saith Calvine Harmon in locum His pain was so great that it gave no time or leisure to his Reason to weigh what he said Which in effect is He spake he knew not what But we may truly say Non fuit haec Interpretis meditata oratio This Author did not well understand nor consider what he wrote and may seem not well to have advised with his Reason that would leave Wisdome it self without the use of it No question it was the language of a bleeding heart and the resultance of Grief For grieve Christ did and fear He who as God could have commanded a Legion of Angels as Man had need of one to comfort him He was delivered up to Passions to afflict not to swallow him up There was no disorder no jar with Reason which was still above them There was no fullenness in his grief no dispair in his complaints no unreasonableness in his thoughts not a thought did rise amiss not a word misplaced not a motion was irregular He knew he was not forsaken when he asked Why hast thou forsaken me Matth. 27.46 The bitterness of the cup struck him into a fear when his Obedience called for it He prayed indeed Let this cup pass from me But that was not as some think Matth. 26.39 the cup of his Cross and Passion but the cup of his Agony And in that prayer it is plain he was heard for the Text telleth us Luke 22.43 there appeared an Angel unto him from heaven to strengthen him Being of the same mould and temper with man he was willing to receive the impressions which are so visible in man of Sorrow and Fear even those affections which are seated in the Sensitive part and without which Misery and Pain have no tooth at all to bite us Our Passions are the sting of Misery nor could Christ have suffered at all if he had been free from them If Misery be a whip it is our Passion and Phansie that make it a Scorpion What could Malice hurt me if I did not help the blow What edge hath an Injury if I could not be angry What terror hath Death if I did not fear It is Opinion and Passion that make us miserable take away these and Misery is but a name Tunde Anaxarchum enim non tundis You touch not the Stoick though you bray him in a mortar Delivered then was the Son of God to these Passions to Fear and to Grief These strained his body rackt his joynts stretched his sinews these trickled down in clods of blood and exhaled themselves through the pores of his flesh in a bloody sweat The fire that melted him was his Fear and his Grief Da si quid ultrà est Is there yet any more or can the Son of God be delivered further Delivered he was Not to Despair for that was impossible nor to the torments of Hell which could never seize on his innocent soul But to the Wrath of God which withered his heart like grass Psal 102.3 4. and 22.15 burnt up his bones like a hearth and brought him even to the dust of death Look now upon his Countenance it is pale and wan upon his Heart it is melted like wax upon his Tongue it cleaveth to the roof of his mouth What talk we of Death The Wrath of God is truly 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the terriblest thing in the world the sting of Sin which is the sting of Death Look into our own souls That weak apprehension of it which we sometimes have what a night and darkness doth it draw over us nay what a hell doth it kindle in us What torments do we feel the types and sad representations of those in the bottomless pit How do our delights distast us and our desires strangle themselves What a Tophet is the world and what Furies are our thoughts What do we see which we do not turn from what do we know which we would not forget what do we think which we do not startle at Or do we know what to think Now what rock can hide us what mountain can cover us We are weary of our selves and could wish rather not to be then to be under Gods wrath Were it not for this there would be no Law no Conscience no Devil but with this the Law is a killing letter the Conscience a Fury and the Devil a Tormenter But yet there is still a difference between our apprehension and Christ's For alas to us God's wrath doth not appear in it its full horror for if it did we should sooner dye then offend him Some do but think of it few think of it as they should and they that are most apprehensive look upon it as at a distance as that which may be turned away and so not fearing God's wrath treasure up wrath against the day of wrath To us when we take it at the nearest and have the fullest sight of it it appeareth but as the cloud did to Elijah's servant 1 Kings 18.44 like a man's hand but to Christ the heavens were black with clouds and winds and it showred down upon him as in a tempest of fire and brimstone We have not his eyes and therefore not his apprehension We see not so much deformity in Sin as he did and so not so much terror in the Wrath of God It were Impiety and blasphemy to think that the blessed Martyrs were more patient than Christ De patient Cujus natura patientia saith Tertullian whose very nature was patience yet who of all that noble army ever breathed forth such disconsolate speeches God indeed delivered them up to the saw to the rack to the teeth of Lions to all the engines of cruelty and shapes of death but numquid deseruit they never cryed out they were forsaken He snatched them not from the rage of the persecutor by a miracle but behold a greater miracle Sil. Ital. l. 1. Rident superántque dolores Spectanti similes In all their torments they had more life and joy in their countenance than they who looked on who were more troubled with the sight than the Martyrs were with the punishment Their torture was their triumph their afflictions were their melody Of weak they were made strong Prudent Hymn in laudem Vincentii M. Tormenta carcer ungulae Stridensque flammis lamina Atque ipsa poenarum ultima Mors Christianis ludus est Torments Racks Strappadoes and the last enemy Death it self were but a recreation and refreshment to Christians who suffered all these with the patience of a stander-by But what speak we of Martyrs Divers sinners whose ambition never reach at such a crown but rather trembled at it have been delivered up to afflictions and crosses nay to the anger of God But never yet any nay not those who have despaired were so delivered as Christ We may say that the Traytor Judas felt not so much when he went and hanged himself For though Christ could not despair
not with us in favour and mercy He seeketh after us and layeth hold on us being gone from him as far as Sin and Disobedience could carry us out of his reach It was his love it was his will to do so and in this we might rest But Divines will tell us that Man was a fitter object of mercy than the Angels quia levius est alienâ mente peccare De Angelis quibusdam suâ sponte corruptis corruptior gens Daemonum evaâ—it Tert. Apol c. 22. quà m propriâ because the Angels sin was more spontaneous wrought in them by themselves Man had importunam arborem that flattering and importuning Tree and that subtile and seducing Serpent to urge and sway him from his obedience Man had a Tempter the Angels were both the temptation and tempters to themselves Man took in death by looking abroad but the Angels reflecting upon themselves gazed so long upon their own beauty till they saw it changed into horrour and deformity And the offence is more pardonable where the motive is ab extrinseco than where it groweth up of it self Besides the Angels did not all fal but the whole lump of Mankind was leavened with the same leaven and pity it may seem that so noble a Creature made up after Gods own Image should be utterly lost These reasons with others we may admit though they may seem rather to be conjectures than reasons and we have not much light in Scripture to give them a fairer appearance Hebr. 2.16 but the Scripture is plain that he took not the Angels he did not lay his hands upon them to redeem them to liberty and strike off their bonds And we must go out of the world to find the reason and seek the true cause in the bosome of the Father nay in the bowels of his Son and there see the cause why he was delivered for us written in his heart It was 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the love of God to mankind Tit. 3.4 And what was in mankind but enmity and hostility sin and deformity which are no proper motives to draw on love And yet God loved us and hated sin and made hast to deliver us from it Dilexisti me Domine plusquà m te quando mori voluisti pro me saith Augustine Lord when thou dyedst for me thou madest it manifest that my soul was dearer to thee then thy self Such a high esteem did he set upon a Soul which we scarce honour with a thought but so live as if we had none For us Men then and for us Sinners was Christ delivered The Prophet Isaiah speaketh it and he could not speak it properly of any but him Isa 53.5 He was wounded for our transgressions he was bruised for our iniquities So that he was delivered up not only to the Cross and Shame but to our Sins which nayled him to the cross which not only crucified him in his humility but crucified him still in his glory now he sitteth at the right hand of God and put him to shame to the end of the world Falsò de Judaeis querimur Why complain we of the Jews malice or Judas's treason or Pilates injustice We we alone are they who crucified the Lord of life Our Treachery was the Judas which betrayed him our Malice the Jew which accused him our Perjury the false witness against him our Injustice the Pilate that condemned him Our Pride scorned him our Envy grinned at him our Luxury spate upon him our Covetousness sold him Our corrupt Blood was drawn out of his wounds our Swellings prickt with his thorns our Sores launced with his spear and the whole body of Sin stretched out and crucified with the Lord of life He delivered him up for us Sinners No sin there is which his blood will not wash away but final Impenitency which is not so much a sin as the sealing up of the body of sin when the measure is full For us sinners for us the progeny of an arch-traytor and as great traytors as he Take us at our worst if we repent he was delivered for us And if we do not repent yet he may be said to be delivered for us for he was delivered for us to that end that we might repent For us sinners he was delivered for us when we were without strength for us when we were ungodly Rom. 5.6.8 So we were considered in this great work of Redemption And thus high are we gone on this scale and ladder of Love There is one step more He was delivered for us all ALL not considered as Elect or Reprobate but as Men as Sinners Rom. 5.12 for that name will take in all for all have sinned And here we are taught to make a stand and not to touch too hastily and yet the way is plain and easie For all This some will not touch and yet they do touch and press it with that violence that they press it almost into nothing make the world not the world and whosoever not whosoever but some certain men and turn all into a few deduct whom they please out of all people nations and languages and out of Christendome it self leave some few with Christ upon the Cross whose persons he beareth whom they call the Elect and mean themselves So God loved the world that is the Elect say they They are the world John 3.16 where it is hard to find them for they are called out of it and the best light we have which is the Scripture discovereth them not unto us in that place If the Elect be the world which God so loved then they are such Elect as may not believe such Elect as may perish and whom God will have perish if they do not believe It is true none have benefit of Christ's death but the Elect but from hence it doth not follow that no other might have had Theirs is the kingdome but are not they shut out now who might have made it theirs God saith S. Peter 2 Pet. 3 9. would not that any should perish and God is the Saviour of all men saith S. Paul 1 Tim. 4.10 but especially of those that believe all if they believe and repent and those who are obedient to the Gospel because they do The blood of Christ is poured forth on the Believer and with it he sprinkleth his heart and is saved the wicked trample it under their foot and perish The blood of Christ is sufficient to wash away the sins of the world nay of a thousand worlds Christ paid down a ransome of so infinite a value that it might redeem all that are ' or possibly might be under captivity But none are actually redeemed but they who make him their Captain and do as he commandeth that is believe and repent or to speak in their own language none are saved but the elect In this all agree in this they are Brethren and why should they fall out when both hold up the priviledge of the Believer
in the face if it be flitting and unsetled this will vanish at the sight of the next object which presenteth it self with less distast vanish like the lightning which is seen and gone Sin is a heavy burden Psal 38.4 saith David It is so when it is felt 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 hard to be born Moles saith Augustine of a great bulk and weight And it is not a sigh or a grone a forced displacency it is not such weak and faint heaves of the soul that can remove such a mountain Isa 38.14 We see some who mourn like a dove and chatter like a crane when the hand of God toucheth them for their sin who speak mournfully look mournfully go mournfully all the day long who are cast down you would think indeed to the lowest pit and it is easy to mistake a Pharisee for a Penitentiary We read of some who did afflict and penance themselves with so much severity that they fell in morbum poenitentialem as Rhenanus observeth upon Tertullian into a strange distemper which they called the poenitentiary disease because it was contracted in the daies of Penance But all this doth not make up the full face of Repentance nor complete our Turn We may hang down our head like a bulrush Isa 58.5 we may fast till we have more need of a Physician then a Divine and yet too much need of both we may even seem to be afraid of our selves to be weary of our selves to run out of our selves and yet not Turn For these may be rather apparitions then motions Fasting Lamentation and that displacency which sin carrieth naturally along with it are glorious expressions and probable symptomes of a wounded spirit but yet many times they are nothing else but the types and shadows of Repantance signa non signantia signes indeed but such as signifie nothing Qui peccata deplorat ploranda minimè committat saith Gregory He truly bewaileth his sin who doth no longer practice what he will be forced to bewail He giveth a perfect account of his debts who is resolved never to add to the Bills He truly turneth who will never look back Haec poenitentiae vox est In Psal 118. lacrymis orare saith Hilary Tears and Complaints are the voice and language of Repentance If you see a Turn you see a Change also in the countenance But many times vox est praeterea nihil it is the voice of Repentance and nothing else For Sorrow and Dejection of mind have not alwayes the same beginnings nor do our Tears constantly flow from the same spring and fountain Omnis dolor fundatur in amore say the Schools All Grief is grounded on Love For as it is my Joy to have so is it my Grief to want what I love And our Grief may have no better principle then the Love of our selves and then it cometh à fumo peccati from the troublesome smoke which Sin maketh or rather from the very gall of bitterness a Grief begot betwixt Conscience and Lust betwixt the Deformity of Sin and the Pleasure thereof betwixt the Apprehension of a real evil and the Flattery of a seeming good When I am troubled not that I have sinned but that it is not lawful to sin much disquieted within me that that sin which I am unwilling to fly from is a serpent that will sting me to death Prov. 20.17 Prov. 23.32 that there is gravel in the bread of deceit that that unlawful pleasure which is at present as sweet as honey should at last bite like a cockatrice that the wayes in which I walk with delight should lead unto death that that Sin which I am unwilling to fling off hath such a troop of Sergeants and Executioners at her heels And so it cometh à fumo gehennae from the smoke of the bottomless pit from Fear of punishment which is far from a Turn but may prepare mature and ripen us for Repentance But then it may come from the Fear of God wrought in us by the apprehension of his Justice and Mercy and Dominion and Power to judge both the quick and the dead And this Grief is next to a Turn and the immediate cause of our Conversion when out of the admiration of Gods Justice Majesty and Goodness I am willing to offend my self for offending him and offer up to him some part of my substance the Anguish of my soul the Grones of contrition and my Tears Anastast Bibl Patrum which are ex ipsa nostra essentia sicut sanguis martyrum from our being and essence and are offered up as the bloud of Martyrs 3. And this Grief will in the third place open our mouthes and force us to a Confession and Acknowledgment of our sins I mean a sad and serious acknowledgment which will draw them out and not suffer them to be pressed down and settle like foul and putrified matter in the bottom of the soul as Basil expresseth it For the least grief is vocal In Psal 38. the least displacency will open our mouthes Yea where there is little sense or none we are ready to complain And because S. Pauls Humility brought him so low we look for an absolution if we can say what we may truely say 1 Tim. 1.15 but not with S. Pauls spirit that we are the chiefest of sinners Nothing more easy then to libel our selves where the Bill taketh in the whole world And the best of Saints as well as the worst of sinners Psal 51.5 how willing are they to confess with David that they are conceived in sin and born in iniquity How ready are we to call our selves children of wrath and workers of all unrighteousness What delight do we take to miscall our virtues to find infidelity in our Faith wavering in our Hope pride in our Humility ignorance in our Knowledge coldness in our Devotion and some degrees of Hostility in our very Love of God What can the Devil our great adversary and accuser say more of us then we are well pleased to say of our selves But this Acknowledgment is but the product of a lazy Knowledge and a faint and momentany disgust It cometh 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as the Stoick speaketh not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Epict. Arr c 2. c. 15.1 It is but the calves of our lips not the sacrifice of our hearts We breathe it forth with noise and words enough We make our sins innumerable Psal 40.12 mo then the hairs of our head or the sands on the sea-shore but bring us to a particular account and we find nothing but ciphers some sins of daily incursion some of sudden subreption some minute and scarce visible sins but not the figure of any sin which we think will make up a number He that will confess himself the chief of sinners upon the must gentle remembrance and meekest reprehension will be ready to charge you as a greater or peradventure take you by the
one For this they fight unto death even for the Book of life till they have blotted out their names with the blood of their Brethren This is drest out unto them as savoury meat set for their palate who had rather be carried up to heaven in Elias fiery chariot then pace it thither with trouble and pain That GOD hath absolutely decreed the salvation of some particular men and passed sentence of death upon others is as musick to some ears like David's harp to refresh them and drive away the evil spirit Et qui amant sibi somnia fingunt Mens desires do easily raise a belief and when they are told of such a decree they dream themselves to heaven For if we observe it they still chuse the better part and place themselves with the Sheep at the right hand and when the controversie of the inheritance of Heaven is on foot to whom it belongeth they do as the Romanes did who when two Cities contending about a piece of ground made them their Judge to determin whose it was fairly gave sentence on their own behalf and took it to themselves Because they read of Election they elect themselves which is more indeed then any man can deny and more I am sure then themselves can prove And now O Death 1 Cor. 15.55 56 where is thy sting The sting of Death is Sin but it cannot reach them and the strength of Sin is the Law but it cannot bind them For Sin it self shall turn to the good of these elect and chosen Vessels And we have some reason to suspect that in the strength of this Doctrine and a groundless conceit that they are these particular men they walk on all the daies of their life in fraud and malice in hypocrisie and disobedience in all that uncleanness and pollution of sin which is enough to wipe out any name out of the book of Life Sen. Controv. Hoc saxum defendit Maulius hinc excidit For this they rowse up all their forces this is their rock their fundamental doctrine their very Capitol and from this we may fear many thousands of souls have been tumbled down into the pit of destruction at this rock many such elect Vessels have been cast away Again others miscarry as fatally on the other hand For when we speak of an absolute Decree upon particulars unto the vulgar sort vvho have not cor in corde as Augustine speaketh who have their judgement not in their heart but in their sense they soon conceive a fatal necessity and one there is that called it so fatum Christianum the Christian mans Destiny tâ—ey think themselves in chains and shackles that they cannot turn when they cannot be predestinate not to turn but to die because they will not turn I will give you a remarkable instance and out of Mr. Calvine Quintinus Contr. Libertin c. 13. And yet his own followers use the same words bring the same Texts and apply them as the Libertines did Vide Piscat Aphorismos the Father of the Libertines as Calvine himself calleth him as he rideth in company by the way lighteth upon a man slain and lying in his gore and one asking Who did this bloody deed he readily replyeth I am he that did it if thou desire to know it And art thou such a villain saith the party again to do such an act I did it not my self saith he but it was God that did it And being ask't again Whether may we impute to God those hainous sins which in justice he will and doth so severely punish So it is said he Thou didst it and I did it and God did it For what thou or I do God doth and what God doth that thou and I do for we are in him and he in us he worketh in us he worketh all in all Quintinus is long since dead but his errour dyed not with him Fortaliter constitutum est quando quantoperè unus uisque nostrûm pietatem colere vel non colere debeat Piscator ad Duplicat Vorstii p. 228. For it is the policy of our common Enemy to remove our eye as far as he can from the Command and he cannot set it at a greater distance then by fixing it on Eternity that so whilst we think upon the Decree we may quite forget the Command and never fly from Death because for ought we know we are killed already never do our duty because God doth whatsoever he will in heaven and in earth never strive to be better then we are because God is all in all Let us then walk on in a middle way and neither flatter nor afflict our selves with the thought of what God may do or what he hath done from all eternity Let us not busy our selves in the fruitless study of the Book of life Rev. 5.3 5. which no man in heaven or in earth is able to open and look into but only the Lion of the tribe of Judah In that book saith S. Basil Comment in Isai 10. no names are written but of them that repent Let us not seek what God decreeth which we cannot find out but hearken to what he commandeth which is nigh us even in our mouthes Rom. 10.8 The book of Life is shut and sealed up but he hath opened many other Books to us and biddeth us sit down and read them The book of his Works of which the Creatures are the leaves and the characters the Goodness and Power and Glory of God The book of his Words Matth. 1.1 2 Cor. 3.2 The Book of the Generation of JESVS CHRIST to be known and read of all men and if these words be written in thy heart thy name is also written in the book of Life And the book of thy Conscience for the information of which all the Books in the world were made And if thou read and study this with care and diligence and an impartial eye and then find there no bill or indictment against thee then thou maist have confidence towards God that he never past any decree or sentence of death against thee and that thou art ordained to life This is the true method of a Christian mans studies not to look too stedfastly backward upon Aeternity but to look down upon our selves and ponder and direct our paths and then to look forward to eternity of bliss We read of the Philosopher Thales that lifting up his eyes to observe the course of the stars he fell into the water Which gave occasion to a damsell called Thressa of an ingenious and bitter scoff That he who was so busy to see what was done in heaven could not observe what was even before his feet And it is as true of them who are so bold and forward in the contemplation of God's eternal Decree many times they fall dangerously into those errours which swallow them up They are too bold with God and so negligent of themselves talk more what he doth or hath
and grind him with our oppression not build him a tabernacle in his glory and deny him at his cross No Love speaketh to Christ as the Israelites did to Joshua Josh 1. Whatsoever he commandeth it will do and whithersoever he leadeth it will go against powers and principalities against tribulation and persecution against the power of darkness and the Devil himself This is the dialect of Love And if Love wax cold that it doth not plainly speak this holy tongue here is the Altar and from it thou mayst take a live cole to touch it that it may revive and burn within thee And that heart is not cold but dead which the Love of Christ presented and tendered in the Sacrament cannot quicken and stir up into a flame If this work not a miracle in us and dispossess us of the dumb spirit it is because of our unbelief Again we shew the Lord's death by our Repentance which speaketh in grones and sighs unutterable When we dye to sin we then best shew the death of the Lord. Then his sorrow is seen in ours and his agony in our strugling and contention with our selves His complaints are heard in ours and are the very same My God my God why hast thou forsaken me We are lifted up as it were on a cross the powers of our soul are stretched and dilated our hearts are pierced our Flesh is crucified and Sin fainteth and when all is finished will give up the ghost And then when we rise to newness of life it will be manifest that Christ is in us of a truth A penitent sinner is the best shew of the best Sermon on a crucified Saviour And here in this so visible presentment of his Body and Bloud our wounds must needs bleed afresh our Anger be more hot our Indignation higher our Revenge more bitter and our Complaints louder Here we shall repent of our Repentance it self that it is not so serious so true so universal as it should be Here our wounds as David speaketh will corrupt and putrefie But the bloud of Christ is a precious balm to cure them Christ shall wash away our tears still our complaints take away our sorrow and by the power of his Spirit seal us to the day of Redemption Last of all we must shew the Lord's death with Reverence With Reverence why the Angels desire to look into it Thrones and Dominations bow and adore it and shall not Dust and ashes sinning dying men fall down and worship that Lord who hath taken away the sting of Death which is Sin and swallowed up Death it self in victory Let us then shew the Lord's death with fear and rejoyce with trembling By Reverence I do not mean that vain unnecessary apologizing Reverence which withdraweth us from this Table and detaineth us amongst the swine at the husks because we have made our selves unworthy to go to our Father's house a Reverence which is the daughter and nurse of Sin begot of Sin and multiplying Sin the Reverence of Adam behind the bush who was afraid and hid himself unwilling to come out of the thicket when God called him a Reverence struck out of these two Conscience of sin and Unwillingness to forsake it And what Reverence is that which keepeth the sick from the Physician maketh the wounded afraid of balm and a sinner run from his Saviour This Reverence we must tread under foot with the mother that bare it and dash it against the Rock the Rock Christ Jesus First be reverent and sin no more and then make our approches to Christ with reverence Shew our death to sin that we may shew the death of the Lord for it First leave our sin behind us and then draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith When as Job speaketh we are afraid of all our works of our Faith that it is but weak and call to him to strengthen it of our Love that it is not hot enough and then stir it up of our Hope that it is but feeble and then feed it with the bloud of Christ of our Sorrow that it is not great enough and then drop a tear of our Repentance that it is not sincere enough and then smite our hearts look upon the wounds of Christ and then rip up our own that they may open and take in his bloud when we are afraid of our Reverence that it is not low enough and then lay the cross of Christ upon it all the benefits of a Saviour and our own sins to press it down lower and make him more glorious and us more vile in our own eyes When we have thus washed our hands in innocencie and our souls in the bloud of the immaculate Lamb then Faith will quicken us and Hope embolden us and Love encourage us and Repentance lead us on with fear and reverence to compass his Altar For these are operative and will evaporate will break thy heart humble thy look cast down thy countenance bow thy knee and lay thee prostrate before the Mercy-seat the Table of the Lord. Thus if we shew his Death he will shew himself to us a Lord and a Saviour he will shew us his hands and his side he will shew his wounds and his bloud the virtue of his sufferings shall stream out upon our souls and water and refresh them and we shall return from his Table as the Disciples did from his sepulchre with great joy even with that joy which is a pledge and type of that eternal jubilating joy at his Table in the Kingdom of Heaven The Six and Twentieth SERMON 1 COR. XI 28. But let a man examine himself and so let him eat of that bread and drink of that cup. AMongst all the duties of a Christian whether Moral or Ceremonial there is not one but requireth something to be done before it be done 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saith Clemens Those velitations and trials which are before the sight are a part of that exercise and they are called Mysteries which do but make way and lead us to the mysteries themselves Preparation to the duties of Christianity we must count as a part of those duties or else we shall come short in the performance of them so do them as that it had been better we had left them undone Eccl. 5.1 It is good to go up to the house of the Lord but we must first keep our feet subdue our foul and irregular affections It is good to offer sacrifice but we must first clense our hands or else we shall but give the sacrifice of fools It is good to give alms with our right hand but so that our left hand know it not It is good to pray but not standing in the synagogues or the corners of the streets It is good to fast but vvithout a disfigured face In all our approches to God vve must keep our feet vvalk forvvard vvith reverence and preparation for the place is not onely holy but dangerous to stand in
the Devil Why should any mortal now fear to dye It is most true Christ dyed and by his death shook the powers of the Grave Consummatum est all is finished and he is returned victoriously with the spoils of his enemies and of this last enemy Death Job 18.14 But for all this his triumph Death may be still the King of terrours and as dreadful as before All is finisht on his part but a Covenant consisteth of two parts and something is required on ours He doth not turn Conditions into Promises as some have been willing to perswade themselves and others It must be done is not Thou shalt do it If thou wilt believe is not Thou shalt believe But every Promise every Act of grace of his implieth a Condition He delivereth those that are willing to be delivered who do not feed Death and supply this enemy with such weapons as make him terrible 1 Cor. 15.56 All the terrour Death hath is from our selves our Sin our Disobedience to the commands of God that is his sting And our part of the Covenant is by the power and virtue of Christs death every day to be plucking it off from him at last to take it quite away We we our selves must rise up against this King of terrours and in the Name and Power of Christ take the sceptre out of his hand and spoil him of his strength and terrour And this we may do by parts and degrees now cut from him this sin now that now this desire and anon another and so dye daily as S. Paul speaketh dye to Profit dye to Pleasure dye to Honour be as dead to every temptation which may beget sin in us and a sting in him and so leave him nothing to take from us not a desire not a hope not a thought nothing that can make us fear Death Then we shall not look upon it as a divorcement from those delights which we have cast off already or a passage into a worse condition from that we loved too well to that we never feared enough but we shall consider it as a Sleep as it is to all wearied pilgrimes as a Message sent from heaven to tell us our walk is at an end now we are to lay down our staff and scrip and rest in that Jerusalem which is above Tert. De patientia for which we vowed this pilgrimage Et quis non ad meliora festinat What stranger will be afraid to return to his Fathers house or lose that life quam sibi jam supervacuam fecit which by dying daily to the world he hath already made superfluous and unnecessary To conclude this He that truly feareth God can fear nothing else nor is Death terrible to any but to those who would build their tabernacle here who love to feed with swine on husks Luk. 15.16 Heb. 6.5 because they have not tasted of the powers of the world to come who wish immortality to this mortal before they put it on who are willing to converse and trade with Vanity for ever who desire not with David to be spared a little but would never go hence Psal 39.13 Last of all this will moderate our sorrow for those our friends who are dead or rather fallen asleep or rather at their journeys end For why should any man who knoweth the condition of a stranger how many dangers and how many cares and how many storms and tempests he is obnoxious to hang down the head and complain that his friend hath now passed through them all and is set down at his journeys end Why should he who looketh for a City to come Hebr. 13.14 be troubled that his fellow-pilgrime is come thither and entred before him It might be a matter of holy emulation perhaps but why it should afflict us with grief I cannot see unless it be because we have not made it our meat and drink to keep Gods commandements which might give us a tast of a better estate to come unless it be because we have not well learnt to act the part of a stranger Miserable men that we are that we will be that know not our own quality and condition that are strangers yet unwilling to draw near our selves or to see others come to their home but think them lost where they are made perfect We stand by the bed of our sick and dying friend as if he were now to be removed to a place of torment and not of rest and to be either nothing or more miserable then he was in a region of misery We send out shreeks and outcries to keep time with his gasps to call him back if it were possible from heaven and to keep him still under the yoke harrow when as the fainting of his spirits the failing of his eyes the trembling of his joynts are but as the motion of bodies to their center most violent when they are nearest to their end And then we close up his eyes and with them our hopes as if with his last gasp he had breathed out his soul into air when indeed there is no more then this One pilgrime is gone before his fellows one is gone hath left others in their way in trouble and more troubled that he is gone to rest Migrantem migrantes praemisimus saith S. Hierome We are passing forward apace and have sent one before us to his journeyes end his everlasting sabbath With this contemplation doth Religion comfort and uphold us in our way and keepeth us in that temper which the Philosopher commendeth as best in which we do sentine desiderium Sen. ad Marciam op primere She giveth Nature leave to draw tears but then she bringeth in Faith and Hope to wipe them off She suffereth us to mourn for our friends but not as men without hope Nature will vent and Love is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 1 Thess 4.13 saith the Oratour ever querulous and full of complaints when the object is removed out of sight and God remembreth whereof we are made Ps 103.14 is not angry with our Love and will suffer us to be Men But then we must silence one Love with another our natural Affection with the Love of God at least divide our language thus Alas my Father Alas my Husband Alas my Friend but then He was a stranger and now at his journeyes end And here we must raise our note and speak it more heartily Rev. 14 13. Blessed are such strangers Blessed are they that dye in the Lord even so saith the Spirit for they rest from their labours For conclusion Let us fear God and keep his commandments Eccl. 12.13 This is the whole duty of a stranger to observe those Laws which came from that place to which he is going Let these Laws be in our heart and our heart will be an Elaboratory a Limbeck to work the water of life out of the vanities and very dregs of the world
the infusion of Grace I know it was decreed at the Council of Carthage and other Councils 1. That every man ought to say Forgive us our trespasses 2. That he ought to say it not for others alone but for himself also 3. Not ex humilitate sed vere not out of humility confessing what they were not but truly what they were And all these Decrees may well stand and be as unchangeable as those of the Medes and Persians and pass for everlasting truths and yet no necessity of fixing up this doctrine of the Impossibility of not sinning on the gates of the Temple and proclaiming it as by the voice of a trumpet in the midst of the Congregation This doctrine is the sweetest musick flesh and blood can hear This sounding in the ears of men which delight in wickedness lulleth them in a pleasant sleep till they dream for they dare not speak it that they are bound to that Law which they are made to break and that it is one part of their duty to sin It is most true and if we deny it the truth is not in us that we have all sinned But who ever read in the Scripture that we cannot but sin We are bound to ask forgiveness of our sins and that veraciter truly because as S. James speaketh in many things we offend all But this petition is put as in relation to sins past not in relation to sins not yet committed unless conditionally onely And who will build a supposition upon that which infallibly will come to pass Nè peccemus is in order before Si peccamus We are commanded first Not to sin and then followeth the supposition If we sin So that NE PECCEMUS and SI PECCAMUS That we sin not and If we sin make up this one conclusion That we may or may not sin And this suiteth best with the Precept or Command Sin not at all and this in the Text Sin no more with our Promise made in Baptism where we solemnly bid defiance to the World the Flesh and the Devil and with our Prayer for forgiveness which we cannot accent and pronounce as we should but with a firm resolution to sin no more For how dareth he ask pardon for his sins who is resolved to sin again and again upon hope of pardon So then we may truly and humbly beg pardon of sins past But it is neither Truth nor Humility to make God a liar who proposeth himself a pattern of Perfection Be ye perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect to make him a Tyrant in first crippling us and then sending us about his business in commanding us to do what he knoweth cannot be done in giving us that flesh which our spirit cannot conquer in letting loose that Lion whom we cannot resist in laying us naked to those temptations which we cannot subdue No. 1 Cor. 10.13 God is faithful saith S. Paul who will not suffer us to be tempted above that we are able above that which he will make us able if we seek him It is not said God is merciful or God is gracious as being a more indifferent and arbitrary thing but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 God is faithful So that we cannot bring in a Necessity of sinning without prejudice to the Truth and Sincerity of God But then as God is faithful and true not to let in an enemy stronger then his Grace can make us so is he also gracious and merciful si peccemus if we sin if in the midst of so many enemies inter tot errores humanae vitae if in such slippery ground we step aside and fall as Jonathan in the high places to reach forth his hand and lift us up again But with this proviso That we look better to our steps and be more careful how we walk hereafter The one keepeth us from presumption the other from despair For we do not ask forgiveness of our sins upon these terms that we cannot but sin but we beg pardon with this promise that we will sin no more But further yet if this doctrine were true That Sin is absolutely unavoidable and that we are so fettered and shackled with an impossibility of performing our duty that the Grace of God cannot redeem us as indeed it hath neither Reason nor Scripture to countenance it yet sure it cannot be but very dangerous to tell it in Gath and publish it in Askalon to urge and press it to the multitude who are too prone and ready to make an Idol of that Serpent which is lifted up to cure them Omnes homines nostris vitiis favemus quod propriâ facimus voluntate ad Naturae referimus necessitatem saith S. Hierome We are all too apt to favour and speak friendly to our sins and are glad when we cannot but sin that we may sport and play in the wayes which lead unto death and sin with less remorse and regret Gaudemus de contumelia nostra We make that our triumph which is our shame proclaim our Will as innocent whilest we arraign our natural Constitution and lay all the guilt on a fatal Necessity of sinning We are indeed bound to acknowledge our sin and without it there is no remission but a bare acknowledgement is not enough We are ready to say We have sinned and ready to say We cannot but sin that we may sin again We are ready to acknowledge our sins especially in a lump and body Oh would we were as ready to forsake them This thought of the Not-possibility of avoiding sin followeth us I fear in all our wayes and standeth between us and those sins we have left behind us And if at any time we cast an eye back upon them we look on them with favour through this imagination of Weakness as through a pane of painted glass which discoloureth them and maketh the greatest sin appear in the hue and shape of a sin of Infirmity Then those Furies of lust are not so terrible those monsters of sins are not so deformed those sins which devour have not a tooth For how should they feel a bruise who are so just as to fall and sin not seven but seventy times seven times in a day To conclude this Let us take Christ's words as near as we can as they lie They are plain Sin no more And they were no Prescript at all if there lay upon us a necessity of sinning again if by the power of Christ we could not quit our selves of those sins which cannot consist with the Gospel and Covenant of Grace This Doctrine concerning the Possibility of keeping this Prescript of Christ men that are willing to sin are not willing to understand Flesh and bloud runneth from it as from an errour of a monstrous shape and that they may be yet more wicked they count it as an heresie But flesh and bloud shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven And we cannot think but our Saviour meant as he spake and would not have laid it
there been no Sin there had been no Hell at all And therefore as it resembles it so it tends to it as naturally as a Stone doth to the centre Against the righteous the gates of Hell will not open but they are never shut to the wicked ever ready to receive him and take him in as his due and portion For again is it not fit that they who have made an agreement with it that with their words and works have called it to them that have studied and laboured for it all their life long that have made it their business that have broke their sleep for it that have had it in their will and desire should at last be thrown into that place which they have chosen and which they have made such hast to all the daies of their life Is it not fit that what they sow that they should also reap You will say This is impossible impossible that any man should will it should desire it should be ambitious of that place of horrour and count it a preferment But beloved as much as it may be this is the case and condition of every obstinate and unrepenting sinner For he that counts Sin a preferment must count Punishment a preferment too which can no more be separated from Sin then Poyson from a Serpent When thou first sinnest thou bowest towards Hell when thou goest on in thy sin thou runnest to destruction and to die and to be in Hell are the same period and term of thy motion Prov. 8.36 When thou lovest Sin thou lovest Death When thou drawest in Sin as the Oxe doth water thou drawest in the flames of Hell When thou thinkest thy self in Paradise thou art falling into the pit of Hell The Philosopher gives the reason 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The beginning is from thy self if therefore the end is from thy self the cause is from thy self and therefore the effect is from thy self For will any man say that the Glutton is sick the Wanton rotten the Sluggard poor against his will when they greedily do those things which naturally bring along with them Sickness Rottenness and Poverty Will you say he had a mischance that wilfully leapt into the Sea We will Death we love Death nay further yet exsultamus rebus pessimis we rejoyce to do evil Prov. 2.14 We are in an exstasie transported beyond our selves in our third heaven as S. Paul was in his we talk of it we dream of it we sweat for it we fight for it we travell for it we embrace it we have a kind of exsultation and jubilee in Sin And what is this but to hoyse up our sails and make forward towards the gulf of Destruction and the bottomless pit So that to conclude this by the Justice of God by the Providence of God by our own Wills as by so many winds by the tempest of our Passions as well as that of Gods Wrath we are driven to our end to the place prepared and fitted for the Devil and his Angels and for all those who have loved their tentations and embraced them with more affection then they have the oracles of God For if we thus deceive our selves and mock God God will mock us to our own place Still it is What a man soweth that shall he also reap We will but look back and so hasten to our journeys end adde one word of application and so conclude And 1. that we be not deceived let us as S. Augustine exhorts operam dare rationi let us therefore diligently observe the dictates of Reason and be attentive to the Spirit speaking in the Scripture not neglect the light of the one nor quench the heat of the other The Scripture cannot deceive us but when we are willing to deceive our selves When we are averse from that it bids us love and place our love where it commands our hatred then we are not interpreters but fathers of the Word as he spake of Origine and put what shape and sense we please upon it Nor can we urge the obscurity of the Text especially in agendis in matters of practice for I never thought it a matter of wit and subtilty to become a Christian And if we weigh the plainness and easiness of Scripture and the time and leisure which most have but mispend upon their lusts and the world I might bespeak them as Chrysostome bespake his auditory 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 What need have you of a preacher For why should our Wit serve us rather to make us rich then good Why may we not try out as many conclusions for saving Knowledge as we do for Riches and Honour and the things of this world 2. Let us not seek death in the errour of our lives Let us not plunge our selves in errour and then study to believe that which we cannot believe without fear and trembling Let us not present God unto us in a strange and aliene shape in that monstrosity which we affect and so make him like unto our selves Quid tibi cum Deo si tuis legibus What hast thou do with God if thou wilt be thy own Lawgiver and wilt live and be judged by no other Laws but those which thy self makest This is indeed to take the place of God whilst we give him but the name Oh beloved it is ill trying conclusions with him who tryeth both the heart and the reins From him no cloud can shadow us no deep can cover us no secret grot or cave can hide us And if we act by our own laws yet we shall be judged by his And what paint soever we put upon our sins he that numbreth the stars will number them all and call them by their right names What we call Religion shall be with him Profaneness What we call Faith with him shall be but Phansie What we call the Cause of God shall be the cause of our Damnation Quantas cuncque tenebras superfuderis Deus lumen est Cast what mists you will build what labyrinths you please God is Light and will find out thy Sin that monster that Minotaur Be not deceived God is not mocked but is rather more jealous of his Wisdome then of his Power At the very sight of Sin his Anger waxeth hot but when vve vvould hide our sin from his sight his Jealousie burneth like fire For he that sinâ—eth dallieth with God's Power but he that palliateth his sin playeth with his Wisdome and tryeth whether he can fraudulently circumvent and abuse him He who sinneth would be stronger then God but he who shifteth a sin into the habit of Holiness by a pretense would be wiser then God potior Jupiter quà m ipse Jupiter Then vvhich no impiety can be greater 3. And last of all let us remember the end When vve sow look forward toward the Harvest Say vve vvithin our selves What may this vvhich I now sow bring forth Will Light grow up here and Joy or shall I reap nothing but Darkness and Corruption
this they did contradict themselves who brought in their Wiseman sensless of pain even on the rack and wheel When the Body is an unprofitable burden unserviceable to the Soul oportet educere animam laborantem we ought to do drive the Soul out of such an useless habitation Cum non sis quod esse velis non est quod ultrà sies When thou art what thou shouldst be there is no reason thou shouldst be any longer Quare mori voluerim quaeris En quia vivam Would you know the reason why I would dye The onely reason is because I do live These were the speeches of men strangers from the common-wealth of Israel 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of those who were without without Christ and so without God in this world But the Christian keeps his station and moves not from it injussu Imperatoris but when the Lord of all the world commands who hath given us a Soul to beautifie and perfect with his graces but hath not given us that power over it when it is disquieted and vexed as he hath given to the Magistrate over us if we offend and break the peace of the common-wealth Qui seipsum occidit est homicida si est homo He that kills himself is a murderer and homicide if he be a man And he that thus desires death desires it not to that end for which it is desireable to be with Christ but to be out of the world which frowns upon him and handles him too roughly which he hath not learnt to withstand nor hath will to conquer This desire is like that of the damned that hills might cover them and mountains fall on them that they migâ—â— be no more No this desire of S. Paul is from the heaven heavenly drawn from that place where his conversation was wrought in him by the will of God and bowing in submission to his will a longing and panting after that rest and sabbath which remains after that crown which was laid up for him And this Desire filled the hearts of all those who with S. Paul loved God in sincerity and truth in whom the Soul being of a divine extraction and like unto God and cleaving and united to him had a kind of striving and inclination to the things above and was restless and unquiet till it came to rest in him who is the centre of all good Here they acted their parts in the world as on a stage contemned hated reviled it trod it under foot and longed for their exit to go out Vae mihi quia incolatus meus prolongatus est saith David Wo is me that I sojourn in it any longer So Elias who could call down fire from heaven give laws to the clouds and shut and open heaven when he would cryes out unto God It is enough Take away my life for I am not better then my fathers And this affection the Gospel it self instills into us in that solemn Prayer Thy kingdome come wherein we desire saith Tertullian maturius regnare non diutiùs servire to reign in heaven sooner and not to stay longer and serve and drudge upon the earth Wretched man that I am who shall deliver me from this body of death this whole state and generality of sins of Calamities and those evils which the world swarms with life brings along with it So Pharaoh speaking of the Locusts which were sent Intreat saith he the Lord your God to take away this death from me This desire that vvas in S. Paul in some degree possesseth the heart of every regenerate person and is nourished and fomented in them by the operarion of the blessed Spirit as a right spirit a spirit of Love vvorking in us the Love of God and as a spirit of Peace filling our hearts vvith Peace making our conscience a house of Peace as the Ark of God as the Temple of Solomon where no noise was heard We love Christ and would be there where his honour dwelleth our conscience is at rest and we have confidence in God Now first to love God is not a duty of so quick despatch as some imagin It is not enough to speak good of his name to call upon him in the time of trouble to make laws against those which take his name in vain to give him thanks for that he never did and will certainly punish to make our boast of him all the day long For do not even hypocrites and Pharisees the same But to love him is to do his will and keep his commandments John 17. By this we glorifie him I have glorified thee on earth saith Christ and the interpretation follows I have finished the work thou gavest me to do that is I have preached thy law declared thy will publisht both thy promises and precepts by the observation of which men may love thee and long after thee and be delivered from the fear of death Idem velle idem nolle ea demùm est firma amicitia then are we truly servants and friends to God when we have the same will when we have no will of own The sting of Death is sin and there is no way to take it out to spoil this King of terrour of his power but by subduing our Affections to our Reason the Flesh to the Spirit and surrendring up our wills unto God Then we dare look Death in the face and ask him Where is thy terrour Where is thy sting God loves them that love him nay he cannot but love them bearing his Image and being his workmanship in Christ And he that is thus loved and thus loves cannot but hasten and press forward and fly like the Doves as the Prophet speaketh to the windows of heaven It is a famous speech of Martin Luther Homo perfectè credens se esse haeredem Dei non diu superstes merueret A man that perfectly and upon sure grounds doth believe himself to be the child and heir of God would not long survive that assurance but would be swallowed up and dye of immoderate joy This is that transformation and change by which our very nature is altered Now Heaven is all and the World is Nothing All the rivers of pleasures vvhich this world can yield cannot quench this love What is Beauty to him that delights in the face of God what is Riches to him vvhose treasure is in heaven vvhat is Honour to him vvho is candidatus Angelorum vvhose ambition is to be like unto the Angels This true unfeigned Love ravisheth the soul and setteth it as it were in heavenly places This makes us living dying men nay dead before we depart not sensible of Pleasures which flatter us of Injuries vvhich are thrown upon us of Miseries vvhich pinch us having no eye no ear no sense no heart for the world vvilling to loose that being which vve have in this shop of vanities and to be loosed that vve may be with Christ Secondly this Love of God and this Obedience to his will
Powers and Principalities Laws and Precepts and all that is named of God Ambition maketh Laws Jura perjura Swear and forswear Arise kill and eat Covetousness maketh Laws condemneth us to the mines to dig and sweat Quocunque modo rem Gather and lay up Come not within the reach of Omri's statutes of humane Laws and you need not fear any Law of Christ. Private Interest maketh Laws and indeed is the Emperour of the world and maketh men slaves to crouch and bow under every burthen to submit to every Law of man though it enjoyn to day what it did forbid yesterday to raise up our heads and then duck at every shadow that cometh over us but we can see no such formidable power in the Royal Law of Christ because it breatheth not upon it to promote and uphold it but looketh as an enemy that would cast it down biddeth us deny our selves which we do every day for our lusts for our honour for our profit but cannot do it for Christ or for that crown which is laid up for those that do it Thus every thing hath power over us which may destroy us but Christ is not hearkned to nor those his Laws which may make us wise unto salvation For we are too ready to believe what some have been bold to teach that there are no such Laws at all in the Gospel Therefore in the last place let us cast this root of bitterness out of our hearts let us look upon it as a most dangerous and baneful errour an errour which hath brought that abomination of desolation into the world and into the lives and manners of Christians which have made them stink amongst the inhabitants of the earth amongst Jews and Pagans and Infidels which tremble to behold those works of darkness which they see every day not onely done but defended by those who call themselves the children of light Because in that name we bite and devour one another for this they despise the Gospel of Christ because we boast of it all the day long and make use of it as a Licence or Letters patent to be worse then they riot it in the light beat our fellow-servants defraud and oppress them which they do not in darkness and in the shadow of death The first Christians called the Gospel legem Christianam the Christian Law and so lived as under a Law so lived that nothing but the name was accused But the latter times have brought forth subtle Divines that have disputed away the Law and now there is scarce any thing left commendable but the name A Gospeller and worse then a Turk or Pagan a Gospeller and a Revenger a Gospeller and a Libertine a Gospeller and a Schismatick a Gospeller and a Deceiver a Gospeller and a Traitor a Gospeller that will be under no Law a Gospeller that is all for Love and Mercy and nothing for Fear I may say the Devil is a better Gospeller for he believeth and trembleth And indeed this is one of the Devils subtilest engines veritatem veritate concutere to shake and beat down one Truth with another to bury our Duty in the Good news to hide the Lord in the Saviour and the Law in the covering of Mercy to make the Gospel supplant it self that it may be of no effect to have no sound heard but that of Imputative righteousness From hence that irregularity and disobedience amongst Christians that liberty and peace in sin For when Mercy waiteth so close upon us and Judgment is far out of our sight we walk on pleasantly in forbidden paths and sin with the less regret sin and fear not pardon lying so near at hand To conclude then Let us not deceive our selves and think that there is nothing but Mercy and Pardon in the Gospel and so rely upon it till we commit those sins which shall be pardoned neither in this world nor in the world to come Nemo promittat sibi quod non promittit Evangelium saith Augustine Let no man make the promise larger then the Gospel hath made it nor so presume on the Grace of God as to turn it into wantonness so extol it as to depress it so trust to Mercy as to forfeit it but look into the Gospel and behold it in its own shape and face as pardoning sin and forbidding sin as a royal Release and a royal Law And look upon Christ the authour and finisher of our faith as a Jesus to save us Psal 2. and a Lord to command us as preaching peace and preaching a Law Rom. 8.3 condemning sin in his flesh dying that sin might dye and teaching us to destroy it in our selves In a word let us so look into the Gospel that it may be unto us the savour of life unto life and not the savour of death unto death so look upon Christ here that he may be our Lord to govern us and our Jesus to save us that we may be subject to his Laws and so be made capable of his mercy that we may acknowledge him to be our Lord and he acknowledge us before his Father that Death may lose its sting and Sin its strength and we may be saved in the last day through Jesus Christ our Lord. The Two and Fortieth SERMON PART II. JAMES I. 25. But whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty and continueth therein he being not a forgetful hearer but a doer of the work this man shall be blessed in his deed THat the Precepts of the Gospel do bind us as Laws ye have heard already and how the Doctrine of the Gospel is a Law We must in the next place see how it is a perfect Law And first That is perfect saith the Philosopher cui nihil adimi nec adjici potest from which nothing can be taken and to which nothing can be added Such is the Gospel You cannot adde to it you cannot take from it one lota or tittle If any shall adde unto these things Rev. 22.18 God shall adde to him the plagues that are written in this book And if any shall take away from them God shall take away his part out of the book of life There needeth no second hand to supply it and that hand deserveth to be cut off that shall corrupt or alter it For look upon the End which is Blessedness There you have it drawn out in the fairest lines that flesh and bloud can read in as large a representation as our humane nature is capable of Then view the Means to bring us to that end They are plainly exprest and set out there in such a character that we may run and read them open to our understanding exciting our faith raising our hope and even provoking us to action There is nothing which we ought to know nothing which we must believe nothing which we may hope for nothing which concerneth us to do nothing which may lift us up to happiness and carry us to the end but it is written
so few instances of Retractation but a Augustine one among the Antients and of later dayes b Bellarm. one more but such a one as did but like some Plumbers make his business worse by mending it So harsh a thing it is to the nature of Men to seem to have mistaken and so powerful is Prejudice For to confess an Errour is to say we wanted Wit And therefore we should flye from Prejudice as from a Serpent Gen. 3. For it deceiveth us as the Serpent did Eve giveth a No to Gods Yea maketh Men true and God a lyar and nulleth the sentence of death You shall dye the death when this is the Interpreter is your Eyes shall be opened and to deceive our selves is to be as Gods knowing good and evil And it may well be called a Serpent for the biting of it is like that of the Tarantula the working of its venome maketh us dance and laugh our selves to death For a setled prejudicate though false opinion may build up as strong resolutions as a true Saul was as zealous for the Law as Paul was for the Gospel A Heretick will be as loud for a fiction as the Orthodox for the Truth the Turk as violent for his Mahomet as a Christian for his Saviour Habet diabolus suos Martyres For the Devil hath his Martyrs as well as God And it is Prejudice which is that evil spirit that casteth them into the fire and the water that consumeth or drowneth them 1 Sam. 15.32 that leadeth them forth like Agag delicately to their death And this is most visible in those of the Church of Rome We may see even the marks upon them Obstinacy Insolency Scorn and contempt a proud and high Disdain of any thing that appeareth like reason or of any man that shall speak it to teach and recover them Which are certainly the signes of the biting of this Serpent Prejudice or as some will call it the marks of the Beast Quà m gravis incubat How heavy doth Prejudice lye upon them who are taught to renounce their very Sense and to mistrust nay to deny their Reason who see with other mens eyes Apul. De mundo and hear with other mens ears qui non animosed auribus cogitant who do not judge with their mind but with their ears The first prejudice is That theirs is the Catholick Church and cannot err and then all other search and enquiry is vain as a learned writer observeth For what need they go further to find the truth then to the high Priests chair to which it is bound And this they back and strengthen with many others of Antiquity making that most true which is most antient Quintil. And yet omnia vetera nova fuere that which is now old was at first new And by this Argument Truth was not Truth when it first began nor the Light Light when it first sprung from on high and visited us And besides Truth though it had found professours but in this latter age yet was first born because Errour is nothing else but a deviation from the Truth and cometh forth last and layeth hold on the heel of Truth to supplant it Besides these Councils Which may err and the Truth many times is voted down when it is put to most voices Nazianzene was bold to censure them as having seen no good effect of any of them And we our selves have seen and our eyes have dropped for it what a meer Name what Prejudice can do with the Many Nunquam tam benè cum rebus humanis agebatur ut plures essent meliores Sen. de Clement 1. and what it can countenance And many others they have of Miracles which were but lies of Glory which is but vanity of Universality which is bounded and confined to a certain place With these and the like that first prejudice That the Church cannot err is underpropt and upheld And yet again these depend upon that Such a mutual complication there is of Errours as in a bed of Snakes If the first be not true then these were nothing and if these pillars be once shaken and they are but mud that Church will soon sink in its reputation and not fit so high as magisterially to dictate to all the Churches of the world And as we have set up this Queen of Churches as an ensample of the effects of Prejudice so may we hold it up as a glass to see our own She saith we are a Schismatical We please and assure our selves that we are a Reformed Church And so we are and yet Prejudice may find a place even in the Reformation it self Rome is not only guilty of this but even some members of the Reformation who think themselves nearest to Christ when they run farthest from that Church though it be from the Truth it self And this is nothing else but Prejudice to judge our selves pure because our Church is purged to be less reformed because that is Reformed or to think that Heaven and Happiness will be raised and rest upon a Word or Name and that we are Saints as soon as we are Protestants Almost every Sect and every Faction laboureth under this Prejudice and feeleth it not but runneth away with its burden And too many there be who predestinate themselves to Heaven when they have made a surrendry of themselves to such a Church to such a company or collection nay sometimes but to such a man I accuse not Luther or Calvine of errour but honour them rather though I I know they were but men and I know they have erred or else our Church doth in many things and it were easie to name them But suppose they had broacht as many lyes as the Father of them could suggest yet they who have raised them in their esteem to such an height must needs have too open a breast to have received them as oracles and to have lickt up poyson it self if it had fallen from their pens since they have the same motive and inducement to believe them when they err which they have to believe them when they speak the truth and that is no more then their Name Orat. pro Muraena Tolle Catonem de Causa said Tully Cato was a name of virtue and carried authority with it and therefore he thought him not a fit witness in that cause against Muraena for his very name might overbear and sink it Tolle Augustinum de causa Take away the name of Augustine of Luther and Calvine and Arminius for they are but names not arguments There is but one Name by which we may be saved Acts 4.12 And his Name alone must have authority Hebr. 12.2 and prevail with us who is the authour and finisher of our faith VVe may honour others and give unto them that which is theirs but we must not deifie them nor pull Christ out of his throne to place them in his room Of this we may be sure There is
saved and make them nigh unto him to follow in the same method à morte ad vitam from suffering to glory from death to life Tota ecclesia cum Christo computatur ut una persona Hebr. 2.10 Christ and his Church are in computation but one person He ought to suffer and they ought to suffer They suffer in him and he in them Luke 24.26 to the end of the world Nor is any other method answerable either to his infinite Wisdome and Justice which hath set it down in indeleble characters or to our mortal and frail condition which must be bruised before it can be healed and be levelled with the ground before it can be raised up Quicquid Deo convenit homini prodest saith Tertullian that which is convenient for Christ is profitable for us That which becometh him we must wear as an ornament of grace unto our head There is an oportet set upon both Luke 24.26 He ought and we ought first to suffer and then to enter into glory to die first that we may rise again First it cannot consist with the Wisdome of God that Christ should suffer and die and that we might live as we please and then reign with him and so pass à deliciis in delicias from one paradise to another that he should overcome the Devil for those who will be his vassals that he should foil him in his proud temptations for those who will not be humble and beat off his sullen temptation for those who will distrust and murmure that he should make his victorious death commeatum delinquendi a licence and charter for all generations to fling away their weapons and not strike a stroke If he should have done this we could not have taken him for our Captain and if we will not enter the lists he will not take us for his Souldiers Non novimus Christum si non credimus We do not know Christ if we believe him not to be such a one as he is a Captain that leadeth us as Moses did the children of Israel through a wilderness full of fiery Serpents into Canaan through the valley of death into life Nor is it expedient for us who are not born but made Christians and a Christian is not made with a thought whose lifting up supposeth some dungeon or prison in which we formerly were whose rising looketh back into some grave Tolle certamen nè virtus quidem quicquam erit Take away this combat with our spiritual enemies with afflictions and tentations and Religion it self will be but a bare name and Christianity as Leo the tenth is said to have called it but a fable What were my Patience if no Pain did look towards it What were my Faith if there were no Doubt to assault it What were my Hope if there were no Scruple to shake it What were my charity if there were no Misery to urge it no Malice to oppose it What were my Day if I had no Night or what were my Resurrection if I were never dead I was dead saith the Lord of life And his speech is directed to us who do but think we live being indeed in our graves entombed in this world which we so love compassed about with enemies covered with disgraces raked up as it were in those evils that are those locusts which come out of the smoke of the bottomless pit Rev. 9 3. And when we hear this voice and by the virtue and power of it look upon these and make a way through them we rise with Christ 1 John 5.4 our hope is lively and our faith is that victory which overcomeh the world Nor need this method seem grievous unto us For these very words I was dead may put life and light into it and commend it not onely as the truest but as a plain and easie method For by Christ's Death we must understand all those miseries that he suffered before which were as the train and ceremony of his Death as the officers of the High priest to lead him to it as Poverty Scorn and Contempt the Burden of our sins his Agony and bloody Sweat These we must look upon as the principles of this heavenly Science by which our best Master learned to succour us in our sufferings to lift us up out of our graves and to raise us from the dead There is life in his death and comfort in his sufferings For we have not such an High priest who will not help us Hebr. 4.15 2.17 but which is one and a chief end of his suffering and death who is touched with the feeling of our infirmities and is merciful and faithful hath not only power for that he may have and not shew it but will and propension also desire and diligent care to hold up them who are ready to fall and to bring them back who were even brought to the gates of death Indeed Mercy without Power can beget but a good wish S. James his complemental charity Be ye warmed and Be ye filled and Be ye comforted Jam. 2.16 which leaveth us cold and empty and comfortless And Power without Mercy will neither strengthen a weak knee nor heal a broken heart It may as well strike us dead as revive us But Mercy and Power when they meet and kiss each other will work a miracle will uphold us when we fall and raise us from the dead will give eyes to the blind and strength to the weak will make a fiery furnace a bath a rack a bed and persecution a blessing will call those sorrows that are as if they were not Such a virtue and force such life there is in these three words I was dead For though his Compassion and Mercy were coeternal with him as God yet as Man he learnt them He came into the world as into a school and there learnt them by his sufferings and death Hebr. 5.8 For the way to be sensible of anothers misery is first to feel it our selves It must be ours or if it be not ours we must make it ours before our heart will melt I must take my brother into my self I must make my self as him before I help him I must be that Lazar that beggeth of me Luke 16. Luke 10.30 34. and then I give I must be that wounded man by the way-side and then I powre my oyl and wine into his wounds and take care of him I must feel the Hell of sin in my self before I can snatch my brother out of the fire Compassion is first learnt at home and then it walketh abroad Job 29.15 and is eyes to the blind and feet to the lame and so healeth two at once both the miserable and him that comforts him They were both under the same disease one as sick as the other I was dead and I suffered are the main strength of our salvation For though Christ could no more forget to be merciful then he could leave off to be
it self and fill the world with Atheists which will learn by no Masters but such as instruct fools nor acknowledge any Keyes but those which may break their head But indeed we have had these Keyes too long in our hands For though they concern us yet are they not the keyes in the Text nor had we lookt upon them but that those of the Romish party wheresoever they find keys mentioned take them up and hang them on their Church But we must observe a difference betwixt the keyes of the kingdome of heaven Matth. 16.19 which were given to Peter and the keyes of Hell and of Death although with them when the Keyes are seen Heaven and Hell are all one For the key of David Rev. 3.7 which openeth and no man shutteth and shutteth and no man openeth was not given to the Apostles but is a regality and prerogative of Christ who only hath power of Life and Death over Hell and the Grave who therefore calleth himself the first and the last because although when he first publisht his Gospel he died and was buried yet he rose again to live for ever so to perfect the great work of our salvation and by his power to bind those in everlasting chains who stood out against him and to bring those that bow to his sceptre out of prison into liberty and everlasting life The power is his alone and he made it his by his sufferings Phil. 2.8 9. He was obedient to death therefore God did highly exalt him Phil. 2.7 11. He became a Lord by putting on the form of a servant But he hath delegated his power to his Apostles and those that succeed them to make us capable and fit subjects for his power to work upon which nevertheless will have its operation and effect either let us out or shut us up for ever under the power of Hell and of Death Were not he alive and to live for evermore we had been shut up in darkness and oblivion for ever But Christ living infuseth life into us that the bands of Hell and of Death can no more hold us than they can him There is such a place as Hell but to the living members of Christ there is no such place For it is impossible it should hold them You may as well place Lucifer at the right hand of God as a true Christian in Hell For how can Light dwell in Darkness How can Purity mix with stench How can Beauty stay with Horrour If Nature could forget her course and suffer contradictories to be drawn together and be both true yet this is such a contradiction as unless Christ could die again which is impossible can never be reconciled Matth. 5.18 Heaven and earth may pass away but Christ liveth for evermore and the power and virtue of his Life is as everlasting as Everlastingness it self Rev. 6.8 And again There was a pale horse and his name that sat on him was Death and he had power to kill with the sword and with hunger and with death and with the beasts of the earth But now he doth not kill us he doth but stagger us and fling us down that we may rise again and tread him under our feet and by the power of an everliving Saviour be the death of Death it self Job 18.14 Death was the King of terrors and the fear of Death made us slaves Heb. 2.15 and kept us in servility and bondage all our life long made our pleasures less delightful and our virtues more tedious made us tremble and shrink from those Heroick undertakings for the truth of God But now they in whom Christ liveth and moveth and hath his being as in his own dare look upon Death in all his horror expeditum morti genus saith Tertullian and are ready to meet him in his most dreadful march with all his army of Diseases Racks and Tortures Man before he sinned knew not what Death meant then Eve familiarly conversed with the Serpent so do Christians with Death Having that Divine Image restored in them they are secure and fear it not For what can that Tyrant take from them Col. 3.3 Their life That is hid with Christ in God Psal 37.4 It cannot cut them off from pleasure for their delight is in the Lord. Matth. 6.20 It cannot rob them of their treasure for that is laid up in heaven It can take nothing from them but what themselves have already crucified Gal. 5.24 their Flesh It cannot cut off one hope one thought one purpose for all their thoughts purposes and hopes were leveld not on this but on another life And now Christ hath his keyes in his hand Death is but a name it is nothing or if it be something it is such a thing as troubled S Augustine to define what it is We call it a punishment but indeed it is a benefit a favour even such a favour that Christ who is as omnipotent as he is everlasting who can work all in all though he abolished the Law of Moses and of Ceremonies yet would not abrogate the law by which we are bound over unto death because it is so profitable and advantageous to us It was indeed threatned but it is now a promise or the way unto it for Death it is that letteth us into that which was promised It was an end of all it is now the beginning of all It was that which cut off life it is now that through which as through a gate we enter into it We may say it is the first point and moment of our after-eternity for it is so neer unto it that we can hardly sever them We live or rather labour and fight and strive with the World and with Life it self which is it self a temptation and whilst by the power of our everliving Christ we hold up and make good this glorious contention and fight and conquer and press forward towards the mark either nature faileth or is prest down with violence and we dye that is our language but the Spirit speaketh after another manner we sleep we are dissolved we fall in pieces our bodies from our souls and we from our miseries and temptations and this living everliving Christ gathereth us together again breatheth life and eternity into us that we may live and reign with him for evermore And so I have viewed all the parts of the Text being the main articles of our Faith 1 Christs Death 2. his Life 3. his eternal Life and last of all his Power of the Keyes his Dominion over Hell and Death We will but in a word fit the ECCE the Behold in the Text to every part of it and set the Seal Amen to it and so conclude And first we place the ECCE the Behold on his Death He suffered and dyed that he might learn to have compassion on thy miseries and on thy dust and raise thee from both and wilt thou learn nothing from his compassion
Reproch then Misery and Affliction then Persecution and Death being compassed about with these terrours is a matter of difficulty in regard of our Weakness and Frailty which loveth not to look upon Beauty in such a dress and of that domestick war which is within us and that fight and contention which is between the Flesh and the Spirit And in this respect it is a narrow way and we must use a kind of violence upon our selves to work through it to our end But yet it is shewn and manifested and the knowledge of the way is not shut up and barricadoed except to those who are not willing to find it but run a contrary way by some false light which they had rather look upon and follow then that which leadeth them upon the pricks upon labour and sorrow and difficulty Whatsoever concerneth a Man is easie to be seen for it is as open as the Day In other passages and dispensations of himself in other effects of his power and wisdome God is a God afar off but in this which concerneth us he is near at hand Jer. 23.23 he is with us about us and within us In other things which will no whit advantage us to see he maketh darkness his pavilion round about him Psal 18.11 but in this he displayeth his beams His way is in the whirlwind Nah. 1.3 Psal 77.19 and his footsteps are not known Why he lifteth up one on high and layeth another in the dust Why he now shineth upon my tabernacle and anon beateth upon it with his tempest Why he placeth a man of Belial in the throne and setteth the poor innocent man to grind at the mill Why he passeth by a brothel-house and with his thunder beateth down his own temple Why he keepeth not a constant course in his works but to day passeth by us in a still voice and to morrow in an earthquake as it is far removed out of our ken and sight so to know it would not promote or forward us in our motion to happiness We are the wiser that we do not know these things For there is no greater folly in the world then for a mortal finite creature to discover such a mad ambition as to desire to know as much and be as wise as his Creatour This was my infirmity Psal 77.10 saith David I was even sick when I did think of it and he checketh himself for it Behold the world is my stage and here I must move by that light which God hath offered me and not be put out of my part to a full shame by a bold and unseasonable contemplation of his proceedings not run out of my own wayes by gazing too boldly on his My business is to embrace this Good Psal 91.11 12. and that will be my Angel to keep me in all my wayes that I dash not my foot against a stone against perplext and cross events which are those stones we so hardly digest I cannot know why God lifteth up one and pulleth down another but if I cleave to this Psal 75.7 this will lift up my head even when I am down It is not fit I should know why the wicked prosper Jer. 12.1 but by this light I see a Serpent in their Paradise which will deceive and sting them to death Why they prosper I cannot find out but he that seemeth to hide himself cometh so near me as to tell me that their prosperity shall slay them Prov. 1.32 that their greatest happiness is their greatest curse and if there be a hell on earth it is better then their heaven It is not convenient for me to know things to come quem mihi Horat. l. i. od 11. quem tibi Finem Dii dederint what will be my end and what will be theirs to know the number of their dayes how long they shall rage and I suffer These are like the secrets of great Princes and they may undo us and therefore they are lockt up from us in the prescience and bosome of God and he keepeth the key himself and will not shew them But cast thy burden upon him Psal 55.22 do thy duty exercise thy self in that which he hath shewn and then thou mayest lye down and rest upon this that their damnation sleepeth not 2 Pet. 2.3 that their rage shall not hurt thee and that thy patience shall crown thee In a word If it be evil and thou foreseest it it may cast thee down too low and if it be good it may lift thee up too high and thy exaltation may be more dangerous then thy fall Psal 34.14 1 Pet. 3.11 but eschew evil and follow that which is good and this will be a certain prophesie and presage of a good end be it what it will whether it come to meet thee in the midst of rayes or of a tempest These things God will not shew thee because thy eye is too weak to receive them Nor in the next place will he answer thy Curiosity and determin every question which thou art too ready to put up nor redeem thee from those doubts and perplexities which not Knowledge but Ignorance hath led thee into and so left thee in that maze and labyrinth out of which thou canst not get For it favoureth more of Ignorance then of Knowledge to venture in our search without light to conclude without premisses and to affect the knowledge of that which we must needs know was yet never discovered and therefore can never be known That Good which is good for us God bringeth out of the treasurie of his Wisedome Psal 34.8 and layeth it before us and biddeth us come and see how gracious he is But that which is curiosae disquisitionis as Tertullian speaketh of a more subtle nature he keepeth from our eyes For Religion may stand fast as mount Sion though it have not those deeper speculations to support it which many times supplant and undermine it and rob it of that precious time and those earnest endeavours which were due and consecrated to it alone What a fruitless dispute might that seem to be between S. Hierome and S. Augustine concerning the Original of the Soul when after long debate and some heat and frequent intercourse of letters S. Augustine himself confesseth in his Retractations De origine animae nec tunc sciebam nec adhuc scio Concerning the Soul's original I knew nothing then and know as little now What a needless controversie arose between the Eastern and the Western Bishops concerning the time of the keeping of the Feast of Easter when whensoever they kept it they gave some occasion to standers by of fear that they kept it both with the leaven of malice and uncharitableness And what a weakness is it to put that to the question which before inquiry made we may easily know we shall never find Many such questions have been in agitation many such inquiries made and some others of another
delightful but what is it to the splendour of Virtue who would look upon a face that could see Virtue naked What is Honour that is blasted with a breath with a frown to immortal Glory What is the Merchants Pearl to the Kingdome of Heaven What are Pleasures which are but for a season to those which are for evermore Hebr. 11.25 What is a span of Time a Moment to Eternity And certainly were these outward things which do but please and tempt and withdraw us from better the onely reward of goodness these aery fugitive envenomed glories all that we should find at the end of our race no wise man vvould stoop to reach them up If these vvere the end of our hopes we were of all men most miserable 1 Cor. 15.19 If this vvere all the heaven that vvere promised vve should not believe there vvas either a God or Heaven Compare them if you please vvorldly glories vvith spiritual blessings The one come tovvard us smiling and make us mirth and melody but they soon turn their back and leave us sad and disconsolate in the very shadovv of death The other present themselves at first with great distast to flesh and bloud because we look upon them through a sad and dark medium through Disgrace and Affliction and Death it self but if we look often and converse familiarly with them we shall see in them Beauty and Riches and Heaven and God himself And is it not a great deal better for a while to watch and strive and fight it out and afterwards rejoyce and triumph as conquerours then by the impatience of one hour to be slaves for ever De Patientia Quid enim est malum nisi impatientia boni saith Tertullian For what is evil what is our yielding to temptations what is the slacking of our watch but our want of patience towards that which is good Thus if we compare them we shall soon discover their deformity and on holy desires and strong resolutions as with the wings of a dove fly swiftly away that we may be at rest Thus if we know them they can hardly hurt us For what Pliny spake of Monsters and Prodigies is true either of fair or black Tentations Ostentorum vires in eorum potestate sunt quibus portenduntur Prout quaeque accepta sunt ità valent Plin. Nat. hist l. 28. c. 3. As of the one so of the other their power is no greater then they would have it to whom it is shewed and presented and are of force onely so far as they are received have no power to hurt us but from our selves And therefore we must deal with them as they did with those prodigies neglect and flight them that they may not hurt us beat down crucifie the flesh with the affections and lusts disgrace and vilifie every imagination that exalteth it self against God hath them with a perfect hatred For not to yield is to overcome To study and learn and know temptations and find out where their great strength lyeth and cut it off to consider them as they are not in appearance but reality to contemn and put them by is that which maketh way to victory and prepareth us for the coming of the Lord. Nihil in bello oportet contemni But thirdly let us not so neglect and slight them as to let them come up too near us for so to neglect an enemy is to strengthen him But let us stand at the doors and repress and put them back at the first sight either of their false glory or their borrowed terrour Psal 119.37 Let us turn away our eyes Nemo diu tatus periculo proximus Cypr. Epist 61 that they behold not vanity Periculosum est crebrò videre per quae aliquando captus sis A dangerous thing it is nay a folly to behold those objects and look upon them often which may be a snare unto us to dally with the point of that sword which may enter our bowels to sport with that serpent which may sting us to death What should they do long in the Eye Why should they stay so long in the Phansie till she gild and beautifie them and set them up as an idole to worship No let us watch and rowse up our selves and beat down every altar as soon as it is erected there Nay stay the Phansie in its work repress them here in causis in their beginnings take these Babylonish brats and dash them against the stones Psal 137.8 9. For he that doth not meet and withstand an evil in the approch hath fairly invited it to come forward Qui morbo non occurrit sibi manus infert He that doth not use speedy means to keep back a disease is as he that killeth himself A thought begetteth Delight Delight begetteth Consent Consent is seen in Action Action begetteth Custome Custome Necessity Necessity Death It was but an Object but an Apparition but a thought at first and now it is Death And he that was willing a Thought should lead in the front was willing also that Death should come in the rear It is not safe thus to dally with a Temptation to resolve not to act it and yet to act in the mind which will soon make the basis and ground-work of a resolution to be afraid of the action and yet commit the sin to nourish that sin in my bosome which I am ashamed to be seen with abroad which will yet at last break forth before the Sun and the people to harbour that in my closet which within a while will be on the house top That of Bernard is most true though it be in rhythme Non nocet sensus ubi non est consensus The sense hurteth not where there is no consent It is no sin for the Eye to see or for the Ear to hear or for the Phansie to set up objects within her in that shape in which they appear But it is a hard matter as S. Hierome speaketh integritate mentis abuti voluptatibus to abuse those pleasures which daily present themselves to a good end to have them as Aristippus had his Lais and not to have them to live in pleasure without that delight which maketh tentation a sin We may say of Temptations as he did of Fortune Vna est ad illam securitas non toties illam experiri The best security we have against Fortunes fickle inconstancy is not to make tryal of her too often not to want her So of Tentations It is not good to look too often upon them when they flatter not to see too often not to hear too often not to open our eyes or our ears to vanity For as they who busie themselves in worldly affairs when all things succeed prosperously do begin at last to dote on riches and love them for themselves which they sought for at first but for their necessity so what we look upon at first as a common object by degrees insinuateth it self and
13.16 Therefore to do good and to distribute forget not for with such sacrifices God is well pleased This then may well go for one part or limb of Religion In the next place as in the visitation of the fatherless and widows all charity to our brother is implyed so all charity to our selves is shut up in the other in keeping our selves unspotted of the world And this phrase of keeping our selves is very significant and hath its weight For those spots which defile us and make us such leopards are not so much from the world as from our selves as a cheat is not onely from the cunning of the impâ—stour but from the want of wisdome and experience in him that is deceived It is ignorance that promoteth the cheat that draweth the power and faculty into act that maketh him that hath a subtle wit injurious and it is an evil heart that makes the world contagious Wisdome preventeth a cheat and watchfulness a spot This world in it self hath nothing in it that can defile us Gen. 1 31. For God saw all that he made was good Tertull. de â—pectaculis c. 2. yea very good Yet Nihil non est Dei quod Deum offendit there is nothing by which we offend God but is from God That Beauty which kindleth lust is his gift that Gold which hath made that desolation upon the earth was the work of his hands He giveth us the bread we surfet on Psal 24.1 he filleth the cup that intoxicateth us The world is the Lord's and all that therein is but yet this world bespotteth us not because it is his who cannot behold much less could make any unclean thing We must therefore search out another world And you need not travel far for you may stay at home 1 ep 2. 16. and find it in your selves S. John hath made the discovery for you in this first Epistle where he draweth the map of it and divideth it to our hands into three provinces or parts 1. the lust of the flesh where unlawful Pleasures sport themselves 2. the lust of the eyes where Covetousness buildeth her an house 3. the pride of life which whetteth a sword for the Revenger erecteth a throne for the Ambitious raiseth up a triumphant arch for the Vain-glorious This is the world saith S. John even a world of wickedness This inverteth the whole course of Nature and maketh the wheel of the Creation move disorderly This world within us maketh that world without us an enemy Prov. 31.30 Prov. 20.1 1 Tim. 6.9 maketh Beauty deceitful Wine a mocker Riches a snare worketh that into sin out of which we might have made a key to open the gates of heaven droppeth its poyson under every leaf upon every object and by its mixture with the World ingendreth that serpent which spitteth the poyson back again upon us and not onely bespotteth and defileth James 1.15 but stingeth us to death For when Lust hath conceived it bringeth forth sin and when sin is finished it defileth a man and leaveth those spots behind it which deface him and give him a thousand several shapes The Schools call it maculam peccati the blot and stain of sin which is of no positive reality but a deprivation and defect of beauty in the soul and varieth as a shadow doth according to the diversity of those bodies that cast it We see then that there is a world within us as well as without us And when these two are in conjunction when our Lust joyneth it self to the things of this world Luke 15.13 15 as the Prodigal is said to do to a master in a far countrey then followeth pollution and deformity and as many spots as there be sins which are as many as the hairs of our head Beauty bringeth in deformity riches poverty plenty leanness into the soul Prov. 4.23 Therefore to conclude this to keep our hearts with all diligence and to keep our selves unspotted of the world is a main and principal part of our Religion and will keep us members of Christ and parts of the Church Col. 3.5 when Profaneness and Covetousness which is idolatry shall have laid her discipline her honour in the dust A man of tender bowels and a pure heart is as the Church Matth. 16.18 The gates of hell cannot prevail against him By this we intimate that we worship God and draw near unto him as near as flesh and mortality will permit Our escaping the spots and pollutions of this world maketh us followers of that God who marketh every spot we have 2 Pet. 2 20. and is not touched who seeth us in our blood and pollution Ezek. 16.6 and is not defiled who beholdeth all the wickedness in the world and yet remaineth the same for ever even Goodness and Purity it self 2 Pet. 1.4 This maketh us partakers as S. Peter speaketh of the Divine nature In a word to be in the world and tread it under our feet to be in Sodom and yet be Lots to be on the hills of the robbers and do no wrong to be in the midst of snares and not be taken to be in Paradise to see the apple pleasant to the sight to be compast about with glorious objects of delight and pleasures and not to taste or touch or handle is the nearest assimilation that dust and ashes Col. 2.21 that mortal Man can have to his Creatour I may well then call these two the Essential parts of Religion Of which as you have taken a short several view Antigoni imaginem Protogenes obliquam fecit ut quod corpore decrat picturae potiùs deesse videretur tantúmque eam partem ostendit quam totam poterat ostendere Plin. Nat. Hist l. 35 c. 10. so be pleased to observe also their mutual dependence and necessary connexion If either be wanting you spoil the whole piece Neither will my Charity to my brother entitle me to Religion if I be an enemy to my self nor will my abstaining from evil canonize me a Saint if my goodness be not diffusive on others If we draw-out in our selves the picture of Religion but with one of these we do but like the painter who to flatter Antigonus because he had but one eye drew but the half-face First to visit the fatherless and widows i. e. to be plenteous in good works ista sunt quasi incunabula pietatis saith Gregory These are the very beginnings and nurcery of the love of God And there is no surer and readier step to the love of God whom we have not seen 1 John 4.20 then by the love of our Brethren whom we see Tunc ad alta charitas mirabiliter surgit cùm ad ima proximorum se misericorditer attrahit saith the same Father Then our Charity beginneth to improve it self and rise as high as heaven when it boweth and descendeth and falleth low to sit with a Brother in the dust And if you search the
through which we are to pass It shall be a Rock firm and solid against every wave and temptation that shall beat against it It shall be a Shop of pretious receipts proper remedies against every evil It shall be spoliarium Mortis a place where Death shall be stript and spoiled of its sting and its terrour It shall be the Temâ—le of God an House of feasting and joy where Sorrow may look in at the window at the sensitive part but be soon chased away It shall be even ashamed of its tabernacle of flesh 2 Cor. 5.4 and pant and beat to get out that it may be clothed upon and mortality be swallowed up of life In brief this will make us strangers and keep us strangers even such strangers as shall be made like unto the Angels and whom when they come to their journeys end the Angels shall meet and welcome and receive into their Fathers house where they shall rest and rejoyce for evermore I have done with my Text and now must turn your eyes and thoughts upon this Pilgrime here this Honoured and worthy Knight who hath now passed through the buisie noise and tumults of this world to his long home and rest In which passage of his as I have received it from men of place and worth and unquestioned integrity he hath so exactly performed the part and office of a stranger and Pilgrime that he is followed with the applause of them that knew him And as in his death he is become an argument to prove the doctrine which I have taught so in his life he made himself a great ensample for them to look upon who are now travelling and labouring in the same way Look upon him then in every capacity and relation either as a part of the Common-wealth or a member of the City or a Father of a Family and you shall discover the image and fair representation of a Stranger in every one of these relations For no man can take this honour to himself to be a good Common-wealths-man or a good Master of a family but he who is as David was a Stranger All the ataxie and disorder all the noise we hear and mischiefs we see in the world are from men who love it too well and would live and dwell and delight themselves in it for ever For the first I may truly say as Lampridius did of Alexander Severus He was vir bonus Reipublicae necessarius a good man and of necessary use in the Common-wealth He laid all the strength he had to uphold it and preferred the peace and welfare of it to his own as well knowing that a private house might sink and fall to the ground and yet the Common-wealth stand and flourish but that the ruine of the whole must necessarily draw with it the other parts and at last bury them in the same grave And here he found as rough a passage as Aufidienus Rufus in Tacitus did in that commotion and Rebellion of Percennius l. 1. Annal. who was pulled out of his chariot loaden first with scoffs and reproches and then with a fardel of stuff and made to march foremost of all the company and then asked in scorn whether he bore his burden willingly or whether so long a journey was not tedious and irksome to him So was this worthy Knight taken from his wife whom he entirely loved and from his children those pledges of his love and conveyed to ship and by ship to prison in a remote City where he found some friends and then was brought back from thence to a prison nearer home where if the Providence of God had not gone along with him and shadowed him he had met the plague So that in some measure that befell him which S. Paul speaketh of himself 2 Cor. 11.26 He was in journeying often in perils of waters in perils of his own country-men in perils in the city in perils on the sea in perils amongst false brethren But it may be said What praise is it to suffer all this 1 Pet. 4.15 2 19 20. if he suffer as an evil-doer and not for conscience towards God I come not hither to dispute that but am willing to refer it to the great Trial which shall open every eye to behold that truth which now being dâ—zled with fears and hopes and even blinded with the love of the world it cannot see But if it were an errour and not knowledge but mistake that drove him upon these pricks yet sure it was an errour of a fair descent begot in him by looking stedfastly on the truth and by having a steady eye on the oath of God Eccl. 8.2 And if here he fell he fell like a Christian who did exercise himself to keep a good conscience Acts 24.16 For he that followeth not his Conscience when it erreth will be as far from hearkning to it when it speaketh the truth For even Errour it self sheweth the face of Truth to him that erreth or else he could not erre at all And yet I need not fear to say it it is an errour of such a nature that it may rather deserve applause then censure even from those who call it by that name For we do not use to fall willingly into so dangerous vexatious and costly errours errours which will strip us and put a yoke upon us errours which will put us in prison No to fly from these we too oft fly from the Truth it self when it is as open as the day and commandeth our faith though not our tongue and forceth our assent when we renounce it Private Interest Love of our selves Fear of restraint Hope of advancement these are the mothers commonly of this monster which we call Errour when we do not erre and in these it is ingendred and bred as serpents are in carrion or dung He that erreth and loseth by it erreth most excusably and sheweth plainly that he would not erre For who would do that which will undo him Again take him in the City In this he bore the highest honour and filled the greatest place yet was rather an ornament to it then that unto him For he sate in it as a stranger and a pilgrime as a man going out of the world nor did so much consider his power as his duty which lookt forward and had respect to that which cannot be found in this but is the riches and glory of another world Therefore this world was never in his thoughts never came in to sowr Justice to turn Judgment into wormwood by corrupting it or into vinegar by delaying it There were no cries of orphans no tears of the widow no loud complaints of the oppressed to disquiet him in his passage which use to follow the oppressour even to the gates of hell and there deliver him up to those howlings which are everlasting How oft hath he been presented to me and that by prudent and judicious men as the honour and glory of
For shew me he that can one passage of Scripture that looketh favourably on Riches Luke 18.24 It is plainly said How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of God! but it would puzzle the wit of the best Logician in the world to draw out of Scripture but by way of consequence this conclusion BEATI DIVITES Blessed are the rich Indeed when men are rich the Scripture giveth them good counsel what to do Not to trust in them To make them a sacrifice To distribute and communicate which indeed is to contemn them to empty them out It counselleth us to be rich in good works and then the Vae will fly away from us as a mist doth before the Sun I am unwilling to leave the Rich and the Wo so near together but would set them at that distance that they may never meet To conclude then let us not be too familiar wich Riches lest whilest we embrace them we take the plague and the Wo enter into our very bowels The love of the world is a catching disease and it is drawn on with dallying with a very look The covetous man saith Aristotle first seeketh money for his want and then falleth in love with it And love of money increaseth with our heaps so that even a mountain of gold is counted but a mole-hill He that is grown rich complaineth he is poor And so indeed he is poorer then that Lazar that lieth naked at his door This plague the Love of the world is got insensibly we know not how For the Eye is the burning-glass of the soul and as we see in glasses of that nature if we wag and stir them up and down they produce no flame but if we hold them fixed and steddy between the Sun and the object it will presently kindle so if we plant our eyes and hold them steddy betwixt the glittering wedge of gold and the catching matter of our heart it will unite and grow strong and strike a fire into our soul which is not so easily quenched as it might have been avoided We see nothing but glory in Riches when they are gendring a Wo. Let us therefore rather look upon them as strangers for our traffick and our trading should be in heaven Alienum est à nobis omne quod seculi est saith Hierome The World and a Christian are of a diverse nature and constitution We do not traffick for gold where there are no mines nor can we find God in the world He that maketh him his purchase will find business enough to take up his thoughts and little time left for conference and commerce in the world scarce any time to look upon it but by the By and in the passage as we use to look upon a stranger A look is dangerous a look of liking is too much but a look of love will bury us in the world where we are sown in power but are raised in dishonour We rest and sleep in this dust and when we awake the Wo which hung over our heads falleth upon us In a word then let us not onely look upon Riches as strangers but handle them as serpents warily lest they sting us to death Let us take them by the right end and then that which was a serpent may prove a rod to work wonders Your riches like the widow's oyle shall increase by being poured forth and you shall purchase most when you sell all that you have So you shall turn the Vae into an Euge the Wo into a Blessing Make these strangers these enemies these Riches of unrighteousness to be friends by keeping a kind of state and distance from them Work off their paint force from them their deceitfulness and malignancy Make them such friends as shall plead and intercede on your behalf be your Harbingers to prepare a place for you and when you faile when they faile open the gates of heaven and make a way for you to be received into everlasting habitations The Seventh SERMON PART I. 1 PET. V. 6. Humble your selves therefore under the mighty hand of God that he may exalt you in due time I May call my Text ITINERARIUM MENTIS AD DEUM The Journal of the Soul to God or A bref Discovery of the way to heaven and of the occurrences and remarkable passages therein For here we have two terms Humility and Exaltation a Valley and a Hill a Valley of tears and a holy Hill Now you see there is a great distance between these two terms as great as between SURSUM and DEORSUM below and above And between these two there is a God to be bowed to an hand to awe us and a mighty hand to shake and shiver us into a spiritual nothing Whether it be his hand which he reacheth forth to help us or his hand which he stretcheth forth to strike us whether it be his hand with which he leadeth his people or his hand with which he bruiseth the nations his hand of Mercy or his hand of Vengeance his hand it is and a mighty hand mighty to lay us on the ground and mighty to raise us up again able to turn our dunghil into a throne our sackcloth into a triumphant robe and our humility into glory Now Humility is causa removens prohibens the cause that putteth by all obstacles and retardances that prepareth our way and maketh our paths straight nay causa movens the moving cause that hath an operative causality and efficacious virtue in it illex misericordiae as Tertullian that matureth and ripeneth us for God's mercy and draweth on and inviteth 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 his mighty hand to crown us Fear not Mary saith the Angel for thou hast found favour with God And fear not thou virgin humble soul thou shalt find favour with God Thy vileness is thy honour thy low estate is thy high preferment thy minoration thy exinanition thy nothing is thy All For see Humility looketh directly upon Glory Between them there is but a short line nay there is an hand in the Text that draweth them both together and uniteth them as it were in puncto The whole line the whole course of a Christian is Humility and Glory And as in a Line there be infinite Points yet thou canst not say Here is this point and here is that to distinguish them so our Humility must be continued degree upon degree sigh upon sigh contrition upon contrition so close so without pause or interval as to be impercepâ—â—ble I am sure our Exaltation shall be infinitely and imperceiveably continued Onely here is the difference Our Humility is drawn on in a straight but short line it hath it extremes an end it hath but our Exaltation shall be everlasting and run round in a Circle as Eternity This is the sum of these words The Division now is easie The parts are but two First our part Humbling of our selves Secondly God's part he will raise us up again Now the Wise-man will
and bring forth fruit Matth. 13 5-8 For that is good ground not onely where Truth groweth but which is fit to receive it All forestalled imaginations and prejudicate opinions are as thorns to choke it up or they make the heart as stony ground in which if the Truth spring up it is soon parched for lack of rooting and withereth away What can that heart bring forth or what can it receive which is full already Ye have heard what Prejudice is In the next place consider the danger of it how it obstructeth and shutteth up the wayes of Truth and leaveth them unoccupied or to allude to the words of my Text how it spoileth the market I have shewed you the Serpent I must now shew you its Sting And indeed as the Serpent deceived Eve Gen. 3 1-5 so Prejudice deceiveth us It giveth a No to God's Yea maketh Men true and God a liar nulleth the sentence of death and telleth us we shall not die at all Ye shall die if this be the interpreter is Your eyes shall be opened and to deceive our selves is to be as Gods knowing good and evil I do not much mistake in calling Prejudice a Serpent For the biting of it is like that of the Tarantula the working of its venome maketh men dance and laugh themselves to death How do we delight our selves in errour and pity those who are in the Truth How do we lift up our heads in the wayes that lead unto death and contemn yea persecute them that will not follow us What a paradise is our ditch and what an hell do we behold them in who are not fallen into it Our flint is a diamond and a diamond is a flint Virtue is vice and vice virtue Errour is truth and truth errour Heaven is covered with darkness and hell is the kingdome of light Nothing appeareth to us as it is in its own shape but Prejudice turneth day into night and the light it self into darkness A setled prejudicate though false opinion will build up as strong resolutions as a true one Saul was as zelous for the Law as Paul was for the Gospel Hereticks are as loud for a fiction as the Orthodox for the Truth the Turk as violent for his Mahomet as the Christian for Christ Habet Diabolus suos martyres Even the Devil hath his Martyrs as well as God Mark 9.22 And it is Prejudice that is that evil Spirit that casteth them into fire and into water that consumeth or drowneth them 1 Sam. 15.32 that leadeth them forth like Agag delicately to their death If this poison will not fright us if these bitings be insensible and we will yet play with this Serpent let us behold it as a fiery Serpent stinging men to death enraging them to wash their hands in one anothers bloud turning plow shares into swords and fithes into spears making that desolation which we see on the earth beating down Churches grinding the facc of the innocent smoking like the bottomless pit breathing forth Anathemaes proscriptions banishment death If there be war this beateth up the drum If there be persecution this raised it If a deluge of iniquity cover the face of the earth this brought it in Is there any evil in the City which this hath not done This poison hath spread it self through the greatest part of mankind yea even Christendome is tainted with it and the effects have been deadly Errour hath gained a kingdome and in the mean while Truth like Psyche in Apuleius is commended of all yet refused of most is counted a pearl and a rich merchandise yet few buy it Ye have seen it already in general and in gross We will make it yet more visible by pointing as it were with the finger and shewing you it in particulars And first its biting is most visible and eminent in those of the Church of Rome For ye may even see the marks upon them Obstinacy Perverseness Insolency Scorn and Contempt a proud and high Disdain of any thing that appeareth like reason or of any man that shall be so charitable as to teach them which are certainly the signs of the bitings of this Serpent Prejudice if not the marks of the Beast Quà m gravis incubat How heavy doth Prejudice lie upon them who have renounced their very Sense and are taught to mistrust yea deny their Reason Who see with other mens eyes and hear with other mens ears nec animo sed auribus cogitant do not judge with their mind but with their ears Not the Scripture but the Church is their oracle And whatsoever that speaketh though it were a congregation of hereticks is truth And so it may be for ought they can discover For that theirs is the true Catholick Church is the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that which must be granted and not further sought into Once to doubt of it is heresie This prejudice once taken in That that Church cannot erre and though not well digested yet in a manner consubstantiated and connaturalized with them frustrateth yet forbiddeth all future judgment yea inhibiteth all further search or enquiry which may uncloud the Reason and bring her into that region of light where she may see the very face of Truth and so regain her proper place her office and dignity and condemn that which she bowed and submitted to when she was made a servant and slave of men and taught to conclude with the Church though against her self to say what that saith to do what that biddeth to be but as the echo of her decrees and canons though it be but in one as in her Bishop in many as in the Consistory in more as in a general Councel though it be but a name For they that lie under this prejudice in a manner do profess to all the world that they have unmanned themselves Prov. 20.27 blown out that candle of the Lord which was kindled in them that they received eyes but not to see ears but not to hear and reason but not to understand and judge that they are ready to believe that that which is black is white and that snow it self is as black as ink as the Academick thought if the Pope shall think good so to determine it To dispute with these is operam ludere to lose our labour and mispend our time It is altogether vain to seek to perswade those who will not be perswaded though they be convinced nor yield when they are overcome Though seven yea seventy times seven wisemen bring reason and arguments against them they do but beat the air What speak we to him of colours who must not see or urge him with reason who hath renounced it There cannot be a more prevalent reason given then that which Sense and Experience bring yet we see Bread and it is flesh we see Wine and it is very Bloud because the Church saith it There cannot be a more reasonable thing then that Reason should be our judge yet Reason
thou beatest them down as a whirlwind carrieth them to heaven but driveth thee back to the pit of destruction Thou makest them the off scouring of the world which will quickly loath vertue in such a dress but thou makest them glorious in the sight of God Thou wreakest thy wrath upon them but treasurest up wrath for thy self Thou spoilest them that is makest them richer thou disgracest them that is makest them more honourable thou tormentest them that is increaseth their joy thou sendest them into their graves that is into heaven An eye of flesh cannot discern this but the eye of faith glorieth in the Martyr and pitieth the murtherer For when he looketh upon those he hath oppressed and pleaseth himself in it So so thus would I have it he doth but subscribe to the sentence which is already past against him and in effect triumpheth in his own damnation Nor can this help him although sometimes it doth comfort him That God hath delivered them into his hand and so make power an argument of justice and good success a sign and mark of a predestinate Saint For God may deliver the soul of his turtle-doves into the hand of the wicked and yet they be as wicked as before Psal 71.11 You know who they were that cryed God hath forsaken him God may deliver the Jews into captivity and yet the Heathen be aliens still He doth not onely deliver up Sihon King of the Amorites and Og King of Basan but his own people into his enemies hands For it is one thing what God is willing to permit another what he is willing should be done He permitteth all the murthers and massacres and tragedies that have been acted in the world but his permitting them is no Plaudite no approbation of them He permitteth all the sin that hath or shall be committed from Adam the first man to him that shall stand last upon earth and yet that conclusion standeth firm The wages of sin is death Rom. 8.32 He delivered up his Son for us all and yet his bloud was upon those Jews that spilt it Neither is good success or ill success an argument of God's favour or dislike Lazarus was not in Abraham's bosome onely because he was poor nor Dives in hell for that he was rich Josiah did not fall to hell when he fell in battel nor was Pharaoh-Necho a Saint because he slew him But yet I should sooner suspect prosperity then adversity because it hath slain so many fools Blessed are they that are persecuted the words are plain But where do we read Blessed are they that prosper in their wayes Go and prosper and that shall be a sign to thee that thou art highly beloved Let this either in terms or by deduction be produced out of Scripture and I will straight subscribe to a conclusion which may canonize Infidels and Turks Cain and Nimrod and those brethren in evil Judas and the Jews and the Devil himself who too often prevaileth in his wiles and enterprizes and leadeth us captive according to his will Then that of Christ will be true in this sense also That Publicans and sinners harlots and men of Belial shall enter the kingdom of heaven and the children of the kingdom the poor unfortunate children shall be shut out I am weary of this argument And I hope there is none amongst us which will nourish such a serpent in his bosom which may at first flatter him shew him an apple something that is fair to look upon but at last sting him to death an opinion which may drive him upon any pricks on those sins which the righteous do tremble to think of an opinion which may waste and consume a soul and make it like to the souls of the beasts that perish I had rather turn my speech to them that suffer and so conclude and exhort them to humility and patience under the cross For Patience is one of the fairest branches of Righteousness the proper effect of Faith Rom. 5.3 for which we suffer all things and by which we suffer nothing which maketh tribulation joyful the cross a crown and persecution a blessing Adam brought in Labour and Abel Patience Sin invented the one and Righteousness the other Phil. 4.13 And by the virtue of it S. Paul professeth he could do and suffer all things And this the omnipotency of Patience is demonstratively true For if the eye of our faith were as clear as the reward is glorious we should not be either dazled with the smile and beauty of a flattering nor dismayed with the terrour of a black temptation but pleasure would be vanity and persecution a crown For what is this span of misery to bliss without end Persecution strippeth thee and Persecution clotheth thee Persecution beateth at the door of life to let out thy soul and it openeth the gates of heaven to place it there It is that violence which taketh the Kingdom of heaven He that is persecuted for righteousness beleaguereth Heaven undermineth it payeth down a price for it his sufferings Which though they be but momentany and too light yet are accepted as full weight To sit at my right hand and at my left is not mine to give saith Christ Vendit Matth. 20.23 non intuitu consanguinitatis dat He doth not give it saith Augustine for relation and kindreds sake but he selleth it Coelum venale Deúsque see Heaven is set at a price and the price is thy bloud As there is a covenant so there is a contract a bargain between God and man and the covenant is a contract My son saith God give me thy heart Give me a contrite heart a bleeding heart a broken heart and thou shalt have for grief joy for labour rest for dishonour glory for ignominy honour for death life and for poverty a Kingdom For Persecution which is but momentany advanceth to a Kingdom which shall have no end The Thirteenth SERMON PHILIPP III. 10 11. That I may know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings being made conformable unto his death If by any means I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead THat I may know him carrieth but an imperfect sense and sendeth us back to that which goeth before Where we shall find our blessed Apostle at his holy Arithmetick at a strict computation ad digitos calculos cogentem casting up his accounts as it were at his fingers ends He beginneth with Circumcision ver 2. proceedeth to the Law ver 5. riseth up to the Righteousness which is in the Law ver 6. He taketh in his Stock his Tribe his Sect his Zele his unblameable Course of life And that his Audite may be exact ver 8. he bringeth in 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 all things These be the Particulars But what is the Sum Circumcision the Law Zele Righteousness All things a large account and which is strange the sum is Nothing And will Nothing make a sum
not onely placeth us upon but as Solomon speaks makes us an everlasting foundation by raising up in us a good conscience And this it doth as necessarily as fire sendeth forth heat or the Sun light For it is impossible to love God sincerely and not to know it and it is as impossible to know it and not to speak it to our own heart and comfort our selves in it For Conscience follows Science A light it is which directs us in the course of our obedience and when we have finished our course by the Memory it is reflected back upon us It tells us what we are to do and what we have done We have a kind of short but useful Genealogy in S. Paul 1 Tim. 1.5 The end of the commandment is charity out of a pure heart and a good conscience and faith unfeigned From Faith unfeigned ariseth a good Conscience from that the Purity of the inward man from that that Peace which maketh us draw near with confidence to the throne of Grace A golden chain where every link fits us in some degree for a dissolution nay where every link is unseparably annexed to each other and with it we cannot but tend naturally and cheerfully yea and hasten to our place of rest For our Conscience is our Judge our God upon earth And if it be of this royal extraction the product of our Faith and Obedience it will judge aright it will draw the Euge to us and tell us what sentence the Judge will pass at the last day and we even now hear in our ears Well done good and faithful servant enter into thy masters joy And when our Conscience hath past this sentence upon us we have 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 boldness and confidence towards God This this is an everlasting foundation and upon it we build as high as Heaven Our thoughts and desires our longings and pantings soar up even to that which is within the vail which is yet hidden and we are earnest to look into Let us then exercise our selves to have alwaies a conscience void of offense 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The word intimates the clearness of a way where no spy can discover any thing amiss For 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in Suidas is speculator explorator a Scout a Spy So that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is a conscience clear and free from offense The want of this makes Death a King of terrours and puts more horrour in the Grave then it hath When Death comes towards wicked men on his pale horse it comes as a Serjeant to arrest them to put them out of possession of that which they had taken up as their habitation for ever to banish them out of the world which they made their paradise and to let them into eternity of torment If we love the world how can the love of God abide in us We plead for titles saith a learned Gentleman of our own who had large experience of the vanity and deceitfulness of the world and was exemplum utriusque fortunae an example of both fortunes good and evil We plead for titles till our breath fails us we dig for riches whilst strength enables us we exercise malice whilst we can revenge and then when Age hath beaten from us both youth and pleasure and health it s lf and Nature it self loatheth the House of old Age we then remember when our memory begins to fail that we must go the way from whence we must not return and that our bed is made ready for us in the grave At last looking too late into the bottom of our conscience which the Vanities of the world had lockt up from us all our lives we behold the fearful image of our actions past and withal this terrible inscription THAT GOD SHALL BRING EVERY WORK INTO JVDGMENT Thus he And this our vvay uttereth our foolishness in increasing the fear of Death and Judgment by striving to chase it away never thinking of Deaths sting till vve feel it putting by all sad and melancholy thoughts in our way till they meet us again vvith more horrour at our journeys end This is it which makes Death vvhich is but a messenger a King yea a King of terrours We can neither live nor are vvilling to dye vvith such a conscience vvhereas had vve learnt as Seneca speaks and studieâ— Death had vve not fed and supplyed this enemy with such vveapons a make him terrible had we cut from him now this now that desire an anon another for Death 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 fights against us with our selves vvith our Wantonness and Luxury and Pride and Covetousness haâ— vve spoiled him of those things vvhich make Death terrible and the Dâ—â—vil our accuser vve might have boldly met him nay desired to meet him For vvhy should they fear Death vvho may present themselves vvith comâ—fort before God and shall meet Christ himself in all his glory coming iâ— the clouds To conclude Death shall be to them vvho love God and keep a good conscience a messenger of peace a gentle dismission into a better vvorld an Ostiary to let us in to the presence of God vvhere there is fulness of joy and pleasures for evermore Our Apostle here calls it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but a departing or dissolution To vvhich vve should lead you but vve cannot now so fully speak of it as vve vvould and as the matter requires vve will therefore reserve it for some other time The Seven and Thirtieth SERMON 1 COR. XI 1. Be ye followers of me even as I also am of Christ. THat which the Philosopher telleth us in the first of his Ethicks that we must not look for that certainty in Moral Philosophy which we do in the Mathematicks is most true And the reason is as plain For the Mathematician separateth and abstracteth the forms and essences of things from all sensible matter And these forms are of that nature for the most part that they admit not of the interposition of any thing Inter rectum curvum nihil est medium Between that which is straight and that which is crooked there is no medium at all for there is no line which is not either straight or crooked But in Morality and in the duties of our life the least circumstance varieth and altereth the matter and the forms there handled have something which cometh between so that there is an inclination which draweth us near sometimes to the right hand sometimes to the left sometimes to one extreme sometimes to another And in respect of this variety of circumstances it is that the Philosopher telleth us 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 It is a hard matter many times to make our choice or in our judgment to prefer one thing before another Therefore they who have given us precepts of good life have also delivered us rules to guid us in this variety of circumstances that we swerve neither to the right hand nor to the left For as in artificial works the
unto death There is lex Factorum the Law of Works For they are not all Credenda in the Gospel all articles of Faith there be Agenda some things to be done Nor is the Decalogue shut out of the Gospel Nay the very articles of our Creed include a Law and in a manner bind us to some duty and though they run not in that imperial strain Do this and live yet they look towards it as towards their end Otherwise to believe them in our own vain and carnal sense vvere enough and the same faith vvould save us vvith vvhich the Devils are tormented No thy Faith to vvhich thou art also bound as by a Law is dead that is is not faith if it do not vvork by a Law Thou believest there is a God Thou art then bound to vvorship him Thou believest that Christ is thy Lord Thou art then obliged to do what he commandeth His Word must be thy Law and thou must fulfill it His Death is a Law and bindeth thee to mortification His Cross should be thy obedience his Resurrection thy righteousness and his Coming to judge the quick and the dead thy care and solicitude In a word in a Testament in a Covenant in the Angel's message in the Promises of the Gospel in every Article of thy Creed thou mayest find a Law Christ's Legacy his Will is a Law the Covenant bindeth thee the Good news obligeth thee the Promises engage thee and every Article of thy Creed hath a kind of commanding and legislative power over thee Either they bind to some duty or concern thee not at all For they are not proposed for speculation but for practice and that consequence vvhich thou mayest easily draw from every one must be to thee as a Law What though honey and milk be under his tongue and he sendeth embassadours to thee and they intreat and beseech thee in his stead and in his name Yet is all this in reference to his command and it proceedeth from the same Love which made his Law And even these beseechings are binding and aggravate our guilt if we melt not and bow to his Law Principum preces mandata sunt the very intreaties of Kings and Princes are as binding as Laws preces armatae intreaties that carry force and power with them that are sent to us as it were in arms to invade and conquer us And if we neither yield to the voice of Christ in his royal Law nor fall down and worship at his condescensions and loving parlies and earnest beseechings we increase our guilt and make sin sinful in the highest degree Nor need we thus boggle at the word or be afraid to see a Law in the Gospel if either we consider the Gospel it self or Christ our King and Lord or our selves who are his redeemed captives and owe him all service and allegeance For first the Gospel is not a dispensation to sin nor was a Saviour born to us that he should do and suffer all and we do what we list No the Gospel is the greatest and sharpest curb that was ever yet put into the mouth of Sin The grace of God saith S. Paul hath appeared unto all men teaching us that is commanding us Tit. 2.11 to deny ungodliness and worldly lusts Libertas in Christo non fecit innocentiae injuriam saith the Father Our liberty in Christ was not brought in to beat down innocency before it but to uphold it rather and defend it against all those assaults which flesh and bloud our lusts and concupiscence are ready to make against it Behold the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world He taketh away those sins that are past by remission and pardon but he setteth up a Law as a rampire and bulwork against Sin that it break not in and reign again in our mortal bodies There Christ is said to take away not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the sins but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the sin of the world that is the whole nature of Sin that it may have no subsistence or being in the world If the Gospel had nothing of Law in it there could be no sin under the Gospel For Sin is a transgression of a Law But flatter our selves as we please those are the greatest sins which we commit against the Gospel And it shall be easier in the day of judgment for Sodom and Gomorrah then for those Christians who turn the grace of God into wantonness who sport and revel it under the very wings of Mercy who think Mercy cannot make a Law but is busie onely to bestow Donatives and Indulgences who are then most licencious when they are most restrained For what greater curb can there be then when Justice and Wisdom and Love and Mercy all concur and joyn together to make a Law Secondly Christ is not onely our Redeemer but our King and Law-giver As he is the wonderful Counsellour Isa 9 6. Psal 2.6 so he came out of the loyns of Judah and is a Law-giver too Yet have I set my King upon my holy hill of Zion The government shall be upon his shoulder He crept not to this honour Isa 9.6 but this honour returned to him as to the true and lawful Lord With glory and honour did God crown him and set him over the works of his hands Heb. 2.7 As he crowned the first Adam with Understanding and freedom of Will so he crowned the second Adam with the full Knowledge of all things with a perfect Will and with a wonderful Power And as he gave to Adam Dominion over the beasts of the field so he gave to Christ Power over things in heaven and things on earth And he glorified not himself Heb. 5.5 but he who said Thou art my Son this day have I begotten thee he it was that laid the government upon his shoulder Not upon his shoulders For he was well able to bear it on one of them For in him the Godhead dwelleth bodily And with this power he was able to put down all other rule autority and power 1 Cor. â—5 24 to spoil principalities and powers and to shew them openly in triumph to spoil them by his death and to spoil them by his Laws due obedience to which shaketh the power of Hell it self For this as it pulleth out the sting of Death so also beateth down Satan under our feet This if it were universal would be the best exorcism that is and even chase the Devil out of the world which he maketh his Kingdom For to run the way of Christ's commandments is to overthrow him and bind him in chains is another hell in hell unto him Thirdly if we look upon our selves we shall find there is a necessity of Laws to guide and regulate us and to bring us to the End All other creatures are sent into the world with a sense and understanding of the end for which they come and so without particular direction and yet unerringly
an Ear listening after lies are the faculties and passions and members or rather the marks and reproches of a stigmatized slave For can he be thought free who imployeth all the power he hath to make himself a prisoner No liberty then without subordination and subjection to this Law Behold I shew you a mystery which you may think rather a paradox A Christian a Gospeller is the freest and yet the most subject creature in the world the highest and yet the lowest delivered out of prison and yet confined set at liberty and yet kept under a Law S. Paul saith to the Galatians Brethren you have been called unto liberty Gal. 5.13 He meaneth Liberty in things indifferent neither good nor evil in their own nature There our fetters are broken off Onely use not your liberty as an occasion to the flesh There we are limited and confined So that Christian Liberty it self is under a Law which bindeth us ab illicitis semper quandoque à licitis from unlawful things alwayes and sometimes from that which is lawful Nay it is under many Laws 1. The Law of Sobriety and Temperance which must bound and limit the outward practice of it God hath given as I told you before every moving thing that liveth to be meat for us Gen. 9. â— All meats under the Gospel all drinks are lawful fish and flesh bread and herbs and the rest But there is a Law yet to bound us We are free but not so free as to surfeit and be drunken and to devour our souls with care for our bodies to make an art of eating and indulge so long to luxury till we can indulge no more Wine is from the vine In which saith S. Augustine God doth every year work a miracle and turn water into wine But if Sobriety be not the cup bearer if we look not on Temperance as a Law it may prove to us what the Manichees feigned it to be fel principis tenebrarum the gall of the Prince of darkness Again all apparel all stuff all cloth all colours are lawful Foâ— he that clotheth the grass of the field will doe much more for us But this Liberty doth not straight write us Gallants nor boulster out our excessive pride and vanity this doth not give us power to put the poor's and Christ's patrimony on our backs Modesty must be our Tire-woman to put on our dress and our garments and not Phansie and Pride Tertullian thought it not fit to supplicate God in silk or purple Cedò acum crinibus distinguendis Bring forth saith he your crisping-pins and your pomanders and wash your selves in costly baths and if any ask you why you do so Deliqui dicito in Deum say I have offended against God Itaque nunc maceror crucior ut reconciliam me Deo and therefore I thus macerate and afflict my self and am come in this gay and costly outside that I may reconcile my self to God Thus did he bitterly and sarcastically lâ—sh the luxury of his times What think you would he say if he saw what we see every day even when the dayes are gloomy and black Ecclesia in attonito when mens hearts even fail them for fear and Vengeance hovereth over us ready to fall upon our heads But if he were too streight-laced we ought to remember that Apparel was for covert and not for sight to warm the body that weareth it and not to take the eye of him that beholdeth it We have freedom to use but Modesty and Temperance must be as Tribunes and come in with their Veto and check and manage this Liberty that we abuse not the creature 2. Our Liberty is bounded with another Law even the Law of Charity Of Charity I say both to my self and to my brethren For our selves A right hand is to be cut off and a right eye plucked out if they offend us We must remove every thing out of the way which may prove a stone to stumble at though it be as useful as our Hand and as dear as our Eye at least make a covenant with our Eye and with our Hand to forbear those lawful things which may either endanger the body or occasion the ruine of the soul For what is an Eye a Hand to the whole And what a serpent is that occasion which If I touch it will sting me to death And as for our selves so also for others we must not use the creature with offence or scandal of our weaker brethren LICET It is lawful is the voice of Liberty but the Charity of the Gospel which is as a Law to a Christian bâ—â—ngeth in an EXPEDIT and maketh onely that lawful in this case which is expedient For as every thing which we please as Bernard speaketh is not lawful so every thing that is lawful is not expedient Nihil charitate imperiosius There is nothing more commanding then Charity and no command fuller of delight and profit then hers For how quickly doth she condescend to the weakness of others How willing is she to abridge her self rather then they should fall What delight doth she take to deny her self delight that she may please them She will not touch nor taste that they may not be offended And then thus in matters of this nature to restrain Liberty bringeth with it huge advantage For how will he flie with ease from that which â—e may not do who can for another's sake abstain from that which he may Liberty is a word of enlargement and giveth us line biddeth Rise and eat but a NON EXPEDIT It is not expedient which is the language of Charity putteth the knife to our throat cometh in case of scandal to pinion us that we reach not our hand to things otherwise lawful A NON EXPEDIT maketh a NON LICET It is not expedient in matters of this indifferencie is the same with It is not lawful The Gospel you see then is a Law of liberty but it is also a Law to moderate and restrain it Lastly as it is a Law of liberty so it limiteth and boundeth it in respect of those relations which are between man and man between Father and Son Master and Servant Superiour and Inferiour For Christ came not to shake these relations but to establish them He left the Servant the Son the Subject as he found them but taught them to bow yet a little lower before their Master their Father their Lord for the Gospel's sake to do it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 with fear and reverence as to the Lord 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 not as the heathen slaves in chains but in simplicity and truth as unto Christ 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 with good will not driven on with the goad and whip and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as servants not of men but of Christ He giveth them liberty yet tieth them up and confineth them in the Family in the Commonwealth in the Church A Christian is the most free and the most
Every wilful sin is fruitful and seldom endeth in it self He that telleth a lie is in a disposition to betray a Kingdom He that slandereth his neighbour is in an aptitude to blaspheme God We may see Wantonness even budding out of Luxury Strife shooting forth out of Covetousness out of Strife Murther He that yieldeth up his Conscience for his flesh and State will be the more pliable to yield it up when they call for it upon the hardest terms Take heed of these yieldings and condescensions Saepè peccat qui semel One fall naturally draweth on another and that a third till we come in profundum to the very bottom Every little sin if we commit it because we think it little is a great one and carrieth as it were written in its forehead BEHOLD A TROOP COMETH Therefore to conclude this let us not trifle with our conscience but honour it And we honour our Conscience as we do our God for she is as our God upon earth We honour her when we observe her and bow to every beck hearken what she will say and do it and what she forbiddeth avoid not touch not taste not handle â—â—ye from it as from a serpent that doth now flatter but will hereafter sting us to death It is no honour to commend Conscience and wound her to call her a Temple of Solomon a Paradise of delights the Court of God and the Habitation of the Spirit as Bernard calleth a good Conscience Then we honour her when we make her so when we let her keep her throne when we bow to her sceptre when the image of her Dictates is visible in all the emanations of our Soul in our Thoughts when they are such as she would mould in our Words when we speak after her and in our Works when she doth begin and finish them When we subscribe to her first commands which we received when we were free from all interpellations of Fear or Hope and fall not off at their after-solicitations to the contrary and then build up a false persuasion in honour of it and call it Conscience offend and sin against her and then give up her name to an Idol When she commandeth silence and we blaspheme when she lifteth up our heart to heaven and our thoughts are full of adulteries when she prescribeth patience and we strike when she bindeth our hands and we break loose when she sealeth up our lips and we will open them to perjury when by-respects shall win us to that of which she hath said see you do it not when vve are not vvhat she would have us to be but fashion our selves to the world and yet bear her image and superscription are the worst of men with a Good conscience then we dishonour her place her under our lusts and most loathsome desires take her from her throne and lay her in a Golgotha They who look as she looketh and speak as she speaketh and do as she commandeth they vvho obey her these alone are they vvho honour her And then as she is our God on earth that is as she is in the place of God so vvhat God spake of himself will be verified of our Conscience also They that honour her she will honour She will be as our Angel to keep us in all our wayes that we hurt not our foot against any stone of offence She will root and build us up in the faith and in a constant obedience to this perfect law of liberty She vvill settle and establish us to remain in it and set the crown upon our heads even all the Blessedness this life is capable of and that Blessedness which remaineth for ever in the life to come And so we have brought you to the last and best of all the Reward set down in the last words This man shall be blessed in his deed This is the End of all and the End is the crown of all 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saith Aristotle The End is that which all look upon In this all our desires and endeavours and counsels meet and rest It is that which giveth force to a Law which maketh Perfection something and Liberty a gift And vvithout it a Law vvere void and no Law Perfection vvere nothing and Liberty but a name The end shineth and casteth an influence and lustre upon all upon the Law upon Perfection upon Liberty For we are obedient to the Law we strive forward to Perfection we stand fast in our Liberty for some end and that is Blessedness Reward and Punishment are the two adamantine pillars saith Plato of a Commonwealth And they are the two pillars vvhich uphold the Church Democritus called them Gods that bear and uphold all things These lead us under a Law guide us to Perfection and uphold us in Liberty If those were not these could not be but all Law Perfection and Liberty would fall to the ground If Heaven were not happiness it were not worth a thought much less our violence To enjoy something better then what we do is the basis and foundation on which every action is raised For who doeth any thing onely that he may do it That action is vain that endeth in it self Fruition is the ultimus terminus the last end of all Knowledge and Volition For To know onely to know is no better then Ignorance And in every act of the Will it is manifest For no man willeth onely that he may will no man loveth onely that he may love no man hateth onely that he may hate no man hopeth onely that he may hope but in every proffer inclination and determination of the Will we look further then the act in which it endeth When we desire any thing we do it with an intent to be united to it to meet and embrace it and from that union something else in which the desire may rest and be fully satisfied This made Moses meek Abraham obedient David devout Job patient This made Apostles and Martyrs this led them through honour and dishonour through good report and evil report and at last brought them to the cross and to the block the next stage unto Blessedness For that which moveth the Will to obedience of the Law is before the obedience it self as that which exciteth and worketh it If this be not set up there is no such thing as Conscience or Obedience at least our Conscience would lose its office and neither accuse nor excuse us neither be our comforter nor tormenter If there were no Hell there were no worm and if there were no Heaven in the next there were no joy in this life The Apostle is plain Without faith that is Heb. 11.6 without a full persuasion of a future estate it is impossible to please God And He that cometh unto God must believe that he is and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him And in this appeareth the glory and excellency of the Gospel of Christ of this Law of Liberty that