soul that receives him is Scot-free from Terror and Fear of Divine displeasure for this Guest secures his Quarters yea the power of the Almighty overshadoweth those with Grace whose hearts are prepared to cry Veni Spiritus Sancte And till O man this be thy temper thou art as unfit for Acquaintance with God as for Heaven of which it is a real Type and to which it is the Baptist for as into Heaven flesh and blood quà such cannot enter so into familiarity with God can none be admitted who have not the Test of this Comforter who never beares witnesse that they are the sons of God who rest unreconciled to Christ unresigned to him But how may these Graces appear in me may the soul say God Christ and the Holy Ghost have their Court in Heaven I am in the Valley of Bochim in the frigid Zone of earthly vanities where dust and ashes wormes and no men live and acclamate the Diana of Pomp and splendid nothing my bucket is not deep enough my stature not high enough to reach Heaven my bulk will not bear those breadthy Sails which that Glory fils What shal I do How may I contract acquaintance with God by union with Christ and rendition to his Spirit To these the third Step is answer Adore his Ordinances Those are his Leidgers which here he leaves to negotiate about affaires of Heaven these are the Chariots in which Eliahs are whirled thither these bring forth and there is none barren amongst them the good will of him that was in the bush are upon these Deut. 33.16 which Atheism and Irreligion would separate and unbrother as rejectitious and illegitimate God hath appointed his Word for our Rule his Ministers for our Guide his Sacraments for our Comfort his Day for our Rest and Refection his Church for our Pillar and Ground of Truth and those who adore not these are not like to be Gods Acquaintance Soveraignty will have no limits prescribed by Subjects Heaven knowes no Method but that of its own dictation Those that will be beggars must not be chusers Interest with God is worth gaining by cap in hand and upon bended knee and they deserve not to be heard in their request who request any thing contra formam Statuti inde editi the Declarative Law is Search the Scriptures John 5.3 9. Luke 16.29 for they do testifie saith Christ of me And in another place If they will not hear Moses and the Prophets neither will they be perswaded if one rise from the dead Wander not then O soul after wild phansies and blazing figments exposed to view and set on broach of purpose to deceive and mislead ignorant and inquisitive worldlings who set the Crown on Coridons and believe Christ the Saviour of the world rather from his riding on an Ass-Colt and obscure parentage then from his glorious attestation from Heaven or his convincing conversation here on earth and judg nothing Sacred but what is indeed common and unclean But O soul keep thou close to the Ordinances of Christ which his servants have received from him by the unquestionable tradition of the Church to the Truth of which the lives and deaths of holy Martyrs and glorious Confessors have in all ages born witness and do not believe that any thing is so lovely and truly advantageous to thy peace and orderly conduct as to serve thy God in that manner which he hath appointed and adore thou these holy mysteries Psal 46.4 by which waters the City of God in thy soul ought only to be made glad 5 And though thus to do be to do more then many now will yet is it not the totum postulatum of thee God O man requires of thee some tribute of praise the quit-rent of Gratitude The Psalmist tells us in the person of God Psal 50.23 Whose offereth me praise honoureth me and to give God the glory of his Munificence is but to offer him of his own it is but to pay him our Fine in his owne Coyn 1 Cor. 4.7 for what have we that we do not receive And in no kind is this sense of our obligation to God better resented by him then by Admiration of his Works which is the fourth Requiry of God towards the perfection of our Acquaintance with him Admiration of his Works And here me thinks I am enforced to exclamate with the holy Pophet Lord what is Man What his Being Capacity Dignity that thou shouldest honour him with Contemplation of thee and of those Works which set thee out in thy back parts though not to the ineffability of thine Essence Who O who wishes not his tongue were untied and tipped with Eloquence excelling mortal Emulation Psalm 150.2 that he might give to God the glory due to his name and praise him according to his excellent greatness not only for that he is high not for that he is and there is none besides him but for that he vouchsafeth to look down upon us here below and calls us to contemplate his good Will as well as matchless Power in the Formation of things and the orderly production of them Here is Matter to amuse the Secretary of Nature and to puzzle the greatest Oedipus here is a full point to Plato's Eloquence and Plotinus his Profundity Who can search the Center of that Idea which was in God when he made the Sun Moon and Stars appointing them their seasons influences order and sweetly tuning them each to other Who knowes the Nature of Creatures animate and inanimate vegetive and sensitive and can say of their Natures as God doth of the Seas proud Waves Hitherto and no further this you can and this you cannot do Where is he that sees the abyss of Providence and penetrates into that privy Chamber of Divinity which is for Gods eye only daring to affirme what shall and shall not be and the consequences of things natural and contingent Sure no mortal man undementated dare so confide in Art and dote so fondly on his vain shadow as to boast of this which is Gods incommunicable Jewel and the Prerogative of his Crown Our portion Oman is to wait Gods discovery Secret things belong to God Deut. 29.29 Exod. 24.2 but things revealed to us and God forbid we should come neerer the Mount then is indulged us or endeavour after Wisdom beyond Sobriety Our duty is to acquaint our selves with God not by knowing him as he is for that 's impossible but by knowing him as he manifests himself in works of Power Providence Mercy and in the improvement of what light we borrow from this Lamp we may see enough to make us in love with him who made all things as and what they are and to what they shall be In him the Rich and the poor the wise and the simple the Brute and the Rational the Worm and the Angel the Flye and the Eagle the Ant and the Elephant the Mouse and the Lion the Eele and
a Description of it that which forms it is the being and that which expatiates it is the wel-being of it For the more this grace for lesse it is not is meditated upon the greater are the touches of sweetnesse in the Souls visage from this lovely Pensill of the most lovely Artist GOD And therefore I shall conceive it to ascend its Zenith by these Gradations Step. 1 1. The lowest and inchoate step to this Mount is the Vnderstanding that must know him the chief good or else it will never desire him mans intellect is the Bucket by which he drawes and the Ladder at which he climbs to will and wed the object he knowes good without this 't is as impossible to love and obey as without eyes to judge of colours or without taste to discriminate Liquor and Meats God hath given the priority to this faculty as that which must season to and prepare appositely for the rest And truly this is of the foundation and reall nature of the rationall soul for from this are we determined to be worthy as to other creatures of that Supremacy and jurisdiction God hath given us over them for did not our Understandings direct us to a carriage proportionate to the natures of Creatures and things we should soon discover our follies to be too brutish either to be admired or followed and the Creation would soon renite obedience to so senslesse Governours But blessed be God he hath not left us without a witnesse of his liberality He hath informed our specious bodies with perfect souls and made a noble Lodging of State for himself that high room and top battlement our Understanding which though too vast to be filled with the little puncto's and contemptible grains of worldly nothings yet receives completion from God and those apprehensions of him which he in much condescension to us is pleased to vouchsafe us not to make us proud of our fatnesse but provident to improve fulnesse to gratitude and to serve him more compleatly who does good and is good and from whom goodnesse effluxeth to all creatures for of his fulnesse they receive fulnesse That this Understanding is the Key of Discovery and Acquaintance needs no second to confirm it for even nature tels us by the Rule that there is no desire of what we know not Ignoti nulla cupido and Scripture directs to this as the path to all gracious Intercourse with God in one passage of holy Writ I hear this asserted Psal 9.10 They that know thy Name will put their trust in thee in another He that cometh to GOD must believe that he is Heb. 11.6 Now effects imply causes as Cisterns do Springs and Rivers Seas If God be to be believed on he must be conceived of and understood by those that thus believe him for as articulation is consequent to generation so is adhaesion to assent and assent to intellect The necessity of intellect to head the will and affections which in a sort compleat acqaintance is evincible from many things from the order of God in Creation Nature which makes this as the womb at which port every thing which tends in its progresse to action enters The light natural typicall of this internall Luminary was the first Creature as that which God erected to give light to his Library the World which God compiled of nothing by a power eternal complete and indeterminable and the first tryall hee put man upon was to touch his Intellect and to try the magnetisme of that faculty which could draw all things to it and incorporate it self with every thing And if when there was no distortion if befote the mis-rule which sin and Satan brought into the Understanding this was the tendency of that Faculty It must still remain what it was as to the Nature and sacred Design of God though vayled and denegrated by accessions of sin and contractions of punishments which by understanding any thing but God and in order to God is just up on it The faculty then is the same in its nature in its imployment onely the Rose hath prickles the Swan deformed legs Death is in the pot if God doth not heal the waters and turn our Understandings to that right object Himself whom to know is life eternal And whom to glorifie as God our most excellent and onely good is the sole end of our creation Nor is the order of God in Creation the only Instance of this precedence of the Intellect but experience attests this in the whole latitude of Instances the Heavens by that instinct they have as it were and after their kind do their duty to earth Man nay their Maker by a duct which to them is in stead of Intellect do they serve times and seasons do they remit and extend influence according to the law of their first Cause and the Birds and Beasts by their sensual Energy analogous in some sort to Intelect in man direct their course and run their race not attempting to love or flye that which is not Good or Evil in their eye and pleasing or displeasing to their Natures Now if that rule of the Schools be true which neither is yet nor ever will be contradicted That the work of Nature is the work of the God of Nature Opus Naturae est opus Authe ris then what is the concurrent practice of Universal Nature according to its specifick being must be Positive and Absolute and so from him who is the Beginning and End of all things and therefore most true And so I have mounted the first Step the Vnderstanding Acquaintance imports Understanding for how shall Desire be heightned but from Knowledge and Knowledg be gained but by that Faculty Rom 10.14 which is admissive and receptive of it How can they saith S. Paul believe on him of whom they have not heard and how can they hear without a Preacher Nor is this Step consummative to our Acquaintance if here we stay pitching this as the Non ultra beyond which we will not go for God hath placed his Seat on High and the Rounds of the Ladder which reacheth him are many he will have us engaged in much colluctation many breathings and pantings before we come up to the Mount of Mercy where Peace is and Evil is not and therefore he cryes out to man Step. 2 in the second place for his Heart his Will which is the Jewel in this Cabinet of Glory This this to the Intellect is as the Sailes to the Ship takes the Winds gales and carrys it to the Port of Loss or Gain this this is the Womb in which are the Issues of life and death this this is the Paradise which we ought to guard with the Flaming Sword of an uninterrupted and earnest Zeal for as the Sailes move the Ship by reason of the wind which acts upon them and so is causal of their swelling as they of the Ships motion and according to the quantity of the
love Christ when he is with those in Princes Courts cloathed in soft Rayment sat in Royal Apparel on the Throne when the people cry him up but when he is traduced when in the High Priests Hall when trampled upon then they are gone like Summer birds in Winter they are all for a Pompous Reign on earth before that more glorious Reign in Heaven and therefore they will secure themselves by might and main against all danger and diminution here Do these consider Christ had never been glorious but by sufferings nor the Church been victorious but by the red Cross How much of holy Writ do these men make Apocryphal while they entail external prosperity to Saintship and think none worthy to live but those who look upon the Cross as a curse servile supplicium What think they of those words of the Lord Jesus In the world yee Who my holy Apostles as pure Saints as any such none excepted nay to whom compared those are but as Jewish Sepulchers shall have affliction not be afflicted but have affliction in the Abstract there shall be a kind of connaturality betwixt you and affliction What judge they of Saint Pauls peremptory position All that will live godly in Christ Jesus shal suffer persecution What of Saint Peters prediction of fiery Tryals and Encouragements to prepare for them Nay what of our Saviours Benediction on those that suffer for Righteousness sake Are these Tales and Figments Are these Legends and Foysts Are these Lillies of his field not to be compared to the Solomons of their fancy in all his Royalty I trow there is no man so fond but sees self more set up then Christ in this Pageant for take away sufferings and where is Faith where Charity where Martyrdome nay where is or to what purpose that animative reference of the Holy Ghost displaying Christ glorious in witnessing a good confession before Pentius Pilate his Judg who could wash his hand and protest Christs innocency and yet durst not deliver him from the rage of the multitude No wonder they cry down Scripture and Fathers and Church Stories who cry up such wild excentrick worldly subtilties for Religion and own Christ with their mouthes as the Jewes did him on the Cross only the more to reproach him Well let these stray from the fold as wildly as they will it is thy part O holy foul to keep close to thy colours Voti tunc Curistianis crat pro Christi nomine gladio percuti S. Hieâ—on in vita Pauli Eremitae de Temp. Decii Christ looketh thou shouldst not only he ready to own but of need be to dyefor him thou must expect sorrows perhaps not such as with Spira will make thee despair turn thy back on Gon as Ephraim did in the day of Battel but such as may exercise thy Grace correct thine out-goings mind thee of thine end admonish thee of thy duty rouze thee to get thine Evidence ready to make thy Calling and Election sure and by a holy end prepare thee for a blessed Exchange The Promise is to be secure not exempt not that yee shall not to be assaulted but not be overcome not that ye shall not be chastned but that ye shall not be condemned not that evils shall not come neer you but that they shall not domineer over you not that ye shall not be buâ—fetted by Satan but that Divine Grace shal be sufficient for you The Peace of God gained by Acquaintance with him is no plea of prescription against trouble and evil but this it doth it modifies evil so that it comes not noxiously neer a godly man as it is evil so it s kept at distance as it is a Mark of Divine love as it is a voice to reclaim as it is commanded to be Gods Monitor to us so we must welcome it as did David It is good for me that I was afflicted and pray for it as preventive Physick that keeps us from Plethorick Distempers Many men may thank God for their crosses without which they had never come to Heaven there is a most notable Story in the Legend of a blind woman who besought Saint Bridget to give her sight the Saint so called at her intreaty Quo presentor sum mundo co absenâ—ior sum Christo did and when she had seen four dages she desired Saint Bridget that she would take away her sight again adding this for reason The more I see of the world the less am I conversant with Christ 4. Lastly The peace in Acquaintance with God will keep thee from thr Evil of Evils Death eternal God suffers not his to fall into that pit out of which there is no redemption His as they have no part in the sin of the Damned so shall they not partake in the torment of the Damned 'T is not Go ye Blessed but Go ye Cursed into everlasting fire prepared for the Divel and his Angels And indeed this is the Mercy of Mercies this is one part of the Recompence of Vertue and Godly life that it shall not only have comfort in seeing God gloriously waving the Banner of love over it but becoming its Guard to Heaven and nullifying Satans attempts on it this is that in which the mercy of God shines as at noon tide and comfortably exalts its self above Justice as that which crowns God and renders him Beloved and admired of all that know him But perhaps O man thou art curious to know what this Death Eternal is This is a vanity and if thou beware not may be the vexation of thy spirit but if thou wouldest ken the scantling of it our blessed Lord hath defined it to be utter darkness Matth. 8.12 where is weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth it is exile from God and judgment to the society of damned spirits for ever Death Eternal what is it not that is absolute tristicity it is a living death and a dying life it is the wages of sin the sentence of Justice the utmost period of Plagues a most exquisite misery a most Merciless Torment an Eternal Passion Eternal Death it is misery to the eye for it shall not see God it is a worm gnawing on the heart for it shall consider the evil it hath done for which is inflicted that evil it suffereth it is a vexation to the senses which to augment the tortures of their condition shal be renewed and made more sensible it is an excess which shall never have end but be eternally what it is and impossible to be what it is not Death Eternal it is the region of Blasphemy the Caldron of Nimrods Nero's Judasses those chambers of ruine into which they descend who desert God by sin and are deserted by God in just Judgment Death Eternal it is a gulfe without bottom a doom beyond ransome a fire that burnes and is never extinguished and a restless craver never satisfied What shall I say other then that of the Psalmist Remember this yee that frrget