either maliciously or ignorantly and we stand upright in that particular by innocence and sometimes by penitence and all this while our Conscinence is our friend Sometimes our conscience does accuse us unto God and then we stand convict by our own judgement Sometimes if our conscience acquit us yet we are not thereby justified For as Moses accused the Jews so do Christ and his Apostles accuse us not in their personss but by their works and by their words by the thing it self by confronting the laws of Christ and our practises Sometimes the Angels who are the observers of all our works carry up sad tidings to the Court of Heaven against us Thus two Angels were the informers against Sodom but yet these were the last for before that time the cry of their iniquity had sounded loud and sadly in Heaven and all this is the direct and proper effect of his jealousie which sets spies upon all the actions and watches the circumstances and telâ—s the steps and attends the businesses the recreations the publications and retirements of every man and will not suffer a thought to wander but he uses means to correct it's errour and to reduce it to himself For he that created us and daily feeds us he that intreats us to be happy with an opportunity so passionate as if not we but himself were to receive the favour he that would part with his onely Son from his bosome and the embraces of eternity and give him over to a shameful and cursed death for us Cannot but be supposed to love us with a great love and to own us with an intire title and therefore that he would fain secure us to himself with an undivided possession and it cannot but be infinitely reasonable for to whom else should any of us belong but to God Did the world create us Or did lust ever do us any good Did Sathan ever suffer one stripe for our advantage Does not he study all the wayes to ruine us Doe the Sun or the stars preserve us alive Or do we get understanding from the Angels Did ever any joynt of our body knit or our heart ever keep one true minute of a pulse without God Had not we been either nothing or worse that is infinitely eternally miserable but that God made us capable and then pursued us with arts and devices of great mercy to force us to be happy Great reason therefore there is that God should be jealous lest we take any of our duty from him who hath so strangely deserved it all and give it to a creature or to our enemy who cannot be capable of any But however it will concern us with much caution to observe our own wayes since we are made a spectacle to God to Angels and to Men God hath set so many spies upon us the blessed Angels and the accursed Devils good men and bad men the eye of Heaven and eye of that eye God himself all watching lest we rob God of his Honour and our selves of our hopes For by his prime intention he hath chosen so to get his own glory as may best consist with our felicity His great designe is to be glorified in our being saved 3. Gods jealousie hath a sadder effect then all this For all this is for mercy but if we provoke this jealousie if he findes us in our spiritual whoredoms he is implacable that is he is angry with us to eternity unlesse we returne in time and if we do it may be he will not be appeased in all instances and when he forgives us he will make some reserves of his wrath he will punish our persons or our estate he will chastise us at home or abroad in our bodies or in our children for he will visit our sins upon our children from generation to generation and if they be made miserable for our sins they are unhappy in such parents but we bear the curse and the anger of God even while they bear his rod God visits the sins of the Fathers upon the children Thatâ—s the second Great stroke he strikes against sin and is now to be considered That God doth so is certain because he saith he doth and that this is just in him so to do is also as certain therefore because he doth it For as his lawes are our measures so his actions and his own will are his own measures He that hath right over all things and all persons cannot do wrong to any thing He that is essentially just and there could be no such thing as justice or justice it self could not be good if it did not derive from him it is impossible for him to be unjust But since God is pleased to speak after the manner of men it may well consist with our duty to enquire into those manners of consideration whereby we may understand the equity of God in this proceeding and to be instructed also in our own danger if we persevere in sin 1. No man is made a sinner by the fault of another man without his own consent For to every one God gives his choice and sets life and death before every of the sons of Adam and therefore this death is not a consequent to any sin but our own In this sense it is true that if the fathers eat sowre grapes the childrens teeth shall not be set on edge and therefore the sin of Adam which was derived to all the world did not bring the world to any other death but temporall by the intermediall stages of sickness and temporal infelicities And it is not said that sin passed upon all men but death that also no otherwise but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in as much as al men have sinned as they have followed the steps of their father so they are partakers of this death And therefore it is very remarkable that death brought in by sin was nothing superinduced to man man onely was reduced to his own naturall condition from which before Adams fall he stood exempted by supernaturall favour and therefore although the taking away that extraordinary grace or priviledge was a punishment yet the suffering the naturall death was directly none but a condition of his creation naturall and therefore not primarily evil but if not good yet at least indifferent And the truth and purpose of this observation will extend it self if we observe that before any man died Christ was promised by whom death was to lose its sting by whom death did cease to be an evil and was or might be if we do belong to Christ a state of advantage So that we by occasion of Adams sin being returned to our naturall certainty of dying do still even in this very particular stand between the blessing and the cursing If we follow Christ death is our friend If we imitate the praevarication of Adam then death becomes an evil the condition of our nature becomes the punishment of our own sin not of Adams for although his sin brought death in
without huge disturbances but by being also Atheistical in their opinions and to believe that the story of hell is but a bug-bear to affright children and fools easy believing people to make them soft and apt for government and designes of princes and this is an opinion that befriends none but impure and vicious persons others there are that believe God to be all mercy that he forgets his justice believing that none shall perish with so sad a ruine if they do but at their death-bed ask God forgivenesse and say they are sorry but yet continue their impiety till their house be ready to fall being like the Circassians whose Gentlemen enter not into the Church till they be threescore years old that is in effect till by their age they cannot any longer use rapine till then they hear service at their windows dividing unequally their life between sin and devotition dedicateing their youth to robbery and their old age to a repentance without restitution Our youth and our man-hood and old age are all of them due to God and justice and mercy are to him equally essential and as this life is a time of the possibilities of mercy so to them that neglect it the next world shall be a state of pure and unmingled justice Remember the fatal and decretory sentence which God hath passed upon all man-kinde it is appointed to all men once to die and after death comes judgement and if any of us were certain to die next morning with what earnestnesse should we pray with what hatred should we remember our sins with what scorn should we look upon the licentious pleasures of the world then nothing could be welcome unto us but a prayer book no company but a Comforter and a Guide of souls no imployment but repentance no passions but in order to religion no kindnesse for a lust that hath undone us and if any of you have been arrested with alarmes of death or been in hearty fear of its approach remember what thoughts and designes then possessed you how precious a soul was then in your account and what then you would give that you had despised the world and done your duty to God and man and lived a holy life It will come to that again and we shall be in that condition in which we shall perfectly understand that all the things and pleasures of the world are vain and unprofitable and irkesome and that he onely is a wise man who secures the interest of his soul though it be with the losse of all this world and his own life into the bargain When we are to depart this life to go to strange company and stranger places and to an unknown condition then a holy conscience will be the best security the best possession it wil be a horror that every friend we meet shall with triumph upbraid to us the sottishnesse of our folly Lo this is the goodly change you have made you had your good things in your life time and how like you the portion that is reserved to you for ever The old Rabbins those Poets of religion report of Moses that when the courtiers of Pharaoh were sporting with the childe Moses in the chamber of Pharaohs daughter they presented to his choice an ingot of gold in one hâ—â—d and a cole of fire in the other and that the childe snatched at tâ—e coal thrust it into his mouth and so singed and parched his tongue that he stammered ever after and certainly it is infinitely more childish in us for the glittering of the small gloworms and the charcoal of worldly possessions to swallow the flames of hell greedily in our choice such a bit will produce a worse stammering then Moses had for so the aâ—ccursed and lost souls have their ugly and horrid dialect they roare and blaspheme blaspheme and roare for ever And suppose God should now at this instant send the great Archangel with his trumpet to summon all the world to judgement would not all this seem a notorious visible truth a truth which you will then wonder that every man did not lay to his heart and preserve therein actual pious and effective consideration let the trumpet of God perpetually sound in your ears surgite mortui venite ad judicium place your selves by meditation every day upon your death-bed and remember what thoughts shall then possesse you and let such thoughts dwell in your understanding for ever and be the parent of all your resolutions and actions The Doctors of the Jews report that when Absalom hanged among the oakes by the haire of the head he seemed to see under him hell gaping wide ready to receive him and he durst not cut off the hair that intangled him for fear he should fall into the horrid lake whose portion is flames and torment but chose to protract his miserable life a few minuts in that pain of posture and to abide the stroke of his pursuing enemies His condition was sad when his arts of remedy were so vain 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Soph. A condemned man hath but small comfort to stay the singing of a long psalm it is the case of every vitious person Hell is wide open to every impenitent persevering sinner to every unpurged person Noctes atque dies patet atri Janua Ditis And although God hath lighted his candle and the lantern of his word and clearest revelations is held out to us that we can see hell in its worst colours and most horrid representments yet we run greedily after bables into that praecipice which swallows up the greatest part of man-kinde and then onely we begin to consider when all consideration is fruitlesse He therefore is a huge fool that heaps up riches that greedily pursues the world and at the same time for so it must be heaps of wrath to himself against the day of wrath when sicknesse death arrests him then they appear unprofitable himself extreamly miserable if you would know how great that misery is you may take account of it by those fearful words and killing Rhetorick of Scripture It is a fearful things to fall into the hands of the living God and who can dwell with the everlasting burning That is No patience can abide there one houre where they must dwell for ever Sermon XX. OF CHRISTIAN PRVDENCE Matthew 10. latter part of Ver. 16. Be ye therefore wise as serpents and harmlesse as doves WHen our B. Saviour entailed a law a condition of sufferings promised a state of persecution to his servants and withall had charmed them with the bands unactive chains of so many passive graces that they should not be able to stir against the violence of Tyrants or abate the edge of axes by any instrument but their own blood being sent forth as sheep among wolves innocent and silent harmlesse and defencelesse certainly exposed to sorrow and uncertainly guarded in their persons their condition seemed nothing else but a designation to
the law was a state of bondage and infirmity as S. Paul largely describes him in the seventh Chapter to the Romanes but he that hath the Spirit is made alive and free and strong and a conquerour over all the powers and violencies of sin such a man resists temptations falls not under the assault of sin returns not to the sin which he last repented of acts no more that errour which brought him to shame and sorrow but he that falls under a crime to which he still hath a strong and vigorous inclination he that acts his sin and then curses it and then is tempted and then sins again and then weeps again and calls himself miserable but still the inchantment hath confined him to that circle this man hath not the Spirit for where the Spirit of God is there is liberty there is no such bondage and a returning folly to the commands of sin But because men deceive themselves with calling this bondage a pitiable and excusable infirmity it will not be uselesse to consider the state of this question more particularly lest men from the state of a pretended infirmity fall into a reall death 1. No great sin is a sin of infirmity or excusable upon that stock But that I may be understood we must know that every sin is in some sense or other a sin of infirmity When a man is in the state of spirituall sicknesse or death he is in a state of infirmity for he is a wounded man a prisoner a slave a sick man weak in his judgement and weak in his reasoning impotent in his passions of childish resolutions great inconstancy and his purposes untwist as easily as the rude conjuncture of uncombining cables in the violence of a Northern tempest and he that is thus in infirmity cannot be excused for it is the aggravation of the state of his sin he is so infirm that he is in a state unable to do his duty Such a man is a servant of sin a slave of the Devil an heir of corruption absolutely under command and every man is so who resolves for ever to avoid such a sin and yet for ever falls under it for what can he be but a servant of sin who fain would avoid it but cannot that is he hath not the Spirit of God within him Christ dwels not in his soul for where the Son is there is liberty and all that are in the Spirit are sons of God and servants of righteousnesse and therefore freed from sin But then there are also sins of infirmity which are single actions intervening seldom in litle instances unavoidable or through a faultlesse ignorance Such as these are alwayes the allays of the life of the best men and for these Christ hath payd and they are never to be accounted to good men save onely to make them more wary and more humble Now concerning these it is that I say No great sin is a sin of excusable or unavoidable infirmity Because whosoever hath received the Spirit of God hath sufficient knowledge of his duty and sufficient strengths of grace and sufficient advertency of minde to avoid such things as do great and apparent violence to piety and religion No man can justly say that it is a sin of infirmity that he was drunk For there are but three causes of every sin a fourth is not imaginable 1. If ignorance cause it the sin is as full of excuse as the ignorance was innocent But no Christian can pretend this to drunkennesse to murder to rebellion to uncleannesse For what Christian is so uninstructed but that he knows Adultery is a sin 2. Want of observation is the cause of many indiscreet and foolish actions Now at this gap many irregularities do enter and escape because in the whole it is impossible for a man to be of so present a spirit as to consider and reflect upon every word and every thought but it is in this case in Gods laws otherwise then in mans the great flies cannot passe thorow without observation little ones do and a man cannot be drunk and never take notice of it or tempt his neighbours wife before he be aware therefore the lesse the instance be the more likely it is to be a sin of infirmity and yet if it be never so little if it be observed then it ceases to be a sin of infirmity 3. But because great crimes cannot pretend to passe undiscernably it follows that they must come in at the door of malice that is of want of Grace in the absence of the Spirit they destroy where ever they come and the man dies if they passe upon him It is true there is flesh and blood in every regenerate man but they do not both rule the flesh is left to tempt but not to prevail And it were a strange condition if both the godly and the ungodly were captives to sin and infallibly should fall into temptation and death without all difference saue onely that the godly sins unwillingly and the ungodly sins willingly But if the same things be done by both and God in both be dishonoured and their duty prevaricated the pretended unwillingnesse is the signe of a greater and a baser slavery and of a condition lesse to be endured For the servitude which is against me is intollerable but if I choose the state of a servant I am free in my minde Libertatis servaveris umbram Si quicquid jubeare velis certain it is that such a person who fain would but cannot choose but commit adultery or drunkennesse is the veriest slave to sin that can be imagined and not at all freed by the Spirit and by the liberty of the sons of God and there is no other difference but that the mistaken good man feels his slavery and sees his chains and his fetters but therefore it is certain that he is because he sees himself to be a slave No man can be a servant of sin and a servant of righteousnesse at the same time but every man that hath the Spirit of God is a servant of righteousnesse and therefore whosoever finde great sins to be unavoidable are in a state of death and reprobation as to the present because they willingly or unwillingly it matters not much whether of the two are servants of sin 2. Sins of infirmity as they are small in their instance so they put on their degree of excusablenesse onely according to the weaknesse or infirmity of a mans understanding So far as men without their own fault understand not their duty or are possessed with weaknesse of principles or are destitute and void of discourse or discerning powers and acts so far if a sin creeps upon them it is as naturall and as free from a law as is the action of a childe But if any thing else be mingled with it if it proceed from any other principle it is criminall and not excused by our infirmity because it is chosen and a mans will hath no
but that they are too big for man to hope for And yet he certainly beleeves that a holy life shall infallibly attain thither Is it I say imaginable that this man should for a transient Action forfeit all this Hope and certainly and knowing incur all that calamity Yea but the sin is pleasant and the man is clothed with flesh and blood and their appetites are materiall and importunate and present And the discourses of Religion are concerning things spirituall separate and apt for spirits Angels and souls departed To take off this also We will suppose the man to consider and really to beleeve that the pleasure of the sin is sudden vain empty and transient that it leaves bitternesse upon the tongue before it is descended into the bowels that there it is poison and makes the Belly to swell and the Thigh to rot That he remembers and actually considers that as soon as the moment of sin is past he shall have an intolerable Conscience and does at the instant compare moments with Eternity and with horrour remembers that the very next minute he is as miserable a man as is in the world Yet that this man should sin Nay suppose the sin to have no pleasure at all such as is the sin of swearing Nay suppose it really to have pain in it such as is the sin of Envy which never can have pleasure in its actions but much torment and consumption of the very heart What should make this man sin so for nothing so against himself so against all Reason and Religion and Interest without pleasure for no reward Here the heart betrayes it self to be desperately wicked What man can give a reasonable account of such a man who to prosecute his revenge will do himself an injury that he may do a lesse to him that troubles him Such a man hath given me ill language 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 My head akes not for his language nor hath he broken my thigh nor carried away my land But yet this man must be requited Well suppose that But then let it be proportionable you are not undone let not him be so Oh yes for else my revenge triumphs not Well if you do yet remember he will defend himself or the Law will right him at least do not do wrong to your self by doing him wrong This were but Prudence and self-Interest And yet we see that the heart of some men hath betrayed them to such furiousnesse of Appetite as to make them willing to die that their enemie may be buried in the same Ruines Jovius Pontanus tells of an Italian slave I think who being enraged against his Lord watched his absence from home and the employment and inadvertency of his fellow-servants he locked the doors and secured himself for a while and Ravished his Lady then took her three sons up to the battlements of the house and at the return of his Lord threw one down to him upon the pavement and then a second to rend the heart of their sad Father seeing them weltring in their blood and brains The Lord begd for his third and now his onely Son promising pardon and libertie if he would spare his life The slave seemed to bend a little and on condition his Lord would cut off his own Nose he would spare his Son The sad Father did so being willing to suffer any thing rather then the losse of that Childe But as soon as he saw his Lord all bloody with his wound he threw the third Son and himself down together upon the Pavement The story is sad enough and needs no lustre and advantages of sorrow to represent it But if a man sets himself down and considers sadly he cannot easily tell upon what sufficient inducement or what principle the slave should so certainly so horridly so presently and then so eternally ruine himself What could he propound to himself as a recompence to his own so immediate Tragedy There is not in the pleasure of the revenge nor in the nature of the thing any thing to tempt him we must confesse our ignorance and say that The Heart of man is desperately wicked and that is the truth in generall but we cannot fathom it by particular comprehension For when the heart of man is bound up by the grace of God and tied in golden bands and watched by Angels tended by those Nurse-keepers of the soul it is not easie for a man to wander And the evil of his heart is but like the ferity and wildnesse of Lyons-whelps But when once we have broken the hedge and got into the strengths of youth and the licenciousnesse of an ungoverned age it is wonderfull to observe what a great inundation of mischief in a very short time will overflow all the banks of Reason and Religion Vice first is pleasing then it grows easie then delightfull then frequent then habituall then confirmed then the man is impenitent then he is obstinate then he resolves never to Repent and then he is Damned And by that time he is come half way in this progresse he confutes the Philosophy of the old Moralists For they not knowing the vilenesse of mans Heart not considering its desperate amazing Impiety knew no other degree of wickednesse but This That men preferred Sense before Reason and their understandings were abused in the choice of a temporall before an intellectuall and eternall good But they alwayes concluded that the Will of man must of necessity follow the last dictate of the understanding declaring an object to be good in one sence or other Happy men they were that were so Innocent that knew no pure and perfect malice and lived in an Age in which it was not easie to confute them But besides that now the wells of a deeper iniquity are discovered we see by too sad experience that there are some sins proceeding from the heart of man which have nothing but simple and unmingled malice Actions of meer spite doing evil because it is evil sinning without sensuall pleasures sinning with sensuall pain with hazard of our lives with actuall torment and sudden deaths and certain and present damnation sins against the Holy Ghost open hostilities and professed enmities against God and all vertue I can go no further because there is not in the world or in the nature of things a greater Evil. And that is the Nature and Folly of the Devil he tempts men to ruine and hates God and onely hurts himself and those he tempts and does himself no pleasure and some say he increases his own accidentall torment Although I can say nothing greater yet I had many more things to say if the time would have permitted me to represent the Falsenesse and Basenesse of the Heart 1. We are false our selves and dare not trust God 2. We love to be deceived and are angry if we be told so 3. We love to seem vertuous and yet hate to be so 4. We are melancholy and impatient and we know not why 5. We
irrigahit torrentem spinarum so it is in the vulgar latin and it shall water the torrent of thorns that is the state or time of the gospel which like a torrent shall cary all the world before it and like a torrent shall be fullest in ill weather and by its banks shall grow nothing but thorns and briers sharp afflictions temporal infelicities and persecution This sense of the words is more fully explained in the book of the prophet Isa. upon the ground of my people shall thorns and briers come up how much more in all the houses of the city of rejoycing which prophecy is the same in the stile of the prophets that my text is in the stile of the Apostles the house of God shall be watered with the dew of heaven and there shall spring up briers in it judgement must begin there but how much more in the houses of the city of rejoycing how much more amongst them that are at ease in Sion that serve their desires that satisfie their appetites that are given over to their own hearts lust that so serves themselves that they never serve God that dwell in the city of rejoycing they are like Dives whose portion was in this life who went in fine linnen and fared deliciously every day they indeed trample upon their briers and thorns and suffer them not to grow in their houses but the roots are in the ground and they are reserved for fuel of wrath in the day of everlasting burning Thus you see it was prophesied now see how it was performed Christ was the captain of our sufferings and he began He entred into the world with all the circumstances of poverty he had a star to illustrate his birth but a stable for his bed chamber and a manger for his cradle the angels sang hymnes when he was born but he was cold and cried uneasy and unprovided he lived long in the trade of a carpenter he by whom God made the world had in his first years the businesse of a mean and an ignoble trade he did good where ever he went and almost where ever he went was abused he deserved heaven for his obedience but found a crosse in his way thither and if ever any man had reason to expect fair usages from God and to be dandled in lap of ease softnes and a prosperous fortune he it was onely that could deserve that or any thing that can be good But after he had chosen to live a life of vertue of poverty and labour he entred into a state of death whose shame and trouble was great enough to pay for the sins of the whole world And I shall choose to expresse this mystery in the vvords of scripture he died not by a single or a sudden death but he was the Lambe slain from the beginning of the world For he was massacred in Abel saith Saint Paulinus he was tossed upon the waves of the Sea in the person of Noah It was he that went out of his Countrey when Abraham was called from Charran and wandred from his native soil He was offered up in Isaac persecuted in Jacob betrayed in Joseph blinded in Sampson affronted in Moses sawed in Esay cast into the dungeon with Jeremy For all these were types of Christ suffering and then his passion continued even after his resurrection for it is he that suffers in all his members it is he that endures the contradiction of all sinners it is he that is the Lord of life and is crucified again and put to open shame in all the sufferings of his servants and sins of rebels and defiances of Apostates and renegados and violence of Tyrants and injustice of usurpers and the persecutions of his Church It is he that is stoned in Saint Stephen flayed in the person of Saint Bartholomew he was rosted upon Saint Laurence his Cridiron exposed to lyons in Saint Ignatius burned in Saint Polycarpe frozen in the lake where stood fourty Martyrs of Cappadocia Vnigenitus enim Dei ad peragendum mortis suae sacramentum consummavit omne genus humanarum passionum said Saint Hilary The Sacrament of Christs death is not to be accomplished but by suffering all the sorrows of humanity All that Christ came for was or was mingled with sufferings For all those little joyes which God sent either to recreate his person or to illustrate his office were abated or attended with afflictions God being more carefull to establish in him the Covenant of sufferings then to refresh his sorrows Presently after the Angels had finished their Halleluiahs he was forced to fly to save his life and the air became full of shrikes of the desolate mothers of Bethlehem for their dying Babes God had no sooner made him illustrious with a voyce from heaven and the descent of the Holy Ghost upon him in the waters of Baptisme But he was delivered over to be tempted and assaulted by the Devil in the wildernesse His transfiguration was a bright ray of glory but then also he entred into a cloud and was told a sad story what he was to suffer at Jerusalem And upon Palme Sunday when he rode triumphantly into Jerusalem and was adorned with the acclamations of a King and a God he wet the Palmes with his tears sweeter then the drops of Mannah or the little pearls of heaven that descended upon mount Hermon weeping in the midst of this triumph over obstinate perishing and maliciour Jerusalem For this Jesus was like the rain-bowe which God set in the clouds as a sacrament to confirm a promise and establish a grace he was half made of the glories of the light and half of the moisture of a cloud in his best dayes he was but half triumph and half sorrow he was sent to tell of his Fathers mercies and that God intended to spare us but appeared not but in the company or in the retinue of a shower and of foul weather But I need not tell that Jesus beloved of God was a suffering person that which concerns this question most is that he made for us a covenant of sufferings His Doctrines were such as expressely and by consequent enjoyne and suppose sufferings and a state of affliction His very promises were sufferings his beatitudes were sufferings his rewards and his arguments to invite men to follow him were onely taken from sufferings in this life and the reward of sufferings hereafter For if we summon up the Commandements of Christ we shall finde humility mortification self-deniall repentance renouncing the world mourning taking up the crosse dying for him patience and poverty to stand in the chiefest rank of Christian precepts and in the direct order to heaven He that will be my Disciple must deny himself and take up his crosse and follow me We must follow him that was crowned with thorns and sorrows him that was drenchâ—d in Cedron nailed upon the Crosse that deserved all good and suffered all evil That is the summe of Christian Religion
in death upon all the world and one sin brought slavery upon the posterity of Cham and alwaâ—es fearing lest death surprize us in that one sin we shall by the grâ—â—e of God either not need or else easily perceive the effects and blessings of that compassion which God reserves in the secrets of his mercy for such persons whom his grace hath ordained and disposed with excellent dispositions unto life eternall These are the sorts of men which are to be used with compassion concerning whom we are to make a difference making a difference so sayes the Text and it is of high concernment that we should do so that we may relieve the infirmities of the men and relieve their sicknesses and transcribe the copy of the Diâ—â—ne mercy who loves not to quench the smoaking flax nor break 〈◊〉 bruised reed For although all sins are against Gods Commandements directly or by certain consequents by line or by analogy yet they are not all of the same tincture and mortality Nec vincit ratio tantundem ut peccet idemque Qui teneros caules alieni fregerit horti Vt qui nocturnus Diuûm sacra legerit He that robs a garden of Coleworts and carries away an armfull of Spinage does not deserve hell as he that steals the Chalice from the Church or betrayes a Prince and therefore men are distinguished accordingly Est inter Tanaim quiddam socerumque Viselli The Poet that Sejanus condemned for dishonouring the memory of Agamemnon was not an equall criminall with Cataline or Gracchus and Simon Magus and the Nicolaitans committed crimes which God hated more then the complying of S. Barnabas or the dissimulation of S. Peter and therefore God does treat these persons severally Some of these are restrained with a fit of sicknesse some with a great losse and in these there are degrees and some arrive at death And in this manner God scourged the Corinthians for their irreverent and disorderly receiving the Holy Sacrament For although even the least of the sins that I have discoursed of will lead to death eternall if their course be not interrupted and the disorder chastised yet because we do not stop their progresse instantly God many times does and visits us with proportionable judgements and so not onely checks the rivulet from swelling into rivers and a vastnesse but plainly tells us that although smaller crimes shall not be punished with equall severity as the greatest yet even in hell there are eternal rods as well as eternal scorpions and the smallest crime that we act with an infant-malice and manly deliberation shall be revenged with the lesser stroaks of wrath but yet with the infliction of a sad eternity But then that we also should make a difference is a precept concerning Church discipline and therefore not here proper to be considered but onely as it may concern our own particulars in the actions of repentance and our brethren in internal correction assit Regula quae poenas peccatis irroget aequas Nec seuticà dignum horribili sectere flagello Let us be sure that we neglect no sin but repent for every one and judge our selves for every one according to the proportion of the malice or the scandall or the danger And although in this there is no fear that we would be excessive yet when we are to reprove a brother we are sharp enough and either by pride or by animosity by the itch of government or the indignation of an angry minde we run beyond the gentlenesse of a Christian Monitor we must remember that by Christs law some are to be admonished privately some to be shamed and corrected publikely and beyond these there is an abscission or a cutting off from the communion of faithfull people A delivering over to Sathan And to this purpose is that old reading of the words of my Text which is still in some Copies 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Reprove them sharply when they are convinced or separate by sentence But because this also is a designe of mercy acted with an instance of discipline it is a punishment of the flesh that the soul may be saved in the day of the Lord it means the same with the usuall reading and with the last words of the Text and teaches us our usage towards the worst of recoverable sinners Others save with fear pulling them out of the fire Some sins there are which in their own nature are damnable and some are such as will certainly bring a man to damnation the first are curable but with much danger the second are desperate and irrecoverable when a man is violently tempted and allured with an object that is proportionable and pleasant to his vigorous appetite and his unabated unmortified nature this man falls into death but yet we pity him as we pity a thief that robs for his necessity this man did not tempt himself but his spirit suffers violence and his reason is invaded and his infirmities are mighty and his aids not yet prevailing But when this single temptation hath prevailed for a single instance and leaves a relish upon the palate and this produces another and that also is fruitfull and swels into a family and kinred of sin that is it grows first into approbation then to a clear assent and an untroubled conscience thence into frequency from thence unto a custome and easinesse and a habit this man is fallen into the fire There are also some single acts of so great a malice that they must suppose a man habitually sinfull before he could arrive at that height of wickednesse No man begins his sinfull course with killing of his Father or his Prince and Simon Magus had preambulatory impieties he was covetous and ambitious long before he offered to buy the Holy Ghost Nemo repente fuit turpissimus and although such actions may have in them the malice and the mischief the disorder and the wrong the principle and the permanent effect of a habit and a long course of sin yet because they never or very seldom go alone but after the praedisposition of other hâ—â—shering crimes we shall not amisse comprise them under the name of habituall sins For such they are either formally or equivalently and if any man hath fallen into a sinfull habit into a course and order of sinning his case is little lesser then desperate but that little hope that is remanent hath its degree according to the infancy or the growth of the habit 1. For all sins lesse then habitual it is certain a pardon is ready to penitent persons that is to all that sin in ignorance or in infirmity by surprize or inadvertency in smaller instances or infrequent returns with involuntary actions or imperfect resolutions 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 said Clemens in his Epistles Lift up your hands to Almighty God and pray him to be mercifull to you in all things when you sin unwillingly that is in which you sin with an imperfect choice for no man sins against his will directly
lose it for the pleasure the sottish beastly pleasure of a night I need not say we lose our soul to save our lives for though that was our blessed Saviours instance of the great unreasonablenesse of men who by saving their lives lose them that is in the great account of Dooms-day though this I say be extreamly unreasonable yet there is something to be pretended in the bargain nothing to excuse him with God but something in the accounts of timerous men but to lose our souls with swearing that unprofitable dishonourable and unpleasant vice to lose our souls with disobedience or rebellion a vice that brings a curse and danger all the way in this life To lose our souls with drunkennesse a vice which is painfull and sickly in the very acting it which hastens our damnation by shortning our lives are instances fit to be put in the stories of fools and mad-men and all vice is a degree of the same unreasonablenesse the most splendid temptation being nothing but a prety well weaved fallacy a meer trick a sophisme and a cheating and abusing the understanding but that which I consider here is that it is an affront and contradiction to the wisdom of God that we should so slight and undervalue a soul in which our interest is so concerned a soul which he who made it and who delighted not to see it lost did account a fit purchase to be made by the exchange of his Son the eternal Son of God To which also I adde this additionall account that a soul is so greatly valued by God that we are not to venture the losse of it to save all the world For therefore whosoever should commit a sin to save kingdoms from perishing or if the case could be put that all the good men and good causes and good things in this world were to be destroyed by Tyranny and it were in our power by perjury to save all these that doing this sin would be so farre from hallowing the crime that it were to offer to God a sacrifice of what he most hates and to serve him with swines blood and the rescuing all these from a Tyrant or a hangman could not be pleasing to God upon those termes because a soul is lost by it which is in it self a greater losse and misery then all the evils in the world put together can out-ballance and a losse of that thing for which Christ gave his blood a price Persecutions and temporal death in holy men and in a just cause are but seeming evils and therefore not to be bought off with the losse of a soul which is a real but an intolerable calamity And if God for his own sake would not have all the world saved by sin that is by the hazarding of a soul we should do well for our own sakes not to lose a soul for trifles for things that make us here to be miserable and even here also to be ashamed 3. But it may be some natures or some understandings care not for all this therefore I proceed to the third and most material consideration as to us and I consider what it is to lose a soul which Hierocles thus explicates 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 An immortall substance can die not by ceasing to be but by losing all being well by becomming miserable And it is remarkable when our blessed Saviour gave us caution that we should not fear them that can kill the body onely but fear him he sayes not that can kill the soul But 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 him that is able to destroy the body and soul in hell which word signifieth not death but tortures For some have chosen death for sanctuary and fled to it to avoid intolerable shame to give a period to the sence of a sharp grief or to cure the earthquakes of fear and the damned perishing souls shall wish for death with a desire impatient as their calamity But this shall be denied them because death were a deliverance a mercy and a pleasure of which these miserable persons must despair of for ever I shall not need to represent to your considerations those expressions of Scripture which the Holy Ghost hath set down to represent to our capacities the greatnesse of this perishing choosing such circumstances of character as were then usuall in the world and which are dreadful to our understanding as any thing Hell fire is the common expression for the Eastern nations accounted burnings the greatest of their miserable punishments and burning malefactours was frequent brimstone and fire to Saint John Revel 14. 10. calls the state of punishment prepared for the Devil and all his servants he adding the circumstance of brimstone for by this time the Devil had taught the world more ingenious pains and himself was new escaped out of boiling oil and brimstone and such bituminous matter and the Spirit of God knew right well the worst expression was not bad enough 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 so our blessed Saviour calls it the outer darknesse that is not onely an abjection from the beatifick regions where God and his Angels and his Saints dwell for ever but then there is a positive state of misery expressed by darknesses 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as two Apostles Saint Peter and Saint Jude call it The blacknesse of darknesse for ever In which although it is certain that God whose Justice there rules will inflict but just so much as our sins deserve and not superadde degrees of undeserved misery as he does to the Saints of glory for God gives to blessed souls in heaven more infinitely more then all their good works could possibly deserve and therefore their glory is infinitely bigger glory then the pains of hell are great pains yet because Gods Justice in hell rules alone without the allayes and sweeter abatements of mercy they shall have pure and unmingled misery no pleasant thought to refresh their wearinesse no comfort in an other accident to alleviate their pressures no waters to cool their flames but because when there is a great calamity upon a man every such man thinks himself the most miserable and though there are great degrees of pain in hell yet there are none perceived by him that thinks he suffers the greatest It follows that every man that loses his soul in this darknesse is miserable beyond all those expressions which the tortures of this world could furnish to the Writers of holy Scripture But I shall choose to represent this consideration in that expression of our blessed Saviour Mark the 9. the 44. verse which himself took out of the Prophet Esay the 66. verse the 24. Where the worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched this is the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 spoken of by Daniel the Prophet for although this expression was a prediction of that horrid calamity and abscision of the Jewish Nation when God poured out a full vial of his wrath upon the crucifiers of his Son and that this which was
gives demonstration of his huge easinesse to redeem us from that intolerable evil that is equally consequent to the indulging to one or to twenty sinful habits 2. Gods readinesse to pardon appears in this that he pardons before we ask for he that bids us alk for pardon hath in designe and purpose done the thing already for what is wanting on his part in whose onely power it is to give pardon and in whose desire it is that we should be pardoned and who commands us to lay hold upon the offer he hath done all that belongs to God that is all that concerns the pardon there it lies ready it is recorded in the book of life it wants nothing but being exemplified and taken forth and the Holy spirit stands ready to consigne and passe the privy signet that we may exhibit it to devils and evil men when they tempt us to despair or sin 3. Nay God is so ready in his mercy that he did pardon us even before he redeemed us for what is the secret of the mysterie that the eternal Son of God should take upon him our nature and die our death and suffer for our sins and do our work and enable us to do our own he that did this is God he who thought it no robbery to be equal with God he came to satisfie himself to pay to himself the price for his own creature and when he did this for us that he might pardon us was he at that instant angry with us was this an effect of his anger or of his love that God sent his Son to work our pardon and salvation Indeed we were angry with God at enmity with the the Prince of life but he was reconciled to us so far as that he then did the greatest thing in the world for us for nothing could be greater then that God the Son of God should die for us here was reconciliation before pardon and God that came to die for us did love us first before he came this was hasty love But it went further yet 4. God pardoned us before we sinned and when he foresaw our sin even mine and yours he sent his son to die for us ouâ— pardon was wrought and effected by Christs death above 1600 years ago and for the sins of to morrow and the infirmities of the next day Christ is already dead already risen from the dead and does now make intercession and atonement And this is not onely a favour to us who were born in the due time of the Gospel but to all mankinde since Adam For God who is infinitely patient in his justice was not at all patient in his mercy he forbears to strike and punish us but he would not forbear to provide cure for us and remedy for as if God could not stay from redeeming us he â—romised the Redeemer to Adam in the beginning of the worlds sin Christ was the lamb slain from the begining of the world and the covenant of the Gospel though it was not made with man yet it was from the beginning performed by God as to his part as to the ministration of pardon The seed of the woman was set up against the dragon as soon as ever the Tempter had won his first battle and though God laid his hand and drew a vail of types and secresy before the manifestation of his mercies yet he did the work of redemption and saved us by the covenant of faith and the righteousnesse of believing and the mercies of repentance the graces of pardon and the blood of the slain lamb even from the fall of Adam to this very day and will do till Christs second coming Adam fell by his folly and did not perform the covenant of one little work a work of a single abstinence but he was restored by faith in the seed of the woman and of this righteousnesse Noah was a preacher and by faith Enoch was traslated and by faith a remnant was saved at the flood and to Abraham this was imputed for righteousnesse and to all the Patriarks and to all the righteous judges and holy Prophets and Saints of the old Testament even while they were obliged so far as the words of their covenant were expressed to the law of works their pardon was sealed kept with in the vail within the curtains of the sanctuary and they saw it not then but they feel it ever since and this was a great excellency of the Divine mercy unto them God had mercy on all mankinde before Christs manifestation even beyond the mercies of their covenant they were saved as we are by the seed of the woman by God incarnate by the lamb slain from the beginning of the world not by works for we all failed of them that is not by an exact obedience but by faith working by love by sincere hearty endeavours believing God and relying upon his infinite mercy revealed in part and now fully manifest by the great instrument and means of that mercy Jesus Christ. So that here is pardon before we asked it pardon before Christs coming pardon before redemption and pardon before we sinned what greater readinesse to forgive us can be imagined yes there is one degree more yet and that will prevent a mistake in this 5. For God so pardoned us once that we should need no more pardon he pardons us by turning every one of us away from our iniquities that 's the purpose of Christ that he might safely pardon us before we sinned and we might not sin upon the confidence of pardon he pardoned us not onely upon condition we would sin no more but he took away our sin cured our cursed inclinations instructed our understanding rectified our will fortified us against temptations and now every man whom he pardons he also sanctifies and he is born of God and he must not will not cannot sin so long as the seed of God remains within him so long as his pardon continues This is the consummation of pardon For if God had so pardoned us as onely to take away our evils which are past we should have needed a second Saviour and a redeemer for every month and new pardons perpetually But our blessed Redeemer hath taken away our sin not onely the guilt of our old but our inclinations to new sins he makes us like himself and commands us to live so that we shall not need a second pardon that is a second state of pardon for we are but once baptized into Christs death and that death was one and our redemption but one and our covenant the same and as long as we continue within the covenant we are still within the power and comprehensions of the first pardon 6. And yet there is a necessity of having one degree of pardon more beyond all this For although we do not abjure our covenant and renounce Christ and extinguish the spirit yet we resist him and we grieve him and we go off from the holinesse of the
sink down and die For so have I seen the pillars of a building assisted with artificiall props bending under the pressure of a roof and pertinaciously resisting the infallible and prepared ruine Donec certa dies omni compage solutâ Ipsum cum rebus subruat auxilium till the determined day comes and then the burden sunk upon the pillars and disordered the aids and auxiliary rafters into a common ruine and a ruder grave so are the desires and weak arts of man with little aids and assistances of care and physick we strive to support our decaying bodies and to put off the evil day but quickly that day will come and then neither Angels nor men can rescue us from our grave but the roof sinks down upon the walls and the walls descend to the foundation and the beauty of the face and the dishonours of the belly the discerning head and the servile feet the thinking heart and the working hand the eyes and the guts together shall be crush'd into the confusion of a heap and dwell with creatures of an equivocall production with worms and serpents the sons and daughters of our own bones in a house of durt and darknesse Let not us think to be excepted or deferred If beauty or wit or youth or Noblenesse or wealth or vertue could have been a defence and an excuse from the grave we had not met here to day to mourn upon the hearse of an excellent Lady and God onely knows for which of us next the mourners shall go about the streets or weep in houses 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 We have lived so many years and every day and every minute we make an escape from those thousands of dangers and deaths that encompasse us round about and such escapings we must reckon to be an extraordinary fortune and therefore that it cannot last long Vain are the thoughts of Man who when he is young or healthfull thinks he hath a long threed of life to run over and that it is violent and strange for young persons to die and naturall and proper onely for the aged It is as naturall for a man to die by drowning as by a fever And what greater violence or more unnaturall thing is it that the horse threw his Rider into the river then that a drunken meeting cast him into a fever and the strengths of youth are as soon broken by the strong sicknesses of youth and the stronger intemperance as the weaknesse of old age by a cough or an asthma or a continuall rheume Nay it is more naturall for young Men and Women to die then for old because that is more naturall which hath more naturall causes and that is more naturall which is most common but to die with age is an extreme rare thing and there are more persons carried forth to buriall before the five and thirtieth year of their age then after it And therefore let no vain confidence make you hope for long life If you have lived but little and are still in youth remember that now you are in your biggest throng of dangers both of body and soul and the proper sins of youth to which they rush infinitely and without consideration are also the proper and immediate instruments of death But if you be old you have escaped long and wonderfully and the time of your escaping is out you must not for ever think to live upon wonders or that God will work miracles to satisfie your longing follies and unreasonable desires of living longer to sin and to the world Go home and think to die and what you would choose to be doing when you die that do daily for you will all come to that passe to rejoyce that you did so or wish that you had that will be the condition of every one of us for God regardeth no mans person Well! but all this you will think is but a sad story What we must die and go to darknesse and dishonour and we must die quickly and we must quit all our delights and all our sins or do worse infinitely worse and this is the condition of us all from which none can be excepted every man shall be spilt and fall into the ground and be gathered no more Is there no comfort after all this shall we go from hence and be no more seen and have no recompense Miser ô miser aiunt omnia ademit Vna die infausta mihi tot praemia vitae Shall we exchange our fair dwellings for a coffine our softer beds for the moistned and weeping turf and our pretty children for worms and is there no allay to this huge calamity Yes there is There is a yet in the Text For all this yet doth God devise means that his banished be not expelled from him All this sorrow and trouble is but a phantasme and receives its account and degrees from our present conceptions and the proportion to our relishes and gust When Pompey saw the Ghost of his first Lady Julia who vexed his rest and his conscience for superinducing Cornelia upon her bed within the ten moneths of mourning he presently fancied it either to be an illusion or else that death could be no very great evil Aut nihil est sensus animis in morte relictum Aut mors ipsa nihil Either my dead wife knows not of my unhandsome marriage and forgetfulnesse of her or if she does then the dead live longae canitis si cognita vitae Mors media est Death is nothing but the middle point between two lives between this and another concerning which comfortable mystery the holy Scripture instructs our faith and entertains our hope in these words God is still the God of Abraham Isaak and Jacob for all do live to him and the souls of Saints are with Christ I desire to be dissolved saith S. Paul and to be with Christ for that is much better and Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord they rest from their labours and their works follow them For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved we have a building of God a house not made with hands eternall in the heavens and this state of separation S. Paul calls a being absent from the body and being present with the Lord This is one of Gods means which he hath devised that although our Dead are like persons banished from this world yet they are not expelled from God They are in the hands of Christ they are in his presence they are or shall be clothed with a house of Gods making they rest from all their labours all tears are wiped from their eyes and all discontents from their spirits and in the state of separation before the soul be reinvested with her new house the spirits of al persons are with God so secured and so blessed and so sealed up for glory that this state of interval and imperfection is in respect of its certain
speak to us by his servants the Prophets by his Son by his Apostles by sermons by spirituall books by thousands of homilies and arts of counsell and insinuation and we sit as unconcerned as the pillars of a Church and hear the sermons as the Athenians did a story or as we read a gazet and if ever it come to passe that we tremble as Felix did when we hear a sad story of death of righteousnesse and judgement to come then we put it off to another time or we forget it and think we had nothing to do but to give the good man a hearing and as Anacharsis said of the Greeks they used money for nothing but to cast account withall so our hearers make use of sermons and discourses Evangelical but to fill up void spaces of our time to help to tell an hour with or without tediousnesse The reason of this is a sad condemnation to such persons they have not yet entertained the Spirit of God they are in darknesse they were washed in water but never baptized with the Spirit for these things are spiritually discerned They would think the Preacher rude if he should say they are not Christians they are not within the Covenant of the Gospel but it is certain that the spirit of Manifestation is not yet upon them and that is the first effect of the Spirit whereby we can be called sons of God or relatives of Christ. If we do not apprehend and greedily suck in the precepts of this holy Discipline as aptly as Merchants do discourse of gain or Farmers of fair harvests we have nothing but the Name of Christians but we are no more such really then Mandrakes are men or spunges are living creatures 3. The Gospel is called Spirit because it consists of Spiritual Promises and Spiritual precepts and makes all men that embrace it truly to be Spiritual men and therefore S. Paul addes an Epithete beyond this calling it a quickening Spirit that is it puts life into our Spirits which the law could not The law bound us to punishment but did not help us to obedience because it gave not the promise of Eternal life to its Disciples The Spirit that is the Gospel onely does this and this alone is it which comforts afflicted mindes which puts activenesse into wearyed Spirits which inflames our cold desires and does 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 blows up sparks into live coles and coles up to flames and flames to perpetual burnings and it is impossible that any man who believes and considers the great the infinite the unspeakable the unimaginable the never ceasing joyes that are prepared for all the sons and daughters of the Gospel should not desire them and unlesse he be a fool he cannot but use means to obtain them effective hearty pursuances For it is not directly in the nature of a man to neglect so great a good there must be something in his manners some obliquity in his will or madnesse in his intellectuals or incapacity in his naturals that must make him sleep such a reward away or change it for the pleasure of a drunken feaver or the vanity of a Mistresse or the rage of a passion or the unreasonablenesse of any sin However this promise is the life of all our actions and the Spirit that first taught it is the life of our soules 4. But beyond this is the reason which is the consummation of all the faithful The Gospel is called the Spirit because by and in the Gospel God hath given to us not onely the Spirit of manifestation that is of instruction and of Catechisme of faith and confident assent but the Spirit of Confirmation or obsignation to all them that believe and obey the Gospel of Christ that is the power of God is come upon our hearts by which in an admirable manner we are made sure of a glorious inheritance made sure I say in the nature of the thing and our own persuasions also are confirmed with an excellent a comfortable a discerning and a reasonable hope in the strength of which and by whose ayde as we do not doubt of the performance of the promise so we vigorously pursue all the parts of the condition and are inabled to work all the work of God so as not to be affrighted with fear or seduced by vanity or oppressed by lust or drawn off by evil example or abused by riches or imprison'd by ambition and secular designes This the Spirit of God does work in all his Servants and is called the spirit of obsignation or the confirming spirit because it confirms our hope and assures our title to life eternall and by means of it and other its collateral assistances it also confirms us in our duty that we may not onely professe in word but live lives according to the Gospel And this is the sense of the Spirit mentionâ—d in the Text ye are not in the flesh but in the Spirit if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you That is if ye be made partakers of the Gospel or of the spirit of manifestation if ye be truly intitled to God and have received the promise of the Father then are ye not carnal men ye are spirituall ye are in the Spirit if ye have the Spirit in one sense to any purpose ye have it also in another if the Spirit be in you you are in it if it hath given you hope it hath also inabled and ascertainâ—d your duty For the Spirit of manifestation will but upbraid you in the shame and horrours of a sad eternity if you have not the Spirit of obsignation if the Holy Ghost be not come upon you to great purposes of holinesse all other pretences are vain ye are still in the flesh which shall never inherit the kingdom of God In the Spirit that is in the power of the spirit so the Greeks call him 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 who is possessed by a spirit whom God hath filled with a coelestial immission he is said to be in God when God is in him and it is a similitude taken from persons encompassed with guards they are in custodiâ that is in their power under their command moved at their dispose they rest in their time and receive laws from their authority and admit visiters whom they appoint and must be employed as they shall suffer so are men who are in the Spirit that is they beleeve as he teaches they work as he inables they choose what he calls good they are friends of his friends and they hate with his hatred with this onely difference that persons in custody are forced to do what their keepers please and nothing is free but their wils but they that are under the command of the Spirit do all things which the Spirit commands but they do them cheerfully and their will is now the prisoner but it is in liberâ custodiâ the will is where it ought to be and where it desires to be and it cannot easily
repentance that they mistake the first addresses and instruments of this part of repentance for the whole duty it self Confession of sins is in order to the dereliction of them but then confession must not be like the unlading of a ship to take in new stowage or the vomits of intemperance which ease the stomack that they may continue the merry meeting but such a confession is too frequent in which men either comply with custome or seek to ease a present load or gripe of conscience or are willing to dresse up their souls against afestival or hope for pardon upon so easie terms these are but retirings back to leap the further into mischief or but approaches to God with the lips no confession can be of any use but as it is an instrument of shame to the person of humiliation of the man and dereliction of the sin and receives its recompence but as it ads to these purposes all other is like the bleating of the calves and the lowing of the Oxen which Saul reserved after the spoil of Agag they proclaim the sin but do nothing towards its cure they serve Gods end to make us justly to be condemned out of our own mouthes but nothing at all towards our absolution * Nay if we proceed further to the greatest expressions of humiliation parts of which I reckon fasting praying for pardon judging and condemning of our selves by instances of a present indignation against a crime yet unlesse this proceed so far as to a total deletion of the sin to the extirpation of every vitious habit God is not glorified by our repentance nor we secured in our eternal interest Our sin must be brought to judgement and like Antinous in Homer layed in the mids as the sacrifice and the cause of all the mischief 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 This is the murderer this is the Achan this is he that troubles Iâ—rael let the sin be confessed and carried with the pomps and solennities of sorrow to its funeral and so let the murderer be slain But if after all the forms of confession and sorrow fasting and humiliation and pretence of doing the will of God we spare Agag and the fattest of the cattel our delicious sins and still leave an unlawful King and a tyrant sin to reigne in our mortal bodies we may pretend what we will towards repentance but we are no better penitents then Ahab no neerer to the obtaining of our hopes then Esau was to his birthright for whose repentance there was no place left though he sought it carefully with tears Well let us suppose our penitent advanced thus far as that he decrees against all sin and in his hearty purposes resolves to decline it as in a severe sentence he hath condemned it as his betrayer and his murderer yet we must be curious for now onely the repentance properly begins that it be not onely like the springings of the thorny or the high way ground soon up and soon down For some men when a sadnesse or an unhandsome accident surprizes them then they resolve against their sin but like the goats in Aristotle they give their milk no longer then they are stung as soon as the thorns are removed these men return to their first hardnesse and resolve then to act their first temptation Others there are who never resolve against a sin but either when they have no temptation to it or when their appetites are newly satisfied with it like those who immediately after a full dinner resolve to fast at supper and they keep it till their appetite returnes and then their resolution untâ—es like the cords of vanity or the gossamere against the violence of the Northen winde Thus a lustfull person fills all the capacity of his lust and when he is wearied and the sin goes off with unquietnesse and regret and the appetite falls down like a horseleech when it is ready to burst with putrifaction and an unwholsome plethory then he resolves to be a good man and could almost vow to be a Hermit and hates his lust as Amnon hated his sister Thamar just when he had newly acted his unworthy rape but the next spring tide that comes every wave of the temptation makes an inrode upon the resolution and gets ground and prevailes against it more then his resolution prevailed against his sin How many drunken persons how many Swearers resolve daily and hourely against their sin and yet act them not once the lesse for all their insinite heape of shamefully retreating purposes * That resolution that begins upon just grounds of sorrow and severe judgement upon fear and love that is made in the midst of a temptation that is inquisitive into all the means and instruments of the cure that prayes perpetually against a sin that watches continually against a surprize and never sinks into it by deliberation that fights earnestly and carries on the war prudently and prevailes by a never ceasing diligence against the temptation that onely is a pious and well begun repentance They that have their fits of a quartan well and ill for ever and think themselves in perfect health when the ague is retired till its period returnes are dangerously mistaken Those intervals of imperfect and fallacious resolution are nothing but states of death and if a man should depart this world in one of those godly fits as he thinks them he is no neerer to obtain his blessed hope then a man in the stone collick is to health when his pain is eased for the present his disease still remaining and threatning an unwelcome return That resolution onely is the beginning of a holy repentance which goes forth into act and whose acts enlarge into habits and whose habits are productive of the fruits of a holy life From hence we are to take our estimate whence our resolutions of piety must commence He that resolves not to live well till the time comes that he must die is ridiculous in his great designe as he is impertinent in his intermedial purposes and vain in his hope Can a dying man to any real effect resolve to be chast for vertue must be an act of election and chastity is the contesting against a proud and an imperious lust active flesh and insinuating temptation And what doth he resolve against who can no more be tempted to the sin of unchastity then he can returne back again to his youth and vigour And it is considerable that since all the purposes of a holy life which a dying man can make cannot be reduced to act by what law or reason or covenant or revelation are we taught to distinguish the resolution of a dying man from the purposes of a living and vigorous person Suppose a man in his youth and health mooved by consideration of the irregularity and deformity of sin the danger of its productions the wrath and displeasure of Almightie God should resolve to leave the puddles of impurity and walk in the paths of righteousnesse can this
resolution alone put him into the state of grace is he admitted to pardon and the favour of God before he hath in some measure performed actually what he so reasonably hath resolved By no means For resolution and purpose is in its own nature and constitution an imperfect act and therefore can signifie nothing without its performance and consummation It is as a faculty is to the act as spring is to the harvest as feed time is to the Autumne as Egges are to birds or as a relative to its correspondent nothing without it And can it be imagined that a resolution in our health and life shall be ineffectual without performance and shall a resolution barely such do any Good upon our deathbed Can such purposes prevail against a long impiety rather then against a young and a newly begun state of sin Will God at an easier rate pardon the sins of fifty or sixty yeers then the sins of our youth onely or the iniquity of five yeers or ten If a holy life be not necessary to be liv'd why shall it be necessary to resolve to live it But if a holy life be necessary then it cannot be sufficient meerly to resolve it unlesse this resolution go forth in an actuall and reall service Vain therefore is the hope of those persons who either go on in their sins before their last sicknesse never thinking to return into the wayes of God from whence they have wandred all their life never renewing their resolutions and vows of holy living or if they have yet their purposes are for ever blasted with the next violent temptation More prudent was the prayer of David Oh spare me a little that I may recover my strength before I go hence and be no more seen And something like it was the saying of the Emperour Charles the fifth Inter vitae negotia mortis diem oportet spacium intercedere When ever our holy purposes are renewed unlesse God gives us time to act them to mortifie and subdue our lusts to conquer and subdue the whole kingdom of sin to rise from our grave and be clothed with nerves and flesh and a new skin to overcome our deadly sicknesses and by little and little to return to health and strength unlesse we have grace and time to do all this our sins will lie down with us in our graves * For when a man hath contracted a long habit of sin and it hath been growing upon him ten or twenty fourty or fifty yeers whose acts he hath daily or hourly repeated and they are grown to a second nature to him and have so prevailed upon the ruines of his spirit that the man is taken captive by the Devil at his will he is fast bound as a slave tugging at the oar that he is grown in love with his fetters and longs to be doing the work of sin is it likely that all this progresse and groweth in sin in the wayes of which he runs fast without any impediment is it I say likely that a few dayes or weeks of sicknesse can recover him the especiall hindrances of that state I shall afterwards consider but Can a man be supposed so prompt to piety and holy living a man I mean that hath lived wickedly a long time together can he be of so ready and active a vertue upon the sudden as to recover in a moneth or a week what he hath been undoing in 20 or 30 yeers Is it so easie to build that a weak and infirm person bound hand and foot shall be able to build more in three dayes then was a building above fourty yeers Christ did it in a figurative sence but in this it is not in the power of any man so suddenly to be recovered from so long a sicknesse Necessary therefore it is that all these instruments of our conversion Confession of sins praying for their pardon and resolutions to lead a new life should begin before our feet stumble upon the dark mountains lest we leave the work onely resolved upon to be begun which it is necessary we should in many degrees finish if ever we mean to escape the eternall darknesse For that we should actually abolish the whole body of sin and death that we should crucifie the old man with his lusts that we should lay aside every weight and the sin that doth so easily beset us that we should cast away the works of darknesse that we should awake from sleep and arise from death that we should redeem the time that we should cleanse our hands and purifie our hearts that we should have escaped the corruption all the corruption that is in the whole world through lust that nothing of the old leaven should remain in us but that we be wholly a new lump throughly transformed and changed in the image of our minde these are the perpetuall precepts of the Spirit and the certain duty of man and that to have all these in purpose onely is meerly to no purpose without the actuall eradication of every vitious habit and the certain abolition of every criminall adherence is clearly and dogmatically decreed every where in the Scripture For they are the words of Saint Paul they that are Christs have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts the work is actually done and sin is dead or wounded mortally before they can in any sence belong to Christ to be a portion of his inheritance And He that is in Christ is a new creature For in Christ Jesus nothing can avail but a new creature nothing but a Keeping the Commandements of God Not all our tears though we should weep like David and his men at Ziklag till they could weep no more or the women of Ramah or like the weeping in the valley of Hinnom could suffice if we retain the affection to any one sin or have any unrepented of or unmortified It is true that a contrite and broken heart God will not despise No he will not For if it be a hearty and permanent sorrow it is an excellent beginning of repentance and God will to a timely sorrow give the grace of repentance He will not give pardon to sorrow alone but that which ought to be the proper effect of sorrow that God shall give He shall then open the gates of mercy and admit you to a possibility of restitution so that you may be within the covenant of repentance which if you actually perform you may expect Gods promise And in this sense Confession will obtain our pardon and humiliation will be accepted and our holy purposes and pious resolutions shall be accounted for that is these being the first steps and addresses to that part of repentance which consists in the abolition of sins shall be accepted so far as to procure so much of the pardon to do so much of the work of restitution that God will admit the returning man to a further degree of emendation to a neerer possibility of working out
that period they had the whole wealth of the earth before them they need not fight for empires or places for their cattle to grase in they lived long and felt no want no slavery no tyrannie no war and the evils that happened were single personal and natural and no violences were then done but they were like those things which the law calls rare contingencies for which as the law can now take no care and make no provisions so then there was no law but men lived free and rich and long and they exercised no vertues but natural and knew no felicity but natural and so long their prosperity was just as was their vertue because it was a natural instrument towards all that which they knew of happinesse * But this publick easinesse and quiet the world turned into sin and unlesse God did compel men to do themselves good they would undoe themselves and then God broke in upon them with a flood and destroyed that generation that he might begin the government of the world upon a new stock and binde vertue upon mens spirits by new bands endeared to them by new hopes and fears Then God made new laws and gave to Princes the power of the sword and men might be punshed to death in certain cases and mans life was shortened and slavery was brought into the world and the state of servants and then war began and evils multiplied upon the face of the earth in which it is naturally certain that they that are most violent and injurious prevailed upon the weaker and more innocent and every tyranny that began from Nimrod to this day and every usurper was a peculiar argument to shew that God began to teach the world vertue by suffering and that therefore he suffered Tyrannies and usurpations to be in the world and to be prosperous and the rights of men to be snatched away from the owners that the world might be established in potent and setled governments and the sufferers be taught al the passive vertues of the soul. For so God brings good out of evil turning Tyranny into the benefits of Government and violence into vertue and sufferings into rewards and this was the second change of the world personal miseries were brought in upon Adam and his posterity as a punishment of sin in the first period and in the second publick evils were brought in by tyrants and usurpers and God suffered them as the first elements of vertue men being just newly put to schoole to infant sufferings But all this was not much Christs line was not yet drawn forth it began not to appear in what family the King of sufferings should descend till Abrahams time and therefore till then there were no greater sufferings then what I have now reckoned But when Abrahams family was chosen from among the many nations and began to belong to God by a special right and he was designed to be the Father of the Messias then God found out a new way to trie him even with a sound affliction commanding him to offer his beloved Isaac but this was accepted and being intended by Abraham was not intended by God for this was a type of Christ and therefore was also but a type of sufferings excepting the sufferings of the old periods and the sufferings of nature and accident we see no change made for a long while after but God having established a law in Abrahams family did build it upon promises of health and peace and victory and plenty and riches and so long as they did not prevaricate the law of their God so long they were prosperous but God kept a remnant of Cananites in the land like a rod held over them to vex or to chastise them into obedience in which while they persevered nothing could hurt them and that saying of David needs no other sence but the letter of its own expression I have been young and now am old and yet saw I never the righteous forsaken nor his seed begging their bread The godly generally were prosperous and a good cause seldome had an ill end and a good man never died an ill death till the law had spent a great part of its time and it descended towards its declension and period But that the great prince of sufferings might not appear upon his stage of tragedies without some forerunners of sorrow God was pleased to choose out some good men and honour them by making them to become little images of suffering Isaiah Jeremy and Zachary were martyrs of the law but these were single deaths Shadrac Meshec and Abednego were thrown into a burning furnace and Daniel into a den of lions and Susanna was accused for adultery but these were but little arâ—ests of the prosperity of the Godly as the time drew neerer that Christ should be manifest so the sufferings grew bigger and more numerous and Antiochus raised up a sharp persecution in the time of the Maccabees in which many passed through the red sea of blood into the bosome of Abraham then Christ came and that was the third period in which the changed method of Gods providence was perfected for Christ was to do his great work by sufferings by sufferings was to enter into blessednesse by his passion he was made prince of the Catholickchurch and as our Head was so must the members be God made the same covenant with us that he did with his most holy Son Christ obtaind no better conditions for us then for himself that was not to be looked for the servant must not be above his master it is well if he be as his Master if the world persecuted him they will also persecute us and from the dayes of John the Baptist the kingdome of Heaven suffers violence and the violent take it by force not the violent doers but the sufferers of violence for though the old law was established in the promises of temporal prosperity yet the gospel is founded in temporal adversity It is directly a covenant of sufferings and sorrows for now the time is come that judgment must begin at the house of God that 's the sence and designe of the text and I intend it as a direct antinomy to the common perswasion of tyrannous carnal and vicious men who reckon nothing good out what is prosperous for though that proposition had many degrees of truth in the beginning of the law yet the case is now altered God hath established its contradictory and now every good man must look for persecution and every good cause must expect to thrive by the sufferings and patience of holy persons and as men do well and suffer evil so they are dear to God and whom he loves most he afflicts most and does this with a designe of the greatest mercy in the world 1. Then the state of the Gospel is a state of sufferings not of temporal prosperities this was foretold by the prophets a fountain shall go out of the house of the Lord
your anger peevishnesse and morosity these are the daily sufferings of a Christian and if we performe them well wil have the same reward and an equal smart and greater labour then the plain suffering the hangmans sword This I have discoursed to represent unto you that you cannot be exempted from the similitude of Christs sufferings that God will shut no age nor no man from his portion of the crosse that we cannot fail of the result of this predestination nor without our own fault be excluded from the covenant of sufferings judgement must begin at Gods house and enters first upon the sons and heirs of the kingdom and if it be not by the direct persecution of Tyrants it will be by the persecution of the devil or infirmities of our own flesh But because this was but the secondary meaning of the text I return to make use of all the former discourse 1. Let no Christian man make any judgement concerning his condition or his cause by the external event of things for although in the law of Moses God made with his people a covenant of temporal prosperity and his Saints did binde the kings of the Amâ—rites and the Philistines in chains and their nobles with links of iron and then that was the honour which all his Saints had yet in Christ Jesus he made a covenant of sufferings most of the graces of Christianity are suffering graces and God hath predestinated us to sufferings and we are baptised into suffering and our very communions are symbols of our duty by being the sacrament of Christs death and passion and Christ foretold to us tribulation and promised onely that he would be with us in tribulation that he would give us his spirit to assist us at tribunals and his grace to despise the world and to contemn riches and boldnesse to confesse every article of the Christian faith in the face of armies and armed tyrants and he also promised that all things should work together for the best to his servants that is he would out of the eater bring meat and out of the strong issue sweetnesse and crowns and scepters should spring from crosses and that the crosse it self should stand upon the globes and scepters of Princes but he nevâ—r promised to his servants that they should pursue Kings and destroy armies that they should reign over the nations and promote the cause of Jesus Christ by breaking his commandments The shield of faith and the sword of the spirit the armour of righteousnesse and the weapons of spiritual warfare these are they by which christianity swelled from a small company and a lesse reputation to possesse the chaires of Doctors and the thrones of princes and the hearts of all men But men in all ages will be tampering with shadows and toyes The Apostles at no hand could endure to hear that Christs kingdom was not of this world and that their Master should die a sad and shameful death though that way he was to receive his crown and enter into glory and after Christs time when his Disciples had taken up the crosse and were marching the Kings high way of sorrows there were a very great many even the generality of Christians for two or three ages together who fell on dreaming that Christ should come and reign upon earth again for a thousand years and then the Saints should reigne in all abundance of temporal power and fortunes but these men were content to stay for it till after the resurrection in the mean time took up their crosse and followed after their Lord the King of sufferings But now a dayes we finde a generation of men who have changed the covenant of sufferings into victories and triumphs riches and prosperous chances and reckon their Christianity by their good fortunes as if Christ had promised to his servants no heaven hereafter no spirit in the mean time to refresh their sorrows as if he had enjoyned them no passive graces but as if to be a Christian and to be a Turk were the same thing Mahomet entered and possessed by the sword Christ came by the crosse entered by humility and his saints possesse their souls by patience God was fain to multiply miracles to make Christ capable of being a man of sorrows and shall we think he will work miracles to make us delicate He promised us a glorious portion hereafter to which if all the sufferings of the world were put together they are not worthy to be compared and shall we with Dives choose our portion of good things in this life If Christ suffered so many things onely that he might give us glory shall it be strange that we shall suffer who are to receive this glory It is in vain to think we shall obtain glories at an easier rate then to drink of the brook in the way in which Christ was drenched When the Devil appeared to Saint Martin in a bright splendid shape and said he was Christ he answered Christus non nisi in cruce apparet suis in hac vita And when Saint Ignatius was newly tied in a chain to be led to his martyrdom he cryed out nunc incipio esse Christianus And it was observed by Minutius Felix and was indeed a great and excellent truth omnes viri fortes quos Gentiles praedicabant in exemplum aerumnis suis inclytistoruerunt The Gentiles in their whole religion never propounded any man imitable unlesse the man were poor or persecuted Brutus stood for his countries liberty but lost his army and his life Socrates was put to death for speaking a religious truth Cato chose to be on the right side but happened to fall upon the oppressed and the injured he died together with his party Victrix causa Deis placuit sed victa Catoni And if God thus dealt with the best of Heathens to whom he had made no cleare revelation of immortal recompences how little is the faith and how much lesse is the patience of Christians if they shall think much to suffer sorrows since they so clearly see with the eye of faith the great things which are laid up for them that are faithful unto the death Faith is uselesse if now in the midst of so great pretended lights we shall not dare to trust God unlesse we have all in hand that we desire and suffer nothing for all we can hope for They that live by sense have no use of faith yet our Lord Jesus concerning whose passions the gospel speaks much but little of his glorifications whose shame was publick whose pains were notorious but his joyes and transfigurations were secret and kept private he who would not suffer his holy mother whom in great degrees he exempted from sin to be exempted from many and great sorrows certainly intends to admit none to his resurrection but by the doors of his grave none to glory but by the way of the crosse If we be planted into the likenesse of his death we shall be also of his
mistaking the accounts of a man for the measures of God or dare not commit treason for fear of being blasted may come to be tempted when they see a sinner thrive and are scandalized all the way if they die before him or they may come to receive some accidentall hardnesses and every thing in the world may spoil such persons and blast their resolutions Take in all the aids you can and if the fancy of the standers by or the hearing a cock crow can adde any collaterall aids to thy weaknesse refuse it not But let thy state of sufferings begin with choice and be confirmed with knowledge and rely upon love and the aids of God and the expectations of heaven and the present sense of duty and then the action will be as glorious in the event as it is prudent in the enterprise and religious in the prosecution 6. Lastly when God hath brought thee into Christs school and entered thee into a state of sufferings remember the advantages of that state consider how unsavoury the things of the world appear to thee when thou art under the arrest of death remember with what comforts the Spirit of God assists thy spirit set down in thy heart all those entercourses which happen between God and thy own soul the sweetnesses of religion the vanity of sins appearances thy newly entertained resolutions thy longings after heaven and all the things of God and if God finishes thy persecution with death proceed in them if he restores thee to the light of the world and a temporall refreshment change but the scene of sufferings into an active life and converse with God upon the same principles on which in thy state of sufferings thou dost build all the parts of duty If God restores thee to thy estate be not lesse in love with heaven nor more in love with the world let thy spirit be now as humble as before it was broken and to what soever degree of sobriety or austerity thy suffering condition did enforce thee if it may be turned into vertue when God restores thee because then it was necessary thou shouldest entertain it by an after choice do now also by a praâ—election that thou mayest say with David It is good for me that I have been afflicted for thereby I have learned thy commandments and Paphnutius did not do his soul more advantage when he lost his right eye and suffered his left knee to be cut for Christianity and the cause of God then that in the dayes of Constantine and the Churches peace he lived not in the toleration but in the active piety of a Martyrs condition not now a confessor of the faith onely but of the charity of a Christian we may every one live to have need of these rules and I do not at all think it safe to pray against it but to be armed for it and to whatsoever degree of sufferings God shal call us we see what advantages God intends for us and what advantages we our selves may make of it I now proceed to make use of all the former â—â—scourse by removing it a little further even into its utmost spiritual sense which the Apostle does in the last words of the text If the righteous scarcely be saved where shall the wicked and the sinner appear These words are taken out of the proverbs * according to the translation of the 70. If the righteous scarcely â—s safe where the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 implyes that he is safe but by intermedâ—â— difficulties and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 he is safe in the midst of his persecutions they may disturb his rest and discompose his fancy but they are like the firy charriot to Elias he is encircled with fire and rare circumstances and strange usages but is carried up to Heaven in a robe of flames and so was Noah safe when the flood came and was the great type and instance too of the verification of this proposition he was 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 he was put into a strange condition perpetually wandring shut up in a prison of wood living upon faith having never had the experience of being safe in flouds And so have I often seen young and unskilful persons sitting in a little boat when every little wave sporting about the sides of the vessel and every motion and dancing of the barge seemed a danger and made them cling fast upon their fellows and yet all the while they wereas safe as if they sat under a tree while a gentle winde shaked the leaves into a refreshment and a cooling shade And the unskiful unexperienced Christian shrikes out when ever his vessel shakes thinking it alwayes a danger that the watry pavement is not stable and resident like a rock and yet all his danger is in himself none at all from without for he is indeed moving upon the waters but fastned to a rock faith is his foundation and hope is his anchor and deathis his harbour and Christ is his pilot and heaven is his countrey and all the evils of poverty or affronts of tribunals and evil judges of fears and sadder apprehensions are but like the loud wind blowing from the right point they make a noise and drive faster to the harbour and if we do not leave the ship and leap into the sea quit the interests of religion and run to the securities of the world cut our cables and dissolve our hopes grow impatient and hug a wave and die in its embraces we are as safe at sea safer in the storm which God sends us then in a calm when we are be friended with the world 2. But 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 may also signifie raro If the righteous is seldom safe which implyes that sometimes he is even in a temporal sense God sometimes sends Halcyon dayes to his Church and when he promised Kings and Queens to be their nurses he intended it for a blessing and yet this blessing does of teâ—imes so ill succeed that it is the greater blessing of the two not to give us that blessing too freely but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 this is scarcly done and yet sometimes it is and God sometimes refreshes languishing piety with such arguments as comply with our infirmities and though it be a shame to us to need such allectives and infant gauds such which the heathen world and the first rudiments of the Israelites did need God who pitties us and will be wanting in nothing to us as he corroborates our willing spirits with proper entertainments so also he supports our weak flesh and not onely cheers an afflicted soul with beams of light and antepasts and earnests of glory but is kinde also to our man of flesh and weaknesse and to this purpose he sends thunder-bolts from heaven upon evil men dividing their tongues infatuating their counsels cursing their posterity and ruining their families 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Sometimes God destroyes their armies or
clothes all the money and civilities all the cheerfull looks and familiarity and fellowship of vices which in your life time made your spirit so gay and easie It will in the eternall loads of sorrow adde a duplicate of groans and indignation when it shall be remembred for how base and trifling interest and upon what weak principles we fell sick and died eternally 2. The next advise to persons thus tempted is that they would learn to separate duty from mistaken interest and let them be both served in their just proportions when we have learned to make a difference A wife is bound to her husband in all his just designes and in all noble usages and Christian comportments But a wife is no more bound to pursue her husbands vitious hatreds then to serve and promote his unlawfull and wandring loves It is not alwayes a part of duty to think the same propositions or to curse the same persons or to wish him successe in unjust designes And yet the sadnesse of it is that a good woman is easily tempted to beleeve the cause to be just and when her affection hath forced her judgement her judgement for ever after shall carry the affection to all its erring and abused determinations A friend is turned a flatterer if he does not know that the limits of friendship extend no further then the pale and inclosures of reason and religion No Master puts it into his covenant that his servant shall be drunk with him or give in evidence in his Masters cause according to his Masters scrolls and therefore it is besides and against the duty of a servant to sin by that authority it is as if he should set Mules to keep his sheep or make his Dogs to carry burdens it is besides their nature and designe and if any person falls under so tyrannicall relation let him consider how hard a Master he serves where the Devil gives the imployment and shame is his entertainment and sin is his work and hell is his wages Take therefore the counsel of the son of Syrac Accept no person against thy soul and let not the reverence of any man cause thee to fall 3. When passion mingles with duty and is a necessary instrument of serving God let not that passion run its own course and passe on to liberty and thence to licence and dissolution but let no more of it be entertained then will just do the work For no zeal of duty will warrant a violent passion to prevaricate a duty I have seen some officers of Warre in passion and zeal of their duty have made no scruple to command a souldier with the dialect of cursing and accents of swearing and pretended they could not else speak words effective enough and of sufficient authority and a man may easily be overtaken in the issues of his government while his authority serves it still with passion if he be not curious in his measures his passion will also serve it self upon the authority and over rule the Ruler 4. Let every such tempted person remember that all evil comes from our selves and not from others and therefore all pretences and prejudices all commands and temptations all opinions and necessities are but instances of our weaknesse and arguments of our folly For unlesse we listed no man can make us drink beyond our measures And if I tell a lie for my Masters or my friends advantage it is because I prefer a little end of money or flattery before my honour and my innocence They are huge follies which go up and down in the mouthes and heads of men He that knows not how to dissemble knows not how to reigne He that will not do as his company does must go out of the world and quit all society of men We create necessities of our own and then think we have reason to serve their importunity Non ego sum ambitiosus sed nemo aliter Romae potest vivere non ego sumptuosus sed urbs ipsa magnas impensas exigit Non est meum vitium quod iracundus sum quod nondum constitui certum vitae genus adolescentia haec facit The place we live in makes us expensive the state of life I have chosen renders me ambitious my age makes me angry or lustfull proud or peevish These are nothing else but resolutions never to mend as long as we can have excuse for our follies and untill we can cozen our selves no more There is no such thing as a necessity for a Prince to dissemble or for a servant to lie or for a friend to flatter for a civil person and a sociable to be drunk we cozen our selves with thinking the fault is so much derivative from others till the smart and the shame falls upon our selves and covers our heads with sorrow And unlesse this gap be stopped and that we build our duty upon our own bottoms as supported with the grace of God there is no vice but may finde a Patron and no age or relation or state of life but will be an engagement to sin And we shall think it necessary to be lustfull in our youth and revengefull in our manhood and covetous in our old age and we shall perceive that every state of men and every trade and profession lives upon the vices of others or upon their miseries and therefore they will think it necessary to promote or to wish it If men were temperate Physitians would be poor and unlesse some Princes were ambitious or others injurious there would be no imployment for souldiers The Vintners retail supports the Merchants trade and it is a vice that supports the Vintners retail and if all men were wise and sober persons we should have fewer beggers and fewer rich and if our Law-givers should imitate Demades of Athens who condemned a man that lived by selling things belonging to funeralls as supposing he could not choose but wish the death of men by whose dying he got his living we should finde most men accounted criminalls because vice is so involved in the affairs of the world that it is made the support of many trades and the businesse of great multitudes of men Certainly from hence it is that iniquity does so much abound and unlesse we state our questions right and perceive the evil to be designed onely from our selves and that no such pretence shall keep off the punishment 〈◊〉 the shame from our selves we shall fall into a state which is onely capable of compassion because it is irrecoverable and then we shall be infinitely miserable when we can onely receive an uâ—â—lesse and ineffective pity Whatsoever is necessary cannot be avoided He therefore that shall say he cannot avoid his sin is out of the mercies of this Text they who are appointed Guides Physitians of souls cannot to any purpose do their offices of pity It is necessary that we serve God and do our duty and secure the interest of our souls and be as carefull to preserve our
hath cancelled all the old principles reduced the appetites of sence to the discourses of reason and heightned reason to the sublimities of the spirit teaching us abstractions and immaterial conceptions giving us new eyes and new objects and new proportions For now sensual pleasures are not delightful riches are drosse honours are nothing but the appendages of vertue and in relation to it are to receive their account but now if you would enjoy life you must die if you would be at ease you must take up Christs crosse and conform to his sufferings if you would save your life you must lose it and if you would be rich you must abound in good works you must be poor in spirit and despise the world and be rich unto God for whatsoever is contrary to the purchases and affections of this world is an endearment of our hopes in the world to come and therefore he having stated the question so that either we must quit this world or the other our affections I mean and adherencies to this or our interest and hopes of the other the choice is rendered very easie by the words of my text because the distance is not lesse then infinite and the comparison hath terms of a vast difference heaven and hell eternity and a moment vanity and real felicity life and death eternal all that can be hoped for and all that can be feared these are the terms of our choice and if a man have his wits about him and be not drunk with sensuality and senslessenesse he need not much to dispute before he passe the sentence For nothing can be given to us to recompeâ—ce the losse of heaven and if our soulâ— be lost there is nothing remaining to us whereby we can be happy What shall it profit a man or what shall a man give is there any exchange for a mans soul the question is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of the negative Nothing can be given for an 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or a price to satisfie for its losse The blood of the son of God was given to recover it or as an 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to God and when our souls were forfeit to him nothing lesse then the life and passion of God and man could pay the price I say to God who yet was not concerned in the losse save onely that such was his goodnesse that it pitied him to see his creature lost But to us what shall be the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 what can make us recompence when we have lost our own souls and are lost in a miserable eternity what can then recompence us not all the world not ten thousand worlds and of this that miserable man whose soul is lost is the best judge For the qustion is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and hath a potential signification and means 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is suppose a man ready to die condemned to the sentence of a horrid death heightned with all the circumstances of trembling and amazement what would he give to save his life eye for eye tooth for tooth and all that a man hath will he give for his life and this turned to a proverb among the Jews for so the last words of the text are 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which proverb being usually meant concerning a temporal death and was intended to represent the sadnesses of a condemned person our blessed Saviour fits to his own purpose and translates to the signification of death eternal which he first revealed clearly to the world and because no interest of the world can make a man recompence for his life because to lose that makes him incapable of enjoying the exchange and he were a strange fool who having no designe upon immortality or vertue should be willing to be hanged for a thousand pound per annum this argument increases infinitely in the purpose of our Blessed Saviour and to gain the world and to lose our souls in the Christian sence is infinitely more madnesse and a worse exchange then when our souls signifie nothing but a temporal life and because possibly the indefinite hopes of â—lysium or an honorable name might tempt some hardy persons to leave this world hoping for a better condition ever among the heathens yet no excuse will acquit a Christian from madnesse If for the purchase of this world he lose his eternitie Here then first we will consider the propositions of the exchange the world and a mans soul by way of supposition supposing all that is propounded were obtained the whole world Secondly we will consider what is likely to be obtained really and indeed of the world and what are really the miseries of a lost soul For it is propounded in the text by way of supposition If a man should gain the world which no man ever did nor ever can and he that gets most gets too little to be exchanged for a temporal life And thirdly I shall apply it to your practise and make material considerations 1. First then suppose a man gets all the world what is it that he gets It is a bubble and a Phantasme and hath no reality beyond a present transient use a thing that is impossible to be enjoyed because its fruits and usages are transmitted to us by parts and by succession He that hath all the world if we can suppose such a man cannot have a dish of fresh summer fruits in the midst of winter not so much as a green fig and very much of its possessions is so hid so fugacious and of so uncertain purchase that it is like the riches of the sea to the Lord of the shore all the fish and wealth within all its hollownesses are his but he is never the better for what he cannot get All the shell fishes that produce pearl produce them not for him and the bowels of the earth shall hide her treasures in undiscovered retirements so that it will signifie as much to this great purchaser to be intitled to an inheritance in the upper region of the aire he is so far from possessing all its riches that he does not so much as know of them nor understand the Philosophy of her minerals 2. I consider that he that is the greatest possessor in the world enjoyes its best and most noble parts and those which are of most excellent perfection but in common with the inferiour persons and the most despicable of his kingdom Can the greatest Prince inclose the Sun and set one little star in his cabinet for his own use or secure to himself the gentle and benigne influence of any one constellation Are not his subjects fields bedewed with the same showers that water his gardens of pleasure Nay those things which he esteems his ornament and his singularity of his possessions are they not of more use to others then to himself For suppose his garments splendid and shining like the robe of a cherub or the clothing of the fields all that he that wears them
enjoyes is that they keep him warm and clean and modest and all this is done by clean and lesse pompous vestmerâ—s the beauty of them which distinguishes him from others is made to please the eyes of the beholders and he is like a fair bird or the meretricious painting of a wanton woman made wholly to be looked on that is to be enjoyed by every one but himself and the fairest face and the sparkling eye cannot perceive or enjoy their own beauties but by reflection It is I that am pleased with beholding his gayety and the gay man in his greatesâ— bravery is onely pleased because I am pleased with the sight so borrowing his little and imaginary complacency from the delight that I have not from any inherency of his own possession The poorest Artizan of Rome walking in Caesars gardens had the same pleasures which they ministred to their Lord and although it may be he was put to gather fruits to eat from another place yet his other senses were delighted equally with Caesars the birds made him as good musick the flowers gave him as sweet smells he there sucked as good aire and delighted in the beauty and order of the place for the same reason and upon the same perception as the prince himself save onely that Caesar paid for all that pleasure vast summes of money the blood and treasure of a province which the poor man had for nothing 3. Suppose a man Lord of all the world for still we are but in supposition yet since every thing is received not according to its own gteatnesse and worth but according to the capacity of the receiver it signifies very little as to our content or to the riches of our possession If any man should give to a Lion a fair meadow full of hay or a thousand quince trees or should give to the goodly Bull the master and the fairest of the whole heard a thousand fair Stags If a man should present to a childe a ship laden with Persian carpets and the ingredients of the rich scarlet all these being either disproportionate to the appetite or to the understanding could adde nothing of content and might declare the freenesse of the presenter but they upbraid the incapacity of the receiver and so it does if God should give the whole world to any man He knows not what to do with it he can use no more but according to the capacities of a man He can use nothing but meat and drink and cloths and infinite riches that can give him changes of raiment every day and a full table do but give him a clean trencher every bit he eats it signifies no more but wantonnesse and variety to the same not to any new purposes He to whom the world can be given to any purpose greater then a private estate can minister must have new capacities created in him He needs the understanding of an Angel to take the accounts of his estate He had need have a stomach like fire or the grave for else he can eat no more then one of his healthful subjects and unlesse he hath an eye like the Sun and a motion like that of a thought and a bulk as big as one of the orbs of heaven the pleasures of his eye can be no greater then to behold the beauty of a little prospect from a hill or to look upon the heap of gold packt up in a little room or to dote upon a cabinet of Jewels better then which there is no man that sees at all but sees every day For not to name the beauties and sparkling diamonds of heaven a mans or a womans or a haukes eye is more beauteous and excellent then al the Jewels of his crown And when we remember that a beast who hath quicker senses then a man yet hath not so great delight in the fruition of any object because he wants understanding and the power to make reflex acts upon his perception it will follow that understanding and knowledge is the greatest instrument of pleasure and he that is most knowing hath a capacity to become happy which a lesse knowing prince or a rich person hath not and in this onely a mans capacity is capable of enlargement but then although they onely have power to relish any pleasure rightly who rightly understand the nature and degrees and essences and ends of things yet they that do so understand also the vanity and the unsatisfyingnesse of the things of this world so that the relish which could not be great but in a great understanding appears contemptible because its vanity appears at the same time the understanding sees all and sees thorow it 4. The greatest vanity of this world is remarkable in this that all its joyes summed up together are not big enough to counterpoise the evil of one sharp disease or to allay a sorrow For imagine a man great in his dominion as Cyrus rich as Solomon victorious as David beloved like Titus learned as Trismegist powerful as all the Roman greatnesse all this and the results of all this give him no more pleasure in the midst of a feaver or the tortures of the stone then if he were only lord of a little dish and a dishfull of fountain water Indeed the excellency of a holy conscience is a comfort and a magazine of joy so great that it sweetens the most bitter potion of the world and makes tortures and death not only tolerable but amiable and therefore to part with this whose excellency is so great for the world that is of so inconsiderable a worth as not to have in it recompence enough for the sorrows of a sharp disease is a bargain fit to be made by none but fools and mad men Antiochus Epiphanes Herod the great his grand child Agrippa were sad instances of this great truth to every of which it happened that the grandeur of their fortune the greatnesse of their possessions and the encrease of their estate disappeared and expired like Camphire at their arrest by those several sharp diseases which covered their head with Cypresse and hid their crowns in an inglorious grave For what can all the world minister to a sick person If it represents all the spoils of nature and the choicest delicacies of land and sea Alas his appetite is lost and to see a pibble stone is more pleasing to him For he can look upon that without loathing but not so upon the most delicious fare that ever made famous the Roman luxury Perfumes make his head ake if you load him with jewels you presse him with a burden as troublesome as his grave-stone and what pleasure is in all those possessions that cannot make his pillow easie nor tame the rebellion of a tumultuous humour nor restore the use of a withered hand or straighten a crooked finger vain is the hope of that man whose soul rests upon vanity and such unprofitable possessions 5. Suppose a man lord of all this world an
the primitive Christians had got a trick to give money for certificates that they had sacrificed to idols though indeed they did not do it but had corrupted the officers and ministers of state they dishonoured their religion and were marked with the appellative of libellatici Libellers and were excommunicate and cast off from the society of Christians and the hopes of Heaven till they had returned to God by a severe repentance optanduum est ut quod libenter facis diu facere possis It is good to have time long to doe that which wee ought to doe but to pretend that which we dare not doe and to say we have when we have not if we know we ought not is to dishonour the cause and the person too it is expressly against confession of Christ of which Saint Paul saith by the mouth confession is made unto salvation And our Blessed Saviour he that confesseth me before men I will confesse him before my Heavenly Father and if here he refuseth to own me I will not own him hereafter it is also expressly against Christian fortitude and noblenesse and against the simplicity and sincerity of our religion and it turnes prudence into craft and brings the Devil to wait in the temple and to minister to God and it is a lesser Kinde of apostacy and it is well that the man is tempted no further for if the persecutors could not be corrupted with money it is ods but the complying man would and though he would with the money hide his shame yet he will not with the losse of all his estate redeeme his religion 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 some men will lose their lives rather then a faire estate and doe not almost all the armies of the world I mean those that fight in the justest causes pretend to fight and die for their lands and liberties and there are too many also that will die twice rather then be beggers once although we all know that the second death is intolerable Christian prudence forbids us to provoke a danger and they were fond persons that run to persecution and when the Proconsul sate on the life and death and made strict inquisition after Christians went and offered themselves to die and he was a fool that being in Portugal run to the Priest as he elevated the host and overthrew the mysteries and openly defied the rites of that religion God when he sends a persecution will pick out such persons whom he will have to die and whom he will consigne to banishment and whom to poverty In the mean time let us do our duty when we can and as long as we can and with as much strictnesse as we can walking 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as the Apostles Phrase is not prevaricating in the least tittle and then if we can be safe with the arts of civil innocent inoffensive compliance let us blesse God for his permissions made to us and his assistances in the using them But if either we turne our zeal into the ambition of death and the follies of an unnecessary beggery or on the other side turn our prudence into craft and covetousnesse to the first I say that God hath no pleasure in fooles to the latter If you gain the whole world and lose your own soul your losse is infinite and intolerable Sermon XXI Of Christian Prudence Part II. 4. IT is the office of Christian prudence so to order the affaires of our life as that in all the offices of our souls and conversation we do honour and reputation to the religion we professe For the follies and vices of the Professors give great advantages to the adversary to speak reproachfully and does aliene the hearts and hinder the complyance of those undetermined persons who are apt to be perswaded if their understandings be not prejudiced But as our necessary duty is bound upon us by one ligament more in order to the honour of the cause of God so it particularly bindes us to many circumstances adjuncts and parts of duty which have no other commandment but the law of prudence There are some sects of Christians which have some one constant indisposition which as a character divides them from all others and makes them reproved on all hands some are so suspitious and ill natured that if a person of a facile nature and gentle disposition fall into their hands he is presently sowred and made morose unpleasant and uneasy in his conversation Others there are that do things so like to what themselves condemn that they are forced to take sanctuary and labour in the mine of unsignificant distinctions to make themselves believe they are innocent and in the mean time they offend all men else and open the mouths of their adversaries to speak reproachful things true or false as it happens And it requires a great wit to understand all the distinctions and devices thought of for legitimating the worshipping of images And those people that are liberal in their excommunications make men think they have reason to say their Judges are proud or self willed or covetous or ill natured people These that are the faults of Governours and continued are quickly derived upon the sect and cause a disreputation to the whole society and institution And who can think that congregation to be a true branch of the Christian who makes it their profession to kill men to save their souls against their will and against their understanding who calling themselves disciples of so meek a Master do live like bears upon prey and spoil and blood It is a huge dishonour to the sincerity of a mans purposes to be too busie in fingring money in the matters of religion and they that are zealous for their rights and tame in their devotion furious against sacrilege and a companion of drunkards implacable against breakers of a Canon and carelesse and patient enough with them that break the fifth or sixth Commandments of the Decalogue tell all the world their private sense is to preserve their own interest with scruple and curiosity and leave God to take care for his Thus Christ reproved the Pharisees for straining at a gnat and swallowing a Camel the very representation of the manner and matter of fact discovers the vice by reproving the folly of it They that are factious to get a rich proselyte and think the poor not worth saving dishonour their zeal and teach men to call it covetousnesse and though there may be a reason of prudence to desire one more then the other because of a bigger efficacy the example of the one may have more then the other yet it will quickly be discovered if it be done by secular designe and the Scripture that did not allow the preferring of a gay man before a poor Saint in the matter of place will not be pleased that in the matter of souls which are all equal there should be a faction and designe and an acceptation of persons Never let us pollute our
much troubled that he missed the dignity but he saw himself blessed that he scaped the death and the dishonour of the overthrow by that time the sad news arrived at Rome The Gentleman at Marseilles cursed his starres that he was absent when the ship set sail to sea having long waited for a winde and missed it but he gave thanks to the providence that blest him with the crosse when he knew that the ship perished in the voyage and all the men were drowned And even those virgins and barren women in Jerusalem that longed to become glad mothers and for want of children would not be comforted yet when Titus sacked the City found the words of Jesus true Blessed is the womb that never bare and the paps that never gave suck And the world being governed with a rare variety and changes of accidents and providence that which is a misfortune in the particular in the whole order of things becomes a blessing bigger then we hoped for then when we were angry with God for hindring us to perish in pleasant wayes or when he was contriving to pour upon thy head a mighty blessing Do not think the Judge condemns you when he chides you nor think to read thy own finall sentence by the first half of his words Stand still and see how it will be in the whole event of things let God speak his minde out for it may be this sad beginning is but an art to bring in or to make thee to esteem and entertain and understand the blessing They that love to talk of the mercies of the Lord and to recount his good things cannot but have observed that God delights to be called by such Appellatives which relate to miserable and afflicted persons He is the Father of the fatherlesse and an avenger of the widowes cause he standeth at the right hand of the poor to save his soul from unrighteous Judges and he is with us in tribulation And upon this ground let us account whether mercy be not the greater ingredient in that death and deprivation when I lose a man and get God to be my Father and when my weak arm of flesh is cut from my shoulder and God makes me to lean upon him and becomes my Patron and my Guide my Advocate and Defender and if in our greatest misery Gods mercy is so conspicuous what can we suppose him to be in the endearment of his loving Kindnesse If his vail be so transparent well may we know that upon his face dwels glory and from his eyes light and perpetuall comforts run in channels larger then the returns of the Sea when it is driven and forced faster into its naturall course by the violence of a tempest from the North. The summe is this God intends every accident should minister to vertue and every vertue is the mother and the nurse of joy and both of them daughters of the Divine goodnesse and therefore if our sorrows do not passe into comforts it is besides Gods intention it is because we will not comply with the act of that mercy which would save us by all means and all varieties by health and by sicknesse by the life and by the death of our dearest friends by what we choose and by what we fear that as Gods providence rules over all chances of things and all designes of men so his mercy may rule over all his providence Sermon XXVI The Miracles of the Divine Mercy Part II. 7. GOD having by these means secured us from the evils of nature and contingencies he represents himself to be our Father which is the great endearment and tye and expression of a naturall unalterable and essentiall kindnesse he next makes provisions for us to supply all those necessities which himself hath made For even to make necessities was a great circumstance of the mercy and all the relishes of wine and the savourinesse of meat the sweet and the fat the pleasure and the satisfaction the restitution of spirits and the strengthening of the heart are not owing to the liver of the vine or the kidneys of wheat to the blood of the grape or the strength of the corne but to the appetite or the necessity and therefore it is that he that sits at a full table and does not recreate his stomack with fasting and let his digestion rest and place himself in the advantages of natures intervals he loses the blessing of his daily bread and leans upon his table as a sick man upon his bed or the lion in the grasse which he cannot feed on but he that wants it and sits down when nature gives the signe rejoyces in the health of his hunger and the taste of his meat and the strengthening of his spirit and gives God thanks while his bones and his flesh rejoyce in the provisions of nature and the blessing of God Are not the imperfections of infancy and the decayes of old age the evils of our nature because respectively they want desire and they want gust and relish and reflections upon their acts of sense and when desire failes presently the mourners go about the streets But then that these desires are so provided for by nature and art by ordinary and extraordinary by foresight and contingency according to necessity and up unto conveniency until we arrive at abundance is a chain of mercies larger then the Bowe in the clouds and richer then the trees of Eden which were permitted to feed our miserable father Is not all the earth our orchard and our granary our vineyard and our garden of pleasure and the face of the Sea is our traffique and the bowels of the Sea is our vivarium a place for fish to feed us and to serve some other collaterall appendant needs and all the face of heaven is a repository for influences and breath fruitfull showers and fair refreshments and when God made provisions for his other creatures he gave it of one kinde and with variety no greater then the changes of day and night one devouring the other or sitting down with his draught of blood or walking upon his portion of grasse But man hath all the food of beasts and all the beasts themselves that are fiâ— for food and the food of Angels and the dew of heaven and the fatnesse of the earth and every part of his body hath a provision made for it and the smoothnesse of the olive and the juice of the vine refresh the heart and make the face cheerfull and serve the ends of joy and the festivity of man and are not onely to cure hunger or to allay thirst but to appease a passion and allay a sorrow It is an infinite variety of meat with which God furnishes out the table of mankinde and in the covering our sin and clothing our nakednesse God passed from sig-leaves to the skins of beasts from aprons to long-robes from leather to wool and from thence to the warmth of furres and the coolnesse of silks he
her spirit she had a strange secret perswasion that the bringing this Childe should be her last scene of life and we have known that the soul when she is about to disrobe her self of her upper garment sometimes speaks rarely Magnifica verba mors propè admota excutit sometimes it is prophetical sometimes God by a superinduced perswasion wrought by instruments or accidents of his own serves the ends of his own providence and the salvation of the soul But so it was that the thought of death dwelt long with her and grew from the first steps of fancy and fear to a consent from thence to a strange credulity and expectation of it and without the violence of sicknesse she died as if she had done it voluntarily and by designe and for fear her expectation should have been deceived or that she should seem to have had an unreasonable fear or apprehension or rather as one said of Cato sic abiit è vitâ ut causam moriendi nactam se esse gauderet she died as if she had been glad of the opportunity And in this I cannot but adore the providence and admire the wisdom and infinite mercies of God For having a tender and soft a delicate and fine constitution and breeding she was tender to pain and apprehensive of it as a childs shoulder is of a load and burden Grave est tenerae cervici jugum and in her often discourses of death which she would renew willingly and frequently she would tell that she feared not death but she feared the sharp pains of death Emori nolo me esse mortuam non curo The being dead and being freed from the troubles and dangers of this world she hoped would be for her advantage and therefore that was no part of her fear But she believing the pangs of death were great and the use and aids of reason little had reason to fear lest they should do violence to her spirit and the decency of her resolution But God that knew her fears and her jealousie concerning her self fitted her with a death so easie so harmlesse so painlesse that it did not put her patience to a severe trial It was not in all appearance of so much trouble as two fits of a common ague so carefull was God to remonstrate to all that stood in that sad attendance that this soul was dear to him and that since she had done so much of her duty towards it he that began would also finish her redemption by an act of a rare providence and a singular mercy Blessed he that goodnesse of God who does so careful actions of mercy for the ease and security of his servants But this one instance was a great demonstration that the apprehension of death is worse then the pains of death and that God loves to reprove the unreasonablenesse of our fears by the mightiness and by the arts of his mercy She had in her sickness if I may so cal it or rather in the solemnities and graver preparations towards death some curious and well-becoming fears concerning the final state of her soul. But from thence she passed into a deliquium or a kinde of trance and as soon as she came forth of it as if it had been a vision or that she had conversed with an Angel and from his hand had received a label or scroll of the book of life and there seen her name enrolled she cried out aloud Glory be to God on high Now I am sure I shall be saved Concerning which manner of discoursing we are wholy ignorant what judgement can be made but certainly there are strange things in the other world and so there are in all the immediate preparation to it and a little glimps of heaven a minutes conversing with an Angel any ray of God any communication extraordinary from the spirit of comfort which God gives to his servants in strange and unknown manners are infinitely far from illusions and they shall then be understood by us when we feel them and when our new and strange needs shall be refreshed by such unusual visitation But I must be forced to use summaries and arts of abbreviature in the enumerating those things in which this rare Personage was dear to God and to all her Relatives If we consider her Person she was in the flower of her age Jucundum cum aetas florida ver ageret of a temperate plain and natural diet without curiosity or an intemperate palate she spent lesse time in dressing then many servants her recreations were little and seldom her prayers often her reading much she was of a most noble and charitable soul a great lover of honourable actions and as great a despiser of base things hugely loving to oblige others and very unwilling to be in arrear to any upon the stock of courtesies and liberality so free in all acts of favour that she would not stay to hear her self thanked as being unwilling that what good went from her to a needful or an obliged person should ever return to her again she was an excellent friend and hugely dear to very many especially to the best and most discerning persons to all that conversed with her and could understand her great worth and sweetnesse she was of an Honourable a nice and tender reputation and of the pleasures of this world which were laid before her in heaps she took a very small and inconsiderable share as not loving to glut her self with vanity or to take her portion of good things here below If we look on her as a Wife she was chast and loving fruitful and discreet humble and pleasant witty and complyant rich and fair wanted nothing to the making her a principal and a precedent to the best Wives of the world but a long life and a full age If we remember her as a Mother she was kinde and severe careful and prudent very tender not at al fond a greater lover of her childrens souls then of their bodies and one that would value them more by the strict rules of honour and proper worth then by their relation to her self Her servants found her prudent and fit to Govern and yet open-handed and apt to reward a just Exactor of their duty and a great Rewarder of their diligence She was in her house a comfort to her dearest Lord a guide to her children a Rule to her Servants an example to all But as she related to God in the offices of Religion she was even and constant silent and devout prudent and material she loved what she now enjoyes and she feared what she never felt and God did for her what she never did expect Her fears went beyond all her evil and yet the good which she hath received was and is and ever shall be beyond all her hopes She lived as we al should live and she died as I fain would die Et cum supremos Lachesis perneverit annos Non aliter cineres mando jacere meos I pray