them as they shall grow capable Why when they are but newly born their children do they take care they shall be regenerate and born again Gods Children if they do not furnish them with necessaries educate them into all the qualities and hopes that appertain to the condition of Gods children as well as they do to that of their own That parent which not only like some delicate ones refuses her own breasts to her own infant but provides no other to sustain it that does only wash her babe from it's first blood and uncleanness to expose it the more handsom prey to wolves and tigers in the desert is more savage then those tigers even the sea monsters draw out the breasts they give suck to their young ones saith lamenting Jeremy but he adds the daughter of my people is cruel like the Ostrich in the wilderness which leaveth her eggs in the earth and forgetteth that the foot may crush them or that the wild beast may break them she is hardned against her young ones such are they who when their children are so born again to God yet as they shall wax capable provide not that which St Peter calls the sincere milk of the word that they may grow thereby but from their being washt so in the laver of regeneration take no more care but expose them forthwith to such lusts and conversations as are much more wild and savage then those beasts in the comparison to which they cannot choose but be a prey They strive indeed they say to educate them into men betime that is make them conversible and bold and since for that they must engage them into frequent company where they see and hear mens follies that I say no worse by that means they come to have their understandings stor'd with nothing but the Modes and sins of conversation fill'd with froth and puddle men betimes only thus as they have forwarded their inclinations to and got an early understanding and experience of those vices which one would think men only could be equal for But by this means the mind that only part that makes us be men is not only not improv'd but dwarft They do not only still continue children in their understanding as to any thing that 's real and solid but the hopes of reason are destroy'd in them and its growth kill'd by turning all its nurishment to feed the beast part and the Christian is quite starv'd There needs no other cause be given for the most part why so many men have no Religion own being Libertiâ—es and profess vice for want of education they have nothing in them that does check this for they had no principles of a Religion instil'd into them And if at any time it comes to pass that they think it is their interest to take upon them the profession of some Religion they therefore since they have no Principles nor rules to judg by are most apt to choose to profess that Religion which is like to be most gentle to the courses they have steer'd and are engag'd in Now that men hope to find such an one whether by its constitution I shall not enquire but by its practice is but too apparent Accordingly when they go over to it they carry with them and preserve in it the vices of their no Religion and by consequence they went not over seriously for Religion and are therefore so much worse now then when they own'd no Religion that they do their wickednesses with certainty of easy absolution and so hopes of salvation and by this are likely to be made two-fold more children of Hell then before and let them triumph in such conquests There 's nothing in the world that contributes so much to this as mens being not acquainted early with instructed in those Divine rules and obligations to piety and vertue which this book the Bible does afford If men had bin season'd first with the knowledg and the sense of duty with the comforts that are in it with the apprehensions of great blessings that attend it and the mischiefs that are consequent indeed essential to impiety and vice here and their minds were furnisht with examples of both which this book abounds with and their hearts too rais'd with expectations of far greater blessedness in a life hereafter and with the belief that both that blessedness and life shall have no end and were made sensible also of strange dreadful torments that await the breach of duty which shall also last for ever if these impressions I say did prevent all other and take up the mind and had in them the stamp and character of God and so there were a reverence and awe of him wrought in them and they lookt upon him as concern'd in all this how it was his word that said it and these sentiments were grown into the very habit of their mind as it would not be easy to corrupt or soften such so 't would be much more difficult to shake them since their faith is founded on the rock of ages Besides the Holy Scriptures carry in them such an obligation of adhering to them and to them alone since they are sufficient to make us wise unto salvation and are Gods word that men would not be apt to exchange them for Legends pious forgeries for things that can make good no certain title from the Lord for let them shew an equal derivation of it bring it down through all the ages as we have don the Scripture's title to him Otherwise it justly may provoke Gods exclamation in the Prophet Jeremy Be astonisht O ye Heavens and be horribly afraid be yee very desolate saith the Lord for my people have committed two evils they have forsaken me the fountain of living waters and hew'd them out cisterns broken cisterns that can hold no water cisterns therefore that may leave them in a state to want a drop of water when their tongue shall be horribly tormented whereas he that drinks that living water which Christ gives his word shall never thirst but it shall be a well of water in him springing up to everlasting life A SERMON OF THE OBLIGATION OF BAPTISM Rom. 6. 3. Know yee not that so many of us as were baptiz'd into Jesus Christ were baptiz'd into his death THE Ancient Severities of this season by which men strove as if they had design'd a fellowship with him in sufferings to celebrate Christs death in mortifying Rigors and Austerities at least to use the body of Sin as cruelly as his was us'd these I say were not only for the discipline of Penitents of Christians that had sin'd against their solemn undertaking and profession so to actuate their Repentance and to mortify their lusts and inclinations and by that prepare them for an Absolution on Good-friday Eve but they also were much earlier employ'd upon the Catechumens that were Candidates of Christianity as by which they did express their sorrow for and detestation of their former
in vicious customes yet for the gross foul acts which men sometimes commit those unkind stabs and wounds to our own souls those cruel self-murders these all are to be daily mourn'd for Now I shall onely name a few reasons why we should mourn and so stir us up to it 1. Because onely in this and in relation to this is greif of any use at all God and Nature they say made nothing in vain now if it were not for our sins greif would be almost in vain a certain sign that this passion must be emploi'd upon our sins ut propter hujus tantum sublationem sit concessa saith St Chrysostom For does any man loose a child why if he greive to death will his mourning raise him Is thy Estate taken from thee why thou art sad upon it but will thy tears recover it But hast thou sin'd and dost thou truly mourn and greive for it why thy tears do wash away thy sin and blot out thine offence So that mourning being every where else preposterous and unprofitable was clearly intended to be spent upon our sins 2. What ingratitude is it to thy Savior not to find in thine heart to mourn for those sins for which he did die the Son of God did sweat and pray and cry and shed a torrent of bloud and water and suffer death for those very sins of thine and mine which we think so slightly of that we will not shed a tear for them O my Brethren if there is in us any love of that our Jesus or indeed of our selves we would now transplant the Agonies and make them ours and sweat out a few drops of sorrow to cure us of those feavors of our sins 3. Yea it is a very trouble to our God that we do not greive he mourns to see that we will not mourn Hosea 13. 14. when God had complain'd before of Ephraim what a foolish child it was that it did not repent he tells them there that if they had don so I would have ransom'd them from the power of the grave not I will for the very next verse contradicts that I would have redeem'd them from death O death I had bin thy grave O grave I had bin thy destruction but comfort is hid from mine eies repentance we read but the word bears and the sense requires comfort as if the eies of the Lord were therefore full of tears because Ephraim's were not and he could not receive comfort if Ephraim did not mourn and if we do not mourn God will comfort himself some other way concerning us to our greif Isaiah 1. 24. Therefore thus saith the Lord the Lord of Hosts the Mighty one of Israel ah I will ease me of mine adversaries 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the very word before I will be comforted by reason of mine adversaries how why I will avenge me of mine enimies Ah my Brethren when God is to be comforted by his vengeance upon us when he can find no ease but in our ruin and destruction and that he calls his comfort in relation to the non-mourning impenitent where shall we find ease and comfort then And then methinks this should scare us into the use of this fright us out of that stupid lethargy in sinning which does so dull us in it makes us so senseless of it and the danger we are in by reason of it that we cannot bestow one day in weeping mourning and fasting no nor indeed an hour of serious sadness upon an age of sin a whole life of iniquity the very next step of this into which we shall be sure to fall is the greatest sin and judgment in the world it is that spoken of as a character of the foulest Heathens Ephes. 4. 18. 19. Having their understandings darkned being alienated from the life of God thro the ignorance that is in them because of the blindness that is in their heart who being past feeling have given themselves over to lasciviousness to work all uncleaness with greediness rather because of the brawny hardness of their hearts which are become callous insensible of any admonitions stings and greif but dead to all sense of sin and having put off all fear of it and who these are he tells you in the next words 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 such as when they do the foulest acts are not toucht with any greif for having don them but like dead members of the body that are forsaken by the vital spirits if you lash or prick or lance them they feel no pain even so these whose consciences are retir'd a sleep they do not mourn for any of their foulest actions which is the very height of impiety for such do strait give themselves over to all filthiness to work all uncleaness with greediness This is the effect of not mourning and then how do they deserve and provoke this judgment who if at any time their conscience begin to twinge them for any of their sins they presently divert their thoughts lest the mourning in the text should creep upon them and they should grow sad These men dread their virtue they are afraid of becoming pious and to avoid the way to heaven is their design and contrivance they come not so near duty as the wicked in hell have not so much repentance as the damned have for there is sorrow for their sins weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth I should 2dly encourage those that do thus mourn but the text does that sufficiently they are blessed and they shall be comforted First they are blest for this mourning it is the great effect and sign of this Spiritual life that man's sickness hath not yet kill'd him who is sensible of it who greives by reason of the anguish of it and he is not dead who feels the weight of it and mourns for it Secondly if it be true it draws such a train of virtues after it as it made St Paul rejoyce that he had made the Corinthians sad 2 Cor. 9 10 11. and then this very same verse will assure them of the comfort hereafter for all the Gospel-promises are assur'd upon the terms of repentance which this Godly sorrow is the first link of and does draw after it then if there be any comfort in the company of myriads of Saints and Angels if we dare take Christ's judgment if he had any tast who suffer'd so many mourning fits that liv'd a life of tears here that often wept but never laught yea a life of horrid suffering and yet thought those comforts a full glorious recompence to him for all those sufferings and therefore may well be to us for a few tears if there be any joy in the beatifical vision and in heaven they shall be comforted that mourn when as I told you out of Revelations all tears shall be wip'd from their eyes there shall be no more trouble nor sorrow nor crying nor pain And yet this is but the Negative part of their eternity of
〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and signifies O Death where is thy plea by which thou didst attaint men before God's Tribunal where is the right thou hadst over all men to seize and take possession of them what 's become of the sentence that was awarded thee by which all of us were adjudg'd to be thy bond-slaves where is that punishment which thou didst inflict upon us all and by it ruin us To all these rights Sin did entitle thee O Death or as it is here in the Text Sin is thy sting whatsoever power thou hast of hurting man as the Scorpion's venom lies in his sting that power Sin hath given thee and in that it lies without Sin Death were no plague and it is this that makes Death insupportable Now to prove this I need not urge more than what I have already said for if Sin be a sting in the very thought of Death much more pungent will it be when Death it self approaches when the Feaver shall lay hold upon the bloud not onely to revenge the former heats of that lustful or that riotous bloud but to be dawnings of those eternal Burnings which do await the Sinners and shall do more than represent unto thee the heats of that unquenchable brimstone which is to be thy lot and which already doth begin to flash in upon thee Which part of thee do's labor with the more intolerable Feaver thy Body or thy Soul Alas the frost of the Grave would seem to thee a Julip a cool refreshment onely if Sin did not make thee look upon the grave as a downlet to that bottomless pitt which is the lake of fire that is not quencht Nothing possibly can keep an unrepentant Sinner that on his death-bed apprehends his guilt from the horror of despair from being his own Devil and suffering his own Hell in his own bosom upon earth I shall demonstrate this invincibly to you that Sin do's and nothing else do's make Death most insupportable when it approaches Now to evince this my Argument is none other than our Blessed Savior himself in whose Passion the onely imputation of guilt seems to have rais'd the greatest contradictions imaginable If you look upon him preparing for his Passion it seems his onely and most pleasing design as he came into the world for that end so his whole life before it was but a Prologue to it onely a walk to mount Calvary it was his extreme desire I have a baptism to be baptiz'd with baptiz'd indeed with fire and his own clotted sweat of bloud yet this Baptism how am I streightened till it be accomplished Luke 12. 50. He had longing throws after it he did as much desire it as a woman to be deliver'd of her burden Nay it was his contrivance he did lay plots that he might not escape it for when a glorious Miracle had broke from him that did extort the confession of his Deity from Men and Devils he charges these to hold their peace and bids the other tell it no man one reason of which was least the knowing him to be the Son of God should hinder him from suffering He gives it himself Luke 9. 21 22. he straitly charg'd and commanded them to tell no man that thing saying the Son of man must suffer many things and be rejected now should they know I were the Son of God they would not crucify the Son of glory You see what care he takes least he should not suffer and just before his passion he come in triumph to Jerusalem with songs and joy about him as if Death were the onely pleasant thing and his passion so desirable that he would go ride to meet it which he never did at any other time And add to all this that the person was the Son of God to whom nothing could be truly insupportable yet when this person comes to meet it see how he entertain it his soul is exceeding sorrowfull he fell on his face to pray against it and while he was in this condition an Angel from Heaven came to strenthen him yet he is still in an agony and prays more earnestly and his sweat was like drops of bloud Now 't was the sense of Sin upon him that made his bloud run out in clotts as it were flying from that sense it was the apprehensions of the guilt imputed to him and the wrath which he knew was due to it did make him apprehend his God who was himself was gon from him made him cry out My God my God why hast thou forsaken me Now to say that all this dread were from the mere apprehension of death were horrid blasphemy the meanest Martyr was never guilty of so much weakness No 't was from the sense of the iniquity that was upon it 't was because he was made sin for us he was a man of sorrows saith the Prophet Isaiah because in representation he was a man of sins for he bore our iniquities saith the same Prophet c. 53. The Lord had laid upon him the iniquities of us all and therefore he was oppressed And so I have made appear that Sin is the sting of Death more than if your selves did feel it by an experimental despair for it is more that Sin should make Death terrible to the Son of God than that it should make it insupportable to you And therefore before Death seize you and prostrate you into his dust this consideration may humble you into the dust and ashes of Repentance this I say if Sin were a sting that made Death so insupportable to Christ what will it be to us If the apprehension of it when it came arm'd onely with the imputation of our guilt for he himself knew no sin was so terrible to the Son of God how shall we stand under it when it brings all our own iniquities to seize upon us If he that was a person of the Trinity could not bear the weight how shall we sink under it That which made our Jesus in an agony as if he meant to pour out his soul in his sweat and pray and roar and die will certainly be to us most infinitely beyond sufferance Alas what then will be our hope We have certainly none except we can by Faith and Repentance rid our selves of this Sin which is the sting of Death and makes it to be thus intolerable which how it comes to pass I must now shew 2. Why and how Sin is the sting of Death Sin may seem very properly to be call'd a sting of Death for it was the Serpent that brought Death into the World and Sin was that by which he did inflict it now a sting is a Serpent's proper instrument and a venomous sting it was that could blast Paradise and shed destruction there where the Tree of life bore fruit But that is not all the reason why it should be call'd the sting of Death because it makes us obnoxious to Death but it is that
which makes Death a miserable condition as it is the sting of the Serpent that makes him a poysonous creature so it is that which makes Death destructive For were Death the expiration of that little spark in the moving of our heart and if our spirit utterly vanisht as the soft air and were it as the Atheist in the Wise man says we are born at all adventure and shall be hereafter as tho we had never bin Death would be so far from all sting that it would be perfect rest and the end of troubles but Sin makes it onely the beginning of sorrows it changes the very nature of death by making that which seems to be the cessation of sensible function to be the very original of the sensibility of torments Then the Sinner doth begin indeed to feel when he dies Death were but the term of a miserable life did not Sin make it the birth of a more miserable life or death I know not whether to call it for it is of so strange a nature that the very uniting of a Sinner's body and soul which is the onely thing we call life God calls death Rev. 22. 13 14. And the sea gave up the dead which were in it and death and hell or the grave deliver'd up the dead which were in them that is the bodies to be joyn'd to the souls and they were judg'd every man according to their works and in that case all are cast into the lake of fire this is the second death Sin makes Resurrection to be dying and it must needs be so because as afflictions are in this life call'd death as St Paul saith in Deaths often so much more then may those torments of hell be call'd death So that in that death that Sin engages to it is necessary to live always that we may for ever die and it must be so because this makes us liable to the eternal indignation of the offended God which we were not capable of suffering were it not a death of this nature This is indeed death with a sting in it and it is the sense of this approaching that wounds the dying soul when it do's at once call to mind the wickedness of its past life and the wrath that do's await it when he recollects how sinful he hath bin and withall how hateful sin is to God so hateful that it was easier for God to send his Son to suffer death than to suffer sin to go unpunish'd then his own expectations sting and stab his very soul for if God did thus use his own Son how will he use me that have both sinn'd and trod under foot the death of that Son by going on wilfully in my sins Would you then my Brethren find out a way to make death easy and familiar to you you must pull out this sting The Jews say if Adam had continued righteous he should not have died but after a long happy life God would have taken up his soul to him with a kiss which they call osculum pacis he would have receiv'd that spirit which with his mouth he did inspire a kiss of taking leave here to meet in Heaven Wouldst thou have thy death to be the same thing 'T is but becoming righteous with the righteousness of Christ thro whom we have this Victory here in the Text the other part I am to speak to who giveth us the victory thro Jesus Christ our Lords where we have those that are partakers of the Victory and the means thro Jesus Christ our Lord and as to both these this I shall demonstrate over all those enimies in order who the us and how the Victory is gotten First the Law Now that Christ hath redeem'd us from the curse of the Law is said expresly and that by his being made a curse for us Gal. 3. 13. and what that curse of the Law was is set down in the tenth verse cursed is every one that continueth not in all things that are written in the book of the Law to do them which no man besides Christ did ever or can do and consequently all mankind lay under that same dreadful curse obnoxious to the wrath of God and the effects of everlasting indignation but Christ by undergoing that curse and by that means satisfying that strict Law procur'd an easier to be set us upon gentler terms not perfect and unsinning strict obedience which was impossible but instead thereof the Law of Faith obsequious Faith that works by love endeavors honestly and heartily and where it fails repents that is grieves and amends and perseveres in doing so For as St Paul assures us we are not under the Law but under Grace Rom. 6. 14. tho we be under the directions of it the duty of it is most indispensable vertue always yet we are not under those strict terms of it according to the tenor of that curse but in a state of favor under terms of grace where there is mercy pardon to be had upon repentance thro faith and where there is encouragement and aid to work that faith and that amendment in us And thus far the Victory accrues to all mankind for all that will accept these terms of this remedying Law of grace the other killing strict Law hath no power over them For the Gospel was commanded to be preach'd to and its terms offer'd every creature under heaven all mankind a victory this that could not be obtain'd but by Christ's bloud the grace and favor of these easier terms for our obedience valued equal with his life for to take of this curse cursed is every one that continueth not in all things that are written in the book of the law to do it these strict terms he himself was made a curse and 't will be certainly a most unkind return if that which he thought worth the dying for to get us we shall not think worth the accepting slight these blessed terms and do not care unless we can be free from all necessity of an endeavor freed from vertue too as well as Law But secondly the Law being as we have shew'd it is the strength of Sin in giving it a power to condemn us that Law being taken off that power also cannot but be taken off from Sin and by that means the great strengths of that Enimy defeated Accordingly St Paul do's tell the Romans c. 6. v. 14. Sin shall not have dominion over you that is it shall not have by vertue of the Law a power to condemn you for you are not under the Law but under grace are in that state where men are not condemn'd for every gross or heinous sin altho too long continued in but there is pardon to be had for them that will but faithfully endeavor to amend turn from their sins return to Christ receive him and his pardon and where there is also help to do this 't is a true state of grace so that unless men will resolve to force their own
by except we will walk on in darkness unto the land of utter darkness But as a lanthorn is no guidance to the blind and a light is of use only where there is an eye so Gods commandments can have no influence upon nor give direction or assistance to our waies except this eye of the mind be enlightned by them for it is Conscience that is the conveiance to all duty to the heart of man that cannot set up obedience but as the Conscience do's press it on it that conveys the immediate obligation My Conscience tells me this I must forbear that I must practise Yea where there was no law to give direction the eye of Conscience looking o're the frame of man a creature reasonable in his making could strait see a necessity of doing things agreable to right reason and viewing the materials of the pile saw he was built of Soul as well as body of of an immortal Spirit as well as a carnal part knew that his life was to be order'd to the uses of the Spirit as well as of the flesh and more indeed that being the better part and easily could gather hence that man was not to serve his lower brutish part the body so as to discompose his soul and when it did so did condemn him for the doing of it And upon this S. Paul affirms Rom. 2. 14 15. When the Gentiles that have not the Law do by nature the things contained in the Law they having not the Law are a Law unto themselves which shew the work of the Law written on their hearts their Conscience bearing them witness Which says that tho the rest of the world had not the Revelation of Gods will and Law as the Jews had yet from the dictats of their reason and the notions of good and evil implanted in them their conscience did oblige them unto the performance of such things as the Law required and upon such performance or omission without any other Law did either excuse them as men that did not culpably wander out of those paths which the light and Eye that God had planted in them did direct them in or else accuse them as transgressors and render them obnoxious to punishment And so it did before the Law So Rom. 5. 13 14. For until the Law sin was in the world but sin is not imputed where there is no Law Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adams transgressions First after Adams time till Moses before the giving of the Law men fin'd and tho it be true that sin is not charg'd to punishment but where there is a Law to forbid it under that penalty and therefore it might be thought that sin without the Law would not have brought death into the world yet from Adam till Moses death reign'd men died that had not sinn'd as Adam did against an express actual precept promulgated as his was and establish't with a positive threat of death but died because they had sinn'd against the laws of their nature the principles of duty that were put into their making which Conscience prest upon their practise and whose guidance they would not follow they pull'd death upon themselvs in the errors of their waies 'T was by the equity of this that when the wickedness of men grew great in the earth the floud grew so too an inundation of waters overspread it when sin had once don so and iniquity against the dictates of conscience struck all the world at once with death except eight persons Conscience therefore where there is law and also where there is none is the great director of our actions and to this I shall apply our Saviors discourse dividing not the Text but Conscience and in the several members verifying what our Savior he reaffirms 1. Conscience either respecteth actions to be don or actions already don First as it respecteth actions to be don telling us this we must do that we must forbear so first as it answers to the single Eye it denotes the pure Conscience the enlightned Eye of the mind as S. Paul calls it that is a truly well inform'd Conscience a Conscience that judges according to its rule and to this I shall first tell you what is the entire rule of conscience and consequently when it s dictates are right when it informs me truly this I must do that I must forbear 2. Prove to you that all our actions that are regulated by such a well inform'd conscience are good and honest so that if this eye be single the whole body shall be full of light If the conscience be pure the man's holy and so the first part of the text is proved 2. As it answers to the evil eye so it denotes an evil conscience a conscience that do's not give true judgment of duty ill inform'd And this either First wholly so and then 't is reprobate sense such as that of them that call good evil and evil good from which men are stil'd 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 1 Tim. 4. 2. or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saith Phavorinus Rom. 1. 31. Or secondly but in part and then 't is either first an erring conscience or secondly a doubtful conscience or thirdly a scrupulous conscience to which also several others will fall in And I shall shew you how every of these do's mislead a man into the dark The scrupulous raiseth clouds and mists about him dark errors and discomforts too the doubtful do's instead of guiding leave him so puzl'd that he knows not which way to be-take himself and the erring conscience lights him into the pit takes him by the hand to thrust him down guides him into a necessity of sin and the no conscience the reprobate sense it is a darkness somwhat worse then that the blackness of Hell here All this I shall do in order Upon the other part conscience as it relates to actions already don so it do's testify and in so doing either excuse or accuse Rom. 2. 15. Now tho conscience in the other former respect hath indeed the greater influence upon our practise and so to it the text do's more directly answer yet this latter having some also in order to the making future actions holy by repentance for when once the soul hath shipwrack't on a sin and she is ready to sink and perish there is no plank on which she can escape but repentance Now 't is this Eye that must look out for that 't is an accusing conscience that must set him upon Repentance this hurry's him about and will not let him rest 'till he get upon the plank that 's fastned to the Anchor even the Anchor of hope by which until it be secur'd a good conscience never is at quiet Because I intend to say but little to this I shall dispatch it now And that in order to its actions excusing and accusing And first if conscience be the
somtime bin the Rector of the Jesuits at Lyons and came thither with Dunblain sollicited one Bruce who also had bin brought up by the Jesuits and who was the Spanish Agent then imploi'd for ships there which that Duke intended should be join'd with and assist in their Armada sollicited him very oft for mony to procure the murder of the Chancellor which he had contriv'd by several ways but being still deni'd at first because his mony was not trusted to him for those purposes he could not justify such disbursment another time because as to the sin it was all one to kill a man with his own hands or to give mony to procure it and that he for his part was a private person and had no Autority over the life of any man and less over that of the Chancellor who was a chief man in the execution of the Justice of the Land and afterwards because the question was about advancement of Christian Religion now this he thought would ruinate the same in as much as men went about to promote it by murder to the great scandal of all But finding himself still importun'd more he demanded of the Father whether in good conscience he might consent to that enterprize or whether he could dispense therewithal to which the Jesuit repli'd that he could not but that the murder being committed and he coming to confess himself unto him he would absolve him of it It seems they thought they had no further power then Now Bruce's answer tho not much concerning my part in this subject yet it was so honest and the consequence so strange that I shall not pass it He repli'd sith your Reverence acknowledgeth that I must confess my self of it you also thereby acknowledg that I should commit a sin and I for my part know not whether when I have don it God would give me grace and inable me to confess it Besides I verily believe that the confession of a sin which a man hath don of set purpose intending to confess himself thereof and to have absolution for it is not greatly available and therefore the surest way for me is not to put my self into such hazard so it ended But he ran into another hazard for the Duke of Parma dying and the Count Fuentes Nephew to the Duke of Alva in his place Chrichton accus'd Bruce before him that he was a Traitor because he would not disburse mony to cause the Lord Chancellor to be slain and the process had its course he not denying the thing and after fourteen months affliction was at last onely releas'd without repair of his good name or damages But passing by this it seems they had no other snare to draw them in could give them no assurance then but in that hopes of after absolution which prov'd insufficient for they found themselves ingag'd in and must wilfully commit crimes at the point of death of which they could not live to be absolv'd I do not instance in the perjuries of Father Garnet tho with horrible execrations He cry'd mercy after saying that he had not thought they could have prov'd the contrary and he might have absolution But Tresham just when dying did deny on his Salvation things concerning Garnet which he had confest before and Garnet did himself confess too after yea and several others of their own persuasion unexceptionable persons also swore The same words are now current in the mouths of those that suffer notwithstanding the express Oaths of their Complices as if they thought the vertue of their Sacrament were such as that when men confess'd themselves of their intended villanies it absolv'd them of them e're they did them and of all the sins they should think needful to commit in the effecting them Yea more if they should discover or confess ought tho dying then that vertue of the Sacrament retir'd the absolution became void unuseful the Sins recoil'd upon them of which otherwise it made them innocent which gives them confidence on their Salvation at the point of death to deny matters of known fact which 't is not imaginable that they could do on any other save on that account And that it is so I have one irrefragable instance of one executed lately for a murder of that kind in Ireland which is assur'd by persons of best credit in that Nation who tho upon flagrant evidence condemn'd deni'd the fact at his death on his Salvation with deep execrations as he at the place of execution went to be turn'd off but it pleas'd God that the rope brake presently and he soon reviv'd but in the greatest horror in the world for having with such desperate execrations deni'd his own deliberate fact and renounc'd his Salvation he openly acknowledg'd the falsity of his former asseverations and own'd his being really guilty of what was charg'd upon him and blessing God for giving him those moments by so strange a way to disburthen himself of such deliberate wilful perjury declar'd that his Confessor when he absolv'd him told him if he did discover it that absolution would not profit him that he should be damn'd but if he did not then he was forgiven Such monstrous practices are made good sanctified as they contribute to the laying our poor Sion in the dust for we have ever bin the mark of all their mischeifs Since Pius the V. Bull it was observ'd there never past four years all Queen Elizabeths reign without a most pernicious plot for the subversion of the State and Church and in the first years of King James not four months without Treason they go now by the same rules in the same methods with the same Oaths the same Sacraments administred to the same purposes And just as they somtimes designing open force somtimes private treasons assassinations somtimes trying by the softer pleas of Liberty of Conscience toleration to do it yea altho it be but partial an Indulgence to our own Sects any thing that may contribute to the breaches of our Sion may keep them open which 't is said whether in earnest or to colour Blacker purposes hide designs more violent is now spoken of and they hope for and hath still bin pleaded for as the birthright of each Christian as instated on them in the very charter of their Christianity But yet to speak to that too I neither find the word in Scripture nor the thing as most men take it for the Liberty of Action and besides this whatever Arguments there are that press it they can be no Arguments for the Romanist who never grants it for either they conclude or they do not if not why do they urge them if they do why do they not allow them if they can see no force in them then they must not use them if they can they must be wrought on by them unless to be the onely men that may do wrong and resist reason be their grant and Charter But not to
unquenchable brimstone and denounc'd that dire thunder of Go ye cursed into everlasting fire which is the sentence of the Law in its own rigour Yea and besides that blackness and darkness too so that notwithstanding all those lightnings and those revelations God was still in the thick cloud and in the dark and Christ might well say in the verse before the Text No man knoweth the Father save the Son and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him and when he comes to do that he does it in another strain with words of another nature all invitation Come unto me all ye that labor The strain of Gospel is not to thunder us into obedience but I beseech you Brethren by the tender mercies of God and tho there be laboring and burden in the words yet those are the effects of Law and there is ease and rest for that labor and those burdens in the words too and to them it is the Gospel that invites us and it is Christ that gives them for it is he that saith Come unto me These words the Church makes use of for her call unto the Sacrament of the Lords body and certainly it is impossible that they should signify with greater Emphasis than upon that occasion when he does bid you come to him that is to the communication of his body and his bloud for the bread which we break is the communion of the body of Christ. You come to him not onely for the emty kindness of a visit there but to partake of his body and his bloud all the redemtions graces mercies which he purchased on the cross If ever Christ do call with passion it is sure when he pours out that bloud for us and saith every one that thirsteth come Come unto me all ye that labor The words are an invitation of Christ in which we may observe 1. The Persons invited All ye that labor and are heavy laden 2. The invitation it self Come unto me 3. The entertainment at this invitation Rest I will give you rest In the handling of these I shall shew first who those persons invited are who they are that are said here to labor and to be heavy laden 2. What is meant by their invitation Come unto me 3. How those persons come to be qualified for this invitation so as to be invited and none other how the laboring heavy laden persons are the onely fit persons to come to Christ. 4. I shall touch the advantages those persons shall gain by coming Of these and 1. Who they are that are said to labor and be heavy laden The words express extremity of burden and labor under it and weariness by reason of that labor they are translated fessi estis bajulantes onera Syr. labore attriti gravati onere by the Arab. And indeed they signify pains such as to make us pant and blow 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 yea thro weakness not be able to stand 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 so as that the joints are loosed 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and the very soul fails and faints and we become as it were in the shadow of death 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 all this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifies Now this excess of pains may denote two things 1. Either the sinner under that notion as a sinner sins themselves being in Scripture exprest by words that signify labor trouble and weight and therefore the word in the Text translates 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which means all those especially iniquity Mich. 2. 1. Wo to them that devise iniquity 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that devise labors and the very next words will warrant it and work evil it being a most familiar expression with the Prophet David the Workers of Iniquity not onely because it is some mens emploiment and trade here lies their skill their managery they are not Artists in any thing besides but the secrets of sin the mysteries of filthiness the Magisteries of Iniquity these they are Professors of in these chair-men but also Workers of iniquity because it is their toil they sweat under it it is the vanity and vexation of their lives which are rackt in designing contriving and acting the sins of their complexions and ambitions Will you see our Saviors sense of the vexing painfulness of sin he calls your sins of the least size peccata levia as they are esteem'd motes in the eye Matth. 7. 3. Why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brothers eye that is why dost thou look so severely on the light faults of others Our escapes that we make slight of they are of such a nature in themselves as to cause the anguish and fretting that dust and splinters do in the tenderest part the eye And if our souls were not all corneous our consciences sear'd and dead we should with the same impatience bear them as our eye does dust with restlesness work against it never quiet till it force out tears to wash away the dust Yea worse than that for the word which we translate mote 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifies a spill of wood a little shiver or splinter a thing absolutely insuppportable to that part which if suffered does not onely threaten it with intolerable pains but with absolute extinction And truly every one of our slighter sins is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a shiver in the eye and then the grosser iniquities will bear both the words of the text of labor and burden and are in the same verse by our Savior entituled to an expression that hath enough of both even a beam in the eye And considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye that is thine own vaster crimes Every design'd and gross wickedness is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a thing whose agony is as much beyond imagination as endurance For how shall the eye bear that which the shoulders must sink under which onely pillars can support Yet such is that burden and therefore the expression is frequent of bearing iniquities St Peter says it of Christ He himself bears our sins and the Prophet Isaiah said it before him c. 53. 11. For he shall bear their iniquities 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 bear them as a great burden as the word expresses and as event did more express a burden indeed which made the Son of God to sweat bloud and roar and sink and die 'T is true there are of those that do delight in life onely because it is the opportunity of sin it hath no more pleasure in it than is spent in vanity or iniquity without that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 life would be a burden they would labor under it all their other time is wearisom and perisheth and notwithstanding in our Saviors character they are the onely drudges yet in their own opinions they are the onely light hearted creatures the onely persons whose life is but various ease and diversified pleasure Yea and the onely great prejudice they have against Religion is
commandment begets sin but how it makes sin condemning begets death and therefore I believe they are mistaken who expound sin taking occasion by the commandment wrought in me all manner of concupiscence as if it meant the Law onely prohibiting but not quelling sin in me the more it was restrain'd the more it wrought all manner of concupiscence in me especially since there was no punishment assign'd to that sin in the Law it took advantage thence more powerfully to engage me in the pursuit of all my lusts since thence I might have hop't without any fear of punishment to pursue them For this seems perfectly to thwart his aim which was to shew us how the Law wrought condemnation and inflicted death by threatning it It seems to mean I had not onely not known sin to be so dangerous but I had not known some things to be sins and by consequence condemning things but by the Law particularly I had not known concupiscence to be so had not the Law said thou shalt not covet The next words do not seem intended to declare how the Commandment work sin that being brought in by the by as it were thus but sin the corruption of my nature 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 had wrought in me all manner of concupiscence all actual lusts and wickednesses 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 got advantage over me or strength against me by the Law which he there proves for without the law sin is dead not as to stirring in us by its sinful motions sure corruption would not fail to do that and more if there were no check but dead had no strength nor power to condemn me For it follows when the commandment came sin reviv'd got strength to do that and I died was sentenc'd to death by it and the commandment which was ordain'd to life could I have obey'd it I found to be unto death by condemning me to death for my transgression of it For sin by the Commandment 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 getting advantage over me slew me not onely made me liable to death but by its guilt envenoming that death for the sting of death is sin which that it is and how it is so is the second thing I am to speak to Sin is the sting of death which I could make appear two manner of ways in relation to two senses that may be given to the words both pertinent and the one but the Anticipation of the other The first is this Sin is the sting of death 't is Sin makes the thoughts of death pungent and stinging the wicked man cannot think of his last dying day without horrors the onely imagination of a sickness stings him because he is conscious to himself of sin and he knows that that after Death cometh the Judgment and he dares not think of beholding the face of his Judg with his guilt upon him To prove this to you I shall not need to fetch any heathen Testimonies that call the Conscience of Sin a whip a sting a goad a lancing knife things that gash and prick and gall and fret all words of all kinds of terrifying punishment but if there be any gross customary Sinner that now hears me I shall need no other way of proof but by appealing to his own conscience whether when he comes hot from his iniquity he dares entertain the thought of dying And why not Alas he is too deep in arrears to venture upon account with so impartial a Judg books must be laid open if he come there the closet curtain sins nay the bosom villanies must be displaied and every one receive his doom he hath heard that all the refuge of a deplored Sinner at that great and terrible Day of the Lord is but to fly unto the Mountains to cover him and to the Rocks to hide him A wretched hope for how shall the Hills hide him whose iniquities are like Mountains or how shall the rocks cover him whose rebellions are like the great deep as the Scripture words it To such a person Death and Judgment are words of too dangerous a sense and it 's easier for him as many do to resolve there is no such thing as one of them than to think of them and go merrily on in sinning For tell me what is the design of that variety of iniquities in which thou dost ingulf thy self that circle of sins wherein one relieves and succeeds another Sure by such a perpetuity of diversified delights to stave off those severer thoughts which if there were an intermission of sinning or a nauseating of one sin for want of variety would creep in the noise of our riots is not to please the ear but to drown the barking of our consciences When the Sinner's candle is put out if weariness in wickedness do not at once close up his eyes and thoughts if the dark solitary night do but suggest some melancholly thoughts into him how do's he tumble up and down as if he thought to role away from his imagination and he do's ransack his fancy and call up the memory of his past sins about him to entertain himself with all and keep out the torturing remembrance of that sad Day which the Scripture calls putting far from them the evil day for the truth is he dares not give it place least it should happen to him as to a man upon a pointed precipice as himself is indeed situated to whom the apprehension would be as mortal as the danger and he would tumble down for fear of falling So here his sin adds such sharps to the imagination of death that he dares not entertain the thought And if Sin be such a sting in the onely thought of death that the mere remembrance of it is insupportable the use is very natural by the frequent calling of death to mind to stop the current of sin For if the wicked cannot endure to think of death he that does think on it cannot well go on to be wicked Remember thy latter end and thou shalt not do amiss I would give this counsel Think thou art to die while doing it The original of the Turks Turbant which was but by continual wearing of his winding sheet by wrapping his head in his grave-cloaths to have always a shrowd and death upon his thoughts and the Philosophers defining their wisdom to be but contemplatio mortis are not such pregnant inforcers of this use as this practical apprehension of it The man that liv'd among the Tombs tho he had a legion of Devils in him yet when he saw Jesus afar off he ran and worshipped him Mark 5. 6. The sight of graves and conversation with monuments will make even Demoniacks Religious and is so far from thrusting Praiers out of the Liturgy of Burial that it brings the very Devils on their knees But there is yet another and a fuller sense of these words which St Paul repeats out of the LXX translation of Hosea 13. 14. tho not verbatim for there insteed of 〈◊〉
come thence too quite discourag'd them broke all their confidence and faith they must have their Provisions and their Deity too nearer cry out for Flesh-pots and the Calf of Egypt that their meat and God too may be present And altho God always answer'd their complaints by satisfying of them miracle sustain'd them constantly yet as Moses told them Deut. 29. 2 3 4. Ye have seen all that the Lord did before your eyes in the land of Egypt unto Pharaoh and unto all his servants and unto all his land the great temtations which thine eyes have seen the signs and those great miracles yet ye had not an heart to understand and eyes to see and ears to hear unto this day they had no sense of them but what brute beasts were capable of having onely gaz'd as lookers on them did not mind consider and much less discern how great he was that wrought those wonders and how able ready and desirous to supply whatever they could need or he had promis'd and that whatsoever they might want 't was sure they should not want a miracle to furnish and by consequence had all obligation that could be imagin'd to believe in trust upon him and his promises But of this they were not sensible made no such reasonings but when ever any thing they had a mind to was not present or when any danger look'd upon them disbeliev'd and murmur'd still flew in his very face insomuch that God says Num. 14. 11. How long will this people provoke me and how long will it be ere they believe me Now after all those strong most operative ways of making faith they still persisting in their incredulity and most unreasonable and sensless doubtings not believing him is but consequent they would not hearken to him and be wrought on or perswaded by him but resisted his will always and as it must follow grew more and more stubborn and inflexible that is stiff-neck'd as God calls them having their hearts harden'd For it is the nature of things harden'd to be such intractables And being so to that degree that Miracles God's most effectual method could make no impression on them that he labor'd in vain with them he must needs abandon them and give them over as incorrigible and so having worn out all his methods and by consequence all his forbearance he swore they should not enter in Canaan and however he endur'd them to live fourty years their opportunity was dead and their day ended I might tell you how the same ill temper of that Nation looking after present earthly satisfactions consequently for a temporal Messiah made them disbelieve and hardned them against Christ's miracles and teachings but that former instance serves my turn and when St Paul proposes this Example to the Christians as a warning that they suffer not their day to pass them least they be shut out of their eternal rest their heavenly Canaan he expresly cautions them against the same two things that they fall not by the same ensample of unbelief Heb. 4. 11. and that their hearts be not hardened by the deceitfulness of sin Heb. 3. 13. Christ's Miracles if they did not make faith of his person and commission of the duties promises and threats of the Gospel to the Jews when present with them we may fear their efficacy may be fainter in men at this distance and if strong inclinations to the present howsoever sinful satisfactions of their appetites together with long practice and converse in them have got a great love to them 't is most certain that this will not suffer them to receive the love of the Gospel no not of its promises and blessednesses all which are so averse and opposite to those satisfactions and not loving it it is impossible they can be willing to give credit to it Yea those sensual affections blind the Understanding so that indeed it discerns not the truth of it and engage the heart so that it gives no great heed to it and then as Attention to it doth the belief of it must decay The man is onely such a stupid Auditor of what is recorded in Scripture as the Jews in the wilderness were Spectators of it without faith or reflection he considers not himself concern'd much in whatever it proposes whether by injunction threat or invitation whether it do promise blessedness or denounce judgment and so grows insensible of his condition as to either and then coming thus to have no sense of his condition therefore neither hath he any fear by reason of it i. e. so far his heart is hardned and so going on continuing in that state it is so perfectly And what that is Pharaoh can inform us 'T is such an heart as admits no compunction tho you let fly all God's arrows at it No respect to God what grounds soever of experienc'd goodness he have for it softens it if you beseech him on God's part he is not mov'd nor yields altho you threaten him if God invite him by prosperity and kindness he is ungrateful and he grows more dissolute but if he scourge him he grows either senseless or else furious and desperate shameless here fearless of hereafter of all humane things regardless of Divine contemtuous all past things are most perfectly past to him he remembers nothing of the good or evil so as to consider or make use of either and altho he throw away the present yet as if the future would never arrive altho you lay before him certain death and the ensuing two Eternities it is not possible to move him to provide for that Futurity And then when neither present past nor future can work any thing upon him how is it possible to change him Now 't is no wonder if God give him over when his state is thus unalterable Indeed as this condition when 't is grown thus irreversible makes the state of Hell here as to sinning so it seems to make the state of it hereafter as to suffering adding weight and in some sort Eternity to its torments for with the other grounds that shew it just for God to plague the little transient satisfactions of our sins with an immortal worm and everlasting burnings this also is one that the Sinner's appetite and resolution to sin is endless and as much as in him lies eternal and were he not cut off from the commission his iniquity would be immortal And it does appear so certainly when if God set him out a time for his Repentance and their Reconciliation and how great soever he have made his heaps if he do not seal up the sum with this hard-heartedness and persevering obstinacy if while there is yet any sand to run he will consider and take up then God will pass by all the rest and cancel the whole reckoning if yet he will refuse this mercy will go on to fill his Ephah and commits even while the life of his Repentance is breathing out its last while the possibilities of
mercy are upon their death-bed gasping the accepted time and the day of Salvation just ending there is no doubt his will his appetite and resolutions to it are immortal and 't is therefore also fit his worm should be so and there is no security against this but by laying hold upon the present for behold now is the day of Salvation the last thing I am to speak to I shall not press this from the common place of the uncertainty of this life of which whatever we have past as death possesses so the succeeding moments Judgment may lay hold of we are sure of nothing but the present But if we had not onely the assurances which constancy of health and strength of constitution give but a lease of years as Hezekiah had from God himself we have no assurance of the time of acceptance Many men tho they live fast furiously spend the stock of Nature sin yet with a much fiercer carrier as the horse in Jeremies expression rusheth into the battel and they spend the day of Salvation faster Men may deceive themselves by reckoning to repent hereafter We cannot conclude with reason we have space left for it while our life lasts since those opportunities are not always and perchance not frequently commensurate with the life or being of a profligate man or Nation and when they end together 't is not that their whole life or being was allotted to those opportunities but when these are forfeit or extinguisht God cuts off the other Thus indeed he did destroy the old World when the one hundred and twenty years for their repentance were expir'd and several men are cut down out of time as Job saith c. 22. 16. men that shall not live out half their days as David saith of the deceitful and the bloudy men that drink their own Bloud when they thirst for others men whose time for their acceptance went not out while their life lasted because when it went out God cut off their life But 't is not always so Not first in Nations four Generations filled the measure of the Amorites iniquity but five were past before destruction made approaches to them Judah had its sentence of excision in Manasses reign but its execution was suspended till the time of Zedekiah near a hundred years And again the things that belonged to the peace of Jerusalem were taken from them when they kill'd the Peace-maker their day of Salvation too was darkned at Christ's Crucifixion but the City liv'd yet fourty years Nor secondly in persons Pharaohs time was out at the sixth plague but God at once upheld and hardned him until the tenth was past And those six hundred thousand that were doom'd for murmuring were afterwards near fourty years in dying liv'd so long to rebel against more miracles Now all that time the state of all these whether men or Nations was irreversible as to the doom past upon them Did we know indeed our measure of iniquity how many crimes we wanted to fill up our Ephah make an end at once of sin and the day of Salvation also 't were no wonder if we did not think it necessary now to seize the opportunity having yet so many sins good But there are commissions of great bulk few of which will do it the men that sin post soon arrive at the end of the race that is set before them There are whose life is nothing else but perpetual variety of wickedness and they will quickly make up their account the constancy inflames the reckoning and the sum does advance mightily how know they but the next of any of these greater magnitudes may fill up the score To such now onely may be the accepted time However 1. They that whenever such considerations are suggested will not at that present even now resolve to attemt to break their sins off by repentance it is plain they are intangled in them love them so that they resolve expresly not to part with them yet tho they are made to consider by the course of all God's several workings for them and their own provokings that they may have wasted almost all the stock both of God's methods and their own opportunities and will venture doing it completely rather than forego their darling customs Now such a love to sin as it works induration as I shew'd you hardens mens hearts so it does betray it and evince they are in some degree so Such a resolution is sufficient not onely to provoke God to contract the measure and cut short the account Rom. 9. 28. but it self bids fair to fill it up The present therefore must be their accepted time and they do all that in them is to put out the day of Salvation who do thus put off from them this Now. 2. Of this that hath bin said whether Almighty God be now about to make the application either as to what concerns the Nation or particular persons is not may part to determine or debate It is not for us to know the times and seasons which the Father hath put in his own power Many seem indeed to have uncomfortable expectations great fears both as to the Nation and I must say they have reason we may justly fear those judgments which we have deserv'd most justly and provok'd most heinously wilfully impudently and great fears too as to Religion nor without good cause yet not because those men that earnestly desire a change talk of it as at hand with comfort False ungracious treacherous Sons to their poor Mother who do what they can to blast and weaken her that they may have color to forsake her But this they have talkt oft with great confidence and he that sits in Heaven always laught their confidence to scorn we hope he will do so to the world's end Sure I am there could be no fear of what they expect and wish so from comparison of the Religions or if we would answer our Religion by our living But there is great cause of fear we may provoke God to desert that reformation we deform so with our manners and put out the Worship we unhallow And inded a flood of Atheism and contemt of all Religion and Virtue or the having a Religion that is next to that itself looks like just dereliction of them who would not let God be in their thoughts nor Piety or Morality in their actions Now if this be so and by consequent these fears be reasonable just there can be no prevention but by closing now with the proposal of my Text by laying hold upon the present Any least forbearance may make our state irreversible and does certainly provoke God towards it whereas if now when God shews us the rod we would break off our sins reform our selves live up to our Religion there would be no cause to fear destruction since God's work were don whatever shall happen all would work together for the everlasting good of those that did so This if earnest
uncouth till a man be experienced in them and also as it smooths the way for such beginnings do nurse up a Habit and prepare a Custom and make Vice very easie which at first it is not while the Appetite is modest and not able to digest full Doses till use enlarge and stretch it And now the Mind which by these means tasts diverse Pleasures and the Degrees of them and finds a gust in them yet not being satisfied in any one as 't is impossible it should be stirs up the Appetite to vary and proceed that that contentment which single pleasures could not afford diversified might make up Wretched Nature using that as an Attractive which should repell for who would hugg a Cloud embrace that which does not cannot satisfie but only Flesh which for that very reason hunts on and follows the scent And by doing so a while it brings upon it self Fourthly Something like a necessity of doing so Thus Continence would be some mens Disease and the Intemperate cannot live without his Vice but gapes as much as Thirst and Fever do and if he have not satisfaction suffers as many qualms and pangs as his Riot used to cause in the Apprentisage of his sin so that there is a kind of necessity of the practice and he wisely seeming to make a vertue of necessity begins to think them the only happiness at least of this life freely without reluctancy embracing them And now the Flesh is Callous and if you doubt how it could so harden it self as not to be pervious to any stings of Conscience but Proof against all Pricks though Experiment may persuade you yet I will shew you the Method As all Appetite you know is blind so the Guides also of Carnal appetite The senses are very short-sighted they cannot look forward to the next Life to the hopes of Heaven or the pains of Hell to bring them into the ballance with the present pleasure and see which does over-weigh The Flesh only lives extempore looks but upon that which is before it scarce on that We have sufficient experience of this for when one Vice will not look forwards a year or two to the penury and rottenness some courses do pull down And when another Vice as if it had learnt to fulfill our Saviours command and take no care for the morrow will not think of the next mornings pains and Headach Nay when the ambitious Usurper will not look just before him to see where he does place his steps on Precipices and Sword-points to note how the Pyramids he does climb are made slippery with blood Pyramids did I say pointed Reeds rather things that have not strength to bear but only sharpness to stab and where the man 's own weight makes his Upholders fail and wound him both together at once sink under him and pierce him thorough Nay we see many whose sins inflict themselves who may be truly said to bear their Iniquities yet chuse those sins that bring their Plauges along with them for we see men with most excessive difficulty practise a Vice only that they may have the Vice swallow sickness drink Convulsions and dead Paralyses foaming Epilepsies only that all this may be easie to them And this is but one instance of the many that might be made just as the King of Pontus that are Poison that so he might be used to it Strange that a man should torture himself with all those deadly symptoms that Poison racks the body with only that he might eat Poison yet just such is the Sinners Design and all the ease and pleasure he acquires at last in sinning is but familiarity of Poison custom of Danger and acquaintance of Ruine Good God! that men should train and exercise themselves so for perdition that they should go through a discipline of torments to get an Habit of destroying themselves that they should work out their own condemnation with hardships and agonies that as if 't were too easie to go down the hill to Hell the descent shall be made craggy and they force breaches into it and great headlong Precipices to make the way more painful and more dangerous to make the fall more wounding and more irrecoverable And what shall give a check where difficulty does provoke and torments do ingratiate Well But though Flesh be so short-sighted and inconsiderate the mind might trash it by suggesting other sorts of punishments that do await transgression Why truly if rude and unmannerly Conscience do sometimes thrust in the thoughts of Hell the Flesh which I told you is not terrified with any thing but what it feels now Conscience presents Hell as a thing of hereafter not till Death be past it satisfies Conscience with a Repentance of Hereafter before Death come I will be sorry for my sins and God is merciful Conscience being thus quieted and both Reins and Spur given to the Flesh it takes its full Carier and leaves behind all thoughts of Repentance and indeed of God or Heaven the hope and joys of which are the only possible method that is left to take off the Man from his eager pursuit or to divert him in his course But as to that also that I may shew you the next heat The Mind that is immerst in body and hath been long accustomed to tast no pleasure but the carnal ones its fancy fill'd with those Ideas it does imbibe such a tincture of sensuality receives such an infusion of Flesh and so impregnated with the fumes of Carnality which clog the Spirit that its complexion and temper is quite altered it is diluted and deprest and so grown stupid and unactive to all higher things Heaven and all after-things it may be are the prejudice of such persons not their persuasions some thin conceptions of such things have been thrown into them but never were improved for their Mind hath otherwise been employed and they can have no appetite to them because they have never had any tast or relish of any thing but sensual And indeed that both longings after and thoughts of a better Life should be altogether dead in the carnal man is but a natural and necessary effect of the verge of his Delights For what motive is there in Heaven to stir up his appetite to whom Heaven it self would not be a place of Joy For I am verily persuaded were the Carnal man in those Eternal Mansions compast with streams of Glory it were impossible for him to take delight in them and he would grope for Paradise in the midst of Heaven As much impossible as for the most unlearned Idiot to satisfie himself with the pleasures of a Mathematical demonstration Let him have the Hecatombe and let Pythâ—goras be an Epicure on the dimensions of a Triangle the other hath no palate for these pleasures and indeed how could the unclean lascivious please himself in the enjoyment of those Felicities that have no Sex Where they neither Marry nor are given in Marriage Or how the
8. which if after all the Husbandmans methods of Care and Art it brings forth only thorns and briars it is rejected by him he will bestow no more labour on it but can hardly forbear cursing such an ill piece of ground and its end is to be burnt So we after Gods Husbandry of Afflictions when the Plowers plowed upon our backs and made long furrows and the Iron teeth of Oppressors as it were harrowed us if we bring forth only the fruits of the Flesh we are rejected reprobated God will bestow no more Arts on us we are not far from his curse and there remains only a fearful looking for of Judgment and fiery Indignation If any did continue refractory to the Rod sinn'd under and against Judgment and did commit with an high hand even while the Lords hand was stretch'd out against them what shall reform what can express their guilt To have beheld that tragical iniquity we read of Lyons where when the City was so visited with the Pestilence that scarce any were free that the Dead without a figure buried their dead falling down one upon another each being at once a Carcass and a grave the Soldiers of the Cittadel would daily issue forth and deflour Virgins now giving up the ghost defile Matrons even already dead committing with the dust warming the grave with sinful heats and coupling with the Plague and Death would not this have seemed the Landskip of Hell to us when they suffer and sin together Yet when a Church and State were on their death-beds Gods Tokens on them visited with the treasures of his Plagues and our selves sinking in that our Ruin if any went a whoring after their own flesh still fulfilling the lusts thereof and in the midst of Deaths searching for sins what was this but to do the same things whose story does affright us while the actions please and in this case what method will be useful do we think our selves of that generous kind that will do nothing by compulsion but will for kindness and though we would not be chained yet we will be drawn to Vertue by the cords of Love and now God hath shewn mercy on us we will return him service out of gratitude Truly I make no question but most of us have promised some such things to God how if he would but save us from our Enemies that we might serve him without fear that we would do it in holiness and Righteousness before him And if he would restore his opportunities of Worship how we would use them Thus we did labour to tempt God and draw him in to have compassion and this was Ephraims Imagination just I heard Ephraim bemoaning himself saith the Prophet as a Bullock unaccustomed to the yoke turn thou me and I shall be turned turn my Captivity and I will turn my life But this was as a Bullock unaccustomed to the yoke that did not like the straitness and pressure of it and would promise any thing to get it off thought it more easie to reform than bear Affliction But is this hopeful think you The Soldiers of Lyons that would ravish Death and break into the Grave for Lust it may be would have been modest and retired from the fair Palaces that are prepared to tempt and entertain that Vice Cold and insensible of all those heats that Health and Beauty kindle but remember it was the taking off Gods hand that hardened Pharaohs heart and a release from punishment was his Reprobation And as for those that were humbled under the Rod and when God had retrench'd from their enjoyments did put restraints upon themselves gave over sinning I have a word of Caution for them that they examine well and take a care it be a ceasing from sin like that in the Text a dying to it that they no longer live the rest of their time in the flesh to the lusts of men For if this Old Man be only cold and stiff not mortified by the calm and sunshine of Peace likely to be warm'd into a recovery if thou owe all thy Innocence to thy Pressure wert only plunder'd of thy sins and thy Vertue and Poverty hand in hand as they were born so they will die together thy Vices and Revenues come in at once What is this but to invite new Desolations which God in kindness must send to take away the opportunities and foments of our ruining sins 'T is true when God has wrought such most astonishing miracles of mercy for us when he did make Calamity contribute to our Happiness when we were Shipwrackt to the Haven and the Shore when Ruins did advance us and we fell upwards it is an hopeful argument God would not do such mighty works on purpose to undo them we have good ground of confidence that he will preserve his own mercies and will not throw away the issues of his goodness in which his bounty hath so great an interest and share But yet if we debauch Salvation and make it serve our undoing if we order these opportunities of mercy so that they only help us to fill up the measure of our sins if we teach Gods long-suffering only to work out our eternal sufferings these Mercies will prove very cruel to us and far from giving any colour for our hopes When the Prodigal was received into his Fathers house and arms had a Ring put on him and the fatted Calf killed for him if he should strait have invited the companions of his former Riot to that fatted Calf and joyn'd his Harlot to him with that Ring he had deserved then to be disinherited both from his Fathers house and pitty who would have had no farther entertainment nor no bowels for him To prevent such a fate let us make no relapses but quite cease from sin which if we do not a little Logick will draw an unhappy inference from this Text if he that hath suffered hath ceast from sin then he that hath not ceast from sinning hath not suffered and then what is all this that we have felt and so lain under What is it if it be not suffering If this be but preparative then what is the full Potion the Cup of Indignation when all his Vials shall be poured into it If such have been the beginnings of sufferings what shall the issues be If the morning dew of the day of punishment have been so full of blood what shall the Storm and Tempest be the deluge and inundation of Fury Take heed of making God relapse 't is in your power to prevent it your Reformation will be his preservative and Antidote That is the way to keep all whole to settle Government and Religion both at once to establish the Kings Throne and Christs For notwithstanding mens pretensions these Thrones are not at all inconsistent For that there must be no King but Christ that there cannot be a Kingdom here of this World because there is a Kingdom that is not of this World is such
death which till the man be dead and the brute onely live within him cannot be his pleasures And it is plain they are not pleasures to a Sober man that lives the life of Reason not to say of Grace Nor are they such to any man till he have train'd and exercis'd himself into an habit of enduring them and by a discipline of Torment made himself experienc'd for Vice and for Damnation Nor is there ever any pleasure in some Vices What is there in the dismal Wishes of mans imprecating passion there cannot be musick in those harsh horrours and yet the Sinners will destruction so as that they call to God to pour it on them and tear it down from Heaven so that Pain and Disease seem to sauce those delights and Death to be the tempter to the pleasure 't is evident mens reasons and their Practices must be first debauch'd that they may count them Pleasures and therefore pleasure cannot be the first mover in the Sinners race to Death But I will grant that the Spirit and Flesh of Man by their so strait alliance and perpetual converse may grow to have the same likes and dislikes have but one appetite and this alas be that of flesh to whose onely satisfactions the man useth himself by long Custom of which the Soul doth so imbibe the Inclinations of the Body that nothing of another kind can possibly be relish'd In this case sensuality hath pleasures yet such as cannot answer Gods enquiry for do but consult mans other Choices and you find a present satisfaction cannot work his Resolutions to forego great after-hopes or run upon a foreseen ruine Who will exchange his right to the Reversion of a Crown which from his Father he shall certainly inherit and succeed to if he do out-live him for a present Scene of Royalty and choose a painted Coronet the pomps and adorations of a Stage and the applauses of a Croud before the real Glories of his Kingdom the love and the obedience of his Subjects And yet my Soul the disproportion of the Sinners terms is infinitely greater and there is no hazzard which to make his choice of present things more flattering the others hopes are liable to For that Heir of the Crown may die before the Crown fall to him but it is impossible that we should miss of ours except we put our selves by by such choices except we change it thus And on the other side we know men will adventure the Sentence of the Law by Robberies and murders to provide for Lusts while they hope to be undiscovered But sure a Prison made delightful by all arts of pleasure and all plenties of it will not hire a man to own those actions which shall forfeit him to certain shameful Execution the next Sessions and yet this is the Sinners state exactly he is ti'd and bound in the chain of his sins they are it may be chains of Gold and softned with delices but they reserve him to the Judgment of the great Assise And yet he chooses these and puts them on as Ensigns of delight and honour Once more Do not men choose a present Agony to keep off an afterevil they tear their bowels with a Vomit to prevent a Surfeit they cup and scarifie and with all artifice or pain upon themselves kill a Disease yea they are well content to prolong torment so they may but prolong life and though the preservation of it prove onely continued pangs and all they can effect is onely this that they are longer dying yet they are glad to be so in all cases except where the prescription is Virtue and the death prescribed against Eternal Now why do you choose thus onely in Sin and Hell 'T is clear the very pleasure you change Heaven for cannot invite you from this Life and then you that will suffer any thing rather than you will dye Why against all resistance will you dye for ever It is Secondly because you know not what it is to dye the second Death at least your notions of it are so slight and easie that they cannot fright you from a pleasure or cope with a temptation to it and so though present satisfactions are not able to engage you upon present ruin they can upon the after-death Indeed the Sinner would have reason if it meant no more than hath been taught of late by one that hath gained many Proselytes among the Virtuosi of Religion After the Resurrection the Reprobates shall be saith he in the state that Adam and his Posterity were in after his Sin i. e. the state we are now in Live as we do Marry and give in Marriage and cease to be when they have got some heirs to succeed them in Tophet Poor unhappy Souls these that never had any sin to merit being there nor any Sentence to condemn them thither but this mans Who must put them there successively one after other to find employment for Everlasting fire A Doctrine such as had an Angel Preach'd from Heaven by S. Paul's award he must have been Anathema when the Devil made Religions and Theology came from the bottomless Pit he never found out such an Engine to conveigh men into it as this pleasant notion of the punishment of sin therein as if Leviathan were made to take his pastime in that Lake also by such interpretations which surely were contrived to make out the Assertion of that Romish Priest who says that those in Hell love to be there nay more that 't was impossible for God to do a kinder thing for them than to put them there Doctrines to be abhorr'd as Hell it self and yet upon these grounds he builds their Church by demonstration so strong as that the Gates of Hell cannot prevail against it and in truth they have no reason to assault it on these terms But to pass by such dotages and frenzies you will be able sure to check all those presumptions which grow from sleight impressions of the second Death if you but take that prospect of it which the close of this time gives look forward through this season which is designed for you to prepare the way of the Lord to his Passion in and you shall see the Death that does await iniquity If you behold him coming to Jerusalem with Hosannas and Palms about him as if Death were his Triumph his Passion so desirable that he rode to meet it which he never did at any other time and then complaining he was straitned until it were accomplish'd as he had throws of Longing after it and singing when he went out to it you would believe the Sinner never chose his death sweetned by his most pleasant sin with a more chearful eagerness But then open the Garden and you see his apprehensions of it throw him on his Face to pray against it See how he sweats and begs his very Prayer is a Passion the zeal of it is Agony and canst thou choose that he so dreads
and deprecates and when he durst not meet the apprehensions wilt thou stand the storm see what a sting death hath when it makes out-lets for such clots and globes of Blood and stings the Soul so too that it pours out it self in Sweat And then he sinks again under the deprecation of it and prays that that Cup may pass from him Blessed Saviour when thou hadst just now made thy Death thy Legacy thy Sacrament dost thou intreat to scape this death if this Cup pass from thee what will the Cup of Blessing profit us thou hadst but now bequeathed a Cup to us which was the New Testament in thy Blood and now wilt thou not shed that Blood But dost thou refuse thy Cup Oh 't was a Cup of deadly Wine red with God Indignation poison'd with Sin And can the Sinner thirst for the Abyss of this the Lake that hath no bottom and when he goes again and prays the same words the third time be yet not onely so supine as not ask to scape it seldom and very sleight in any Prayer or wish against it but also so resolv'd to have it as to gape that he may swill it down to everlastingness Follow him from that Garden and you see him even dying under his Cross he cannot bear that when it is laden with sin who yet upholdeth all things by the word of his Power 'T is said the time will come when the Sinner will cry out to the Hills to fall on him any weight but that of iniquity the burden of that is intolerable 't is easier for him to bear a Mountain than a Vice and yet Christ saith he hath a beam in his Eye and can he shrink at any weight whose part that is most sensible tender to an expression can bear that which shoulders must fall under onely Pillars can sustain Oh yes that which did sink the shoulders of Omnipotence Then the Mountains rather and the Rocks to cover but in vain they will not cover for thy very Groans will rent them Christ's were so sad that his did they tore the Rocks and that which is much more inflexible the Monuments Death started at them and the bonds of the Grave loosened and the Dust was frighted into Resurrection and more the Hypostatick Union seem'd rent by them the God to have forsaken his own Person And can the Sinner hope to stand this shock will the courage of his Iniquity make his heart harder than those Rocks more insensible than the Grave and better able to endure than he that was a God and will you die into this state eternally which it was necessary for him to have the assistance of Divinity in his Person that he might be able to endure one day and which yet notwithstanding made one day intolerable The sum is this a Person so desiring Death and yet so dreading it and sinking under the essays of it and this Person the Son of God and that dread meerly because there was sin in the Death for if this were not in the cause no Martyr but had born death with more courage but that Son of God all this as it does leave no Reason for the Sinners choice of death Eternal so neither doth it leave a possibility of bearing it And if so give me leave in God's Name to Expostulate the last imployment of these words Why will ye die After this killing Prospect while the damp of it is on you let my Bowels debate with you which yearn more over you than they did over my Beloved Son in whom I was well pleased when I have sent my only Son God one with my own Self to be made Man that he might suffer what was necessary to be suffer'd to preserve you from eternal sufferings when I have laid on him that was brought up with me from everlasting and that was daily my Delight all your Iniquities and my own Indignation that so you might be freed from both When I have found out made an Expiation with which I am more pleased than ever your transgressions offended me which hath quite blotted out your sins and my Displeasure when your Redemption from death is made the Ransom paid the Price is in my hand why do you then refuse your selves your own Eternal Blessedness which was thus dearly purchas'd and is ready for you Why will you seize that Indignation which you are redeemed from and force those sufferings on your selves which have been laid already and inflicted on another 'T is a small thing that you refuse me the return of my Expence that which I gave my Son for but do you renounce Happiness because my Love and Blood is in it and will you die because you may and I desire you should live when my Son went from the essential felicities of my Bosom to embrace Agonies and dy'd for you why will you also die as you have slain his Person will you Crucifie his Kindness too and crucifie your selves rather than have it and having us'd him most despightfully will you therefore use his favours so and not let his Death and Passion do you any good contemn his methods of Salvation his divine Acts of making you for ever Blessed is your Saviour and Life it self so hateful to you and after such Redemption of your persons is there no redemption of your Will from perishing nothing of value that can bribe your choice against it nothing that can betroth you into a desire of Life and take you off from your resolves to die had I set no advantage on the other side if sin had sweetned misery to your Palate it had been no such great despite and contradiction to Appetite but when Heaven and the Joys of God are in the Scale against it to prefer Misery is Wretchless beyond aggravation Oh why will you rather die Those very things that tempt your Wills were they abstracted from the death they do inveigle you into were they sincere and innocent if they were set against that Life that blessed life immortal Life would vanish quite in the comparison when you should see they are but frolicks of delight that never take you but when you are turn'd up to them in moods and fits and the complacencies you take in them are but starts of Appetite that swells and breaks out to them and then falls again and so the pleasures die even in the birth and therefore cannot satisfie indeed do but disquiet an immortal appetite such as man's is so that it were impossible to choose a life these rather although there were no misery annex'd to them if you consider'd For it were to resolve that a few drops were more than an immence Ocean of Delight a Moment longer than Eternity a Part were bigger than the Whole an Atome greater than an Infinite Now there is nothing then that can prefer these to your choice but the Death only and Oh will ye without and against all Temptation Will ye die O thou my Soul take
distance and the other present Nor are they to be made to vie since both conspire and both are best in different cases Besides our Saviour is not talking here of begetting Faith but making men repent and the whole meaning of the words is briefly this Thy Brethren being Jews have Moses and the Prophets those contain all the motives of Repentance Gods Commands his Promises and Threats even Heaven and Hell as themselves confess all these have been confirm'd already by great Miracles and as such have been long since received by the whole Jewish Church with so immovable an Opinion of the truth of them that there needs no new Miracle to give accession of credit to them And then what can one coming from the dead perswade new motives he can bring them none Man 's nature is not capable of any other kinds for he can act but from his affections or his Reason all which are baited to the height by those motives they have the Understanding and the Appetite whether it love or hate or hope or fear which set on work whatever we perform all these I say Heaven and Hell are Object for even to the utmost possibility of motion If he can bring no new ones those they have when they are once truly believ'd then they have all the vigour they can have belief being the application of those active motives to their work but all the strength to act being in those motives themselves all I mean in opposition to the miracle I know that there are other strengths of Grace but those do help as well the Miracle as Motive those have influence on the believing too by their exciting and assisting But this strength which may be common to both is not to be considered when one vies with the other What therefore shall he go for who can give no new motives nor strength to those they have If any should not be confirm'd enough in that which Moses and the Prophets say how shall they be convinc'd that this Ghost is of more credit than they were but if he should be so far heeded as to add new Confirmation to them yet if improbity hath been able to dead the force of the activity of all that Moses says although acknowledged with that veneration which the Jews receive Moses with whose credit they themselves do say no Miracle can be wrought so great as to be able to add to or diminish from why then that same improbity within a while will with more ease work off the force of this new Confirmation so that it will be vain Indeed 't is possible that the surprize of such a Miracle just as any other sudden and amazing accident may make a man consider what though he did afore believe yet he did not mind nor lay to heart yet when the astonishment of that is over the motives then are left to their own strength and can work onely by their own activity which we see hath been able to do nothing so that a Miracle at most can be but a more awful remembrancer Now sure to bring this to our selves we want none such nor do they prove much useful Occasions of astonishment and such fatal remembrancers have come and taken up their habitation in our Land and make approaches towards hover over every place Long Bills of mortality and sad knells and dreadful passing bells these are all messengers from the dead that come posting to us swift as Gods Arrows And one would think we should take notice of their message hear them when they pass so near us when they seem to call out to our selves when a thousand do fall besides us and ten thousand at our right hand wherefore should not an Army of such Carcasses become as moving as one Ghost should Lazarus come forth with all his sores they would not be so terrible as these carbuncles and ulcers of the Plague And the destroying Angel out of Heaven with his Sword drawn one would expect should be as efficacious as a Preacher out of Abrahams Bosom And yet men do not seem to hearken any more to these than they do to us when we either Preach or which they think much less when we read Scripture to them that is when they hear Moses and the Prophets Men have the same security as to their sins which they had in the freest times whatever fears possess them they are not the fears of God those that make men depart from evil none of those that fright into Repentance we have no Religious cares upon us now more than at other times but Vice as if that also had a Sanctuary under the Lords wings and might retire under his feathers to be safe dreads no Terrours of the Night nor Arrows of the Day but walks as open and as unconcern'd as ever And now should we behold a mad man on his death-bed spending his onely one remaining minute in execrations the paleness of a shrowd upon his face but Bloud and crimson Sins upon his tongue the frost of the Grave over all his parts but a lascivious heat in his discourse in fine one that had nothing left alive of him but his Iniquity would not an horrour seize you at that sight and the same frost possess you but to hear him and yet his madness is his excuse and his disease his Innocence Should we see one that had no other madness no other sickness but his sin do thus would it not be more horrid and is it not the same to see a Nation as it were upon its Death-bed visited with all the treasures of Gods Plagues his tokens on it and every place and man in fearful expectations and yet no allay of Vice Wickedness as outragious as ever while it is thus with what face can we beg of God to keep from us this Plague and grievous sickness when we do onely mean to make this use of such indulgence to cherish another Plague in our own hearts What can we say to prove it would not be a mercy to us to be suddenly cut off even in the midst of our iniquity when by our going on in sin in the midst of Destruction we make appear if he should let us live yet we would only live to finish our iniquities And longer time would have no other use but to fill up a greater measure of sin What answer do we make to all these Messengers of Death that come so thick about us what do we that may justifie Gods care in sending us so many warnings But 't is no Wonder if the onely neighbourhood of Death have not been able to prevail upon us have you not seen one whom his own iniquity or Gods immediate Hand hath by a Sickness or by some sad Accident cast to the very brink of Death so as the Grave seemed to begin to take possession of him and all his hopes sickned and di'd so that recovery from that condition may be well as 't is in Scripture often called a Rising have
you not seen him in that state when he supposed that sinning was now done with him and the next thing was Judgment when God's Tribunal seemed to be within his view and Hell to gape for him as wide as the Grave both opening to receive their parts of him at the same time and himself ready to divide himself into those two sad Habitations With what effectual Sermon will he then Preach to himself against his sins and that you may be sure shall work upon him he instantly resolves against his Vices he will not carry them along with him out of this Life but cast them off as too sad dangerous Company nor yet if God shall lend him life will he retain them but it shall be a New Life which he will lead And yet when God hath rais'd him up after a while he returns to his Vomit his Sins recover with his Body he owes his Innocence but to his Weakness nor is it more long-liv'd his holy purposes decay as his strength grows and die as soon as setled health does come And he who never would commit the Sin again when he was Dying mends into it again And then what hopes is there in this mistaken Method when we see men come themselves from the Deadunto themselves yet cannot make themselves Repent But if we are not all concerned in this take a more spreading and more visible experiment If ever one came from the Dead this Church and State came thence And by as great a Miracle of Resurrection But where is the Repentance such a Miracle may have flattered our Expectations with as I am confident the resolutions of it did in that sad dying state are not some men as violent in those wicked practices that merited our former Ruin and others in those cursed Principles that did inflict it as they ever were 't is said by many that have evil will at Sion and it is our concern to take a care they speak not truth that in the Church some that are risen up again have still the silence of the Grave upon them and are as dumb as if their mouth were yet full of their monument Earth And yet as if it were not full of Earth nor had been satisfied with it in the Sepulchre they gape still like the Grave that never can be satisfied And we see others who as if this Resurrection were but a start out of a sleep or lucid interval of former madness have their hands ready not onely to tear off the hair the unessential accessary beauties of the Body of the Church and State but to scratch the Face pull out the Eyes and tear open those Wounds which their last fit of Fury did inflict so to let life out again And as for the Community of the Nation 't is true we are as it were risen from the Grave but have we not brought up with us the Plague sores are not the Spots upon us still the Venom Ulcer and infection about us Yea more contracted Stench and Putrefaction such as Death and the Grave do add and coming from the dead we will not yet part with these but dress our selves in those infected and defiled grave-cloaths and rise into corruption and so confute Gods Method of a Resurrection 'T were happier if we would so far confute the Text that coming our selves from the dead we would renounce communion with all Deaths adherencies begin the incorruptible which shall be consummated when we shall rise again a Church triumphant when Death shall be swallowed up in Victory and neither Sin nor Repentance shall be any more but Holiness and Life and Glory too shall be Immortal and unchangeable To Which c. The Twelfth SERMON Preached at CHRIST-CHURCH IN OXFORD Decemb. 31. 1665. LUKE II. part of the 34. verse Behold this Child is set for the Fall and Rising again of many in Israel and for a sign which shall be spoken against AND Simeon Blessed them and said c. A Benediction sure of a most strange importance If to bring forth one that is to be a large Destruction if to be delivered of a Child that must be for the Fall of many and the killing of the Mothers self be blessed if Swords and Ruins be Comforts then my Text is full of these But if this be to Bless what is it to forespeak and abode ill Yet however ominous and fatal the words are they give us the event and the design too of the Blessed Incarnation of the Son of God the Child of this Text and of this Season A short view of Gods Counsel in it and the Effects of it The Effects in these Particulars 1. This Child is for the Fall of many 2. For the Rising again of many 3. For a Sign With the quality of that sign he is for a sign that shall be spoken against 2. The Counsel and Design of this is signified in the word here 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 he is set and preordain'd to be all this First of the first Effect This Child is for the Fall of many And here I shall but onely name that way whereby many men set this Child for their own Fall while they make his holy Time to be but a more solemn opportunity of â—â—â—â—ing We know many celebrate this great Festival with Surfeits and Excesses the usual appendages of Feasting Oathâ— and Curses the ingredients of Gaming Dalliance and Lasciviousness the attendants of Sporting of all which this seems as it were the Anniversary a set time for their return Thus indeed the Israelites did solemnize the Birth of their Idol-Calf They sate down to Eat and Drink and rose up to Play And must we celebrate this Child too like that Calf because he was born among Brutes And must his Votaries also be of the Herd And he live and be worship'd always in a Stable Because God became Man must Men therefore become Beasts Is it fit to honour that Child with Iniquity and Loosness that did come into the World upon designs of Holiness to settle a most strict Religion Nothing can be more incongruous than this and certainly there is nothing of Gods Counsel in it But to you whose time seems nothing else but a constant Festival always hath the Leisure and the Plenties and the Sports of one who as to these things keep a Christmas all your life this Season as it does not seem to challenge those things to it self peculiarly so I shall not now insist on them but proceed to those ways by which Simeon did Prophecy This Child would be for the fall of many in Israel And they are three 1. This Child whom I but now declar'd God had prepar'd to be the Glory of his People Israel yet his Birth was so inglorious and his Life answerable to it shall be so mean and poor and his Death so full of shame and curse that these shall prove a scandal to his People who shall be offended at them and being prepossess'd with prejudices of