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
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
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
his gifts and is never wanting to us in what we need and if all this be not argument strong enough to produce fear and that fear great enough to secure obedience all arguments are uselesse all discourses are vain the grace of God is ineffective and we are dull as the Dead sea unactive as a rock and we shall never dwell with God in any sense but as he is a consuming fire that is dwell in the everlasting burnings 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Reverence and caution modesty and fear 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 so it is in some copies with caution and fear or if we render 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to be fear of punishment as it is generally understood by interpreters of this place and is in Hesychius 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 then the expression is the same in both words and it is all one with the other places of Scripture Work out your salvation with fear and trembling degrees of the same duty and they signifie all those actions and graces which are the proper effluxes of fear such as are reverence prudence caution and diligence chastity and a sober spirit 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 so also say the Grammarians and it means plainly this since our God will appear so terrible at his second comming let us passe the time of our sojourning here in fear that is modestly without too great confidence of our selves soberly without bold crimes which when a man acts he must put on shamelesnesse reverently towards God as fearing to offend him diligently observing his commandements inquiring after his will trembling at his voice attending to his Word revering his judgements fearing to provoke him to anger for it is a fearfull thing to fall into the hands of the living God Thus far it is a duty Concerning which that I may proceed orderly I shall first consider how far fear is a duty of Christian Religion 2. Who and what states of men ought to fear and upon what reasons 3. What is the excesse of fear or the obliquity and irregularity whereby it becomes dangerous penall and criminall a state of evill and not a state of duty 1. Fear is taken sometimes in holy Scripture for the whole duty of man for his whole Religion towards God And now Israel what doth the Lord thy God require of thee but to fear the Lord thy God c. fear is obedience and fear is love and fear is humility because it is the parent of all these and is taken for the whole duty to which it is an introduction The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdome a good understanding have all they that do thereafter the praise of it endureth for ever and Fear God and keep his Commandements for this is the whole duty of man and thus it is also used in the New Testament Let us cleanse our selves from all filthinesse of the flesh and spirit perfecting holinesse in the fear of God 2. Fear is sometimes taken for worship for so our blessed Saviour expounds the words of Moses in Mat. 4. 10. taken from Deut. 10. 20. Thou shalt fear the Lord thy God so Moses Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God and him only shalt thou serve said our blessed Saviour and so it was used by the Prophet Jonah I am an Hebrew and I fear the Lord the God of Heaven that is I worship him he is the Deity that I adore that is my worship and my Religion and because the new Colony of Assyrians did not do so at the beginning of their dwelling there they feared not the Lord that is they worshipped other Gods and not the God of Israel therefore God sent Lions among them which slew many of them Thus far fear is not a distinct duty but a word signifying something besides it self and therefore cannot come into the consideration of this text Therefore 3. Fear as it is a religious passion is divided as the two Testaments are and relates to the old and new Covenant and accordingly hath its distinction In the Law God used his people like servants in the Gospell he hath made us to be sons In the Law he enjoyn'd many things hard intricate various painfull and expensive in the Gospell he gave commandements not hard but full of pleasure necessary and profitable to our life and well being of single persons and communities of men In the Law he hath exacted those many precepts by the covenant of exact measures grains and scruples in the Gospel he makes abatement for humane infirmities temptations morall necessities mistakes errors for every thing that is pitiable for every thing that is not malicious and voluntary In the Law there are many threatnings and but few promises the promise of temporal prosperities branch'd into single instances in the Gospell there are but few threatnings and many promises And when God by Moses gave the 10 Commandements only one of them was sent out with a promise the precept of obedience to all our parents and superiors but when Christ in his first Sermon recommended 8 duties Christian duties to the College of Disciples every one of them begins with a blessing and ends with a promise and therefore grace is opposed to the Law So that upon these differing interests the world put on the affections of Servants and Sons They of old feared God as a severe Lord much in his commands abundant in threatnings angry in his executions terrible in his name in his Majesty and appearance dreadfull unto death and this the Apostle cals 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The spirit of bondage or of a servant But we have not received that Spirit 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 unto fear not a servile fear but the Spirit of adoption and a filiall fear we must have God treats us like sons he keeps us under discipline but designs us to the inheritance and his government is paternall his disciplines are mercifull his conduct gentle his Son is our Brother and our Brother is our Lord and our Judge is our Advocate and our Priest hath felt our infirmities and therefore knows to pity them and he is our Lord and therefore he can relieve them and from hence we have affections of sons so that a fear we must not have and yet a fear we must have and by these proportions we understand the difference Malo vereri quà m timeri me à meis said one in the Comedy I had rather be reverend then fear'd by my children The English doth not well expresse the difference but the Apostle doth it rarely well For that which he cals 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in Rom. 8. 15. he cals 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 2 Tim. 1. 7. The spirit of bondage is the spirit rather of timorousnesse of fearfulnesse rather then fear when we are fearfull that God will use us harshly or when we think of the accidents that happen worse then the things are when they are proportion'd by measures
nature such a snare and a bait to weak and easie fools that it prevails infinitely and rages horribly and rules tyrannically it is a very feaver in the reason and a calenture in the passions and therefore either it must be quenched or it will be impossible to cure our evill natures The curing of this is not the remedy of a single evill but it is a doing violence to our whole nature and therefore hath in it the greatest courage and an equall conduct and supposes spirituall strengths great enough to contest against every enemy 4. Hither is to be reduced that we avoid all flatterers and evill company for it was impossible that Alexander should be wise and cure his pride and his drunkennesse so long as he entertain'd Agesius and Agnon Bagoas and Demetrius and slew Parmenio and Philotas and murder'd wise Calisthenes for he that loves to be flartered loves not to change his pleasur◠but had rather to hear himself cal'd wise then to be so Flattery does bribe an evill nature and corrupt a good one and make it love to give wrong judgement and evill sentences he that loves to be flatter'd can never want some to abuse him but he shall alwaies want one to counsell him and then he can never be wise 5. But I must put these advices into a heap he therefore that will cure his evill nature must for himself against his chiefest lust which when he hath overcome the lesser enemies will come in of themselves He must endevour to reduce his affections to an indifferency for all violence is an enemy to reason and counsell and is that state of disease for which he is to enquire remedies 8. It is necessary that in all actions of choice he deliberate and consider that he may never do that for which he must aske a pardon and he must suffer shame and smart and therefore Cato did well reprove Aulus Albinus for writing the Roman story in the Greek tongue of which he had but imperfect knowledge and himself was put to make his Apologie for so doing Cato told him that he was mightily in love with a fault that he had rather beg a pardon then be innocent Who forc'd him to need the pardon And when beforehand we know we must change from what we are or do worse it is a better compendium not to enter in from whence we must uneasily retire 9. In all the contingencies of chance and variety of action remember that thou art the maker of thy own fortune and of thy own sin charge not God with it either before or after The violence of thy own passion is no superinduced necessity from him and the events of providence in all its strange variety can give no authority or patronage to a foul forbidden action though the next chance of war or fortune be prosperous and rich An Egyptian robber sleeping under a rotten wall was awaken'd by Serapis and sent away from the ruine but being quit from the danger and seeing the wall to slide thought that the Daemon lov'd his crime because he had so strangely preserved him from a sudden and a violent death But Serapis told him 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 I saved you from the wall to reserve you for the wheel from a short and a private death to a painfull and disgracefull and so it is very frequently in the event of humane affairs men are saved from one death and reserved for another or are preserved here to be destroyed hereafter and they that would judge of actions by events must stay till all events are passed that is till all their posterity be dead and the sentence is given at Dooms-day in the mean time the evils of our nature are to be look'd upon without all accidentall appendages as they are in themselves as they have an irregularity and disorder an unreasonablenesse and a sting and be sure to relye upon nothing but the truth of lawes and promises and take severe accounts by those lines which God gave us on purpose to reprove our evill habits and filthy inclinations Men that are not willing to be cured are glad of any thing to cousen them but the body of death cannot be taken off from us unlesse we be honest in our purposes and severe in our counsels and take just measures and glorifie God and set our selves against our selves that we may be changed into the likenesse of the sons of God 9. Avoid all delay in the counsels of Religion Because the aversation and perversnesse of a childes nature may be corrected easily but every day of indulgence and excuse increases the evill and makes it still more naturall and still more necessary 10. Learn to despise the world or which is a better compendium in the duty learn but truly to understand it for it is a cousenage all the way the head of it is a rainbow and the face of it is flattery its words are charmes and all its stories are false its body is a shadow and its hands do knit spiders webs it is an image and a noise with a Hyaena's lip and a Serpents tail it was given to serve the needs of our nature and in stead of doing it it creates strange appetites and nourishes thirsts and feavers it brings care and debauches our nature and brings shame and death as the reward of all our cares Our nature is a disease and the world does nourish it but if you leave to feed upon such unwholesome diet your nature reverts to its first purities and to the entertainments of the grace of God 4. I am now to consider how farre the infirmities of the flesh can be innocent and consist with the spirit of grace For all these counsels are to be entertain'd into a willing spirit and not only so but into an active and so long as the spirit is only willing the weaknesse of the flesh will in many instances become stronger then the strengths of the spirit For he that hath a good will and does not do good actions which are required of him is hindred but not by God that requires them and therefore by himself or his worst enemy But the measures of this question are these 1. If the flesh hinders us of our duty it is our enemy and then our misery is not that the flesh is weak but that it is too strong But 2. when it abates the degrees of duty and stops its growth or its passing on to action and effect then it is weak but not directly nor alwaies criminall But to speak particularly If our flesh hinders us of any thing that is a direct duty and prevails upon the spirit to make it do an evill action or contract an evill habit the man is in a state of bondage and sin his flesh is the mother of corruption and an enemy to God It is not enough to say I desire to serve God and cannot as I would I would fain love God above all the things in the world but the flesh hath
things of God and all other duties to be the things of the world for it was a Pharisaicall device to cry Corban and to refuse to relieve their aged Parents it is good to give to a Church but it is better to give to the Poor and though they must be both provided for yet in cases of dispute Mercy carries the cause against Religion and the Temple And although Mary was commended for choosing the better part yet Mary had done worse if she had been at the foot of her Master when she should have relieved a perishing brother Martha was troubled with much serving that was more then need and therefore she was to blame and sometimes hearing in some circumstances may be more then needs and some women are troubled with over-much hearing and then they had better have been serving the necessities of their house 4. This rule is not to be extended to the relatives of Religion for although the things of the Spirit are better then the things of the World yet a spirituall man is not in humane regards to be preferred before Princes and noble personages Because a man is called spirituall in severall regards and for various measures and manners of partaking of the Spirit of grace or co-operating toward the works of the Spirit * A King and a Bishop both have callings in order to godlinesse and honesty and spirituall effects towards the advancement of Christs Kingdome whose representatives severally they are * But whether of these two works more immediately or more effectively cannot at all times be known and therefore from hence no argument can be drawn concerning doing them civill regards * and possibly the partaking the Spirit is a neerer relation to him then doing his ministeries and serving his ends upon others * and if relations to God and Gods Spirit could bring an obligation of giving proportionable civill honour every holy man might put in some pretence for dignities above some Kings and some Bishops * But as the things of the Spirit are in order to the affairs of another world so they naturally can inferre onely such a relative dignity as can be expressed in spirituall manners But because such relations are subjected in men of this life and we now converse especially in materiall and secular significations therefore we are to expresse our regards to men of such relations by proportionable expressions but because civill excellencies are the proper ground of receiving and exacting civill honors and spirituall excellencies doe onely claim them accidentally and indirectly therefore in titles of honour and humane regards the civill praeeminence is the appendix of the greatest civill power and imployment and is to descend in proper measures and for a spirituall relation to challenge a temporall dignity is as if the best Musick should challenge the best cloathes or a Lute-string should contend with a Rose for the honour of the greatest sweetnesse * Adde to this that although temporall things are in order to spirituall and therefore are lesse perfect yet this is not so naturally for temporall things are properly in order to the felicity of man in his proper and present constitution and it is by a supernaturall grace that now they are thrust forward to a higher end of grace and glory and therefore temporall things and persons and callings have properly the chiefest temporall regard and Christ took nothing of this away from them but put them higher by sanctifying and ennobling them * But then the higher calling can no more suppose the higher man then the richest trade can suppose the richest man From callings to men the argument is fallacious and a Smith is a more usefull man then he that teaches Logick but not always to be more esteemed and called to stand at the chairs of Princes and Nobles * Holy persons and holy things and all great relations are to be valued by generall proportions to their correlatives but if wee descend to make minute and exact proportions and proportion an inch of temporall to a minute of spirituall we must needs be hugely deceived unlesse we could measure the motion of an Angell by a string or the progressions of the Spirit by weight and measure of the staple * And yet if these measures were taken it would be unreasonable that the lower of the higher kind should be preferr'd before the most perfect and excellent in a lower order of things A man generally is to be esteemed above a woman but not the meanest of her subjects before the most excellent Queen not alwayes this man before this woman Now Kings and Princes are the best in all temporall dignities and therefore if they had in them no spirituall relations and consequent excellencies as they have very many yet are not to be undervalu'd to spirituall relations which in this world are very imperfect weak partiall and must stay till the next world before they are in a state of excellency propriety and perfection and then also all shall have them according to the worth of their persons not of their calling * But lastly what men may not challenge is not their just and proper due but spirituall persons and the neerest relatives to God stand by him but so long at they dwell low and safe in humility and rise high in nothing but in labours and zeal of soules and devotion * In proportion to this rule a Church may be pull'd down to save a Town and the Vessels of the Church may be sold to redeem Captives when there is a great calamity imminent and prepared for reliefe and no other way to succour it But in the whole the duty of zeale requires that we neglect an ordinary visit rather then an ordinary prayer and a great profit rather then omit a required duty No excuse can legitimate a sin and he that goes about to distinguish between his duty and his profit and if he cannot reconcile them will yet tie them together like a Hyaena and a Dog this man pretends to Religion but secures the world and is indifferent and lukewarme towards that so he may be warme and safe in the possession of this 2. To that fervour and zeal that is necessary and a duty it is required that we be constant and persevering Esto fidelis ad mortem said the Spirit of God to the Angel of the Church of Smyrna Be faithfull unto death and I will give thee a crown of life For he that is warm to day and cold to morrow zealous in his resolution and weary in his practises fierce in the beginning and slack and easie in his progresse hath not yet well chosen what side he will be of he sees not reason enough for Religion and he hath not confidence enough for its contrary and therefore he is duplicis animi as St. James calls him of a doubtfull mind For Religion is worth as much to day as it was yesterday and that cannot change though we doe and if we doe we have left God and whither
high Priest they kept Damascus with a Garrison they sent parties of souldiers to silence and to imprison the Preachers and thought they did God service when they put the Apostles to death and they swore neither to eat nor to drink till they had killed Paul It was an old trick of the Jewish zeal Non monstrare vias eadem nisi sacra colenti Quaesitum ad fontem solos deducere verpos They would not shew the way to a Samaritan nor give a cup of cold water but to a circumcised brother That was their Zeal But the zeal of the Apostles was this they preached publickly and privately they prayed for all men they wept to God for the hardnesse of mens hearts they became all things to all men that they might gain some they travel'd through deeps and deserts they indured the heat of the Syrian Starre and the violence of Euroclydon winds and tempests seas and prisons mockings and scourgings fastings and poverty labour and watching they endured every man and wronged no man they would do any good thing and suffer any evill if they had but hopes to prevail upon a soul they perswaded men meekly they intreated them humbly they convinced them powerfully the watched for their good but medled not with their interest and this is the Christian Zeal the Zeal of meeknesse the Zeal of charity the Zeal of patience 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in these it is good to be zealous for you can never goe farre enough 2. The next measure of zeal is prudence For as charity is the matter of Zeal so is discretion the manner It must alwaies be for good to our neighbour and there needs no rules for the conducting of that provided the end be consonant to the design that is that charity be intended and charity done But there is a Zeal also of Religion or worshipping and this hath more need of measures and proper cautions For Religion can turn into a snare it may be abused into superstition it may become wearinesse in the spirit and tempt to tediousnesse to hatred and despair and many persons through their indiscreet conduct and furious marches and great loads taken upon tender shoulders and unexperienced have come to be perfect haters of their joy and despisers of all their hopes being like dark Lanthorns in which a candle burnes bright but the body is incompassed with a crust and a dark cloud of iron and these men keep the fires and light of holy propositions within them but the darknesse of hell the hardnesse of a vexed he art hath shaded all the light and makes it neither apt to warm nor to enlighten others but it turnes to fire within a feaver and a distemper dwels there and Religion is become their torment 1. Therefore our Zeal must never carry us beyond that which is profitable There are many institutions customes and usages introduced into Religion upon very fair motives and apted to great necessities but to imitate those things when they are disrobed of their proper ends is an importune zeal and signifies nothing but a forward minde and an easie heart and an imprudent head unlesse these actions can be invested with other ends and usefull purposes The primitive Church were strangely inspired with a zeal of virginity in order to the necessities of preaching and travelling and easing the troubles and temptations of persecution but when the necessity went on and drove the holy men into deserts that made Colleges of Religious and their manner of life was such so united so poor so dressed that they must live more non saculari after the manner of men divorc'd from the usuall entercourses of the world still their desire of single life increased because the old necessity lasted and a new one did supervene Afterwards the case was altered and then the single life was not to be chosen for it self nor yet in imitation of the first precedents for it could not be taken out from their circumstances and be used alone He therefore that thinks he is a more holy person for being a virgin or a widower or that he is bound to be so because they were so or that he cannot be a religious person because he is not so hath zeal indeed but not according to knowledge But now if the single state can be taken out and put to new appendages and fitted to the end of another grace or essentiall duty of Religion it will well become a Christian zeal to choose it so long as it can serve the end with advantage and security Thus also a zealous person is to chuse his fastings while they are necessary to him and are acts of proper mortification while he is tempted or while he is under discipline while he repents or while he obeys but some persons fast in zeal but for nothing else fast when they have no need when there is need they should not but call it religion to be miserable or sick here their zeal is folly for it is neither an act of Religion nor of prudence to fast when fasting probably serves no end of the spirit and therefore in the fasting dayes of the Church although it is warrant enough to us to fast if we had no end to serve in it but the meer obedience yet it is necessary that the superiors should not think the Law obeyed unlesse the end of the first institution be observed a fasting day is a day of humiliation and prayer and fasting being nothing it self but wholly the handmaid of a further grace ought not to be devested of its holinesse and sanctification and left like the wals of a ruinous Church where there is no duty performed to God but there remains something of that which us'd to minister to Religion The want of this consideration hath caus'd so much scandall and dispute so many snares and schismes concerning Ecclesiasticall fasts For when it was undressed and stripp'd of all the ornaments and usefull appendages when from a solemn day it grew to be common from thence to be lesse devout by being lesse seldome and lesse usefull and then it passed from a day of Religion to be a day of order and from fasting till night to fasting till evening-song and evening-song to be sung about twelve a clock and from fasting it was changed to a choice of food from eating nothing to eating fish and that the letter began to be stood upon and no usefulnesse remain'd but what every of his own piety should put into it but nothing was enjoyn'd by the Law nothing of that exacted by the superiours then the Law fell into disgrace and the design became suspected and men were first insnared and then scandalized and then began to complain without remedy and at last took remedy themselves without authority the whole affair fell into a disorder and a mischief and zeal was busie on both sides and on both sides was mistaken because they fell not upon the proper remedy which was to reduce the Law to the
is done then art and sophistry and adulterate dishes invite him to taste and die 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 well may a sober man wonder that men should be so much in love with earth and corruption the parent of rottennesse and a disease that even then when by all laws witches and inchanters murderers and manstealers are chastised and restrain'd with the iron hands of death yet that men should at great charges give pensions to an order of men whose trade it is to rob them of their temperance and wittily to destroy their health 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Greek Fathers call such persons curvae in terris animae coelestium inanes people bowed downe to the earth lovers of pleasures more then lovers of God Aretinas mentes so Antidamus calls them men framed in the furnaces of Etruria Aretine spirits beginning and ending in flesh and filthynesse dirt and clay all over But goe to the Crib thou glutton and there it will be found that when the charger is clean yet natures rules were not prevaricated the beast eats up all his provisions because they are naturall and simple or if he leaves any it is because he desires no more then till his needs be served and neither can a man unlesse he be diseased in body or in spirit in affection or in habit eat more of naturall and simple food then to the satisfactions of his naturall necessities He that drinks a draught or two of water and cooles his thirst drinks no more till his thirst returnes but he that drinks wine drinks it again longer then it is needfull even so long as it is pleasant Nature best provides for her self when she spreads her own Table but when men have gotten superinduced habits and new necessities art that brought them in must maintain them but wantonnesse and folly wait at the table and sickness and death take away 2. Reason is the second measure or rather the rule whereby we judge of intemperance For whatsoever loads of meat or drink make the reason uselesse or troubled are effects of this deformity not that reason is the adequate measure for a man may be intemperate upon other causes though he doe not force his understanding and trouble his head Some are strong to drink and can eat like a wolfe and love to doe so as fire to destroy the stubble such were those Harlots in the Comedy Quae cum amatore suo cum coenant liguriunt These persons are to take their accounts from the measures of Religion and the Spirit though they can talk still or transact the affaires of the world yet if they be not fitted for the things of the Spirit they are too full of flesh or wine and cannot or care not to attend to the things of God But reason is the limit beyond which temperance never wanders and in every degree in which our discourse is troubled and our soul is lifted from its wheels in the same degree the sin prevails Dum sumus in quâdam delinquendi libidine nebulis quibusdam insipientiae mens obducitur saith St. Ambrose when the flesh-pots reek and the uncovered dishes send forth a nidor and hungry smels that cloud hides the face and puts out the eye of reason and then tell them mors in ollâ that death is in the pot and folly in the chalice that those smels are fumes of brimstone and vapours of Egypt that they will make their heart easie and their head sottish and their colour pale and their hands trembling and their feet tormented Mullorum leporúmque suminis exitus hic est Sulphureúsque color carnificésque pedes For that is the end of delicacies 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Dio Chrysostom palenesse and effeminacy and lazinesse and folly yet under the dominion of the pleasures of sensuality men are so stript of the use of reason that they are not onely uselesse in wise counsels and assistances but they have not reason enough to avoid the evils of their own throat and belly when once their reason fails we must know that their temperance and their religion went before 3. Though reason be so strictly to be preserved at our tables as well as at our prayers and we can never have leave to doe any violence to it yet the measures of Nature may be enlarged beyond the bounds of prime and common necessity For besides hunger and thirst there are some labours of the body and others of the mind and there are sorrows and loads upon the spirit by its communications with the indispositions of the body and as the labouring man may be supplyed with bigger quantities so the student and contemplative man with more delicious and spritefull nutriment for as the tender and more delicate easily-digested meats will not help to carry burthers upon the neck and hold the plough in society and yokes of the laborious oxen so neither will the pulse and the leeks Lavinian sausages and the Cisalpine tucets or gobbets of condited buls â—esh minister such delicate spirits to the thinking man but his notion will be flat as the noyse of the Arcadian porter and thick as the first juice of his countrey lard unlesse he makes his body a fit servant to the soul and both fitted for the imployment But in these cases necessity and prndence and experience are to make the measures and the rule and so long as the just end is fairly designed and aptly ministred to there ought to be no scruple concerning the quantity or quality of the provision and he that would stint a Swain by the commons of a Student and give Philot as the Candian the leavings of Pluto does but ill serve the ends of temperance but worse of prudence and necessity 4. Sorrow and a wounded spirit may as well be provided for in the quantity and quality of meat and drink as any other disease and this disease by this remedy as well as by any other For great sorrow and importune melancholy may be as great a sin as a great anger and if it be a sin in its nature it is more malignant and dangerous in its quality as naturally tending to murmur and despair wear inesse of Religion and hatred of God timorousnesse and jealousies fantastick images of things and superstition and therefore as it is necessary to restrain the feavers of anger so also to warm the freezings and dulnesse of melancholy by prudent and temperate but proper and apportion'd diets and if some meats and drinks make men lustfull or sleepy or dull or lazy or spritely or merry so far as meats and drinks can minister to the passion and the passion minister to vertue so far by this means they may be provided for Give strong drink to him that is ready to perish and wine to those that be of heavy hearts let him drink and forget his poverty and remember his misery no more said King Lemuel's Mother But this is not intended to be an habituall cure but
if our festivall dayes like the Gentile sacrifices end in drunkennesse 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and our joyes in Religion passe into sensuality and beastly crimes we change the Holy-day into a day of Death and our selves become a Sacrifice as in the day of Slaughter To summe up this particular there are as you perceive many cautions to make our pleasure safe but any thing can make it inordinate and then scarce any thing can keep it from becoming dangerous Habet omnis hoc voluptas Stimulis agit furentes Apiúmque par volantum Ubi grata mella fudit Fugit nimis tenaci Ferit icta corda mersu And the pleasure of the honey will not pay for the smart of the sting Amores enim delicia ' maturè celeritèr destorescunt in omnibus rebus voluptatibus maximis fastidium finitimum est Nothing is so soon ripe and rotten as pleasure and upon all possessions and states of things loathing looks as being not far off but it sits upon the skirts of pleasure 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 He that greedily puts his hand to a delicious table shall weep bitterly when he suffers the convulsions and violence by the divided interests of such contrary juices 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 For this is the law of our nature and fatall necessity life is alwayes poured forth from two goblets And now after all this I pray consider what a strange madness and prodigious folly possesses many men that they love to swallow death and diseases and dishonor with an appetite which no reason can restrain We expect our servants should not dare to touch what we have forbidden to them we are watchfull that our children should not swallow poysons and filthinesse and unwholesome nourishment we take care that they should be well manner'd and civil and of fair demeanour and we our selves desire to be or at least to be accounted wise and would infinitely scorne to be call'd fooles and we are so great lovers of health that we will buy it at any rate of money or observance and then for honour it is that which the children of men pursue with passion it is one of the noblest rewards of vertue and the proper ornament of the wise and valiant and yet all these things are not valued or considered when a merry meeting or a looser feast calls upon the man to act a scene of folly and madnesse and healthlesnesse and dishonour We doe to God what we severely punish in our servants we correct our children for their medling with dangers which themselves preferre before immortality and though no man think himselfe fit to be despised yet he is willing to make himselfe a beast a sot and a ridiculous monkey with the follies and vapors of wine and when he is high in drinke or fancy proud as a Grecian Orator in the midst of his popular noyses at the same time he shall talk such dirty language such mean low things as may well become a changeling and a foole for whom the stocks are prepared by the laws and the just scorne of men Every drunkard clothes his head with a mighty scorne and makes himselfe lower at that time then the meanest of his servants the boyes can laugh at him when he is led like a cripple directed like a blinde man and speakes like an infant imperfect noyses lisping with a full and spungy tongue and an empty head and a vaine and foolish heart so cheaply does he part with his honour for drink or loads of meat for which honour he is ready to die rather then hear it to be disparaged by another when himselfe destroyes it as bubbles perish with the breath of children Doe not the laws of all wise Nations marke the drunkard for a foole with the meanest and most scornfull punishment and is there any thing in the world so foolish as a man that is drunk But good God! what an intolerable sorrow hath seifed upon great portions of Mankind that this folly and madnesse should possesse the greatest spirits and the wittyest men the best company the most sensible of the word honour and the most jealous of loosing the shadow and the most carelesse of the thing Is it not a horrid thing that a wise or a crafty a learned or a noble person should dishonour himselfe as a foole destroy his body as a murtherer lessen his estate as a prodigall disgrace every good cause that he can pretend to by his relation and become an appellative of scorne a scene of laughter or derision and all for the reward of forgetfulnesse and madnesse for there are in immoderate drinking no other pleasures Why doe valiant men and brave personages fight and die rather then break the laws of men or start from their duty to their Prince and will suffer themselves to be cut in pieces rather then deserve the name of a Traitor or perjur'd and yet these very men to avoyd the hated name of Glutton or Drunkard and to preserve their Temperance shall not deny themselves one luscious morsell or poure a cup of wine on the ground when they are invited to drink by the laws of the circle or wilder company Me thinks it were but reason that if to give life to uphold a cause be not too much they should not think too much to be hungry and suffer thirst for the reputation of that cause and therefore much rather that they would thinke it but duty to be temperate for its honour and eat and drink in civill and faire measures that themselves might not lose the reward of so much suffering and of so good a relation nor that which they value most be destroyed by drink There are in the world a generation of men that are ingag'd in a cause which they glory in and pride themselves in its relation and appellative but yet for that cause they will doe nothing but talk and drink they are valiant in wine and witty in healths and full of stratagem to promote debauchery but such persons are not considerable in wise accounts that which I deplore is that some men preferre a cause before their life and yet preferre wine before that cause and by one drunken meeting set it more backward in its hopes and blessings then it can be set forward by the counsels and armes of a whole yeer God hath ways enough to reward a truth without crowning it with successe in the hands of such men In the mean time they dishonour Religion and make truth be evill spoken of and innocent persons to suffer by their very relation and the cause of God to be reproached in the sentences of erring and abused people and themselves lose their health and their reason their honour and their peace the rewards of sober counsels and the wholesome effects of wisdome Arcanum neque tu scrutaber is ullius unquam Commissúmque teges vino tortus irâ Wine discovers more then the rack and he that will be drunk is not a
Dominicus Catalusius the Prince of Lesbos kept company with his Lady when she was a Leper and these are greater things then to die But the cases in which this can be required are so rare and contingent that holy Scripture instances not the duty in this particular but it contains in it that the husband should nourish and cherish her that he should refresh her sorrowes and intice her fears into confidence and pretty arts of rest for even the fig-trees that grew in Paradise had sharp pointed leaves and harshnesses fit to mortifie the too forward lusting after the sweetnesse of the fruit But it will concern the prudence of the husbands love to make the cares and evils as simple and easie as he can by doubling the joyes and acts of a carefull friendship by tolerating her infirmities because by so doing he either cures her or makes himself better by fairly expounding all the little traverses of society and communication by taking every thing by the right handle as Plutarchs expression is for there is nothing but may be misinterpreted and yet if it be capable of a fair construction it is the office of love to make it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Love will account that to be well said which it may be was not so intended and then it may cause it to be so another time 3. Hither also is to be referred that he secure the interest of her vertue and felicity by a fair example for a wife to a husband is like a line or superficies it hath dimensions of its own but no motion or proper affections but commonly put on such images of vertues or vices as are presented to them by their husbands Idea and if thou beest vicious complain not that she is infected that lies in the bosome the interest of whose love ties her to transcribe thy copy and write after the characters of thy manners Paris was a man of pleasure and Helena was an adulteresse and she added covetousnesse upon her own account But Ulysses was a prudent man and a wary counsellor sober and severe and he efformed his wife into such imagery as he desir'd and she was chast as the snows upon the mountains diligent as the fatall sisters alwaies busie and alwaies faithfull 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 she had a lazie tongue and a busie hand 4. Above all the instances of love let him preserve towards her an inviolable faith and an unspotted chastity for this is the marriage Ring it tyes two hearts by an eternall band it is like the Cherubims flaming sword set for the guard of Paradise he that passes into that garden now that is immur'd by Christ and the Church enters into the shades of death No man must touch the forbidden Tree that in the midst of the garden which is the tree of knowledge and life Chastity is the security of love and preserves all the mysteriousnesse like the secrets of a Temple Under this lock is deposited security of families the union of affections the repairer of accidentall breaches 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 This is a grace that is shut up and secur'd by all arts of heaven and the defence of lawes the locks and bars of modesty by honour and reputation by fear and shame by interest and high regards and that contract that is intended to be for ever is yet dissolv'd and broken by the violation of this nothing but death can do so much evill to the holy ties of marriage as unchastity and breach of faith can The shepherd Cratis falling in love with a she goat had his brains beaten out with a buck as he lay asleep and by the lawes of the Romans a man might kill his daughter or his wife if he surprised her in the breach of her holy vowes which are as sacred as the threads of life secret as the privacies of the sanctuary and holy as the society of Angels Nullae sunt inimicitiae nisi amoris acerbae and God that commanded us to forgive our enemies left it in our choice and hath not commanded us to forgive an adulterous husband or a wife but the offended parties displeasure may passe into an eternall separation of society and friendship Now in this grace it is fit that the wisdome and severity of the man should hold forth a pure taper that his wife may by seeing the beauties and transparency of that Crystall dresse her minde and her body by the light of so pure reflexions It is certain he will expect it from the modesty and retirement from the passive nature and colder temper from the humility and fear from the honour and love of his wife that she be pure as the eye of heaven and therefore it is but reason that the wisdome and noblenesse the love and confidence the strength and severity of the man should be as holy and certain in this grace as he is a severe exactor of it at her hands who can more easily be tempted by another and lesse by her self These are the little lines of a mans duty which like threds of light from the body of the Sun do clearly describe all the regions of his proper obligations Now concerning the womans duty although it consists in doing whatsoever her husband commands and so receives measures from the rules of his government yet there are also some lines of life depicted upon her hands by which she may read and know how to proportion out her duty to her husband 1. The first is obedience which because it is no where enjoyned that the man should exact of her but often commanded to her to pay gives demonstration that it is a voluntary cession that is required such a cession as must be without coercion and violence on his part but upon fair inducements and reasonablenesse in the thing and out of love and honour on her part When God commands us to love him he means we should obey him This is love that ye keep my Commandements and if ye love me said our Lord keep my Commandements Now as Christ is to the Church so is man to the wife and therefore obedience is the best instance of her love for it proclaims her submission her humility her opinion of his wisdome his preeminence in the family the right of his priviledge and the injunction imposed by God upon her sexe that although in sorrow she brings forth children yet with love and choice she should obey The mans authority is love and the womans love is obedience and it was not rightly observed of him that said when woman fell God made her timorous that she might be rul'd apt and easie to obey for this obedience is no way founded in fear but in love and reverence Receptae reverentiae est si mulier viro subsit said the Law unlesse also that we will adde that it is an effect of that modesty which like
deceive you The man deceives because he is false and the staffe because it is weak and the heart because it is both So that it is deceitful above all things that is failing and disabled to support us in many things but in other things where it can it is false and desperately wicked The first sort of deceitfulnesse is its calamitie and the second is its iniquity and that is the worst Calamitie of the two 1. The heart is deceitfull in its strength and when we have the groweth of a Man we have the weaknesses of a childe nay more yet and it is a sad consideration the more we are in age the weaker in our courage It appears in the heats and forwardnesses of new converts which are like to the great emissions of Lightning or like huge fires which flame and burn without measure even all that they can till from flames they descend to still fires from thence to smoak from smoak to embers from thence to ashes cold and pale like ghosts or the phantastick images of Death And the primitive Church were zealous in their Religion up to the degree of Cherubins and would run as greedily to the sword of the hangman to die for the cause of God as we do now to the greatest joy and entertainment of a Christian spirit even to the receiving of the holy Sacrament A man would think it reasonable that the first infancy of Christianity should according to the nature of first beginnings have been remisse gentle and unactive and that according us the object or evidence of faith grew which in every Age hath a great degree of Argument superadded to its confirmation so should the habit also and the grace the longer it lasts the more obiections it runs through it still should shew a brighter and more certain light to discover the divinity of its principle and that after the more examples and new accidents and strangenesses of providence and daily experience and the multitude of miracles still the Christian should grow more certain in his faith more refreshed in his hope and warm in his charity the very nature of these graces increasing and swelling upon the very nourishment of experience and the multiplication of their own acts And yet because the heart of man is false it suffers the fires of the Altar to go out and the flames lessen by the multitude of fuel But indeed it is because we put on strange fire put out the fire upon our hearths by letting in a glaring Sun beam the fire of lust or the heates of an angry spirit to quench the fires of God and suppresse the sweet cloud of incense The heart of man hath not strength enough to think one good thought of itself it cannot command its own attention to a prayer of ten lines long but before its end it shall wander after some thing that is to no purpose and no wonder then that it grows weary of a holy religion which consists of so many parts as make the businesse of a whole life And there is no greater argument in the world of our spiritual weaknesse and falsnesse of our hearts in the matters of religion then the backwardnesse which most men have alwayes and all men have somtimes to say their prayers so weary of their length so glad when they are done so wittie to excuse and frustrate an opportunity and yet there is no manner of trouble in the duty no wearinesse of bones no violent labours nothing but begging a blessing and receiving it nothing but doing our selves the greatest honour of speaking to the greatest person and greatest king of the world and that we should be unwilling to do this so unable to continue in it so backward to return to it so without gust and relish in the doing it can have no visible reason in the nature of the thing but something within us a strange sicknesse in the heart a spiritual nauseating or loathing of Manna something that hath no name but we are sure it comes from a weake a faint and false heart And yet this weak heart is strong in passions violent in desires unresistable in its appetites impatient in its lust furious in anger here are strengths enough one would think But so have I seen a man in a feaver sick and distempered unable to walk lesse able to speak sence or to do an act of counsel and yet when his feaver hath boild up to a delirium he was strong enough to beat his nurse keeper and his doctor too and to resist the loving violence of all his friends who would faine binde him down to reason and his bed And yet we still say he is weak and sick to death 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for these strengths of madnesse are not health but furiousnesse and disease 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 It is weaknesse another way And so are the strengths of a mans heart they are fetters and manacles strong but they are the cordage of imprisonment so strong that the heart is not able to stir And yet it cannot but be a huge sadnesse that the heart shall pursue a temporal interest with wit and diligence and an unwearied industry and shall not have strength enough in a matter that concerns its Eternal interest to answer one obiection to resist one assault to defeate one art of the divel but shall certainly and infallibly fall when ever it is tempted to a pleasure This if it be examined will prove to be a deceit indeed a pretence rather then true upon a just cause that is it is not a natural but a moral a vicious weaknesse and we may try it in one or two familiar instances One of the great strengths shall I call it or weaknesses of the heart is that it is strong violent and passionate in its lusts and weak and deceitful to resist any Tell the tempted person that if he act his lust he dishonours his body makes himself a servant to follie and one flesh with a harlot he defiles the Temple of God and him that defiles a Temple will God destroy Tell him that the Angels who love to be present in the nastinesse and filth of prisons that they may comfort and assist chast souls and holy persons there abiding yet they are impatient to behold or come neer the filthynesse of a lustful person Tell him that this sin is so ugly that the divels who are spirits yet they delight to counterfeit the acting of this crime and descend unto the daughters or sons of men that they may rather lose their natures then not help to set a lust forward Tell them these and ten thousand things more you move them no more then if you should read one of Tullies orations to a mule for the truth is they have no power to resist it much lesse to master it their heart fails them when they meet their Mistresse and they are driven like a fool to the stocks or a Bull to the slaughter-house And
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
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
to passe from thence and as it is in the natural so it is in the spiritual nothing but the union of faith and obedience can secure our regeneration and our new birth and can bring us to see the light of heaven but there are a thousand passages of turning into darknesse and it is not enough that our bodies are exposed to so many sad infirmities and dishonourable imperfections unlesse our soul also be a subject capable of so many diseases follies irregular passions false principles accursed habits and degrees of perversnesse that the very kindes of them are reducible to a method and make up the part of a science There are variety of stages and descents to death as there are diversity of torments and of sad regions of misery in hell which is the centre and kingdom of sorrows But that we may a little refresh the sadnesses of this consideration for every one of these stages of sin God hath measured out a proportion of mercy for if sin abounds grace shall much more abound and God hath concluded all under sin not with purposes to destroy us but Ut omnium misereatur that he might have mercy upon all that light may break forth from the deepest inclosures of darknesse and mercy may rejoyce upon the recessions of justice and grace may triumph upon the ruins of sin and God may be glorified in the miracles of our conversion and the wonders of our preservation and glories of our being saved There is no state of sin but if we be persons capable according to Gods method of healing of receiving antidotes we shall finde a sheet of mercy spread over our wounds and nakednesse If our diseases be small almost necessary scarce avoidable then God does and so we are commanded to cure them and cover them with a vail of pity compassion and gentle remedies If our evils be violent inveterate gangrened and incorporated into our nature by evil customes they must be pulled from the flames of hell with censures and cauteries and punishments and sharp remedies quickly and rudely their danger is present and sudden its effect is quick and intolerable and there is no soft counsels then to be entertained they are already in the fire but they may be saved for all that so great so infinite so miraculous is Gods mercy that he will not give a sinner over though the hairs of his head be singed with the flames of hell Gods desires of having us to be saved continue even when we begin to be damned even till we will not be saved and are gone beyond Gods method and all the revelations of his kindnesse And certainly that is a bold and a mighty sinner whose iniquity is sweld beyond all the bulk and heap of Gods revealed loving kindnesse If sin hath sweld beyond grace and superabounds over it that sin is gone beyond the measures of a man such a person is removed beyond all the malice of humane nature into the evil and spite of Devils and accursed spirits there is no greater sadnesse in the world then this God hath not appointed a remedy in the vast treasures of grace for some men and some sins they have sinned like the falling Angels and having over run the ordinary evil inclinations of their nature they are without the protection of the divine mercy and the conditions of that grace which was designed to save all the world was sufficient to have saved twenty This is a condition to be avoyded with the care of God and his Angels and all the whole industry of man In order to which end my purpose now is to remonstrate to you the several states of sin and death together with those remedies which God had proportioned out to them that we may observe the evils of the least and so avoid the intolerable mischiefs of the greater even of those sins which still are within the power and possibilities of recovery lest insensibly we fall into those sins and into those circumstances of person for which Christ never died which the Holy Ghost never means to cure and which the eternal God never will pardon for there are of this kinde more then commonly men imagine whilest they amuse their spirits with gaietyes and false principles till they have run into horrible impieties from whence they are not willing to withdraw their foot and God is resolved never to snatch and force them thence I of some have compassion and these I shall reduce to four heads or orders of men and actions all which have their proper cure pro portionable to their proper state gentle remedies to the lesser irregularities of the soul. The first are those that sin without observation of their particular state either because they are uninstructed in the special cases of conscience or because they do an evil against which there is no expresse commandment It is a sad calamity that there are so many milions of men and women that are entred into a state of sicknesse and danger and yet are made to believe they are in perfect health and they do actions concerning which they never made a question whether they were just or no nor were ever taught by what names to call them For while they observe that modesty is sometimes abused by a false name and called clownishnesse want of breeding and contentednesse and temperate living is suppressed to be want of courage and noble thoughts and severity of life is called imprudent and unsociable and simplicity and hearty honesty is counted foolish and unpolitick they are easily tempted to honour prodigality and foolish dissolution of their estates with the title of liberal and noble usages timorousnesse is called caution rashnesse is called quicknesse of spirit covetousnesse is frugality amorousnesse is society and gentile peevishnesse and anger is courage flattery is humane and courteous and under these false vails vertue sliâ—s away like truth from under the hand of them that fight for her and leave vices dressed up with the same imagery and the fraud not discovered till the day of recompences when men are distingushed by their rewards But so men think they sleep freely when their spirits are loaden with a Lethargy and they call a hestick-feaver the vigour of a natural heat tell nature changes those lesse discerned states into the notorious images of death Very many men never consider whether they sin or no in 10000. of their actions every one of which is very disputable and do not think they are bound to consider these men are to be pitied and instructed they are to be called upon to use religion like a daily diet their consciences must be made tender and their Catechisme enlarged teach them and make them sensible and they are cured But the other in this place are more considerable Men sin without observation because their actions have no restraint of an expresse Commandment no letter of the law to condemn them by an expresse sentence And this happens when the crime is comprehended under
a general notion without the instancing of particulars for if you search over all the Scripture you shall never finde incest named and marked with the black character of death and there are diveres sorts of uncleannesse to which Scripture therefore gives no name because she would have them have no being And it had been necessary that God should have described all particulars and all kindes if he had not given reason to man For so it is fit that a guide should point out every turning if he be to teach a childe or a fool to return under his fathers roof But he that bids us avoid intemperance for fear of a feaver supposes you to be sufficiently instructed that you may avoid the plague and when to look upon a woman with lust is condemned it will not be necessary to adde you must not do more when even the least is forbidden and when to uncover the nakednesse of Noah brought an universal plague upon the posterity of Cham it was not necessary that the law-giver should say you must not ascend to your fathers bed or draw the curtains from your sisters retirements When the Athenians forbad to transport figs from Athens there was no need to name the gardens of Alcibiades much lesse was it necessary to adde that Chabrias should send no plants to Sparta What so ever is comprised under the general notion and partakes of the common nature and the same iniquity needs no special prohibition unlesse we think we can mock God and elude his holy precepts with an absurd trick of mistaken Logick I am sure that will not save us harmlesse from a thunderbolt 2. Men sin without an expresse prohibition when they commit a thing that is like a forbidden evil And when Saint Paul had reckoned many works of the flesh he addes and such like all that have the same unreasonablenesse carnallity For thus poligamy is unlawful for if it be not lawful for a Christian to put away his wife and marry another unlesse for adultery much lesse may he keep a first and take a second when the first is not put away If a Christian may not be drunk with wine neither may he be drunk with passion if he may not kill his neighbour neither then must he tempt him to sin for that destroyes him more if he may not wound him then he may not perswade him to intemperance and a drunken feaver if it be not lawful to cozen a man much lesse is it permitted that he make a man a fool and a beast and exposed to every mans abuse and to all ready evils And yet men are taught to start at the one half of these and make no conscience of the other half whereof some have a greater basenesse then the other that are named and all have the same unreasonablenesse 3. A man is guilty even when no law names his action if he does any thing that is a cause or an effect a part or unhandsome adjunct of a forbidden instance he that forbad all intemperance is as much displeased with the infinite of foolish talk that happens at such meetings as he is at the spoiling of the drink and the destroying the health If God cannot endure wantonnesse how can he suffer lascivious dressings tempting circumstances wanton eyes high diet if idlenesse be a sin then al immoderate mispending of our time all long and tedious games all absurd contrivances how to throw away a precious hour and a day of salvation also are against God and against religion He that is commanded to be charitable it is also intended he should not spend his money vainely but be a good husband and provident that he may be able to give to the poor as he would be to purchase a Lordship or pay his daughters portion and upon this stock it is that Christian religion forbids jeering and immoderate laughter and reckon jestings amongst the things that are unseemly This also would be considered 4. Besides the expresse laws of our religion there is an universal line and limit to our passions and designes which is called the anology of Christianity that is the proportion of its sanctity and strictnesse of 〈◊〉 holy precepts This is not forbidden but does this become you Is it decent to see a Christian live in plenty and ease and heap up mony and never to partake of Christs passions there is no law against a Judge his being a dresser of gardens or a gatherer of Sycamore fruits but it becomes him not and deserves a reproof If I do exact justice to my neighbour and cause him to be punished legally for all the evils he makes me suffer I have not broken a fragment from the stony tables of the law but this is against the analogy of our religion It does not become a Disciple of so gentle a master to take all advantages that he can Christ that quitted all the glories that were essential to him and that grew up in his nature when he lodged in his Fathers bosom Christ that suffered all the evils due for the sins of mankinde himself remaining most innocent Christ that promised persecution injuries and affronts as part of our present portion and gave them to his Disciples as a legacy and gave us his spirit to enable us to suffer injuries and made that the parts of suffering evils should be the matter of three or four Christian graces of patience of fortitude of long animity and perseverance he that of eight beatitudes made that five of them should be instanced in the matter of humiliation and suffering temporal inconvenience that blessed Master was certainly desirous that his Disciples should take their crowns from the crosse not from the evennesse and felicities of the world He intended we should give something and suffer more things and forgive all things all injuries whatsoever and though together with this may consist our securing a just interest yet in very many circumstances we shall be put to consider how far it becomes us to quit something of that to pursue peace and when we have secured the letter of the law that we also look to its analogy when we do what we are strictly bound to then also we must consider what becomes us who are disciples of such a Master who are instructed with such principles charmed with so severe precepts and invited with the certainty of infinite rewards Now although this discourse may seem new and strange and very severe yet it is infinitely reasonable because Christianity is a law of love and voluntary services it can in no sense be confined with laws and strict measures well may the Ocean receive its limits and the whole capacity of fire be glutted and the grave have his belly so full that it shal cast up al its bowels and disgorge the continual meal of so many thousand years but love can never have a limit and it is indeed to be swallowed up but nothing can fill it but God who hath no bound Christianity
providence was measured by the ends of the religion and the religion which promised them plenty performed the promise till the Nation and the religion too began to decline that it might give place to a better ministery and a more excellent dispensation of the things of the world But when Christian religion was planted and had taken root and had filled all lands then all the nature of things the whole creation became servant to the kingdom of grace and the Head of the religion is also the Head of the creatures and ministers all the things of the world in order to the Spirit of grace and now Angels are ministring spirits sent forth to minister for the good of them that fear the Lord and all the violences of men and things of nature and choice are forced into subjection and lowest ministeries and to cooperate as with an united designe to verifie all the promises of the Gospel and to secure and advantage all the children of the kingdom and now he that is made poor by chance or persecution is made rich by religion and he that hath nothing yet possesses all things and sorrow it self is the greatest comfort not only because it ministers to vertue but because it self is one as in the case of repentance and death ministers to life and bondage is freedom and losse is gain and our enemies are our friends and every thing turns into religion and religion turns into felicity and all manner of advantages But that I may not need to enumerate any more particulars in this observation certain it is that Angels of light and darknesse all the influences of heaven and the fruits and productions of the earth the stars and the elements the secret things that lie in the bowels of the Sea and the entrails of the earth the single effects of all efficients and the conjunction of all causes all events foreseen and all rare contingencies every thing of chance and every thing of choice is so much a servant to him whos 's greatest desire and great interest is by all means to save our souls that we are thereby made sure that all the whole creation shall be made to bend in all the flexures of its nature and accidents that it may minister to religion to the good of the Catholike Church and every person within its bosom who are the body of him that rules over all the world and commands them as he chooses 2. But that which is next to this and not much unlike the designe of this wonderfull mercy is that all the actions of religion though mingled with circumstances of differing and sometimes of contradictory relations are so concentred in God their proper centre and conducted in such certain and pure channels of reason and rule that no one duty does contradict another and it can never be necessary for any man in any case to sin They that bound themselves by an oath to kill Paul were not environed with the sad necessities of murder on one side and vow-breach on the other so that if they did murder him they were man-slayers if they did not they were perjured for God had made provision for this case that no unlawful oath should passe an obligation He that hath given his faith in unlawfull confederation against his Prince is not girded with a fatall necessity of breach of trust on one side or breach of allegeance on the other for in this also God hath secured the case of conscience by forbidding any man to make an unlawfull promise and upon a stronger degree of the same reason by forbidding him to keep it in case he hath made it He that doubts whether it be lawfull to keep the Sunday holy must not do it during that doubt because whatsoever is not of faith is sin But yet Gods mercy hath taken care to break this snare in sunder so that he may neither sin against the commandement nor against his conscience for he is bound to lay aside his errour and be better instructed till when the scene of his sin lies in something that hath influence upon his understanding not in the omission of the fact No man can serve two Masters but therefore he must hate the one and cleave to the other But then if we consider what infinite contradiction there is in sin and that the great long suffering of God is expressed in this that God suffered the contradiction of sinners we shall feel the mercy of God in the peace of our consciences and the unity of religion so long as we do the work of God It is a huge affront to a covetous man that he is the further off from fulnesse by having great heaps vast revenues and that his thirst increases by having that which should quench it and that the more he shall need to be satisfied the lesse he shall dare to do it and that he shall refuse to drink because he is dry that he dyes if he tasts and languishes if he does not and at the same time he is full and empty bursting with a plethory and consumed with hunger drowned with rivers of oyle and wine and yet dry as the Arabian sands but then the contradiction is multiplyed and the labyrinths more amazed when prodigality waits upon another curse and covetousnesse heaps up that prodigality may scatter abroad then distractions are infinite and a man hath two Devils to serve of contradictory designes and both of them exacting obedience more unreasonably then the Egyptian task-masters then there is no rest no end of labours no satisfaction of purposes no method of things but they begin where they should end and begin again and never passe forth to content or reason or quietnesse or possession But the duty of a Christian is easie in a persecution it is clear under a Tyranny it is evident in despite of heresy it is one in the midst of schisme it is determined amongst infinite disputes being like a rock in the sea which is beaten with the tide and washed with retiring waters and encompassed with mists and appears in several figures but it alwayes dips its foot in the same bottom and remaines the same in calms and storms and survives the revolution of ten thousand tides and there shall dwell till time and tides shall be no more so is our duty uniform and constant open and notorious variously represented but in the same manner exacted and in the interest of our souls God hath not exposed us to uncertainty or the variety of anything that can change and it is by the grace and mercy of God put into the power of every Christian to do that which God through Jesus Christ will accept to salvation and neither men nor Devils shall hinder it unlesse we list our selves 3. After all this we may sit down and reckon by great sums and conjugations of his gracious gifts and tell the minuts of eternity by the number of the Divine mercies God hath given his laws to rule us his
word to instruct us his spirit to guide us his Angels to protect us his ministers to exhort us he revealed all our duty and he hath concealed whatsoever can hinder us he hath affrighted our follies with feare of death and engaged our watchfulnesse by its secret coming he hath exercised our faith by keeping private the state of souls departed and yet hath confirmed our faith by a promise of a resurrection and entertained our hope by some general significations of the state of interval His mercies make contemptible means instrumental to great purposes and a small herb the remedy of the greatest diseases he impedes the Devils rage and infatuates his counsels he diverts his malice and defeats his purposes he bindes him in the chaine of darknesse and gives him no power over the children of light he suffers him to walk in solitary places and yet fetters him that he cannot disturb the sleep of a childe he hath given him mighty power yet a young maiden that resists him shall make him flee away he hath given him a vast knowledge and yet an ignorant man can confute him with the twelve articles of his creed he gave him power over the winds and made him Prince of the air and yet the breath of a holy prayer can drive him as far as the utmost sea and he hath so restrained him that except it be by faith we know not whether there be any Devils yea or no for we never heard his noises nor have seen his affrighting shapes This is that great Principle of all the felicity we hope for and of all the means thither and of all the skill and all the strengths we haue to use those means he hath made great variety of conditions and yet hath made all necessary and all mutual helpers and by some instruments and in some respects they are all equal in order to felicity to content and final and intermedial satisfactions He gave us part of our reward in hand that he might enable us to work for more he taught the world arts for use arts for entertainment of all our faculties and all our dispositions he gives eternal gifts for temporal services and gives us whatsoever we want for asking and commands us to ask and theatens us if we will not ask and punishes us for refusing to be happy This is that glorious attribute that hath made order and health and harmony and hope restitutions and variety the joyes of direct possession and the joyes the artificial joyes of contrariety and comparison he comforts the poor and he brings down the rich that they may be safe in their humility and sorrow from the transportations of an unhappy and uninstructed prosperity he gives necessaries to all and scatters the extraordinary provisions so that every nation may traffick in charity and commute for pleasures He was the Lord of hosts and he is stil what he was but he loves to be called the God of peace because he was terrible in that but he is delighted in this His mercy is his glory and his glory is the light of heaven his mercy is the life of the creation and it fills all the earth and his mercy is a sea too and it fills all the abysses of the deep it hath given us promises for supply of whatsoever we need and relieves us in all our fears and in all the evils that we suffer his mercies are more then we can tell and they are more then we can feel for all the world in the abysse of the Divine mercies is like a man diving into the bottom of the sea over whose head the waters run insensibly and unperceived and yet the weight is vast and the sum of them is unmeasurable and the man is not pressed with the burden nor confounded with numbers and no observation is able to recount no sense sufficient to perceive no memory large enough to retain no understanding great enough to apprehend this infinity but we must admire and love and worship and magnify this mercy for ever and ever that we we may dwell in what we feel and be comprehended by that which is equal to God and the parent of all felicity And yet this is but the one half The mercies of giving I have now told of but those of forgiving are greater though not more He is ready to forgive and upon this stock thrives the interest of our great hope the hopes of a blessed immortality for if the mercies of giving have not made our expectations big enough to entertain the confidences of heaven yet when we think of the graciousnesse and readinesse of forgiving we may with more readinesse hope to escape hell and then we cannot but be blessed by an eternal consequence we have but small opinion of the Divine mercy if we dare not believe concerning it that it is desirous and able and watchful and passionate to keep us or rescue us respectively from such a condemnation the pain of which is insupportable and the duration is eternal and the extension is misery upon all our faculties and the intension is great beyond patience or natural or supernatural abilities and the state is a state of darknesse and despair of confusion and amazement of cursing and roaring anguish of spirit and gnashing of teeth misery universal perfect and irremediable From this it is which Gods mercies would so fain preserve us This is a state that God provides for his enemies not for them that love him that endeavour to obey though they do it but in weaknesse that weep truely for their sins though but with a shower no bigger then the drops of pitty that wait for his coming with a holy and pure flame though their lamps are no brighter then a poor mans candle though their strengths are no greater then a contrite reed or a strained arme and their fires have no more warmth then the smok of kindling flax if our faith be pure and our love unfained if the degree of it be great God will accept it into glory if it be little he will accept it into grace and make it bigger For that is the first instance of Gods readinesse to forgive he will upon any termes that are not unreasonable and that do not suppose a remanent affection to sin keep us from the intolerable paines of hell And indeed if we consider the constitution of the conditions which God requires we shall soon perceive God intends heaven to us as a meer gift and that the duties on our part are but little entertainments and exercises of our affections and our love that the Devil might not seize upon that portion which to eternal ages shall be the instrument of our happinesse For in all the parts of our duty it may be there is but one instance in which we are to do violence to our natural and first desires For those men have very ill natures to whom vertue is so contrary that they are inclined naturally to lust to drunkennesse and anger