potion And most certainly it is the greatest of evils to destroy a soul for whom the Lord Jesus dyed and to undoe that grace which our Lord purchased with so much sweat and bloud pains and a mighty charity And because very many sins are sins of society and confederation such are fornication drunkennesse bribery simony rebellion schisme and many others it is a hard and a weighty consideration what shall become of any one of us who have tempted our Brother or Sister to sin and death for though God hath spar'd our life and they are dead and their debt-books are sealed up till the day of account yet the mischief of our sin is gone before us and it is like a murther but more execrable the soul is dead in trespasses and sins and sealed up to an eternall sorrow and thou shalt see at Dooms-day what damnable uncharitablenesse thou hast done That soul that cryes to those rocks to cover her if it had not been for thy perpetuall temptations might have followed the Lamb in a white robe and that poor man that is cloathed with shame and flames of fire would have shin'd in glory but that thou didst force him to be partner of thy basenesse And who shall pay for this losse a soul is lost by thy means thou hast defeated the holy purposes of the Lord 's bitter passion by thy impurities and what shall happen to thee by whom thy Brother dies eternally Of all the considerations that concern this part of the horrors of Dooms-day nothing can be more formidable then this to such whom it does concern and truly it concerns so many and amongst so many perhaps some persons are so tender that it might affright their hopes and discompose their industries and spritefull labours of repentance but that our most mercifull Lord hath in the midst of all the fearfull circumstances of his second coming interwoven this one comfort relating to this which to my sense seems the most fearfull and killing circumstance Two shall be grinding at one mill the one shall be taken and the other left Two shall be in a bed the one shall be taken and the other left that is those who are confederate in the same fortunes and interests and actions may yet have a different sentence for an early and an active repentance will wash off this account and put it upon the tables of the Crosse and though it ought to make us diligent and carefull charitable and penitent hugely penitent even so long as we live yet when we shall appear together there is a mercy that shall there separate us who sometimes had blended each other in a common crime Blessed be the mercies of of God who hath so carefully provided a fruitfull shower of grace to refresh the miseries and dangers of the greatest part of mankind Thomas Aquinas was used to beg of God that he might never be tempted from his low fortune to Prelacies and dignities Ecclesiasticall and that his minde might never be discomposed or polluted with the love of any creature and that he might by some instrument or other understand the state of his deceased Brother and the story sayes that he was heard in all In him it was a great curiosity or the passion and impertinencies of a uselesse charity to search after him unlesse he had some other personall concernment then his relation of kindred But truly it would concern very many to be solicitous concerning the event of those souls with whom we have mingled death and sin for many of those sentences which have passed and decreed concerning our departed relatives will concern us dearly and we are bound in the same bundles and shall be thrown into the same fires unlesse we repent for our own sins and double our sorrows for their damnation 5. We may consider that this infinite multitude of men and women Angels and Devils is not ineffective as a number in Pythagoras Tables but must needs have influence upon every spirit that shall there appear For the transactions of that court are not like Orations spoken by a Grecian Orator in the circles of his people heard by them that croud nearest him or that sound limited by the circles of aire or the inclosure of a wall but every thing is represented to every person and then let it be considered when thy shame and secret turpitude thy midnight revels and secret hypocrisies thy lustfull thoughts and treacherous designes thy falshood to God and startings from thy holy promises thy follies and impieties shall be laid open before all the world and that then shall be spoken by the trumpet of an Archangell upon the house top the highest battlements of Heaven all those filthy words and lewd circumstances which thou didst act secretly thou wilt find that thou wilt have reason strangely to be ashamed All the wise men in the world shall know how vile thou hast been and then consider with what confusion of face wouldst thou stand in the presence of a good man and a severe if peradventure he should suddenly draw thy curtain and finde thee in the sins of shame and lust it must be infinitely more when God and all the Angels of heaven and earth all his holy myriads and all his redeemed Saints shall stare and wonder at thy impurities and follies I have read a story that a young Gentleman being passionately by his mother disswaded from entring into the severe courses of a religious and single life broke from her importunity by saying Volo servare animam meam I am resolved by all means to save my soul. But when he had undertaken a rule with passion he performed it carelesly and remifly and was but lukewarm in his Religion and quickly proceeded to a melancholy and wearied spirit and from thence to a sicknesse and the neighbourhood of death but falling into an agony and a phantastick vision dream'd that he saw himself summon'd before Gods angry throne and from thence hurryed into a place of torments where espying his Mother full of scorn she upbraided him with his former answer and asked him Why he did not save his soul by all means according as he undertook But when the sick man awaked and recovered he made his words good indeed and prayed frequently and fasted severely and laboured humbly and conversed charitably and mortified himself severely and refused such secular solaces which other good men received to refresh and sustain their infirmities and gave no other account to them that asked him but this If I could not in my extasie or dream endure my Mothers upbraiding my follies and weak Religion how shall I be able to suffer that God should redargue me at Dooms-day and the Angels reproach my lukewarmnesse and the Devils aggravate my sins and all the Saints of God deride my follies and hypocrisies The effect of that mans consideration may serve to actuate a meditation in every one of us for we shall all be at that passe that unlesse our shame and sorrowes
as they would avoid death But certainly they have great cause to fear who are sure to be sick when the weather changes or can no longer retain their possession but till an enemy please to take it away or will preserve their honour but till some smiling temptation aske them to forgoe it 2ly They also have great reason to fear whose repentance is broken into fragments and is never a whole or entire change of life I mean those that resolve against a sin and pray against it and hate it in all the resolutions of their understanding till that unlucky period comes in which they use to act it but then they sin as certainly as they will infallibly repent it when they have done these are a very great many Christians who are esteemed of the better sort of penitents yet feel this feaverish repentance to be their best state of health they fall certainly in the returns of the same circumstances or at a certain distance of time but God knows they doe not get the victory over their sin but are within its power For this is certain they who sin and repent and sin again in the same or the like circumstances are in some degree under the power and dominion of sin when their actions can be reduc'd to an order or a method to a rule or a certainty that oftner hits then fails that sin is habituall though it be the least habit yet a habit it is every course or order or method of sin every constant or periodicall return every return that can be regularly observed or which a man can foresee or probably foretell even then when he does not intend it but prays against it every such sin is to be reckoned not for a single action or upon the accounts of a pardonable infirmity but it is a combination an evill state such a thing as the man ought to feare concerning himselfe lest he be surpriz'd and call'd from this world before this evill state be altered for if he be his securities are but slender and his hopes will deceive him It was a severe doctrine that was maintain'd by some great Clerks and holy men in the Primitive Church That Repentance was to be but once after Baptism One Faith one Lord one Baptisme one Repentance all these the Scripture saith and it is true if by repentance we mean the entire change of our condition for he that returns willingly to the state of an unbeleeving or a heathen profane person intirely and choosingly in defiance of and apostasie from his Religion cannot be renew'd againe as the Apostle twice affirms in his Epistle to the Hebrews But then concerning this state of Apostasie when it hapned in the case not of Faith but of Charity and obedience there were many fears and jealousies they were therefore very severe in their doctrines lest men should fall into so evill a condition they enlarged their fear that they might be stricter in their duty and generally this they did beleeve that every second repentance was worse then the first and the third worse then the second and still as the sin returned the Spirit of God did the lesse love to inhabit and if he were provoked too often would so withdraw his aides and comfortable cohabitation that the Church had little comfort in such children so said Clemens Alexandr stromat 2. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Those frequent and alternate repentances that is repentances and sinnings interchangeably differ not from the conditions of men that are not within the covenant of grace from them that are not beleevers 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 save onely says he that these men perceive that they sin they doe it more against their conscience then infidels and unbeleevers and therefore they doe it with lesse honesty and excuse 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 I know not which is worse either to sin knowingly or wilfully or to repent of our sin and sin it over again And the same severe doctrine is delivered by Theodoret in his 12 book against the Greeks and is hugely agreeable to the discipline of the Primitive Church And it is a truth of so great severity that it ought to quicken the repentance and sowre the gayeties of easy people and make them fear whose repentance is therefore ineffectuall because it is not integrall or united but broken in pieces by the intervention of new crimes so that the repentance is every time to begin anew and then let it be considered what growth that repentance can make that is never above a week old that is for ever in its infancy that is still in its birth that never gets the dominion over sin These men I say ought to fear lest God reject their persons and deride the folly of their new begun repentances and at last be weary of giving them more opportunities since they approve all and make use of none their understanding is right and their will a slave their reason is for God and their affections for sin these men as the Apostles expression is walk not as wise but as fools for we deride the folly of those men that resolve upon the same thing a thousand times and never keep one of those resolutions These men are vaine and light easy and effeminate childish and abused these are they of whom our blessed Saviour said those sad decretory words Many shall strive to enter in and shall not be able SERMON VIII Part II. 3. THey have great reason to feare whose sins are not yet remitted for they are within the dominion of sin within the Kingdome of darknesse and the regions of feare Light makes us confident and Sin checks the spirit of a man into the pusillanimity and cowardize of a girle or a conscious boy and they doe their work in the days of peace and a wealthy fortune and come to pay their symbole in a warre or in a plague then they spend of their treasure of wrath which they laid up in their vessels of dishonour And indeed want of feare brought them to it for if they had known how to have accounted concerning the changes of mortality if they could have reckoned right concerning Gods judgements falling upon sinners and remembred that themselves are no more to God then that Brother of theirs that died in a drunken surfeit or was kill'd in a Rebell warre or was before his grave corrupted by the shames of lust if they could have told the minutes of their life and passed on towards their grave at least in religious and sober thoughts and consider'd that there must come a time for them to die and after death comes judgement a fearfull and an intolerable judgement it would not have come to this passe in which their present condition of affairs doe amaze them and their sin hath made them lyable unto death and that death is the beginning of an eternall evill In this case it is naturall to fear and if men consider their condition and know that all the felicity
and reluctancies with parts and interrupted steps with waitings and expectations with watchfulnesse and stratagems with inspirations and collaterall assistances after all this grace and bounty and diligence that we should despite this grace and trample upon the blessings and scorn to receive life at so great an expence and love of God this is so great a basenesse and unworthynesse that by troubling the tenderest passions it turns into the most bitter hostilities by abusing Gods love it turns into jealousie and rage and indignation Goe and sin no more lest a worse thing happen to thee 2. Falling away after we have begun to live well is a great cause of fear because there is added to it the circumstance of inexcuseablenesse The man hath been taught the secrets of the Kingdome and therefore his understanding hath been instructed he hath tasted the pleasures of the Kingdome and therefore his will hath been sufficiently entertain'd He was entred into the state of life and renounced the ways of death his sin began to be pardoned and his lusts to be crucified he felt the pleasures of victory and the blessings of peace and therefore fell away not onely against his reason but also against his interest and to such a person the Questions of his soul have been so perfectly stated and his prejudices and inevitable abuses so cleerly taken off and he was so made to view the paths of life and death that if he chooses the way of sin again it must be not by weaknesse or the infelicity of his breeding or the weaknesse of his understanding but a direct preference or prelation a preferring sin before grace the spirit of lust before the purities of the soul the madnesse of drunkennesse before the fulnesse of the Spirit money before our friend and above our Religion and Heaven and God himself This man is not to be pityed upon pretence that he is betrayed or to be relieved because he is oppressed with potent enemies or to be pardoned because he could not help it for he once did help it he did overcome his temptation and choose God and delight in vertue and was an heir of heaven and was a conqueror over sin and delivered from death and he may do so still and Gods grace is upon him more plentifully and the lust does not tempt so strongly and if it did he hath more power to resist it and therefore if this man fals it is because he wilfully chooses death it is the portion that he loves and descends into with willing and unpityed steps Quà m vilis facta es nimis iterans vias tuas said God to Judah 3. He that returns from vertue to his old vices is forced to doe violence to his own reason to make his conscience quiet he does it so unreasonably so against all his fair inducements so against his reputation and the principles of his society so against his honour and his promises and his former discourses and his doctrines his censuring of men for the same crimes and the bitter invectives and reproofs which in the dayes of his health and reason he used against his erring Brethren that he is now constrained to answer his own arguments he is intangled in his own discourses he is shamed with his former conversation and it will be remembred against him how severely he reproved and how reasonably he chastised the lust which now he runs to in despite of himself and all his friends And because this is his condition he hath no way left him but either to be impudent which is hard for him at first it being too big a naturall change to passe suddenly from grace to immodest circumstances and hardnesses of face and heart or else therefore he must entertain new principles and apply his minde to beleeve a lye and then begins to argue There is no necessity of being so severe in my life greater sinners then I have been saved Gods mercies are greater then all the sins of man Christ dyed for us and if I may not be allowed to sin this sin what ease have I by his death or this sin is necessary and I cannot avoid it or it is questionable whether this sin is of so deep a die as is pretended or flesh and bloud is alwaies with me and I cannot shake it off or there are some Sects of Christians that do allow it or if they do not yet they declare it easily pardonable upon no hard terms and very reconcileable with the hopes of heaven or the Scriptures are not rightly understood in their pretended condemnations or else other men do as bad as this and there is not one in ten thousand but hath his private retirements from vertue or else when I am old this sin will leave me and God is very pityfull to mankinde But while the man like an intangled bird flutters in the net and wildly discomposes that which should support him and that which holds him the net and his own wings that is the Lawes of God and his own conscience and perswasion he is resolved to do the thing and seeks excuses afterwards and when he hath found out a fig-leav'd apron that he could put on or a cover for his eyes that he may not see his own deformity then he fortifies his error with irresolution and inconsideration and he beleeves it because he will and he will because it serves his turn then he is entred upon his state of fear and if he does not fear concerning himself yet his condition is fearfull and the man haih 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a reprobate minde that is a judgement corrupted by lust vice hath abused his reasoning and if God proceeds in the mans method and lets him alone in his course and gives him over to beleeve a lye so that he shall call good evill and evill good and come to be heartily perswaded that his excuses are reasonable and his pretences fair then the man is desperately undone through the ignorance that is in him as St. Paul describes his condition his heart is blinde he is past feeling his understanding is darkned then he may walk in the vanity of his minde and give himself over to lasciviousnesse and shall work all uncleannesse with greedinesse then he needs no greater misery this is the state of evill which his fear ought to have prevented but now it is past fear and is to be recovered with sorrow or else to be run through till death and hell are become his portion fiunt novissima illus pejora pejoribus his latter end is worse then his begining 4. Besides all this it might easily be added that he that fals from vertue to vice again addes the circumstance of ingratitude to his load of sins he sins against Gods mercy and puts out his own eyes he strives to unlearn what with labour he hath purchased and despises the trabell of his holy daies and throws away the reward of vertue for an interest which himself despised the
is his gain and this man understands the things of God and is ready to die for Christ and fears nothing but to sin against God and his will is filled with love and it springs out in obedience to God and in charity to his brother and of such a man we cannot make judgement by his fortune or by his acquaintance by his circumstances or by his adherencies for they are the appendages of a naturall man but the spirituall is judged of no man that is the rare excellencies that make him happy do not yet make him illustrious unlesse we will reckon Vertue to be a great fortune and holinesse to be great Wisedom and God to be the best Friend and Christ the best Relative and the Spirit the hugest advantage and Heaven the greatest Reward He that knows how to value these things may sit down and reckon the felicities of him that hath the Spirit of God The purpose of this Discourse is this That since the Spirit of God is a new nature and a new life put into us we are thereby taught and enabled to serve God by a constant course of holy living without the frequent returns and intervening of such actions which men are pleased to call sins of infirmity Whosoever hath the Spirit of God lives the life of grace The Spirit of God rules in him and is strong according to its age and abode and allows not of those often sins which we think unavoidable because we call them naturall infirmities But if Christ he in you the body is dead because of sin but the spirit is life because of righteousnesse The state of sin is a state of death the state of a man under the law was a state of bondage and infirmity as S. Paul largely describes him in the seventh Chapter to the Romanes but he that hath the Spirit is made alive and free and strong and a conquerour over all the powers and violencies of sin such a man resists temptations falls not under the assault of sin returns not to the sin which he last repented of acts no more that errour which brought him to shame and sorrow but he that falls under a crime to which he still hath a strong and vigorous inclination he that acts his sin and then curses it and then is tempted and then sins again and then weeps again and calls himself miserable but still the inchantment hath confined him to that circle this man hath not the Spirit for where the Spirit of God is there is liberty there is no such bondage and a returning folly to the commands of sin But because men deceive themselves with calling this bondage a pitiable and excusable infirmity it will not be uselesse to consider the state of this question more particularly lest men from the state of a pretended infirmity fall into a reall death 1. No great sin is a sin of infirmity or excusable upon that stock But that I may be understood we must know that every sin is in some sense or other a sin of infirmity When a man is in the state of spirituall sicknesse or death he is in a state of infirmity for he is a wounded man a prisoner a slave a sick man weak in his judgement and weak in his reasoning impotent in his passions of childish resolutions great inconstancy and his purposes untwist as easily as the rude conjuncture of uncombining cables in the violence of a Northern tempest and he that is thus in infirmity cannot be excused for it is the aggravation of the state of his sin he is so infirm that he is in a state unable to do his duty Such a man is a servant of sin a slave of the Devil an heir of corruption absolutely under command and every man is so who resolves for ever to avoid such a sin and yet for ever falls under it for what can he be but a servant of sin who fain would avoid it but cannot that is he hath not the Spirit of God within him Christ dwels not in his soul for where the Son is there is liberty and all that are in the Spirit are sons of God and servants of righteousnesse and therefore freed from sin But then there are also sins of infirmity which are single actions intervening seldom in litle instances unavoidable or through a faultlesse ignorance Such as these are alwayes the allays of the life of the best men and for these Christ hath payd and they are never to be accounted to good men save onely to make them more wary and more humble Now concerning these it is that I say No great sin is a sin of excusable or unavoidable infirmity Because whosoever hath received the Spirit of God hath sufficient knowledge of his duty and sufficient strengths of grace and sufficient advertency of minde to avoid such things as do great and apparent violence to piety and religion No man can justly say that it is a sin of infirmity that he was drunk For there are but three causes of every sin a fourth is not imaginable 1. If ignorance cause it the sin is as full of excuse as the ignorance was innocent But no Christian can pretend this to drunkennesse to murder to rebellion to uncleannesse For what Christian is so uninstructed but that he knows Adultery is a sin 2. Want of observation is the cause of many indiscreet and foolish actions Now at this gap many irregularities do enter and escape because in the whole it is impossible for a man to be of so present a spirit as to consider and reflect upon every word and every thought but it is in this case in Gods laws otherwise then in mans the great flies cannot passe thorow without observation little ones do and a man cannot be drunk and never take notice of it or tempt his neighbours wife before he be aware therefore the lesse the instance be the more likely it is to be a sin of infirmity and yet if it be never so little if it be observed then it ceases to be a sin of infirmity 3. But because great crimes cannot pretend to passe undiscernably it follows that they must come in at the door of malice that is of want of Grace in the absence of the Spirit they destroy where ever they come and the man dies if they passe upon him It is true there is flesh and blood in every regenerate man but they do not both rule the flesh is left to tempt but not to prevail And it were a strange condition if both the godly and the ungodly were captives to sin and infallibly should fall into temptation and death without all difference saue onely that the godly sins unwillingly and the ungodly sins willingly But if the same things be done by both and God in both be dishonoured and their duty prevaricated the pretended unwillingnesse is the signe of a greater and a baser slavery and of a condition lesse to be endured For the servitude which is
if the fathers eat sowre grapes the childrens teeth shall not be set on edge and therefore the sin of Adam which was derived to all the world did not bring the world to any other death but temporall by the intermediall stages of sickness and temporal infelicities And it is not said that sin passed upon all men but death that also no otherwise but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in as much as al men have sinned as they have followed the steps of their father so they are partakers of this death And therefore it is very remarkable that death brought in by sin was nothing superinduced to man man onely was reduced to his own naturall condition from which before Adams fall he stood exempted by supernaturall favour and therefore although the taking away that extraordinary grace or priviledge was a punishment yet the suffering the naturall death was directly none but a condition of his creation naturall and therefore not primarily evil but if not good yet at least indifferent And the truth and purpose of this observation will extend it self if we observe that before any man died Christ was promised by whom death was to lose its sting by whom death did cease to be an evil and was or might be if we do belong to Christ a state of advantage So that we by occasion of Adams sin being returned to our naturall certainty of dying do still even in this very particular stand between the blessing and the cursing If we follow Christ death is our friend If we imitate the praevarication of Adam then death becomes an evil the condition of our nature becomes the punishment of our own sin not of Adams for although his sin brought death in yet it is onely our sin that makes death to be evil And I desire this to be observed because it is of great use in vindicating the Divine justice in the matter of this question The materiall part of the evil came from our father upon us but the formality of it the sting and the curse is onely by our selves 2. For the fault of others many may become miserable even all or any of those whose relation is such to the sinner that he in any sense may by such inflictions be punished execrable or oppressed Indeed it were strange if when a plague were in Ethiopia the Athenians should be infected or if the house of Pericles were visited and Thucydides should die for it For although there are some evils which as Plutarch saith are ansis propagationibus praedita incredibili celeritate in longinquum penetrantia such which can dart evil influences as Porcupines do their quils yet as at so great distances the knowledge of any confederate events must needs be uncertain so it is also uselesse because we neither can joyne their causes nor their circumstances nor their accidents into any neighbourhood of conjunction Relations are seldome noted at such distances and if they were it is certain so many accidents will intervene that will out-weigh the efficacy of such relations that by any so far distant events we cannot be instructed in any duty nor understand our selves reproved for any fault But when the relation is neerer and is joyned under such a head and common cause that the influence is perceived and the parts of it do usually communicate in benefit notices or infelicity especially if they relate to each other as superiour and inferiour then it is certain the sin is infectious I mean not onely in example but also in punishment And of this I shall shew 1. In what instances usually it is so 2. For what reasons it is so and justly so 3. In what degree and in what cases it is so 4. What remedies there are for this evil 1. It is so in kingdoms in Churches in families in politicall artificiall and even in accidentall societies When David numbred the people God was angry with him but he punished the people for the crime seventy thousand men died of the plague and when God gave to David the choice of three plagues he chose that of the pestilence in which the meanest of the people and such which have the least society with the acts and crimes of Kings are most commonly devoured whilest the powerfull and sinning persons by arts of physick and flight by provisions of nature and accidents are more commonly secured * But the story of the Kings of Israel hath furnished us with an example sitted with all the stranger circumstances in this question Joshuah had sworn to the Gibeonites who had craftily secured their lives by exchanging it for their liberties Almost 500. yeers after Saul in zeal to the men of Israel and Judah slew many of them After this Saul dies and no question was made of it But in the dayes of David there was a famine in the land three yeers together and God being inquired of said it was because of Saul his killing the Gibeonites What had the people to do with their Kings fault or at least the people of David with the fault of Saul That we shall see anon But see the way that was appointed to expiate the crime and the calamity David took seven of Sauls sons and hanged them up against the Sun and after that God was intreated for the land The story observes one circumstance more that for the kindnesse of Jonathan David spared Mephibosheth Now this story doth not onely instance in Kingdoms but in families too The fathers fault is punished upon the sons of the family and the Kings fault upon the people of his land even after the death of the King after the death of the father Thus God visited the sin of Ahab partly upon himself partly upon his sons I will not bring the evil in his dayes but in his sons dayes will I bring the evil upon his house Thus did God slay the childe of Bathsheba for the sin of his father David and the whole family of Eâ—i all his kinred of the neerer lines were thrust from the priesthood and a curse made to descend upon his children for many ages that all the males should die young and in the flower of their youth The boldnesse and impiety of Cham made his posterity to be accursed and brought slavery into the world Because Ataalek fought with the sons of Israel at Rephidim God took up a quarrell against the nation for ever And above all examples is that of the Jews who put to death the Lord of life and made their nation to be an anathema for ever untill the day of restitution His blood be upon us and upon our children If we shed innocent blood If we provoke God to wrath If we oppresse the poor If we crucifie the Lord of life again and put him to an open shame the wrath of God will be upon us and upon our children to make us a cursed family and who are the sinners to be the stock and original of the curse the pedigree of the misery
shall derive from us This last instance went further then the other of families and kingdoms For not onely the single families of the Jews were made miserable for their Fathers murdering the Lord of life nor also was the Nation extinguished alone for the sins of their Rulers but the religion was removed it ceased to be God peoples the synagogue was rejected and her vail rent and her privacies dismantled and the Gentiles were made to be Gods people when the Jews inclosure was disparkd I need not further to instance this proposition in the case of National Churches though it is a sad calamity that is fallen upon the al seven Churches of Asia to whom the spirit of God wrote seven Epistles by Saint John and almost all the Churches of Africa where Christ was worshipped and now Mahomet is thrust in substitution and the people are servants and the religion is extinguished or where it remains it shines like the Moon in an Eclipse or like the least spark of the pleiades seen but seldom And that rather shining like a gloworm then a taper enkindled with a beam of the Sun of righteousnesse I shall adde no more instances to verifie the truth of this save onely I shall observe to you that even there is danger in being in evil company in suspected places in the civil societies and fellowships of wicked men Vetabo qui Cereris sacrum vnlgarit arcanae sub ijsdem sit trabibus fragilemque mecum solvat phaselum saepe Diespiter Neglectus in cesto addidit in tegrum And it hapned to the Mariners who carried Jonah to be in danger with a horrid storme because Jonah was there who had sinned against the Lord. Many times the sin of one man is punished by the falling of a house or a wall upon him and then al the family are like to be crushed with the same ruine so dangerous so pestilential so infectious a thing is sin that it scatters the poison of its breath to all the neighbourhood and makes that the man ought to be avoided like a person infected with the plague Next I am to consider why this is so and why it is justly so To this I answer 1. Between Kings and their people Parents and their children there is so great a necessitude propriety and entercourse of nature dominion right and possession that they are by God and the laws of Nations reckoned as their Goods and their blessings The honour of a King is in the multitude of his people and children are a gift that cometh of the Lord and happy is that man that hath his quiver full of them and Lo thus shall the man be blessed that feareth the Lord his wife shall be like the fruitful vine by the wals of his house his children like olive branches round about his Table Now if children be a blessing then to take them away in anger is a curse and if the losse of flocks and herds the burning of houses the blasting of fields be a curse how much greater is it to lose our children and to see God slay them before our eyes in hatred to our persons and detestation and loathing of our basenesse When Jobs Messengers told him the sad stories of fire from Heaven the burning his sheep and that the Sabeans had driven his Oxen away and the Chaldeans had stolne his Camels these were sad arrests to his troubled spirit but it was reserved as the last blow of that sad execution that the ruines of a house had crush'd his Sons and Daughters to their graves Sons daughters are greater blessings then sheep Oxen they are not servants of profit as sheep are but they secure greater ends of blesssing they preserve your Names they are so many titles of provision providence every new childe is a new title to Gods care of that family They serve the ends of honour of commonwealths and Kingdoms they are images of our souls and images of God and therefore are great blessings and by consequence they are great riches though they are not to be sold for mony and surely he that hath a cabinet of invaluable jewels will think himself rich though he never sells them Does 〈◊〉 take care for Oxen said our blessed Saviour much more for you yea all and every one of your children are of more value then many Oxen when therefore God for your sin strikes them with crookednesse with deformity with foolishnesse with impertinent and caytive spirits with hasty or sudden deaths it is a greater curse to us then to lose whole herds of cattel of which it is certain most men would be very sensible They are our goods they are our blessings from God therefore we are striken when for our sakes they dye Therefore we may properly be punished by evils happening to our Relatives 2. But as this is a punishment to us so it is not unjust as to them though they be innocent For all the calamities of this life are incident to the most Godly persons of the world and since the King of Heaven and earth was made a man of sorrows it cannot be called unjust or intolerable that innocent persons should be pressed with temporal infelicities onely in such cases we must distinguish the misery from the punishment for that all the world dyes is a punishment of Adams sin but it is no evil to those single persons that die in the Lord for they are blessed in their death Jonathan was killed the same day with his Father the King and this was a punishment to Saul indeed but to Jonathan it was a blessing for since God had appointed the kingdom to his neighbour it was more honourable for him to die fighting the Lords battel then to live and see himself the lasting testimony of Gods curse upon his Father who lost the Kingdom from his family by his disobedience That death is a blessing which ends an Honorable and prevents an inglorious life And our children it may be shall be sanctified by a sorrow and purified by the fire of affliction and they shall receive the blessing of it but it is to their Fathers a curse who shall wound their own hearts with sorrow and cover their heads with a robe of shame for bringing so great evil upon their house 3. God hath many ends of providence to serve in this dispensation of his judgements * 1. He expresses the highest indignation against sin and makes his examples lasting communicative and of great effect it is a little image of hell and we shall the lesse wonder that God with the pains of eternity punishes the sins of time when with our eyes we see him punish a transient action with a lasting judgement * 2. It arrests the spirits of men and surprises their loosenesses and restrains their gaiety when we observe that the judgements of God finde us out in all relations and turns our comforts into sadnesse and makes our families the scene of sorrows and we can escape him no
vain and miserable hodiè tam posthume vivere serum est Ille sapit quisquis posthume vixit heri Martial l. 2. ep 90. Well! but what will you have a man do that hath lived wickedly and is now cast upon his death-bed shall this man despair and neglect all the actions of piety and the instruments of restitution in his sicknesse No. God forbid Let him do what he can then It is certain it will be little enough for all those short gleames of piety and flashes of lightning will help towards the alleviating some degrees of misery and if the man recovers they are good beginnings of a renewed piety and Ahabs tears and humiliation though it went no further had a proportion of a reward though nothing to the portions of eternity So that he that sayes it is every day necessary to repent cannot be supposed to discourage the piety of any day a death-bed piety when things are come to that sad condition may have many good purposes therefore even then neglect nothing that can be done Well! But shall such persons despair of salvation To them I shall onely return this That they are to consider the conditions which on one side God requires of us and on the other side whether they have done accordingly Let them consider upon what termes God hath promised salvation and whether they have made themselves capable by performing their part of the obligation If they have not I must tell them that not to hope where God hath made no promise is not the sin of despair but the misery of despair A man hath no ground to hope that ever he shall be made an Angel and yet that not hoping is not to be called despair and no man can hope for heaven without repentance And for such a man to despair is not the sin but the misery If such persons have a promise of heaven let them shew it and hope it and enjoy it if they have no promise they must thank themselves for bringing themselves into a condition without the Covenant without a promise hopelesse and miserable But will not trusting in the merits of Jesus Christ save such a man For that we must be tried by the word of God In which there is no contract at all made with a dying person that hath lived in Name a Christian in practise a Heathen and we shall dishonour the sufferings and redemption of our blessed Saviour if we make them to be a Umbrello to shelter our impious and ungodly living But that no such person may after a wicked life repose himself in his deathbed upon Christs merits observe but these two places of scripture Our Saviour â—esus Christ who gave himself for us what to do that we might live as we list and hope to be saved by his merits No But that he might redeem us from all iniquity and purifie to himself a peculiar people zealous of good works These things speak and exhort saith Saint Paul But more plainly yet in S. Peter Christ bare our sins in his own body on the tree To what end that we being dead unto sin should live unto righteousnesse since therefore our living a holy life is the end of Christs dying that sad and holy death for us he that trusts on it to evil purposes and to excuse his vicious life does as much as lies in him make void the very purpose and designe of Christs passion and dishonours the blood of the everlasting covenant which covenant was confirmed by the blood of Christ but as it brought peace from God so it requires a holy life from us But why may not we be saved as well as the thief upon the crosse even because our case is nothing alike When Christ dies once more for us we may look for such another instance not till then But this thiefe did but then come to Christ he knew him not before and his case was as if a Turk or heathen should be converted to Christianity and be baptized and enter newly into the Covenant upon his deathbed Then God pardons all his sins and so God does to Christians when they are baptized or first give up their names to Christ by a voluntarie confirmation of their baptismal vow but when they have once entred into the Covenant they must performe what they promise and to what they are obliged The thief had made no contract with God in Jesus Christ and therefore failed of none onely the defaillances of the state of ignorance Christ paid for at the thiefes admission But we that have made a covenant with God in baptisme and failed of it all our dayes and then returne at night when we cannot work have nothing to plead for our selves because we have made all that to be uselesse to us which God with so much mercy and miraculous wisdom gave us to secure our interest and hopes of heaven And therefore let no Christian man who hath covenanted with God to give him the service of his life think that God will be answered with the sighs and prayers of a dying man for all that great obligation which lies upon us cannot be transacted in an instant when we have loaded our souls with sin and made them empty of vertue we cannot so soon grow up to a perfect man in Christ Jesus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 you cannot have an apple or a cherry but you must stay its proper periods and let it blossom and knot and grow and ripen and in due season we shall reap if we faint not saith the Apostle far much lesse may we expect that the fruits of repentance and the issues and degrees of holinesse shall be gathered in a few dayes or houres 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 you must not expect such fruits in a little time nor with little labour Suffer therefore not your selves to be deceived by false principles and vain confidences for no man can in a moment root out the long contracted habits of vice nor upon his deathbed make use of all that variety of preventing accompanying and persevering grace which God gave to man in mercy because man would need it all because without it he could not be saved nor upon his death-bed can he exercise the duty of mortification nor cure his drunkennesse then nor his lust by any act of Christian discipline nor run with patience nor resist unto blood nor endure with long sufferance but he can pray and groan and call to God and resolve to live well when he is dying but this is but just as the Nobles of Xerxes when in a storm they were to lighten the ship to preserve their Kings life they did 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 they did their obeysance and leaped into the sea so I fear doe these men pray and mourn and worship and so leap overboard into an ocean of eternal and into lerable calamity From which God deliver us and all faithful people Hunc volo laudari qui sine morte potest Mart. ep
was made prince of the Catholickchurch and as our Head was so must the members be God made the same covenant with us that he did with his most holy Son Christ obtaind no better conditions for us then for himself that was not to be looked for the servant must not be above his master it is well if he be as his Master if the world persecuted him they will also persecute us and from the dayes of John the Baptist the kingdome of Heaven suffers violence and the violent take it by force not the violent doers but the sufferers of violence for though the old law was established in the promises of temporal prosperity yet the gospel is founded in temporal adversity It is directly a covenant of sufferings and sorrows for now the time is come that judgment must begin at the house of God that 's the sence and designe of the text and I intend it as a direct antinomy to the common perswasions of tyrannous carnal and vicious men who reckon nothing good but what is prosperous for though that proposition had many degrees of truth in the beginning of the law yet the case is now altered God hath established its contradictory and now every good man must look for persecution and every good cause must expect to thrive by the sufferings and patience of holy persons and as men do well and suffer evil so they are dear to God and whom he loves most he afflicts most and does this with a designe of the greatest mercy in the world 1. Then the state of the Gospel is a state of sufferings not of temporal prosperities this was foretold by the prophets a fountain shall go out of the house of the Lord irrigabit torrentem spinarum so it is in the vulgar latin and it shall water the torrent of thorns that is the state or time of the gospel which like a torrent shall cary all the world before it and like a torrent shall be fullest in ill weather and by its banks shall grow nothing but thorns and briers sharp afflictions temporal infelicities and persecution This sense of the words is more fully explained in the book of the prophet Isa. upon the ground of my people shall thorns and briers come up how much more in all the houses of the city of rejoycing which prophecy is the same in the stile of the prophets that my text is in the stile of the Apostles the house of God shall be watered with the dew of heaven and there shall spring up briers in it judgement must begin there but how much more in the houses of the city of rejoycing how much more among them that are at ease in Sion that serve their desires that satisfie their appetites that are given over to their own hearts lust that so serves themselves that they never serve God that dwell in the city of rejoycing they are like Dives whose portion was in this life who went in fine linnen and fared deliciously every day they indeed trample upon their briers and thorns and suffer them not to grow in their houses but the roots are in the ground and they are reserved for fuel of wrath in the day of everlasting burning Thus you see it was prophesied now see how it was performed Christ was the captain of our sufferings and he began He entred into the world with all the circumstances of poverty he had a star to illustrate his birth but a stable for his bed chamber and a manger for his cradle the angels sang hymnes when he was born but he was cold and cried uneasy and unprovided he lived long in the trade of a carpenter he by whom God made the world had in his first years the businesse of a mean and an ignoble trade he did good where ever he went and almost where ever he went was abused he deserved heaven for his obedience but found a crosse in his way thither and if ever any man had reason to expect fair usages from God and to be dandled in lap of ease softnes and a prosperous fortune he it was onely that could deserve that or any thing that can be good But after he had chosen to live a life of vertue of poverty and labour he entred into a state of death whose shame and trouble was great enough to pay for the sins of the whole world And I shall choose to expresse this mystery in the vvords of scripture he died not by a single or a sudden death but he was the Lambe slain from the beginning of the world For he was massacred in Abel saith Saint Paulinus he was tossed upon the waves of the Sea in the person of Noah It was he that went out of his Countrey when Abraham was called from Charran and wandred from his native soil He was offered up in Isaac persecuted in Jacob betrayed in Joseph blinded in Sampson affronted in Moses sawed in Esay cast into the dungeon with Jeremy For all these were types of Christ suffering and then his passion continued even after his resurrection for it is he that suffers in all his members it is he that endures the contradiction of all sinners it is he that is the Lord of life and is crucified again and put to open shame in all the sufferings of his servants and sins of rebels and defiances of Apostates and renegados and violence of Tyrants and injustice of usurpers and the persecutions of his Church It is he that is stoned in Saint Stephen flayed in the person of Saint Bartholomew he was rosted upon Saint Laurence his Gridiron exposed to lyons in Saint Ignatius burned in Saint Polycarpe frozen in the lake where stood fourty Martyrs of Cappadocia Unigenitus enim Dei ad peragendum mortis suae sacramentum consummavit omne genus humanarum passionum said Saint Hilary The Sacrament of Christs death is not to be accomplished but by suffering all the sorrows of humanity All that Christ came for was or was mingled with sufferings For all those little joyes which God sent either to recreate his person or to illustrate his office were abated or attended with afflictions God being more carefull to establish in him the Covenant of sufferings then to refresh his sorrows Presently after the Angels had finished their Halleluiahs he was forced to fly to save his life and the air became full of shrikes of the desolate mothers of Bethlehem for their dying Babes God had no sooner made him illustrious with a voyce from heaven and the descent of the Holy Ghost upon him in the waters of Baptisme But he was delivered over to be tempted and assaulted by the Devil in the wildernesse His transfiguration was a bright ray of glory but then also he entred into a cloud and was told a sad story what he was to suffer at Jerusalem And upon Palme-Sunday when he rode triumphantly into Jerusalem and was adorned with the acclamations of a King and a God he wet the Palmes with
phantastick images imagining that he saw the Scythians flaying him alive his daughters like pillars of fire dancing round about a cauldron in which himself was boyling and that his heart accused it self to be the cause of all these evils And although all tyrants have not imaginative and phantastick consciences yet all tyrants shall die and come to judgement and such a man is not to be feared nor at all to be envied and in the mean time can he be said to escape who hath an unquiet conscience who is already designed for hell he whom God hates and the people curse and who hath an evil name and against whom all good men pray and many desire to fight and all wish him destroyed and some contrive to do it is this man a blessed man Is that man prosperous who hath stolen a rich robe is in fear to have his throat cut for it and is fain to defend it with the greatest difficulty and the greatest danger Does not he drink more sweetly that takes his beaverage in an earthen vessel then he that looks and searches into his golden chalices for fear of poison and looks pale at every sudden noise and sleeps in armour and trusts no body and does not trust God for his safety but does greater wickednesse onely to escape a while un punished for his former crimes Aurobibitur venenum No man goes about to poison a poor mans pitcher nor layes plots to forrage his little garden made for the hospital of two bee hives and the feasting of a few Pythagorean herbe eaters 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 They that admire the happinesse of a prosperous prevailing Tyrant know not the felicities that dwell in innocent hearts and poor cottages and small fortunes A Christian so long as he preserves his integrity to God and to religion is bold in all accidents he dares die and he dares be poor but if the persecutor dies he is undone Riches are beholding to our fancies for their value and yet the more we value the riches the lesse good they are and by an overvaluing affection they become our danger and our sin But on the other side death and persecution loose all the ill that they can have if we do not set an edge upon them by our fears and by our vices From our selves riches take their wealth and death sharpens his arrows at our forges and we may set their prices as we please and if we judge by the spirit of God we must account them happy that suffer And therefore that the prevailing oppressor Tyrant or persecutor is infinitly miserable onely let God choose by what instruments he will govern the world by what instances himself would be served by what waies he will chastise the failings and exercise the duties and reward the vertues of his servants God sometimes punishes one sinne with another pride with adultery drunkennesse with murder carelesnesse with irreligion idlenesse with vanity penury with oppression irreligion with blasphemy and that with Atheisme and therefore it is no wonder if he punishes a sinner by a sinner And if David made use of villains and profligate persons to frame an armie and Timoleon destroy'd the Carthaginians by the help of souldiers who themselves were sacrilegious and Physitians use the poison to expel poisons and all common-wealths take the basest of men to be their instruments of justice and executions we shall have no further cause to wonder if God raises up the Assyrians to punish the Israelites and the Egyptians to destroy the Assyrians and the Ethiopians to scourge the Egyptians and at last his own hand shall separate the good from the bad in the day of separation in the day when he makes up his Iewels 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Soph. Elect. God hath many ends of providence to serue by the hands of violent and vitious men by them he not onely checks the beginning errours and approaching sins of his predestinate but by them he changes governments and alters kingdoms and is terrible among the sons of men for since it is one of his glories to convert evil into good and that good into his own glory and by little and little to open and to turn the leaves and various folds of providence it becomes us onely to dwell in duty and to be silent in our thoughts and wary in our discourses of God and let him choose the time when he will prune his vine and when he will burn his thorns how long he will smite his servants and when he will destroy his enemies In the dayes of the primitive persecutions what prayers how many sighings how deep groanes how many bottles of tears did God gather into his repository all praying for ease and deliverances for Halcyon dayes and fine sunshine for nursing fathers and nursing mothers for publick assemblies and open and solemn sacraments And it was 3 hundred years before God would hear their prayers and all that while the persecuted people were in a cloud but they were safe and knew it not and God kept for them the best wine untill the last they ventured for a crown and fought valiantly they were faithful to the death and they received a crown of life and they are honored by God by angels and by men whereas in all the prosperous ages of the Church we hear no stories of such multitudes of Saints no record of them no honour to their memorial no accident extraordinary scarce any made illustrious with a miracle which in the dayes of suffering were frequent and popular And after all our fears of sequestration and poverty of death or banishment our prayers against the persecution and troubles under it we may please to remember that twenty years hence it may be sooner it wil not be much longer all our cares and our troubles shall be dead and then it shall be enquired how we did bear our sorrows and who inflicted them and in what cause and then he shall be happy that keeps company with the persecuted and the persecutors shall be shut out amongst dogs and unbelievers He that shrinks from the yoke of Christ from the burden of the Lord upon his death-bed will have cause to remember that by that time all his persecutions would have been past and that then there would remain nothing for him but rest and crowns and scepters When Lysimachus impatient and overcome with thirst gave up his kingdom to the Getae and being a captive and having drank a lusty draught of wine and his thirst was now gone he fetched a deep sigh and said Miserable man that I am who for so little pleasure the pleasure of one draught lost so great a Kingdom such will be their case who being impatient of suffering change their persecution into wealth and an easie fortune they shall finde themselves miserable in the separations of eternity losing the glories of heaven for so little a
pleasure illiberalis ingratae voluptatis causa as Plutarch calls it for illiberal and ungratefull pleasure in which when a man hath entred he loses the rights and priviledges and honours of a good man and gets nothing that is profitable and useful to holy purposes or necessary to any but is already in a state so hateful and miserable that he needs neither God nor man to be a revenger having already under his splendid robe miseries enough to punish and betray this hypocrisy of his condition being troubled with the memory of what is past distrustful of the present suspicious of the future vitious in their lives and full of pageantry and out-sides but in their death miserable with calamities real eternal and insupportable and if it could be other wise vertue it self would be reproached with the calamity 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 I end with the advice of Saint Paul In nothing be terrified of your adversaries which to them is an evident token of perdition but to you of salvation and that of God Sermon XI The Faith and Patience of the SAINTS OR The righteous cause oppressed Part III. BUt now that the persecuted may at least be pitied and assisted in that of which they are capable I shall propound some rules by which they may learn to gather grapes from their thorns and figs from their thistles crowns from the crosse glory from dishonour As long as they belong to God it is necessary that they suffer persecution or sorrow no rules can teach them to avoid that but the evil of the suffering and the danger must be declined and we must use such spirituall arts as are apt to turn them into health and medicine For it were a hard thing first to be scourged and then to be crucified to suffer here and to perish hereafter through the fiery triall and purging fire of afflictions to passe into hell that is intollerable and to be prevented with the following cautions least a man suffers like a fool and a malefactour or inherits damnation for the reward of his imprudent suffering 1. They that suffer any thing for Christ and are ready to die for him let them do nothing against him For certainly they think too highly of martyrdom who beleeve it able to excuse all the evils of a wicked life A man may give his body to be burned and yet have no charity and he that dies without charity dies without God for God is love And when those who fought in the dayes of the Maccabees for the defence of true Religion and were killed in those holy warres yet being dead were found having about their necks 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or pendants consecrated to idols of the Jamnenses it much allayed the hope which by their dying in so good a cause was entertained concerning their beatificall resurrection He that overcomes his fear of death does well but if he hath not also overcome his lust or his anger his baptisme of blood will not wash him clean Many things may make a man willing to die in a good cause Publike reputation hope of reward gallantry of spirit a confident resolution and a masculine courage or a man may be vexed into a stubborn and unrelenting suffering But nothing can make a man live well but the grace and the love of God But those persons are infinitely condemned by their last act who professe their religion to be worth dying for and yet are so unworthy as not to live according to its institution It were a rare felicity if every good cause could be mannaged by good men onely but we have found that evil men have spoiled a good cause but never that a good cause made those evil men good and holy If the Governour of Samaria had crucified Simon Magus for receiving Christian Baptisme he had no more died a martyr then he lived a saint For dying is not enough and dying in a good cause is not enough but then onely we receive the crown of martyrdom when our death is the seal of our life and our life is a continuall testimony of our duty and both give testimony to the excellencies of the religion and glorifie the grace of God If a man be gold the fire purges him but it burns him if he be like stubble cheap light and uselesse For martyrdom is the consummation of love But then it must be supposed that this grace must have had its beginning and its severall stages and periods and must have passed thorow labour to zeal thorow all the regions of duty to the perfections of sufferings and therefore it is a sad thing to observe how some empty souls will please themselves with being of such a religion or such a cause and though they dishonour their religion or weigh down the cause with the prejudice of sin beleeve all is swallowed up by one honourable name or the appellative of one vertue If God had forbid nothing but heresie and treason then to have been a loyall man or of a good beleef had been enough but he that forbad rebellion forbids also swearing and covetousnesse rapine and oppression lying and cruelty And it is a sad thing to see a man not onely to spend his time and his wealth and his money and his friends upon his lust but to spend his sufferings too to let the canker-worm of a deadly sin devour his Martyrdom He therefore that suffers in a good cause let him be sure to walk worthy of that honour to which God hath called him Let him first deny his sins and then deny himself and then he may take up his crosse and follow Christ ever remembring that no man pleases God in his death who hath walked perversely in his life 2. He that suffers in a cause of God must be indifferent what the instance be so that he may serve God I say he must be indifferent in the cause so it be a cause of God and indifferent in the suffering so it be of Gods appointment For some men have a naturall aversation to some vices or vertues and a naturall affection to others One man will die for his friend and another will die for his money Some men hate to be a rebell and will die for their Prince but tempt them to suffer for the cause of the Church in which they were baptized and in whose communion they look for heaven and then they are tempted and fall away Or if God hath chosen the cause for them and they have accepted it yet themselves will choose the suffering Right or wrong some men will not endure a prison and some that can yet choose the heaviest part of the burden the pollution and stain of a sin rather then lose their money and some had rather die twice then lose their estates once In this our rule is easie Let
in a persecution to perjuries and Apostacy and unhandsome compliances and hypocricy and irreligion and many men are brought to vertue and to God and to felicity by being persecuted and made unprosperous and these are effects of a more absolute and irrespective predestination but when the grace of God is great and prudent and masculine and well grown it is unalter'd in all changes save onely that every accident that is new and violent brings him neerer to God and makes him with greater caution and severity to dwell in vertue 11. Lastly some there are who are firme in all great and foresoen changes and have laid up in the store-houses of the spirit reason and religion arguments and discourses enough to defend them against all violencies and stand at watch so much that they are safe where they can consider and deliberate but there may be something wanting yet and in the direct line in the strait progresse to heaven I call that an infallible signe of a great grace and indeed the greatest degree of a great grace when a man is prepared against sudden invasions of the spirit surreptions and extemporary assaults Many a valiant person dares sight a battle who yet will be timorous and surprised in a mid-night alarme or if he falls into a river And how many discreet persons are there who if you offer them a sin and give them time to consider and tell them of it before hand will rather die then be perjured or tell a deliberate lie or break a promise who it may be tell many sudden lies and excuse themselves and break their promises and yet think themselves safe enough and sleep without either affrightments or any apprehension of dishonour done to their persons or their religion Every man is not armed for all sudden arrests of passions few men have cast such fetters upon their lusts and have their passions in so strict confinement that they may not be over run with a midnight flood or an unlooked for inundation He that does not start when he is smitten suddenly is a constant person and that is it which I intend in this instance that he is a perfect man and well grown in grace who hath so habitual a resolution and so unhasty and wary a spirit as that he decrees upon no act before he hath considered maturely and changed the sudden occasion into a sober counsel David by chance spied Bathsheba washing her self and being surprised gave his heart away before he could consider and when it was once gone it was hard to recover it and sometimes a man is betrayed by a sudden opportunity and all things fitted for his sin ready at the door the act stands in all its dresse and will not stay for an answear and incosideration is the defence and guard of the sin and makes that his conscience can the more easily swallow it what shall the man do then unlesse he be strong by his old strengths by a great grace by an habitual vertue and a sober unmoved spirit he falls and dies in the death and hath no new strengths but such as are to be imployed for his recovery none for his present guard unlesse upon the old stock and if he be a well grown Christian. These are the parts acts and offices of our growing in grace and yet I have sometimes called them signes but they are signes as eating and drinking are signes of life they are signes so as also they are parts of life and these are parts of our growth in grace so that a man can grow in grace to no other purpose but to these or the like improvements Concerning which I have a caution or two to interpose 1. The growth of grace is to be estimated as other morall things are not according to the growth of things naturall Grace does not grow by observation and a continuall efflux and a constant proportion and a man cannot call himself to the account for the growth of every day or week or moneth but in the greater portions of our life in which we have had many occasions and instances to exercise and improve our vertues we may call our selves to account but it is a snare to our consciences to be examined in the growth of grace in every short resolution of solemn duty as against every Communion or great Festivall 2. Growth in grace is not alwayes to be discerned either in single instances or in single graces Not in single instances for every time we are to exercise a vertue we are not in the same naturall dispositions nor do we meet with the same circumstances and it is not alwayes necessary that the next act should be more earnest and intence then the former all single acts are to be done after the manner of men and therefore are not alwayes capable of increasing and they have their termes beyond which easily they cannot swell and therefore if it be a good act and zealous it may proceed from a well grown grace and yet a younger and weaker person may do some acts as great and as religious as it But neither do single graces alwayes affoord a regular and certain judgement in this affair for some persons at the first had rather die then be unchast or perjured and greater love then this no man hath that he lay down his life for God he cannot easily grow in the substance of that act and if other persons or himself in processe of time do it more cheerfully or with fewer fears it is not alwayes a signe of a greater grace but some times of greater collaterall assistances or a better habit of body or more fortunate circumstances for he that goes to the block tremblingly for Christ and yet endures his death certainly and endures his trembling too and runs through all his infirmities and the bigger temptations looks not so well many times in the eyes of men but suffers more for God then those confident Martyrs that courted death in the primitive Church and therefore may be much dearer in the eyes of God But that which I say in this particular is that a smallnesse in one is not an argument of the imperfection of the whole estate Because God does not alwayes give to every man occasions to exercise and therefore not to improve every grace and the passive vertues of a Christian are not to be expected to grow so fast in prosperous as in suffering Christians but in this case we are to take accounts of our selves by the improvement of those graces which God makes to happen often in our lives such as are charity and temperance in young men liberality and religion in aged persons ingenuity and humility in schollers justice in merchants and artificers forgivenesse of injuries in great men and persons tempted by law-suits for since vertues grow like other morall habits by use diligence and assiduity there where God hath appointed our work and in our instances there we must consider concerning our growth in grace in other things
necessary God would not do it But if it be worth it and all of it be necessary why should we not labour in order to this great end If it be worth so much to God it is so much more to us for if we perish his felicity is undisturbed but we are undone infinitely undone It is therefore worth taking in a spirituall guide so far we are gone But because we are in the question of prudence we must consider whether it be necessary to do so For every man thinks himself wise enough as to the conduct of his soul and managing of his eternal interest and divinity is every mans trade and the Scriptures speak our own language and the commandments are few and plain and the laws are the measure of justice and if I say my prayers and pay my debts my duty is soon summed up and thus we usually make our accounts for eternity and at this rate onely take care for heaven but let a man be questioned for a portion of his estate or have his life shaken with diseases then it will not be enough to employ one agent or to send for a good woman to minister a potion of the juices of her country garden but the ablest Lawyers and the skilfullest Physitians the advice of friends and huge caution and diligent attendances and a curious watching concerning all the accidents and little passages of our disease and truly a mans life and health is worth all that and much more and in many cases it needs it all But then is the soul the onely safe and the onely trifling thing about us Are not there a thousand dangers and ten thousand difficulties and innumerable possibilities of a misadventure Are not all the congregations in the world divided in their doctrines and all of them call their own way necessary and most of them call all the rest damnable we had need of a wise instructor and a prudent choice at our first entrance and election of our side and when we are well in the matter of Faith for its object and jnstitution all the evils of my self and all the evils of the Church and all the good that happens to evil men every day of danger the periods of sicknesse and the day of death are dayes of tempest and storm and our faith wil suffer shipwrack unlesse it be strong and supported and directed But who shall guide the vessel when a stormy passion or a violent imagination transports the man who shall awaken his reason and charm his passion into slumber instruction How shal a man make his fears confident and allay his confidence with fear and make the allay with just proportions and steere evenly between the extremes or call upon his sleeping purposes or actuate his choices or binde him to reason in all the wandrings and ignorances in his passion and mistakes For suppose the man of great skil and great learning in the wayes of religion yet if he be abused by accident or by his own will who shall then judge his cases of conscience and awaken his duty and renew his holy principle and actuate his spiritual powers For Physitians that prescribe to others do not minister to themselves in cases of danger and violent sicknesses and in matter of distemperature we shall not finde that books alone will do all the work of a spiritual Physitian more then of a natural I will not go about to increase the dangers and difficulties of the soul to represent the assistance of a spiritual man to be necessary But of this I am sure our not understanding and our not considering our soul make us first to neglect and then many times to lose it But is not every man an unequal judge in his own case and therefore the wisdom of God and the laws hath appointed tribunals and Judges and arbitrators and that men are partial in the matter of souls it is infinitely certain because amongst those milions of souls that perish not one in ten thousand but believes himself in a good condition and all sects of Christians think they are in the right and few are patient to enquire whether they be or no then adde to this that the Questions of souls being clothed with circumstances of matter and particular contingency are or may be infinite and most men are so infortunate that they have so intangled their cases of conscience that there where they have done something good it may be they have mingled half a dozen evils and when interests are confounded and governments altered and power strives with right and insensibly passes into right and duty to God would fain be reconciled with duty to our relatives will it not be more then necessary that we should have some one that we may enquire of after the way to heaven which is now made intricate by our follies and inevitable accidents But by what instrument shall men alone and in their own cases be able to discern the spirit of truth from the spirit of illusion just confidence from presumption fear from pusillanimity are not all the things and assistances in the world little enough to defend us against pleasure and pain the two great fountains of temptation is it not harder to cure a lust then to cure a feaver and are not the deceptions and follies of men and the arts of the Devil and inticements of the world the deceptions of a mans own heart and the evils of sin more evil and more numerous then the sicknesses and diseases of any one man and if a man perishes in his soul is it not infinitely more sad then if he could rise from his grave and die a thousand deaths over Thus we are advanced a second step in this prudential motive God used many arts to secure our souls interest and there is infinite dangers and infinite wayes of miscarriage in the souls interest and therefore there is great necessity God should do all those mercies of security and that we should do all the under-ministeries we can in this great work But what advantage shall we receive by a spiritual Guide much every way For this is the way that God hath appointed who in every age hath sent a succession of spiritual persons whose office is to minister in holy things and to be stewards of Gods houshold shepherds of the stock dispensers of the mysteries under mediators and ministers of prayer preachers of the law expounders of questions monitors of duty conveiances of blessings and that which is a good discourse in the mouth of another man is from them an ordinance of God and besides its natural efficacy and perswasion it prevails by the way of blessing by the reverence of his person by divine institution by the excellency of order by the advantages of opinion and assistances of reputation by the influence of the spirit who is the president of such ministeries and who is appointed to all Christians according to the despensation that is appointed to them to the people
Ocean and to span the measures of eternity I must do it by the great lines of revelation and experience and tell concerning Gods mercy as we do concerning God himself that he is that great fountain of which we all drink and the great rock of which we all eat and on which we all dwell and under whose shadow we all are refreshed Gods mercy is all this and we can onely draw great lines of it and reckon the constellations of our hemisphere instead of telling the number of the stars we onely can reckon what we feel and what we live by And though there be in every one of these lines of life enough to ingage us for ever to do God service and to give him praises yet it is certain there are very many mercies of God upon us and toward us and concerning us which we neither feel nor see nor understand as yet but yet we are blessed by them and are preserved and secured and we shall then know them when we come to give God thanks in the festivities of an eternall sabbath But that I may confine my discourse into order since the subject of it cannot I consider 1. That mercy being an emanation of the Divine goodnesse upon us and supposes us and found us miserable In this account concerning the mercies of God I must not reckon the miracles and graces of the creation or any thing of the nature of man nor tell how great an endearment God passed upon us that he made us men capable of felicity apted with rare instruments of discourse and reason passions and desires notices of sense and reflections upon that sense that we have not the deformity of a Crocodile nor the motion of a Worm nor the hunger of a Wolf nor the wildenesse of a Tigre nor the birth of Vipers nor the life of flies nor the death of serpents Our excellent bodies and usefull faculties the upright motion and the tenacious hand the fair appetites and proportioned satisfactions our speech and our perceptions our acts of life the rare invention of letters and the use of writing and speaking at distance the intervals of rest and labour either of which if they were perpetual would be intolerable the needs of nature and the provisions of providence sleep and businesse refreshments of the body and entertainment of the soul these are to be reckoned as acts of bounty rather then mercy God gave us these when he made us and before we needed mercy these were portions of our nature or provided to supply our consequent necessities but when we forfeited all Gods favour by our sins then that they were continued or restored to us became a mercy and therefore ought to be reckoned upon this new account for it was a rare mercy that we were suffered to live at all or that the Anger of God did permit to us one blessing that he did punish us so gently But when the rack is changed into an ax and the ax into an imprisonment and the imprisonment changed into an enlargement and the enlargement into an entertainment in the family and this entertainment passes on to an adoption these are steps of a mighty favour and perfect redemption from our sin and the returning back our own goods is a gift and a perfect donative sweetned by the apprehensions of the calamity from whence every lesser punishment began to free us and thus it was that God punished us and visited the sin of Adam upon his posterity He threatned we should die and so we did but not so as we deserved we waited for death and stood sentenced and are daily summoned by sicknesses and uneasinesse and every day is a new reprieve and brings a new favour certain as the revolution of the Sun upon that day and at last when we must die by the irreversible decree that death is changed into a sleep and that sleep is in the bosom of Christ and there dwels all peace and security and it shall passe forth into glories and felicities We looked for a Judge and behold a Saviour we feared an accuser and behold an Advocate we sate down in sorrow and rise in joy we leaned upon Rhubarb and Aloes and our aprons were made of the sharp leaves of Indian fig-trees and so we fed and so were clothed But the Rhubarb proved medicinal and the rough leaf of the tree brought its fruit wrapped up in its foldings and round about our dwellings was planted a hedge of thornes and bundles of thistles the Aconite and the Briony the Night-shade and the Poppy and at the root of these grew the healing Plantain which rising up into a talnesse by the friendly invitation of a heavenly influence turn'd about the tree of the crosse and cured the wounds of the thorns and the curse of the thistles and the malediction of man and the wrath of God Si sic irascitur quomodo convivatur If God be thus kinde when he is Angry what is he when he feasts us with caresses of his more tender Kindnesse All that God restored to us after the foâ—feiture of Adam grew to be a double Kindnesse for it became the expression of a bounty which knew not how to repent a graciousnesse that was not to be altered though we were and that was it which we needed That 's the first generall all the bounties of the creation became mercies to us when God continued them to us and restored them after they were forfeit 2. But as a circle begins every where and ends no where so do the mercies of God after all this huge progresse now it began anew God is good and gracious and God is ready to forgive Now that he had once more made us capable of mercies God had what he desired and what he could rejoyce in something upon which he might pour forth his mercies and by the way this I shall observe for I cannot but speak without art when I speak of that which hath no measure God made us capable of one sort of his mercies and we made our selves capable of another God is good and gracious that is desirous to give great gifts and of this God made us receptive first by giving us naturall possibilities that is by giving those gifts he made us capable of more and next by restoring us to his favour that he might not by our provocations be hindered from raining down his mercies But God is also ready to forgive and of this kinde of mercy we made our selves capable even by not deserving it Our sin made way for his grace and our infirmities called upon his pity and because we sinned we became miserable and because we were miserable we became pitiable and this opened the other treasure of his mercy that because our sin abounds his grace may superabound In this method we must confine our thoughts 1. Giving Thou Lord art good and ready to forgive plenteous in mercy to all them that call upon thee 2. Forgiving Thou Lord art good
and pride and covetousnesse and unthankefulnesse and disobedience Most men that are tempted with lust could easily enough entertain the sobrieties of other counsels as of temperance and justice or religion if it would indulge to them but that one passion of lust persons that are greedy of mony are not fond of amorous vanities nor care they to sit long at the wine and one vice destroyes another and when one vice is consequent to another it is by way of punishment and dereliction of the man unlesse where vices have cognation and seem but like several degrees of one another and it is evil custome and superinduced habits that make artificiall appetites in most men to most sins But many times their naturall temper vexes them into uneasie dispositions and aptnesses onely to some one unhandsome sort of action that one thing therefore is it in which God demands of thee mortification and self deniall Certain it is There are very many men in the world that would fain commute their severity in al other instances for a licence in their one appetite they would not refuse long prayers after a drunken meeting or great almes to gether with one great lust but then consider how easie it is for them to go to heaven God demands of them for his sake their own to crucifie but one natural lust or one evil habit for all the rest they are easie enough to do themselves God will give them heaven where the joy is more then one and I said it is but one mortification God requires of most men for if those persons would extirp but that one thing in which they are principally tempted it is not easily imaginable that any lesse evill to which the temptation is trifling should interpose between them and their great interest If Saul had not spared Agag the people could not have expected mercy and our little and inferiour appetites that rather come to us by intimation and consequent adherences then by direct violence must not dwell with him who hath crossed the violence of his distempered nature in a beloved instance since therefore this is the state of most men and God in effect demands of them but one thing and in exchange for that will give them all good things it gives demonstration of his huge easinesse to redeem us from that intolerable evil that is equally consequent to the indulging to one or to twenty sinful habits 2. Gods readinesse to pardon appears in this that he pardons before we ask for he that bids us ask for pardon hath in designe and purpose done the thing already for what is wanting on his part in whose onely power it is to give pardon and in whose desire it is that we should be pardoned and who commands us to lay hold upon the offer he hath done all that belongs to God that is all that concerns the pardon there it lies ready it is recorded in the book of life it wants nothing but being exemplified and taken forth and the Holy spirit stands ready to consigne and passe the privy signet that we may exhibit it to devils and evil men when they tempt us to despair or sin 3. Nay God is so ready in his mercy that he did pardon us even before he redeemed us for what is the secret of the mysterie that the eternal Son of God should take upon him our nature and die our death and suffer for our sins and do our work and enable us to do our own he that did this is God he who thought it no robbery to be equal with God he came to satisfie himself to pay to himself the price for his own creature and when he did this for us that he might pardon us was he at that instant angry with us was this an effect of his anger or of his love that God sent his Son to work our pardon and salvation Indeed we were angry with God at enmity with the the Prince of life but he was reconciled to us so far as that he then did the greatest thing in the world for us for nothing could be greater then that God the Son of God should die for us here was reconciliation before pardon and God that came to die for us did love us first before he came this was hasty love But it went further yet 4. God pardoned us before we sinned and when he foresaw our sin even mine and yours he sent his son to die for us our pardon was wrought and effected by Christs death above 1600. years ago and for the sins of to morrow and the infirmities of the next day Christ is already dead already risen from the dead and does now make intercession and atonement And this is not onely a favour to us who were born in the due time of the Gospel but to all mankinde since Adam For God who is infinitely patient in his justice was not at all patient in his mercy he forbears to strike and punish us but he would not forbear to provide cure for us and remedy for as if God could not stay from redeeming us he promised the Redeemer to Adam in the beginning of the worlds sin Christ was the lamb slain from the begining of the world and the covenant of the Gospel though it was not made with man yet it was from the beginning performed by God as to his part as to the ministration of pardon The seed of the woman was set up against the dragon as soon as ever the Tempter had won his first battle and though God laid his hand and drew a vail of types and secresy before the manifestation of his mercies yet he did the work of redemption and saved us by the covenant of faith and the righteousnesse of believing and the mercies of repentance the graces of pardon and the blood of the slain lamb even from the fall of Adam to this very day and will do till Christs second coming Adam fell by his folly and did not perform the covenant of one little work a work of a single abstinence but he was restored by faith in the seed of the woman and of this righteousnesse Noah was a preacher and by faith Enoch was traslated and by faith a remnant was saved at the flood and to Abraham this was imputed for righteousnesse and to all the Patriarks and to al the righteous judges and holy Prophets and Saints of the old Testament even while they were obliged so far as the words of their covenant were expressed to the law of works their pardon was sealed kept with in the vail within the curtains of the sanctuary and they saw it not then but they feel it ever since and this was a great excellency of the Divine mercy unto them God had mercy on all mankinde before Christs manifestation even beyond the mercies of their covenant they were saved as we are by the seed of the woman by God incarnate by the lamb slain from the beginning of
scorn his miraculous mercies How shall we dare to behold that holy face that brought salvation to us and we turned away and fell in love with death and kissed deformity and sins and yet in the beholding that face consists much of the glories of eternity All the pains and passions the sorrowes and the groans the humility and poverty the labours and the watchings the Prayers and the Sermons the miracles and the prophecies the whip and the nails the death and the buriall the shame and the smart the Crosse and the grave of Jesus shall be laid upon thy score if thou hast refused the mercies and design of all their holy ends and purposes And if we remember what a calamity that was which broke the Jewish Nation in pieces when Christ came to judge them for their murdering him who was their King and the Prince of life and consider that this was but a dark image of the terrors of the day of Judgement we may then apprehend that there is some strange unspeakable evill that attends them that are guilty of this death and of so much evill to their Lord. Now it is certain if thou wilt not be saved by his death you are guilty of his death if thou wilt not suffer him to save thee thou art guilty of destroying him and then let it be considered what is to be expected from that Judge before whom you stand as his murtherer and betrayer * But this is but half of this consideration 2. Christ may be crucified again and upon a new account put to an open shame For after that Christ had done all this by the direct actions of his Priestly Office of sacrificing himself for us he hath also done very many things for us which are also the fruits of his first love and prosecutions of our redemption I will not instance in the strange arts of mercy that our Lord uses to bring us to live holy lives But I consider that things are so ordered and so great a value set upon our souls since they are the images of God and redeemed by the Bloud of the holy Lamb that the salvation of our souls is reckoned as a part of Christs reward a part of the glorification of his humanity Every sinner that repents causes joy to Christ and the joy is so great that it runs over and wets the fair brows and beauteous locks of Cherubims and Seraphims and all the Angels have a part of that banquet Then it is that our blessed Lord feels the fruits of his holy death the acceptation of his holy sacrifice the graciousnesse of his person the return of his prayers For all that Christ did or suffer'd and all that he now does as a Priest in heaven is to glorifie his Father by bringing souls to God For this it was that he was born and dyed that he descended from heaven to earth from life to death from the crosse to the grave this was the purpose of his resurrection and ascension of the end and design of all the miracles and graces of God manifested to all the world by him and now what man is so vile such a malicious fool that will refuse to bring joy to his Lord by doing himself the greatest good in the world They who refuse to do this are said to crucifie the Lord of life again and put him to an open shame that is they as much as in them lies bring Christ from his glorious joyes to the labours of his life and the shame of his death they advance his enemies and refuse to advance the Kingdome of their Lord they put themselves in that state in which they were when Christ came to dye for them and now that he is in a state that he may rejoyce over them for he hath done all his share towards it every wicked man takes his head from the blessing and rather chuses that the Devill should rejoyce in his destruction then that his Lord should triumph in his felicity And now upon the supposition of these premises we may imagine that it will be an infinite amazement to meet that Lord to be our Judge whose person we have murdered whose honour we have disparaged whose purposes we have destroyed whose joyes we have lessened whose passion we have made ineffectuall and whose love we have trampled under our profane and impious feet 3. But there is yet a third part of this consideration As it will be inquir'd at the day of Judgement concerning the dishonours to the person of Christ so also concerning the profession and institution of Christ and concerning his poor Members for by these also we make sad reflexions upon our Lord. Every man that lives wickedly disgraces the religion and institution of Jesus he discourages strangers from entring into it he weakens the hands of them that are in already and makes that the adversaries speak reproachfully of the Name of Christ but although it is certain our Lord and Judge will deeply resent all these things yet there is one thing which he takes more tenderly and that is the uncharitablenesse of men towards his poor It shall then be upbraided to them by the Judge that himself was hungry and they refused to give meat to him that gave them his body and heart-bloud to feed them and quench their thirst that they denyed a robe to cover his nakednesse and yet he would have cloathed their souls with the robe of his righteousnesse lest their souls should be found naked in the day of the Lords visitation and all this unkindnesse is nothing but that evill men were uncharitable to their Brethren they would not feed the hungry nor give drink to the thirsty nor cloath the naked nor relieve their Brothers needs nor forgive his follies nor cover their shame nor turn their eyes from delighting in their affronts and evill accidents this is it which our Lord will take so tenderly that his Brethren for whom he died who suck'd the paps of his Mother that fed on his Body and are nourished with his Bloud whom he hath lodg'd in his heart and entertains in his bosome the partners of his Spirit and co-heirs of his inheritance that these should be deny'd relief and suffered to go away ashamed and unpitied this our blessed Lord will take so ill that all those who are guilty of this unkindnesse have no reason to expect the favour of the Court. 4. To this if we adde the almightinesse of the Judge his infinite wisdome and knowledge of all causes and all persons and all circumstances that he is infinitely just inflexibly angry and impartiall in his sentence there can be nothing added either to the greatness or the requisites of a terrible and an Almighty Judge For who can resist him who is Almighty Who can evade his scrutiny that knows all things Who can hope for pity of him that is inflexible Who can think to be exempted when the Judge is righteous and impartial But in all these annexes of the great
makes intercession for us with groans unutterable and all the holy men in the world pray for all and for every one and God hath instructed us with Scriptures and precedents and collaterall and direct assistances to pray and he incouraged us with divers excellent promises and parables and examples and teaches us what to pray and how and gives one promise to publique prayer and another to private prayer and to both the blessing of being heard * Adde to this account that God did heap blessings upon us without order infinitely perpetually and in all instances when we needed and when we needed not * He heard us when we pray'd giving us all and giving us more then we desired * He desired that we should aske and yet he hath also prevented our desires * He watch'd for us and at his own charge sent a whole order of men whose imployment is to minister to our souls and if all this had not been enough he had given us more also * He promised heaven to our obedience a Province for a dish of water a Kingdome for a prayer satisfaction for desiring it grace for receiving and more grace for accepting and using the first * He invited us with gracious words and perfect entertainments * He threatned horrible things to us if we would not be happy * He hath made strange necessities for us making our very repentance to be a conjugation of holy actions and holy times and a long succession * He hath taken away all excuses from us he hath called us off from temptation he bears our charges he is alwaies before-hand with us in every act of favour and perpetually slow in striking and his arrowes are unfeathered and he is so long first in drawing his sword and another long while in whetting it and yet longer in lifting his hand to strike that before the blow comes the man hath repented long unlesse he be a fool and impudent and then God is so glad of an excuse to lay his anger aside that certainly if after all this we refuse life and glory there is no more to be said this plain story will condemn us but the story is very much longer and as our conscience will represent all our sins to us so the Judge will represent all his Fathers kindnesses as Nathan did to David when he was to make the justice of the Divine Sentence appear against him * Then it shall be remembred that the joyes of every daies piety would have been a greater pleasure every night then the remembrance of every nights sin could have been in the morning * That every night the trouble and labour of the daies vertue would have been as much passed and turned to as very a nothing as the pleasure of that daies sin but that they would be infinitely distinguished by the remanent effects 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 So Musonius expressed the sense of this inducement and that this argument would have grown so great by that time we come to dye that the certain pleasures and rare confidences and holy hopes of a death-bed would be a strange felicity to the man when he remembers he did obey if they were compared to the fearfull expectations of a dying sinner who feels by a formidable and afrighting remembrance that of all his sins nothing remains but the gains of a miserable eternity * The offering our selves to God every morning and the thanksgiving to God every night hope and fear shame and desire the honour of leaving a fair name behinde us and the shame of dying like a fool every thing indeed in the world is made to be an argument and an inducement to us to invite us to come to God and be sav'd and therefore when this and infinitely more shall by the Judge be exhibited in sad remembrances there needs no other sentence we shall condemn our selves with a hasty shame and a fearfull confusion to see how good God hath been to us and how base we have been to our selves Thus Moses is said to accuse the Jewes and thus also he that does accuse is said to condemn as Verres was by Cicero and Claudia by Domitius her accuser and the world of impenitent persons by the men of Nineveh and all by Christ their Judge I represent the horror of this circumstance to consist in this besides the reasonablenesse of the Judgement and the certainty of the condemnation it cannot but be an argument of an intolerable despair to perishing souls when he that was our Advocate all our life shall in the day of that appearing be our Accuser and our Judge a party against us an injur'd person in the day of his power and of his wrath doing execution upon all his own foolish and malicious enemies * 2. Our conscience shall be our accuser but this signifies but these two things 1. that we shall be condemned for the evils that we have done and shall then remember God by his power wiping away the dust from the tables of our memory and taking off the consideration and the voluntary neglect and rude shufflings of our cases of conscience For then we shall see things as they are the evill circumstances and the crooked intentions the adherent unhandsomenesse and the direct crimes for all things are laid up safely and though we draw a curtain of cobweb over them and few figleaves before our shame yet God shall draw away the curtain and forgetfulnesse shall be no more because with a taper in the hand of God all the corners of our nastinesse shall be discovered And secondly it signifies this also that not only the Justice of God shall be confessed by us in our own shame and condemnation but the evill of the sentence shall be received into us to melt our bowels and to break our heart in pieces within us because we are the authors of our own death and our own inhumane hands have torn our souls in pieces Thus farre the horrors are great and when evill men consider it it is certain they must be afraid to dye Even they that have liv'd well have some sad considerations and the tremblings of humility and suspicion of themselves I remember S. Cyprian tels of a good man who in his agony of death saw a phantasme of a noble and angelicall shape who frowning and angry said to him Pati timetis exire non vultis Quid faciam vobis Ye cannot endure sicknesse ye are troubled at the evils of the world and yet you are loth to dye and to be quit of them what shall I do to you Although this is apt to represent every mans condition more or lesse yet concerning persons of wicked lives it hath in it too many sad degrees of truth they are impatient of sorrow and justly fearfull of death because they know not how to comfort themselves in the evill accidents of their lives and their conscience is too polluted to take death for sanctuary and
diuturni sed sempiterni Epiphanius charges not the opinion upon Origen and yet he was free enough in his animadversion and reproof of him but S. Austin did and confuted the opinion in his books De civitate Dei However Origen was not the first that said the pains of the damned should cease Justin Martyr in his Dialogue with Tryphon expresses it thus Neither do I say that all the souls do dye for that indeed would be to the wicked a gain unlooked for What then the souls of the godly in a better place of the wicked in a worse do tarry the time of Judgement then they that are worthy shall never dye again but those that are designed to punishment shall abide so long as God please to have them to live and to be punished But I observe that the primitive Doctors were very willing to believe that the mercy of God would finde out a period to the torment of accursed souls but such a period which should be nothing but eternall destruction called by the Scripture the second death only Origen as I observed is charg'd by S. Austin to have said they shall return into joyes and back again to hell by an eternall revolution But concerning the death of wicked souls and its being broke into pieces with fearfull torments and consumed with the wrath of God they had entertain'd some different fancies very early in the Church as their sentences are collected by S. Hierome at the end of his Commentaries upon Isay and Ireneus disputes it largely that they that are unthankfull to God in this short life and obey him not shall never have an eternall duration of life in the ages to come sed ipse se privat in saeculum saeculi perseverantiâ he deprives his soul of living to eternall ages for he supposes an immortall duration not to be naturall to the soul but a gift of God which he can take away and did take away from Adam and restored it again in Christ to them that beleeve in him and obey him for the other they shall be raised again to suffer shame and fearfull torments and according to the degree of their sins so shall be continued in their sorrowes and some shall dye and some shall not dye the Devill and the Beast and and they that worshipped the Beast and they that were marked with his Character these S. John saith shall be tormented for ever and ever he does not say so of all but of some certain great criminals 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 all so long as God please some for ever and ever and some not so severely And whereas the generall sentence is given to all wicked persons to all on the left hand to go into everlasting fire it is answered that the fire indeed is everlasting but not all that enters into it is everlasting but only the Devils for whom it was prepared and others more mighty criminals according as S. John intimates though also everlasting signifies only to the end of its proper period Concerning this Doctrine of theirs so severe and yet so moderated there is lesse to be objected then against the supposed fancy of Origen for it is a strange consideration to suppose an eternall torment to those to whom it was never threatned to those who never heard of Christ to those that liv'd probably well to heathens of good lives to ignorants and untaught people to people surprised in a single crime to men that dye young in their naturall follies and foolish lusts to them that fall in a sudden gaiety and excessive joy to all alike to all infinite and eternall even to unwarned people and that this should be inflicted by God who infinitely loves his creature who dyed for them who pardons easily and pities readily and excuses much and delights in our being saved and would not have us dye and takes little things in exchange for great it is certain that Gods mercies are infinite and it is also certain that the matter of eternall torments cannot truly be understood and when the School-men go about to reconcile the Divine justice to that severity and consider why God punishes eternally a temporall sin or a state of evill they speak variously and uncertainly and unsatisfyingly But that in this question we may separate the certain from the uncertain 1. It is certain that the torments of hell shall certainly last as long as the soul lasts for eternall and everlasting can signifie no lesse but to the end of that duration to the perfect end of the period in which it signifies So Sodom and Gomorrah when God rained down hell from heaven upon the earth as Salvian's expression is they are said to suffer the vengeance of eternall fire that is of a fire that consumed them finally and they never were restored and so the accursed souls shall suffer torments till they be consumed who because they are immortall either naturally or by gift shall be tormented for ever or till God shall take from them the life that he restored to them on purpose to give them a capacity of being miserable and the best that they can expect is to despair of all good to suffer the wrath of God never to come to any minute of felicity or of a tolerable state and to be held in pain till God be weary of striking This is the gentlest sentence of some of the old Doctors But 2. the generality of Christians have been taught to beleeve worse things yet concerning them and the words of our blessed Lord are 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 eternall affliction or smiting Nec mortis poenas mors altera finiet hujus Horaque erit tantis ultima nulla malis And S. John who well knew the minde of his Lord saith The smoke of their torment ascendeth up for ever and ever and they have no rest day nor night that is their torment is continuall and it is eternall Their second death shall be but a dying to all felicity for so death is taken in Scripture Adam dyed when he eat the forbidden fruit that is he was lyable to sicknesse and sorrowes and pain and dissolution of soul and body and to be miserable is the worse death of the two they shall see the eternall felicity of the Saints but they shall never taste of the holy Chalice Those joyes shall indeed be for ever and ever for immortality is part of their reward and on them the second death shall have no power but the wicked shall be tormented horridly and insufferably till death and hell be thrown into the lake of fire and shall be no more which is the second death But that they may not imagine that this second death shall be the end of their pains S. Iohn speaks expresly what that is Rev. 21. 8. The fearfull and unbeleeving the abominable and the murderers the whoremongers and sorcerers the idolaters and all lyars shall have their part in the lake wich burneth with fire and brimstone
which is the second death no dying there but a being tormented burning in a lake of fire that is the second death For if life be reckoned a blessing then to be destitute of all blessing is to have no life and therefore to be intolerably miserable is this second death that is death eternall 3. And yet if God should deal with man hereafter more mercifully and proportionably to his weak nature then he does to Angels and as he admits him to repentance here so in hell also to a period of his smart even when he keeps the Angels in pain for ever yet he will never admit him to favour he shall be tormented beyond all the measure of humane ages and be destroyed for ever and ever It concerns us all who hear and beleeve these things to do as our blessed Lord will do before the day of his coming he will call and convert the Jews and strangers Conversion to God is the best preparatory to Dooms-day and it concerns all them who are in the neighbourhood and fringes of the flames of hell that is in the state of sin quickly to arise from the danger and shake the burning coals off our flesh lest it consume the marrow and the bones Exuenda est velociter de incendio sarcina priusquam flammis supervenientibus concremetur Nemo diu tutus est periculo proximus saith S. Cyprian No man is safe long that is so neer to danger for suddenly the change will come in which the Judge shall be called to Judgement and no man to plead for him unlesse a good conscience be his Advocate and the rich shall be naked as a condemned criminall to execution and there shall be no regard of Princes or of Nobles and the differences of mens account shall be forgotten and no distinction remaining but of good or bad sheep and goats blessed and accursed souls Among the wonders of the day of Judgement our blessed Saviour reckons it that men shall be marrying and giving in marriage 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 marrying and crosse marrying that is raising families and lasting greatnesse and huge estates when the world is to end so quickly and the gains of a rich purchase so very a trifle but no trifling danger a thing that can give no security to our souls but much hazards and a great charge More reasonable it is that we despise the world and lay up for heaven that we heap up treasures by giving almes and make friends of unrighteous Mammon but at no hand to enter into a state of life that is all the way a hazard to the main interest and at the best an increase of the particular charge Every degree of riches every degree of greatnesse every ambitious imployment every great fortune every eminency above our brother is a charge to the accounts of the last day He that lives temperately and charitably whose imployment is religion whose affections are fear and love whose desires are after heaven and do not dwell below that man can long and pray for the hastning of the coming of the day of the Lord. He that does not really desire and long for that day either is in a very ill condition or does not understand that he is in a good * I will not be so severe in this meditation as to forbid any man to laugh that beleeves himself shall be called to so severe a Judgement yet S. Hierom said it Coram coelo terrâ rationem reddemus totius nostrae vitae tu rides Heaven and earth shall see all the follies and basenesse of thy life and doest thou laugh That we may but we have not reason to laugh loudly and frequently if we consider things wisely and as we are concerned but if we do yet praesentis temporis ita est agenda laetitia ut sequentis judicii amaritudo nunquam recedat à memoriâ so laugh here that you may not forget your danger lest you weep for ever He that thinks most seriously and most frequently of this fearfull appearance will finde that it is better staying for his joyes till this sentence be past for then he shall perceive whether he hath reason or no. In the mean time wonder not that God who loves mankinde so well should punish him so severely for therefore the evill fall into an accursed portion because they despised that which God most loves his Son and his mercies his graces and his holy Spirit and they that do all this have cause to complain of nothing but their own follies and they shall feel the accursed consequents then when they shall see the Judge sit above them angry and severe inexorable and terrible under them an intolerable hell within them their consciences clamorous and diseased without them all the world on fire on the right hand those men glorified whom they persecuted or despised on the left hand the Devils accusing for this is the day of the Lords terror and who is able to abideat Seu vigilo intentus studiis seu dormio semper Iudicis extremi nostras tuba personet aures SERMON IV. The Returne of PRAYERS Or The Conditions of a PREVAILING PRAYER John 9. 31. Now wee know that God heareth not sinners but if any man be a worshippar of God and doth his will him be heareth IKnow not which is the greater wonder either that prayer which is a duty so easie and facile so ready and apted to the powers and skill and opportunities of every man should have so great effects and be productive of such mighty blessings or that we should be so unwilling to use so easie an instrument of procuring so much good The first declares Gods goodnesse but this publishes mans folly and weaknesse who finds in himself so much difficulty to perform a condition so easie and full of advantage But the order of this infelicity is knotted like the foldings of a Serpent all those parts of easinesse which invite us to doe the duty are become like the joynes of a bulrush not bendings but consolidations and stiffenings the very facility becomes its objection and in every of its stages wee make or finde a huge uneasinesse At first wee doe not know what we ask and when we doe then we finde difficulty to bring our wils to desire it and when that is instructed and kept in awe it mingles interest and confounds the purposes and when it is forc'd to ask honestly and severely then it wills so coldly that God hates the prayer and if it desires fervently it sometimes turns that into passion and that passion breaks into murmurs or unquietnesse or if that be avoyded the indifferency cooles into death or the fire burns violently and is quickly spent our desires are dull as a rock or fugitive as lightening either wee aske ill things earnestly or good things remissely we either court our owne danger or are not zealous for our reall safety or if we be right in our matter or earnest in our affections and lasting in
of David died for his father David as well as he did for us he was the Lambe slain from the beginning of the world and yet that death and that relation and all the heap of the Divine favours which crown'd David with a circle richer then the royall diadem could not exempt him from the portion of sinners when he descended into their pollutions I pray God we may find the sure mercies of David and may have our portion in the redemption wrought by the Son of David but we are to expect it upon such terms as are revealed such which include time and labour and uncertainty and watchfulnesse and fear and holy living But it is a sad observation that the case of pardon of sins is so administred that they that are most sure of it have the greatest fears concerning it and they to whom it doth not belong at all are as confident as children and fooles who believe every thing they have a mind to not because they have reason so to doe but because without it they are presently miserable The godly and holy persons of the Church work out their salvation with fear and trembling and the wicked goe to destruction with gayety and confidence these men think all is well while they are in the gall of bitternesse and good men are tossed in a tempest crying and praying for a safe conduct and the sighs of their feares and the wind of their prayers waft them safely to their port Pardon of sins is not easily obtain'd because they who onely certainly can receive it find difficulty and danger and fears in the obtaining it and therefore their case is pityable and deplorable who when they have least reason to expect pardon yet are most confident and carelesse But because there are sorrows on one side and dangers on the other and temptations on both sides it will concern all sorts of men to know when their sins are pardoned For then when they can perceive their signes certain and evident they may rest in their expectations of the Divine mercies when they cannot see the signes they may leave their confidence and change it into repentance and watchfulnesse and stricter observation and in order to this I shall tell you that which shall never faile you a certaine signe that you may know whether or no and when and in what degree your persons are pardoned 1. I shall not consider the evils of sin by any Metaphysicall and abstracted effects but by sensible reall and materiall Hee that revenges himself of another does something that will make his enemy grieve something that shall displease the offender as much as sin did the offended and therefore all the evills of sin are such as relate to us and are to bee estimated by our apprehensions Sin makes God angry and Gods anger if it be turned aside will make us miserable and accursed and therefore in proportion to this we are to reckon the proportions of Gods mercy in forgivenesse or his anger in retaining 2. Sin hath obliged us to suffer many evills even whatsoever the anger of God is pleased to inflict sicknesse and dishonour poverty and shame a caytive spirit and a guilty conscience famine and war plague and pestilence sudden death and a short life temporall death or death eternall according as God in the severall covenants of the Law and Gospel hath expressed 3. For in the law of Moses sin bound them to nothing but temporall evills but they were sore and heavy and many but these only there were threatned in the Gospel Christ added the menaces of evills spirituall and eternall 4. The great evill of the Jews was their abscission and cutting off from being Gods people to which eternall damnation answers amongst us and as sicknesse and war and other intermediall evills were lesser strokes in order to the finall anger of God against their Nation so are these and spirituall evills intermediall in order to the Eternall destruction of sinning and unrepenting Christians 5. When God had visited any of the sinners of Israel with a grievous sicknesse then they lay under the evill of their sin and were not pardoned till God took away the sicknesse but the taking the evill away the evill of the punishment was the pardon of the sin to pardon the sin is to spare the sinner and this appears For when Christ had said to the man sick of the palsey Son thy sins are forgiven thee the Pharisees accused him of blasphemy because none had power to forgive sins but God onely Christ to vindicate himselfe gives them an ocular demonstration and proves his words that yee may know the Son of Man hath power on earth to forgive sins he saith to the man sick of the palsey Arise and walk then he pardoned the sin when he took away the sicknesse and proved the power by reducing it to act for if pardon of sins be any thing else it must be easier or harder if it be easier then sin hath not so much evill in it as a sicknesse which no Religion as yet ever taught If it be harder then Christs power to doe that which was harder could not be proved by doing that which was easier It remaines therefore that it is the same thing to take the punishment away as to procure or give the pardon because as the retaining the sin was an obligation to the evill of punishment so the remitting the sin is the disobliging to its penalty So farre then the case is manifest 6. The next step is this that although in the Gospel God punishes sinners with temporall judgements and sicknesses and deaths with sad accidents and evill Angels and messengers of wrath yet besides these lesser strokes he hath scorpions to chastise and loads of worse evils to oppresse the disobedient he punishes one sin with another vile acts with evill habits these with a hard heart and this with obstinacy and obstinacy with impenitence and impenitence with damnation Now because the worst of evills which are threatned to us are such which consign to hell by persevering in sin as God takes off our love and our affections our relations and bondage under sin just in the same degree he pardons us because the punishment of sin being taken off and pardoned there can remaine no guilt Guiltinesse is an unsignificant word if there be no obligation to punishment Since therefore spirituall evils and progressions in sin and the spirit of reprobation and impenitence and accursed habits and perseverance in iniquity are the worst of evils when these are taken off the sin hath lost its venome and appendant curse for sin passes on to eternall death onely by the line of impenitence and it can never carry us to hell if we repent timely and effectually in the same degree therefore that any man leaves his sin just in the same degree he is pardoned and he is sure of it For although curing the temporall evill was the pardon of sins
under the eye of heaven that many Nations are marked for intemperance and that it is lesse noted because it is so popular and universall and that even in the midst of the glories of Christianity there are so many persons drunk or too full with meat or greedy of lust even now that the Spirit of God is given to us to make us sober and temperate and chaste we may well imagine since all men have flesh and all men have nor the spirit the flesh is the parent of sin and death and it can be nothing else And it is no otherwise when we are tempted with pain We are so impatient of pain that nothing can reconcile us to it not the laws of God not the necessities of nature not the society of all our kindred and of all the world not the interest of vertue not the hopes of heaven we will submit to pain upon no terms but the basest and most dishonorable for if sin bring us to pain or affront or sicknesse we choose that so it be in the retinue of a lust and a base desire but we accuse Nature and blaspheme God we murmur and are impatient when pain is sent to us from him that ought to send it and intends it as a mercy when it comes But in the matter of afflictions and bodily sicknesse we are so weak and broken so uneasie and unapt to sufferance that this alone is beyond the cure of the old Philosophy Many can endure poverty and many can retire from shame and laugh at home and very many can endure to be slaves but when pain and sharpnesse are to be endured for the interests of vertue we finde but few Martyrs and they that are suffer more within themselves by their fears and their temptations by their uncertain purposes and violences to Nature then by the Hang-mans sword the Martyrdome is within and then he hath won his Crown not when he hath suffered the blow but when he hath overcome his fears and made his spirit conqueror It was a sad instance of our infirmity when of the 40 Martyrs of Cappadocia set in a freezing lake almost consummate and an Angell was reaching the Crowne and placing it upon their brows the flesh fail'd one of them and drew the spirit after it and the man was called off from his Scene of noble contention and dyed in warm water Odi artus fragilémque hunc corporis usum Desertorem animi We carry about us the body of death and we bring evils upon our selves by our follies and then know not how to bear them and the flesh forsakes the spirit And indeed in sicknesse the infirmity is so very great that God in a manner at that time hath reduced all Religion into one vertue Patience with its appendages is the summe totall of almost all our duty that is proper to the days of sorrow and we shall find it enough to entertain all our powers and to imploy all our aids the counsels of wise men and the comforts of our friends the advices of Scripture and the results of experience the graces of God and the strength of our own resolutions are all then full of imployments and find it work enough to secure that one grace For then it is that a could is wrapped about our heads and our reason stoops under sorrow the soul is sad and its instrument is out of tune the auxiliaries are disorder'd and every thought sits heavily then a comfort cannot make the body feel it and the soule is not so abstracted to rejoyce much without its partner so that the proper joyes of the soul such as are hope and wise discourses and satisfactions of reason and the offices of Religion are felt just as we now perceive the joyes of heaven with so little relish that it comes as news of a victory to a man upon the Rack or the birth of an heir to one condemned to dye he hears a story which was made to delight him but it came when he was dead to joy and all its capacities and therefore sicknesse though it be a good Monitor yet it is an ill stage to act some vertues in and a good man cannot then doe much and therefore he that is in the state of flesh and blood can doe nothing at all 4. But in these considerations we find our nature in disadvantages and a strong man may be overcome when a stronger comes to disarme him and pleasure and pain are the violences of choice and chance but it is no better in any thing else for nature is weak in all its strengths and in its fights at home and abroad in its actions and passions we love some things violently and hate others unreasonably any thing can fright us when we should be confident and nothing can scare us when we ought to feare the breaking of a glasse puts us into a supreme anger and we are dull and indifferent as a Stoick when we see God dishonour'd we passionately desire our preservation and yet we violently destroy our selves and will not be hindred we cannot deny a friend when he tempts us to sin and death and yet we daily deny God when he passionately invites us to life and health we are greedy after money and yet spend it vainly upon our lusts we hate to see any man flatter'd but our selves and we can endure folly if it be on our side and a sin for our interest we desire health and yet we exchange it for wine and madnesse we sink when a persecution comes and yet cease not daily to persecute our selves doing mischiefs worse then the sword of Tyrants and great as the malice of a Devill 5. But to summe up all the evills that can be spoken of the infirmities of the flesh the proper nature and habitudes of men are so foolish and impotent so averse and peevish to all good that a mans will is of it self onely free to choose evils Neither is it a contradiction to say liberty and yet suppose it determin'd to one object onely because that one object is the thing we choose For although God hath set life and death before us fire and water good and evill and hath primarily put man into the hands of his owne counsell that he might have chosen good as well as evill yet because he did not but fell into an evill condition and corrupted manners and grew in love with it and infected all his children with vicious examples and all nations of the world have contracted some universall stains and the thoughts of mans hearts are onely evill and that continually and there is not one that doth good no not one that sinneth not since I say all the world have sinned we cannot suppose a liberty of indifferency to good and bad it is impossible in such a liberty that there should be no variety that all should choose the same thing but a liberty of complacency or delight we may suppose that is so that though naturally he might
usefulnesse and advantages of its first intention But this I intended not to have spoken 2. Our Zeal must never carry us beyond that which is safe Some there are who in their first attempts and entries upon Religion while the passion that brought them in remains undertake things as great as their highest thoughts no repentance is sharp enough no charities expensive enough no fastings afflictive enough then totis Quinquatribus orant and finding some deliciousnesse at the first contest and in that activity of their passion they make vowes to binde themselves for ever to this state of delicacies The onset is fair but the event is this The age of a passion is not long and the flatulent spirit being breathed out the man begins to abate of his first heats and is ashamed but then he considers that all that was not necessary and therefore he will abate something more and from something to something at last it will come to just nothing and the proper effect of this is indignation and hatred of holy things an impudent spirit carelessenesse or despair Zeal sometimes carries a man into temptation and he that never thinks he loves God dutifully or acceptably because he is not imprison'd for him or undone or design'd to Martyrdome may desire a triall that will undoe him It is like fighting of a Duell to shew our valour Stay till the King commands you to fight and die and then let zeal do its noblest offices This irregularity and mistake was too frequent in the primitive Church when men and women would strive for death and be ambitious to feel the hangmans sword some miscarryed in the attempt and became sad examples of the unequall yoking a frail spirit with a zealous driver 3. Let Zeal never transport us to attempt anything but what is possible M. Teresa made a vow that she would do alwaies that which was absolutely the best But neither could her understanding alwaies tell her which was so nor her will alwayes have the same fervours and it must often breed scruples and sometimes tediousnesse and wishes that the vow were unmade He that vowes never to have an ill thought never to commit an error hath taken a course that his little infirmities shall become crimes and certainly be imputed by changing his unavoidable infirmity into vow-breach Zeal is a violence to a mans spirit and unlesse the spirit be secur'd by the proper nature of the duty and the circumstances of the action and the possibilities of the man it is like a great fortune in the meanest person it bears him beyond his limit and breaks him into dangers and passions transportations and all the furies of disorder that can happen to an abused person 4. Zeal is not safe unlesse it be in re probabili too it must be in a likely matter For we that finde so many excuses to untie all our just obligations and distinguish our duty into so much finenesse that it becomes like leaf-gold apt to be gone at every breath it can not be prudent that we zealously undertake what is not probable to be effected If we do the event can be nothing but portions of the former evill scruple and snares shamefull retreats and new fantastick principles In all our undertakings we must consider what is our state of life what our naturall inclinations what is our society and what are our dependencies by what necessities we are born down by what hopes we are biassed and by these let us measure our heats and their proper businesse A zealous man runs up a sandy hill the violence of motion is his greatest hinderance and a passion in Religion destroys as much of our evennesse of spirit as it sets forward any outward work and therefore although it be a good circumstance and degree of a spirituall duty so long as it is within and relative to God and our selves so long it is a holy flame but if it be in an outward duty or relative to our neighbours or in an instance not necessary it sometimes spoils the action and alwaies endangers it But I must remember we live in an age in which men have more need of new fires to be kindled within them and round about them then of any thing to allay their forwardnesse there is little or no zeal now but the zeal of envie and killing as many as they can and damning more then they can 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 smoke and lurking fires do corrode and secretly consume therefore this discourse is lesse necessary A Physitian would have but small imployment near the Riphâ—an Mountains if he could cure nothing but Calentures Catarrhes and dead palsies Colds and Consumptions are their evils and so is lukewarmnesse and deadnesse of spirit the proper maladies of our age for though some are hot when they are mistaken yet men are cold in a righteous cause and the nature of this evill is to be insensible and the men are farther from a cure because they neither feel their evill nor perceive their danger But of this I have already given account and to it I shall only adde what an old spirituall person told a novice in religion asking him the cause why he so frequently suffered tediousnesse in his religious offices Nondum vidisti requiem quam speramus nec tormenta quae timemus young man thou hast not seen the glories which are laid up for the zealous and devout nor yet beheld the flames which are prepared for the lukewarm and the haters of strict devotion But the Jewes tell that Adam having seen the beauties and tasted the delicacies of Paradise repented and mourned upon the Indian Mountains for three hundred years together and we who have a great share in the cause of his sorrowes can by nothing be invited to a persevering a great a passionate religion more then by remembring what he lost and what is laid up for them whose hearts are burning lamps and are all on fire with Divine love whose flames are fann'd with the wings of the holy Dove and whose spirits shine and burn with that fire which the holy Jesus came to enkindle upon the earth Sermon XV. The House of Feasting OR THE EPICVRES MEASVRES Part I. 1 Cor. 15. 32. last part Let us eat and drink for to morrow we dye THis is the Epicures Proverb begun upon a weak mistake started by chance from the discourses of drink and thought witty by the undiscerning company and prevail'd infinitely because it struck their fancy luckily and maintained the merry meeting but as it happens commonly to such discourses so this also when it comes to be examined by the consultations of the morning and the sober hours of the day it seems the most witlesse and the most unreasonable in the world When Seneca describes the spare diet of Epicurus and Metrodorus he uses this expression Liberaliora sunt alimenta carceris sepositos ad capitale supplicium non tam angustè qui occisurus est pascit The prison keeps a
better table and he that is to kill the criminall to morrow morning gives him a better supper over night By this he intended to represent his meal to be very short for as dying persons have but little stomach to feast high so they that mean to cut the throat will think it a vain expence to please it with delicacies which after the first alteration must be poured upon the ground and looked upon as the worst part of the accursed thing And there is also the same proportion of unreasonablenesse that because men shall die to morrow and by the sentence and unalterable decree of God they are now descending to their graves that therefore they should first destroy their reason and then force dull time to run faster that they may dye sottish as beasts and speedily as a slie But they thought there was no life after this or if there were it was without pleasure and every soul thrust into a hole and a dorter of a spans length allowed for his rest and for his walk and in the shades below no numbring of healths by the numerall letters of Philenium's name no fat Mullets no Oysters of Luerinus no Lesbian or Chian Wines 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Therefore now enjoy the delicacies of Nature and feel the descending wines distilled through the limbecks of thy tongue and larynx and suck the delicious juice of fishes the marrow of the laborious Oxe and the tender lard of Apulian Swine and the condited bellies of the scarus but lose no time for the Sun drives hard and the shadow is long and the dayes of mourning are at hand but the number of the dayes of darknesse and the grave cannot be told Thus they thought they discoursed wisely and their wisdome was turned into folly for all their arts of providence and witty securities of pleasure were nothing but unmanly prologues to death fear and folly sensuality and beastly pleasures But they are to be excused rather then we They placed themselves in the order of beasts and birds and esteemed their bodies nothing but receptacles of flesh and wine larders and pantries and their soul the fine instrument of pleasure and brisk perception of relishes and gusts reflexions and duplications of delight and therefore they trea ed themselves accordingly But then why we should do the same things who are led by other principles and a more severe institution and better notices of immortality who understand what shall happen to a soul hereafter and know that this time is but a passage to eternity this body but a servant to the soul this soul a minister to the Spirit and the whole man in order to God and to felicity this I say is more unreasonable then to eat aconite to preserve our health and to enter into the floud that we may die a dry death this is a perfect contradiction to the state of good things whither we are designed and to all the principles of a wise Philophy whereby we are instructed that we may become wise unto salvation That I may therefore do some assistances towards the curing the miseries of mankinde and reprove the follies and improper motions towards felicity I shall endevour to represent to you 1. That plenty and the pleasures of the world are no proper instruments of felicity 2. That intemperance is a certain enemy to it making life unpleasant and death troublesome and intolerable 3. I shall adde the rules and measures of temperance in eating and drinking that nature and grace may joyne to the constitution of mans felicity 1. Plenty and the pleasures of the world are no proper instrument of felicity It is necessary that a man have some violence done to himself before he can receive them for natures bounds are non esurire non sitire non algere to be quit from hunger and thirst and cold that is to have nothing upon us that puts us to pain against which she hath made provisions by the fleece of the sheep and the skins of beasts by the waters of the fountain and the hearbs of the field and of these no good man is destitute for that share that he can need to fill those appetites and necessities he cannot otherwise avoid 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 For it is unimaginable that Nature should be a mother naturall and indulgent to the beasts of the forrest and the spawn of fishes to every plant and fungus to cats and owles to moles and bats making her store-houses alwaies to stand open to them and that for the Lord of all these even to the noblest of her productions she should have made no provisions and only produc'd in us appetites sharp as the stomach of Wolves troublesome as the Tigres hunger and then run away leaving art and chance violence and study to feed us and to cloath us This is so far from truth that we are certainly more provided for by nature then all the world besides for every thing can minister to us and we can passe into none of Natures cabinets but we can finde our table spread so that what David said to God Whither shall I go from thy presence If I go to heaven thou art there if I descend to the deep thou art there also if I take the wings of the morning and flie into the uttermost parts of the wildernesse even there thou wilt finde me out and thy right band shall uphold me we may say it concerning our table and our wardrobe If we go into the fields we finde them till'd by the mercies of heaven and water'd with showers from God to feed us and to cloath us if we go down into the deep there God hath multiplyed our stores and fill'd a magazine which no hunger can exhaust the aire drops down delicacies and the wildernesse can sustain us and all that is in nature that which feeds Lions and that which the Oxe eats that which the fishes live upon and that which is the provision for the birds all that can keep us alive and if we consider that of the beasts and birds for whom nature hath provided but one dish it may be flesh or fish or herbes or flies and these also we secure with guards from them and drive away birds and beasts from that provision which Nature made for them yet seldome can we finde that any of these perish with hunger much rather shall we finde that we are secured by the securities proper for the more noble creatures by that providence that disposes all things by that mercy that gives us all things which to other creatures are ministred singly by that labour that can procure what we need by that wisdome that can consider concerning future necessities by that power that can force it from inferiour creatures and by that temperance which can fit our meat to our necessities For if we go beyond what is needfull as we finde sometimes more then was promised and very often more then we need so we disorder the certainty of our
come that is if it be not repented of it is punished here and hereafter which the Scripture does not affirm concerning all sins and all cases But in this the sinner gives sentence with his mouth and brings it to execution with his own hands Paena tamen praesens cum tu deponis amictum Turgidus et crudum pavonem in balneaportas The old gluttons among the Romans Heliogabalus Tigellius Crispus Montanus notaeque per oppida buccae famous Epicures mingled their meats with vomitings so did Vitellius and enter'd into their baths to digest their Phesants that they might speedily return to the Mullet and the Eeles of Syene and then they went home and drew their breath short till the morning and it may be not at all before night Hinc subitae mortes atque intestata senectus Their age is surprised at a feast and gives them not time to make their will but either they are choked with a large morsell and there is no room for the breath of the lungs and the motions of the heart or a feaver burns their eyes out or a quinzie punishes that intemperate throat that had no religion but the eating of the fat sacrifices the portions of the poor and of the Priest or else they are condemned to a Lethargie if their constitutions be dull and if active it may be they are wilde with watching Plurimus hinc aeger moritur vigilando sed illum Languorem peperit cibus imperfectus haerens Ardenti stomacho So that the Epicures geniall proverb may be a little alter'd and say Let us eat and drink for by this means to morrow we shall die but that 's not all for these men live a healthlesse life that is are long are every day dying and at last dye with torment Menander was too soft in his expression 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that it is indeed a death but gluttony is a pleasant death 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 For this is the gluttons pleasure to breath short and difficultly scarce to be able to speak and when he does he cries out I dye and not with pleasure But the folly is as much to be derided as the men to be pityed that we daily see men afraid of death with a most intolerable apprehension and yet increase the evill of it the pain and the trouble and the suddennesse of its coming and the appendage of an unsufferable eternity Rem struere exoptant caeso bove Mercuriúmqque Arcessunt fibrâ They pray for herds of cattell and spend the breeders upon feasts and sacrifices For why do men go to Temples and Churches and make vowes to God and daily prayers that God would give them a healthfull body and take away their gout and their palfies their feavers and apoplexies the pains of the head and the gripings of the belly and arise from their prayers and powre in loads of flesh and seas of wine lest there should not be matter enough for a lusty disease Poscis opem'nervis corpúsqque fidele senectae Esto age sed grandes patinae tucetáqque crassa Annuere his superos vetuere Jov émqque morantur But it is enough that the rich glutton shall have his dead body condited and embalmed he may be allowed to stink and suffer corruption while he is alive These men are for the present living sinners and walking rottennesse and hereafter will be dying penitents and perfumed carcasses and their whole felicity is lost in the confusions of their unnaturall disorder When Cyrus had espyed Astyages and his fellowes coming drunk from a banquet loaden with variety of follies and filthinesse their legs failing them their eyes red and staring cousened with a moist cloud and abused by a doubled object their tongues full as spunges and their heads no wiser he thought they were poysoned and he had reason for what malignant quality can be more venomous and hurtfull to a man then the effect of an intemperate goblet and a full stomach it poysons both the soul and body All poysons do not kill presently and this will in processe of time and hath formidable effects at present But therefore me thinks the temptations which men meet withall from without are in themselves most unreasonable and soonest confuted by us He that tempts me to drink beyond my measure civilly invites me to a feaver and to lay aside my reason as the Persian women did their garments and their modesty at the end of feasts and all the question then will be which is the worse evill to resuse your uncivill kindnesse or to suffer a violent headach or to lay up heaps big enough for an English Surfeit Creon in the Tragedy said well 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 grieve thee O stranger or to he affronted by thee then to be tormented by thy kindnesse the next day and the morrow after and the freed man of Domitius the Father of Nero suffered himself to be kild by his Lord and the sonne of Praxaspes by Cambyses rather then they would exceed their own measures up to a full intemperance and a certain sicknesse and dishonour For as Plutarch said well to avoid the opinion of an uncivill man or being clownish to run into a pain of thy sides or belly into madnesse or a head-ach is the part of a fool and a coward and of one that knowes not how to converse with men citra pocula nidorem in any thing but in the famelick smels of meat and vertiginous drinkings Ebrius petulans qui nullum forte cecîdit Dat poenas noctem patitur lugentis amicum Pelidae A drunkard and a glutton feels the torments of a restlesse night although he hath not kil'd a man that is just like murtherers and persons of an afrighting conscience so wake the glutton so broken and sick and disorderly are the slumbers of the drunkard Now let the Epicure boast his pleasures and tell how he hath swallowed the price of Provinces and gobbets of delicious flesh purchased with the rewards of souls let him brag furorem illum conviviorum foedissimum patrimoniorum exitium culinam of the madnesse of delicious feasts and that his kitchin hath destroyed his Patrimony let him tell that he takes in every day Quantum Lauseia bibebat As much wine as would refresh the sorrowes of 40 languishing prisoners or let him set up his vain-glorious triumph Ut quod multi Damalis meri Bassum Threiciâ vicit amystide That he hath knock'd down Damalis with the 25th bottle and hath outfeasted Anthony or Cleopatra's luxury it is a goodly pleasure and himself shall bear the honour Rarum memorabile magni Gutturis exemplum conducendúsqque magister But for the honour of his banquet he hath some ministers attending that he did not dream of and in the midst of his loud laughter the gripes of the belly and the feavers of the brain Pallor genae pendulae oculorum ulcera tremulae
single and occasionall for he that hath a pertinacious sorrow is beyond the cure of meat and drink and if this become every days physick it will quickly become every days sin 2. It must alwayes keep within the bounds of reason and never seise upon any portions of affection The Germans use to mingle musick with their bowls and drink by the measures of the six Notes of Musick Ut relevet miserum fatum solitósque labores but they sing so long that they forget not their sorrow onely but their vertue also and their Religion and there are some men that fall into drunkennesse because they would forget a lighter calamity running into the fire to cure a calenture and beating their brains out to be quit of the aking of their heads A mans heavynesse is refreshed long before he comes to drunkennesse for when he arrives thither he hath but chang'd his heavynesse and taken a crime to boot 5. Even when a man hath no necessity upon him no pungent sorrow or naturall or artificiall necessity it is lawfull in some cases of eating and drinking to receive pleasure and intend it For whatsoever is naturall and necessary is therefore not criminall because it is of Gods procuring and since we eate for need and the satisfaction of our need is a removing of a pain and that in nature is the greatest pleasure it is impossible that in its own nature it should be a sin But in this case of Conscience these cautions are to be observed 1. So long as nature ministers the pleasure and not art it is materially innocent Si tuo veniat jure luxuria est But it is safe while it enters upon natures stock for it is impossible that the proper effect of health and temperance and prudent abstinence should be vicious and yet these are the parents of the greatest pleasure in eating and drinking Malum panem expecta bonus siet etiam illum tenerum tibi siligineum fames reddet If you abstaine and be hungry you shall turne the meanest provision into delicate and desireable 2. Let all the pleasure of meat and drink be such as can minister to health and be within the former bounds For since pleasure in eating and drinking is its naturall appendage and like a shadow follows the substance as the meat is to be accounted so is the pleasure and if these be observed there is no difference whether nature or art be the Cook For some constitutions and some mens customes and some mens educations and necessities and weaknesses are such that their appetite is to be invited and their digestion helped but all this while we are within the bounds of nature and need 3. It is lawfull when a man needs meat to choose the pleasanter even meerly for their pleasures that is because they are pleasant besides that they are usefull this is as lawfull as to smell of a rose or to lye in feathers or change the posture of our body in bed for ease or to hear musick or to walk in gardens rather then the high-wayes and God hath given us leave to be delighted in those things which he made to that purpose that we may also be delighted in him that gives them For so as the more pleasant may better serve for health and directly to refreshment so collaterally to Religion Alwayes provided that it be in its degree moderate and we temperate in our desires without transportation and violence without unhandsome usages of our selves or taking from God and from Religion any minutes and portions of our affections When Eicadastes the Epicure saw a goodly dish of hot meat serv'd up he sung the verse of Homer 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and swallowed some of it greedily till by its hands of fire it curled his stomach like parchment in the flame and he was carryed from his banquet to his grave Non poterat letho nobiliore mori It was fit he should dye such a death but that death bids us beware of that folly 4. Let the pleasure as it came with the meat so also passe away with it Philoxenus was a beast 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 he wisht his throat as long as a Cranes that he might be long in swallowing his pleasant morsels Moeret quòd magna pars felicitat is exclusa esset corporis angustiis he mourned because the pleasure of eating was not spread over all his body that he might have been an Epicure in his hands and indeed if we consider it rightly great eating and drinking is not the greatest pleasure of the taste but of the touch and Philoxenus might feel the unctious juyce slide softly down his throat but he could not taste it in the middle of the long neck and we see that they who mean to feast exactly or delight the palate do libare or pitissare take up little proportions and spread them upon the tongue or palate but full morsells and great draughts are easie and soft to the touch but so is the feeling of silke or handling of a melon or a moles skin and as delicious too as eating when it goes beyond the appetites of nature and the proper pleasures of taste which cannot be perceived but by a temperate man And therefore let not the pleasure be intended beyond the taste that is beyond those little naturall measures in which God intended that pleasure should accompany your tables Doe not run to it beforehand nor chew the chud when the meal is done delight not in the fancies and expectations and remembrances of a pleasant meal but let it descend in latrinam together with the meals whose attendant pleasure is 5. Let pleasure be the lesse principall and used as a servant it may be modest and prudent to strew the dish with Sugar or to dip thy bread in vinegar but to make thy meal of sauces and to make the accessory become the principall and pleasure to rule the table and all the regions of thy soule is to make a man lesse and lower then an Oglio of a cheaper value then a Turbat a servant and a worshipper of sauces and cookes and pleasure and folly 6. Let pleasure as it is used in the regions and limits of nature and prudence so also be changed into religion and thankfulnesse Turtures cum bibunt non resupinant colla say Naturalists Turtles when they drink lift not up their bills and if we swallow our pleasures without returning the honour and the acknowledegment to God that gave them we may largè bibere jumentorum modo drink draughts as large as an Oxe but we shall die like an Oxe and change our meats and drinks into eternall rottennesse In all Religions it hath been permitted to enlarge our Tables in the days of sacrifices and religious festivity Qui Veientarum festis potare diebus Campanâ solitus trullâ vappámque profestis For then the body may rejoyce in fellowship with the soule and then a pleasant meal is religious if it be not inordinate But
passes the time with incogitancy and hates the imployment and suffers the torments of prayers which he loves not and all this although for so doing it is certain he may perish what fruit what deliciousnesse can he fancy in being weary of his prayers There is no pretence or colour for these things Can any man imagine a greater evill to the body and soul of a man then madnesse and furious eyes and a distracted look palenesse with passion and trembling hands and knees and furiousnesse and folly in the heart and head and yet this is the pleasure of anger and for this pleasure men choose damnation But it is a great truth that there are but very few sins that pretend to pleasure although a man be weak and soon deceived and the Devill is crafty and sin is false and impudent and pretences are too many yet most kinds of sins are reall and prime troubles to the very body without all manner of deliciousnesse even to the sensuall naturall and carnall part and a man must put on something of a Devill before he can choose such sins and he must love mischief because it is a sin for in most instances there is no other reason in the world Nothing pretends to pleasure but the lusts of the lower belly ambition and revenge and although the catalogue of sins is numerous as the production of fishes yet these three only can be apt to cousen us with a fair outside and yet upon the survey of what fruits they bring and what taste they have in the manducation besides the filthy relish they leave behind we shall see how miserably they are abused and fool'd that expend any thing upon such purchases 2. For a man cannot take pleasure in lusts of the flesh in gluttony or drunkennesse unlesse he be helped forward with inconsideration and folly For we see it evidently that grave and wise persons men of experience and consideration are extremely lesse affected with lust and loves the hare-brain'd boy the young gentleman that thinks nothing in the world greater then to be free from a Tutor he indeed courts his folly and enters into the possession of lust without abatement consideration dwels not there but when a sober man meets with a temptation and is helped by his naturall temper or invited by his course of life if he can consider he hath so many objections and fears so many difficulties and impediments such sharp reasonings and sharper jealousies concerning its event that if he does at all enter into folly it pleases him so little that he is forced to do it in despite of himself and the pleasure is so allayed that he knowes not whether it be wine or vinegar his very apprehension and instruments of relish are fill'd with fear and contradicting principles and the deliciousnesse does but affricare cutem it went but to the skin but the allay went further it kept a guard within and suffered the pleasure to passe no further A man must resolve to be a fool a rash inconsiderate person or he will feel but little satisfaction in the enjoyment of his sin indeed he that stops his nose may drink down such corrupted waters and he understood it well who chose rather to be a fool Dum mala delectent mea me vel denique fallant Quà m sapere ringi so that his sins might delight him or deceive him then to be wise and without pleasure in the enjoyment So that in effect a man must lose his discerning faculties before he discerns the little phantastick joyes of his concupiscence which demonstrates how vain how empty of pleasure that is that is beholding to folly and illusion to a jugling and a plain cousenage before it can be fancyed to be pleasant For it is a strange beauty that he that hath the best eyes cannot perceive and none but the blinde or blear-ey'd people can see and such is the pleasure of lust which by every degree of wisdome that a man hath is lessened and undervalued 3. For the pleasures of intemperance they are nothing but the reliques and images of pleasure after that nature hath been feasted For so long as she needs that is so long as temperance waits so long pleasure also stands there But as temperance begins to go away having done the ministeries of Nature every morsell and every new goblet is still lesse delicious and cannot be endured but as men force nature by violence to stay longer then she would How have some men rejoyced when they have escaped a cup and when they cannot escape they pour it in and receive it with as much pleasure as the old women have in the Lapland dances they dance the round but there is a horror and a harshnesse in the Musick and they call it pleasure because men bid them do so but there is a Devill in the company and such as is his pleasure such is theirs he rejoyces in he thriving sin and the swelling fortune of his darling drunkennesse but his joyes are the joyes of him that knowes and alwayes remembers that he shall infallibly have the biggest damnation and then let it be considered how forc'd a joy that is that is at the end of an intemperate feast Non benè mendaci risus componitur ore Nec benè sollicitis ebria verba sonant Certain it is intemperance takes but natures leavings when the belly is full and nature cals to take away the pleasure that comes in afterwards is next to loathing it is like the relish and taste of meats at the end of the third course or the sweetnesse of honey to him that hath eaten til he can endure to take no more and in this there is no other difference of these men from them that die upon another cause then was observed among the Phalangia of old 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 some of these serpents make men die laughing and some to die weeping so does the intemperate and so does his brother that languishes of a consumption this man dies weeping and the other dies laughing but they both die infallibly and all his pleasure is nothing but the sting of a serpent immixte liventia mella veneno it wounds the heart and he dies with a Tarantula dancing and singing till he bowes his neck and kisses his bosome with the fatall noddings and declensions of death 4. In these pretenders to pleasure which you see are but few and they not very prosperous in their pretences there is mingled so much trouble to bring them to act and injoyment that the appetite is above half tired before it comes It is necessary a man should be hugely patient that is ambitious Ambulare per Britannos Scythicas pati pruinas no man buy 's death and damnation at so dear a rate as he that fights for it and endures cold and hunger Patiens liminis atque solis The heat of the sun and the cold of the threshold the dangers of war and the snares of a crafty enemy he lies
obsence is a torment and the enjoyment does not satisfie but disables the instrument and tires the faculty and when a man hath but a little of what his sense covets he is not contented but impatient for more and when he hath loads of it he does not feel it for he that swallowes a full goblet does not taste his wine and this is the pleasure of the sense nothing contents it but that which he cannot perceive and it is alwaies restlesse till he be weary and all the way unpleased till it can feel no pleasure and that which is the instrument of sense is the means of its torment by the faculty by which it tasts by the same it is afflicted for so long as it can taste it is tormented with desire and when it can desire no longer it cannot feel pleasure 7. Sin hath little or no pleasure in its very injoyment because its very manner of entry and production is by a curse and a contradiction it comes into the world like a viper through the sides of its mother by means unnaturall violent and monstrous Men love sin only because it is forbidden Sin took occasion by the Law saith St. Paul it could not come in upon its own pretences but men rather suspect a secret pleasure in it because there are guards kept upon it Sed quia caecus inest vitiis amor omne futurum Despicitur suadéntque brevem praesentia fructum Et ruit in vetitum damni secura libido Men run into sin with blinde affections and against all reason despise the future hoping for some little pleasure for the present and all this is only because they are forbidden Do not many men sin out of spight some out of the spirit of disobedience some by wildenesse and indetermination some by impudence and because they are taken in a fault Frontémque à crimine sumunt Some because they are reproved many by custome others by importunity Ordo fuit crevisse malis It grows upon crab-stocks and the lust it self is sowre and unwholesome and since it is evident that very many sins come in wholly upon these accounts such persons and such sins cannot pretend pleasure but as Naturalists say of pulse cum maledictis probris serendum praecipiunt ut laetiùs porvemat the countrey people were used to curse it and rail upon it all the while that it was sowing that it might thrive the better t is true with sins they grow up with curses with spite and contradiction peevishnesse and indignation pride and cursed principles and therefore pleasure ought not to be the inscription of the box for that 's the least part of its ingredient and constitution 8. The pleasures in the very enjoying of sin are infinitely trifling and inconsiderable because they passe away so quickly if they be in themselves little they are made lesse by their volatile and fugitive nature But if they were great then their being so transient does not only lessen the delight but changes it into a torment and loads the spirit of the sinner with impatience and indignation Is it not a high upbraiding to the watchfull adulterer that after he hath contriv'd the stages of his sin and tyed many circumstances together with arts and labour and these joyn and stand knit and solid only by contingency and are very often born away with the impetuous torrent of an inevitable accident like Xerxes bridge over the Hellespont and then he is to begin again and sets new wheels a going and by the arts and the labour and the watchings and the importunity and the violence and the unwearied study and indefatigable diligence of many moneths he enters upon possession and finds them not of so long abode as one of his cares which in so vast numbers made so great a portion of his life afflicted 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The enjoying of sin for a season St. Paul cals it he names no pleasures our English translation uses the word of enjoying pleasures but if there were any they were but for that season that instant that very transition of the act which dies in its very birth and of which we can only say as the minstrell sung of Pacuvius when he was carryed dead from his supper to his bed 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 A man can scarce have time enough to say it is alive but that it was nullo non se die extulit it died every day it lived never unto life but lived and dyed unto death being its mother and its daughter The man dyed before the sin did live and when it had lived it consign'd him to dye eternally Adde to this that it so passes away that nothing at all remains behind it that is pleasant it is like the path of an arrow in the air the next morning no man can tell what is become of the pleasures of the last nights sin they are no where but in Gods books deposited in the conscience and sealed up against the day of dreadfull accounts but as to the man they are as if they never had been and then let it be considered what a horrible aggravation it will be to the miseries of damnation that a man shall for ever perish for that which if he looks round about he cannot see nor tell where it is He that dies dies for that which is not and in the very little present be findes it an unrewarding interest to walk seven dayes together over sharp stones only to see a place from whence he must come back in an hour If it goes off presently it is not worth the labour ifit stayes long it growes tedious so that it cannot be pleasant if it stayes and if it does stay it is not to be valued Haec mala mentis gaudia It abides too little a while to be felt or called pleasure and ifit should abide longer it would be troublesome as pain and loath'd like the tedious speech of an Orator pleading against the life of the innocent 9. Sin hath in its best advantages but a trifling inconsiderable pleasure because not only God and reason conscience and honour interest and lawes do sowre it in the sense and gust of pleasure but even the devill himself either being over-ruled by God or by a strange unsignificant malice makes it troublesome and intricate intangled and involv'd and one sin contradicts another and vexes the man with so great variety of evils that if in the course of Gods service he should meet with half the difficulty he would certainly give over the whole imployment Those that St. James speaks of who prayed that they might spend it upon their lusts were covetous and prodigall and therefore must endure the torments of one to have the pleasure of another and which is greater the pleasure of spending or the displeasure that it is spent and does not still remain after its consumption is easie to tell certain it is that this lasts much longer Does not the Devill often tempt men to
we have the Spirit S. John spake a hard saying but by the spirit of manifestation we are also taught to understand it Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin for his seed remaineth in him and he cannot sin because he is born of God The seed of God is the spirit which hath a plastic power to efform us in similitudinem filiorum Dei into the image of the sons of God and as long as this remains in us while the Spirit dwels in us We cannot sin that is it is against our natures our reformed natures to sin And as we say we cannot endure such a potion we cannot suffer such a pain that is we cannot without great trouble we cannot without doing violence to our nature so all spirituall men all that are born of God and the seed of God remains in them they cannot sin cannot without trouble and doing against our natures and their most passionate inclinations A man if you speak naturally can masticate gums and he can break his own legs and he can sip up by little draughts mixtures of Aloes and Rhubarb of Henbane or the deadly Nightshade but he cannot do this naturally or willingly cheerfully or with delight Every sin is against a good mans nature he is ill at case when he hath missed his usual prayers he is amazâ—d if he have fallen into an errour he is infinitely ashamed of his imprudence he remembers a sin as he thinks of an enemy or the horrors of a midnight apparition for all his capacities his understanding and his choosing faculties are filled up with the opinion and perswasions with the love and with the desires of God and this I say is the Great benefit of the Spirit which God hath given to us as an antidote against worldly pleasures And therefore S. Paul joynes them as consequent to each other For it is impossible for those who were once enlightned and have tasted of the heavenly gift and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the world to come c. First we are enlightned in Baptisme and by the Spirit of manifestation the revelations of the Gospel then we relish and taste interiour excellencies and we receive the Holy Ghost the Spirit of confirmation and he gives us a taste of the powers of the world to come that is of the great efficacy that is in the Article of eternall life to perswade us to religion and holy living then we feel that as the belief of that Article dwels upon our understanding and is incorporated into our wils and choice so we grow powerfull to resist sin by the strengths of the Spirit to defie all carnall pleasure and to suppresse and mortifie it by the powers of this Article those are the powers of the world to come 2. The Spirit of God is given to all who truly belong to Christ as an anidote against sorrows against impatience against the evil accidents of the world and against the oppression and sinking of our spirits under the crosse There are in Scripture noted two births besides the naturall to which also by analogy we may adde a third The first is to be born of water and the Spirit It is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 one thing signified by a divided appellative by two substantives water and the Spirit that is Spiritus aqueus the Spirit moving upon the waters of Baptisme The second is to be born of Spirit and fire for so Christ was promised to baptize us with the Holy Ghost and with fire that is cum spiritu igneo with a fiery spirit the Spirit as it descended in Pentecost in the shape of fiery tongues And as the watry spirit washed away the sins of the Church so the spirit of fire enkindles charity and the love of God 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 sayes Plutarch the Spirit is the same under both the titles and it enables the Church with gifts and graces And from these there is another operation of the new birth but the same Spirit the spirit of rejoycing or spiritus exultans spiritus laetitiae Now the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in beleeving that ye may abound in hope through the power of the Holy Ghost There is a certain joy and spirituall rejoycing that accompanies them in whom the Holy Ghost doth dwell a joy in the midst of sorrow a joy given to allay the sorrows of saecular troubles and to alleviate the burden of persecution This S. Paul notes to this purpose And ye became followers of us and of the Lord having received the word in much affliction with joy of the Holy Ghost Worldly afflictions and spirituall joyes may very well dwell together and if God did not supply us out of his storehouses the sorrows of this world would be mere and unmixt and the troubles of persecution would be too great for naturall confidences For who shall make him recompence that lost his life in a Duel fought about a draught of wine or a cheaper woman What arguments shall invite a man to suffer torments in testimony of a proposition of naturall Philosophy And by what instruments shall we comfort a man who is sick and poor and disgrac'd and vitious and lies cursing and despairs of any thing hereafter That mans condition proclaims what it is to want the Spirit of God the Spirit of comfort Now this Spirit of comfort is the hope and confidence the certain expectation of partaking in the inheritance of Jesus This is the faith and patience of the Saints this is the refreshment of all wearied travellers the cordiall of all languishing sinners the support of the scrupulous the guide of the doubtfull the anchor of timorous and fluctuating souls the confidence and the staff of the penitent He that is deprived of his whole estate for a good conscience by the Spirit he meets this comfort that he shall finde it again with advantage in the day of restitution and this comfort was so manifest in the first dayes of Christianity that it was no infrequent thing to see holy persons court a Martyrdom with a fondnesse as great as is our impatience and timorousnesse in every persecution Till the Spirit of God comes upon us we are 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 inopis nos atque pusilli finxerunt animi we have little souls little faith and as little patience we fall at every stumbling block and sink under every temptation and our hearts fail us and we die for fear of death and lose our souls to preserve our estates or our persons till the Spirit of God fills us with joy in beleeving and a man that is in a great joy cares not for any trouble that is lesse then his joy and God hath taken so great care to secure this to us that he hath turn'd it into a precept Rejoyce evermore and Rejoyce in the Lord always and again I say rejoyce But this
as Churches use to remove the accursed thing from sticking to the communities of the faithful and the sins of Christians from being required of the whole Congregation by excommunicating and censuring the delinquent persons so the Heires and sons of families are to 〈◊〉 from their house the curse descending from their Fathers 〈◊〉 by 1. Acts of disavowing the sins of their Ancestors 2. By praying for pardon 3. by being humbled for them 4. By renouncing the example and 5. Quitting the affection to the crimes 6. By not imitaing the actions in Kinde or in semblance and similitude and lastly 7. By refusing to rejoyce in the ungodly purchases in which their Fathers did amisse and dealt wickedly Secondly But after all this many cases do occur in which we finde that innocent sons are pâ—â—istied The remedies I have already discoursed of are for such children who have in some manner or other contracted and derived the sin upon themselves But if we inquire how those sons who have no 〈◊〉 or affinity with their fathers sins or whose fathers sins were so transient that no benefit or effect did passe upon their posterity how they may prevent or take off the curse that lyes upon the family for their Fathers faults this will have some distinct considerations 1. The pious children of evil Parents are to stand firme upon the confidence of the Divine grace and mercy and upon that persuasion to begin to work upon a new stock For it is as certain that he may derive a blessing upon his Posterity as that this Parents could transmit a curse and if any man by piety shall procure Gods favour to his Relatives and children it is certain that he hath done more then to escape the punishment of his Fathers follies If sin doth abound and evils by sin are derived from his Parents much more shall grace super abound and mercy by grace If he was in danger from the crimes of others much rather shall he be secured by his own piety For if God punishes the sins of the fathers to four generations yet he rewards the piety of fathers to ten to hundreds and to thousands Many of the Ancestors of Abraham were persons not noted for religion but suffered in the publike impiety and almost universal idolatry of their ages and yet all the evils that could thence descend upon the family were wiped off and God began to reckon with Abraham upon a new stock of blessings and piety and he was under God the Original of so great a blessing that his family for 1500. years together had from him a title to many favours and what ever evils did chance to them in the descending ages were but single evils in respect of that treasure of mercies which the fathers piety had obtained to the whole nation And it is remarkable to observe how blessings did stick to them for their fathers sakes even whether they would or no. For first his Grand-childe Esau proved a naughty man and he lost the great blessing which was in tailed upon the family but he got not a curse but a lesse blessing and yet because he lost the greater blessing God excluded him from being reckoned in the elder time for God foreseeing the event so ordered it that he should first lose his birth-right and then lose the blessing for it was to be certain the family must be reckoned for prosperous in the proper line and yet God blessed Esau into a great Nation and made him the Father of many Princes Now the line of blessing being reckoned in Jacob God blessed his family strangely and by miracle for almost five generations he brought them from Egypt by mighty signes and wonders and when for sin they all died in their way to Canaan two onely excepted God so ordered it that they were all reckoned as single deaths the Nation still descending like a river whose waters were drunk up for the beauvrage of an army but still it keeps its name and current and the waters are supplied by showers and springs and providence After this iniquity still increased and then God struck deeper and spread curses upon whole families he translated the Priesthood from line to line he removed the Kingome from one family to another and still they sinned worse and then we read that God smote almost a whole tribe the tribe of Benjmin was almost extinguished about the matter of the Levites Concubine but still God remembred his promise which he made with their forefathers and that breach was made up After this we finde a greater rupture made and ten tribes fell into idolatry and ten tribes were carried captives into Assyria and never came again But still God remembred his covenant with Abraham and left two Tribes but they were restlesse in their provocation of the God of Abraham and they also were carried captive But still God was the God of their fathers and brought them back and placed them safe and they grew again into a Kingdom and should have remained for ever but that they killed one that was greater then Abraham even the Messias and then they were rooted out and the old covenant cast off and God delighted no more to be called the God of Abraham but the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. As long as God kept that relation so long for the fathers sakes they had a title and an inheritance to a blessing for so saith Saint Paul As touching the election they are beloved for the Fathers sakes I did insist the longer upon this instance that I might remonstrate how great and how sure and how persevering mercies a pious Father of a family may derive upon his succeeding generations And if we do but tread in the footsteps of our Father Abraham we shall inherit as certain blessings But then I pray adde these considerations 1. If a great impiety and a clamorous wickednesse hath stained the honour of a family and discomposed its title to the Divine mercies and protection it is not an ordinary piety that can restore this family An ordinary even course of life full of sweetnesse and innocency will secure every single person in his own eternal interest but that piety which must be a spring of blessings and communicative to others that must plead against the sins of their Ancestors and begin a new bank of mercies for the Relatives that must be a great and excellent a very religious state of life A smal pension will maintain a single person but he that hath a numerous family and many to provide for needs a greater providence of God and a bigger provision for their maintenance and a small revenue will not keep up the dignity of a great house especially if it be charged with a great debt And this is the very state of the present question That piety that must be instrumental to take off the curse imminent upon a family to blesse a numerous posterity to secure a fair condition to many ages and to pay the
for us upon that condition and who then shall die again for us to get heaven for us upon easier conditions What would you do if God should command you to kill your eldest son or to work in the mines for a thousand yeers together or to fast all thy life time with bread and water were not heaven a great bargain even after all this and when God requires nothing of us but to live soberly justly and godly which very things of themselves to man are a very great felicity and necessary to his present well-being shall we think this to be a load and an unsufferable burden and that heaven is so little a purchase at that price that God in meer justice will take a death-bed sigh or groan and a few unprofitable tears and promises in exchange for all our duty Strange it should be so but stranger that any man should rely upon such a vanity when from Gods word he hath nothing to warrant such a confidence But these men do like the Tyrant Dionysius who stole from Apollo his golden cloak and gave him a cloak of Arcadian home-spun saying that this was lighter in summer and warmer in winter These men sacrilegiously rob God of the service of all their golden dayes and serve him in their hoary head in their furs and grave clothes and pretend that this late service is more agreeable to the Divine mercy on one side and humane infirmity on the other and so dispute themselves into an irrecoverable condition having no other ground to rely upon a death-bed or late-begun-repentance but because they resolve to enjoy the pleasures of sin and for heaven they will put that to the venture of an after-game These men sow in the flesh and would reap in the spirit live to the Devil and die to God and therefore it is but just in God that their hopes should be desperate and their craft be folly and their condition be the unexpected unfeared inheritance of an eternall sorrow Lastly Our last inquiry is into the time the last or latest time of beginning our repentance Must a man repent a yeer or two or seven yeers or ten or twenty before his death or what is the last period after which all repentance will be untimely and ineffectuall To this captious question I have many things to oppose 1. We have entred into covenant with God to serve him from the day of our Baptisme to the day of our death He hath sworn this oath to us that he would grant unto us that we being delivered from fear of our enemies might serve him without fear in holinesse and righteousnesse before him all the dayes of our life Now although God will not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 forget our infirmities but passe by the weaknesses of an honest a watchfull industrious person yet the Covenant he makes with us is from the day of our first voluntary profession to our grave and according as we by sins retire from our first undertaking so our condition is insecure there is no other Covenant made with us no new beginnings of another period but if we be returned and sin be cancelled and grace be actually obtained then we are in the first condition of pardon but because it is uncertain when a man can have masterd his vices and obtain'd the graces therefore no man can tell any set time when he must begin 2. Scripture describing the duty of repenting sinners names no other time but to day To day if ye will hear his voyce harden not your hearts 3. The duty of a Christian is described in Scripture to be such as requires length of time and a continued industry Let us run with patience the â—ace that is set before us and Consider him that endured such contradiction of sinners against himself lest ye be wearied and faint in your mindes So great a preparation is not for the agony and contention of an hour or a day or a week but for the whole life of a Christian or for great parts of its abode 4. There is a certain period and time set for our repentance and beyond that all our industry is ineffectuall There is a day of visitation our own day and there is a day of visitation that is Gods day This appeared in the case of Jerusalem O Jerusalem Jerusalem if thou hadst known the time of thy visitation at least in this thy day Well! they neglected it and then there was a time of Gods visitation which was his day called in Scripture the day of the Lord and because they had neglected their own day they fell into inevitable ruine No repentance could have prevented their finall ruine And this which was true in a Nation is also clearly affirmed true in the case of single persons Look diligently lest any fail of the grace of God lest there be any person among you as Esau who sold his birth-right and afterwards when he would have inherited the blessing he was rejected for he found no place for his repentance though he sought it carefully with tears Esau had time enough to repent his bargain as long as he lived he wept sorely for his folly and carefulnesse sate heavy upon his soul and yet he was not heard nor his repentance accepted for the time was past And take heed saith the Apostle lest it come to passe to any of you to be in the same case Now if ever there be a time in which repentance is too late it must be the time of our death-bed and the last time of our life And after a man is fallen into the displeasure of Almighty God the longer he lies in his sin without repentance and emendation the greater is his danger and the more of his allowed time is spent and no man can antecedently or before-hand be sure that the time of his repentance is not past and those who neglect the call of God and refuse to hear him call in the day of grace God will laugh at them when their calamity comes they shall call and the Lord shall not hear them * And this was the case of the five foolish virgins when the arrest of death surprized them they discovered their want of oil they were troubled at it they beg'd oil they were refused they did something towards the proouring of the oil of grace for they went out to buy oil and after all this stir the bridegroom came before they had finished their journey and they were shut out from the communion of the bridegrooms joyes Therefore concerning the time of beginning to repent no man is certain but he that hath done his work Mortem venientem nemo hilaris excipit nisi qui se ad eam diù composuerat said Seneca He onely dies cheerfully who stood waiting for death in a ready dresse of a long preceding preparation He that repents to day repents late enough that he did not begin yesterday But he that puts it off till to morrow is
direct action And therefore we may also as well be sorrowfull the third time for want of the just measure or hearty meaning of the second sorrow as be sorrowfull the second time for want of true sorrow at the first and so on to infinite And we shall never be secure in this Artifice if we be not certain of our naturall and hearty passion in our direct and first apprehensions Thus many persons think themselves in a good estate and make no question of their salvation being confident onely because they are confident and they are so because they are bidden to be so and yet they are not confident at all but extreamly timerous and fearfull How many persons are there in the world that say they are sure of their salvation and yet they dare not die And if any man pretends that he is now sure he shall be saved and that he cannot fall away from grace there is no better way to confute him then by advising him to send for the Surgeon and bleed to death For what should hinder him not the sin for it cannot take him from Gods favour not the change of his condition for he sayes he is sure to go to a Better why does he not then say 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 like the Romane gallants when they decreed to die The reason is plainly this They say they are confident and yet are extreamly timerous they professe to beleeve that Doctrine and yet dare not trust it nay they think they beleeve but they do not so false is a mans heart so deceived in its own Acts so great a stranger to its own sentence and opinions 3. The heart is deceitfull in its own resolutions and purposes for many times men make their resolutions onely in their understanding not in their wills they resolve it sitting to be done not decree that they will do it And instead of beginning to be reconciled to God by the renewed and hearty purposes of holy living they are advanced so far onely as to be convinced and apt to be condemned by their own sentence But suppose our resolutions advanced further and that our Will and Choices also are determined see how our hearts deceive us 1. We resolve against those sins that please us not or where temptation is not present and think by an over-acted zeal against some sins to get an indulgence for some others There are some persons who will be Drunk The Company or the discourse or the pleasure of madnesse or an easie nature and a thirsty soul something is amisse that cannot be helped But they will make amends and the next day pray twice as much Or it may be they must satisfie a beastly lust but they will not be drunk for all the world and hope by their Temperance to Commute for their want of Chastity But they attend not the eraft of their secret enemy their Heart for it is not love of the vertue if it were they would love Vertue in all its Instances for Chastity is as much a vertue as Temperance and God hates Lust as much as he hates Drunkennesse But this sin is against my health or it may be it is against my lust it makes me impotent and yet impatient full of desire and empty of strength Or else I do an act of Prayer lest my conscience become unquiet while it is not satisfied or cozened with some intervals of Religion I shall think my self a damned wretch if I do nothing for my soul but if I do I shall call the one sin that remains nothing but my Infirmity and therefore it is my excuse and my Prayer is not my Religion but my Peace and my Pretence and my Fallacy 2. We resolve against our sin that is we will not act it in those circumstances as formerly I will not be drunk in the streets but I may sleep till I be recovered and then come forth sober or if I be overtaken it shall be in Civill and Gentile company Or it may be not so much I will leave my intemperance and my Lust too but I will remember it with pleasure I will revolve the past action in my minde and entertain my fancy with a moros delectation in it and by a fiction of imagination will represent it present and so be satisfied with a little effeminacy or phantastick pleasure Beloved suffer not your hearts so to cozen you as if any man can be faithfull in much that is faithlesse in a little He certainly is very much in love with sin and parts with it very unwillingly that keeps its Picture and wears its Favour and delights in the fancy of it even with the same desire as a most passionate widow parts with her dearest husband even when she can no longer enjoy him But certainly her staring all day upon his picture and weeping over his Robe and wringing her hands over his children are no great signes that she hated him And just so do most men hate and accordingly part with their sins 3. We resolve against it when the opportunity is slipped and lay it aside as long as the temptation please even till it come again and no longer How many men are there in the world that against every Communion renew their vowes of holy living Men that for twenty for thirty yeers together have been perpetually resolving against what they daily Act and sure enough they did beleeve themselves And yet if a man had daily promised us a curtesie and failed us but ten times when it was in his power to have done it we should think we had reason never to beleeve him more And can we then reasonably beleeve the resolutions of our hearts which they have falsified so many hundred times We resolve against a religious Time because then it is the Custome of men and the Guise of the Religion Or we resolve when we are in a great danger and then we promise any thing possible or impossible likely or unlikely all is one to us we onely care to remove the present pressure and when that is over and our fear is gone and no love remaining our condition being returned to our first securities our resolutions also revert to their first indifferencies Or else we cannot look a temptation in the face and we resolve against it hoping never to be troubled with its arguments and importunity Epictetus tells us of a Gentleman returning from banishment in his journey towards home called at his house told a sad story of an Imprudent life the greatest part of which being now spent he was resolved for the future to live Philosophically and entertain no businesse to be candidate for no employment not to go to the Court not to salute Caesar with ambitious attendancies but to study and worship the gods and die willingly when nature or necessity called him It may be this man beleeved himself but Epictetus did not And he had reason For 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Letters from Caesar met him at the doors
before Reason and their understandings were abused in the choice of a temporall before an intellectuall and eternall good But they alwayes concluded that the Will of man must of necessity follow the last dictate of the understanding declaring an object to be good in one sence or other Happy men they were that were so Innocent that knew no pure and perfect malice and lived in an Age in which it was not easie to confute them But besides that now the wells of a deeper iniquity are discovered we see by too sad experience that there are some sins proceeding from the heart of man which have nothing but simple and unmingled malice Actions of meer spite doing evil because it is evil sinning without sensuall pleasures sinning with sensuall pain with hazard of our lives with actuall torment and sudden deaths and certain and present damnation sins against the Holy Ghost open hostilities and professed enmities against God and all vertue I can go no further because there is not in the world or in the nature of things a greater Evil. And that is the Nature and Folly of the Devil he tempts men to ruine and hates God and onely hurts himself and those he tempts and does himself no pleasure and some say he increases his own accidentall torment Although I can say nothing greater yet I had many more things to say if the time would have permitted me to represent the Falsenesse and Basenesse of the Heart 1. We are false our selves and dare not trust God 2. We love to be deceived and are angry if we be told so 3. We love to seem vertuous and yet hate to be so 4. We are melancholy and impatient and we know not why 5. We are troubled at little things and are carelesse of greater 6. We are overjoyed at a petty accident and despise great and eternall pleasures 7. We beleeve things not for their Reasons and proper Arguments but as they serve our turns be they true or false 8. We long extreamly for things that are forbidden us And what we despise when it is permitted us we snatch at greedily when it is taken from us 9. We love our selves more then we love God and yet we eat poysons daily and feed upon Toads and Vipers and nourish our deadly enemies in our bosome and will not be brought to quit them but brag of our shame and are ashamed of nothing but Vertue which is most honourable 10. We fear to die and yet use all means we can to make Death terrible and dangerous 11. We are busie in the faults of others and negligent of our own 12. We live the life of spies striving to know others and to be unknown our selves 13. We worship and flatter some men and some things because we fear them not because we love them 14. We are ambitious of Greatnesse and covetous of wealth and all that we get by it is that we are more beautifully tempted and a troop of Clients run to us as to a Pool whom first they trouble and then draw dry 15. We make our selves unsafe by committing wickednesse and then we adde more wickednesse to make us safe and beyond punishment 16. We are more servile for one curtesie that we hope for then for twenty that we have received 17. We entertain slanderers and without choice spread their calumnies and we hugg flatterers and know they abuse us And if I should gather the abuses and impieties and deceptions of the Heart as Chrysippus did the oracular Lies of Apollo into a Table I fear they would seem Remedilesse and beyond the cure of watchfulnesse and Religion Indeed they are Great and Many But the Grace of God is Greater and if Iniquity abounds then doth Grace superabound and that 's our Comfort and our Medicine which we must thus use 1. Let us watch our hearts at every turn 2. Deny it all its Desires that do not directly or by consequence end in godlinesse At no hand be indulgent to its fondnesses and peevish appetites 3. Let us suspect it as an Enemy 4. Trust not to it in any thing 5. But beg the grace of God with perpetuall and importunate prayer that he would be pleased to bring good out of these evils and that he would throw the salutary wood of the Crosse the merits of Christs death and passion into these salt waters and make them healthful and pleasant And in order to the mannaging these advises and acting the purposes of this prayer let us strictly follow a rule and choose a Prudent and faithful guide who may attend our motions and watch our counsels and direct our steps and prepare the way of the Lord and make his paths streight apt and imitable For without great watchfulnesse and earnest devotion and a prudent Guide we shall finde that true in a spiritual sense which Plutarch affirmed of a mans body in the natural that of dead Buls arise Bees from the carcases of horses hornets are produced But the body of man brings forth serpents Our hearts wallowing in their own natural and acquired corruptions will produce nothing but issues of Hell and images of the old serpent the divel for whom is provided the everlasting burning Sermon IX THE FAITH and PATIENCE OF THE SAINTS OR The righteous cause oppressed 1 Peter 4. 17. For the time is come that judgement must begin at the house of God and if it first begin at us what shall the end be of them that obey not the Gospel of God 18. And if the righteous scarcely be saved where shal the ungodly and the sinner appear SO long as the world lived by sense and discourses of natural reason as they were abated with humane infirmities and not at all heightned by the spirit divine revelations So long men took their accounts of good and bad by their being prosperous or unfortunate and amongst the basest and most ignorant of men that onely was accounted honest which was profitable and he onely wise that was rich and that man beloved of God who received from him all that might satisfie their lust their ambition or their revenge Fatis accede deisque colâ— felices miseros fuge sidera terra ut distant flamma maeri sic utile recto But because God sent wise men into the world and they were treated rudely by the world and exercised with evil accidents and this seemed so great a discouragement to vertue that even these wise men were more troubled to reconcile vertue and misery then to reconcile their affections to the suffering God was pleased to enlighten their reason with a little beame of faith or else heightned their reason by wiser principles then those of vulgar understandings and taught them in the clear glasse of faith or the dim perspective of Philosophy to look beyond the cloud and there to spie that there stood glories behinde their curtain to which they could not come but by passing through the cloud and being wet with the dew of heaven and the
waters of affliction And accordding as the world grew more enlightned by faith so it grew more dark with mourning sorrowes God sometimes sent a light of fire and pillar of a cloud and the brightnesse of an angel and the lustre of a star and the sacrament of a rainbowe to guide his people thorough their portion of sorrows and to lead them through troubles to rest But as the Sun of righteousnesse approached towards the chambers of the East and sent the harbingers of light peeping through the curtains of the night and leading on the day of faith and brightest revelation so God sent degrees of trouble upon wise and good men that now in the same degree in the which the world lives by faith and not by sense in the same degree they might be able to live in vertue even while she lived in trouble and not reject so great a beauty because she goes in mourning and hath a black cloud of cypresse drawn before her face literally thus God first entertained their services and allured and prompted on the infirmities of the infant world by temporal prosperity but by degrees changed his method and as men grew stronger in the knowledge of God and the expectations of heaven so they grew weaker in their fortunes more afflicted in their bodies more abated in their expectations more subject to their enemies and were to endure the contradiction of sinners and the immission of the sharpnesses of providence and divine Oeconomy First Adam was placed in a Garden of health and pleasure from which when he fell he was onely tied to enter into the covenant of natural sorrows which he and all his posteritie till the flood run through but in all that period they had the whole wealth of the earth before them they need not fight for empires or places for their cattle to grase in they lived long and felt no want no slavery no tyrannie no war and the evils that happened were single personal and natural and no violences were then done but they were like those things which the law calls rare contingencies for which as the law can now take no care and make no provisions so then there was no law but men lived free and rich and long and they exercised no vertues but natural and knew no felicity but natural and so long their prosperity was just as was their vertue because it was a natural instrument towards all that which they knew of happinesse * But this publick easinesse and quiet the world turned into sin and unlesse God did compel men to do themselves good they would undoe themselves and then God broke in upon them with a flood and destroyed that generation that he might begin the government of the world upon a new stock and binde vertue upon mens spirits by new bands endeared to them by new hopes and fears Then God made new laws and gave to Princes the power of the sword and men might be punshed to death in certain cases and mans life was shortened and slavery was brought into the world and the state of servants and then war began and evils multiplied upon the face of the earth in which it is naturally certain that they that are most violent and injurious prevailed upon the weaker and more innocent and every tyranny that began from Nimrod to this day and every usurper was a peculiar argument to shew that God began to teach the world vertue by suffering and that therefore he suffered Tyrannies and usurpations to be in the world and to be prosperous and the rights of men to be snatched away from the owners that the world might be established in potent and setled governments and the sufferers be taught al the passive vertues of the soul. For so God brings good out of evil turning Tyranny into the benefits of Government and violence into vertue and sufferings into rewards and this was the second change of the world personal miseries were brought in upon Adam and his posterity as a punishment of sin in the first period and in the second publick evils were brought in by tyrants and usurpers and God suffered them as the first elements of vertue men being just newly put to schoole to infant sufferings But all this was not much Christs line was not yet drawn forth it began not to appear in what family the King of sufferings should descend till Abrahams time and therefore till then there were no greater sufferings then what I have now reckoned But when Abrahams family was chosen from among the many nations and began to belong to God by a special right and he was designed to be the Father of the Messias then God found out a new way to trie him even with a sound affliction commanding him to offer his beloved Isaac but this was accepted and being intended by Abraham was not intended by God for this was a type of Christ and therefore was also but a type of sufferings excepting the sufferings of the old periods and the sufferings of nature and accident we see no change made for a long while after but God having established a law in Abrahams family did build it upon promises of health and peace and victory and plenty and riches and so long as they did not prevaricate the law of their God so long they were prosperous but God kept a remnant of Cananites in the land like a rod held over them to vex or to chastise them into obedience in which while they persevered nothing could hurt them and that saying of David needs no other sence but the letter of its own expression I have been young and now am old and yet saw I never the righteous for saken nor his seed begging their bread The godly generally were prosperous and a good cause seldome had an ill end and a good man never died an ill death till the law had spent a great part of its time and it descended towards its declension and period But that the great prince of sufferings might not appear upon his stage of tragedies without some forerunners of sorrow God was pleased to choose out some good men and honour them by making them to become little images of suffering I saiah Jeremy and Zachary were martyrs of the law but these were single deaths Shadrac Meshec and Abednego were thrown into a burning furnace and Daniel into a den of lions and Susanna was accused for adultery but these were but little arrests of the prosperity of the Godly as the time drew neerer that Christ should be manifest so the sufferings grew bigger and more numerous and Antiochus raised up a sharp persecution in the time of the Maccabees in which many passed through the red sea of blood into the bosome of Abraham then Christ came and that was the third period in which the changed method of Gods providence was perfected for Christ was to do his great work by sufferings by sufferings was to enter into blessednesse by his passion he
his tears sweeter then the drops of Mannah or the little pearls of heaven that descended upon mount Hermon weeping in the midst of this triumph over obstinate perishing and maliciour Jerusalem For this Jesus was like the rain-bowe which God set in the clouds as a sacrament to confirm a promise and establish a grace he was half made of the glories of the light and half of the moisture of a cloud in his best dayes he was but half triumph and half sorrow he was sent to tell of his Fathers mercies and that God intended to spare us but appeared not but in the company or in the retinue of a shower and of foul weather But I need not tell that Jesus beloved of God was a suffering person that which concerns this question most is that he made for us a covenant of sufferings His Doctrines were such as expressely and by consequent enjoyne and suppose sufferings and a state of affliction His very promises were sufferings his beatitudes were sufferings his rewards and his arguments to invite men to follow him were onely taken from sufferings in this life and the reward of sufferings hereafter For if we summon up the Commandements of Christ we shall finde humility mortification self-deniall repentance renouncing the world mourning taking up the crosse dying for him patience and poverty to stand in the chiefest rank of Christian precepts and in the direct order to heaven He that will be my Disciple must deny himself and take up his crosse and follow me We must follow him that was crowned with thorns and sorrows him that was drenchd in Cedron nailed upon the Crosse that deserved all good and suffered all evil That is the summe of Christian Religion as it distinguishes from all the Religions of the world To which we may adde the expresse Precept recorded by Saint James Be afflicted and mourn and weep let your laughter be turned into mourning and your joy into weeping You see the Commandements Will you also see the Promises These they are In the world yee shall have tribulation in me ye shall have peace and through many tribulations ye shall enter into heaven and he that loseth father and mother wives and children houses and lands for my Names sake and the Gospel shall receive a hundred fold in this life with persecution that 's part of his reward And he chastiseth every son that he receiveth and if you be exempt from sufferings ye are bastards and not sons These are some of Christs promises will you see some of Christs blessings that he gives his Church Blessed are the poor Blessed are the hungry and thirsty Blessed are they that mourn Blessed are the humble Blessed are the persecuted Of the eight Beatitudes five of them have temporall misery and meannesse or an afflicted condition for their subject Will you at last see some of the reward which Christ hath propounded to his servants to invite them to follow him When I am lifted up I will draw all men after me when Christ is lifted up as Moses lift up the serpent in the wildernesse that is lifted upon the Crosse then he will draw us after him To you it is given for Christ saith Saint Paul when he went to sweeten and to flatter the Philippians Well what is given to them Some great favours surely true It is not onely given that you beleeve in Christ though that be a great matter but also that you suffer for him that 's the highest of your honour And therefore saith Saint James My brethren count it all joy when ye enter into divers temptations And Saint Peter Communicating with the sufferings of Christ rejoyce And Saint James again We count them blessed that have suffered And Saint Paul when he gives his blessing to the Thessalonians he uses this form of prayer Our Lord direct our hearts in the charity of God and in the patience and sufferings of Christ. So that if wee will serve the King of sufferings whose crown was of thorns whose seepter was a reed of scorne whose imperiall robe was a scarlet of mockery whose throne was the Crosse We must serve him in sufferings in poverty of spirit in humility and mortification and for our reward we shall have persecution and all its blessed consequents Atque hoc est esse Christianum Since this was done in the green-tree what might we expect should be done in the dry Let us in the next place consider how God hath treated his Saints and servants and the descending ages of the Gospel That if the best of Gods servants were followers of Jesus in this covenant of sufferings we may not think it strange concerning the fiery tryall as if some new thing had happened to us For as the Gospel was founded in sufferings we shall also see it grow in persecutions and as Christs blood did cement the corner stones and the first foundations So the blood and sweat the groans and sighings the afflictions and mortifications of saints and martyrs did make the super structures and must at last finish the building If I begin with the Apostles who were to perswade the world to become Christian and to use proper Arguments of invitation we shall sinde that they never offered an Argument of temporall prosperity they never promised Empires and thrones on earth nor riches nor temporall power and it would have been soon confuted if they who were whipt and imprisoned banished and scattered persecuted and tormented should have promised Sun-shine dayes to others which they could not to themselves Of all the Apostles there was not one that died a naturall death but onely Saint John and did he escape Yes But he was put into a Cauldron of scalding lead and oyl before the Port Latin in Rome and scaped death by miracle though no miracle was wrought to make him scape the torture And besides this he lived long in banishment and that was worse then Saint Peters chains Sanctus Petrus in vinculis Johannes ante portam latinam were both dayes of Martyrdom and Church Festivals and after a long and laborious life and the affliction of being detained from his crown and his sorrows for the death of his fellow-disciples he dyed full of dayes and sufferings And when Saint Paul was taken into the Apostolate his Commissions were signed in these words I will shew unto him how great things he must suffer for my Name and his whole life was a continuall suffering Quotidiè morior was his Motto I die daily and his lesson that he daily learned was to know Christ Jesus and him crucified and all his joy was to rejoyce in the Crosse of Christ and the changes of his life were nothing but the changes of his sufferings and the variety of his labours For though Christ hath finished his own sufferings for expiation of the world yet there are 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 portions that are behinde of the sufferings of Christ which must
be filled up by his body the Church and happy are they that put in the greatest symbol for in the same measure you are partakers of the sufferings of Christ in the same shall ye be also of the consolation And therefore concerning S. Paul as it was also concerning Christ there is nothing or but very little in Scripture relating to his person and chances of his private life but his labours and persecutions as if the holy Ghost did think nothing fit to stand upon record for Christ but sufferings And now began to work the greatest glory of the divine Providence here was the case of Christianity at stake The world was rich and prosperous learned and full of wise men the Gospel was preached with poverty and persecution in simplicity of discourse and in demonstration of the Spirit God was on one side and the Devil on the other they each of them dressed up their city Babylon upon Earth Jerusalem from above the Devils city was full of pleasure triumphs victories and cruelty good news and great wealth conquest over Kings and making nations tributary They bound Kings in chains and the Nobles with links of iron and the inheritance of the Earth was theirs the Romans were Lords over the greatest parts of the world and God permitted to the Devil the Firmament and increase the wars and the successe of that people giving to him an intire power of disposing the great changes of the world so as might best increase their greatnesse and power and he therefore did it because all the power of the Romane greatnesse was a professed enemy to Christianity and on the other side God was to build up Jerusalem and the kingdom of the Gospel and he chose to build it of hewen stone cut and broken the Apostles he chose for Preachers and they had no learning women and mean people were the first Disciples and they had no power the Devil was to lose his kingdom and he wanted no malice and therefore he stirred up and as well as he could he made active all the power of Rome and all the learning of the Greeks and all the malice of Barbarous people and all the prejudice and the obstinacy of the Jews against this doctrine and institution which preached and promised and brought persecution along with it On the one side there was scandalum crucis on the other patientia sanctorum and what was the event They that had overcome the world could not strangle Christianity But so have I seen the Sun with a little ray of distant light challenge all the power of darknesse and without violence and noise climbing up the hill hath made night so to retire that its memory was lost in the joyes and spritefulnesse of the morning and Christianity without violence or armies without resistance and self-preservation without strength or humane eloquence without challenging of priviledges or fighting against Tyranny without alteration of government and scandall of Princes with its humility and meeknesse with tolerations and patience with obedience and charity with praying and dying did insensibly turn the world into Christian and persecution into victory For Christ who began and lived and died in sorrows perceived his own sufferings to succeed so well and that for suffering death he was crowned with immortality resolved to take all his Disciples and servants to the fellowship of the same suffering that they might have a participation of his glory knowing God had opened no gate of heaven but the narrow gate to which the Crosse was the key and since Christ now being our High Priest in heaven intercedes for us by representing his passion and the dolours of the Crosse that even in glory he might still preserve the mercies of his past sufferings for which the Father did so delight in him he also designes to present us to God dressed in the same robe and treated in the same manner and honoured with the marks of the Lord Jesus He hath predestinated us to be conformable to the image of his Son And if under a head crowned with thorns we bring to God members circled with roses and softnesse and delicacy triumphant members in the militant Church God will reject us he will not know us who are so unlike our elder brother For we are members of the Lamb not of the Lion and of Christs suffering part not of the triumphant part and for three hundred yeers together the Church lived upon blood and was nourished with blood the blood of her own children Thirty three Bishops of Rome in immediate succession were put to violent and unnaturall deaths and so were all the Churches of the East and West built the cause of Christ and of Religion was advanced by the sword but it was the sword of the persecutours not of resisters or warriours They were all baptized into the death of Christ their very profession and institution is to live like him and when he requires it to die for him that is the very formality the life and essence of Christianity This I say lasted for three hundred yeers that the prayers and the backs and the necks of Christians fought against the rods and axes of the persecutours and prevailed till the Countrey and the Cities and the Court it self was filled with Christians And by this time the army of Martyrs was vast and numerous and the number of sufferers blunted the hangmans sword For Christ first triumphed over the princes and powers of the world before he would admit them to serve him he first felt their malice before he would make use of their defence to shew that it was not his necessity that required it but his grace that admitted Kings and Queens to be nurses of the Church And now the Church was at ease and she that sucked the blood of the Martyrs so long began now to suck the milk of Queens Indeed it was a great mercy in appearance and was so intended but it proved not so But then the Holy Ghost in pursuance of the designe of Christ who meant by sufferings to perfect his Church as himself was by the same instrument was pleased now that persecution did cease to inspire the Church with the spirit of mortification and austerity and then they made Colleges of sufferers persons who to secure their inheritance in the world to come did cut off all their portion in this excepting so much of it as was necessary to their present being and by instruments of humility by patience under and a voluntary undertaking of the Crosse the burden of the Lord by self deniall by fastings and sackcloth and pernoctations in prayer they chose then to exercise the active part of the religion mingling it as much as they could with the suffering And indeed it is so glorious a thing to be like Christ to be dressed like the prince of the Catholick church who was so a man of sufferings and to whom a prosperous and unafflicted person is very unlike that in all ages
the servants of God have put on the armour of righteousnesse on the right hand and on the left that is in the sufferings of persecution or the labours of mortification in patience under the rod of God or by election of our own by toleration or self denial by actual martyrdom or by aptnesse or disposition towards it by dying for Christ or suffering for him by being willing to part with all when he calls for it and by parting with what we can for the relief of his poor members For know this there is no state in the Church so serene no days so prosperous in which God does not give to his servants the powers and opportunities of suffering for him not onely they that die for Christ but they that live according to his laws shall finde some lives to part with and many wayes to suffer for Christ. To kill and crucifie the old man and all his lusts to mortifie a beloved sin to fight against temptations to do violence to our bodies to live chastly to suffer affronts patiently to forgive injuries and debts to renounce all prejudice and interest in religion and to choose our side for truthes sake not because it is prosperous but because it pleases God to be charitable beyond our power to reprove our betters with modesty and opennesse to displease men rather then God to be at enmity with the world that you may preserve friendship with God to denie the importunity and troublesome kindnesse of a drinking friend to own truth in despite of danger or scorn to despise shame to refuse worldly pleasure when they tempt your soul beyond duty or safety to take pains in the cause of religion the labour of love and the crossing of your anger peevishnesse and morosity these are the daily sufferings of a Christian and if we performe them well wil have the same reward and an equal smart and greater labour then the plain suffering the hangmans sword This I have discoursed to represent unto you that you cannot be exempted from the similitude of Christs sufferings that God will shut no age nor no man from his portion of the crosse that we cannot fail of the result of this predestination nor without our own fault be excluded from the covenant of sufferings judgement must begin at Gods house and enters first upon the sons and heirs of the kingdom and if it be not by the direct persecution of Tyrants it will be by the persecution of the devil or infirmities of our own flesh But because this was but the secondary meaning of the text I return to make use of all the former discourse 1. Let no Christian man make any judgement concerning his condition or his cause by the external event of things for although in the law of Moses God made with his people a covenant of temporal prosperity and his Saints did binde the kings of the Amorites and the Philistines in chains and their nobles with links of iron and then that was the honour which all his Saints had yet in Christ Jesus he made a covenant of sufferings most of the graces of Christianity are suffering graces and God hath predestinated us to sufferings and we are baptised into suffering and our very communions are symbols of our duty by being the sacrament of Christs death and passion and Christ foretold to us tribulation and promised onely that he would be with us in tribulation that he would give us his spirit to assist us at tribunals and his grace to despise the world and to contemn riches and boldnesse to confesse every article of the Christian faith in the face of armies and armed tyrants and he also promised that all things should work together for the best to his servants that is he would out of the eater bring meat and out of the strong issue sweetnesse and crowns and scepters should spring from crosses and that the crosse it self should stand upon the globes and scepters of Princes but he never promised to his servants that they should pursue Kings and destroy armies that they should reign over the nations and promote the cause of Jesus Christ by breaking his commandments The shield of faith and the sword of the spirit the armour of righteousnesse and the weapons of spiritual warfare these are they by which christianity swelled from a small company and a lesse reputation to possesse the chaires of Doctors and the thrones of princes and the hearts of all men But men in all ages will be tampering with shadows and toyes The Apostles at no hand could endure to hear that Christs kingdom was not of this world and that their Master should die a sad and shameful death though that way he was to receive his crown and enter into glory and after Christs time when his Disciples had taken up the crosse and were marching the Kings high way of sorrows there were a very great many even the generality of Christians for two or three ages together who fell on dreaming that Christ should come and reign upon earth again for a thousand years and then the Saints should reigne in all abundance of temporal power and fortunes but these men were content to stay for it till after the resurrection in the mean time took up their crosse and followed after their Lord the King of sufferings But now adayes we finde a generation of men who have changed the covenant of sufferings into victories and triumphs riches and prosperous chances and reckon their Christianity by their good fortunes as if Christ had promised to his servants no heaven hereafter no spirit in the mean time to refresh their sorrows as if he had enjoyned them no passive graces but as if to be a Christian and to be a Turk were the same thing Mahomet entered and possessed by the sword Christ came by the crosse entered by humility and his saints possesse their souls by patience God was fain to multiply miracles to make Christ capable of being a man of sorrows and shall we think he will work miracles to make us delicate He promised us a glorious portion hereafter to which if all the sufferings of the world were put together they are not worthy to be compared and shall we with Dives choose our portion of good things in this life If Christ suffered so many things onely that he might give us glory shall it be strange that we shall suffer who are to receive this glory It is in vain to think we shall obtain glories at an easier rate then to drink of the brook in the way in which Christ was drenched When the Devil appeared to Saint Martin in a bright splendid shape and said he was Christ he answered Christus non nisi in cruce apparet suis in hac vita And when Saint Ignatius was newly tied in a chain to be led to his martyrdom he cryed out nunc incipio esse Christianus And it was observed by Minutius Felix and was indeed a great and excellent truth omnes
us choose God and let God choose all the rest for us it being indifferent to us whether by poverty or shame by lingring or a sudden death by the hands of a Tyrant Prince or the despised hands of a base usurper or a rebell we receive the crown and do honour to God and to Religion 3. Whoever suffer in a cause of God from the hands of cruell and unreasonable men let them not be too forward to prognosticate evil and death to their enemies but let them solace themselves in the assurance of the divine justice by generall consideration and in particular pray for them that are our persecutours Nebuchadnezzar was the rod in the hand of God against the Tyrians and because he destroyed that city God rewarded him with the spoil of Egypt and it is not alwayes certain that God will be angry with every man by whose hand affliction comes upon us And sometimes two armies have met and fought and the wisest man amongst them could not say that either of the Princes had prevaricated either the lawes of God or of Nations and yet it may be some superstitious easie and half witted people of either side wonder that their enemies live so long And there are very many cases of warre concerning which God hath declared nothing and although in such cases he that yeelds and quits his title rather then his charity and the care of so many lives is the wisest and the best man yet if neither of them will do so let us not decree judgements from heaven in cases where we have no word from heaven and thunder from our Tribunals where no voice of God hath declared the sentence But in such cases where there is an evident tyranny or injustice let us do like the good Samaritan who dressed the wounded man but never pursued the thief let us do charity to the afflicted and bear the crosse with noblenesse and look up to Jesus who endured the crosse and despised the shame but let us not take upon us the office of God who will judge the Nations righteously and when he hath delivered up our bodies will rescue our souls from the hands of unrighteous judges I remember in the story that Plutarch tels concerning the soul of Thespesius that it met with a Prophetick Genius who told him many things that should happen afterwards in the world and the strangest of all was this That there should be a King Qui bonus cum sit tyrannide vitam finiet An excellent Prince and a good man should be put to death by a rebell and usurping power and yet that Prophetick soul could not tell that those rebels should within three yeers die miserable and accursed deaths and in that great prophecy recorded by Saint Paul That in the last dayes perillous times should come and men should be traitours and selvish having forms of godlinesse and creeping into houses yet could not tell us when those men should come to finall shame and ruine onely by a generall signification he gave this signe of comfort to Gods persecuted servants But they shall proceed no further for their folly shall be manifest to all men that is at long running they shall shame themselves and for the elects sake those dayes of evil shall be shortned But you and I may be dead first And therefore onely remember that they that with a credulous heart and a loose tongue are too decretory and enunciative of speedy judgements to their enemies turn their religion into revenge and therefore do beleeve it will be so because they vehemently desire it should be so which all wise and good men ought to suspect as lesse agreeing with that charity which overcomes all the sins and all the evils of the world and sits down and rests in glory 4. Do not trouble your self by thinking how much you are afflicted but consider how much you make of it For reflex acts upon the suffering it self can lead to nothing but to pride or to impatience to temptation or a postacy He that measures the grains and scruples of his persecution will soon sit down and call for ease or for a reward will think the time long or his burden great will be apt to complain of his condition or set a greater value upon his person Look not back upon him that strikes thee but upward to God that supports thee and forward to the crown that is set before thee and then consider if the losse of thy estate hath taught thee to despise the world whether thy poor fortune hath made thee poor in spirit and if thy uneasie prison sets thy soul at liberty and knocks off the fetters of a worse captivity For then the rod of suffering turns into crowns and scepters when every suffering is a precept and every change of condition produces a holy resolution and the state of sorrows makes the resolution actuall and habituall permanent and persevering For as the silk-worm eateth it self out of a seed to become a little worm and there feeding on the leaves of mulberies it grows till its coat be off and then works it self into a house of silk then casting its pearly seeds for the young to breed it leaveth its silk for man and dieth all white and winged in the shape of a flying creature So it the progresse of souls when they are regenerate by Baptisme and have cast off their first stains and the skin of world 〈…〉 by feeding on the leaves of Scriptures and the fruits of 〈…〉 and the joyes of the Sacrament they incircle themselves in the rich garments of holy and vertuous habits then by leaving their blood which is the Churches seed to raise up a new generation to God they leave a blessed memory and fair example and are themselves turned into Angels whose felicity is to do the will of God as their imployments was in this world to suffer it fiat voluntas tua is our daily prayer and that is of a passive signification thy will be done upon us and if from thence also we translate it into an active sence and by suffering evils increase in our aptnesses to do well we have done the work of Christians and shall receive the reward of Martyrs 5. Let our suffering be entertained by a direct election not by collateral ayds and phantastick assistances It is a good refreshment to a weak spirit to suffer in good company and so Phocion encouraged a timerous Greek condemned to die and he bid him be confident because that he was to die with Phocion and when 40 Martyrs in Cappadocia suffered and that a souldier standing by came and supplyed the place of the one Apostate who fell from his crown being overcome with pain it added warmth to the frozen confessors and turnd them into consummate Martyrs But if martyrdom were but a phantastick thing or relyed upon vain accidents and irregular chances it were then very necessary to be assisted by images of things and any thing lesse then the
to a taverne not to refresh their needs of nature or for ends of a tolerable civility or innocent purposes but like the condemned persons among the Levantines they tasted wine freely that they might die and be insensible I could easily reprove such persons with an old Greek proverb mentioned by Plutarch 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 You shall ill be cured of the knotted Gout if you have nothing else but a wide shoe But this reproof is too gentle for so great a madnesse it is not onely an incompetent cure to apply the plaister of a sin or vanity to cure the smart of a divine judgement but it is a great increaser of the misery by swelling the cause to bigger and monstrous proportions It is just as if an impatient fool feeling the smart of his medicine shall tear his wounds open and throw away the instruments of his cure because they bring him health at the charge of a little pain 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 He that is full of stripes and troubles and decked round about with thorns he is neer to God But he that because he sits uneasily when he sits neer the King that was crowned with thorns shall remove thence or strew flowers roses and Jessamine the downe of thistles and the softest Gossamere that he may die without pain die quietly and like a lamb sink to the bottom of hell without noise this man is a fool because he accepts death if it arrest him in civil language is content to die by the sentence of an eloquent Judge and prefers a quiet passage to hell before going to heaven in a storm That Italian Gentleman was certainly a great lover of his sleep who was angry with the lizard that wak't him when a viper was creeping into his mouth when the Devil is entring into us to poison our spirits and steal our souls away while we are sleeping in the lethargy of sin God sends his sharp messages to awaken us and we call that the enemy and use arts to cure the remedy not to cure the disease There are some persons that will never be cured not because the sicknesse is incurable but because they have ill stomacks and cannot keep the medicine Iust so is his case that so despises Gods method of curing him by these instances of long-sufferance that he uses all the arts he can to be quit of his Physitian and to spill his physick and to take cordials as soon as his vomit begins to work There is no more to be said in this affair but to read the poor wretches sentence and to declare his condition As at first when he despised the first great mercies God sent him sharpnesses and sad accidents to ensober his spirits So now that he despises this mercy also the mercy of the rod God will take it away from him and then I hope all is well Miserable man that thou art this is thy undoing if God ceases to strike thee because thou wilt not mend thou art sealed up to ruine and reprobation for ever The Physitian hath giv◠thee over he hath no kindnesse for thee This was the desperate estate of Judah Ah sinfull nation a people laden with iniquity they have forsaken the Lord they have provoked the Holy One of Israel why should ye be stricken any more This is the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the most bitter curse the greatest excommunication when the delinquent is become a heathen and a publicane without the covenant out of the pale of the Church the Church hath nothing to do with them for what have I to do with them that are without said Saint Paul It was not lawfull for the Church any more to punish them and this court Christian is an imitation and paralell of the justice of the court of heaven When a sinner is not mended by judgements at long running God cuts him off from his inheritance and the lot of sons he will chastise him no more but let him take his course and spend his portion of prosperity such as shall be allowed him in the great Oeconomy of the world Thus God did to his Vineyard which he took such pains to fence to plant to manure to dig to cut and to prune and when after all it brought forth wilde grapes the last and worst of Gods anger was this Auferam sepem ejus God had fenced it with a hedge of thorns and God would take away all that hedge he would not leave a thorn standing not one judgement to reprove or admonish them but all the wilde beasts and wilder and more beastly lusts may come and devour it and trample it down in scorn And now what shall I say but those words quoted by Saint Peter in his Sermon Behold ye despisers and wonder and perish perish in your own folly by stubbornesse and ingratitude For it is a huge contradiction to the nature and designes of God God calls us we refuse to hear he invites us with fair promises we hear and consider not he gives us blessings we take them and understand not his meaning we take out the token but read not the letter then he threatens us and we regard not he strikes our neighbours and we are not concerned then he strikes us gently but we feel it not then he does like the Physitian in the Greek Epigram who being to cure a man of a Lethargy locked him into the same room with a mad-man that he by dry beating him might make him at least sensible of blows but this makes us instead of running to God to trust in unskilfull Physitians or like Saul to run to a Pythonisse we run for cure to a crime we take sanctuary in a pleasant sin just as if a man to cure his melancholy should desire to be stung with a Tarantula that at least he may die merily what is there more to be done that God hath not yet done he is forced at last to break off with a Curavimus Babylonem non est sanata we dressed and tended Babylon but she was incurable there is no help but such persons must die in their sins and lie down in eternall sorrow Sermon XIV Of Growth in Grace 2 Pet. 3. 18. But grow in grace and in the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ to whom be glory both now and for ever Amen WHen Christianity like the day spring from the East with a new light did not onely inlighten the world but amazed the mindes of men and entertained their curiosities and seized upon their warmer and more pregnant affections it was no wonder that whole Nations were converted at a Sermon and multitudes were instantly professed and their understandings followed their affections and their wills followed their understandings and they were convinced by miracle and overcome by grace and passionate with zeal and wisely governed by their Guides and ravished with the sanctity of the Doctrine and the holinesse of their examples And this was not onely their duty but a great
when the box is newly broken but the want of it is no trouble we are well enough without it but vertue is like hunger and thirst it must be satisfied or we die and when we feel great longings after religion and faintings for want of holy nutriment when a famine of the word and sacraments is more intolerable and we think our selves really most miserable when the Church doors are shut against us or like the Christians in the persecution of the Vandals who thought it worse then death that there Bishops were taken from them If we understand excommunication or Church censures abating the disreputation and secular appendages in the sense of the spirit to be a misery next to hell it self then we have made a good progresse in the Charity and grace of God till then we are but pretenders or infants or imperfect in the same degree in which our affections are cold and our desires remisse For a constant and prudent zeal is the best testimony of our masculine and vigorous heats and an houre of fervour is more pleasing to God then a moneth of luke-warmnesse and indifferency 9 But as some are active onely in the presence of a good object but remisse and carelesse for the want of it so on the other side an infant grace is safe in the absence of a temptation but falls easily when it is in presence He therefore that would understand if he be grown in grace may consider if his safety consists onely in peace or in the strength of the spirit It is good that we will not seek out opportunities to sin but are not we too apprehensive of it when it is presented or do we not sink under when it presses us can we hold our tapers neer the flames and not suck it in greedily like Naphtha or prepared Nitre or can we like the children of the captivity walk in the midst of flames and not be scorched or consumed Many men will not like Judah go into high wayes and untie the girdles of harlots But can you reject the importunity of a beautious and an imperious Lady as Joseph did we had need pray that we be not led into temptation that is not onely into the possession but not into the allurements and neighbour-hood of it least by little and little our strongest resolutions be untwist and crack in sunder like an easie cord severed into single threds but if we by the necessity of our lives and manner of living dwell where a temptation will assault us then to resist is the signe of a great grace but such a signe that without it the grace turns into wantonnesse and the man into a beast and an angel into a Devil R. Moses will not allow a man to be a true penitent untill he hath left all his sin and in all the like circumstances refuses those temptations under which formerly he sinned and died and indeed it may happen that such a trial onely can secure our judgement concerning our selves and although to be tried in all the same accidents be not safe nor alwayes contingent and in such cases it is sufficient to resist all the temptations we have and avoid the rest and decree against all yet if it please God we are tempted as David was by his eyes or the Martyrs by tortures or Joseph by his wanton Mistris then to stand sure and to ride upon the temptation like a ship upon a wave or to stand like a rock in an impetuous storm that 's the signe of a great grace and of a well-grown Christian 10. No man is grown in grace but he that is ready for every work that chooses not his employment that refuses no imposition from God or his superiour a ready hand an obedient heart and a willing cheerful soul in all the work of God and in every office of religion is a great index of a good proficient in the wayes of Godlinesse The heart of a man is like a wounded hand or arme which if it be so cured that it can onely move one way and cannot turn to all postures and natural uses it is but imperfect and still half in health and half wounded so is our spirit if it be apt for prayer and close sifted in almes if it be sound in faith and dead in charity if it be religious to God and unjust to our neighbour there wants some integral part or there is a lamenesse and the deficiency in any one duty implyes the guilt of all said Saint James and bonum exintegrâ causâ malum exquâlibet particulari every fault spoils a grace But one grace alone cannot make a good man But as to be universal in our obedience is necessary to the being in the state of grace so readily to change imployment from the better to the worse from the honorable to the poor from usefull to seemingly unprofitable is a good Character of a well grown Christian if he takes the worst part with indifferency and a spirit equally choosing all the events of the divine providence Can you be content to descend from ruling of a province to the keeping of a herd from the work of an Apostle to be confined into a prison from disputing before Princes to a conversation with Shepherds can you be willing to all that God is willing and suffer all that he chooses as willingly as if you had chosen your own fortune In the same degree in which you can conform to God in the same you have approached towards that perfection whether we must by degrees arrive in our journey towards heaven This is not to be expected of beginners for they must be enticed with apt imployments and it may be their office and work so fits their spirits that it makes them first in love with it and then with God for giving it and many a man goes to heaven in the dayes of peace whose faith and hopes and patience would have been dashed in pieces if he had fallen into a storm or persecution Oppression will make a wise man mad saith Solomon there are some usages that will put a sober person out of all patience such which are besides the customes of this life and contrary to all his hopes and unworthy of a person of his quality and when Nero durst not die yet when his servants told him that the Senators had condemned him to be put to death more Majorum that is by scourging like a slave he was forced into a preternatural confidence and fel upon his own sword but when God so changes thy estate that thou art fallen into accidents to which thou art no otherwise disposed but by grace and a holy spirit and yet thou canst passe through them with quietnesse and do the work of suffering as well as the works of a prosperous imployment this is an argument of a great grace and an extraordinary spirit For many persons in a change of fortune perish who if they had still been prosperous had gone to heaven being tempted
any known sin if I should descend to particulars I might lay a snare to scrupulous and nice consciences This onely every confirmed habitual sinner does manifest the divine justice in punishing the sins of a short life with a never dying worm and a never quenched flame because we have an affection to sin that no time will diminish but such as would increase to eternal ages and accordingly as any man hath a degree of love so he hath lodged in his soul a spark which unless it be speedily effectively quenched will break forth into unquenchable fire Sermon XVIII THE FOOLISH EXCHANGE Matthew 16. Ver. 26. For what is a man profited if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul WHen the eternal mercy of God had decreed to rescue mankinde from misery and infelicity and so triumphed over his own justice the excellent wisdom of God resolved to do it in wayes contradictory to the appetites and designes of man that it also might triumph over our weaknesses and imperfect conceptions So God decreeing to glorifie his mercy by curing our sins and to exalt his wisdome by the reproof of our ignorance and the representing upon what weak and false principals we had built our hopes and expectations of felicity Pleasure and profit victory over our enemies riches and pompous honours power and revenge desires according to sensual appetites and prosecutions violent and passionate of those appetites health and long life free from trouble without poverty or persecution Hac sunt jucundissime Martialis vitam quae faciunt beatiorem These are the measures of good and evil the object of our hopes and fears the securing our content and the portion of this world and for the other let it be as it may But the Blessed Jesus having made revelations of an immortal duration of another world and of a strange restitution to it even by the resurrection of the body and a new investiture of the soul with the same upper garment clarified and made pure so as no Fuller on earth can whiten it hath also preached a new Philosophy hath cancelled all the old principles reduced the appetites of sence to the discourses of reason and heightned reason to the sublimities of the spirit teaching us abstractions and immaterial conceptions giving us new eyes and new objects and new proportions For now sensual pleasures are not delightful riches are drosse honours are nothing but the appendages of vertue and in relation to it are to receive their account but now if you would enjoy life you must die if you would be at ease you must take up Christs crosse and conform to his sufferings if you would save your life you must lose it and if you would be rich you must abound in good works you must be poor in spirit and despise the world and be rich unto God for whatsoever is contrary to the purchases and affections of this world is an endearment of our hopes in the world to come and therefore he having stated the question so that either we must quit this world or the other our affections I mean and adherencies to this or our interest and hopes of the other the choice is rendered very easie by the words of my text because the distance is not lesse then infinite and the comparison hath terms of a vast difference heaven and hell eternity and a moment vanity and real felicity life and death eternal all that can be hoped for and all that can be feared these are the terms of our choice and if a man have his wits about him and be not drunk with sensuality and senslessenesse he need not much to dispute before he passe the sentence For nothing can be given to us to recompence the losse of heaven and if our souls be lost there is nothing remaining to us whereby we can be happy What shall it profit a man or what shall a man give is there any exchange for a mans soul the question is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of the negative Nothing can be given for an 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or a price to satisfie for its losse The blood of the son of God was given to recover it or as an 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to God and when our souls were forfeit to him nothing lesse then the life and passion of God and man could pay the price Isay to God who yet was not concerned in the losse save onely that such was his goodnesse that it pitied him to see his creature lost But to us what shall be the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 what can make us recompence when we have lost our own souls and are lost in a miserable eternity what can then recompence us not all the world not ten thousand worlds and of this that miserable man whose soul is lost is the best judge For the qustion is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and hath a potential signification and means 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is suppose a man ready to die condemned to the sentence of a horrid death heightned with all the circumstances of trembling and amazement what would he give to save his life eye for eye tooth for tooth and all that a man hath will he give for his life and this turned to a proverb among the Jews for so the last words of the text are 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which proverb being usually meant concerning a temporal death and was intended to represent the sadnesses of a condemned person our blessed Saviour fits to his own purpose and translates to the signification of death eternal which he first revealed clearly to the world and because no interest of the world can make a man recompence for his life because to lose that makes him incapable of enjoying the exchange and he were a strange fool who having no designe upon immortality or vertue should be willing to be hanged for a thousand pound per annum this argument increases infinitely in the purpose of our Blessed Saviour and to gain the world and to lose our souls in the Christian sence is infinitely more madnesse and a worse exchange then when our souls signifie nothing but a temporal life and because possibly the indefinite hopes of Elysium or an honorable name might tempt some hardy persons to leave this world hoping for a better condition even among the heathens yet no excuse will acquit a Christian from madnesse If for the purchase of this world he lose his eternitie Here then first we will consider the propositions of the exchange the world and a mans soul by way of supposition supposing all that is propounded were obtained the whole world Secondly we will consider what is likely to be obtained really and indeed of the world and what are really the miseries of a lost soul For it is propounded in the text by way of supposition If a man should gain the world which no man ever did nor ever can and he
bituminous matter and the Spirit of God knew right well the worst expression was not bad enough 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 so our blessed Saviour calls it the outer darknesse that is not onely an abjection from the beatifick regions where God and his Angels and his Saints dwell for ever but then there is a positive state of misery expressed by darknesses 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as two Apostles Saint Peter and Saint Jude call it The blacknesse of darknesse for ever In which although it is certain that God whose Justice there rules will inflict but just so much as our sins deserve and not superadde degrees of undeserved misery as he does to the Saints of glory for God gives to blessed souls in heaven more infinitely more then all their good works could possibly deserve and therefore their glory is infinitely bigger glory then the pains of hell are great pains yet because Gods Justice in hell rules alone without the allayes and sweeter abatements of mercy they shall have pure and unmingled misery no pleasant thought to refresh their wearinesse no comfort in an other accident to alleviate their pressures no waters to cool their flames but because when there is a great calamity upon a man every such man thinks himself the most miserable and though there are great degrees of pain in hell yet there are none perceived by him that thinks he suffers the greatest It follows that every man that loses his soul in this darknesse is miserable beyond all those expressions which the tortures of this world could furnish to the Writers of holy Scripture But I shall choose to represent this consideration in that expression of our blessed Saviour Mark the 9. the 44. verse which himself took out of the Prophet Esay the 66. verse the 24. Where the worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched this is the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 spoken of by Daniel the Prophet for although this expression was a prediction of that horrid calamity and abscision of the Jewish Nation when God poured out a full vial of his wrath upon the crucifiers of his Son and that this which was the greatest calamity which ever did or ever shall happen to a Nation Christ with great reason took to describe the calamity of accursed souls as being the greatest instance to signifie the greatest torment yet we must observe that the difference of each state makes the same words in the several cases to be of infinite distinction The worm stuck close to the Jewish Nation and the fire of Gods wrath flamed out till they were consumed with a great and unheard of destruction till many millions did die accursedly and the small remnant became vagabonds and were reserved like broken pieces after a storm to shew the greatnesse of the storm and misery of the shipwrack but then this being translated to signifie the state of accursed souls whose dying is a continual perishing who cannot cease to be it must mean an eternity of duration in proper and naturall significations And that we may understand it fully observe the places In the 34. Esa. 8. The Prophet prophecies of the great destruction of Jerusalem for all her great iniquities It is the day of the Lords vengeance and the yeer of recompences for the controversie of Sion and the streams thereof shall be turned into pitch and the dust thereof into brimstone and the land thereof shall become burning pitch It shall not be quenched night nor day the smoak thereof shall go up for ever from generation to generation It shall lie wast none shall passe thorow it for ever and ever This is the final destruction of the Nation but this destruction shall have an end because the Nation shall end and the anger also shall end in its own period even then when God shall call the Jews into the common inheritance with the Gentiles and all the sons of God And this also was the period of their worme as it is of their fire The fire of the Divine vengeance upon the Nation which was not to be extinguished till they were destroyed as we see it come to passe And thus also in Saint Jude the Angels who kept not their first state are said to be reserved by God in everlasting chains under darknesse which word everlasting signifies not absolutely to eternity but to the utmost end of that period for so it follows unto the judgement of the great day that everlasting lasts no longer and in verse the seventh the word eternal is just so used The men of Sodom and Gomorrha are set forth for an example suffering the vengeance of eternal fire that is of a fire which burned till they were quite destroyed and the cities and the countrey with an irreparable ruine never to be rebuilt and reinhabited as long as this world continues The effect of which observations is this That these words for ever everlasting eternal the never-dying worme the fire unquenchable being words borrowed by our blessed Saviour and his Apostles from the stile of the old Testament must have a signification just proportionable to the state in which they signifie so that as this worme when it signifies a temporal infliction meanes a worme that never ceases giving torment till the body is consumed So when it is translated to an immortall state it must signifie as much in that proportion that eternal that everlasting hath no end at all because the soul cannot be killed in the natural sense but is made miserable and perishing for ever that is the worme shall not die so long as the soul shall be unconsumed the fire shall not be quenched till the period of an immortall nature comes and that this shall be absolutely for ever without any restriction appears unanswerably in this because the same for ever that is for the blessed souls the same for ever is for the accursed souls but the blessed souls that die in the Lord henceforth shall die no more death hath no power over them for death is destroyed it is swallowed up in victory saith Saint Paul and there shall be no more death saith Saint John Revel 21. 4. So that because for ever hath no end till the thing or the duration it self have end in the same sense in which the Saints and Angels give glory to God for ever in the same sense the lost souls shall suffer the evils of their sad inheritance and since after this death of nature which is a separation of soul and body there remains no more death but this second death this eternal perishing of miserable accursed souls whose duration must be eternall It follows that the worm of conscience and the unquenchable fire of hell have no period at all but shall last as long as God lasts or the measures of a proper eternity that they who provoke God to wrath by their base unreasonable and sottish practises may know what their portion shall be in the everlasting habitations and yet suppose that Origens
off from this sad discourse onely I shall crave your attention to a word of exhortation That you take care lest for the purchase of a little trifling inconsiderable portion of the world you come into this place and state of torment Although Homer was pleased to complement the beauty of Helena to such a height as to say it was a sufficient price for all the evils which the Greeks and Trojans suffered in ten years 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Yet it was a more reasonable conjecture of Herodotus that during the ten years siege of Troy Helena for whom the Greeks fought was in Egypt not in the city because it was unimaginable but that the Trojans would have thrown her over the walls rather then for the sake of such a trifle have endured so great calamities we are more sottish then the Trojans if we retain our Helena any one beloved lust any painted Devil any sugar'd temptation with not the hazard but the certainty of having such horrid miseries such in valuable losses And certainly its a strange stupidity of spirit that can sleep in the midst of such thunder when God speaks from heaven with his lowdest voice and draws aside his curtain and shows his arsenal and his armory full of arrows steeled with wrath headed and pointed and hardned with vengeance still to snatch at those arrows if they came but in the retinue of a rich fortune or a vain Mistris if they wait but upon pleasure or profit or in the reare of an ambitious designe But let not us have such a hardinesse against the threats and representments of the divine vengeance as to take the little imposts and revenues of the world and stand in defiance against God and the fears of hell unlesse we have a charm that we can be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 invisible to the judge of heaven and earth and are impregnable against or are sure we shall be insensible of the miseries of a perishing soul. There is a sort of men who because they will be vitious and Atheistical in their lives have no way to go on with any plaisance and without huge disturbances but by being also Atheistical in their opinions and to believe that the story of hell is but a bug-bear to affright children and fools easy believing people to make them soft and apt for government and designes of princes and this is an opinion that befriends none but impure and vicious persons others there are that believe God to be all mercy that he forgets his justice believing that none shall perish with so sad a ruine if they do but at their death-bed ask God forgivenesse and say they are sorry but yet continue their impiety till their house be ready to fall being like the Circassians whose Gentlemen enter not into the Church till they be threescore years old that is in effect till by their age they cannot any longer use rapine till then they hear service at their windows dividing unequally their life between sin and devotition dedicateing their youth to robbery and their old age to a repentance without restitution Our youth and our man-hood and old age are all of them due to God and justice and mercy are to him equally essential and as this life is a time of the possibilities of mercy so to them that neglect it the next world shall be a state of pure and unmingled justice Remember the fatal and decretory sentence which God hath passed upon all man-kinde it is appointed to all men once to die and after death comes judgement and if any of us were certain to die next morning with what earnestnesse should we pray with what hatred should we remember our sins with what scorn should we look upon the licentious pleasures of the world then nothing could be welcome unto us but a prayer book no company but a Comforter and a Guide of souls no imployment but repentance no passions but in order to religion no kindnesse for a lust that hath undone us and if any of you have been arrested with alarmes of death or been in hearty fear of its approach remember what thoughts and designes then possessed you how precious a soul was then in your account and what then you would give that you had despised the world and done your duty to God and man and lived a holy life It will come to that again and we shall be in that condition in which we shall perfectly understand that all the things and pleasures of the world are vain and unprofitable and irkesome and that he onely is a wise man who secures the interest of his soul though it be with the losse of all this world and his own life into the bargain When we are to depart this life to go to strange company and stranger places and to an unknown condition then a holy conscience will be the best security the best possession it wil be a horror that every friend we meet shall with triumph upbraid to us the sottishnesse of our folly Lo this is the goodly change you have made you had your good things in your life time and how like you the portion that is reserved to you for ever The old Rabbins those Poets of religion report of Moses that when the courtiers of Pharaoh were sporting with the childe Moses in the chamber of Pharaohs daughter they presented to his choice an ingot of gold in one hand and a cole of fire in the other and that the childe snatched at the coal thrust it into his mouth and so singed and parched his tongue that he stammered ever after and certainly it is infinitely more childish in us for the glittering of the small gloworms and the charcoal of worldly possessions to swallow the flames of hell greedily in our choice such a bit will produce a worse stammering then Moses had for so the aeccursed and lost souls have their ugly and horrid dialect they roare and blaspheme blaspheme and roare for ever And suppose God should now at this instant send the great Archangel with his trumpet to summon all the world to judgement would not all this seem a notorious visible truth a truth which you will then wonder that every man did not lay to his heart and preserve therein actual pious and effective consideration let the trumpet of God perpetually sound in your ears surgite mortui venite ad judicium place your selves by meditation every day upon your death-bed and remember what thoughts shall then possesse you and let such thoughts dwell in your understanding for ever and be the parent of all your resolutions and actions The Doctors of the Jews report that when Absalom hanged among the oakes by the haire of the head he seemed to see under him hell gaping wide ready to receive him and he durst not cut off the hair that intangled him for fear he should fall into the horrid lake whose portion is flames and torment but chose to protract his miserable life a few
the slender reward with which the Romans payed their souldiers for their extraordinary valour True it is that heaven is not in a just sense of a commutation a reward but a gift and an infinite favour but yet it is not reached forth but to persons disposed by the conditions of God which conditions when we pursue in kinde let us be very carefull we do not fail of the mighty price of our high calling for want of degrees and just measures the measures of zeal and a mighty love 3. It is an office of prudence so to serve God that we may at the same time preserve our lives and our estates our interest and reputation for our selves and our relatives so farre as they can consist together Saint Paul in the beginning of Christianity was careful to instruct the forwardnesse and zeal of the new Christians into good husbandry and to catechize the men into good trades and the women into useful imployments that they might not be unprofitable For Christian religion carrying us to heaven does it by the way of a man and by the body it serves the soul as by the soul it serves God and therefore it endeavours to secure the body and its interest that it may continue the opportunities of a crown and prolong the stage in which we are to run for the mighty price of our salvation and this is that part of prudence which is the defensative and guards of a Christian in the time of persecution and it hath in it much of duty He that through an indiscreet zeal casts himself into a needlesse danger hath betrayed his life to tyranny and tempts the sin of an enemy he loses to God the service of many yeers and cuts off himself from a fair opportunity of working his salvation in the main parts of which we shall finde a long life and very many yeers of reason to be little enough he betrayes the interest of his relatives which he is bound to preserve he disables himself of making provision for them of his own house and he that fails in this duty by his own fault is worse then an infidel and denies the faith by such unseasonably dying or being undone which by that testimony he did intend gloriously to confesse he serves the end of ambition and popular services but not the sober ends of religion he discourages the weak and weakens the hands of the strong and by upbraiding their warinesse tempts them to turn it into rashnesse or despair he affrights strangers from entring into religion while by such imprudence he shall represent it to be impossible at the same time to be wise and to be religious it turns all the whole religion into a forwardnesse of dying or beggery leaving no space for the parts and offices of a holy life which in times of persecution are infinitely necessary for the advantages of the institution But God hath provided better things for his servants Quem fata cogunt ille cum veniâ est miser He whom God by an inevitable necessity calls to sufferance he hath leave to be undone and that ruine of his estate or losse of his life shall secure first a providence then a crown At si quis ultro se malis offert volens seque ipse torquet perdere est dignus bona Queis nescit uti But he that invites the cruelty of a Tyrant by his own follyes or the indiscretions of an unsignificant and impertinent zeal suffers as a wilful person and enters into the portion and reward of fools And this is the precept of our Blessed Saviour next after my text Beware of men use your prudence to the purposes of avoiding their snare 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Man is the most harmful of all the wilde beasts ye are sent as sheep among wolves be therefore wise as serpents when you can avoid it suffer not men to ride over your heads or trample you under foot that 's the wisdom of Serpents and so must we that is by all just complyances and toleration of all indifferent changes in which a duty is not destroyed and in which we were not active so to preserve our selves that we might be permitted to live and serve God and to do advantages to religion so purchasing time to do good in by bending in all those flexures of fortune and condition which we cannot help and which we do not set forward and which we never did procure and this is the direct meaning of Saint Paul see then that ye walk circumspectly not as fools but as wise Redeeming the time because the dayes are evil that is we are fallen into times that are troublesome dangerous persecuting and afflictive purchase as much respite as you can Buy or redeem the time by all honest arts by humility by fair carriage and sweetnesses of society by civility and a peaceful conversation by good words and all honest offices by praying for your persecutors by patient sufferance of what is unavoidable And when the Tyrant draws you forth from all these guards and retirements and offers violence to your duty or tempts you to do a dishonest act or to omit an act of obligation then come forth into the Theater and lay your necks down to the hangmans axe and fear not to die the most shamful death of the crosse or the gallows for so have I known angels ascending and descending upon those ladders and the Lord of glory suffered shame and purchased honour upon the crosse Thus we are to walk in wisdom towards them that are without redeeming the time for so Saint Paul renewes that permission or commandment Give them no just cause of offence with all humility and as occasion is offered represent their duty and invite them sweetly to felicities and vertue but do not in ruder language upbraid and reproach their basenesse and when they are in corrigible let them alone lest like cats they run mad with the smell of delicious ointments And therefore Pothinus Bishop of Lyons being asked by the unbaptized President who was the God of the Christians answered 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 If you be disposed with real and hearty desires of learning what you ask you shall quickly know But if your purposes be in direct I shall not preach to you to my hurt and your no advantage Thus the wisdom of the primitive Christians was careful not to prophane the temples of the heathen not to revile their false Gods and when they were in duty to represent the follies of their religion they chose to do it from their own writings and as relators of their own records they fled from the fury of a persecution they hid themselves in caves and wandred about in disguises and preached in private and celebrated their synaxes and communions in grots and retirements and made it appear to all the world they were peaceable and obedient charitable and patient and at this price bought their time 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 As
knowing that even in this sense time was very pretious and the opportunitie of giving glory to God by the offices of an excellent religion was not too deare a purchase at that rate But then when the wolves had entred into the folds and seized upon a lamb the rest fled and used all the innocent arts of concealment Saint Athanasius being overtaken by his persecutors but not known and asked whether he saw Athanasius passing that way pointed out forward with his finger non longè abest Athanasius the man is not far off a swift foot-man will easily overtake him And Saint Paul divided the councell of his Judges and made the Pharisees his parties by a witty insinuation of his own belief of the resurrection which was not the main question but an incident to the matter of his accusation And when Plinius secundus in the face of a Tyrant court was pressed so invidiously to give his opinion concerning a good man in banishment and under the disadvantage of an unjust sentence he diverted the snare of Marcus Regulus by referring his answer to a competent judicatory according to the laws being pressed again by offering a direct answer upon a just condition which he knew they would not accept and the third time by turning the envy upon the impertinent and malicious Orator that he won great honour the honour of a severe honesty and a witty man and a prudent person The thing I have noted because it is a good pattern to represent the arts of honest evasion and religious prudent honesty which any good man may transcribe and turn into his own instances if an equal case should occur For in this case the rule is easy If we are commanded to be wise and redeeme our time that we serve God and religion we must not use unlawful arts which set us back in the accounts of our time no lying Subterfuges no betraying of a truth no treachery to a good man no insnaring of a brother no secret renouncing of any part or proposition of our religion no denying to confesse the article when we are called to it For when the primitive Christians had got a trick to give money for certificates that they had sacrificed to idols though indeed they did not do it but had corrupted the officers and ministers of state they dishonoured their religion and were marked with the appellative of libellatici Libellers and were excommunicate and cast off from the society of Christians and the hopes of Heaven till they had returned to God by a severe repentance optanduum est ut quod libenter facis din facere possis It is good to have time long to doe that which wee ought to doe but to pretend that which we dare not doe and to say we have when we have not if we know we ought not is to dishonour the cause and the person too it is expressly against confession of Christ of which Saint Paul saith by the mouth confession is made unto salvation And our Blessed Saviour he that confesseth me before men I will confesse him before my Heavenly Father and if here he refuseth to own me I will not own him hereafter it is also expressly against Christian fortitude and noblenesse and against the simplicity and sincerity of our religion and it turnes prudence into craft and brings the Devil to wait in the temple and to minister to God and it is a lesser Kinde of apostacy and it is well that the man is tempted no further for if the persecutors could not be corrupted with money it is ods but the complying man would and though he would with the money hide his shame yet he will not with the losse of all his estate redeeme his religion 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 some men will lose their lives rather then a faire estate and doe not almost all the armies of the world I mean those that fight in the justest causes pretend to fight and die for their lands and liberties and there are too many also that will die twice rather then be beggers once although we all know that the second death is intolerable Christian prudence forbids us to provoke a danger and they were fond persons that run to persecution and when the Proconsul sate on the life and death and made strict inquisition after Christians went and offered themselves to die and he was a fool that being in Portugal run to the Priest as he elevated the host and overthrew the mysteries and openly defied the rites of that religion God when he sends a persecution will pick out such persons whom he will have to die and whom he will consigne to banishment and whom to poverty In the mean time let us do our duty when we can and as long as we can and with as much strictnesse as we can walking 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as the Apostles Phrase is not prevaricating in the least tittle and then if we can be safe with the arts of civil innocent inoffensive compliance let us blesse God for his permissions made to us and his assistances in the using them But if either we turne our zeal into the ambition of death and the follies of an unnecessary beggery or on the other side turn our prudence into craft and covetousnesse to the first I say that God hath no pleasure in fooles to the latter If you gain the whole world and lose your own soul your losse is infinite and intolerable Sermon XXI Of Christian Prudence Part II. 4. IT is the office of Christian prudence so to order the affaires of our life as that in all the offices of our souls and conversation we do honour and reputation to the religion we professe For the follies and vices of the Professors give great advantages to the adversary to speak reproachfully and does aliene the hearts and hinder the complyance of those undetermined persons who are apt to be perswaded if their understandings be not prejudiced But as our necessary duty is bound upon us by one ligament more in order to the honour of the cause of God so it particularly bindes us to many circumstances adjuncts and parts of duty which have no other commandment but the law of prudence There are some sects of Christians which have some one constant indisposition which as a character divides them from all others and makes them reproved on all hands some are so suspitious and ill natured that if a person of a facile nature and gentle disposition fall into their hands he is presently sowred and made morose unpleasant and uneasy in his conversation Others there are that do things so like to what themselves condemn that they are forced to take sanctuary and labour in the mine of unsignificant distinctions to make themselves believe they are innocent and in the mean time they offend all men else and open the mouths of their adversaries to speak reproachful things true or false as it happens And it requires a great wit to understand all the
meat and the strengthening of his spirit and gives God thanks while his bones and his flesh rejoyce in the provisions of nature and the blessing of God Are not the imperfections of infancy and the decayes of old age the evils of our nature because respectively they want desire and they want gust and relish and reflections upon their acts of sense and when desire failes presently the mourners go about the streets But then that these desires are so provided for by nature and art by ordinary and extraordinary by foresight and contingency according to necessity and up unto conveniency until we arrive at abundance is a chain of mercies larger then the Bowe in the clouds and richer then the trees of Eden which were permitted to feed our miserable father Is not all the earth our orchard and our granary our vineyard and our garden of pleasure and the face of the Sea is our traffique and the bowels of the Sea is our vivarium a place for fish to feed us and to serve some other collaterall appendant needs and all the face of heaven is a repository for influences and breath fruitfull showers and fair refreshments and when God made provisions for his other creatures he gave it of one kinde and with variety no greater then the changes of day and night one devouring the other or sitting down with his draught of blood or walking upon his portion of grasse But man hath all the food of beasts and all the beasts themselves that are fit for food and the food of Angels and the dew of heaven and the fatnesse of the earth and every part of his body hath a provision made for it and the smoothnesse of the olive and the juice of the vine refresh the heart and make the face cheerfull and serve the ends of joy and the festivity of man and are not onely to cure hunger or to allay thirst but to appease a passion and allay a sorrow It is an infinite variety of meat with which God furnishes out the table of mankinde and in the covering our sin and clothing our nakednesse God passed from sig-leaves to the skins of beasts from aprons to long-robes from leather to wool and from thence to the warmth of furres and the coolnesse of silks he hath dressed not onely our needs but hath fitted the severall portions of the year and made us to go dressed like our mother leaving off the winter sables when the florid spring appears and assoon as the Tulip fades we put on the robe of Summer and then shear our sheep for Winter and God uses us as Ioseph did his brother Benjamin we have many changes of raiment and our messe is five times bigger then the provision made for our brothers of the Creation But the providence and mercies of God are to be estimated also according as these provisions are dispensed to every single person For that I may not remark the bounties of God running over the tables of the rich God hath also made provisions for the poorest person so that if they can but rule their desires they shall have their tables furnished and this is secured and provided for by one promise and two duties by our Own labour and our Brothers charity and our faith in this affair is confirmed by all our own and by all the experience of other men Are not all the men and the women of the world provided for and fed and clothed till they die and was it not alwayes so from the first morning of the creatures and that a man is starved to death is a violence and a rare contingency happening almost as seldom as for a man to have but one eye and if our being provided for be as certain as for a man to have two eyes we have reason to adore the wisdom and admire the mercies of our Almighty Father But these things are evident Is it not a great thing that God hath made such strange provisions for our health such infinite differences of Plants and hath discovered the secrets of their nature by meer chance or by inspiration either of which is the miracle of providence secret to us but ordered by certain and regular decrees of heaven It was a huge diligence and care of the divine mercy that discovered to man the secrets of Spagyrick medicines of stones of spirits and the results of 7. or 8. decoctions and the strange effects of accidental mixtures which the art of man could not suspect being bound up in the secret sanctuary of hidden causes and secret natures and being laid open by the concourse of 20. or 30. little accidents all which were ordered by God as certainly as are the first principles of nature or the descent of sons from fathers in the most noble families But that which I shall observe in this whole affair is that there are both for the provision of our tables and the relief of our sicknesses so many miracles of providence that they give plain demonstration what relation we bear to heaven and the poor man need not be troubled that he is to expect his daily portion after the Sun is up for he hath found to this day he was not deceived and then he may rejoyce because he sees by an effective probation that in heaven a decree was made every day to send him provisions of meat and drink and that is a mighty mercy when the circles of heaven are bowed down to wrap us in a bosome of care and nourishment and the wisdom of God is daily busied to serve his mercy as his mercy serves our necessities Does not God plant remedies there where the diseases are most popular and every Countrey is best provided against its own evils Is not the Rhubarb found where the Sun most corrupts the liver and the Scabious by the shore of the Sea that God might cure as soon as he wounds and the inhabitants may see their remedy against the leprosie and the scurvy before they feel their sicknesse And then to this we may adde Natures commons and open fields the shores of rivers and the strand of the Sea the unconfined air the wildernesse that hath no hedge and that in these every man may hunt and fowl and fish respectively and that God sends some miracles and extraordinary blessings so for the publike good that he will not endure they should be inclosed and made severall Thus he is pleased to dispense the Manna of Calabria the medicinall waters of Germany the Musles at Sluce at this day and the Egyptian beans in the marishes of Albania and the salt at Troas of old which God to defeat the covetousnesse of man and to spread his mercy over the face of the indigent as the Sun scatters his beams over the bosome of the whole earth did so order that as long as every man was permitted to partake the bosome of heaven was open but when man gathered them into single handfulls and made them impropriate God gathered his hand
he hath made it so sure to us to become happy even in this world that if we will not he hath threatened to destroy us which is not a desire or aptnesse to do us an evil but an art to make it impossible that we should For God hath so ordered it that we cannot perish unlesse we desire it our selves and unlesse we will do our selves a mischief on purpose to get hell we are secured of heaven and there is not in the nature of things any way that can more infallibly do the work of felicity upon creatures that can choose then to make that which they should naturally choose be spiritually their duty and that he will make them happy hereafter if they will suffer him to make them happy here But hardly stand another throng of mercies that must be considered by us and God must be glorified in them for they are such as are intended to preserve to us all this felicity 9. God that he might secure our duty and our present and consequent felicity hath tied us with golden chaines and bound us not onely with the bracelets of love and the deliciousnesse of hope but with the ruder cords of fear and reverence even with all the innumerable parts of a restraining grace For it is a huge aggravation of humane calamity to consider that after a man hath been instructed in the love and advantages of his Religion and knows it to be the way of honour and felicity and that to prevaricate his holy sanctions is certain death and disgrace to eternal ages yet that some men shall despise their religion others shall be very weary of its laws and cal the commandments a burden and too many with a perfect choice shall delight in death and the wayes that lead thither and they choose mony infinitely and to rule over their Brother by al means to be revenged extremely and to prevail by wrong and to do all that they can and please themselves in all that they desire and love it fondly and be restlesse in all things but where they perish if God should not interpose by the arts of a miraculous and merciful grace and put a bridle in the mouth of our lusts and chastise the sea of our follies by some heaps of sand or the walls of a rock we should perish in the deluge of sin universally as the old world did in that storm of the divine anger the flood of waters But thus God suffers but few adulteries in the world in respect of what would be if all men that desire to be adulterers had power opportunity and yet some men and very many women are by modesty and natural shamefacednesse chastised in their too forward appetites or the laws of man or publick reputation or the undecency and unhandsome circumstances of sin check the desire and make it that it cannot arrive at act for so have I seen a busie flame sitting upon a sullen cole turn its point to all the angles and portions of its neighbour-hood and reach at a heap of prepared straw which like a bold temptation called it to a restlesse motion and activity but either it was at too big a distance or a gentle breath from heaven diverted the speare and the ray of the fire to the other side and so prevented the violence of the burning till the flame expired in a weak consumption and dyed turning into smoak and the coolnesse of death and the harmlesnesse of a Cinder and when a mans desires are winged with sailes and a lusty wind of passion and passe on in a smooth chanel of opportunity God often times hinders the lust and the impatient desire from passing on to its port and entring into action by a suddain thought by a little remembrance of a word by a fancy by a sudden disability by unreasonable and unlikely fears by the suddain intervening of company by the very wearinesse of the passion by curiosity by want of health by the too great violence of the desire bursting it self with its fulnesse into dissolution a remisse easinesse by a sentence of scripture by the reverence of a good man or else by the proper interventions of the spirit of grace chastising the crime and representing its appendant mischiefs and its constituent disorder and irregularity and after all this the very anguish and trouble of being defeated in the purpose hath rolled it self into so much uneasinesse and unquiet reflections that the man is grown a shamed and vexed into more sober counsels And the mercy of God is not lesse then infinite in separating men from the occasions of their sin from the neighbour-hood and temptation for if the Hyaena and a dog should be thrust into the same Kennel one of them would soon finde a grave and it may be both of them their death so infallible is the ruine of most men if they be shewed a temptation Nitre and resin Naphtha and Bitumen sulphur and pitch are their constitution and the fire passes upon them infinitely and there is none to rescue them But God by removing our sins far from us as far as the East is from the West not onely putting away the guilt but setting the occasion far from us extremely far so far that sometimes we cannot sin and many times not easily hath magnified his mercy by giving us safety in all those measures in which we are untempted It would be the matter of new discourses if I should consider concerning the variety of Gods grace his preventing and accompanying his inviting and corroborating grace his assisting us to will his enabling us to do his sending Angels to watch us to remove us from evil company to drive us with swords of fire from forbidden instances to carry us by unobserved opportunities into holy company to minister occasions of holy discourses to make it by some means or other necessary to do a holy action to make us in love with vertue because they have mingled that vertue with a just and a fair interest to some men by making religion that thing they live upon to others the means of their reputation and the securities of their honour and thousands of wayes more which every prudent man that watches the wayes of God cannot but have observed But I must also observe other great conjugations of mercy for he that is to passe through an infinite must not dwell upon everie little line of life 10. The next order of mercies is such which is of so pure and unmingled constitution that it hath at first no regard to the capacities and disposition of the receivers and afterwards when it hath it relates onely to such conditions which it self creates and produces in the suscipient I mean the mercies of the divine predestination For was it not an infinite mercy that God should predestinate all mankinde to salvation by Jesus Christ even when he had no other reason to move him to do it but because man was miserable and needed his pity
own entertainment it gives us precepts and makes us able to keep them it enables our faculties and excites our desires it provokes us to pray and sanctifies our heart in prayer and makes our prayer go forth to act and the act does make the desire valid and the desire does make the act certain and persevering and both of them are the works of God for more is received into the soul from without the soul then does proceed from within the soul It is more for the soul to be moved and disposed then to work when that is done as the passage from death to life is greater then from life to action especially since the action is owing to that cause that put in the first principle of life These are the great degrees of Gods forwardnesse and readinesse to forgive for the expression of which no language is sufficient but Gods own words describing mercy in all those dimensions which can signifie to us its greatnesse and infinity His mercy is great his mercies are many his mercy reacheth unto the heavens it fils heaven and earth it is above all his works it endureth for ever God pitieth as a Father doth his children nay he is our Father and the same also is the Father of mercy and the God of all comfort So that mercy and we have the same relation and well it may be so for we live and die together for as to man onely God shews the mercy of forgivenesse so if God takes away his mercy man shall be no more no more capable of felicity or of any thing that is perfective of his condition or his person But as God preserves man by his mercy so his mercy hath all its operations upon man and returns to its own centre and incircumscription and infinity unlesse it issues forth upon us And therefore besides the former great lines of the mercy of forgivenesse there is another chain which but to produce and tell its links is to open a cabinet of Jewels where every stone is as bright as a star and every star is great as the Sun and shines for ever unlesse we shut our eyes or draw the vail of obstinate and finall sins 1. God is long-suffering that is long before he be angry and yet God is provoked every day by the obstinacy of the Jews and the folly of the Heathens and the rudenesse and infidelity of the Mahumetans and the negligence and vices of Christians and he that can behold no impurity is received in all places with perfumes of mushromes and garments spotted with the flesh and stained souls and the actions and issues of misbelief and an evil conscience and with accursed sins that he hates upon pretence of religion which he loves and he is made a party against himself by our voluntary mistakes and men continue ten yeers and 20. and 30. and 50. in a course of sinning and they grow old with the vices of their youth and yet God forbears to kill them and to consigne them over to an eternity of horrid pains still expecting that they should repent and be saved 2. Besides this long-sufferance and for-bearing with an unwearied patience God also excuses a sinner oftentimes and takes a little thing for an excuse so far as to move him to intermediall favours first and from thence to a finall pardon He passes by the sins of our youth with a huge easinesse to pardon if he be intreated and reconciled by the effective repentance of a vigorous manhood he takes ignorance for an excuse and in every degree of its being inevitable or innocent in its proper cause it is also inculpable and innocent in its proper effects though in their own natures criminal But I found mercy of the Lord because I did it in ignorance saith S. Paul he pities our infirmities and strikes off much of the account upon that stock the violence of a temptation and restlesnesse of its motion the perpetuity of its sollicitation the wearinesse of a mans spirit the state of sicknesse the necessity of secular affairs the publike customs of a people have all of them a power of pleading and prevailing towards some degrees of pardon and diminution before the throne of God 3. When God perceives himself forced to strike yet then he takes off his hand and repents him of the evil It is as if it were against him that any of his creatures should fall under the strokes of an exterminating fury 4. When he is forced to proceed he yet makes an end before he hath half done and is as glad of a pretence to pardon us or to strike lesse as if he himself had the deliverance and not we When Ahab had but humbled himself at the word of the Lord God was glad of it and went with the message to the Prophet himself saying Seest thou not how Ahab humbles himself What was the event of it I will not bring the evil in his dayes but in his sons dayes the evil shall come upon his house 5 God forgets our sin and puts it out of his remembrance that is he makes it as though it had never been he makes penitence to be as pure as innocence to all the effects of pardon and glory the memory of the sins shall not be upon record to be used to any after act of disadvantage and never shall return unlesse we force them out of their secret places by ingratitude and a new state of sinning 6. God sometimes gives pardon beyond all his revelations and declared will and provides suppletories of repentance even then when he cuts a man off from the time of repentance accepting a temporal death instead of an eternal that although the Divine anger might interrupt the growing of the fruits yet in some cases and to some persons the death and the very cutting off shall go no further but be instead of explicite and long repentances Thus it happened to Uzzah who was smitten for his zeal and died in severity for prevaricating the letter by earnestnesse of spirit to serve the whole religion Thus it was also in the case of the Corinthians that died a temporal death for their undecent circumstances in receiving the holy Sacrament Saint Paul who used it for an argument to threaten them into reverence went no further nor pressed the argument to a sadder issue then to die temporally But these suppletories are but seldom and they are also great troubles and ever without comfort and dispensed irregularly and that not in the case of habituall sins that we know of or very great sins but in single actions or instances of a lesse malignity and they are not to be relied upon because there is no rule concerning them but when they do happen they magnifie the infinitenesse of Gods mercy which is commensurate to all our needs and is not to be circumscribed by the limits of his own revelations 7. God pardons the greatest sinners and hath left them upon record
Lord I pray God this heap of sorrow may swell your piety till it breaks into the greatest joyes of God and of religion and remember when you pay a tear upon the grave or to the memory of your Lady that dear and most excellent soul that you pay two more one of repentance for those things that may have caused this breach and another of joy for the mercies of God to your Dear departed Saint that he hath taken her into a place where she can weep no more My Lord I think I shall so long as I live that is so long as I am Your Lordships most humble Servant TAYLOR 2 Samuel 14. 14. For we must needs die and are as water spilt on the ground which cannot be gathered up again neither doth God respect any person yet doth he devise means that his banished be not expelled from him WHen our blessed Saviour and his Disciples viewed the Temple some one amongst them cryed out Magister aspice quales lapides Master behold what fair what great stones are here Christ made no other reply but foretold their dissolution and a world of sadnesse and sorrow which should bury that whole Nation when the teeming cloud of Gods displeasure should produce a storm which was the daughter of the biggest anger and the mother of the greatest calamitie which ever crushed any of the sons of Adam the time shall come that there shall not be left one stone upon another The whole Temple and the Religion the ceremonies ordained by God and the Nation beloved by God and the fabrick erected for the service of God shall run to their own period and lie down in their several graves Whatsoever had a beginning can also have an ending and it shall die unlesse it be daily watered with the purls flowing from the fountain of life and refreshed with the dew of Heaven and the wells of God And therefore God had provided a tree in Paradise to have supported Adam in his artificial immortality Immortality was not in his nature but in the hands and arts in the favour and superadditions of God Man was alwaies the same mixture of heat and cold of drynesse and moisture ever the same weak things apt to feel rebellion in the humors and to suffer the evils of a civil war in his body natural and therefore health and life was to descend upon him from Heaven and he was to suck life from a tree on earth himself being but ingraffed into a tree of life and adopted into the condition of an immortal nature But he that in the best of his dayes was but a Cien of this tree of life by his sin was cut off from thence quickly and planted upon thorns and his portion was for ever after among the flowers which to day spring and look like health and beauty and in the evening they are sick and at night are dead and the oven is their grave And as before even from our first spring from the dust of the earth we might have died if we had not been preserved by the continual flux of a rare providence so now that we are reduced to the laws of our own nature we must needs die It is natural and therefore necessary It is become a punishment to us and therefore it is unavoidable and God hath bound the evill upon us by bands of naturall and inseparable propriety and by a supervening unalterable decree of Heaven and we are fallen from our privilege and are returned to the condition of beast and buildings and common things And we see Temples defiled unto the ground and they die by Sacrilege and great Empires die by their own plenty and ease full humors and factious Subjects and huge buildings fall by their own weight and the violence of many winters eating and consuming the cement which is the marrow of their bones and Princes die like the meanest of their Servants and every thing findes a grave and a tomb and the very tomb it self dies by the bignesse of its pompousnesse and luxury Phario nutantia pondera saxo Quae cineri vanus dat ruitura labor and becomes as friable and uncombined dust as the ashes of the Sinner or the Saint that lay under it and is now forgotten in his bed of darknesse And to this Catalogue of mortality Man is inrolled with a Statutum est It is appointed for all men once to die and after death comes judgement and if a man can be stronger then nature or can wrestle with a degree of Heaven or can escape from a Divine punishment by his own arts so that neither the power nor the providence of God nor the laws of nature nor the bands of eternal predestination can hold him then he may live beyond the fate and period of flesh and last longer then a flower But if all these can hold us and tie us to conditions then we must lay our heads down upon a turfe and entertain creeping things in the cells and little chambers of our eyes and dwell with worms till time and death shall be no more We must needs die That 's our sentence But that 's not all We are as water spilt on the ground which cannot be gathered up again Stay 1. We are as water weak and of no consistence alwaies descending abiding in no certain place unlesse where we are detained with violence and every little breath of winde makes us rough and tempestuous and troubles our faces every trifling accident discomposes us and as the face of the waters wafting in astrom so wrinkles it self that it makes upon its fore-head furrows deep and hollow like a grave so do our great and little cares and trifles first make the wrinkles of old age and then they dig a grave for us And there is in nature nothing so contemptible but it may meet with us in such circumstances that it may be too hard for us in our weaknesses and the sting of a Bee is a weapon sharp enough to pierce the finger of a childe or the lip of a man and those creatures which nature hath left without weapons yet they are armed sufficiently to vex those parts of men which are left defenselesse and obnoxious to a sun beam to the roughnesse of a sower grape to the unevennesse of a gravel-stone to the dust of a wheel or the unwholesome breath of a star looking awry upon a sinner 2. But besides the weaknesses and natural decayings of our bodies if chances and contingencies be innumerable then no man can reckon our dangers and the praeternatural causes of our deaths So that he is a vain person whose hopes of life are too confidently increased by reason of his health and he is too unreasonably timorous who thinks his hopes at an end when he dwels in sickness For men die without rule and with and without occasions and no man suspecting or foreseeing any of deaths addresses and no man in his whole condition is weaker then another A man in a long
Consumption is fallen under one of the solemnities and preparations to death but at the same instant the most healthful person is as neer death upon a more fatal and a more sudden but a lesse discerned cause There are but few persons upon whose foreheads every man can read the sentence of death written in the lines of a lingring sicknesse but they sometimes hear the passing bell ring for stronger men even long before their own knell calls at the house of their mother to open her womb and make a bed for them No man is surer of to morrow then the weakest of his brethren and when Lepidus and Aufidius stumbled at the threshold of the Senate and fell down and died the blow came from heaven in a cloud but it struck more suddenly then upon the poor slave that made sport upon the Theatre with a praemeditated and foredescribed death Quod quisque vitet nunquam homini satis cautum est in horas There are sicknesses that walk in darknesse and there are exterminating Angels that fly wrapt up in the curtains of immateriality and an uncommunicating nature whom we cannot see but we feel their force and sink under their sword and from heaven the vail descends that wraps our heads in the fatal sentence There is no age of man but it hath proper to it self some posterns and outlets for death besides those infinite and open ports out of which myriads of men and women every day passe into the dark and the land of forgetfulnesse Infancie hath life but in effigie or like a spark dwelling in a pile of wood the candle is so newly lighted that every little shaking of the taper and every ruder breath of air puts it out and it dies Childhood is so tender and yet so unwary so soft to all the impressions of chance and yet so forward to run into them that God knew there could be no security without the care and vigilance of an Angel-keeper and the eyes of Parents and the arms of Nurses the provisions of art and all the effects of Humane love and Providence are not sufficient to keep one childe from horrid mischiefs from strange and early calamities and deaths unlesse a messenger be sent from heaven to stand sentinel and watch the very playings and the sleepings the eatings and the drinkings of the children and it is a long time before nature makes them capable of help for there are many deaths and very many diseases to which poor babes are exposed but they have but very few capacities of physick to shew that infancy is as liable to death as old age and equally exposed to danger and equally uncapable of a remedy with this onely difference that old age hath diseases incurable by nature and the diseases of child-hood are incurable by art and both the states are the next heirs of death 3. But all the middle way the case is altered Nature is strong and art is apt to give ease and remedy but still there is no security and there the case is not altered 1 For there are so many diseases in men that are not understood 2. So many new ones every year 3 The old ones are so changed in circumstance and intermingled with so many collateral complications 4 The Symptoms are oftentimes so alike 5 Sometimes so hidden and fallacious 6 Sometimes none at all as in the most sudden and the most dangerous imposthumations 7 And then the diseases in the inward parts of the body are oftentimes such to which no application can be made 8 They are so far off that the effects of all medicines can no otherwise come to them then the effect and juices of all meats that is not till after two or three alterations and decoctions which change the very species of the medicament 9 And after all this very many principles in the art of Physick are so uncertain that after they have been believed seven or eight ages and that upon them much of the practise hath been established they come to be considered by a witty man and others established in their stead by which men must practise and by which three or four generations of men more as happens must live or die 10. And all this while the men are sick and they take things that certainly make them sicker for the present and very uncertainly restore health for the future that it may appear of what a large extent is humane calamity when Gods providence hath not onely made it weak and miserable upon the certain stock of a various nature and upon the accidents of an infinite contingency but even from the remedies which are appointed our dangers and our troubles are certainly increased so that we may well be likened to water our nature is no stronger our aboad no more certain If the sluces be opened it falls away and runneth apace if its current be stopped it swells and grows troublesome and spils over with a greater diffusion If it be made to stand still it putrefies and all this we do For 4. In all the processe of our health we are running to our grave we open our own sluces by vitiousnesse and unworthy actions we pour in drink and let out life we increase diseases and know not how to bear them we strangle our selves with our own intemperance we suffer the feavers and the inflammations of lust and we quench our souls with drunkennesse we bury our understandings in loads of meat and surfets and then we lie down upon our beds and roar with pain and disquietnesse of our souls Nay we kill one anothers souls and bodies with violence and folly with the effects of pride and uncharitablenesse we live and die like fools and bring a new mortality upon our selves wars and vexatious cares and private duels and publike disorders and every thing that is unreasonable and every thing that is violent so that now we may adde this fourth gate to the grave Besides Nature and Chance and the mistakes of art men die with their own sins and then enter into the grave in haste and passion and pull the heavy stone of the monument upon their own heads And thus we make our selves like water spilt on the ground we throw away our lives as if they were unprofitable and indeed most men make them so we let our years slip through our fingers like water and nothing is to be seen but like a showr of tears upon a spot of ground there is a grave digged and a solemn mourning and a great talk in the neighbourhood and when the dayes are finished they shall be and they shall be remembred no more And that 's like water too when it is spilt it cannot be gathered up again There is no redemption from the grave inter se mortales mutua vivunt Et quasi cursores vitäi lampada tradunt Men live in their course and by turns their light burns a while and then it burns blew and faint and men go to converse with
Spirits and then they reach the taper to another and as the hours of yesterday can never return again so neither can the man whose hours they were and who lived them over once he shall never come to live them again and live them better When Lazarus and the widows son of Naim and Tabitha and the Saints that appeared in Jerusalem at the resurrection of our blessed Lord arose they came into this world some as strangers onely to make a visit and all of them to manifest a glory but none came upon the stock of a new life or entred upon the stage as at first or to perform the course of a new nature and therefore it is observable that we never read of any wicked person that was raised from the dead Dives would fain have returned to his brothers house but neither he nor any from him could be sent but all the rest in the New Testament one onely excepted were expressed to have been holy persons or else by their age were declared innocent Lazarus was beloved of Christ those souls that appeared at the resurrection were the souls of Saints Tabitha raised by Saint Peter was a charitable and a holy Christian and the maiden of twelve years old raised by our blessed Saviour had not entred into the regions of choice and sinfulnesse and the onely exception of the widows son is indeed none at all for in it the Scripture is wholly silent and therefore it is very probable that the same processe was used God in all other instances having chosen to exemplifie his miracles of nature to purposes of the Spirit and in spirituall capacities So that although the Lord of nature did break the bands of nature in some instances to manifest his glory to succeeding great and never failing purposes yet besides that this shall be no more it was also instanced in such persons who were holy and innocent and within the verge and comprehensions of the eternall mercy We never read that a wicked person felt such a miracle or was raised from the grave to try the second time for a Crown but where he fell there he lay down dead and saw the light no more This consideration I intend to you as a severe Monitor and an advice of carefulnesse that you order your affairs so that you may be partakers of the first resurrection that is from sin to grace from the death of vitious habits to the vigour life and efficacy of an habituall righteousnesse For as it hapned to those persons in the New Testament now mentioned to them I say in the literall sense Blessed are they that have part in the first resurrection upon them the second death shall have no power meaning that they who by the power of Christ and his holy Spirit were raised to life again were holy and blessed souls and such who were written in the book of God and that this grace happened to no wicked and vitious person so it is most true in the spirituall and intended sense You onely that serve God in a holy life you who are not dead in trespasses and sins you who serve God with an early diligence and an unwearied industry and a holy religion you and you onely shall come to life eternall you onely shall be called from death to life the rest of mankind shall never live again but passe from death to death from one death to another to a worse from the death of the body to the eternall death of body and soul and therefore in the Apostles Creed there is no mention made of the resurrection of wicked persons but of the resurrection of the body to everlasting life The wicked indeed shall be haled forth from their graves from their everlasting prisons where in chains of darknesse they are kept unto the judgement of the great day But this therefore cannot be called in sensu favoris a resurrection but the solennities of the eternall death It is nothing but a new capacity of dying again such a dying as cannot signifie rest but where death means nothing but an intolerable and never ceasing calamity and therefore these words of my Text are otherwise to be understood of the wicked otherwise of the godly The wicked are spilt like water and shall never be gathered up again no not in the gatherings of eternity They shall be put into vessels of wrath and set upon the flames of hell but that is not a gathering but a scattering from the face and presence of God But the godly also come under the sense of these words They descend into their graves and shall no more be reckoned among the living they have no concernment in all that is done under the Sun Agamemnon hath no more to do with the Turks armies invading and possessing that part of Greece where he reigned then had the Hippocentaur who never had a beeing and Cicero hath no more interest in the present evils of Christendome then we have to do with his boasted discovery of Catilines conspiracie What is it to me that Rome was taken by the Gauls and what is it now to Camillus if different religions be tolerated amongst us These things that now happen concern the living and they are made the scenes of our duty or danger respectively and when our wives are dead and sleep in charnel houses they are not troubled when we laugh loudly at the songs sung at the next marriage feast nor do they envy when another snatches away the gleanings of their husbands passion It is true they envy not and they lie in a bosome where there can be no murmure and they that are consigned to Kingdoms and to the feast of the marriage-supper of the Lamb the glorious and eternall Bride-groom of holy souls they cannot think our marriages here our lighter laughings and vain rejoycings considerable as to them And yet there is a relation continued still Aristotle said that to affirm the dead take no thought for the good of the living is a disparagement to the laws of that friendship which in their state of separation they cannot be tempted to rescind And the Church hath taught in generall that they pray for us they recommend to God the state of all their Relatives in the union of the intercession that our blessed Lord makes for them and us and Saint Ambrose gave some things in charge to his dying brother Satyrus that he should do for him in the other world he gave it him I say when he was dying not when he was dead And certain it is that though our dead friends affection to us is not to be estimated according to our low conceptions yet it is not lesse but much more then ever it was it is greater in degree and of another kind But then we should do well also to remember that in this world we are something besides flesh and blood that we may not without violent necessities run into new relations but preserve the affections we bear to our dead when
shall be rent into threds of light and scatter like the beards of comets Then shall bee fearfull earthquakes and the rocks shall rend in pieces the trees shall distill bloud and the mountains and fairest structures shall returne unto their primitive dust the wild beasts shall leave their dens and come into the companies of men so that you shall hardly tell how to call them herds of Men or congregations of Beasts Then shall the Graves open and give up their dead and those which are alive in nature and dead in fear shall be forc'd from the rocks whither they went to hide them and from caverns of the earth where they would fain have been concealed because their retirements are dismantled and their rocks are broken into wider ruptures and admit a strange light into their secret bowels and the men being forc'd abroad into the theatre of mighty horrors shall run up and downe distracted and at their wits end and then some shall die and some shall bee changed and by this time the Elect shall bee gathered together from the foure quarters of the world and Christ shall come along with them to judgment These signes although the Jewish Doctors reckon them by order and a method concerning which they had no revelation that appeares nor sufficiently credible tradition yet for the main parts of the things themselves the holy Scripture records Christs own words and concerning the most terrible of them the summe of which as Christ related them and his Apostles recorded and explicated is this The earth shall tremble and the powers of the heavens shall bee shaken the sun shall bee turned into darknesse and the moon into bloud that is there shall bee strange eclipses of the Sun and fearfull aspects in the Moon who when she is troubled looks red like bloud The rocks shall rend and the elements shall melt with fervent heat The heavens shall bee rolled up like a parchment the earth shall bee burned with fire the hils shall be like wax for there shall goe a fire before him and a mighty tempest shall be stirred round about him Dies irae Dies illa Solvet sêclum in favillâ Teste David cum Sibyllâ The Trumpet of God shall sound and the voice of the Archangell that is of him who is the Prince of all that great army of Spirits which shall then attend their Lord and wait upon and illustrate his glory and this also is part of that which is called the signe of the Son of Man for the fulfilling of all these praedictions and the preaching the Gospel to all Nations and the Conversion of the Jews and these prodigies and the Addresse of Majesty make up that signe The notice of which things some way or other came to the very Heathen themselves who were alarum'd into caution and sobriety by these dreadfull remembrances Sic cum compage solutâ Saecula tot mundt suprema coëgerit hora Antiquum repetens iterum chaos omnia mistis Sidera sideribus concurrent ignea pontum Astra petent tellus extendere littora nolet Excutietque fretum fratri contraria Phoebe Ibit Totaque discors Machina divulsi turbabit foedera Mundi Which things when they are come to passe it will be no wonder if mens hearts shall faile them for feare and their wits bee lost with guilt and their fond hopes destroyed by prodigie and amazement but it will bee an extreme wonder if the consideration and certain expectation of these things shall not awake our sleeping spirits and raise us from the death of Sin and the basenesse of vice and dishonorable actions to live soberly and temperately chastly and justly humbly and obediently that is like persons that believe all this and such who are not mad men or fools but will order their actions according to these notices For if they doe not believe these things where is their Faith If they doe believe them and sin on and doe as if there were no such thing to come to passe where is their Prudence and what is their hopes and where their Charity how doe they differ from beasts save that they are more foolish for beasts goe on and consider not because they cannot but we can consider and will not we know that strange terrors shall affright us all and strange deaths and torments shall seise upon the wicked and that we cannot escape and the rocks themselves will not bee able to hide us from the fears of those prodigies which shall come before the day of Judgement and that the mountains though when they are broken in pieces we call upon them to fall upon us shall not be able to secure us one minute from the present vengeance and yet we proceed with confidence or carelesnesse and consider not that there is no greater folly in the world then for a man to neglect his greatest interest and to die for trifles and little regards and to become miserable for such interests which are not excusable in a Childe He that is youngest hath not long to live Hee that is thirty forty or fifty yeares old hath spent most of his life and his dream is almost done and in a very few moneths hee must be cast into his eternall portion that is hee must be in an unalterable condition his finall Sentence shall passe according as hee shall then bee found and that will be an intolerable condition when he shall have reason to cry out in the bitternesse of his soule Eternall woe is to mee who refus'd to consider when I might have been saved and secured from this intolerable calamity But I must descend to consider the particulars and circumstances of the great consideration Christ shall be our Judge at Doomes-day SERMON II. Part II. 1. IF we consider the person of the Judge we first perceive that he is interested in the injury of the crimes he is to sentence Videbunt quem crucifixerunt and they shal look on him whom they have pierced It was for thy sins that the Judge did suffer such unspeakable pains as were enough to reconcile all the world to God The summe and spirit of which pains could not be better understood then by the consequence of his own words My God my God why hast thou forsaken me meaning that he felt such horrible pure unmingled sorrowes that although his humane nature was personally united to the Godhead yet at that instant he felt no comfortable emanations by sensible perception from the Divinity but he was so drenched in sorrow that the Godhead seemed to have forsaken him Beyond this nothing can be added but then that thou hast for thy own particular made all this in vain and ineffective that Christ thy Lord and Judge should be tormented for nothing that thou wouldst not accept felicity and pardon when he purchased them at so dear a price must needs be an infinite condemnation to such persons How shalt thou look upon him that fainted and dyed for love of thee and thou didst
and all the security they can have depends upon Gods mercy pardoning their sins they cannot choose but fear infinitely if they have not reason to hope that their sins are pardoned * Now concerning this men indeed have generally taken a course to put this affair to a very speedy issue God is mercifull and God forgive mee and all is done or it may be a few sighs like the deep sobbings of a man that is almost dead with laughter that is a trifling sorrow returning upon a man after he is full of sin and hath pleased himselfe with violence and revolving onely by a naturall change from sin to sorrow from laughter to a groan from sunshine to a cloudy day or it may be the good man hath left some one sin quite or some degrees of all sin and then the conclusion is firm he is rectus in Curâ—â his sins are pardoned he was indeed in an evill condition but now he is purged he is sanctified and clean These things are very bad but it is much worse that men should continue in their sin and grow old in it and arrive at consirmation and the strength of habituall wickednesse and grow fond of it and yet think if they die their account stands as fair in the eyes of Gods mercy as St. Peter's after his tears and sorrow Our sins are not pardoned easily and quickly and the longer and the greater hath been the iniquity the harder and more difficult and uncertain is the pardon it is a great progresse to return from all the degrees of death to life to motion to quicknesse to purity to acceptation to grace to contention and growth in grace to perseverance and so to pardon For pardon stands no where but at the gates of heaven It is a great mercy that signifies a finall and universall acquittance God sends it out in little scroles and excuses you from falling by the sword of the enemy or the secret stroke of an Angell in the days of the plague but these are but little entertainments and inticings of our hopes to work on towards the great pardon which is registred in the leaves of the Book of Life And it is a mighty folly to think that every little line of mercy signifies glory and absolution from the eternall wrath of God and therefore it is not to be wondred at that wicked men are unwilling to dye it is a greater wonder that many of them dye with so little resentment of their danger and their evill There is reason for them to tremble when the Judge summons them to appear When his messenger is clothed with horror and speaks in thunder when their conscience is their accuser and their accusation is great and their bills uncancell'd and they have no title to the crosse of Christ no advocate no excuse when God is their enemy and Christ is the injur'd person and the Spirit is grieved and sicknesse and death come to plead Gods cause against the man then there is reason that the naturall fears of death should be high and pungent and those naturall fears encreased by the reasonable and certain expectations of that anger which God hath laid up in heaven for ever to consume and destroy his enemies And indeed if we consider upon how trifling and inconsiderable grounds most men hope for pardon if at least that may be call'd hope which is nothing but a carelesse boldnesse and an unreasonable wilfull confidence we shall see much cause to pity very many who are going merrily to a sad and intolerable death Pardon of sins is a mercy which Christ purchased with his dearest blood which he ministers to us upon conditions of an infinite kindnesse but yet of great holinesse and obedience and an active living faith it is a grace that the most holy persons beg of God with mighty passion and labour for with a great diligence and expect with trembling fears and concerning it many times suffer sadnesses with uncertain soules and receive it by degrees and it enters upon them by little portions and it is broken as their sighs and sleeps But so have I seen the returning sea enter upon the strand and the waters rolling towards the shore throw up little portions of the tide and retire as if nature meant to play and not to change the abode of waters but still the floud crept by little steppings and invaded more by his progressions then he lost by his retreat and having told the number of its steps it possesses its new portion till the Angell calls it back that it may leave its unfaithfull dwelling of the sand so is the pardon of our sins it comes by slow motions and first quits a present death and turnes it may be into a sharp sicknesse and if that sicknesse prove not health to the soul it washes off and it may be will dash against the rock again and proceed to take off the severall instances of anger and the periods of wrath but all this while it is uncertain concerning our finall interest whether it be ebbe or floud and every hearty prayer and every bountifull almes still enlarges the pardon or addes a degree of probability and hope and then a drunken meeting or a covetous desire or an act of lust or looser swearing idle talk or neglect of Religion makes the pardon retire and while it is disputed between Christ and Christs enemy who shall be Lord the pardon fluctuates like the wave striving to climbe the rock and is wash'd off like its own retinue and it gets possession by time and uncertainty by difficulty and the degrees of a hard progression When David had sinned but in one instance interrupting the course of a holy life by one sad calamity it pleased God to pardon him but see upon what hard terms He prayed long and violently he wept sorely he was humbled in sackcloth and ashes he eat the bread of affliction and drank of his bottle of tears he lost his Princely spirit and had an amazing conscience he suffer'd the wrath of God and the sword never did depart from his house his Son rebell'd and his Kingdome revolted he fled on foot and maintained Spies against his childe hee was forc'd to send an army against him that was dearer then his owne eyes and to fight against him whom he would not hurt for all the riches of Syria and Egypt his concubines were desir'd by an incestuous mixture in the face of the sun before all Israel and his childe that was the fruit of his sin after a 7 days feaver dyed and left him nothing of his sin to show but sorrow and the scourges of the Divine vengeance and after all this God pardoned him finally because he was for ever sorrowfull and never did the sin againe He that hath sinned a thousand times for David's once is too confident if he thinks that all his shall be pardoned at a lesse rate then was used to expiate that one mischief of the religious King The son
frequency in prayers and that part of zeal which relates to it is to be upon no account but of an holy spirit a wise heart and reasonable perswasion for if it begins upon passion or fear in imitation of others or desires of reputation honour or phantastick principles it will be unblessed and weary unprosperous and without return or satisfaction therefore if it happen to begin upon a weak principle be very curious to change the motive and with all speed let it be turned into religion and the love of holy things then let it be as frequent as it can prudently it cannot be amisse 2. When you are entred into a state of zealous prayer and a regular devotion what ever interruption you can meet with observe their causes and be sure to make them irregular seldome and contingent that your omissions may be seldome and casuall as a bare accident for which no provisions can be made for if ever it come that you take any thing habitually and constantly from your prayers or that you distract from them very frequently it cannot be but you will become troublesome to your self your prayers will be uneasie they will seem hinderances to your more necessary affairs of passion and interest and the things of the world and it will not stand still till it comes to Apostasie and a direct despite and contempt of holy things For it was an old rule and of a sad experience Tepiditas si callum obduxerit fiet apostasia if your lukewarmnesse be habituall and a state of life if it once be hardned by the usages of many daies it changes the whole state of the man it makes him an apostate to devotion Therefore be infinitely carefull in this particular alwayes remembring the saying of St. Chrysostome Docendi praedicandi officia alia cessant suo tempore precandi autem nunquam there are seasons for teaching and preaching and other outward offices but prayer is the duty of all times and of all persons and in all contingences From other things in many cases we can be excused but from prayer never In this therefore 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 it is good to be zealous 2. Concerning the second instance I named viz. To give almes above our estate it is an excellent act of zeal and needs no other caution to make it secure from illusion and danger but that our egressions of charity do not prejudice justice See that your almes do not other men wrong and let them do what they can to thy self they will never prejudice thee by their abundance but then be also carefull that the pretences of justice do not cousen thy self of thy charity and the poor of thine almes and thy soul of the reward He that is in debt is not excused from giving almes till his debts are paid but only from giving away such portions which should and would pay them and such which he intended should do it There are lacernae divitiarum and crums from the table and the gleanings of the harvest and the scatterings of the vintage which in all estates are the portions of the poor which being collected by the hand of providence and united wisely may become considerable to the poor and are the necessary duties of charity but beyond this also every considerable relief to the poor is not a considerable diminution to the estate and yet if it be it is not alwaies considerable in the accounts of Justice for nothing ought to be pretended against the zeal of almes but the certain omissions or the very probable retarding the doing that to which we are otherwise obliged He that is going to pay a debt and in the way meets an indigent person that needs it all may not give it to him unlesse he knowes by other means to pay the debt but if he can do both he hath his liberty to lay out his money for a Crown But then in the case of provision for children our restraint is not so easie or discernible 1. Because we are not bound to provide for them in a certain portion but may do it by the analogies and measures of prudence in which there is a great latitude 2. Because our zeal of charity is a good portion for them and layes up a blessing for inheritance 3. Because the fairest portions of charity are usually short of such sums which can be considerable in the duty of provision for our children 4. If we for them could be content to take any measure lesse then all any thing under every thing that we can we should finde the portions of the poor made ready to our hands sufficiently to minister to zeal and yet not to intrench upon this case of conscience But the truth is we are so carelesse so unskil'd so unstudied in religion that we are only glad to make an an excuse and to defeat our souls of the reward of the noblest grace we are contented if we can but make a pretence for we are highly pleased if our conscience be quiet and care not so much that our duty be performed much lesse that our eternall interest be advanced in bigger portions We care not we strive not we think not of getting the greater rewards of Heaven and he whose desires are so indifferent for the greater will not take pains to secure the smallest portion and it is observable that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the least in the Kingdome of heaven is as much as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as good as none if a man will be content with his hopes of the lowest place there and will not labour for something beyond it he does not value it at all and it is ten to one but will lose that for which he takes so little pains and is content with so easie a security He that does his almes and resolves that in no case he will suffer inconvenience for his brother whose case it may be is into erable should do well to remember that God in some cases requires a greater charity and it may be we shall be called to dye for the good of our brother and that although it alwaies supposes a zeal and a holy fervour yet sometimes it is also a duty and we lose our lives if we go to save them and so we do with our estates when we are such good husbands in our Religion that we will serve all our own conveniences before the great needs of a hungry and afflicted brother God oftentimes takes from us that which with so much curiosity we would preserve and then we lose our money and our reward too 3. Hither is to be reduced * the accepting and choosing the counsels Evangelicall * the virgin or widow estate in order to Religion * selling all and giving it to the poor * making our selves Eunuchs for the Kingdome of Heaven * offering our selves to death voluntary in exchange or redemption of the life of a most usefull person as Aquila and Priscilla who ventur'd their lives for St.
Paul * the zeal of souls * St. Paul's preaching to the Corinthian Church without wages remitting of rights and forgiving of debts when the obliged person could pay but not without much trouble * protection of calamitous persons with hazard of our own interest and a certain trouble concerning which and all other acts of zeal we are to observe the following measures by which our zeal will become safe and holy and by them also we shall perceive the excesses of Zeal and its inordinations which is the next thing I am to consider 1. The first measure by which our zeal may comply with our duty and its actions become laudable is charity to our neighbour For since God receives all that glorification of himself whereby we can serve and minister to his glory reflected upon the foundation of his own goodnesse and bounty and mercy and all the Allellujahs that are or ever shall be sung in heaven are praises and thank givings and that God himself does not receive glory from the acts of his Justice but then when his creatures will not rejoyce in his goodnesse and mercy it followes that we imitate this originall excellency and pursue Gods own method that is glorifie him in via misericordiae in the way of mercy and bounty charity and forgivenesse love and fair compliances There is no greater charity in the world then to save a soul nothing that pleases God better nothing that can be in our hands greater or more noble nothing that can be a more lasting and delightfull honour then that a perishing soul snatched from the flames of an intolerable Hell and born to Heaven upon the wings of piety and mercy by the Ministery of Angels and the graces of the holy Spirit shall to eternall ages blesse God and blesse thee Him for the Author and finisher of salvation and thee for the Minister and charitable instrument that bright starre must needs look pleasantly upon thy face for ever which was by thy hand plac'd there and had it not been by thy Ministery might have been a â—ooty coal in the regions of sorrow Now in order to this God hath given us all some powers and ministeries by which we may by our charity promote this Religion and the great interest of souls Counsels and prayers preaching and writing passionate desires and fair examples going before others in the way of godlinesse and bearing the torch before them that they may see the way and walk in it This is a charity that is prepared more or lesse for every one and by the way we should do well to consider what we have done towards it For as it will be a strange arrest at the day of Judgement to Dives that he fed high and sufferred Lazarus to starve and every garment that lies by thee and perishes while thy naked brother does so too for want of it shall be a bill of Inditement against thy unmercifull soul so it will be in every instance in what thou couldst profit thy brother and didst not thou art accountable and then tell over the times in which thou hast prayed for the conversion of thy sinning brother and compare the times together and observe whether thou hast not tempted him or betrayed him to a sin or encourag'd him in it or didst not hinder him when thou mightest more frequently then thou hast humbly and passionately and charitably and zealously bowed thy head and thy heart and knees to God to redeem that poor soul from hell whither thou seest him descending with as much indifferency as a stone into the bottome of a well In this thing 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 it is a good thing to be zealous and put forth all your strength for you can never go too far But then be carefull that this zeal of thy neighbours amendment be only expressed in waies of charity not of cruelty or importune justice He that strikes the Prince for justice as Solomons expression is is a companion of murderers and he that out of zeal of Religion shall go to convert Nations to his opinion by destroying Christians whose faith is intire and summ'd up by the Apostles this man breaks the ground with a sword and sowes tares and waters the ground with bloud and ministers to envie and cruelty to errors and mistake and there comes up nothing but poppies to please the eye and fancy disputes and hypocrisie new summaries of Religion estimated by measures of anger and accursed principles and so much of the religion as is necessary to salvation is laid aside and that brought forth that serves an interest not holinesse that fils the Schooles of a proud man but not that which will fill Heaven Any zeal is proper for Religion but the zeal of the sword and the zeal of anger this is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the bitternesse of zeal and it is a certain temptation to every man against his duty for if the sword turns preacher and dictates propositions by empire in stead of arguments and ingraves them in mens hearts with a ponyard that it shall be death to beleeve what I innocently and ignorantly am perswaded of it must needs be unsafe to try the spirits to try all things to make inquiry and yet without this liberty no man can justifie himself before God or man nor confidently say that his Religion is best since he cannot without a finall danger make himself able to give a right sentence and to follow that which he findes to be the best this may ruine souls by making Hypocrites or carelesse and complyant against conscience or without it but it does not save souls though peradventure it should force them to a good opinion This is inordination of zeal for Christ by reproving St. Peter drawing his sword even in the cause of Christ for his sacred and yet injured person 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saith Theophylact teaches us not to use the sword though in the cause of God or for God himself because he will secure his own interest only let him be served as himself is pleased to command and it is like Moses passion it throwes the tables of the Law out of our hands and breaks them in pieces out of indignation to see them broken This is the zeal that is now in fashion and hath almost spoyl'd Religion men like the Zelots of the Jewes cry up their Sect and in it their interest 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 they affect Disciples and fight against the opponents and we shall finde in Scripture that when the Apostles began to preach the meeknesse of the Christian institution salvations and promises charity and humility there was a zeal set up against them the Apostles were zealous for the Gospell the Jewes were zealous for the Law and see what different effects these two zeals did produce the zeal of the Law came to this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 they stirred up the City they made tumults they persecuted this way unto the death they got letters from the