from all Christianity so especially from its Cross From all kinds and degrees of Suffering for it Your Salvation it 's true is wholly bought by your Redeemer's Sufferings but it is not to be received without your own And you perfidiously desert his Cause if at his call you do not promptly take up his Cross You are no more than Flatterers if in resolution you be not his Martyrs Neither can you reign if you will not suffer with him But faring deliciously every Day weds you to Pleasure and Delicacy makes you too tender to be blown on by any adverse Wind. Like a Palsy it slackens the Nerves and loosens the Joints of your Souls makes them Frightful And like a startling Beast causes you in your Fright to leap down a Precipice to avoid a Shadow To turn aside and take the bite of a Viper to avoid the prick of a Pin. To throw your selves into eternal Flames to scape the Sufferings that be comparatively lighter than Feathers It seduceth you into Conceits that the Hill of your Prosperity is the Mount of Transfiguration and there 's no good Life on any lower Ground That Death is a very Hell and a poor Life is a very Death That plain Food makes but a durable Famine that ordinary Clothes be but Grave-Clothes And not to be worshipped by the World is to be buried by it So Timorous are you made by your Riches and thereby Treacherous Fearful Vnbelieving and Abominable 7. Your Riches are Nets and Bands Those wherein Satan takes and holds you He and his Angels cannot hurt you by immediate Impressions It is by Objects without that they work on your Affections within They are notable Movers in your Sins but not without Gold and Silver Engines By these they do so move your Wills as to take you Captive at their own And hold you as fast as their Malice can wish The Devil is stiled the God of this World as reigning in the deluded Men of it But delude you he cannot nor obtain or establish his Throne in you but by using worldly things to effect it With these he did set upon the first yea and the second Adam Imagining as it seems that Holiness it self might be made to sin for this World's Glory This made the Primitive Christians to suspect Riches insomuch that Trypho the Jew derided them as Fools and Men afraid of Temporal good Things Richly your Estates furnish Satan with materials for your Ruin With the abundance of this World to lay amort your Care of the next With the Comforts of this Life to make Snares for your Eternal one Agrippina gave Claudius his fatal Poison in his most beloved Meat And with these things that do most please you Satan doth most effectually poison you Yea he makes you to take his very Office out of his Hands and turn Tempters to your selves Thus are Riches kept to you owners thereof to your Hurt Thô the Cock must crow loud that awakens you to see it Yet the very Turks themselves have a saying That the World is but a Carcass and they who feed on it are Dogs Lastly 8. Your Riches are Toils and Chains Such wherewith you your selves do take and hold Multitudes to their Sorrow As they do make you easy Trophies of the Tempter so next unto him they make you the greatest of Tempters For whatever their Wills be Poor-folk and Yeomen are Babies at seducing You of the Gentry and Nobility are Plenipotentiaries Your great Dunghils for no other are your great Estates are heaps of Worms and Flies to angle for any simple Fishes Your Cellars and Pantries do draw in whole Shoals of them Making your Words the very worst of them a Law of Iniquity to City and Country No Examples do move so as yours Tully's Observation is most true The Manners of a Countrey do lie at your Mercy Your Examples can set up Vices or Vertues Corrumpere mores Civitatis vel corrigere possunt Cic. de Legib. Your Practices do disguise Vices and gild them with a very Creditableness If a Churchman be busy his Reproof is quash'd with your Authority Or if an Head be broke by any Reprover your Smile is a considerable Plaister No small Matter will make a Tenant afraid of being as wicked as his Landlord This you know O ye Jeroboam's who do sin and make all Israel to sin But be it sadly acknowledged Lords and Gentlemen Prosperity hath been all which it has been said to be unto the very Clergy also Constantine's Gift was a Dose of Poison tho given with a good meaning Shepherds as well as Sheep are baned with too high Feed Like Horses we grow unruly when pampered Except but here and there a rare Exemplar of Mortification the Sons of Levi do become as the Sons of Eli they turn very Hophni's and Phineasses when they have Benjamin's Messes When they do very much more than live by the Altar their scandalous Lives make Men to abhor their religious Offerings The Heads are extraordinary whom high Places do not make Giddy The best of Men are most afraid of them We cannot name many a Sampson but the Dalilah of Opulence hath been too hard for him and shaved his Locks Queen Elizabeth dared to say that she spoiled a Preacher when she bestowed a Mitre All the World sees it too much Oil as well as too little spoileth the Lamps of the Temple Strabo calls a rich City of Egypt Neeropolis a Town of dead Men. Because so very many Dead were therein kept Embalmed And every Rustick hath it in his Mouth that where the Benefice is Fat the Ministry is Lean if not Amort But Sirs to do you Justice very few of you do this way spoil us Rarely it is that you Patrons do kill Incumbents with kindness Many are starved for every one that is surfeited They may be as studious as the great Calvin and leave their Inventory as slender as his which amounted but to sixty Pounds with his very Library thrown in Thô many a hopeful Son of the Church be Overlaid they are very many who take their Deaths in Patmos not in Arabia Foelix And whose Service would be valuable if their Stipends were not contemptible You very well know that thô by Office they are Angels by Nature they are Men. And their Bodies be not as Cameleons Nor are their Books to be bought for so little or to be sold for much more than Songs Albeit a Minister without those Vtensils is but a Workman without his Tools In a word till their Families are decently maintained and their Libraries competently furnished you may not look to see your Priests clothed with Righteousness and hear your People shouting for Joy But to return to your selves None of your Souls are taken from you by Force All which are taken by Satan are by your own Hands sold to him And for what Poverty and Sorrow are no good Sterling nor do you ever part with your selves for them Wealth and Mirth be the
Lord most High hath sent me unto you and my Message is Gospel If not let it be Anathema The Gospel of the great Lover of Souls Of your Souls as truly as of any inferior Ranks Yea very particularly of Yours Indeed the Poor have his Gospel Preached to them But they have it not confined unto them And it is unto the Preaching of the Gospel it is not to Salvation by it that the Holy Apostle saith Not many Wise after the Flesh not many Mighty and not many Noble are called Most certain it is that Men of neither Poverty nor Riches are the greatest number of Heaven's Guests But we are fully as certain that Men of all Orders have the self-same Invitation For to the Feast thereof we are commanded by our Saviour to bid every Creature And to proclaim that whosoever comes unto him He will in no wise cast out Yea singularly doth the Lord rich in Mercy unto All invite you Rich ones His primary Design in giving you your Riches is to win your Hearts By the good things of this Earth he Allures and Perswades you to Heaven By them as by all his other Goodness he leads you to Repentance For what are Gifts but Messengers sent to fetch Affections to the Giver And is it not a Creature less ingenuous than Brutes who is not a Friend to him that giveth Gifts Gifts so Useful so Delectable and so Rare as your Riches That Good should be rendred for Evil is a Truth of some little Obscurity But that Good should be rendred for Good the Good of Duty for the Good of Bounty is a Truth of most Meridian-light and incapable of doubt But Are these Good Gifts convertible to very ill Vses Are your Riches generally your Snares Do your fat Soils usually breed Rank Weeds Have your Purples and fine Linen a qualitative Touch making proud Flesh And do your rich Wines less Recreate than Intoxicate you This is as True as Sad. But whose is the Fault He that reproveth God let him answer it God the Maker of your Treasures is Wise God the Donor of them Gracious Most apt he made them to enable and engage you to his chearful Service And it is sure he bestows them on you for the Purpose Giving you sufficient direction for the Holy Use of them Who doubts but it is by means of its own Poison that a Spider is made more Venomous by a Flower When Israelites do turn Egyptian Jewels into Idols who blameth the Jewels the Givers or Any beside the Idolatrous Abusers They are wilfully blind who see not that God is kind Riches are Innocent and the Possessors of them are Peccant The Possessors thrô whose Lusts that which is Good is made Death unto them Prosperity apt to be a Loadstone to draw them unto their Duty becomes a Stumbling-stone and occasion of Revolt Their Estates which should be as Joshua's Leaders to Canaan do become Pharaoh's that will not let them stir out of Egypt St. Austin's words are worthy of Cedar That Riches might not be thought to be the best Good God gives them often to the worst Men that they might not be thought to be evil Things he gives them sometimes unto the best Men. In short your own Hearts do tell you what a Price Riches are in a wise Man's Hand tho they are so dangerous a Sword in a Mad Man's It is granted you do most pronely abuse Divine Bounty Behold ye therefore another instance of your Saviour's overflowing Kindness What should he have done that he hath not done for Rich Men His admirable Grace doth you the Favour to give you loud Warning of your Danger To tell you of the Sin that dwelleth in you and of the Temptations that do incircle you of the beguiling Serpents in your Paradises And of your Deceivableness by them into the most deadly Sin For that you do incur when like the unruly raging Sea you do turn the sweet showers of Heaven into a filthy Brine He proclaims it extreamly hard for you to be Saved Not of design to put you into a needless Fright but unto a necessary Watch. He gives you a kind Alarm in an aweful Exclamation How hardly shall they that have Riches enter into the Kingdom of God! To the Life he paints forth the Difficulty in a pathetical Simile that of a Camel going through the Eye of a Needle Expressing your Salvation to lie but just within the line of Possibility And with great Prolixity he Inculcates this As most unwilling that like unwary Bees you should drown your selves and perish in your Honey As resolving that if by any Warning you will be Preserved you shall not be Lost Nor is this his Beacon all your Warning No he requireth all his Ambassadors to be your like Monitors Of any Mens Ears especially to Thunder in yours Using no more Gentleness nor any less Severity than will do you Good Charge them that be Rich in this World that they be not high-minded nor Trust in uncertain Riches but in the Living God q. d. None stand in more Jeopardy than Men in Prosperity The Places of none are more slippery The Charms of no inchanted Men are harder to be unbound Sampson was less strongly fettered by the Philistines than they by their Grandeurs Wherefore Go temper your Ministrations to the Quality of their Spiritual Diseases not of their secular Dignities Dare not flatter and fawn on them As you value their Lives treat them not meerly with soft Suasions and oiled Words And with Rebukes as cold as Eli's Not so not so Take up the two-edged Sword of the Spirit and call for fiery Tongues when you deal with a Magnus or a Dives Storm them with Vollies of Divine Commands Commands the aptest to tear Cedars to break Rocks to level Mountains To humble an Ahab to shake a Felix to cast down the strong holds of a Herod's Lusts Speak as Preachers sent from him who * The Text in Jo◠34.17 18 19. should be thus read Wilt thou condemn him that is most Just to say to a King thou art Wicked and to Princes ye are Vngodly Who accepteth not c. dares say to a King Thou art Wicked and to Princes Ye are Vngodly Who accepts not the Persons of Princes nor regardeth the Rich more than the Poor Because they are all the Work of his Hands Fear not as need requires to give Cordials to the Poorest of the Parish and Vomits to the Lord of the Mannor Consider the Rich as Men under the greatest Trusts and responsible for the greatest Talents Men whose Conversion is of more mighty Influence than meaner Mens and is therefore of more exceeding Concernment to the Kingdom of God By these Thoughts of them be provoked to double your blows upon them Charge them to know themselves to be but Men. And not to lift up themselves in their Imagination above their proper Region To remember that Mountains of Gold and Silver do not set a Soul nearer to
Heaven or safer from Hell To beware of taking too much State of looking with Disdain and of breathing out Scorn upon their Overseers Overseers of the Holy Ghost's making and armed with Power to retain their Sins or remit them Charge them to mortify their common but cruel Lust their Lust for the pernicious Privilege of a way to Hell without any stop in it For the unmerciful Liberty of Self-damnation without any Contradiction Finally Smite with the Hand stamp with the Foot lift up your Voice as a Trumpet and give them no Rest till they make God their Riches and cease to make Riches their God Strain with Holy Violence to set up the Kingdom of God in the Rich of this World Whether they will believe it or no shew that you his Ministers do believe that God is not willing any should perish but that all should come to Repentance One thing more must be added the divine Care of your Souls is illustriously expressed also in the abundance of your Chastnings For of these fatherly Instructions ordinarily you have your Portions Of these refining Fires you have large shares Of these Medicines few have more Doses God dealeth not with you as with Bastards but as Sons Your have his Rod and Correction to give you Wisdom And kindly he hedgeth up your way with Thorns if by any means you may be kept from your fatal Folly Thus hath God loved you O ye Rich of this World Thus hath he testified that he would have you to be saved and come to the knowledg of the Truth And what will you render to the God of all this Grace Lebanon is not sufficient nor the Cattle on a thousand Hills There is no blacker Guilt than that of Ingratitude Breaches of Law be less contumelious than slights of Love If you render not Thanks according to the Divine Benefits you must expect Wrath to the uttermost according to Babylon's Judgments How much they have glorified themselves and lived deliciously so much Torment and Sorrow give them Wherefore fear ye the Lord and his Goodness Amen CHAP. II. Of the Ways whereby Prosperity slayeth THE Rich hath many Friends saith the Royal Preacher Yea more than be good saith every Spectator Many as the Italians speak which dwell at Placenza Which be bold to please you to your Hurt and as fearful to offend you for your Good Prompt to court you to Hell and afraid to chide you to Heaven Sirs Your State is like that of Men in a Great but very Leaky Ship Unless you continually Pump you unavoidably Perish But Hard Labour agrees with few of you Nor can you much better hear of it than Lewis the 11th could hear of Death Death whose Name was half the Thing to him And as little do most who are about you incline to trouble you with it One says as Cain Am I their Keeper No let the Chaplain see to his Lord and Ladies Salvation Another says as Solomon's Sluggard There is a Lion in the Way and I shall be bitten I know that a Bee gets nothing by stinging of a Bear Another argues like Judas To what purpose is this Waste It is as easy to make an old Man Young as a Rich Man Wise But what Friends of God or of your Souls are these worse than Cannibals To your Souls what is their Affection whose Silence gives Consent to your Damnation Toward God what can more prove an Infidel than such contrariety to his Precept and Example Wherefore By your leave and whether you will or no it is to be said as follows With a Corrupt Nature common to Adam's Race you have Trains of Temptations peculiar to your own Rank All Men have Rubs in their way towards Heaven but upon Ossa you have Pelion All our Lives be continued Temptations But yours be the most multiplied ones For what are your Estates but Superfluities and see you not that things superfluous be generally mischievous That rank Corn does still Lodg. Overladen Boughs do break Blossoms of extream Plenty seldom come to maturity And overgrown Bodies be the fullest of Maladies Besides Satan knows that one of you is worth a thousand of us for his turn and he accordingly strains to get you And there is no Eve but what offers you an hundred Apples for every one that is presented to your Neighbours You are encircled with Lures sufficient if it were possible to deceive the very Elect In short your Riches are Blinds to your Reason Opiats to your Conscience Fewel to your sensual Appetites Bellows to your Passion Extinguishers of Devotion Bars against the Cross of Christ Nets wherein Satan takes you Bands wherein he holds you Toils by which you do take Men and Chains by which you lead them Captives in Sin Insomuch that it is of little wonder they should slay Fools and wound the Wisest of you 1. Your Riches are Blinds The Faculty and Habit of Reason they do not destroy But the Vse and Exercise of it they do sadly suppress For their specious Vanities do perpetually court your Senses perpetually incur your Eyes your Ears and your Mouths And thrô them make way into your Fancies By whose quick and mighty Inspiration they do easily raise your Passions and allure those blind Powers to their embraces Which being gained your Minds are presently bribed and blinded your Understandings given to be your Guides constituted God's Deputies to order your Lives made the Eyes of your Souls to direct in all your Duties to inhibit from Evil and to instigate you unto Good to testify your Innocence or your Guilt in every Practice and to approve or condemn you accordingly these your Understandings are darkned by your Passions your blind but burning Passions the smoke of whose Furnace puts out their Eyes making them either to stand Neuters or turn Parties for your Lusts Utterly to neglect their Office or act most contrarily to their Duty Thus do your Riches murder your very Thoughts as Herod the Infants Especially as Pharaoh all your Masculine ones Thus they do hold you entertaining your Fancies and treating your sensual Appetites Which is the Business and Pleasure of Asses and Apes not of Angels and Men. Thus they serve you as the Athenians did the Men of Egina cut off your Thumbs and disable you to every thing that is Manly every thing save pulling an Oar in their Galley Miserable servitude wherein you are all Fancy no Thought And are set upon your Cash as Swine on their Draff without one look Upwards Great Men do not know the Rich do not consider 2. Your Riches are Opiats Your Consciences feel them such Your Consciences which are inseparable Faculties of your Souls Which are Laws in them and more unalterable than the Medes and Persians Are Witnesses also Witnesses not to be made away with And are Judges Judges for Life and not durante beneplacito But these thank your Riches are all asleep in your Breasts For as your Inheritances and your Purchases do give you great
of safety like the Practice of Piety Religion makes a Cottage a safe and sweet Habitation Innocence and Repentance do make a Musick Room of a Prison The discreet Apostle asks not Who is he that will harm you if you heap up Gold But if you follow that which is Good The Invisible Ruler of the World makes himself known by his Judgments upon the Richest that do contemn him And Worms themselves will turn the Poor whom you tread on as Down Hedges do not unfrequently bite your Heels But Earth as well as Heaven favours Religion God loves and makes the worst of Men to be at Peace with a Good one Indeed Times there are wherein the Lord of both sees Good to try who is of his Side And in these the better the Man the greater his Persecution But what then Be it under Affliction by his own Hand or under Persecution by Men's all is one He never fails to supply Good Men with Courage and to support them with Comfort Such as render them rather Objects of Envy than of Pity And of such more than of any it is said Let me die their Death let my last End be as theirs There is such a Spirit of Glory rests upon sincere Christianity in Tribulation as well as out of it Such a Vertue internal Holiness hath to expel Fears and to rejoice in Hopes But be the Kings of the Earth ever so much nursing Fathers and Queens nursing Mothers without Practical Religion there can be nothing but a Hell upon Earth Without you will have Fightings and within you will have Fears Feeling the Curse that goeth over the Face of the whole Earth by which every one that Stealeth is cut off on this side and every one that Sweareth is cut off on that Side 3. If you ask for Pleasure look no further Here it is here it Lives it Moves and it has its Being They who have taken the largest draughts of all Wines will tell you so and be Vouchers that the Sweetest and Richest are from our Saviour's Vineyard We are agreed I suppose what Pleasure is That it is founded in the congruity of Objects unto Faculties And consists in the satisfying Vse of the things which we possess Nor will it be denied but that the more noble the Objects and the more capacious the Faculties be the more satisfying and transporting the Delights must be Else the Pleasure of Brutes and very Insects might be thought to equal Mens and Angels As readily also it must be granted that tho vitiated Faculties have peculiar Gusts to which very nauseous things are grateful and pernicous ones are pleasant Yet in such Cases Men are beholding to their Distempers for their Delights And their Pleasure as it proceeds from Delusion it partakes of it True Satisfaction and Complacence rising only from proper Objects and regular Faculties When the Light is pure and the Eye is sound the Food wholesome and the Stomach good Wherefore Whether it be Vertue or Vice whose Ways are Pleasantness judg ye Yea whether Vertue promotes not Pleasure Naturally as well as Morally Whether as it best deserves it it doth not most work it There is no sensible Pleasure from which it doth restrain you but such as is below and against you Such as hath incomparably more Sting than Honey And is together opposite to your Reason and to your Interest It multiplieth intellectual and refineth animal Pleasures Providing against their natural Emptiness and Vanity of which they are apt quickly to satiate you and worse It teaches you to use them so as to enjoy them To eat so as not to surfeit to drink so as not to vomit to embrace so as not to rue it Let the fattest and fairest of your Countenances be looked on whose Tables groan under Stalled Oxen and the Countenances of such whose Feast is a Dinner of Herbs Presently it shall be seen in whose Faces the Oil of Joy doth most shine Boast not of your Sports and Diversions what of them is Moderate Religion allows And whatever is more doth not recreate but waste you Glory not in your grosser Shames like Claudius his Mushrooms tho Pleasant you do know they are Poisonous Like the stately Horse of Cn. Seius they are attended with this mischief that whoever has them is sure to suffer by them Their luscious Honey breeds a Choler so deadly Dissoluteness was never without Vultures on its Liver But the Sun will want Light and the Sea Water when Religion 's destitute of Pleasure For Repentance it self Self-denial and Mortification are a very Canaan There 's Milk and Honey flowing in them as little as you think it Because the Vices that made them disagreeable being removed Mens Natures being changed and Faculties rectified the Disproportion is removed and an Agreeableness is induced What Is it not Pleasure to the sound Man to Walk tho it was Torture to him when Lame Is it not gladly that Men keep the Cup from their Mouths when they are thoroughly cured of their Dropsies In the midst of Laughter your Hearts are sorrowful but in the midst of Sorrows Penitents Hearts are joyful Yet if it were otherwise a Wise Man would choose to bear the Pain of his Medicine rather than of his Disease Are many pretenders to Sanctity very sowre Many who are thought to be Religious bitterly morose What then So are Multitudes of you who are Irreligious And all who understand their Religion or themselves will acknowledg that it is not Christianity but the want of it that gives Men their Melancholy For they cannot but know that Chearfulness is both a Reward which Divine Bounty bestows on the Religious and a Duty which Divine Wisdom requires from them In a word suppose Vice to be as pleasant as ever it was conceited he that leaves Vertue for it he leaves the Sun for a Gloworm and a Canaan for Cabul 4. Are Riches of any account with you Or hath their Familiarity bred Contempt If those Hedges which keep you from being trampled on by your Neighbours be in much request please you to consider Godliness hath the Promise of the Life that now is And in its Left Hand are Riches i. e. The Possession and use of this World's Goods and Contentment with them For a Man is no more enriched with them than a Chest is if he doth but possess and not use them And Vse without Content is as bad as Possession without Vse Poverty it self can be no poorer than the Man who has not set a limit to his Desire But Religion it is that teaches the true Art of Getting and Keeping and no less of Vsing and Enjoying your Portion under the Sun Sensuality brings to a Morsel of Bread and clothes a voluptuous Heir with Rags Accordingly for the most part you do see Families Cities Nations the most Religious to be the most Prosperous The most illustriously and durably Prosperous Farthest from bare Feet and Wooden Shooes Richest themselves their Children and their Childrens Children