apparitions that shall go before his second coming to the end that when they come we may not be dismayed and affrighted at the sight but may entertain them as Angels which bring us good tidings of good things that we may look upon them as Objects of joy rather then of amazement that they may not dead our spirits or change our countenances or trouble our joynts or make us hold down our heads like a bullrush but rowse up our hearts and fill us with joy and make us to say This is the day which the Lord hath made a day of exaltation and redemption a day of jubilee and triumph and so look up and lift up our heads And here methinks I see in my Text a strange conjunction of Night and Day of Brightness and Darkness of Terror and Joy or a chain made up as it were of these three links Terror Exultation and Redemption Yet they will well hang together if Redemption be the middle link For in this they meet and are friends Redemption being that which turns the Night into Day maketh affliction joyful and puts a bright and lovely colour upon Horror it self When these things come to pass Why these things are terrible It is true yet lift up your heads But how can we lift up our heads in this day of terror in this day of vengeance in this day of gloominess and darkness Can we behold this sight and live Yes we may The next words are quick and operative of power to lift up our heads and to exalt our horn and strength as the horn of an Unicorne and make us stand strong against all these terrors Look up lift up your heads for your redemption draweth nigh Not to detein you longer by way of Preface Four things there are which in these words that I have read are most remarkable 1. The Persons unto whom these words are uttered in the particle Your Lift up your heads 2. What things they are of which our Saviour here speaks in the first words of the Text Now when these things begin to come to pass 3. The Behaviour which our Saviour commends unto us in these words Look up lift up your heads 4. Last of all the Reason or Encouragement words of life and power to raise us from all faintness of heart and dullness of spirit For your redemption draweth nigh I have formerly upon another Text spoken of the two first points the Persons to whom and the Things whereof our Saviour here speaketh Before I come to the third point the Behaviour prescribed to be observed by them who see the signs foretold in this Chapter come to pass it will not be amiss a little to consider whence it comes to pass that in the late declining age of the world so great disorder distemper and confusion have their place And it shall yield us some lessons for our instruction And first of all it may seem to be Natural and that it cannot be otherwise For our common experience tells us that all things are apt to breed somewhat by which themselves are ruin'd How many Plants do we see which breed that worm which eats out their very heart We see the body of Man let it be never so carefully so precisely ordered yet at length it grows foul and every day gathers matter of weakness and disease which at first occasioning a general disproportion in the parts must at the last of necessity draw after it the ruin and dissolution of the whole It may then seem to fall out in this great body of the World as it doth in this lesser body of ours By its own distemper it is the cause of its own ruin For the things here mentioned by our Saviour are nothing else but the diseases of the old decaying World The failing of light in the Sun and Moon what is it but the blindness of the World an imperfection very incident to Age. Tumults in the Sea and Waters what are they but the distemper of superfluous humors which abound in Age Wars and rumors of wars are but the falling out of the prime qualities in the union and harmony of which the very being of the creature did consist It is observed by the Wise Libidinosa intemperans adolescentia effoetum corpus tradit senectuti Youth riotously and luxuriously and lewdly spent delivers up to old age an exhaust and juyceless and diseased body Do we not every day see many strong and able young men fade away upon the sudden even in the flower of their age and soon become subject to impotency and diseases and untimely death These commonly are the issues of riot luxury and intemperance Nor can it be otherwise Therefore we cannot but expect that the World should be exceedingly diseased in its old decaying age whose youthful dayes and not only those but all other parts of its age have been spent in so much intemperance and disorder Scarcely had the World come to any growth and ripeness but that it grew to that height of distemper that there was no way to purge it but by a general Floud purgati baptisma mundi as St. Hierome calls it in which as it were in the Baptism its former sins were done away And after that scarcely had three hundred years past but a general disease of Idolatry over-spread and seized on all well-near Abraham and his Family excepted Yet after this once more it pleased God to take the cure into his hands by sending his Son our Saviour Jesus Christ the great Physician and Bishop of our souls But what of all this After all this was done tantorum impensis operum by so much cost and so much care his Physick did not work as it should and little in comparison was gained upon the World For the Many of us we are still the sons of our fathers Therefore we have just cause of fear that God will not make many more tryals upon us or bestow his pains so oft in vain Christ is the last Priest and the last Physician that did stand upon the earth and if we will not hear him what remains there or what can remain but a fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation which shall devour the world Ephraim is turned unto Idols let him alone I will spend no more labor in Hos 4. vain upon him Thus as Physicians when they find the disease incurable let the diseased go on unto his end so God having now as it were tryed his skill in vain having invited all and seeing so few come having spoken to all and so few hear having poured out his Sons bloud to purge the World and seeing so few cleansed for ought we know and it is very probable hath now resolv'd the World shall go unto its end which in so great a body cannot be without the disorder and confusion our blessed Saviour here speaketh of But you may peradventure take this for a speculation and no more and I have urged it no further then as a
Tertullian that upon this command he might build up a glorious ensample for us and teach us to esteem our Children the fruit of our body our best hopes and expectation as nothing in respect of God And the Devil is said to tempt Job but to another end to make him curse God to his face In both under the name of temptation those adverse and contrary things are comprehended by which we may be withdrawn and hindred in the race which we run For the command to Abraham was a grievous command grievous to flesh and bloud for a father to slay his son and might have shook his faith And the Devils tentation was such a touch of Job as might have overthrown him Only here is the difference There was love in Gods tryal which made it a tryal of a Father and no more but there was malice in the Devils which made it the tryal of an Enemy a bloudy tryal to undermine and overthrow Gods tryal did bespeak obedience but the Devils tryal breathed-forth nothing but destruction But here the word INDUCAS or INFERAS Lead us not into tentation may seem to imply that God sometime not only brings us but leads us into tentations there to be as it were shut-up and detained For that may be the force of the word as if we were so cast upon tentations that they might lay-hold and take possession of us And if it would not bear this sense yet even the word Tentation may signifie no less than a Withdrawing us from God And so it is taken 1 Cor. 7. 5. where Paul admonishing the married couple to separate themselves but for a season adds the reason Lest Satan tempt you for your incontinency Which is nothing else than Lest Satan make you sin through incontinency And Gal. 6. 1. he bespeaks them brethren If any man be overtaken in a fault restore him in the spirit of meekness lest thou also be tempted which must needs be the very same with that before Lest thou also be overtaken with a fault And 1 Thes 3. 5. Lest the tempter have tempted you and our labour be in vain For though by adversity or some other temptation they were solicited to sin yet it doth not follow that their labour should be in vain but it was then in vain when they yielded unto the temptation and did actually sin Now it cannot be attributed to God that he thus tempts us God is a Tempter of no man We Jam. 1. 13. will therefore before we descend to particulars lay-down these two positions 1. God doth permit us to be led into tentations 2. God doth but permit us That we are led unto tentations is by the permission of God and this permission is not efficacious for if we will we may overcome them Nothing more contrary and abhorrent to the will of God than Sin and yet the Permission of Sin is a positive act of his will for he will permit it For though God made Man upright yet he made him also mutable the root of which mutability was the freedom of his Will by which Man might incline to either side and either embrace tentations or resist them Man being thus built-up did owe unto his Maker absolute and constant obedience and obedient he could not be if he had not been thus built-up Therefore his Understanding and Will were to be exercised the one with Arguments the other with Occasions the one of which might discover the Resolution the other the Election of Man which way he would take whether to the right hand or to the left These arguments and occasions are that which we call Temptations Which though they naturally light upon the outward man yet do formally aime at the inward For Obedience hath reference to some law by which it must be squared and directed and therefore God hath made Man capable of one made him Dominum rerum temporumque Master and Lord of his own actions and imprinted in him a Will which may either joyn with the Sensitive part against Reason which make us to every good work reprobate or else with Reason against the Sensual appetite which works in us a conformity to Gods will He that is capable of this Law must have some power and faculty left to break it Otherwise it were a vanity to enact a Law Who would speak to the Grass to grow or to the Fire to burn or to a Stone to lye still and move no more Quis unquam lapidem coronavit quod virgo permanserit saith St. Hierome Who ever put the crown of virginity upon a Stone upon his head who could not possibly defile himself There is a nullity in every Law if the persons to whom it is given be necessitated to either part of the contradiction to keep or not to keep it Obedience is nothing else but a bowing of the Will and conforming it to the Law of God against all those assaults which like so many winds beat upon the Will which is a free faculty to drive it from that object to which the will of God confines it to that which indeed it may choose but for the VETO the prohibition written upon it to dull and take off that inclination Now the Will of man having this natural propriety to be libripens emancipati à Deo boni to weigh that good which is proposed as it were in the scales and to chuse and refuse it is that which turns Tentations from that end for which they were permitted and ordained makes Satans darts more fiery his enterprises more subtle his arguments more strong his occasions more powerful and his tentations more perswasive than indeed they are so that what God ordained for our tryal and crown is made a means of our downfal and condemnation All the weakness of our soul all those sad symptoms and prognosticks of death all the sins of the world though permitted by God and suggested by Satan are properly and principally from the Will Suppose a darkness on the Understanding the cloud is from the Will and therefore God often complaineth not that we do not but that we will not understand That my Anger rageth my Love burneth my Grief is impatient and my Joy is mad all is from the Will All arguments all occasions all tentations all provocations supposed no outward force no flattery no violence not all the power of Hell can determine our Will or force us unto action NULLUM MALUM EST NATURALE That no evil is natural is the substance of that great dispute of St. Augustine against the Manichee And then certainly nullum malum est supernaturale no evil is or can be supernatural The highest Heaven is not the coast from whence this pestilential wind doth blow And therefore the Father laies it down as a fundamental principle MALUM NON EXORTUM NISI EX LIBERO ARBITRIO Sin could have no beginning or being but from the Will of man God permits the Devil tempts outward objects are busie in our eyes every
unpleasing sound but if we will attend and hearken to them they are sermons and instructions and they may serve to order and compose rotam nativitatis the whole wheel of our nature And first they work upon the Understanding part to clear and enlighten that We see not only seeds of moral conversation those practick notions which were born with us but also those seeds of saving knowledge which we gather from the Scripture and improve by instruction and practise never so darkned and obscured as when Pleasures and Delights have taken full possession of our souls And as we see in sick and distempered men that the light of their reason is dimmed and their mind disturbed which proceeds from those vicious vapors which their corrupt humors do exhale it is so in the Soul and Understanding which could not but apprehend objects as they are and in their own likeness as it were not dazled and amazed with intervenient and impatient objects and phantasms but being blinded by the God of this world it sees objects indeed but through the vanities of the world which as coloured Glass present the object much like unto themselves Sin hath now the face and beauty of Virtue Envy is emulation Covetousness thrift Prodigality bounty the Gospel a promulgation of liberty and a priviledge to sin Things now appear unto us as upon a stage in masques and vizards and strange apparel Now when the hand of God is upon us when to expel that sin which a delightful tentation hath occasioned he maks us feel the smart of one quite contrary and to drive out that which entred with delight he sends another with a whip when this cross tentation hath cut of all hopes of enjoying such pleasing objects as have taken us up the Understanding hath more liberty then before to retire into it self and begins evigilare to awake as a man out of sleep and to enjoy a kind of heaven and serenity which before did 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as the Platonicks speak sleep in a hell of confusion and darkness Now the seeds of Goodness being freed from the attractive force of allurements begin to recover life and strength and sprout forth into those apprehensions which bring with them a loathing of that evil which before they converst withal as with a familiar friend And anon every sin appears in his own shape Envy is Murder Covetousness Idolatry Prodigality Folly and the Gospel a Sanctuary not for Libertines but Repentants In my prosperity I said saith David I shall never be moved Lord by thy favour thou hast made my mountain to stand strong Thou didst hide thy face and I was troubled I cryed unto thee O Lord Psal 30. 6 7 8 and unto the Lord I made my supplication It is strange saith Calvine that God should enlighten Davids eyes by hiding his face without the light of whose countenance even Knowledge it self is no better than Darkness But we find it most true that when one temptation doth infatuate a contrary is brought-in to make men wise Secondly the Will of man as it is a free so is a perverse and froward faculty and many times Planet-wise moveson in its own way contrary to the strong circumvolution of the First mover But the Temptations of the left hand serve to settle its irregular motion and to make it wait upon Reason For having followed the deceitful allurements of the World and finding gall and bitterness upon every seeming delight having found death in the Harlots lips and misery in every way she wandered she begins to renounce her self and though she be free to every object yet she fastens her self on one alone and hath her eye alwayes upon the Understanding as the eye of the hand-maid is upon the eye of the mistress who directs her Lastly Tentations may have their operation on the Memory and revive those decay'd characters whether of Gods blessings or of our own sins and bring those sins which did lurk in secret into the open light How soon when we are at quiet and ease do we forget God how soon do we forget our selves How many benefits how many sins are torn out of our memories Who remembers his own soul in this calm or can think that he hath a soul Who thinks of Sin in Jollity So that it may seem to be a kind of tentation to be long free from tentation We read in the book of Genesis that Joseph's brethren made no scruple of the sin they committed against him for fourteen years together but being cast into prison they presently call it to mind and that upon no apparent reason We are verily guilty concerning our brother and therefore is this distress come upon us Beloved afflictions are to us à memoriâ and though they be tentations to distrust and murmuring yet they may prove and so they are intended like Joseph unto his brethren remembrancers to us to remove the callum the hardness of our consciences and make them quick of sense that we may ab ipso morbo remedium sumere force a remedy from the disease and make even Sin advantageous to us by removing it out of the Affection where it playes the parasite and fixing it in the Memory where it is a fury where it is as operative to destroy as it was in the Affection to increase it self To contemplate Sin and to view the horror of it and the hell it deserves is enough to break our hearts and bow our wills and to make us hate and detest Sin more than Hell it self Again in the third place this exercise in tentations doth not only draw us to repentance for sins past but also serves as a fence or guard to those virtues and saving graces which make us gracious in the sight of God it doth temper that portion in us which is the Spirits that it prove not more dangerous and fatal than that of the Flesh For as Bernard discanteth upon Porphyrie's definition of Man HOMO EST ANIMAL RATIONALE MORTALE Man is a rational but mortal creature The Mortal saith he doth temper the Rational that it do not swell and the Rational strengthen the Mortal that it do not weaken and dead our spirits And therefore St. Augustine was bold to pronounce that it was very happy for some men that they did fall in tentations For Pride which threw down the Angels from heaven will grow not only upon Power and Beauty and Pomp of the world but upon the choicest virtues and like those plantae parasiticae those parasitical plants which will grow but upon other plants it sucks out the very juice and spirits of them and is nourisht with that which quickens those virtues and keeps them alive When we have stood strong against temptations quâdam delectatione sibimet ipsi animus blanditur there ariseth in our soul a kind of delight which doth fâ—â—tter and tickle us to death Fovea mentis memoria virtutis saith Gregory Too much to look back upon our beauty and too steddily
the Schools call them these airy speculations these faint endeavours of the thoughts will not make it up These are strivings rather than resistings similes conatibus expergisci volentium as Augustine speaketh like to the turnings and liftings of men who would awake but that sleep is so heavy on them that they cannot They resist and fall off awake and fall down again upon their pillow fast asleep some sparkles some scintillations and the business of the mind We may consent for all these and joyn with them after we have bid so many defiances to them That which makes up our consent is a strong and undaunted Resolution upon no parley upon no terms to admit them though they flatter yet to stand out though they threaten yet to stand out though they come in a low voice or though they come in the whirlwind and earthquake though they promise kingdoms or threaten death not to consent In this case what is fully resolved is done already Quicquid imperavit sibi animus obtinuit The mind of man is of that power as to create that which it commands it self If it lay upon it self the strictness of Temperance it hath set-up that virtue in it self If it command Chastity it is an Eunuch for the kingdom of heaven Whatsoever it will it doth whatsoever it purposeth it hath In a word if we truly resolve we shall never give consent and if we give consent we may be sure that we did never truly resolve For to speak truth the reason why tentations are so importunate can be no other but this That we make them so and by our indifferency and irresolution prepare a way for them and even invite them to come on and do as the Aequi told the Romans ostentare bellum non gerere rather denounce war against them than wage it vow against them profess against them bid them open defiance but never resolve to keep them out And this is the great error of our lives this is the shame of a Christian Souldier to beat his brains and exercise his thoughts in these vain ventilations and flourishes in big words and loud defiances in promises and vows as the children of Ephraim to be ready harnessed to talk of the Sword of the spirit and the Shield of faith and the Helmet of salvation and then turn Psal 78. 9. back in the day of battel Nihil indignius quà m consumi virtutem ubi non potest ostendi saith the Historian There is nothing more unworthy a souldier than to wast and spend his strength in those low imployments where it cannot be shewn The strength and virtue of a Christian is most seen in a firm resolution which makes quick dispatch and at once puts the enemy to flight It is no more but Nolle Not to be willing to consent and the victory is ours and the Temptation overcome nay put to confusion and annihilated is no more a tentation There is no delight in Pleasure no beauty in Riches no loveliness in Honour no horror on Afflictions no terror on Death If you ask how you may conquer them I will give no other answer than Aquinas did to his sister SI NOLIS You have done it already if you will not consent But yet in the next place though the Will be of greater activity than all the Temptations of the world yet it is a faculty seducible and which may be swayed and bowed to incline to that object which it loathed Nor is there any clock which is carelesly lookt unto so loose and disordered in its wheels and parts and indication of the hour as is the Will if it be not carefully watched sometimes pointing to this and sometimes to that and then running back again to that point where it was before Therefore our safest course is to be indeed alwaies ready prepared to the battel but not to provoke the enemy to fight fugiendo pugnare to fight flying and by removing our selves at such a distance that no dart of Satan may reach us to fly from Tentation as from a Serpent tanquam à facie aspidis as from his gaping mouth and deadly poyson tanquam à facie to fly not only from its poyson and sting but from the very face and sight of it and as St. Paul exhorts to abstain from all appearance of evil not only from 1 Thess 5. 22. those gross and palpable tentations but from the very phantasmes and apparitions the very image of them non à vero tantùm sed à picto malo to detest Sin not onely in the deformity of it but in the very representation and to hate it even in a picture Therefore St. Hierome counsels Eustochium that she should not have access into Noble-mens houses nor often see that by the contemning of which she was a virgin Disce saith he in hac parte superbiam Sanctam Learn in this respect a holy pride and vouchsafe not to converse with them whose pomp and glory may bewitch thee to a liking Scito te illis esse meliorem Know thou art far better than these Nazianzene tells us of his mother Nonna that she would not give her hand to a heathen woman though she were of alliance to her not salute her non commune saledere not eat or sit at table with her Cyprian Epist 77. laies it down as his opinion That we ought not to feast or talk with Schismaticks but be separate as far from them as they are from the Church Tertullian though he permits Christians to live with the Heathen yet he would not have them die with them licet convivere commori non licet And therefore he interdicts them the feasts of shews of the Ethnicks Nay so scrupulous is he in removing the occasions of sin and every thing that may prove a tentation that he doth blame not onely the making of Idols but the very art of the Statuary as unlawful and proceeds yet further to inhibite Christians from being Schoolmasters because they must be forct to mention the names of the heathen Gods although indeed this they must have done if they had preached against them and scarce any makes more frequent mention of them than himself I do not propose these as patterns or ensamples for us to follow nor do I know any warrant to do it but only I commend unto you the reason which made the Fathers so scrupulous Which was nothing else but the danger they conceived to be in the very representation of Sin For it is not safe to give place to the devil but to keep him off at such a distance that as Eph. 4. 27. far as we can he may not tempt us not to retreat or shun the combat when he assaults us but yet not to call for it Equà m parvis veniunt summa mala principiis How great a matter doth a little fire a very spark kindle What great evils have been raised from very small beginnings What danger in a look in a glaunce of the
torpid and tender constitution many of us are that we wish it were so 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 We would neither have it rain upon us nor would we feel the heat of the Sun To struggle with Affliction and to stand the snock of a Temptation is a thing tedious and irksome to our nature NE NOCEAT That it may not hurt us is not enough NE TANGAT is our prayer we desire it shall not touch us What Antony imputed to Augustus may pass as a just censure upon us in this our warfare Rectis oculis nè aspicere potuisse rectam aciem We cannot look upon these armies of sorrows and temptations with a stedfast and settled eye When they appear before us in their full shew and march we are ready to hide our selves as it was said of him We only look up unto heaven vota solùm Diis fundentes pouring forth our fears and desires before God praying not for victory but for the removal of these sad spectacles not to be delivered in battel but not to fight The reason of this is from hence That we do judicium tradere affectibus submit our judgments to our Affections nay to our Sense so that the same horror which the Sense apprehends affects the Rational part and a stripe on the Body leaveth a mark on the Understanding We are ignorant of the nature and quality or rather of the operation and end of these things which we call evil we make not a true and just estimate of them but like bad artificers we look upon the matter so much that we quite forget what it may make To us a knotty piece of wood is so and no more a viper is a viper and the Devil a Serpent and a Lion and no more But a skilful artificer out of this piece of wood will make a God the Apothecary can find treacle in this viper And if we stand upon our guard the Devil saith Chrysostom would be evil to himself and not to us But this is not the true meaning To be delivered from evils is not so to be delivered as by a kind of priviledge to be quite exempt from the least touch of them This were too high a pitch for our mortal nature to reach unto This were not to be delivered but to be as God To be delivered here supposeth a possibility nay a necessity of sufferance For necesse est ut veniant it is necessary that some of these evils should befall us or else we cannot properly be said to be delivered from evil Huic nimis boni est cui nihil est mali He hath too much good who was never acquainted with evil Indeed Tertullian renders it EVEHE NOS A MALO Lift and carry us up out of the sight of evil But then he seems in the word evil to allude to a snare And then it is no more then this Lift us aloft above evil that it prove not a snare unto us If we be poor and miserable let not our poverty or misery ensnare us In Acts 2. 24. Christ is said to have loosed the sorrows of hell And St. Augustine gives this gloss Non illos quibus nexus est sed nè necteretur Not those sorrows wherewith he was bound but that he might not be bound at all with them But such a Deliverance as this from all kind of evil cannot be lookt for on earth For Man is born to labour and sorrow as the sparks fly upwards saith Eliphas And these may seem to proceed from his Job 5. 7. very nature as the Sparks do from Fire Now as soon as any Evils seize on us we are in chains and as willing to shake them off as any prisoner his gieves Here is the difference No prisoner can be said to be at liberty till his fetters be off but we may be delivered when these evils hang on us and these chains be made ornaments of Grace The Civilians will tell us Auxilium venit cùm cessat periculum that we may then be said to have received aid when the danger is past So may we be said to have deliverance when the noxious quality of the evil is spent when God hath placed us over it as he did Moses over Pharaoh to rule and govern it given us a divine power over it that though it rise up against us again and again and will not let us go yet we shall at last overthrow it So then we shall lie-down in sorrow and misery as Christ did in his grave and yet as he was free amongst the dead though dead yet to rise again and triumph over Death so shall we be free even in this our bondage as weak and yet strong as dying and behold we live as sorrowful yet alway rejoycing as chastized and yet not killed And as He by dying overcame Death so we by suffering evil shall gain a conquest over Evil that we may now rejoyce and sing Where is thy sting The sting of these sensible Evils is Sin But thanks be to God who hath given us the victory through Jesus Christ our Lord. And thus are we delivered from Evil NE NOCEAT that it do not hurt us But there is a further Deliverance UT PROSIT that it may help us that out of this Eater may come meat even sweeter than hony or the hony-comb Indeed these two are never asunder If it do not hurt us it will help us If it do not weary our Patience it confirms it If our Faith fal not it strengthens it There is no medium here but this operation or that it will have either it will make us better or it will make us worse In a word Every Evil that befalls us is either our physick or our poyson either the savour of life unto life or the savour of death unto death Now God is said to deliver us from evil when he drives it home to that end which he intends when he deads that operation which the Devil hath put in it and maketh it work-on in a contrary course For as it is the work of the Devil to raise evil out of good so is it the very nature and property of God to force good out of evil nay many times out of Sin it self The Devil thrusts hard against us that we may fall not a dart he throws but with a full intent to wound us unto death But God shortens his strength in the way that many times it falls short and reacheth not home or if it do reach home and stick in our sides our faith shall quench it and the wound he gives us shall cure us and make us more healthful He maketh Affliction more bitter than it is that we may murmure and complain and run from our station and he makes Riches and Pleasures far more sweet than they are that we may taste them often and surfet on them and for love of them loath the water of life But God changeth the complexion of Evil and though it be gall in
and there discourse with none but God and Angels Thus we may shame a Tyrant and puff at his Terrors For what I beseech you can the most subtle in curses invent against such who call Banishment a going to travel Imprisonment a getting out of a throng who say to dye is to lye down to sleep It is as impossible to torment these as to confine a Spirit or to lay shackles upon that thing which has no Body to bear them For you must not esteem these kind of expressions the heat only of a luxuriant wit because whatever happens in this life is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as one most excellently calls it whose whole being consists meerly in Relation seems good to such as like it and evil to such as think the contrary just like meat which though it nourish one may kill another His Brethren thought they had sold Joseph into a strange Country to destroy him but he says God sent him before to provide for their whole Family So this Apostle collects with himself that if he dy'd he should go to his Saviour and if he liv'd he should serve his Brethren If he were at liberty his tongue should preach but being in prison his sufferings did further the Gospel much more If he met with all friends they would receive the Truth chearfully and if he found enemies they would preach Christ for him though out of strife and envy With him to dye was gain and to live was gain He took every thing by the right ear and found some benefit in every condition whatsoever whether by good report or by disgrace whether by the left hand or by the right whether by hatred 2 Cor. 6. or out of good will whether by life or death if Christ were preached he lookt no farther he had his end that unum necessarium the advancement of the Gospel and whatsoever happened besides this he esteemed as an additional complement which he might very well spare and yet remain an Apostle still But now on the other side what a continued torment is a mans life without this spiritual carelesness this holy neglect of our earthly Being Then are we born to misery indeed if a moth rust or canker can make us wretched If the trouble which as our Saviour says belongs to every single day can sully our mirth and cast us down If every wind and breath of an insulting Tyrant can twirl us about to all points of the Compass If we make our selves the shadow of the times and take both form and figure only as men do Rise and Set like some flowers if we shut and open just as they shine or not upon us 't were better a Mill-stone were tyed about our neck and we were cast into the midst of the Sea for that would keep us steddy Thus to halt to be divided as the word imports between Heaven and Earth Light and Darkness God and Mammon It breeds the same deformity in the Soul as would appear in the Body If you fancied a man lookt with one ey directly up to the skie and at the same time pitched the other ey streight down upon the ground how ugly would such a one seem unto you This this is the carefulness or rather this denying of Gods Providence which makes so many desire a gift desire it Nay most impudently make it their whole design and business of their lives to get it mounting the Pulpit as they would do a Bank and there sell of their Drugs for Medicines when in truth they poyson the very Soul Whence is it else that they preach their dreams calling that the word of God which hits in their heads when they cannot sleep Who bite with their teeth as Micha says eat on and talk as the company will have it and as it follows in the same verse who puts not into their mouths and gives not what they expect they even prepare a war against him Micha 3. 5. nay blot him out of their book of life Doggs 't is St. Pauls word to them or else I durst not use it Phil. 3. 2. that divine for money who will be rich whose greatest triumph is to lead captive silly women Men that will help up a sin into your bosome which otherwise perhaps a tender Conscience would keep down and set a whole City a fire and then like Nero stand by and play to it Men without whom no mischief ever had a beginning nor by whom shall ever any have an end Give me leave I beseech you to bend this crooked bough as much the other way and call such to St. Pauls example who when he was to preach a new Law preach'd 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Gospel without charge 1 Cor. 9. who put his hands to work night and day that they might not receive any thing but from himself And I heartily wish what the Apostle did here of choice the Civil Magistrate would whip them to for they are a scandal to their beautiful Profession to preach Providence and at the same time scrape together as if God who provides for all things would have more care of a crow or the grass of the field then of man whom he created after his own Image as if he who sent forth his Disciples without scrip or penny did it only to destroy them and how shall the people credit those who preach the contempt of the world to their Congregations when they see these Foxes would only have their Auditors leave the world that they may enjoy it wholly to themselves calling that the Kingdom of Christ when they themselves raign or rather when Lust raigns in them Whereas St. Paul often urg'd this as an Argument to confirm his Doctrine that he took nothing for it Thirdly St. Paul did not desire a Gift because their Benevolence kept him still alive heartned his body up and prolong'd his days which considering St. Pauls condition was cruel mercy the greatest injury they could possibly do him to hold him thus from his Saviour with whom he long'd to be For the Apostle had fully weigh'd the poizes both of life and death concluded the most beneficial thing to him if he lookt only after his own advantage was Death having a desire to depart and be with Christ which is the better Phil. 1. 23. For pray resolve me what kindness is it to fetch a wretch devoted and given up to affliction necessity and distresses to stripes imprisonment tumults to fasting watching and all kind of labours 2 Cor. 6. to make much of a man only that he may last out to torment to set his joynts that he may go on upon the rack again to strengthen and enable him that he may suffer yet more to bind up his wounds as they did the Slaves in Rome meerly that he might fight with more beasts This is the same pity simply so considered as if you should give strong Cordials to one irrecoverably sick to lengthen and draw out his pain least he
should not feel what he endured to wake a condemned man and tell him he must dye Evasit says the Tyrant of one who had prevented his fury by a timely death Evasit in dying quickly he has made an escape he got away and has out-run me now for there in the Grave the wicked cease from troubling and there the weary are at rest Job 3. 13. The prisoner and the oppressor there lye quiet both together and there every one is free in the next verse and therefore if we consider Death only as a Rest from labour the Apostle had no reason to be solicitous with what to preserve his life any longer For we mistake exceedingly if we think life as life is desirable for there are some that dig to find a Grave as much as they would do to discover a Mine as Job speaks and God when he would reward some memorable act of piety Job 3. 21. in a man takes him out of the way before his Judgments come which made the Prophet when he could not turn away Gods wrath utterly pray'd the women might have miscarrying wombs and the Apostles seeing the persecution begin to rage advises the Christians not to marry lest they should 1 Cor. 3. only bring forth to the Sword and Faggot Now not to be born and death are in effect all one they are both equally alike not to be here Again Imagine the world had treated and dealt kindly with the Apostle yet then he needed not much care for means to keep up his life any longer for he calls himself now Paul the aged a time when we might choose death Philem. 9. meerly out of satietie because it is tedious to do the same things over and over again so often to eat and be a hungry and then eat again to sleep and then wake and then sleep again to see things still go about in the same circle to behold peace breeding luxury luxury war and war smooth into peace again for is there any thing whereof it might be said this is new Solomon Eccl. 1. 10. asks the Question who had proved all things and at last concludes by a particular Induction the surest Demonstration of any whatsoever That as the Sun goes round as the rivers hasten to the Sea from whence they came as the wind goes round the points of heaven and whirls about continually so the actions of men have their circuits too and whatever you wonder at in this or that Age you may find the same in another for there is no new thing under the Sun The Apostles years therefore he being now grown old might induce him not to be much concern'd how he should live being now full of days as the Scripture most elegantly expresses it having taken a perfect view now of whatever this world can afford which requires no long time to look over for Christ saw it all in a moment Luke 4. 14. and then I know not what a man has to do but to despise it and leave it with no more regret then he would walk out of garden where he found nothing that liked him But there is a far higher Contemplation not only to render living inconsiderable to a Christian but likewise to ravish our thoughts up from hence and that is the the promises of the Gospel where we behold Heaven open and those eternal Joyes revealed there which have lain hid ever since the foundations of the Earth If there were one that killed himself at reading Plato's immortality of the Soul If it be true that there are yet some Heathens who usually make away themselves upon no other account but because they would be in heaven If natural Reason can cast meer Gentiles into such admiration of that Bliss What will you say to St. Paul who was wrapt up alive into the Third Heavens and saw what the Saints enjoyed above though he could not express it when he came back with what scorn do you think he trod upon the ground afterwards when the Angel set him down again here Who was fain to have a thorn run into 2 Cor. 3. his flesh before he could find himself to be a Man can you imagine he would petition for liberty whose very body seemed a prison to him till he returned to Christ again Or would he sue for a supply to detain him from that which became his wish his dissolution how would you fret at him who should lengthen the race when you had almost won it or stake the prize yet farther off when you had almost caught it Just such a courtesie is it to relieve him who would dye any way that he might quickly enjoy his Saviour 't is but deferring and putting off his happiness the longer as if an unexpected supply should renew the fight then when we thought we had now gotten the day Take no thought for your life what you shall eat or what you shall drink says Christ surely this precept is needless to the Matth. 6. 25. Disciples of Christ Me-thinks he should rather allay our desire then fear of death who do expect such great things after it Me-thinks he should rather advise us that we should not out of hasty longing to be in Heaven neglect the means of continuing our being in this life But O you of little faith to talk of the blessedness the Saints of God enjoy above and yet use the most base abject and sordid means to live here and to keep your selves from it If then we cannot apprehend the Apostles here as a necessitous person nor any way concern'd to prolong his days by shifting about for maintenance but rather obliged to leave this world as soon as he could that he might enjoy a better We must think of some other Reason why St. Paul entertain'd their Benevolence with such joy Which leads me to the Consideration under which he accepted their Liberality viz. for their sakes not his own But I desire fruit that may abound to your account c. Fruit as fruit of their Patience that they durst own one whom the world had not only laid by as useless but tyed up as dangerous and fruit of their Love that they would acknowledge him and fruit of their Constancie that they persevered still to admire the glory of the Gospel though clouded with so much opposition as the whole world had now set it up as a mark to shoot at and as the fruit of their Zeal for in sending part of their substance to supply him they gave testimony that they would part with the whole and lives and all to advance the Kingdom of Christ and lastly as fruit of his Ministery wherein he saw he had not run in vain suffered in vain or scattered his seed amongst stones or thorns for in this he perceived that neither the fears nor love of the world had choaked it because as he tells the Galatians they neither despised nor spued him up again Gal. 4. 14. as the word imports