Paul Eph. 2. 6. He hath raised us up and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ as sure as if we were already there for there we are already as his members in our head And to the full and personal enjoyment of the blessings of those heavenly places it is death that lets us in that vale of Achor is the door of hope and Canaan the grave the avenue to God's right hand that death 't is but the Pascha in St Bernard 't is our Passover a repast of bitter herbs indeed but at the going out of Egypt from the house of bondage And tho the body seem in death a piteous despicable thing sown in corruption dishonor as St Paul expresses yet death gives that a relation too to Christ the Prophet Isaiah brings in the Lord calling His dead 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 cadaver they my dead body shall aris◠saith he c. 26. 19. So that the corps of a good person is so far a member that 't is call'd the very body of his Savior into such a title Death translates it to such not to live onely but to die is Christ. And sure if they that die in him did live in him as none can die there where they did not live at all that is live as his members they that die in Christ must die his members But in the expression of the Prophet they do also die himself and are Christ's own dead body Death to such is as it were transfiguration and do's not so much strip and make them naked as cloath them and that with glory the shrowd may seem but their white wedding linnen and their dress for the marriage of the Lamb. Whoever is a faithfull sincere Christian if Death seem to make approaches to him arm'd with all his instruments of cruelty and terror charge him as assuredly as a Prophet could to set his house in order for he must die if he can say with Hezekiah in Isaiah 38. 3. Remember now O Lord how I have walked before thee in truth and with a perfect heart and have don that which is good in thy sight then if he have not fifty years yet he shall have a numberless Eternity added to his life and notwithstanding the dark solitude of the Grave to which he is retiring he shall have that which will accompany him to his infinite joy when he is torn from friends and all his dearest things do leave him yet he shall not be alone his faith and piety his vertues all go along with him and appear for him at that tribunal on the Judgment day All his relations even his bosom-guest the other half of his own soul forsake him bring him it may be to the grave and tho they carry blacks upon them to refresh and keep alive the memory of him yet in a while take comfort and forget yet the true conjugal affections of an untainted undefiled bed shall go along present the Soul white as a Virgin that 's unspotted And after this 't is in vain to say his riches will forsake him they go not so far as the grave afford nothing of themselves but the price of a sheet and coffin But then Charities will mount Alms will ascend as fast as the Spirit the wealth one piously bestow'd will meet him he shall eternally possess that which he gave away and tho his place know him no more they shall receive him into everlasting habitations Wherefore my beloved Brethren be ye stedfast unmovable always abounding in the work of the Lord which is the real way of giving thanks to God who giveth us the Victory SERMON XI
at a price he became our Lord Ye are bought with a price 1 Cor. 7. 23. They that do not acknowledge this are in the number of those men of whom St Peter speaks Epist. 2. c. 2. v. 1. denying the Lord that bought them and bring upon themselves swift destruction and you may judge what kind of Lord he ought to be by the price he paid for the Title what service he expected by the rates at which he purchased them even at the bloud of God Acts 20. 28. He died I told you that he might be Lord. And now Lord what is thy servant that thou shouldst thus value him or what are his performances that thou shouldst buy them at these rates And shall I give to Sin or Sathan those services which he thus values and thus buys No if thou art content to purchase that so dear which was thy own just due before surely now by all rights thou art My Lord. But 3. He is so also by my own most solemn contract and engagement And to pass by all the rest and to stick to that of this day onely we did contract so in the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper and in receiving that we did most solemnly assume to do him faithful service and took him for our Lord. And this would easily appear from hence if Christ's bloud be the price with which he bought the right to be thy Lord and this day thou didst come and here didst take that bloud to all those ends and uses it was given for then in so doing thou didst ratify the contract and take possession of the relation but to do it more solemnly and here I will not stand upon that proof which I have formerly made to you from the account that Pliny gave to Trajan the persecuting Emperor tho truly it be strange that a Heathen should discern this was the meaning of their Sacrament and Christians will not believe it He when he was emploied to persecute the Christians tells him what he had found of them by racking some and by confessions of others at their death Soliti stato die convenire seque Sacramento obstringere ne furta ne latrocinia ne adulteria committerent c. to take an oath they knew no other sense of the word Sacrament to do what their Lord had commanded them What have you don this day Why Christ was sworn your Lord this day and you have taken an oath of service entred into a bond of duty and obedience and if you wilfully shall fail of doing this your Worships will be brought against you your Communions will come in as so many evidences that you have forfeited so many oaths that you have broken No sure I will henceforwards tie my self to better performance for I have hamper'd my self with obligations entangled my self with one other engagement I have again sworn at the Altar Thou art my Lord. But I have a more solemn proof of this that he who comes to the renewing of a Covenant with God now Christ we know saith that that cup is the new Covenant in his bloud he does enter into an oath of God Deut. 29. from verse 10. to 15. Ye stand this day all of you before the Lord your God your captains of your tribes your elders and your officers with all the men of Israel your little ones your wives and thy stranger that is in thy camp from the hewer of thy wood unto the drawer of thy water that thou shouldest enter into covenant with the Lord thy God and into his oath which the Lord thy God maketh with thee this day that he may establish thee to day for a people unto himself and that he may be unto thee a God as he hath said unto thee and as he hath sworn unto thy fathers to Abraham to Isaac and to Jacob neither with you onely do I make this covenant and this oath but with him that standeth here with us this day before the Lord our God and also with him that is not here with us this day Now out of this they who are not convinc'd that our first entring Covenant with God by Baptism is a vow altho the Church require that we should look upon it under that Solemnity and tho St Peter call it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a stipulation or if they think it something like it yet 't is a vow but in the childrens name and so it does not strike those apprehensions of so sacred an engagement into them themselves may see here at an entring Covenant little ones entring into an oath and this was not the first giving of the Covenant that so any thing might be thought peculiar to that but onely a repeting of the Covenant in their presence verse 1. and least that we should think their standing there in solemn manner might imply something more than ordinary verse 14. 15. take us that stand here this day before the Lord our God but also with him that shall be born hereafter Many expositors and the Jerusalem Exposition says with all the generations of you that are to come 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as if they stood with us this day And the Targum of Jon. Vziel says they do stand that is as to this intent and purpose that as soon as they are admitted into Covenant by Circumcision they are within this oath Littles ones therefore that can be admitted into a Covenant by receiving of the sign of it they then enter an oath of keeping it And then my Brethren we have entred an oath to continue Christ's faithful Soldiers and Servants unto our lives end and that is thou and I and every one have sworn he is my Lord. O my Savior I was baptized and at that time did swear service and then if I should fail thee now I renounce my Allegiance I go from my fealty and I throw of my Covenant Every evil action I deliberately commit brands me with the dishonorable base stile of one that slights his oaths there is no hold of his vows not his most sacred ones those that he makes to God Every vain or passionate oath how true soever speaks me perjured the draughts of intemperance would wash off the water of my Christendom every unclean lust every impurity of Flesh or Spirit does as it were bemire and wipe out my contract with my Lord. For I covenanted to be pure and clean for I was wash'd into the very name of his retainer I could not have that title of that relation without being cleansed There I did swear defiance against all his Enimies the Devil World and Flesh and all worldly and carnal lusts that I would neither follow not be led by them and if I should serve them now I should be a Rebel and a Traitor to my Lord against my bond and covenant and oath No my Lord I will not serve these where death must be my wages the Fiends my Comrades and my Conquest Hell I 'le not do homage to destruction
to this rencounter of the object of its strong affections no rest but in the labors that work towards it no calm but in those violences And much of this there must be in Religion where the heart is set upon the hopes of it on heaven He must be eager in it as the covetous is on his gains the proud man on his pomps the pleasurist on his sports the Epicure on his excesses It is not possible a man should have no heart to that on which his heart is set He therefore that hath set his heart on heaven must be religious and holy and so it is concluded that the liberal-minded must needs be so The progress of which proof is this he whose heart is in heaven his conversation will be there his life will be Christian and holy he whose treasure is in heaven his heart is in heaven he that hath taken off his heart from the world and out of liberality of heart gives alms he laies his treasure up in heaven and then it is concluded that he is religious And this now may apply it self without my help to press it to you Ah my Brethren chuse and strive towards a vertue that will help you to all the rest that will calm and moderate your affections to this world and the dying follies of it and that will draw your hearts to heaven and set them on the world to come Who would not labor for one disposition of mind that comes with such a train of pieties that hath all Christianity in its attendance and brings all into the soul with it Who would not give alms if by doing so he give himself a shole of vertue to whom is this man bountiful but to himself indeed Here is a ground for men to beg after the fashion of Lombardy Be good to your self Sir and bestow an alms upon me for he indeed is good unto himself who what he gives laies up in heaven as a treasure for eternity and at the same time entertains the disposition to all piety in his heart receives all vertue into him I sahll not need to call in accessory proofs fetch in auxiliary motives tell you that works of charity are called good works in Scripture and the liberal man good So Rom. 5. 7. the good man signifies and Tit. 2. 5. where the women are commanded to be good it is merciful so works of mercy are call'd good works Acts. 9. 36. doing good Matt. 12. 12. Heb. 13. 16. good fruits James 3. 17. So to work good signifies Gal. 6. 9. and every good work 2 Cor. 9. 8. is works of mercy as if he did engross all goodness and that same vertue did fulfil the title Nay I tell you more that the merciful man and the perfect man are but two words for the same person Matt. 5. 48. Luke 6. 36. all Christianity is so sure appendant to this disposition of the heart when it is in the soul I tell you not when it is now and then in the actions that this alone is perfectness 't is entire lacking nothing And then here is a clear account why at the last great trial nothing should come upon account but charity that is the only thing the Judg takes cognizance of at the day of final doom When I was hungry ye gave me meat the words of everlasting Judgment pass only in relation to this nothing but charity do's come into that sentence for all the rest is implied in this and where the heart is liberal the whole life will be Christian this is an evidence will pass at God's Assise stand before the Searcher of the heart and reins And therefore it may well be a sign to us and make proof that this grace in the heart bounty of mind is a great evidence of a truly Christian heart the second Proposition Blessed Savior thou that wert all bounty to us that didst emty thy self to enrich us and didst chuse rather to die thy self than not relieve us when we were sick to everlasting death give us grace to be like-minded shed into our hearts this disposition of soul that will make us so remember thee a disposition that will make our affections even and moderate to things of this earth which by teaching us to part with wealth contentedly will work us out of the world and teach us not to be enamoured on the advantages of wealth not to be passionate for pomps or pleasures or for any superfluities which wealth procures which will set our hearts in heaven and lay up treasures for us there which if it rob us of the pomps and the magnificences of this world will give us for them pomps of piety the whole train of vertues a long attendance of graces if it deprives us of some heights or some excess of pleasures it will recompence with the satisfactions of relieving Christ in his members here and reigning with him hereafter in Kingdom SERMON XXII THE LIGHT OF THE BODY is the Eye Matt. 6. 22 23. The light of the body is the eye if therefore thy eye be single thy whole body shall be full of light But if thine eye be evill thy whole body shall be full of darkness If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness how great is that darkness PHILOSOPHY do's say that all vertues are so annext and tied together that it is not possible for any man to have any one truly and compleat but he must needs have all they are like pearls upon the necklace from which if any violence pull one the string is broke and all are shatter'd and disorder'd And S. James saith c. 2. 10. Whosoever shall offend in one point is guilty of all and sure the vertue of the Text makes good both these Positions if liberality of heart be that one point he that excludes it from his Soul shuts out the rest at once All the graces are as train to that leading vertue are its such close attendants that they must needs have the same fate and either dwell together in the heart or all together be thrust thence for if thine eie be single thy whole body shall be full of light but if thine eie be evil thy whole body shall be full of darkness An envious discontent uncharitable mind makes the whole life un-Christian and he that do's offend in that one point must needs be guilty of all and if Charity that bond of perfectness in S. Paul that tie of graces that do's unite them to it self and with each other if that be there all graces must be there and liberality of heart makes the life Christian for if thine eie be single thy whole body shall be full of light But I am now to shew you that bounty in the heart is a great Sign of a true Christian heart that that person who not out of easiness or modesty of constitution not knowing how to deny when he is askt nor out of inconsideration or vanity bestows an alms or else when importunities
as the Swine were drowned on the one side so two men possessed with Devils were recovered and that Christ had don this since his coming thither Hereupon the whole City as being very much concern'd in that which had happen'd came out to meet and see Jesus who did such Miracles and instead of being wrought on by his cure on the men to desire his continuance among them the consideration of the loss of their Swine made them desire and beseech him that he would depart out of their Coasts Behold an equal Enemy to Christ and all his Miracles an Enemy that was too hard for them even a little worldly advantage The Senate of Hell hath no project like this to keep out Religion as this making Religion thwart an interest rather no Christianity than abate gain or greatness or any earthly satisfaction rather the Swine than Christ himself But we have a worse instance yet than this and more comprehensive as to our purpose An evil eie could not endure to see the Son of God alive and when the second Person of the Godhead was to be betraied and crucified the Devil had no other passion to employ on that design but these same discontent and envy and a greedy mind and all these but at little trifles We find that Judas bore the purse and S. John saies that he robb'd it John 12. 6. was deceitful in the discharge of his office of relieving the poor Now it happen'd that a woman spent a box of precious ointment upon Christ at which Judas was discontent and envied it his Master Matt. 16. 8. Mark 14. 4 5. he murmur'd and had indignation at it saies the places his evil eie could not endure to see such a sum should pass his purse of which yet he could have purloin'd but very little for the sum was not great and missing that for very envy for it was immediatly upon it Mark 14. 10. his own covetous heart by the Devil's suggestion put him upon his project of gain to make some advantage by delivering Christ to the hands of the Jews and upon his consenting to this suggestion the Devil was permitted by God to have this power over him to enter into him John 13. 2. and doing so incited him to make a bargain with the Rulers of the Sanhedrim their great Council and with their Officers to deliver up Jesus unto them and he yielding to his incitation and after Christ's talking with him and telling him distinctly of it and the sin and danger attending it Mark 14. 21. and his not yet relenting the Devil entred into him again more forcibly than before John 13. 27. hurried him to the speedy execution and he went and covenanted with them that he should have thirty shekels Matt. 26. 15. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Luke 22. 6. and thanked them altho it were a low and a vile sum as could be the price of a slave Exod. 21. 32. yet Judas thankt them for the offer so covetous he was and glad of an occasion to get mony We see the Devil enters at an evil eie if that be envious Satan gets in strait at that eie himself in person and he possesses hearts set upon gain and then no wonder if the Kingdom of darkness be in such an heart when as the King of Hell the Devil dwells there Satan entred into him and when he was there what design hath he to fill an heart with nothing but that of getting mony this is effect enough of his possession The Devil hath don work enough in such a heart as he is entred into really if he but make it set upon desire of mony tho it be but a trifle of gain but three pounds fifteen shillings But Lord God what will not a worldly heart adventure on what will not a mind undertake which envies at another and is greedy for it self When such an one did set Judas upon betraying Christ for almost nothing one vanity one sport one dress one sin's engagement to damnation costs a man more than what an envious covetous Soul did sell the Son of God the Ransom of Mankind the price of all the Souls in the whole world for yea and was thankful for it too so low so fordid and so base a soul it is that loves increase And now my Brethren there is no need that I should tell you that you must bring no evil eie to the Lord's Table to see his body crucified and his bloud poured out in the Sacrament no discontents no murmurs no envious intentions nor covetous desires must come near that for they were these betraied him If such a soul come thither Judas is there again the things that sold him come again to tear his body and to shed his bloud And do you think that such shall be receiv'd and entertain'd by Christ Oh no the bread of the Sacrament will be their Sop and not Christ but the Devil enters into such Oh sure no heart so fit to come to that same feast as the charitable those that feed him he will feed and I could tell you charity the offertory I mean an offering for the poor was used as an essential part of the Sacrament and was a service of so high esteem that preparation was requir'd for it as for the Sacrament and by the first Councils men guilty of gross sins might not offer their charities would not be receiv'd by the Church Yea and there was an excommunication from this duty and to be excluded from bringing their gifts for the poor was a greater censure than to be shut out from the Sermon or the Praiers But these are things our world do's not take notice of nor will understand to be censur'd from liberality and to be excommunicate from bounty and that receiving of mens alms should be a grace and an indulgence to the givers are talks that men now have no notions of nor much care for But let them be sure no time so proper for our relieving the members of Christ as when the body of Christ is relieving us to life eternal no occasion more urgent for us to contribute towards the clothing of the naked body of Christ than when Christ is clothing us with the crimson glorious garment of his Righteousness no opportunity more pressing than this to visit his sick members than when he administring to us 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 nothing do's preach Charity like a Sacrament nor no Sacrament more than this at the time of his Incarnation when the Son of God did so exhaust himself for us as to emty immensity of God-head into a span of weak poor helpless flesh to become really one of the meanest objects of compassion one that had no revenue in the world but Charity for while he liv'd he had not an hole to put his head in nor when he died a grave to put his body in but as thro all his life his sustenance was alms so at his death his burying place was alms too and yet this was
of his Son who useth all the artifice of Words affirmative and negative to tell us so as if on purpose to preclude all doubt and subterfuge calls it Eternal fire and Eternal punishment where their worm dieth not their fire is not quenched Torment for ever and ever and the like Your Faith and certainty of which is as strong as your Christianity and therefore by attempting any farther proof of this to imply there is reason and necessity for doing so were to suppose my Hearers Infidels But then this being granted that such is the Sinners Fate to lay down positively that it is his Choyce and that he doth resolve for Death is to suppose them worse than Infidels more than irrational and brutish Beasts cannot so desire against the possibilities of Appetite break all the forces and instincts of Nature as to will destruction and choose misery Yet that the Sinner does so is the ground of Gods Expostulation here Why will you dye David enquires as if it were a Prodigy to find What man is he that lusteth to Live And sure the vicious man does not for Wisdom that is Virtue says He that sinneth against me woundeth his own Soul and all they that hate me love death Prov. viii 36. And 't is most evident that they who eagerly and out of vehement affection pursue and seize those things to which they know destruction is annex'd inseparably they love and choose destruction though not for it self yet for the sake of that to which it clings He that is certain such a Potion howsoever sweetned and made palatable is compounded with the juice of deadly Nightshade if notwithstanding he will have the Poisonous draught it is apparent he resolves to dye And that I may evince this is a setled obstinate incorrigible resolution in him and by what ways and steps it comes to be so I will lay before you the violent courses he does take to break through difficulties and obstructions that would trash and hinder him And when the avenues to Death are strongly guarded how he storms and forces them overcomes all resistance possible that he may seize on Sin and Death And First When such persons have entred the Profession of Christianity in Baptism and by early engagements tyed themselves to the observation of its duties if Principles of probity in Nature fomented by others instill'd with Education have made impressions of duty on the mind and wrought a reverence and awe of God and of Religion which is a fence about them and does keep off Vice by making it seem strange uncouth and difficult while these fears and aversations are rooted in them why then the first thing that they do as soon as Youth and the Temptations do stir within them is to poyson these their own Principles by evil Conversation and from that and Example take infusions which shall impregnate them with humours of being in the fashion of the World Thus they labour to strangle the then troublesom modesties of Nature and of Virtuous breeding thus they look out ill Company to infect themselves And surely they that seek the Plague and run into infection we have cause to fear they have a Resolution to dye But Secondly If notwithstanding this in the first practices of Vice their former Principles stir and ferment within and fret the Conscience set that on working why then if the sin sting gently do but prick the heart and make an out-let for a little gush of Sorrow then in spight of Scripture they do teach themselves to think that grief Repentance and by the help of that conceit this sorrow cools and doth allay the swelling of the mind washes away the guilt and thought of the commission they have been sad and they believe repented as if those stings opened the fountain for transgression and those little wounds did flow with Balsom for themselves And by this means that sting of the old Serpent sin while it pretends to cure by hurting thus proves indeed the Tempter to go on For if this be all why should a man renounce all the Contents and satisfactions of his Inclinations and mortifie and break his nature to avoid a thing which is so easily repented for No if it be no worse they can receive this Serpent in their bosom dare meet his sting and run upon these wounds and they do so till the frequent pungencies and cicatrices have made the Conscience callous and insensible the heart hardned But if their first essays of sin were made unfortunate by Notoreity or some unhappy circumstance and so the wound were deep and the Conscience troublesom and restless because this is very uneasie these inward groans make discord in their chearful airs make their life harsh they therefore find it necessary to confront the shame with Courage of iniquity go boldly on that so they may outlook it fear their own Conscience that its wounds may not bleed And as those Fiends of Men who Sacrific'd their Children in the fire to Moloch that they might not hear their Infants shreek nor their own Bowels croak had noises made with Timbrels to out-voice them So these to drown the cries and howlings of their wounded mind put themselves in perpetual hurry of divertisement and Vice make Tophet about themselves and with the noise of Ryots overcome all other because they will not hearken to those groans that call for the Physician of Souls and then sure these resolve to dye Nay if this will not keep them quiet you may see them sometimes ruffle with their own Consciences desire present Convictions in the very instant of Commission men so set on Death that they Condemn themselves in that which they allow And though a man would think there should be little satisfaction in those pleasures which Condemnation thrusts it self into and which have an alloy of so sad apprehensions yet such are it seems the satisfactions of sin For while it slabs and gashes He brave Hero of Iniquity can charge the wounds and take the Vice Yea Thirdly though the Lord himself appear and take part in the Quarrel joyn with our Principles and Conscience against the sin and with importunate Calls alarm us give us no rest ordain a Function of men by whom he does beseech us dresses their Messages with Promises of that which God is blessed in and arms them too with Terrors such as Devils tremble at and joyns his Holy Spirit too that Power of the Highest sends him in Tongues of Fire that he also may Preach this to our very Hearts and fright us with more flame And yet the Sinner breaks these strengths and vanquishes the Arts and strivings of Divine Compassion If these Embassadors speak Charms it is but what God tells our Prophet in this Chapter ver 32. And lo thou art unto them as a very lovely Song of one that hath a pleasant voice and can play well on an Instrument And it does dye like that as it there follows They hear thy
death which till the man be dead and the brute onely live within him cannot be his pleasures And it is plain they are not pleasures to a Sober man that lives the life of Reason not to say of Grace Nor are they such to any man till he have train'd and exercis'd himself into an habit of enduring them and by a discipline of Torment made himself experienc'd for Vice and for Damnation Nor is there ever any pleasure in some Vices What is there in the dismal Wishes of mans imprecating passion there cannot be musick in those harsh horrours and yet the Sinners will destruction so as that they call to God to pour it on them and tear it down from Heaven so that Pain and Disease seem to sauce those delights and Death to be the tempter to the pleasure 't is evident mens reasons and their Practices must be first debauch'd that they may count them Pleasures and therefore pleasure cannot be the first mover in the Sinners race to Death But I will grant that the Spirit and Flesh of Man by their so strait alliance and perpetual converse may grow to have the same likes and dislikes have but one appetite and this alas be that of flesh to whose onely satisfactions the man useth himself by long Custom of which the Soul doth so imbibe the Inclinations of the Body that nothing of another kind can possibly be relish'd In this case sensuality hath pleasures yet such as cannot answer Gods enquiry for do but consult mans other Choices and you find a present satisfaction cannot work his Resolutions to forego great after-hopes or run upon a foreseen ruine Who will exchange his right to the Reversion of a Crown which from his Father he shall certainly inherit and succeed to if he do out-live him for a present Scene of Royalty and choose a painted Coronet the pomps and adorations of a Stage and the applauses of a Croud before the real Glories of his Kingdom the love and the obedience of his Subjects And yet my Soul the disproportion of the Sinners terms is infinitely greater and there is no hazzard which to make his choice of present things more flattering the others hopes are liable to For that Heir of the Crown may die before the Crown fall to him but it is impossible that we should miss of ours except we put our selves by by such choices except we change it thus And on the other side we know men will adventure the Sentence of the Law by Robberies and murders to provide for Lusts while they hope to be undiscovered But sure a Prison made delightful by all arts of pleasure and all plenties of it will not hire a man to own those actions which shall forfeit him to certain shameful Execution the next Sessions and yet this is the Sinners state exactly he is ti'd and bound in the chain of his sins they are it may be chains of Gold and softned with delices but they reserve him to the Judgment of the great Assise And yet he chooses these and puts them on as Ensigns of delight and honour Once more Do not men choose a present Agony to keep off an afterevil they tear their bowels with a Vomit to prevent a Surfeit they cup and scarifie and with all artifice or pain upon themselves kill a Disease yea they are well content to prolong torment so they may but prolong life and though the preservation of it prove onely continued pangs and all they can effect is onely this that they are longer dying yet they are glad to be so in all cases except where the prescription is Virtue and the death prescribed against Eternal Now why do you choose thus onely in Sin and Hell 'T is clear the very pleasure you change Heaven for cannot invite you from this Life and then you that will suffer any thing rather than you will dye Why against all resistance will you dye for ever It is Secondly because you know not what it is to dye the second Death at least your notions of it are so slight and easie that they cannot fright you from a pleasure or cope with a temptation to it and so though present satisfactions are not able to engage you upon present ruin they can upon the after-death Indeed the Sinner would have reason if it meant no more than hath been taught of late by one that hath gained many Proselytes among the Virtuosi of Religion After the Resurrection the Reprobates shall be saith he in the state that Adam and his Posterity were in after his Sin i. e. the state we are now in Live as we do Marry and give in Marriage and cease to be when they have got some heirs to succeed them in Tophet Poor unhappy Souls these that never had any sin to merit being there nor any Sentence to condemn them thither but this mans Who must put them there successively one after other to find employment for Everlasting fire A Doctrine such as had an Angel Preach'd from Heaven by S. Paul's award he must have been Anathema when the Devil made Religions and Theology came from the bottomless Pit he never found out such an Engine to conveigh men into it as this pleasant notion of the punishment of sin therein as if Leviathan were made to take his pastime in that Lake also by such interpretations which surely were contrived to make out the Assertion of that Romish Priest who says that those in Hell love to be there nay more that 't was impossible for God to do a kinder thing for them than to put them there Doctrines to be abhorr'd as Hell it self and yet upon these grounds he builds their Church by demonstration so strong as that the Gates of Hell cannot prevail against it and in truth they have no reason to assault it on these terms But to pass by such dotages and frenzies you will be able sure to check all those presumptions which grow from sleight impressions of the second Death if you but take that prospect of it which the close of this time gives look forward through this season which is designed for you to prepare the way of the Lord to his Passion in and you shall see the Death that does await iniquity If you behold him coming to Jerusalem with Hosannas and Palms about him as if Death were his Triumph his Passion so desirable that he rode to meet it which he never did at any other time and then complaining he was straitned until it were accomplish'd as he had throws of Longing after it and singing when he went out to it you would believe the Sinner never chose his death sweetned by his most pleasant sin with a more chearful eagerness But then open the Garden and you see his apprehensions of it throw him on his Face to pray against it See how he sweats and begs his very Prayer is a Passion the zeal of it is Agony and canst thou choose that he so dreads
and deprecates and when he durst not meet the apprehensions wilt thou stand the storm see what a sting death hath when it makes out-lets for such clots and globes of Blood and stings the Soul so too that it pours out it self in Sweat And then he sinks again under the deprecation of it and prays that that Cup may pass from him Blessed Saviour when thou hadst just now made thy Death thy Legacy thy Sacrament dost thou intreat to scape this death if this Cup pass from thee what will the Cup of Blessing profit us thou hadst but now bequeathed a Cup to us which was the New Testament in thy Blood and now wilt thou not shed that Blood But dost thou refuse thy Cup Oh 't was a Cup of deadly Wine red with God Indignation poison'd with Sin And can the Sinner thirst for the Abyss of this the Lake that hath no bottom and when he goes again and prays the same words the third time be yet not onely so supine as not ask to scape it seldom and very sleight in any Prayer or wish against it but also so resolv'd to have it as to gape that he may swill it down to everlastingness Follow him from that Garden and you see him even dying under his Cross he cannot bear that when it is laden with sin who yet upholdeth all things by the word of his Power 'T is said the time will come when the Sinner will cry out to the Hills to fall on him any weight but that of iniquity the burden of that is intolerable 't is easier for him to bear a Mountain than a Vice and yet Christ saith he hath a beam in his Eye and can he shrink at any weight whose part that is most sensible tender to an expression can bear that which shoulders must fall under onely Pillars can sustain Oh yes that which did sink the shoulders of Omnipotence Then the Mountains rather and the Rocks to cover but in vain they will not cover for thy very Groans will rent them Christ's were so sad that his did they tore the Rocks and that which is much more inflexible the Monuments Death started at them and the bonds of the Grave loosened and the Dust was frighted into Resurrection and more the Hypostatick Union seem'd rent by them the God to have forsaken his own Person And can the Sinner hope to stand this shock will the courage of his Iniquity make his heart harder than those Rocks more insensible than the Grave and better able to endure than he that was a God and will you die into this state eternally which it was necessary for him to have the assistance of Divinity in his Person that he might be able to endure one day and which yet notwithstanding made one day intolerable The sum is this a Person so desiring Death and yet so dreading it and sinking under the essays of it and this Person the Son of God and that dread meerly because there was sin in the Death for if this were not in the cause no Martyr but had born death with more courage but that Son of God all this as it does leave no Reason for the Sinners choice of death Eternal so neither doth it leave a possibility of bearing it And if so give me leave in God's Name to Expostulate the last imployment of these words Why will ye die After this killing Prospect while the damp of it is on you let my Bowels debate with you which yearn more over you than they did over my Beloved Son in whom I was well pleased when I have sent my only Son God one with my own Self to be made Man that he might suffer what was necessary to be suffer'd to preserve you from eternal sufferings when I have laid on him that was brought up with me from everlasting and that was daily my Delight all your Iniquities and my own Indignation that so you might be freed from both When I have found out made an Expiation with which I am more pleased than ever your transgressions offended me which hath quite blotted out your sins and my Displeasure when your Redemption from death is made the Ransom paid the Price is in my hand why do you then refuse your selves your own Eternal Blessedness which was thus dearly purchas'd and is ready for you Why will you seize that Indignation which you are redeemed from and force those sufferings on your selves which have been laid already and inflicted on another 'T is a small thing that you refuse me the return of my Expence that which I gave my Son for but do you renounce Happiness because my Love and Blood is in it and will you die because you may and I desire you should live when my Son went from the essential felicities of my Bosom to embrace Agonies and dy'd for you why will you also die as you have slain his Person will you Crucifie his Kindness too and crucifie your selves rather than have it and having us'd him most despightfully will you therefore use his favours so and not let his Death and Passion do you any good contemn his methods of Salvation his divine Acts of making you for ever Blessed is your Saviour and Life it self so hateful to you and after such Redemption of your persons is there no redemption of your Will from perishing nothing of value that can bribe your choice against it nothing that can betroth you into a desire of Life and take you off from your resolves to die had I set no advantage on the other side if sin had sweetned misery to your Palate it had been no such great despite and contradiction to Appetite but when Heaven and the Joys of God are in the Scale against it to prefer Misery is Wretchless beyond aggravation Oh why will you rather die Those very things that tempt your Wills were they abstracted from the death they do inveigle you into were they sincere and innocent if they were set against that Life that blessed life immortal Life would vanish quite in the comparison when you should see they are but frolicks of delight that never take you but when you are turn'd up to them in moods and fits and the complacencies you take in them are but starts of Appetite that swells and breaks out to them and then falls again and so the pleasures die even in the birth and therefore cannot satisfie indeed do but disquiet an immortal appetite such as man's is so that it were impossible to choose a life these rather although there were no misery annex'd to them if you consider'd For it were to resolve that a few drops were more than an immence Ocean of Delight a Moment longer than Eternity a Part were bigger than the Whole an Atome greater than an Infinite Now there is nothing then that can prefer these to your choice but the Death only and Oh will ye without and against all Temptation Will ye die O thou my Soul take
likeness of his death by being made conformable to that in crucifying of our sins we are inoculated as it were and both together ingraffed in into the Cross and so there is deriv'd to us the vertue of that Stem that Root of Expiation and Atonement and by this insertion being as the same S. Paul says Phil. iii. 9. found in him we have his Righteousness That poor Soul that does throw himself down in the strict humiliations of Repentance at the footstool of the Cross and there beholds his Saviour dying for him and that is himself by Penitence incorporated into him graffed into his Death and planted in his very Passion as Origen and Thomas interpret He may take confidence to say Behold Lord if the satisfactions of thy Eternal Justice be acceptable to thee if the blood of God that is offer'd up without spot be a well-pleasing Sacrifice look down at once on thy Messiah and on my poor Soul turn not thy face from me for whatever my guilts are I have an equal Sacrifice those are my satisfactions and that blood my Offering the Passion and propitiation of the Cross are 〈◊〉 I am Crucified with Christ. We have gone through all the Parts all the Considerations of this Expression and have no more now to take notice of but this that all of them must go together that they never are fulfill'd asunder but he only whom the efficacy of the Cross of Christ hath wrought on to the Crucifying of sin he onely hath the satisfactions of the Cross imputed to him he is planted with ingraffed into Christ For if any man be i◠Christ he is a new creature old things are done away 2 Cor. v. 17. Whosoever is not such he hath no interest in the Jesus of that day He may perchance in some one of those easie Saviours which these times afford wherein Opinions call'd holy or a sanctify'd Faction give such interests and to be in a party is to be in Christ or else he may depend upon that Christ that may be had with meer Dependance that is ours if we persuade our selves he is so Now sure he that is persuaded he is Christ's is either truly so persuaded or else falsly if but falsly that will not advantage him for God will never save a man for believing a lye but that he should truly be persuaded so without this Duty is impossible for he that is Christ's hath crucified the Flesh with the Affections and Lusts therefore by good Logick he that hath not crucified them is not Christ's and evidently whosoever is not crucified at all he is not crucified with Christ. And sure I need not put you in remembrance that the man in whom sin reigns and whensoever his Lusts and Passions bid him go he goeth or come he cometh or do this he doeth it that the body of sin is not crucified in him that which were nailed and fetter'd on the Cross and slain there could not command and rule him so Or if sins dominion be not so absolute but God hath got some footing so as that his Law hath power in the man's mind so as to make him make resistances against his sin and he dislikes it but alas commits it still yet what he does allows not but returns to do it at the next Temptation afterwards would fain be good yet does not find how to perform something governs in his members leading that Law in his mind into captivity to the law of sin this man although he hath the body of death yet 't is not crucified and slain for it does live and exercise the greatest tyranny upon him forces him to serve and to obey against his mind it overcomes his own heart and all inclinations to good and conquers God within him Till men have left off the custom of the works of sin and all gross deeds of the flesh it were as vain to prove they are not crucified as that he is alive that walks and eats Those works they are the fruits of the flesh the off-spring of its lusts and were that crucified and we by likeness to Christ's death planted into the Cross we could no more produce them than that dead Tree the Cross could bear fruit or than a Carcass could have heat to generate the Grave become a Womb or the dust bring forth Secondly Yea more they perform not the outward actions of life who have but the image of death on them and a man asleep works not yet is alive his fancy and his inwards work and if sin be onely kept from breaking out and men commit not gross deeds of the flesh but yet indulge to these things in imagination and the heart cherish them in phansie and design and wish onely restrain the practice or indulge to spiritual wickednesses you may as well say that a man is dead because he does not walk abroad because he keeps within doors and lives only in his Closet or his Bed Chamber as say that sin is crucified which while it stirs but in the heart it is not dead Thirdly Once more we part from all acquaintance with the dead the Corps of one that had the same Soul with us howsoever we may have some throes of grief to leave it yet we put it from us we admit it to no more embraces but if 't were the loathsom Carcass of a Villain Traytor that was Executed we turn from the sight as from a Fiend it is a detestable and accursed spectacle And so he that hath put his Body of sin to death would have great aversations to it yea how dear soever it had been he would no more endure the least acquaintance with it than he would go seek for his old conversations in the Chambers of Death he would shun the sight of any the most bosom custom as he would the Ghost of his dead Friend he would abandon it as a most ghastly dreadful spectacle he would also bury these his dead out of his sight Thus he must needs be dispos'd that hath crucified his Old man And they that are thus dead with Christ shall also live with him yea those that are thus crucified with him he hath already rais'd up together and hath made them sit together in Heavenly places in Christ Jesus There already in their cause and in their right and pledge and there hereafter in effect and full enjoyment The Tenth SERMON Preached at CHRIST-CHURCH IN OXFORD Novemb. 5. 1665. LUKE IX 55. Ye know not what manner of Spirit ye are of THE state of that great Controversie which the words suppose between the Jews and the Samaritans as it then stood seems briefly thus Those that were planted in the Regions of Samaria by Salmaneser however great Idolaters at first having admitted in a while the God of Israel among their Gods and after having an High Priest of Aaron's Line a Temple too built on that place where Abraham and the Fathers of the Hebrews friends of God did chuse to offer Sacrifice and on that
with these break with Virtue when their interest cannot consist with it that these false hypocritical pretenders should be offended with the mean condition of this Child and of his followers in this World and with the poor spirited Principles of his Religion In sum they that upon these or any other grounds finally disbelieve or disobey him God design'd this Child to be a means of bringing sorer Punishments even to everlasting ruin upon such A black Decree this one would think He that had so much kindness for Mankind to give away the onely Son both of his Nature his Affections and his Bosom to them could he then design that Gift to be the Ruin of the greatest part of men This Child Simeon said but just before my Text is Gods Salvation which he had prepared before all people and does he now say God hath set him for their fall The Angels preached this was a Birth that brought glad tidings of great joy that should be to all people and is there so much comfort in destruction that most men should rejoyce at that which is ordained to be the great occasion of it to them But we have no reason to complain 'T is not unkind to deny Mercy to them that refuse the offers of it that will not accept Salvation when their God himself does come to bring it to them tenders it upon condition of accepting and amending Which if they despise and prefer Hell before Repentance chuse sin rather than Gods blessed retributions 't is but reason to deny them what they will not have and let them take their chosen Ruine to will their Judgment which they will themselves set and ordain Him to be that to them which themselves do ordain and make him to be to themselves So S. Peter says expresly He is a Stone of stumbling and a Rock of offence to them who being disobedient stumble at the Word whereunto they were appointed Disobedience where it is obdurate alters so the temper of our God that it makes Him who swears he would not have the Sinner die yet set out his Son to make such sinners fall into eternal Death Makes Judgment triumph over Mercy even in the Great contrivances and executions of that Mercy and while God was plotting an Incarnation for the everlasting Safety of Mankind prevails with him to decree Ruins by the means of that Salvation to Decree even in the midst of all those strivings of his Mercies that that Issue of his kindness should be for the fall of such as they Oh! let us consider whether they are likely to escape that which is set and ordain'd for them by God Whether they can hope for a Redemption when the only great Redeemer is appointed for the Instrument of their Destruction and God is so bent on their ruine that to purchase it he gives this Child his Son Yea when he did look down upon this Son in Agonies and on the Cross in the midst of that sad prospect yet the Ruine of such sinners which he there beheld in his Sons Bloud was a delight to him that also was a Sacrifice and a sacrifice of a sweet smell to him For S. Paul says We are unto God a sweet savour of Christ in them that perish because we are the savour of Death unto death to them As if their Brimstone did ascend like Incense shed a perfume up to God and their evrlasting burnings were his Altar-fires kindled his holocausts and he may well be pleased with it for he ordain'd it 'T is true indeed This Child riding as in Triumph in the midst of his Hosannas when he saw one City whose fall he was set for on this very account He was so far from being pleas'd with it that he wept over it in pity But alas that onely more declares the most deplored and desperate condition of such sinners Blessed Saviour hadst thou no Blood to shed for them nothing but Tears or didst thou weep to think they very Bloodshed does but make their guilt more crimson who refuse the mercy of that Bloodshed all the time that is offered Sad is their state that can find no pity in the Tears of God and remediless their Condition for whom all that the Son of God could do was to weep over them all that he did do for them was to be for their fall too sad a part indeed for festival Solemnity very improper for a Benedictus and Magnificat To celebrate the greatest act of kindness the Almighty could design onely by the miseries it did occasion to magnifie the vast descent of God from Heaven down to Earth onely by reason of the fall of Man into the lowest Hell of which that was the cause My Text hath better things in view The greatness of that fall does but add height to that Resurrection which He also is the cause of Behold this Child is set for the rising again of many My remaining Part. Rising again does not particularly and onely refer to the foregoing fall here in the Text which this Child did occasion as I shewed you but to the state wherein all Mankind both in its nature and its Customs lay ingulâ—'d the state of Ignorance and sin A state from which recovery is properly 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a resurrection and a reviving in this Life and so call'd in Scripture often as Ephes. v. 15. Wherefore he saith Awake thou that sleepest 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and arise from the dead And Rom. vi 13. Yield not your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin but yield your selves unto God as those that are alive form the dead Now to raise us from the death of sin into the life of Righteousness by the amendment of our own lives to recover us into a state of Vertue is the thing this Child is said here to be set for This was that which God thought worth an Incarnation Neither was there any greater thing in the prospect of his everlasting Counsel when he did decree his Son into the World than that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 He is set for this The Word was made Flesh to teach practise and persuade to Vertue To make men Reform their lives was valued at the price of a Person of the Trinity Piety and his Exinanition yea his Blood and Life were set at the same rates All of him given for our recovery The time would fail me if I should attempt onely to name the various methods he makes use of to effect this How this Child that was the brightness of his Fathers Glory came to lighten us shining in his Doctrine and Example How he sent more light The fiery Tongues Illuminations of the Holy Ghost to guide us in the ways of Piety How he suffered Agonies and Death for sin to appale and fright us from it How he Rose again to confirm Judgment to us to demonstrate the rewards of Immortality to them that will repent and leave their sins and everlasting Torments to those
it does still appear so to the carnal reasonings of that sort of men who have the same objections to the Cross of Christ as it would Crucifie the World to them and them to it as it would strip them of all present rich contents and give them certain evils with some promises of after good things which they have no taste for nor assurance of Now this being in their account folly then the contrary to this they must think Wisdom as it is indeed the Wisdom of this World which Wisdom since it does design no further than this World and hath no higher ends than Earth and its Felicities it must needs put men upon minding the acquist and the enjoyment of these Earthly things for that is onely to pursue and to atchieve their ends to catch at and lay hold on their felicity and accordingly we see it does immerse them wholly in those cares So that it is no wonder if their God and Religion can get no attendance from them it being most impossible they should when Mammon hath engaged them in the superstitious services of Idolatry and when they sacrifice their whole selves to pleasure and make their bodies the burnt offerings of their Lusts and when Ambition even while it makes them stretch and climb and mount causes them also to fall low prostrate make their temper nature stoop lie down to every humour and to every Vice they think themselves concern'd to court and please And though a man would think these so great boundless cares are very vain and foolish upon several accounts for common sense as well as Scripture does assure us that this life and the Contents of it do not consist in the abundance of the things that we possess that it is all one whether my draught come out of a small Bottle or an Hogshead the one of these indeed may serve excess and sickness better but the other serves my Appetite as well the one may drown my Vertue but the other quenches thirst alike And every days experience also does convince us that the least cross accident pain or affliction on our persons or some other that is seated near our hearts or the least vexation or cross passion will so sowr all those advantages that we cannot possibly enjoy them while we have them sickness makes the richest plenty only a more nauseous trouble a more costly loathing then the poorest Soul that is in health is that great rich mans envy And there 's no man also but does see so far into futurity as to satisfie himself that he shall die and then the shadow of Death will cloud and put out all these Glories And universal Reason also does tell every man that to deny himself or want his present satisfactions of this helpless dying kind and suffer present evils is in prudence to be chosen for avoiding of a future evil or atchieving of a good to come which do transcend those other infinitely and to all Eternity continue Sure as no man pities the poor Infant in the Womb because he lies imbrued in Blood hath no inheritance there at all is fetter'd confin'd as it were in that dark Cell if he be to be born to an Estate to live a full age here in gaiety of mind and health of body in Reputation and all plenty of delights we never are concern'd or troubled at his other nine months Dungeon So if this life be to the next as the Womb is to this and if our hopes be no more on the Earth than in the Belly and we have no inheritance or abiding place here as we had not there although the waters of affliction and to be in our bloud should be as natural to us as to the Child yet if we thus press forward to the other birth to be delivered into immortality of joys this state were not to be lamented but endeavoured for with all our powers Lastly the same reason does assure us that if those futurities which are most certain were but only possible yet to part with every thing and suffer any thing here to prevent miscarriage in relation to those two Eternities is certainly the safest course and then by consequence the wisest And this does appear a truth to all men when they go to die And if it be the truth then 't is always so Yet notwithstanding all this he that minds these earthly things whose heart is set upon them whose desires the World serves provides to satisfie every imagination of delight His heart is so intangled in affections to them and in prejudices for them and hath so imbib'd the impressions of them that he hath no taste for any other and by consequence no satisfying notions of them And if he hath not then it is not possible that he should really and from his heart out of conviction and inward sense value these beyond the earthly ones and it is plain we see he does not and if he do not to deprive himself of all the sweet contentments of his life and tear out his own bowels that yearn after them and cling to them and instead of those embrace a Cross and do this for things which he cannot value more and counts uncertain he must needs think a mad folly Consequently to contrive and seize the present to the best most plentiful advantage is the wisest course and therefore they that by whatever arts do thrive advance themselves live high and in delights they are Wise men because they do attain their ends by means appropriate to those ends And now the enmity betwixt the Cross of Christ and the wisdom of the World appears first their designs are most directly opposite the cross designs to take us up from earth and from its satisfactions which have also thorns and bryars in them that Earths Curse things that pierce and wound as fatally as the Nails and Thorns and other cruelties of Christ's Cross and to lift us towards Heaven to direct our hearts and our affections thither as our harbingers to take possession for us of those joys the Cross did purchase for us but no Cross can ever trouble But the Wisdom of this World designs to lay out all its cares and its contrivances within this World minds nothing else but earthly things and does not lift an eye or thought to any other Secondly Their Principles wage war For earthly good things being the design the main end of this worldly wisdom consequently that does justifie all courses without which men cannot gain those ends by which they do though they be never so unlawful by the Rules of that which we call Vertue and Religion it does justifie I say all such as prudent But the Principles of the Doctrines of the Cross of Christ are positive that we must renounce all earthly satisfactions when they cannot be enjoyed without trangressing Christ's Commands and imbrace Duty even when it executes it self upon us But Thirdly there 's no enmity so fatal to the Cross of Christ as is
which he found death from till we labor under that which he sunk under we have no regard of his mercies to us but renounce all relation to him and close with his mortal enimy and cannot then hope to be received by him And thus you have the reason why these 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 are the onely fit persons to be invited by him because till we are so we cannot truly come unto him depend upon him and till we are so we are not fit to be received by him And now for application But what cannot we truly come til we find our selves to be heavy laden till we labor and are tired and wearied with iniquity We see the perverse conditions of man whom nothing but misery can perswade to Heaven Heaven is no bait tho it prostitute all its glories Happiness is a word that hath no musick in it the pleasures with which God entertained himself from all eternity have no temtation in them compared to those of sin Come unto me is not an invitation till we labor till we find our selves perishing in our choice ruined in those sins we have embraced we never will uncling nor come to Christ we must have our happiness inflicted on us and be goaded into bliss But then 2. Learn hence how willing Christ is to have us come to him when he makes use of Hell not to punish onely them that will not come but to drive us to come to him Had it not bin enough for him to set before us life and death and bid us take our choice No he knows our blind and unadvised appetites would chuse the guilt poison the painted the pleasant death and make a Covenant with Hell and therefore he lets us feel part of that Hell to fright us and yet then receives us To force us to love ease he lets us travel under the burdens of our own desiring and yet after that invites us to rest he do's not onely accept them whose choice he is not but refuge when as he might reject us You would none of me but chose weight load and labor go and look for ease thence But alas if I should bid you seek refreshment from your pleasant sins what comfort would you find when you are tired with those sins and the pleasures of them do forsake you and leave you nothing but the stings and horror of the after expectations No no come to me yet I will receive you after all your refusals and tho you come to me but as to a last hold having nothing else to trust to tho you have already tri'd all other and slighted me you shall yet be welcome my pierced side is yet open to receive all of you that will yet come and let you into my very heart my arms are yet as wide as on the Cross at their full length to take you into their embraces Ah my Brethren Christ doth not send us back to our beloved miseries when we come to him but he makes those miseries a part of his Rhetoric to invite us uses our labour and weariness to perswade us to come makes those burdens the indearment of and provocation to his ease and Hell it self a part of his wooing And how will he receive and embrace us who doth thus desire and court us The story of the Prodigal is hugely evictive of this and so indulgent that it would almost invite a man to sin but then it do's far more invite a man that will repent him of his sin to be secure of God's acceptance He that had so villanously betraied his Father's dearness to his own beastliness and ruin to whom all kindness would seem lost and to receive him in again and to assist him would be but to encourage him and to furnish him for a return back to the prodigalities of sin and to the former riots of iniquity yet when he do's repent he do's obtain far more than he desires he is received to feast and bosom is entertain'd much more than the first born and had he never gon away he had not bin so dear Do but consult the story Luke 15. When weary and fainting under the burden of himself which his languishing spirits were scarce able to sustain he came at last to himself v. 17. and began to wonder that he chose to stay with husks with famine rather than to go to daily plenty and chose to dwell in the unclean uncomfortable company of swine before his Father's houshold and then strait to think of leaving that condition and society and to resolve on a return When he began to put those resolutions into act and his impotent starv'd limbs would scarce serve his desires at least he was unable to make hast in the pursuit of his intentions for he was yet a great way off v. 20. yet then his Father had compassion and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him His compassions did not keep state or stand expecting till his ungracious son should come and humble himself and deprecate and beg but he ran to meet him and made far greater hast to receive and entertain than the other could do to be received and as if the humiliations or weaknesses had bin on his side he fell at least the impotencies of his affection did vie with those of the others condition for he fell on his neck and kissed him And whereas his repenting son did resolve to become prostrate and low in condition as well as posture I will go to my Father and say unto him Father I have sinned before heaven and against thee and am no more worthy to be called thy son make me as one of thy hired servants v. 18 19. I dare not hope for favor from any tie of nature which I have broken all I do not beg thy kindness as the issue of thy Relation but as the wages of my labor I will serve for thy affections and let me have it as the hire of my repentance and endeavors but 't was enough it seems to have resolv'd thus lowly in earnest for when he comes to act it v. 21. as he had said I am unworthy to be called thy son his Father cuts him off and calls for the best Robe and for a Ring and for the fatted Calf will not let him so much as beg to be a servant but if he once acknowledge himself unworthy for a son he puts him strait in such an equipage as he may owne him in with credit in the best Robe and he rejoyces quickens and sets out his joy with Feasts and Music Now saith Tertullian Quis ille nobis intelligendus Pater What Father is this in the story Why certainly 't is God No one so much a Father no one so compassionate if the Sinner once come to himself as the prodigal son is said to do for while he do's go on he is indeed beside himself and in a fit and when he has collected sober thoughts about him and do's compare his wanting husks with the
and his Brother's blood upon his Soul to seize his Sentence Go ye Cursed into everlasting Fire 'T is plain against all Interests of this World and the World to come this man will dye And yet this is one of the laudable and generous Customs of the Age. Neither doth this man stand alone the desperate Rebel would come into the Induction that without any hopes sets all on fire to consume all here and to begin his Flames hereafter But I have said enough to prove the Resoluteness of a Sinners Will which is so great indeed that it is this especially which does enhance the guilt of sin into the merit of an endless punishment this persevering obstinacy does deserve Hell and make it just For whatsoever inequality there is betwixt the short-liv'd pleasures of a sin which dye while they are tasted and put out themselves and those eternal never-dying retributions of Vengeance As sure there is also betwixt the life of Man and several of those petty felonies that forfeit it yet the Law does not murder when it Executes I might have instanc'd in the gathering sticks upon the Sabbath day in Israel For since the preservation of publique safety and propriety is valuable with the lives of many men and to secure that and affright the Violation it was necessary to affix such punishments to such offences they that know the penalty and wilfully meerly to feed their other Vices run upon it justly suffer it So that Man might not rob himself of that Immortal Glory which God had ordain'd him when he did see it absolutely necessary thus to hedge Vice with Eternal Death And as he set Angels and Flaming Swords to keep him out of Paradise so to set Fiends and Flames to guard Hell from him and to entail those Torments on Man's sin which he had prepared for the Devil and sealed the Deed in the Blood of his Son If notwithstanding men renounce the blessedness and against all their Interests and Obligations in spight of all the Arts and Powers of Heaven they will have the Torments and what they never would attempt for Paradise invade those flames to get to Hell 't is very just that God should let them have it should not break his Decrees dispence with Holy Laws so confirm'd meerly to gratifie those that are obstinate for ruine and against his whole Gospel quench Hell fires because men are resolv'd to run into them This Will does as it were even the Scales betwixt the Sin and the Damnation equal the pleasure to the punishment and fill the distance from a moment to Eternity But though this Will do clear God's Justice yet it does not satisfie his Reason he seems astonish'd at the choice God himself cannot find a Ground for such a Resolution and therefore does enquire Why will ye dye Which is God's question and my second Part. It is the present pleasure sin does tempt your sensuality withal whose agitations are so quick and strong that they surprize or break the forces of your Reason and your Principles put the Mind in disorder and then seize it with such violence as to lead it captive to the Law of Sin and Death 'T is true indeed thus both of them had their original so they prevail'd in Paradise for when the Woman saw the Tree was good for food and pleasant to the eye and a Tree to be desired to make one wise she took thereof and she did eat although she knew that God had said In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely dye Gen. iii. But there was generous pleasure here such as tempted the Soul assaulted it with the appearances of Wisdom and divine Knowledg Ye shall be as Gods Gen. iii. 5. And sure 't is no great wonder if the proper pleasures of the mind ingage it therefore when God would give a Precept liable to a Temptation of being broke he laid it in the sphere of those things that delight the Soul of Knowledg but far be it that those of sensuality should ever have prevail'd Man may yield to the pleasure of being like God but for pleasure to make himself a Beast is contradiction to Nature For pleasure is but satisfaction of our appetites and the more natural the inclination is the higher and more powerful that Nature and the desire eagerer so much the more delightful is the satisfaction Now it is certain that the reasonable faculty the Soul or Spirit is the highest and most proper nature of a man In all the rest he 's not a step remov'd from Beasts unless it be in shape but in the accurateness of his senses is below them far and therefore must be so in sensual satisfactions but in his Soul he borders upon Angels and does come towards God Now then that Soul being mans peculiar nature the highest part of him It follows its delights Spiritual reasonable Joys must needs be the most natural and most proper for it most conform'd to it and therefore the most taking with it This may be cleared most irrefragably A Beast hath several ingredients of Nature in his making he is an heavy body and a Vegetable and he hath also Sense which is his highest nature Now though the onely inclination of heavy bodies be to fall down to the Earth and this be also natural to a Beast we do not find that 't is his greatest pleasure sure he had rather feed than tumble in the Pasture his chief delight lies in the satisfaction of his chiefest faculties wherein he does excel his Senses and as Beasts differ and transcend in these so do their pleasures also differ and exceed A man also as Aristotle says does live a threefold Life At first he is but a Plant-man a growing span of living Creature and he 's born only into Animality a Life of Sense and at last educated into reasonable Now the delights of his first Stages whilst onely Vegetation and Sense live although proportioned to those states yet have no savour to the mind he grows through Nuts and Rattles to the use of Reason and the pleasures of it also these must keep even with the growing faculties and become higher rational and manly Which if they do not but the man still dwell upon the satisfaction of sense he does confound the Stages contradict the progresses of Nature he hath the age and strength of Reason but to play the Child with to exert it in those things that are but a Man's Rattles hath the sagacity of an Intelligence meerly to find out how to be a brute with greater luxury and rellish Come therefore shew me now the sins which the delights of Reason do betray you to and I 'le admit the Plea But if you live your own reverse that you may dye renounce all your own pleasures first that so you may renounce the joys of God and Heaven and fall from Nature that you may fall into Hell this case hath no pretence and those pleasures cannot toll man on to