for they shall have a composition still and every compounded thing may perish but they shal be so assured and with such a preservation as they shall alwaies know they shall never dye S. Augustine saies well Aug. Assit motio absit fatigatio assit potestas vescendi absit necessitas esuriendi They have in their nature a mortality and yet be immortall a possibility and an impossibility of dying with those two divers relations one to nature the other to preservation will consist together So in this soule that hath this first Resurrection from sin by grace a conscience of her owne infirmity that she may relapse and yet a testimony of the powerfulnesse of Gods Spirit that easily she shall not relapse may consist well together But the last seale of this holy confidence is reserved for that which is the third acceptation of this first Resurrection not from persecutions in this world nor from sin in this world but from all possibility of falling back into sin in the world to come and to this have divers Expositors referred these words this first resurrection Blessed and holy is he that hath part in this first Resurrection Now a Resurrection of the soule seemes an improper an impertinent an improbable 3 Part. an impossible forme of speech for Resurrection implies death and the soule does not dye in her passage to Heaven And therefore Damascen makes account De ortho sid l. 4. c. ult that he hath sufficiently proved the Resurrection of the body which seems so incredible if he could prove any Resurrection if there be any Resurrection at all saies he it must be of the body for the soule cannot dye therefore not rise Yet have not those Fathers nor those Expositors who have in this text acknowledged a Resurrection of the soule mistaken nor miscalled the matter Take Damascens owne definition of Resurrection Resurrectio est ejus quod cecidit secunda surrectio A Resurrection is a second rising to that state from which any thing is formerly fallen Now though by death the soule do not fall into any such state as that it can complaine for what can that lack which God fils yet by death the soule fals from that for which it was infused and poured into man at first that is to be the forme of that body the King of that Kingdome and therefore when in the generall Resurrection the soule returnes to that state for which it was created and to which it hath had an affection and a desire even in the fulnesse of the Joyes of Heaven then when the soule returnes to her office to make up the man because the whole man hath therefore the soule hath a Resurrection not from death but from a deprivation of her former state that state which she was made for and is ever enclined to But that is the last Resurrection and so the soule hath part even in that last Resurrection But we are in hand with the first Resurrection of the soule and that is when that soule which was at first breath'd from God and hath long suffered a banishment a close imprisonment in this body returnes to God againe The returning of the soule to him from whom it proceeded at first is a Resurrection of the soule Here then especially I feele the straitnesse of time two considerations open themselves together of such a largenesse as all the time from Moses his In principio when time began to the Angels Affidavit in this booke That shall say and sweare that time shall be no more were too narrow to contemplate these two Hemispheares of Man this Evening and Morning of Mans everlasting day The miseries of man in this banishment in this emprisonment in this grave of the soule the body And the glory and exaltation of that soule in her Resurrection to Heaven That soule which being borne free is made a slave to this body by comming to it It must act but what this body will give it leave to act according to the Organs which this body affords it and if the body be lame in any limme the soule must be lame in her operation in that limme too It must doe but what the body will have it doe and then it must suffer whatsoever that body puts it to or whatsoever any others will put that body to If the body oppresse it selfe with Melancholy the soule must be sad and if other men oppresse the body with injury the soule must be sad too Consider it is too immense a thing to consider it reflect but one thought but upon this one thing in the soule here and hereafter In her grave the body and in her Resurrection in Heaven That is the knowledge of the soule Here saies S. Augustine when the soule considers the things of this world Non veritate certior sed consuetudine securior She rests upon such things as she is not sure are true but such as she sees are ordinarily received and accepted for truths so that the end of her knowledge is not Truth but opinion and the way not Inquisition but ease But saies he when she proceeds in this life to search into heavenly things Verberatur luce veritatis The beames of that light are too strong for her and they sink her and cast her downe Et ad familiaritatem tenebrarum suarum non electione sed fatigatione convertitur and so she returnes to her owne darknesse because she is most familiar and best acquainted with it Non electione not because she loves ignorance but because she is weary of the trouble of seeking out the truth and so swallowes even any Religion to escape the paine of debating and disputing and in this lazinesse she sleeps out her lease her terme of life in this death in this grave in this body But then in her Resurrection her measure is enlarged and filled at once There she reads without spelling and knowes without thinking and concludes without arguing she is at the end of her race without running In her triumph without fighting In her Haven without sayling A free-man without any prentiship at full yeares without any wardship and a Doctor without any proceeding She knowes truly and easily and immediately and entirely and everlastingly Nothing left out at first nothing worne out at last that conduces to her happinesse What a death is this life what a resurrection is this death For though this world be a sea yet which is most strange our Harbour is larger then the sea Heaven infinitely larger then this world For though that be not true which Origen is said to say That at last all shall be saved nor that evident which Cyril of Alexandria saies That without doubt the number of them that are saved is far greater then of them that perish yet surely the number of them with whom we shall have communion in Heaven is greater then ever lived at once upon the face of the earth And of those who lived in our time how few did we
keepes it from dying then that it cannot dye We magnifie God in an humble and faithfull acknowledgment of the immortality of our soules but if we aske quid homo what is there in the nature of Man that should keepe him from death even in that point the question is not easily answered It is every mans case then every man dyes Videbit and though it may perchance be but a meere Hebraisme to say that every man shall see death perchance it amounts to no more but to that phrase Gustare mortem To taste death yet thus much may be implied in it too That as every man must dye so every man may see that he must dye as it cannot be avoided so it may be understood A beast dyes but he does not see death S. Basil sayes he saw an Oxe weepe for the death of his yoke-fellow Basil orat de Morte but S. Basil might mistake the occasion of that Oxes teares Many men dye too and yet doe not see death The approaches of death amaze them and stupifie them they feele no colluctation with Powers and Principalities upon their death bed that is true they feele no terrors in their consciences no apprehensions of Judgement upon their death bed that is true and this we call going away like a Lambe But the Lambe of God had a sorrowfull sense of death His soule was heavy unto death and he had an apprehension that his Father had forsaken him And in this text the Chalde Paraphrase expresses it thus Videbit Angelum mortis he shall see a Messenger a forerunner a power of Death an executioner of Death he shall see something with horror though not such as shall shake his morall or his Christian constancy So that this Videbunt They shall see implies also a Viderunt they have seene that is they have used to see death to observe a death in the decay of themselves and of every creature and of the whole World Almost fourteene hundred yeares agoe Cyprian ad Demetrianum S. Cyprian writing against Demetrianus who imputed all the warres and deaths and unseasonablenesses of that time to the contempt and irreligion of the Christians that they were the cause of all those ils because they would not worship their Gods Cyprian imputes all those distempers to the age of the whole World Canos videmus in pueris saies hee Wee see Children borne gray-headed Capilli deficiunt antequam crescant Their haire is changed before it be growne Nec aetas in senectute desinit sed incipit asenectute Wee doe not dye with age but wee are borne old Many of us have seene Death in our particular selves in many of those steps in which the morall Man expresses it Seneca Wee have seene Mortem infantiae pueritiam The death of infancy in youth and Pueritiae adolescentiam and the death of youth in our middle age And at last we shall see Mortem senectutis mortem ipsam the death of age in death it selfe But yet after that a step farther then that Morall man went Mortem mortis in morte Iesu We shall see the death of Death it self in the death of Christ As we could not be cloathed at first in Paradise till some Creatures were dead for we were cloathed in beasts skins so we cannot be cloathed in Heaven but in his garment who dyed for us This Videbunt this future sight of Death implies a viderunt they have seene they have studied Death in every Booke in every Creature and it implies a Vident they doe presently see death in every object They see the houre-glasse running to the death of the houre They see the death of some prophane thoughts in themselves by the entrance of some Religious thought of compunction and conversion to God and then they see the death of that Religious thought by an inundation of new prophane thoughts that overflow those As Christ sayes that as often as wee eate the Sacramentall Bread we should remember his Death so as often as we eate ordinary bread we may remember our death Bern. Aug. for even hunger and thirst are diseases they are Mors quotidiana a daily death and if they lasted long would kill us In every object and subject we all have and doe and shall see death not to our comfort as an end of misery not onely as such a misery in it selfe as the Philosopher takes it to be Mors omnium miseriarum That Death is the death of all miserie because it destroyes and dissolves our beeing Prov. 16.14 but as it is Stipendium peccati The reward of sin That as Solomon sayes Indignatio Regis nuncius mortis The wrath of the King is as a messenger of Death so Mors nuncius indignationis Regis We see in Death a testimony that our Heavenly King is angry for but for his indignation against our sinnes we should not dye And this death as it is Malum ill for if ye weigh it in the Philosophers balance it is an annihilation of our present beeing and if ye weigh it in the Divine Balance it is a seale of Gods anger against sin so this death is generall of this this question there is no answer Quis homo What man c. We passe then from the Morte moriemini 2 Part. to the fortè moriemini from the generality and the unescapablenesse of death from this question as it admits no answer to the Fortè moriemini perchance we shall dye that is to the question as it may admit a probable answer Of which we said at first that in such questions nothing becomes a Christian better then sobriety to make a true difference betweene problematicall and dogmaticall points betweene upper buildings and foundations betweene collaterall doctrines and Doctrines in the right line Aug. for fundamentall things Sine haesitatione credantur They must be beleeved without disputing there is no more to be done for them but beleeving for things that are not so we are to weigh them in two balances in the balance of Analogy and in the balance of scandall we must hold them so as may be analogall proportionable agreeable to the Articles of our Faith and we must hold them so as our brother be not justly offended nor scandalized by them wee must weigh them with faith for our own strength and we must weigh them with charity for others weaknesse Certainly nothing endangers a Church more then to draw indifferent things to be necessary I meane of a primary necessity of a necessity to be beleeved De fide not a secondary necessity a necessity to be performed and practised for obedience Without doubt the Roman Church repents now and sees now that she should better have preserved her selfe if they had not denied so many particular things which were indifferently and problematically disputed before to bee had necessarily De fide in the Councell of Trent Taking then this Text for a probleme Quis homo What man lives and shall not
godly men have declared this lothnesse to dye Beloved waigh Life and Death one against another and the balance will be even Throw the glory of God into either balance and that turnes the scale S. Paul could not tell which to wish Life or Death There the balance was even Then comes in the glory of God the addition of his soule to that Quire that spend all their time eternity it selfe only in glorifying God and that turnes the scale and then he comes to his Cupio dissolvi To desire to be dissolved and to be with Christ But then he puts in more of the same waight in the other scale he sees that it advances Gods glory more for him to stay and labour in the building of Gods Kingdome here and so adde more soules then his owne to that state then only to enjoy that Kingdome in himself and that turnes the scale againe and so he is content to live These Saints of God then when they deprecate death and complain of the approaches of death they are at that time in a charitable extasie abstracted and withdrawne from the consideration of that particular happinesse which they in themselves might haye in heaven and they are transported and swallowed up with this sorrow that the Church here and gods kingdome upon earth should lack those meanes of advancement or assistance which God by their service was pleased to afford to his Church Whether they were good Kings good Priests or good Prophets the Church lost by their death and therefore they deprecated that death Esay 38.18 and desired to live The grave cannot praise thee death cannot celebrate thee But the living the living he shall praise thee as I doe this day sayes Hezekias He was affected with an apprehension of a future barrennesse after his death and a want of propagation of Gods truth I shall not see the Lord even the Lord sayes he He had assurance that he should see the Lord in Heaven when by death he was come thither But sayes he I shall not see him in the land of the living Well even in the land of the living even in the land of life it selfe he was to see him if by death he were to see him in Heaven But this is the losse that he laments this is the misery that he deplores with so much holy passion I shall behold man no more with the Inhabitants of the world Howsoever I shall enjoy God my selfe yet I shall be no longer a meanes an instrument of the propagation of Gods truth amongst others And till we come to that joy which the heart cannot conceive it is I thinke the greatest joy that the soule of man is capable of in this life especially where a man hath been any occasion of sinne to others to assist the salvation of others And even that consideration that he shall be able to doe Gods cause no more good here may make a good man loath to die Quid facies magno nomini tuo Jos 7.9 sayes Ioshuah in his prayer to God if the Canaanites come in and destroy us and blaspheme thee What wilt thou do unto thy mighty Name What wilt thou doe unto thy glorious Church said the Saints of God in those Deprecations if thou take those men out of the world whom thou hadst chosen enabled qualified for the edification sustentation propagation of that Church In a word David considers not here what men doe or doe not in the next world but he considers onely that in this world he was bound to propagate Gods Truth and that that he could not doe if God tooke him away by death Consider then this horrour and detestation and deprecation of death in those Saints of the old Testament with relation to their particular and then it must be Quia promissiones obscurae Because Moses had conveyed to those men all Gods future blessings all the joy and glory of Heaven onely in the types of earthly things and said little of the state of the soule after this life And therefore the promises belonging to the godly after this life were not so cleere then not so well manifested to them not so well fixt in them as that they could in contemplation of them step easily or deliver themselves confidently into the jawes of death he that is not fully satisfied of the next world makes shift to be content with this and he that cannot reach or does not feele that will be glad to keepe his hold upon this Consider their horrour and â—etestation and deprecation of death not with relation to themselves but to Gods Church and then it will be Quia operarii pauci Because God had a great harvest in hand and few labourers in it they were loath to be taken from the worke And these Reasons might at least by way of excuse and extenuation in those times of darknesse prevaile somewhat in their behalfe They saw not whither they went and therefore were loath to goe and they were loath to goe because they saw not how Gods Church would subsist when they were gone But in these times of ours when Almighty God hath given an abundant remedy to both these their excuses will not be appliable to us We have a full cleernesse of the state of the soule after this life not onely above those of the old Law but above those of the Primitive Christian Church which in some hundreds of yeares came not to a cleere understanding in that point whether the soule were immortall by nature or but by preservation whether the soule could not die or onely should not die Or because that perchance may be without any constant cleernesse yet that was not cleere to them which concernes our case neerer whether the soule came to a present fruition of the sight of God after death or no. But God having afforded us cleernesse in that and then blest our times with an established Church and plenty of able work-men for the present and plenty of Schooles and competency of endowments in Universities for the establishing of our hopes and assurances for the future since we have both the promise of Heaven after and the promise that the gates of Hell shall not prevaile against the Church here Since we can neither say Promissiones obseurae That Heaven hangs in a Cloud nor say Operarii pauci That dangers hang over the Church it is much more inexcusable in us now then it was in any of them then to be loath to die or to be too passionate in that reason of the deprecation Quia non in morte Because in death there is no remembrance of thee c. Which words being taken literally may fill our meditation and exalt our devotion thus If in death there be no remembrance of God if this remembrance perish in death certainly it decayes in the neernesse to death If there be a possession in death there is an approach in age And therefore Remember now thy Creator in the dayes of thy youth
Eccles 12.1 There are spirituall Lethargies that make a man forget his name forget that he was a Christian and what belongs to that duty God knows what forgetfulnesse may possesse thee upon thy death-bed and freeze thee there God knows what rage what distemper what madnesse may scatter thee then And though in such cases God reckon with his servants according to that disposition which they use to have towards him before and not according to those declinations from him which they shew in such distempered sicknesses yet Gods mercy towards them can worke but so that he returnes to those times when those men did remember him before But if God can finde no such time that they never remembred him then he seales their former negligence with a present Lethargy they neglected God all their lives and now in death there is no remembrance of him nor there is no remembrance in him God shall forget him eternally and when he thinkes he is come to his Consummatum est The bell tolls and will ring out and there is an end of all in death by death he comes but to his Secula Seculorum to the beginning of that misery which shall never end This then which we have spoken arises out of that sense of these words which seems the most literall that is of a naturall death But as it is well noted by divers Expositors upon this Psalme this whole Psalme is intended of a spirituall agonie and combat of David wrastling with the apprehension of hell and of the indignation of God even in this world whilst he was alive here And therefore S. Augustine upon the last words of this verse in that Translation which he followed In inferno quis consitchitur tibi Not In the grave but In hell who shall confesse unto thee puts himselfe upon this In Inferne Dives confessus Domino oravit pro fratribus In hell Dives did confesse the name of the Lord and prayed there for his brethren in the world And therefore he understands not these words of a literall and naturall a bodily death a departing out of this world but he calls Peccatum Mortem and then Caecitatem animae Infernum He makes the easinesse of sinning to be Death and then blindnesse and obduration and remorslesnesse and impenitence to be this Hell And so also doth S. Ierome understand all that passionate deploring of Hezekias which seems literally to be spoken of naturall death of this spirituall death of the habit of sin and that he considered and lamented especially his danger of that death of a departing from God in this world rather then of a departing out of this world And truely many pieces and passages of Hezekias his lamentation there will fall naturally enough into that spirituall interpretation though perchance all will not though S. Ierome with a holy purpose drive them and draw them that way But whether that of Hezekias be of naturall or of a spirituall death we have another Author ancienter then S. Augustine and S. Ierome and so much esteemed by S. Iereme as that he translated some of his Works which is Didymus of Alexandria who sayes it is Impia opinio not an inconvenient or unnaturall but an impious and irreligious opinion to understand this verse of naturall death because sayes he The dead doe much more remember God then the living doe And he makes use of that place Deus non confunditur Heb. 11.16 God is not ashamed to be called the God of the dead for he hath prepared them a City And therefore reading these words of our Text according to that Translation which prevailed in the Easterne Church which was the Septuagint he argues thus he collects thus that all that David sayes here is onely this Non est in morte qui memor est Dei Not that he that is dead remembers not God but that he that remembers God is not dead not in an irreparable and irrecoverable state of death not under such a burthen of sin as devastates and exterminates the conscience and evacuates the whole power and work of grace but that if he can remember God confesse God though he be falne under the hand of a spirituall death by some sin yet he shall have his resurrection in this life for Non est in morte sayes Didymus He that remembers God is not dead in a perpetuall death And then this reason of Davids Prayer here Doe this and this for in death there is no remembrance of thee will have this force That God would returne to him in his effectuall grace That God would deliver his soule in dangerous tentations That God would save him in applying to him and imprinting in him a sober but yet confident assurance that the salvation of Christ Jesus belongs to him Because if God did not return to him but suffer him to wither in a long absence If God did not deliver him by taking hold of him when he was ready to fall into such sins as his sociablenesse his confidence his inconsideration his infirmity his curiosity brought him to the brinke of If God did not save him by a faithfull assurance of salvation after a sin committed and resented This absence this slipperinesse this pretermitting might bring him to such a deadly and such a hellish state in this world as that In death that is In that death he should have no remembrance of God In hell In the grave that is In that hell In that grave he should not confesse nor praise God at all There was his danger he should forget God utterly and God forget him eternally if God suffered him to proceed so far in sin that is Death and so far in an obduration and remorslesnesse in sin that is Hell The Death and the Hell of this world to which those Fathers refer this Text. In this lamentable state we will onely note the force and the emphasis of this Tui and Tibi in this verse no remembrance of Thee no praise to Thee For this is not spoken of God in generall but of that God to which David directs the last and principall part of his Prayer which is To save him It is to God as God is Jesus a Saviour and the wretchednesse of this state is that God shall not be remembred in that notion as he is Iesus a Saviour No man is so swallowed up in the death of sin nor in the grave of impenitence No man so dead and buried in the custome or senselesnesse of sin but that he remembers a God he confesses a God If an Atheist sweare the contrary beleeve him not His inward terrors his midnight startlings remember him of that and bring him to confessions of that But here is the depth and desperatenesse of this death and this grave habituall sin and impenitence in sin that he cannot remember he cannot confesse that God which should save him Christ Jesus his Redeemer he shall come he shall not chuse but come to remember a God that
and that dejection of spirit which the Adversary by temporall afflictions would induce upon me is an act of his Power So this Metaphor The shadow of his wings which in this place expresses no more then consolation and refreshing in misery and not a powerfull deliverance out of it is so often in the Scriptures made a denotation of Power too as that we can doubt of no act of power if we have this shadow of his wings For in this Metaphor of Wings doth the Holy Ghost expresse the Maritime power the power of some Nations at Sea in Navies Woe to the land shadowing with wings that is Esay 18.1 that hovers over the world and intimidates it with her sailes and ships In this Metaphor doth God remember his people of his powerfull deliverance of them Exod. 19.14 You have seene what I did unto the Egyptians and how I bare you on Eagles wings and brought you to my selfe In this Metaphor doth God threaten his and their enemies what hee can doe Ezek. 1.24 The noise of the wings of his Cherubims are as the noise of great waters and of an Army So also what hee will doe Hee shall spread his wings over Bozrah Ier. 49.22 and at that day shall the hearts of the mighty men of Edom be as the heart of a woman in her pangs So that if I have the shadow of his wings I have the earnest of the power of them too If I have refreshing and respiration from them I am able to say as those three Confessors did to Nebuchadnezzar My God is able to deliver me I am sure he hath power And my God will deliver me Dan. 3.17 when it conduces to his glory I know he will But if he doe not bee it knowne unto thee O King we will not servethy Gods Be it knowne unto thee O Satan how long soever God deferre my deliverance I will not seeke false comforts the miserable comforts of this world I will not for I need not for I can subsist under this shadow of these Wings though I have no more The Mercy-seat it selfe was covered with the Cherubims Wings Exod. 25.20 and who would have more then Mercy and a Mercy-seat that is established resident Mercy permanent and perpetuall Mercy present and familiar Mercy a Mercy-seat Our Saviour Christ intends as much as would have served their turne if they had laid hold upon it when hee sayes That hee would have gathered Ierusalem Matt. 23.37 as a henne gathers her chickens under her wings And though the other Prophets doe as ye have heard mingle the signification of Power and actuall deliverance in this Metaphor of Wings yet our Prophet whom wee have now in especiall consideration David never doth so but in every place where hee uses this Metaphor of Wings which are in five or sixe severall Psalmes still hee rests and determines in that sense which is his meaning here That though God doe not actually deliver us nor actually destroy our enemies yet if hee refresh us in the shadow of his Wings if he maintaine our subsistence which is a religious Constancy in him this should not onely establish our patience for that is but halfe the worke but it should also produce a joy and rise to an exultation which is our last circumstance Therefore in the shadow of thy wings I will rejoice I would always raise your hearts and dilate your hearts to a holy Joy Gaudium to a joy in the Holy Ghost There may be a just feare that men doe not grieve enough for their sinnes but there may bee a just jealousie and suspition too that they may fall into inordinate griefe and diffidence of Gods mercy And God hath reserved us to such times as being the later times give us even the dregs and lees of misery to drinke For God hath not onely let loose into the world a new spirituall disease which is an equality and an indifferency which religion our children or our servants or our companions professe I would not keepe company with a man that thought me a knave or a traitor with him that thought I loved not my Prince or were a faithlesse man not to be beleeved I would not associate my selfe And yet I will make him my bosome companion that thinks I doe not love God that thinks I cannot be saved but God hath accompanied and complicated almost all our bodily diseases of these times with an extraordinary sadnesse a predominant melancholy a faintnesse of heart a chearlesnesse a joylesnesse of spirit and therefore I returne often to this endeavor of raising your hearts dilating your hearts with a holy Joy Joy in the holy Ghost for Vnder the shadow of his wings you may you should rejoyce If you looke upon this world in a Map you find two Hemisphears two half worlds If you crush heaven into a Map you may find two Hemisphears too two half heavens Halfe will be Joy and halfe will be Glory for in these two the joy of heaven and the glory of heaven is all heaven often represented unto us And as of those two Hemisphears of the world the first hath been knowne long before but the other that of America which is the richer in treasure God reserved for later Discoveries So though he reserve that Hemisphear of heaven which is the Glory thereof to the Resurrection yet the other Hemisphear the Joy of heaven God opens to our Discovery and delivers for our habitation even whilst we dwell in this world As God hath cast upon the unrepentant sinner two deaths a temporall and a spirituall death so hath he breathed into us two lives Gen. 2.17 for so as the word for death is doubled Morte morieris Thou shalt die the death so is the word for life expressed in the plurall Chaiim vitarum God breathed into his nostrils the breath of lives of divers lives Though our naturall life were no life but rather a continuall dying yet we have two lives besides that an eternall life reserved for heaven but yet a heavenly life too a spirituall life even in this world And as God doth thus inflict two deaths and infuse two lives so doth he also passe two Judgements upon man or rather repeats the same Judgement twice For that which Christ shall say to thy soule then at the last Judgement Matt. 25.23 Enter into thy Masters joy Hee sayes to thy conscience now Enter into thy Masters joy The everlastingnesse of the joy is the blessednesse of the next life but the entring the inchoation is afforded here For that which Christ shall say then to us Verse 24. Venite benedicti Come ye blessed are words intended to persons that are comming that are upon the way though not at home Here in this world he bids us Come Luk. 15.10 there in the next he shall bid us Welcome The Angels of heaven have joy in thy conversion and canst thou bee without that joy in thy selfe
place in such a disposition as that if you should meet the last Trumpets at the gates and Christ Jesus in the clouds you would not intreat him to goe back and stay another yeare To enwrap all in one if you have a religious and sober assurance that you are his and walke according to your beleefe you are his and as the fulnesse of time so the fulnesse of grace is come upon you and you are not onely within the first commission of those who were under the Law and so Redeemed but of this quorum who are selected out of them the adopted sons of that God who never disinherits those that forsake not him SERMON IV. Preached at S. Pauls upon Christmas day 1626. LUKE 2.29 30. Lord now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace according to thy word For mine eyes have seen thy salvation THe whole life of Christ was a continuall Passion others die Martyrs but Christ was born a Martyr He found a Golgatha where he was crucified even in Bethlem where he was born For to his tendernesse then the strawes were almost as sharp as the thornes after and the Manger as uneasie at first as his Crosse at last His birth and his death were but one continuall act and his Christmas-day and his Good Friday are but the evening and morning of one and the same day And as even his birth is his death so every action and passage that manifests Christ to us is his birth for Epiphany is manifestation And therefore though the Church doe now call Twelf-day Epiphany because upon that day Christ was manifested to the Gentiles in those Wise men who came then to worship him yet the Ancient Church called this day the day of Christs birth the Epiphany because this day Christ was manifested to the world by being born this day Every manifestation of Christ to the world to the Church to a particular soule is an Epiphany a Christmas-day Now there is no where a more evident manifestation of Christ then in that which induced this text Lord now lettest thou thy servant c. It had been revealed to Simeon whose words these are that he should see Christ before he dyed And actually and really substantially essentially bodily presentially personally he does see him so it is Simeons Epiphany Simeons Christmas-day So also this day in which we commemorate and celebrate the generall Epiphany the manifestation of Christ to the whole world in his birth all we we who besides our interest in the universall Epiphany and manifestation implyed in the very day have this day received the Body and Blood of Christ in his holy and blessed Sacrament have had another Epiphany another Christmas-day another manifestation and application of Christ to our selves And as the Church prepares our devotion before Christmas-day with foure Sundayes in Advent which brings Christ nearer and nearer unto us and remembers us that he is comming and then continues that remembrance again with the celebration of other festivals with it and after it as S. Stephen S. Iohn and the rest that follow so for this birth of Christ in your particular soules for this Epiphany this Christmas-day this manifestation of Christ which you have had in the most blessed Sacrament this day as you were prepared before by that which was said before so it belongs to the through celebration of the day and to the dignity of that mysterious act and to the blessednesse of worthy and the danger of unworthy Receivers to presse that evidence in your behalf and to enable you by a farther examination of your selves to depart in peace because your eyes have seen his salvation To be able to conclude to you selves that because you have had a Christmas-day a manifestation of Christs birth in your soules by the Sacrament you shall have a whole Good-Friday a crucifying and a consummatum est a measure of corrections and joy in those corrections tentations and the issue with the tentation And that you shall have a Resurrection and an Ascension an inchoation and an unremoveable possession of heaven it self in this world Make good your Christmas day that Christ by a worthy receiving of the Sacrament be born in you and he that dyed for you will live with you all the yeare and all the yeares of your lives and inspire into you and receive from you at the last gasp this blessed acclamation Lord now lettest thou thy servant c. The end of all digestions Divisio and concoctions is assimilation that that meate may become our body The end of all consideration of all the actions of such leading and exemplar men as Simeon was is assimilation too That we may be like that man Therefore we shall make it a first part to take a picture to give a character of this man to consider how Simeon was qualified and prepared matured and disposed to that confidence that he could desire to depart in peace intimated in that first word Now now that all that I look for is accomplished And farther expressed in the first word of the other clause For for mine eyes have seen thy salvation Now now the time is fulfilled For for mine eyes have seen And then enters the second part what is the greatest happinesse that can be well wished in this world by a man well prepared is that he may depart in peace Lord now lettest thou c. And all the way in every step that we make in his light in Simeons light we shall see light we shall consider that that preparation and disposition and acquiescence which Simeon had in his Epiphany in his visible seeing of Christ then is offered to us in this Epiphany in this manifestation and application of Christ in the Sacrament And that therefore every penitent and devout and reverent and worthy receiver hath had in that holy action his Now there are all things accomplished to him and his For for his eyes have seen his salvation and so may be content nay glad to depart in peace In the first part then 1 Part. in which we collect some marks and qualities in Simeon which prepared him to a quiet death qualities appliable to us in that capacity as we are â—â—tred for the Sacrament Praesentatio for in that way only we shall walk throughout this exercise wee consider first the action it self what was done at this time At this time our Saviour Christ according to the Law by which all the first born were to be presented to God in the Temple at a certain time after their birth was presented to God in the Temple and there acknowledged to be his And then bought of him again by his parents at a certain price prescribed in the Law A Lord could not exhibite his Son to his Tenants and say this is your Land-lord nor a King his Son to his Subjects and say this is your Prince but first he was to be tendred to God his they were all He that is not
of comming to Church which S. Augustine confesses and laments That they came to make wanton bargaines with their eyes and met there because they could meet no whereelse and that more fearfull occasion of comming when they came onely to elude the Law and proceeding in their treacherous and traiterous religion in their heart and yet communicating with us draw God himselfe into their conspiracies and to mocke us make a mocke of God and his religion too betweene these two this licencious comming and this treacherous comming there are many commings to Church commings for company for observation for musique And all these indispositions are ill at prayers there they are unwholesome but at the Sacrament deadly He that brings any collaterall respect to prayers looses the benefit of the prayers of the Congregation and he that brings that to a Sermon looses the blessing of Gods ordinance in that Sermon hee heares but the Logique or the Retorique or the Ethique or the poetry of the Sermon but the Sermon of the Sermon he heares not but he that brings this disposition to the Sacrament ends not in the losse of a benefit but he acquires and procures his owne damnation All that we consider in Simeon Viderunt oculi and apply from Simeon to a worthy receiver of the Sacrament is how he was fitted to depart in peace All those peeces which we have named conduce to that but all those are collected into that one which remaines yet Viderunt oculi that his eyes had seene that salvation for that was the accomplishment and fulfilling of Gods Word According to thy word All that God had said should be done was done for as it is said v. 26. It was revealed unto him by the holy Ghost that hee should not see death before he had seene the Lords Christ and now his eyes had seene that Salvation Abraham saw this before but but with the eye of faith and yet rejoyced to see it so he was glad even of that Simeon saw it before this time then when he was illustrated with that Revelation he saw it but but with the eye of hope of such hope Abraham had no such ground no particular hope no promise that hee should see the Messiah in his time Simeon had and yet he waited he attended Gods leasure But hope defer'd maketh the heart sick Prov. 13.12 saies Solomon but when the desire comes it is a tree of life His desire was come he saw his salvation Perchance not so as S. Cyprian seemes to take it That till this time Simeon was blinde and upon this presentation of Christ in the Temple came to his sight againe and so saw this Salvation for I thinke no one Author but S. Cyprian saies so that Simeon was blinde till now and now restored to sight And I may ease S. Cyprian too of that singularity for it is enough and abundantly evident that that book in which that is said which is Altercatio Iasonis papisci de Messia cannot possibly be S. Cyprians But with his bodily eyes open to other objects before he saw the Lords Salvation and his Salvation the Lords as it came from the Lord and his as it was appliable to him He saw it according to his word that is so far as God had promised he should see it He saw not how that God which was in this Child which was this child was the Son of God The manner of that eternall Generation he saw not He saw not how this Son of God became man in a Virgins womb whom no man knew The manner of this Incarnation he saw not for this eternall Generation and this miraculous Incarnation fell not within that Secundùm verbum according to thy Word God had promised Simeon nothing concerning those mysteries But Christum Domini the Lords Salvation and his Salvation that is the person who was all that which was all that was within the word and the promise Simeon saw and saw with bodily eyes Beloved in the blessed and glorious and mysterious Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ Jesus thou seest Christum Domini the Lords Salvation and thy Salvation and that thus far with bodily eyes That Bread which thou seest after the Consecration is not the same bread which was presented before not that it is Transubstantiated to another substance for it is bread still which is the hereticall Riddle of the Roman Church and satans sophistry to dishonour miracles by the assiduity and frequency and multiplicity of them but that it is severed and appropriated by God in that Ordinance to another use It is other Bread so as a Judge is another man upon the bench then he is at home in his owne house In the Roman Church they multiply and extend miracles til the miracle it selfe crack and become none but vanish into nothing as boyes bubbles which were but bubbles before at best by an overblowing become nothing Nay they constitute such miracles as do not onely destroy the nature of the miracle but destroy him that should doe that miracle even God himselfe for nothing proceeds farther to the destroying of God then to make God do contradictory things for contradictions have falsehood and so imply impotency and infirmity in God There cannot be a deeper Atheisme then to impute contradictions to God neither doth any one thing so overcharge God with contradictions as the Transubstantiation of the Roman Church There must be a Body there and yet no where In no place and yet in every place where there is a consecration The Bread and the Wine must nourish the body nay the bread and the wine may poyson a body and yet there is no bread nor wine there They multiply miracles and they give not over till they make God unable to doe a miracle till they make him a contradictory that is an impotent God And therefore Luther inferres well that since miracles are so easie and cheape and obvious to them as they have induced a miraculous transubstantiation they might have done well to have procured one miracle more a trans-accidentation that since the substance is changed the accidents might have beene changed too and since there is no bread there might be no demensions no colour no nourishing no other qualities of bread neither for these remaining there is rather an annihilation of God in making him no God by being a contradictory God then an annihilation of the Bread by making that which was formerly bread God himselfe by that way of Transubstantiation But yet though this bread be not so transubstantiated we refuse not the words of the Fathers in which they have expressed themselves in this Mystery Not Irenaeus his est corpus that that bread is his body now Not Tertullians fecit corpus that that bread is made his body which was not so before Not S. Cyprians mutatus that that bread is changed Not Damascens supernaturaliter mutatus that that bread is not only changed so in the use as when
is done sayes the Apostle So that here is the case if the naturall man say alas they are but dark notions of God which I have in nature if the Jew say alas they are but remote and ambiguous things which I have of Christ in the Prophets If the slack and historicall Christian say alas they are but generall things done for the whole world indifferently and not applyed to me which I reade in the Gospell to this naturall man to this Jew to this slack Christian we present an established Church a Church endowed with a power to open the wounds of Christ Jesus to receive every wounded soule to spread the balme of his blood upon every bleeding heart A Church that makes this generall Christ particular to every Christian that makes the Saviour of the world thy Saviour and my Saviour that offers the originall sinner Baptisme for that and the actuall sinner the body and blood of Christ Jesus for that a Church that mollifies and entenders and shivers the presumptuous sinner with denouncing the judgements of God and then consolidates and establishes the diffident soule with the promises of his Gospell a Church in contemplation whereof God may say Quid potui Vineae what could I doe more for my people then I have done first to send mine only Son to die for the whole world and then to spread a Church over the whole world by which that death of his might be life to every soule This we preach this we propose according to that commission put into our hands Ite praedicate Goe and preach the Gospell to every creature and yet Domine quis credidit Lord who hath beleeved our report In this then the Apostle and this Text places the inflexible the incorrigible stiffenesse of mans disobedience in this he seales up his inexcusablenesse his irrecoverablenesse first that he is not afraid of future judgements because they are remote then that he does not beleeve present judgements to be judgements because he can make shift to call them by a milder name accidents and not judgements and can assigne some naturall or morall or casuall reason for them But especially in this that he does not beleeve a perpetuall presence of Christ in his Church he does not beleeve an Ordinance of meanes by which all burdens of bodily infirmities of crosses in fortune of dejection of spirit and of the primary cause of all these that is sin it selfe may be taken off or made easie unto him he does not beleeve a Church Now as in our former part we were bound to know Gods hand and then bound to reade it to acknowledge a judgement to be a judgement and then to consider what God intended in that judgement so here we are bound to know the true Church and then to know what the true Church proposes to us The true Church is that where the word is truely preached and the Sacraments duly administred But it is the Word the Word inspired by the holy Ghost not Apocryphall not Decretall not Traditionall not Additionall supplements and it is the Sacraments Sacraments instituted by Christ himself and not those super-numerary sacraments those posthume post-nati sacramēts that have been multiplyed after and then that which the true Church proposes is all that is truly necessary to salvation and nothing but that in that quality as necessary So that Problematical points of which either side may be true in which neither side is fundamentally necessary to salvation those marginal interlineary notes that are not of the body of the text opinions raised out of singularity in some one man and then maintained out of partiality and affection to that man these problematicall things should not be called the Doctrine of the Church nor lay obligations upon mens consciences They should not disturb the general peace they should not extinguish particular charity towards one another The Act then that God requires of us is to beleeve so the words carry it in all the three places The Object the next the nearest Object of this Belief is made the Church that is to beleeve that God hath established means for the application of Christs death to all in all Christian Congregations All things are possible to him that beleeveth Mar. 9 23. saith our Saviour In the Word and Sacraments there is Salvation to every soule that beleeves there is so As on the other side we have from the same mouth and the same pen He that beleeveth not is damned Faith then being the root of all Mar. 16.16 and God having vouchsafed to plant this root this faith here in his terrestriall paradise and not in heaven in the manifest ministery of the Gospell and not in a secret and unrevealed purpose for faith comes by hearing and hearing by preaching which are things executed and transacted here in the Church be thou content with those meanes which God hath ordained and take thy faith in those meanes and beleeve it to be influxus suasorius that it is an influence from God but an influence that works in thee by way of perswasion and not of compulsion It convinces thee but it doth not constraine thee It is as S. Augustine sayes excellently Vocatio congrua it is the voice of God to thee but his voice then when thou art fit to heare and answer that voice not fitted by any exaltation of thine own naturall faculties before the cōming of grace nor fitted by a good husbanding of Gods former grace so as in rigor of justice to merit an increase of grace but fitted by his preventing his auxiliant his concomitant grace grace exhibited to thee at that time when he calls thee for so saies that Father Sic eum vocat quo modo seit ei congruere ut vocantē non respuat God calls him then when he knows he wil not resist his calling But he doth not say then when he cānot resist that needs not be said But as there is podus glcriae as the Apostle speaks an eternall weight of glory which mans understanding cannot cōprehend so there is Pondus gratiae a certain weight of grace that God layes upon that soule which shall be his under which that soule shall not easily bend it self any way from God This then is the summe of this whole Catechisme which these words in these three places doe constitute First that we be truely affected with Gods fore-warnings and say there Domine credo Lord I beleeve that report I beleeve that judgement to be denounced against my sin And then that we be duely affected with present changes and say there Domine credo Lord I beleeve that report I beleeve this judgement to come from thee and to be a letter of thy hand Lord enlighten others to interpret it aright for thy more publique glory and me for my particular reformation And then lastly to be sincerely and seriously affected with the Ordinances of his Church and to rest in them for the means of our salvation and to
Terafim Desideramus We would fain see such a time we would fain see such a God as were so much too hard for us They had seen such a God before they had known that that God had formerly brought all the people upon the face of the earth so neare to an annihilation so neare to a new creation as to be but eight persons in the generall flood they had seen that God to have brought their own numerous and multitudinous Nation their 600000. men that came out of Aegypt to that paucity as that but two of them are recorded to enter into the land of promise And could they doubt what that God could do or would do upon them Or as Ieremy saith Jer. 12. Could they belie the Lord and say it is not he neither shall evill come upon us or shall we see sword and famine God expressed his anger thrice upon this people in their State in their form of government First he exprest it in giving them a King for though that be the best form of government in it self yet for that people at that time God saw it not to be the fittest and so it was extorted from him and he gave them their King in anger Secondly he expressed his anger in giving them two Kings in the desection of the ten Tribes and division of the two Kingdomes Thirdly he exprest his anger in leaving them without any King after this Captivity which was prophesied here Now of those 6000. yeares which are vulgarly esteemed to be the age and terme of this world 3000. were past before the division of the Kingdome and presently upon the division they argued à divisibili ad corruptibile whatsoever may be broken and divided may come to nothing It is the devils way to come to destruction by breaking of unions There was a contract between God and Iob because Iob loved and feared him and there the devill attempts to draw away the head from the union God from Iob with that suggestion Doth Iob serve thee for nothing Doest thou get any thing by this union or doth not Iob serve himself upon thee There was a naturall an essentiall an eternall union between the Father and the Son in the Trinity and the devill sought to break that If he could break the union in the Godhead he saw not why he might not destroy the Godhead The devill was Logician good enough Omne divisibile corruptibile whatsoever may be broken may be annihilated And the devill was Papist good enough Schisma aequipollet haeresi Whosoever is a Schismatick departed from the obedience of the Romane Church is easily brought within compasse of heresie too because it is a matter of faith to affirm a necessity of such an obedience And therefore the devil attempts to make that Schisme in the Trinity with that Si filius Deies Make these stones bread If thou beest the Son of God cast thy self down from this Pinnacle that is do something of thy self exceed thy commission and never attend so punctually all thy directions from thy Father In Iobs case he would draw the head from the union In Christs case he would alienate the Son from the Father because division is the fore runner and alas but a little way the fore-runner of destruction And therefore assoon as that Kingdome was come to a division between ten and two Tribes between a King of Judah and a King of Israel presently upon it and in the compasse of a very short time arose all those Prophets that prophesied of a destruction assoon as they saw a division they foresaw a destruction And therefore when God had shewed before what he could doe and declared by his Prophets then what he would doe Vae desiderantibus Woe unto them that say Esay 5.18 Let him make speed and hasten his work that we may see it That is that are yet confident that no such thing shall fall upon us and confident with a scorn 2 Pet. 3.4 and fulfill that which the Apostle saith There shall come in the latter daies scoffers saying Where is the promise of his comming for since the fathers fell asleep all things continue as they were from the beginning at the Creation But God shall answer their scorn with scorn as in Ezekiel Son of man Ezek. 12.22 What is that Proverb which you have in the Land of Israel saying The dayes are prolonged and every vision failes That is the Prophets talk of great calamities but we are safe enough Tell them sayes the Lord I will make their proverb to cease I will speak and it shall come to passe in your dayes O rebellious house will I say the word and per-form it And therefore ut quid vobis what should you pretend to desire that day what can ye get by that day Because you have made a covenant with death and are at an agreement with hell when that Invadens flagellum as the Prophet with an elegant horror if they can consist expresses it when that over-flowing scourge shall passe through shall it not come to you Why Esay 20.15 who are you have you thought of it before hand considered it digested it and resolved that in the worst that can fall your vocall constancy and your humane valour shall sustaine you from all dejection of spirit what judgement of God soever shall fall upon you whensoever this dies Domini shall break out upon you you have light in your selves and by that light you shall see light and passe through all incommodities Be not deceived this day of the Lord is darknesse and not light the first blast the first breath of his indignation blowes out thy candle extinguishes all thy Wisedome all thy Counsells all thy Philosophicall sentences disorders thy Seneca thy Plutarch thy Tacitus and all thy premeditations for the sword of the Lord is a two-edged sword it cuts bodily and it cuts ghostly it cuts temporally and it cuts spiritually it cuts off all worldly reliefe from others and it cuts off all Christian patience and good interpretation of Gods correction in thine owne heart Vt quid vobis what can you get by that day can you imagine that though you have beene benighted under your owne obduration and security before yet when this day of the Lord the day of affliction shall come afflictio dabit intellectum the day will bring light of it selfe the affliction will give understanding and it will be time enough to see the danger and the remedy both at once and to turne to God by that light which that affliction shall give Be not deceived dies Domini tenebrae this day of the Lord will be darknesse and not light God hath made two great lights for man the Sun and the Moone God doth manifest himselfe two waies to man by prosperity and adversity but if there were no Sun there would be no light in the Moone neither If there be no sense of God in thy greatnesse in thy abundance it is a dark
in the warfare Mat. 26.38 so we have our example in our great Generall Christ Jesus Who though his soul were heavy and heavy unto death though he had a baptisme to be baptised with coarctabatur he was straightned and in paine till it were accomplished and though he had power to lay down his soul Iohn 10.18 and take it up againe and no man else could take it from him yet he sought it out to the last houre and till his houre came he would not prevent it nor lay downe his soule Vae desiderantibus woe unto them that desire any other end of Gods correction but what he hath ordained and appointed for ut quid vobis what shall you get by choosing your owne wayes Tenebrae non lux They shall passe out of this world in this inward darknesse of melancholy and dejection of spirit into the outward darknesse which is an everlasting exclusion from the Father of lights and from the Kingdome of joy their case is well expressed in the next verse to our Text they shall flie from a Lyon and a Beare shall meet them they shall leane on a wall and a Serpent shall bite them they shall end this life by a miserable and hasty death and out of that death shall grow an immortall life in torments which no wearinesse nor desire nor practice can ever bring to an end And here in this acceptation of these words this vae falls directly upon them who colouring and apparelling treason in martyrdome expose their lives to the danger of the Law Scribanius embrace death these of whom one of their own society saith that the Scevolaes the Caves the Porciaes the Cleopatraes of the old time were nothing to the Jesuites for saith he they could dye once but they lacked courage ad multas mortes perchance hee meanes that after those men were once in danger of the Law and forfeited their lives by one comming they could come again and again as often as the plentifull mercy of their King would send them away Rapiunt mortem spontanea irruptione sayes he to their glory they are voluntary and violent pursuers of their own death and as he expresses it Crederes morbo adesos Baron Martyrâ—â— 29. Decemb you would think that the desire of death is a disease in them A graver man then he mistakes their case and cause of death as much you are saith he incouraging those of our Nation to the pursuit of death in sacris septis ad martyrium saginati fed up and fatned here for martyrdome Sacramento sanguinem spospondistis they have taken an oath that they will be hanged but that he in whom as his great patterne God himselfe mercy is above all his works out of his abundant sweetnesse makes them perjured when they have so Tworne and vowed their owne ruine But those that send them give not the lives of these men so freely so cheaply as they pretend But as in dry Pumps men poure in a little water that they may pump up more so they are content to drop in a little blood of imaginary but traiterous Martyrs that by that at last they may draw up at last the royall blood of Princes and the loyall blood of Subjects vae desiderantibus woe to them that are made thus ambitious of their owne ruine ut quid vobis Tenebrae non lux you are kept in darknesse in this world and sent into darknesse from heaven into the next and so your ambition ad multas mortes shall be satisfied you dye more then one death morte moriemini this death delivers you to another from which you shall never be delivered We have now past through these three acceptations of these words Conclusion which have falne into the contemplation and meditation of the Ancients in their Expositions of this Text as this dark day of the Lord signifies his judgements upon Atheisticall scorners in this world as it signifies his last irrevocable and irremediable judgements upon hypocriticall relyers upon their own righteousnesse in the next world and between both as it signifies their uncomfortable passage out of this life who bring their death inordinately upon themselves and we shall shut up all with one signification more of the Lords day That that is the Lords day of which the whole Lent is the Vigil and the Eve All this time of mortification and our often meeting in this place to heare of our mortality and our immortality which are the two reall Texts and Subjects of all our Sermons All this time is the Eve of the Resurrection of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ That is the Lords day when all our mortification and dejection of spirit and humbling of our soules shall be abundantly exalted in his resurrection and when all our fasts and abstinence shall be abundantly recompenced in the participation of his body his bloud in the Sacrament Gods Chancery is alwayes open and his seale works alwaies at all times remission of sins may be sealed to a penitent soule in the Sacrament That clause which the Chancellors had in their Patents under the Romane Emperours Vt praerogativamgerat conscientiae nostrae is in our commission too for God hath put his conscience into his Church whose sins are remitted there are remitted in heaven at all times but yet dies Domini the Lords resurrection is as the full Terme a more generall application of this seale of reconciliation But vae desiderantibus woe unto them that desire that day only because they would have these dayes of preaching and prayer and fasting and trouble some preparation past and gone Vae desiderantibus woe unto them who desire that day onely that by receâ—â—ing the Sacrament day that they might delude the world as though they were not of a contrary religion in their heart vae desiderantibus woe unto them who present themselves that day without such a preparation as becomes so fearful and mystesious an action upon any carnall or collaterall respects Before that day of the Lord comes comes the day of his crucifying before you come to that day if you come not to a crucifying of your selves to the world and the world to you ut quid vobis what shall you get by that day you shall prophane that day and the Author of it as to make that day of Christs triumph the triumph of Satan and to make even that body and bloud of Christ Jesus Vehiculum Satanae his Chariot to enter into you as he did into Iudas That day of the Lord will be darknesse and not light and that darknesse will be that you shall not discerne the Lords body you shall scatter all your thoughts upon wrangling and controversies de modo how the Lords body can be there and you shall not discerne by the effects nor in your owne conscience that the Lords body is there at all But you shall take it to be onely an obedience to civill or Ecclesiasticall
never be inhabited from generation to generation neither shall Shepheards be there Not onely no Merchant nor Husbandman but no depopulator none but Owles and Ostriches and Satyres Indeed God knowes what Ochim and Ziim words which truly we cannot translate In a word 2 Sam. 24.13 the horror of War is best discerned in the company he keeps in his associates And when the Prophet God brought War into the presence of David there came with him Famine and Pestilence And when Famine entred we see the effects It brought Mothers to eat their Children of a span long that is as some Expositors take it to take medicines to procure abortions to cast their Children that they might have Children to eate And when War 's other companion the Pestilence entred we see the effects of that too In lesse then half the time that it was threatned for it devoured threescore and ten thousand of Davids men and yet for all the vehemence the violence the impetuousnesse of this Pestilence David chose this Pestilence rather then a War Militia and Malitia are words of so neare a sound as that the vulgat Edition takes them as one For where the Prophet speaking of the miseries that Hierusalem had suffered sayes Finita militia ejus Esay 42.2 Let her warfare be at an end they reade Finita malitia ejus Let her misery be at an end War and Misery is all one thing But is there any of this in heaven Even the Saints in heaven lack something of the consummation of their happinesse Quia hostis because they have an enemy And that is our third and next step Michael and his Angels fought against the devill and his Angels though that war ended in victory Vest 3. Quia Hostis yet taking that war as divers Expositors doe for the fall of Angels that Kingdome lost so many inhabitants as that all the soules of all that shall be saved shall but fill up the places of them that fell and so make that Kingdome but as well as it was before that war So ill effects accompany even the most victorious war There is no war in heaven yet all is not well because there is an enemy for that enemy would kindle a war again but that he remembers how ill he sped last time he did so It is not an enemy that invades neither but only detaines he detaines the bodies of the Saints which are in heaven and therefore is an enemy to the Kingdome of Christ He that detaines the soules of men in Superstition he that detaines the hearts and allegeance of Subjects in an haesitation a vacillation an irresolution where they shall fix them whether upon their Soveraign or a forraigne power he is in the notion and acceptation of enemy in this Text an enemy though no hostile act be done It is not a war it is but an enemy not an invading but a detaining enemy and then this enemy is but one enemy and yet he troubles and retards the consummation of that Kingdome Antichrist alone is enemy enough but never carry this consideration beyond thy self As long as there remaines in thee one sin or the sinfull gain of that one sin so long there is one enemy and where there is one enemy there is no peace Gardners that husband their ground to the best advantage sow all their seeds in such order one under another that their Garden is alwayes full of that which is then in season If thou sin with that providence with that seasonablenesse that all thy spring thy youth be spent in wantonnesse all thy Summer thy middle-age in ambition and the wayes of preferment and thy Autumne thy Winter in indevotion and covetousnesse though thou have no farther taste of licentiousnesse in thy middle-age thou hast thy satiety in that sin nor of ambition in thy last yeares thou hast accumulated titles of honour yet all the way thou hast had one enemy and therefore never any perfect peace But who is this one enemy in this Text As long as we put it off and as loath as we are to look this enemy in the face yet we must though it be Death And this is Vestigium quartum The fourth and next step in this paraphrase Surge descende in domum figuli sayes the Prophet Ieremy that is Mors. Jer. 18.2 say the Expositors to the consideration of thy Mortality It is Surge descende Arise and go down A descent with an ascension Our grave is upward and our heart is upon Iacobs Ladder in the way and nearer to heaven Our daily Funerals are some Emblemes of that for though we be laid down in the earth after yet we are lifted up upon mens shoulders before We rise in the descent to death and so we do in the descent to the contemplation of it In all the Potters house is there one vessell made of better stuffe then clay There is his matter And of all formes a Circle is the perfectest and art thou loath to make up that Circle with returning to the earth again Thou must though thou be loath Fortasse sayes S. Augustine That word of contingency of casualty Perchance In omnibus ferme rebus praeterquam in morte locum habet It hath roome in all humane actions excepting death He makes his example thus such a man is married where he would or at least where he must where his parents or his Gardian will have him shall he have Children Fortasse sayes he They are a yong couple perchance they shall And shall those Children be sons Fortasse they are of a strong constitution perchance they shall And shall those sons live to be men Fortasse they are from healthy parents perchance they shall And when they have lived to be men shall they be good men Such as good men may be glad they may live Fortasse still They are of vertuous parents it may be they shall But when they are come to that Morientur shall those good men die here sayes that Father the Fortasse vanishes here it is omnino certè sine dubitatione infallibly inevitably irrecoverably they must die Doth not man die even in his birth The breaking of prison is death and what is our birth but a breaking of prison Assoon as we were clothed by God our very apparell was an Embleme of death In the skins of dead beasts he covered the skins of dying men Assoon as God set us on work our very occupation was an Embleme of death It was to digge the earth not to digge pitfals for other men but graves for our selves Hath any man here forgot to day that yesterday is dead And the Bell tolls for to day and will ring out anon and for as much of every one of us as appertaines to this day Quotidiè morimur tamen nos esse aeternos putamus sayes S. Hierome We die every day and we die all the day long and because we are notabsolutely dead we call that an eternity an eternity of dying And
and make him like himself The implicite beleever stands in an open field and the enemy will ride over him easily the understanding beleever is in a fenced town and he hath out-works to lose before the town be pressed that is reasons to be answered before his faith be shaked and he will sell himself deare and lose himself by inches if he be sold or lost at last and therefore sciant omnes let all men know that is endeavour to informe themselves to understand That particular Iesum that generall particular if we may so say for it includes all which all were to know is that the same Jesus whom they Crucified was exalted above them all Suppose an impossibility S. Paul does so when he sayes to the Galatians If an Angell from heaven should preach any other Gospell for that is impossible If we could have been in Paradise and seen God take a clod of red earth and make that wretched clod of contemptible earth such a body as should be fit to receive his breath an immortall soule fit to be the house of the second person in the Trinity for God the Son to dwel in bodily fit to be the Temple for the third person for the Holy Ghost should we not have wondred more then at the production of all other creatures It is more that the same Jesus whom they had crucified is exalted thus to sit in that despised flesh at the right hand of our glorious God that all their spitting should but macerate him and dissolve him to a better mold a better plaister that all their buffetings should but knead him and presse him into a better forme that all their scoffes and contumelies should be prophesies that that Ecce Rex Behold your King and that Rex Iudaeorum This is the King of the Iews which words they who spoke them thought to be lies in their own mouthes should become truths and he be truly the King not of the Jews only but of all Nations too that their nayling him upon the Crosse should be a setling of him upon an everlasting Throne and their lifting him up upon the Crosse a waiting upon him so farre upon his way to heaven that this Jesus whom they had thus evacuated thus crucified should bee thus exalted was a subject of infinite admiration but mixt with infinite confusion too Wretched Blasphemer of the name of Jesus that Jesus whom thou crucifiest and treadest under thy feet in that oath is thus exalted Uncleane Adulterer that Jesus whom thou crucifiest in stretching out those forbidden armes in a strange bed thou that beheadest thy self castest off thy Head Christ Jesus that thou mightst make thy body the body of a Harlot that Jesus whom thou defilest there is exalted Let severall sinners passe this through their severall sins and remember with wonder but with confusion too that that Jesus whom they haue crucified is exalted above all How farre exalted Three steps which carry him above S. Pauls third heaven Factus He is Lord and he is Christ and he is made so by God God hath made him both Lord and Christ We return up these steps as they lie and take the lowest first Fecit Deus God made him so Nature did not make him so no not if we consider him in that Nature wherein he consists of two Natures God and Man We place in the Schoole for the most part the infinite Merit of Christ Jesus that his one act of dying once should be a sufficient satisfaction to God in his Justice for all the sins of all men we place it I say rather in pacto then in persona rather that this contract was thus made between the Father and the Son then that whatsoever that person thus consisting of God and Man should doe should onely in respect of the person bee of an infinite value and extention to that purpose for then any act of his his Incarnation his Circumcision any had been sufficient for our Redemption without his death But fecit Deus God made him that that he is The contract between the Father and him that all that he did should be done so and to that purpose that way and to that end this is that that hath exalted him and us in him If then not the subtilty and curiosity but the wisedome of the Schoole and of the Church of God have justly found it most commodious to place all the mysteries of our Religion in pacto rather then in persona in the Covenant rather then in the person though a person of incomprehensible value let us also in applying to our selves those mysteries of our Religion still adhaerere pactis and not personis still rely upon the Covenant of God with man revealed in his word and not upon the person of any man Not upon the persons of Martyrs as if they had done more then they needed for themselves and might relieve us with their supererogations for if they may work for us they may beleeve for us and Iustus fide sua vivet sayes the Prophet Habak 2.4 The righteous shall live by his owne faith Not upon that person who hath made himself supernumerary and a Controller upon the three persons in the Trinity the Bishop of Rome not upon the consideration of accidents upon persons when God suffers some to fall who would have advanced his cause and some to be advanced who would have throwne downe his cause but let us ever dwell in pacto and in the fecit Deus this Covenant God hath made in his word and in this we rest It is God then not nature not his nature that made him And what Christ Christus Christ is anointed And then Mary Magdalen made him Christ for she anointed him before his death And Ioseph of Arimathea made him Christ for he anointed him and embalmed him after his death But her anointing before kept him not from death nor his anointing after would not have kept him from putrefaction in the grave if God had not in a farre other manner made him Christ anointed him praeconsortibus above his fellows God hath anointed him embalmed him enwrapped him in the leaves of the Prophets That his flesh should not see corruption in the grave That the flames of hell should not take hold of him nor sindge him there so anointed him as that in his Humane nature He is ascended into heaven and set downe at the right hand of God For de eo quod ex Maria est Petrus loquitur sayes S. Basil That making of him Christ that is that anointing which S. Peter speakes of in this place is the dignifying of his humane nature that was anointed that was consecrated that was glorified in heaven But he had a higher step then that God made this Iesus Christ and he made him Lord Dominus He brought him to heaven in his own person in his humane nature so he shall all us but when we shall be all there he onely shall be Lord
incorruptionem sicut anima per fidem Because our bodie shall be regenerated by glory there as our soules are by faith here Therefore Tertul. cals the Resurrection Exemplum spei nostrae The Originall out of which we copy out our hope and Clavem sepulchrorū nostrorum How hard soever my grave be locked yet with that key with the application of the Resurrection of Christ Jesus it will open And they are all names which expresse this well which Tertullian gives Christ Vadem obsidem fidejussorem resurrectionis nostrae That he is the pledge the hostage the surety of our Resurrection So doth that also which is said in the Schoole Sicut Adam forma morientium Theoph. it a Christus forma resurgentium Without Adam there had beene no such thing as death without Christ no such thing as a Resurrection But ascendit ille effractor as the Prophet speaks The breaker is gone up before and they have passed through the gate that is assuredly Mich. 2.13 infallibly they shall passe But what needs all this heat all this animosity all this vehemence about the Resurrection May not man be happy enough in heaven though his body never come thither upon what will ye ground the Resurrection upon the Omnipotence of God Asylum haereticorum est Omnipotentia Dei which was well said and often repeated amongst the Ancients The Omnipotence of God hath alwaies been the Sanctuary of Heretiques that is alwaies their refuge in all their incredible doctrines God is able to do it can do it You confesse the Resurrection is a miracle And miracles are not to be multiplied nor imagined without necessity and what necessity of bodies in Heaven Beloved we make the ground and foundation of the Resurrection to be not meerely the Omnipotency of God for God will not doe all that he can doe but the ground is Omnipotens voluntas Dei revelata The Almighty will of God revealed by him to us And therefore Christ joynes both these together Erratis Ye erre Mat. 22.29 not knowing the Scriptures nor the power of God that is not considering the power of God as it is revealed in the Scriptures for there is our foundation of this Doctrine we know out of the Omnipotence of God it may be and we know out of the Scriptures it must be That works upon our faith this upon our reason That it is man that must be saved man that must be damned and to constitute a man there must be a body as well as a soule Nay the Immortality of the soule will not so well lie in proofe without a resuming of the body For upon those words of the Apostle If there were no Resurrection we were the miserablest of all men the Schoole reasons reasonably Naturally the soule and body are united when they are separated by Death it is contrary to nature which nature still affects this union and consequently the soule is the lesse perfect for this separation and it is not likely that the perfect naturall state of the soule which is to be united to the body should last but three or foure score yeares and in most much lesse and the unperfect state that in the separation should last eternally for ever so that either the body must be beleeved to live againe or the soule beleeved to die Never therefore dispute against thine own happinesse never say God asks the heart that is the soule and therefore rewards the soule or punishes the soule and hath no respect to the body Nec auferamus cogitationes a collegio carnis saies Tertullian Never go about to separate the thoughts of the heart from the colledge from the fellowship of the body Siquidem in carne cum carne per carnem agitur quicquid ab anima agitur All that the soule does it does in and with and by the body And therefore saies he also Caro abluitur ut anima emaculetur The body is washed in baptisme but it is that the soule might be made cleane Caro ungitur ut anima consecretur In all unctions whether that which was then in use in Baptisme or that which was in use at our transmigration and passage out of this world the body was anointed that the soule might be consecrated Caro signatur saies Tertullian still ut anima muniatur The body is signed with the Crosse that the soule might be armed against tentations And againe Caro de Corpore Christi vescitur ut anima de Deo saginetur My body received the body of Christ that my soule might partake of his merits He extends it into many particulars and summes up all thus Non possunt in mercede separari quae opera conjungunt These two Body and Soule cannot be separated for ever which whilst they are together concurre in all that either of them doe Never thinke it presumption saies S. Gregory Sperare in te quod in se exhibuit Deus homo To hope for that in thy selfe which God admitted when he tooke thy nature upon him And God hath made it saies he more easie then so for thee to beleeve it because not onely Christ himselfe but such men as thou art did rise at the Resurrection of Christ And therefore when our bodies are dissolved and liquefied in the Sea putrified in the earth resolv'd to ashes in the fire macerated in the ayre Velut in vasa sua transfunditur caro nostra Tertul. make account that all the world is Gods cabinet and water and earth and fire and ayre are the proper boxes in which God laies up our bodies for the Resurrection Curiously to dispute against our owne Resurrection is seditiously to dispute against the dominion of Jesus who is not made Lord by the Resurrection if he have no subjects to follow him in the same way Wee beleeve him to be Lord therefore let us beleeve his and our Resurrection This blessed day Ille Iohn 2.19 Iohn 10.17 which we celebrate now he rose he rose so as none before did none after ever shall rise He rose others are but raised Destroy this Temple saies he and I will raise it I without imploying any other Architect I lay downe my life saies he the Jewes could not have killed him when he was alive If he were alive here now the Jesuits could not kill him here now except his being made Christ and Lord an anointed King have made him more open to them I have a power to lay it downe saies he and I have a power to take it up againe This day Nos Iohn 2.3 we celebrate his Resurrection this day let us celebrate our owne Our own not our one Resurrection for we need many Upon those words of our Saviour to Nicodemus Oportet denuo nasci speaking of the necessity of Baptisme Non solum denuo sed tertiò nasci oportet saies S. Bernard He must be born againe and againe againe by baptisme for Originall sin and for actuall sin againe by repentance Infoelix homo ego
the figurative exposition of those places of Scripture which require that way oft to be figuratively expounded that Expositor is not to be blamed who not destroying the literall sense proposes such a figurative sense as may exalt our devotion and advance our edification And as no one of those Expositors did ill in proposing one such sense so neither do those Expositors ill who with those limitations that it destroy not the literall sense that it violate not the analogy of faith that it advance devotion do propose another and another such sense So doth that preacher well also who to the same end and within the same limit makes his use of both of all those expositions because all may stand and it is not evident in such figurative speeches which is the literall that is the principall intention of the Holy Ghost Of these words of this first Resurrection which is not the last of the body but a spirituall Resurrection there are three expositions authorized by persons of good note in the Church Alcazar First that this first Resurrection is a Resurrection from that low estate to which persecution had brought the Church and so it belongs to this whole State and Church August nostri and Blessed are we who have our part in this first Resurrection Secondly that it is a Resurrection from the death of sin of actuall and habituall sin so it belongs to every particular penitent soul and Blessed art thou blessed am I if we have part in this first Resurrection And then thirdly because after this Resurrection it is said That we shall raign with Christ a thousand yeares Ribera which is a certain for an uncertain a limited for a long time it hath also been taken for the state of the soul in heaven after it is parted from the body by death for though the soul cannot be said properly to have a Resurrection because properly it cannot die yet to be thus delivered from the danger of a second death by future sin to be removed from the distance and latitude and possibility of tentations in this world is by very good Expositors called a Resurrection and so it belongs to all them who are departed in the Lord Blessed and holy is he that hath part in this first Resurrection And then the occasion of the day which we celebrate now being the Resurrection of our Lord and Saviour Christ Jesus invites me to propose a fourth sense or rather use of the words not indeed as an exposition of the words but as a convenient exaltation of our devotion which is that this first Resurrection should be the first fruits of the dead The first Rising is the first Riser Christ Jesus for as Christ sayes of himself that He is the Resurrection so he is the first Resurrection the root of the Resurrection He upon whom our Resurrection all ours all our kindes of Resurrections are founded and so it belongs to State and Church and particular persons alive and dead Blessed and holy is he that hath part in this first Resurrection And these foure considerations of the words A Resurrection from persecution by deliverance a Resurrection from sin by grace a Resurrection from tentation to sin by the way of death to the glory of heaven and all these in the first Resurrection in him that is the roote of all in Christ Jesus These foure steps these foure passages these foure transitions will be our quarter Clock for this houres exercise First then 1. Part. From persecution we consider this first Resurrection to be a Resurrection from a persecution for religion for the profession of the Gospell to a forward glorious passage of the Gospell And so a learned Expositor in the Romane Church carries the exposition of this whole place though not indeed the ordinary way yet truly not incommodiously not improperly upon that deliverance which God afforded his Church from those great persecutions which had otherwise supplanted her in her first planting in the primitive times Then sayes he and in part well towards the letter of the place The devill was chained for a thousand yeares and then we began to raign with Christ for a thousand yeares reckoning the time from that time when God destroyed Idolatry more fully and gave peace and rest and free exercise of the Christian religion under the Christian Emperours till Antichrist in the height of his rage shall come and let this thousand yeares prisoner Satan loose and so interrupt our thousand yeares raign with Christ with new persecutions In that persecution was the death of the Church in the eye of the world In that deliverance by Christian Emperours was the Resurrection of the Church And in Gods protecting her ever since is the chaining up of the devill and our raigning with Christ for those thousand yeares And truly beloved if we consider the low the very low estate of Christians in those persecutions tryed ten times in the fire ten severall and distinct persecutions in which ten persecutions God may seem to have had a minde to deale eavenly with the world and to lay as much upon his people whom he would try then as he had laid upon others for his people before and so to equall the ten plagues of Aegypt in ten persecutions in the primitive Church if we consider that low that very low estate we may justly call their deliverance a Resurrection For as God said to Jerusalem I found thee in thy blood and washed thee so Christ Jesus found the Church the Christian Church in her blood and washed her and wiped her washed her in his own blood which washes white and wiped her with the garments of his own righteousnesse that she might be acceptable in the sight of God and then wiped all teares from her eyes took away all occasions of complaint and lamentation that she might be glorious in the eyes of man and chearefull in her own such was her Resurrection We wonder and justly at the effusion at the pouring out of blood in the sacrifices of the old Law that that little countrey scarce bigger then some three of our Shires should spend more cattle in some few dayes sacrifice at some solemnities and every yeare in the sacrifices of the whole yeare then perchance this kingdome could give to any use Seas of blood and yet but brooks tuns of blood and yet but basons compared with the sacrifices the sacrifices of the blood of men in the persecutions of the Primitive Church For every Oxe of the Jew the Christian spent a man and for every Sheep and Lamb a Mother and her childe and for every heard of cattle sometimes a towne of Inhabitants sometimes a Legion of Souldiers all martyred at once so that they did not stand to fill their Martyrologies with names but with numbers they had not roome to say such a day such a Bishop such a day such a Generall but the day of 500. the day of 5000. Martyrs and the martyrdome of
know and of those whom we did know how few did we care much for In Heaven we shall have Communion of Joy and Glory with all Aug. alwaies Vbi non intrat inimicus nec amicus exit Where never any man shall come in that loves us not nor go from us that does Beloved I thinke you could be content to heare I could be content to speake of this Resurrection our glorious state by the low way of the grave till God by that gate of earth let us in at the other of precious Stones And blessed and holy is he who in a rectified conscience desires that resurrection now But we shall not depart far from this consideration by departing into our last branch or conclusion That this first Resurrection may also be understood to be the first riser Christ Jesus and Blessed and holy is he that hath part in that first Resurrection This first Resurrection is then without any detorting 4 Part. any violence very appliable to Christ himself who was Primitiae dormientium in that that action That he rosc again he is become sayes the Apostle the first fruits of them that sleep 1 Cor. 15.20 Hier. in Mat. 27.52 He did rise and rise first others rose with him none before him for S. Hierome taking the words as he finds them in that Euangelist makes this note That though the graves were opened at the instant of Christs death death was overcome the City opened the gates yet the bodies did not rise till after Christs Resurrection For for such Resurrections as are spoken of That women received their dead raised to life again Heb. 11.35 and such as are recorded in the old and new Testament they were all unperfect and temporary resurrections such as S. Hierome sayes of them all Resurgebant iterum morituri They were but reprieved not pardoned Hier. They had a Resurrection to life but yet a Resurrection to another death Christ is the first Resurrection others were raised but he only rose they by a forraine and extrinsique he by his owne power But we call him not the first in that respect onely for so he was not onely the first but the onely he alone arose by his owne power but with relation to all our future Resurrections he is the first Resurrection First If Christ be not raised your faith is in vaine 1 Cor. 15.17 saies the Apostle You have a vaine faith if you beleeve in a dead man He might be true Man though he remained in death but it concernes you to beleeve that he was the Son of God too And he was declared to be the Son of God Rom. 11.4 by the Resurrection from the dead That was the declaration of himselfe his Justification he was justified by the Spirit when he was proved to be God by raising himselfe But thus our Justification is also in his Resurrection For He was raised from the dead for our Iustification how for ours Rom. 4. ult That we should be also in the likenesse of his Resurrection What is that that he hath told us before Our Resurrection in Christ is that we should walke in newnesse of life Rom. 6.4 So that then Christ is the first Resurrection first Efficiently the onely cause of his owne Resurrection First Meritoriously the onely cause of our Resurrection first Exemplarily the onely patterne how we should rise and how we should walke when we are up and therefore Blessed and happy are we if we referre all our resurrections to this first Resurrection Christ Jesus For as Iob said of Comforters so miserable Resurrections are they all without him If therefore thou need and seeke this first Resurrection in the first acceptation a Resurrection from persecutions and calamities as they oppresse thee here have thy recourse to him to Christ Remember that at the death of Christ there were earthquakes the whole earth trembled There were rendings of the Temple Schismes Convulsions distractions in the Church will be But then the graves opened in the midst of those commotions Then when thou thinkest thy selfe swallowed and buried in affliction as the Angell did his Christ Jesus shall remove thy grave stone and give thee a resurrection but if thou thinke to remove it by thine owne wit thine owne power or the favour of potent Friends Digitus Dei non est hic The hand of God is not in all this and the stone shall lye still upon thee till thou putrifie into desperation and thou shalt have no part in this first Resurrection If thou need and seek this first resurrection in the second acceptation from the fearfull death of hainous sin have thy recourse to him to Christ Jesus remember the waight of the sins that lay upon him All thy sins and all thy Fathers and all thy childrens sins all those sins that did induce the first flood and shall induce the last fire upon this world All those sins which that we might take example by them to scape them are recorded and which lest we should take example by them to imitate them are left unrecorded all sins of all ages all sexes all places al times all callings sins heavy in their substance sins aggravated by their circumstances all kinds of sins and all particular sins of every kind were upon him upon Christ Jesus and yet he raised his holy Head his royall Head though under thornes yet crowned with those thornes and triumphed in this first Resurrection and his body was not left in the Grave nor his soule in Hell Christs first tongue was a tongue that might be heard He spoke to the Shepheards by Angels His second tongue was a Star a tongue which might be seene He spoke to the Wisemen of the East by that Hearken after him these two waies As he speakes to thine eare and to thy soul by it in the preaching of his Word as he speakes to thine eye and so to thy soule by that in the exhibiting of his Sacraments And thou shalt have thy part in this first Resurrection But if thou thinke to overcome this death this sense of sin by diversions by worldly delights by mirth and musique and society or by good works with a confidence of merit in them or with a relation to God himselfe but not as God hath manifested himselfe to thee not in Christ Jesus The stone shall lye still upon thee till thou putrifie into desperation and then hast thou no part in this first Resurrection If thou desire this first Resurrection in the third acceptation as S. Paul did To be dissolved and to be with Christ go Christs way to that also He desired that glory that thou doest and he could have laid down his soul when he would but he staid his houre sayes the Gospel He could have ascended immediatly immediatly in time yet he staid to descend into hell first and he could have ascended immediatly of himself by going up yet he staid till he was taken up Thou hast
He who onely is head of the whole Church Christ Jesus is this Archangell Heare him It is the voyce of the Archangell that is the trne and sincere word of God that must raise thee from the death of sin to the life of grace If therefore any Angell differ from the Archangell and preach other then the true and sincere word of God Gal. 1.8 Anathema saies the Apostle let that Angell be accursed And take thou heed of over-affecting overvaluing the gifts of any man so as that thou take the voice of an Angell for the voyce of the Archangell any thing that that man saies for the word of God Yet thou must heare this voice of the Archangell in the Trumpet of God In Tuba Dei The Trumpet of God is his loudest Instrument and his loudest Instrument is his publique Ordinance in the Church Prayer Preaching and Sacraments Heare him in these In all these come not to heare him in the Sermon alone but come to him in Prayer and in the Sacrament too For except the voyce come in the Trumpet of God that is in the publique Ordinance of his Church thou canst not know it to be the voyce of the Archangell Pretended services of God in schismaticall Conventicles are not in the Trumpet of God and therefore not the voyce of the Archangell and so not the meanes ordained for thy spirituall resurrection And as our last resurrection from the grave is rooted in the personall resurrection of Christ 1 Cor. 15.17 For if Christ be not raised from the dead we are yet in our sins saies the Apostle But why so Because to deliver us from sin Christ was to destroy all our enemies Now the last enemy is Death and last time that Death and Christ met upon the Crosse Death overcame him and therefore except he be risen from the power of Death we are yet in our sins as we roote our last resurrection in the person of Christ so do we our first resurrection in him in his word exhibited in his Ordinance for that is the voice of the Archangell in the Trumpet of God And as the Apostle saies here Ver. 15. This we say unto you by the word of the Lord that thus the last resurrection shall be accomplished by Christ himselfe so this we say to you by the Word of the Lord by the harmony of all the Scriptures thus and no other way By the pure word of God delivered and applied by his publique Ordinance by Hearing and Beleeving and Practising under the Seales of the Church the Sacraments is your first resurrection from sin by grace accomplished So have you then those three branches which constitute our first part That they that are dead before us shall not be prevented by us but they shall rise first That they shall be raised by the power of Christ that is the power of God in Christ That that power working to their resurrection shall be declared in a mighty voyce the voyce of the Archangell in the Trumpet of God And then then when they who were formerly dead are first raised and raised by this Power and this power thus declared then shall we we who shall be then alive and remaine be wrought upon which is our second and our next generall part When the Apostle sayes here 2. Part. Nos Nos qui vivimus We that are alive and remaine would he not be thought to speake this of himselfe and the Thessalonians to whom he writes Doe not the words import that That he and they should live till Christs comming to Judgement Some certainly had taken him so But he complaines that he was mistaken We beseech you brethren 2 Thes 2.2 be not soone shaken in minde nor troubled by word or letter as from us that the day of the Lord is at hand so at hand as that we determine it in our dayes in our life So that the Apostle speakes here but Hypothetically he does but put a case That if it should be Gods pleasure to continue them in the world till the comming of his Son Christ Jesus thus and thus they should be proceeded withall for thus and thus shall they be proceeded with sayes he that shall then be alive Our blessed Saviour hath such a manner of speech of an ambiguous sense in S. Matthew Mat. 16.28 That there were some standing there that should not taste of death till they saw the Son of man comming in his Kingdome And this might give them just occasion to think that that Kingdome into which the Judgement shall enter us was at hand For the words which Christ spoke immediatly before those were evidently undeniably spoken of that last and everlasting kingdome of glory The Son of man shall come in the glory of his Father with his Angels c. Then follows Some standing here shall live to see this And yet Christ did not speak this of that last kingdome of glory but either he spoke it of that manifestation of that kingdome which was shewed to some of them to Peter and Iames and Iohn in the Transfiguration of Christ for the Transfiguration was a representation of the kingdome of glory or else he spoke it of that inchoation of the kingdome of glory which shined out in the kingdome of grace which all the Apostles lived to see in the personall comming of the Holy Ghost and in his powerfull working in the conversion of Nations in their life time And this is an inexpressible comfort to us That our blessed Saviour thus mingles his Kingdomes that he makes the Kingdome of Grace and the Kingdome of Glory all one the Church and Heaven all one and assures us That if we see him In hoc speculo in this his Glasse in his Ordinance in his Kingdome of Grace we have already begun to see him facie ad faciem face to face in his Kingdome of Glory If we see him Sicuti manifestatur as he looks in his Word and Sacraments in his Kingdome of Grace we have begun to see him Sicuti est As he is in his Essence in the Kingdome of Glory And when we pray Thy Kingdome come and mean but the Kingdome of Grace he gives us more then we ask an inchoative comprehension of the Kingdome of Glory in this life This is his inexpressible mercy that he mingles his Kingdomes and where he gives one gives both So is there also a faire beam of comfort exhibited to us in this Text That the number reserved for that Kingdome of Glory is no small number For though David said The Lord looked down from heaven and saw not one that did good no not one Psal 14.2 there it is lesse then a few though when the times had better means to be better when Christ preached personally upon the earth when one Centurion had but replyed to Christ Sir Mat. 8.10 you need not trouble your self to go to my house if you do but say the word here my servant will
all knowledge in heaven is experimentall As all knowledge in this world is causall we know a thing if we know the cause thereof so the knowledge in heaven is effectuall experimentall we know it because we have found it to be so The endowments of the blessed those which the School calls Dotes beatorum are ordinarily delivered to be these three Visio Dilectio Fruitio The sight of God the love of God and the fruition the injoying the possessing of God Now as no man can know what it is to see God in heaven but by an experimentall and actuall seeing of him there nor what it is to love God there but by such an actuall and experimentall love of him nor what it is to enjoy and possesse God but by an actuall enjoying and an experimentall possessing of him So can no man tell what the eternity and everlastingnesse of all these is till he have passed through that eternity and that everlastingnesse and that he can never doe for if it could be passed through then it were not eternity How barren a thing is Arithmetique and yet Arithmetique will tell you how many single graines of sand will fill this hollow Vault to the Firmament How empty a thing is Rhetorique and yet Rherorique will make absent and remote things present to your understanding How weak a thing is Poetry and yet Poetry is a counterfait Creation and makes things that are not as though they were How infirme how impotent are all assistances if they be put to expresse this Eternity The best help that I can assigne you is to use well Aeternum vestrum your owne Eternity as S. Gregory calls our whole course of this life Aeternum nostrum our Eternity Aequum est ut qui in aeterno suo peccaverit in aeterno Dei puniatur sayes he It is but justice that he that hath sinned out his owne Eternity should suffer out Gods Eternity So if you suffer out your owne Eternity in submitting your selves to God in the whole course of your life in surrendring your will intirely to his and glorifying of him in a constant patience under all your tribulations It is a righteous thing with God sayes our Apostle in his other Epistle to these Thessalonians To recompence tribulation to them that trouble you 2 Thess 1.6 and to you that are troubled rest with us sayes hee there with us who shall be caught up in the Clouds to meete the Lord in the Ayre and so shall be with the Lord for ever Amen SERMON XXVII Preached to the LL. upon Easter-day at the Communion The KING being then dangerously sick at New-Market PSAL. 89.47 What man is he that liveth and shall not see death AT first God gave the judgement of death upon man when he should transgresse absolutely Morte morieris Thou shalt surely dye The woman in her Dialogue with the Serpent she mollifies it Ne fortè moriamur perchance if we eate we may die and then the Devill is as peremptory on the other side Nequaquam moriemini do what you will surely you shall not die And now God in this Text comes to his reply Quis est homo shall they not die Give me but one instance but one exception to this rule What man is hee that liveth and shall not see death Let no man no woman no devill offer a Ne fortè perchance we may dye much lesse a Nequaquam surely we shall not dye except he be provided of an answer to this question except he can give an instance against this generall except he can produce that mans name and history that hath lived and shall not see death Wee are all conceived in close Prison in our Mothers wombes we are close Prisoners all when we are borne we are borne but to the liberty of the house Prisoners still though within larger walls and then all our life is but a going out to the place of Execution to death Now was there ever any man seen to sleep in the Cart between New-gate and Tyborne between the Prison and the place of Execution does any man sleep And we sleep all the way from the womb to the grave we are never throughly awake but passe on with such dreames and imaginations as these I may live as well as another and why should I dye rather then another but awake and tell me sayes this Text Quis homo who is that other that thou talkest of What man is he that liveth and shall not see death In these words we shall first for our generall humiliation consider the unanswerablenesse of this question There is no man that lives and shall not see death Secondly we shall see how that modification of Eve may stand fortè moriemur how there may be a probable answer made to this question that it is like enough that there are some men that live and shall not see death And thirdly we shall finde that truly spoken which the Devill spake deceitfully then we shall finde the Nequaquam verified we shall finde a direct and full answer to this question we shall finde a man that lives and shall not see death our Lord and Saviour Christ Jesus of whom both S. Augustine and S. Hierome doe take this question to be principally asked and this Text to be principally intended Aske me this question then of all the sons of men generally guilty of originall sin Quis homo and I am speechlesse I can make no answer Aske me this question of those men which shall be alive upon earth at the last day when Christ comes to judgement Quis homo and I can make a probable answer forte moriemur perchance they shall die It is a problematicall matter and we say nothing too peremptorily Aske me this question without relation to originall sin Quis homo and then I will answer directly fully confidently Ecce homo there was a man that lived and was not subject to death by the law neither did he actually die so but that he fulfilled the rest of this verse Eruit animam de inferno by his owne power he delivered his soule from the hand of the grave From the first this lesson rises Generall doctrines must be generally delivered All men must die From the second this lesson Collaterall an unrevealed doctrines must be soberly delivered How we shall be changed at the last day we know not so clearly From the third this lesson arises Conditionall Doctrines must be conditionally delivered If we be dead with him we shall be raised with him First then 1. Part. Quis homo for the generality Those other degrees of punishment which God inflicted upon Adam and Eve and in them upon us were as absolutely and illimitedly pronounced as this of death and yet we see they are many wayes extended or contracted To man it was said In sudore vultus In the sweat of thy browes thou shalt eate thy bread and how many men never sweat till they sweat with eating To the woman it
concealing which were the pieces that constitute our first Part in the second Part which is the time when this Legacy accrues to us is to be given us In die illo at that day At that day shall yee know c. It is the illumination the illustration of our hearts and therefore well referred to the Day The word it selfe affords cheerefulnesse For when God inflicted that great plague to kill all the first-borne in Aegypt Exod. 12. Luke 20. that was done at Midnight And when God would intimate both deaths at once spirituall and temporall he sayes O foole this night they will fetch away thy soule Against all supply of knowledge he cals him foole and against all sense of comfort in the day he threatens night It was In die Illo and In die illo in the day and at a certaine day and at a short day For after Christ had made his Will at this supper given strength to his Will by his death and proved his Will by his Resurrection and left the Church possest of his estate by his Ascension within ten dayes after that he poured out this Legacy of knowledge For though some take this day mentioned in the Text Calvin to be Tanqnam unius diei tenor à dato Spiritu ad Resurrectionem from the first giving of the Holy Ghost to the Resurrection And others take this day Osiand to bee from his Resurrection to the end of his second Conversation upon earth till his Ascension and S. Augustine referre it Ad perfectam visionem in Coelis to the perfect fruition of the sight of God in Heaven yet the most usefull and best followed acceptation is This Day of the comming of the Holy Ghost That day we celebrate this day and we can never finde the Christian Church so farre as we can judge by the evidence of Story to have been without this festivall day The reason of all Festivals in the Church was and is Ne volumine temporum ingrata subrepat oblivio August Lest after many ages involved and wrapped up in one another Gods particular benefits should bee involved and wrapped up in unthankfulnesse And the benefits received this day were such as should never be forgotten for without this day all the rest had been evacuated and uneffectuall If the Apostles by the comming of the Holy Ghost had not been established in an infallibility in themselves and in an ability to deale with all Nations by the benefit of tongues the benefit of Christs passion had not been derived upon all Nations And therefore to This day and to Easter-day all publike Baptismes in the Primitive Church were reserved None were baptized except in cases of necessity but upon one of these two dayes for as there is an Exaltation a Resurrection given us in Baptisme represented by Easter so there belongs to us a confirmation an establishing of grace and the increase thereof represented in Pentecost in the comming of the Holy Ghost As the Jews had an Easter in the memory of their deliverance from Aegypt and a Pentecost in the memory of the Law given at Mout Sinai So at Easter we celebrate the memory of that glorious Passeover when Christ passed from the grave and hell in his Resurrection and at this Feast of Pentecost we celebrate his giving of the Law to all Nations and his investing and possessing himselfe of his Kingdome the Church for this is Festum Adoptionis as S. Chrysostome cals it The cheerefull feast of our Adoption in which the Holy Ghost convaying the Son of God to us enables us to be the Sons of God and to cry Abba Father This then is that day Acts 2. when the Apostles being with one accord and in one place that is in one faith and in one profession of that faith not onely without Heresie but without Schisme too the Holy Ghost as a mighty winde filled them all and gave them utterance As a winde to note a powerfull working And he filled them to note the abundance And he gave them utterance to inferre that which we spoke of before The Communication of that knowledge which they had received to others This was that Spirit whom it concerned the Apostles so much to have as that Christ himselfe must goe from them to send him to them If I goe not away sayes Christ the Comforter will not come to you How great a comfort must this necessarily be which must so abundantly recompence the losse of such a comfort as the presence of Christ was This is that Spirit who though hee were to be sent by the Father and sent by the Son yet he comes not as a Messenger from a Superiour for hee was alwaies equall to Father and Son But the Father sent him and the Son sent him as a tree sends forth blossomes and as those blossomes send forth a sweet smell and as the Sun sends forth beames by an emanation from it selfe He is Spiritus quem nemo interpretari potest sayes S. Chrysostome hee hath him not that doth not see he hath him nor is any man without him who in a rectified conscience thinks he hath him Illo Prophetae illustrantur Illo idiotae condiuntur sayes the same Father The Prophets as high as their calling was saw nothing without this Spirit and with this Spirit a simple man understands the Prophets And therefore doth S. Basil attribute that to the Holy Ghost which seemes to be peculiar to the Son he cals him Verbum Dei because sayes he Spiritus interpres Filii sicut Filius Patris As the Son hath revealed to us the will of the Father and so is the Word of God to us so the Holy Ghost applies the promises and the merits of the Son to us and so is the Word of God to us too and enables us to come to God in that voyce of his blessed Servant S. Augustine O Deus secretissime patentissime Though nothing be more mysterious then the knowledge of God in the Trinity yet nothing is more manifest unto us then by the light of this person the Holy Ghost so much of both the other Persons as is necessary for our Salvation is Now it is not onely to the Apostles that the Holy Ghost is descended this day but as S. Chrysostom saies of the Annunciation Non ad unam tantùm animam It is not onely to one Person that the Angel said then The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee and overshadow thee but sayes he that Holy Ghost hath said Super omnem Ioel 2. I will poure out my selfe upon all men so I say of this day This day if you be all in this place concentred united here in one Faith and one Religion If you be of one accord that is in perfect charity The Holy Ghost shall fill you all according to your measure and his purpose and give you utterance in your lives and conversations Qui ita vacat orationibus Origen ut dignus fiat illo
as all sin is a violating of God God being the God of mercy and the God of life because it deprives us of both those of mercy and of life in opposition to mercy Ephes 2.3 Rom. 5.12 it is called anger and wrath We are all by nature the children of wrath And in opposition to life it is called death Death enters by sin and death is gone over all men And as originall sin hath relation to our souls It is called that indeleble foulnesse and uncleannesse which God discovers in us all Jer. 2.22 Though thou wash thee with nitre and take thee much sope yet thine iniquity is marked before me saith the Lord And which every man findes in himself as Iob did If I wash my self in Snow-water Job 9. and purge my hands never so cleane yet mine own clothes shall make me filthy As it hath relation to our bodies so it is not only called Lex carnis A law which the flesh cannot disobey And Lex in membris A law written and imprinted naturally in our bodies and inseparably inherent there but it is a law that hath got Posse comitatus All our strength and munition into her own hands all our powers and faculties to execute her purposes against us and as the Apostle expresses it fully Hath force in our members to bring forth fruits unto death Rom. 7.5 Consider our originall weaknesse as God lookes upon it so it is inexcusable sin consider it as our soules suffer by it so it is an indeleble foulnesse consider it as our bodies contribute to it and harbour it and retain it and so it is an unquenchable fire and a brand of hell it self It hath banished me out of my self It is no more I that do any thing but sin that dwelleth in me It doth not only dwell but reign in these mortall bodies not only reign but tyrannize and lead us captives under the law of sin which is in our members Ver. 23. So that we have utterly lost Bonum possibilitatis for as men we are out of all possibility not only of that victorious and triumphant gratulation and acclamation to our selves as for a delivery I thank God through Iesus Christ but we cannot come to that sense of our misery Ver. ult as to cry out in the Apostles words immediately preceding O wretched man that I am who shall deliver me from the body of this death Now as this death hath invaded every part and faculty of man understanding and will and all for though originall sin seem to be contracted without our will yet Sicut omnium natura ita omnium voluntates fuere originaliter in Adam sayes S. Augustine As the whole nature of mankinde and so of every particular man was in Adam so also were the faculties and so the will of every particular man in him so this death hath invaded every particular man Death went over all men for as much as all men had sinned And therefore they that do blasphemously exempt some persons from sin they set them not above the Law but without the Law They out-law them in taking from them the benefit of the new Law the Gospel and of the author of that Law Christ Jesus who came a Physitian to the sick and was sent only to save sinners for them that are none it is well that they need no Redeemer for if they did they could have no part in ours for he came only to redeem sinners and they are none God brought his Son out of Aegypt not out of Goshen in Aegypt not out of a priviledged place in Aegypt but out of Aegypt God brought his Son Christ Jesus out of the Virgin Mary without sin but he brought not her so out of her mother If they might be beleeved that the blessed Virgin and Iohn Baptist and the Prophet Ieremy were without all sin they would goe about at last to make us beleeve that Ignatius were so too For us in the highest of our sanctification still let us presse with that Dimitte nobis debita nostra O Lord forgive us our trespasses and confesse that we needed forgivenesse even for the sins which we have not done Dimissa fateor quae mea sponte feci quae te duce non feci sayes S. Augustine I confesse I need thy mercy both for the sins which I have done and for those which if thy grace had not restrained me I should have done And therefore if another think he hath scaped those sins that I have committed August Non me derideat ab eo medico aegrum sanari à quoei praestitum ne aegrotaret Let him not despise me who am recovered since it is the same physitian who hath wrought upon us both though by a diverse method for he hath preserved him and he hath recovered me for for himselfe we say still with the same Father Perdiderat bonum possibilitatis As well he as I had lost all possibility of standing or rising after our fall This was our first branch Quid homo potest The universall impotency And our second is That this is In homine In man no man as man can make this profession That Iesus is the Lord and therefore we consider first wherein and how far man is disabled In every Age some men have attributed to the power of nature more then a naturall man can doe and yet no man doth so much as a naturall man might doe For the over-valuing of nature and her power there are impressions in the Fathers themselves which whether mis-understood by the Readers or by the Authors have led and prevailed much When Iustin Martyr sayes Ratio pro fide Graecis Barbaris That rectified reason did the same office in the Gentiles as faith did in the Christians when Clement sayes Philosophia per sese justi ficavit Graecos That the Gentiles to whom the Law and Gospell was not communicated were justified by their Philosophy when Chrysostome sayes Satis fuit Gentibus abstinuisse ab Idololatria It was sufficient for the Gentiles if they did not worship false gods though they understood not the true when S. Augustine sayes Rectè facis nihil quaerere ampliùs quà m quod docet ratio He doth well that seeks no farther then his reason leads them these impressions in the Fathers have transported later men farther so far as that Andradius in the Romane Church saves all honest Philosophers that lived morally well without Christ And Tostatus takes all impediments out of their way That originall sin is absolutely remitted to them In prima bona operatione in charitate In their first good morall work that they do So that they are in an easier way then we who are but Christians for in the opinion of Tostatus himselfe and that whole Church we cannot be delivered from originall sin but by baptisme nothing lesse then a Sacrament would deliver us from originall sin and any good worke shall deliver any of the Gentiles
The naturall and essentiall word of God He hath his first name in the text He is the Lord As he is verbum illatum and Conceptum A person upon whom there is a Decree and a Commission that he shall be a person capable to redeem Man by death he hath this second name in the text He is Christ As he is The Lord he cannot die As he is Christ under the Decree he cannot chuse but die But as he is Iesus He is dead already and that is his other his third his last name in this Text If any man love not c. We have inverted a little the order of these names or titles in the Text Iesus because the Name of Christ is in the order of nature before the name of Iesus as the Commission is before the Execution of the Commission And in other places of Scripture to let us see how both the capacity of doing it and the actuall doing of it belongs onely to this person the Holy Ghost seems to convey a spirituall delight to us in turning and transposing the Names every way sometimes Iesus alone and Christ alone sometimes Iesus Christ and sometimes Christ Iesus that every way we might be sure of him Now we consider him as Iesus a reall an actuall Saviour And this was his Name The Angel said to his Mother Thou shalt call his name Iesus for he shall save his people And we say to you Call upon this name Iesus for he hath saved his people for Rom. 8.1 Now there is no condemnation to them that are in Christ Iesus As he was verbum conceptum and illatum The word which the Trinity uttered amongst themselves so he was decreed to come in that place The Lord of the vineyard that is Almighty God seeing the misery of Man Luk. 20.13 to be otherwise irremediable The Lord of the vineyard said what shall I doe I will send my beloved Sonne it may be they will reverence him when they see him But did they reverence him when they saw him This sending made him Christ a person whom though the Sonne of God they might see They did see him but then says that Gospell they drew him out and killed him And this he knew before he came and yet came and herein was Iesus a reall an actuall a zealous Saviour even of them that slew him And in this with piety and reverence we may be bold to say that even the Son of God was filius prodigus that powred out his blood even for his Enemies but rather in that acclamation of the prodigall childs Father This my sonne was dead and is alive againe he was lost and is found For but for this desire of our salvation why should he who was the Lord be ambitious of that Name the name of Iesus which was not Tam expectabile apud Iudaeos nomen Tertull. no such name as was in any especiall estimation amongst the Iews for we see in Ioscphus divers men of that name of no great honour of no good conversation But because the name implyes salvation Iosua who had another name before Idem Cum in hujus sacramenti imagine parabatur when he was prepared as a Type of this Iesus to be a Saviour a Deliverer of the people Etiam nominis Dominici inaugur atus est figurae Iesus cognominatus then he was canonized with that name of salvation and called Iosuae which is Iesus The Lord then the Son of God had a Sitio in heaven as well as upon the Crosse He thirsted our salvation there and in the midst of the fellowship of the Father from whom he came and of the Holy Ghost who came from him and the Father and all the Angels who came by a lower way from them all he desired the conversation of Man for Mans sake He that was God The Lord became Christ a man and he that was Christ became Iesus no man a dead man to save man To save man all wayes in all his parts And to save all men in all parts of the world To save his soule from hell where we should have felt pains and yet been dead then when we felt them and seen horrid spectacles and yet been in darknes and blindnes then when we saw them And suffered unsufferable torments yet have told over innumerable ages in suffering them To save this soule from that hell and to fill that capacity which it hath and give it a capacity which it hath not to comprehend the joyes and glory of Heaven this Christ became Iesus To save this body from the condemnation of everlasting corruption where the wormes that we breed are our betters because they have a life where the dust of dead Kings is blowne into the street and the dust of the street blowne into the River and the muddy River tumbled into the Sea and the Sea remaunded into all the veynes and channels of the earth to save this body from everlasting dissolution dispersion dissipation and to make it in a glorious Resurrection not onely a Temple of the holy Ghost but a Companion of the holy Ghost in the kingdome of heaven This Christ became this Iesus To save this man body and soule together from the punishments due to his former sinnes and to save him from falling into future sinnes by the assistance of his Word preached and his Sacrrments administred in the Church which he purchased by his bloud is this person The Lord the Christ become this Iesus this Saviour To save so All wayes In soule in body in both And also to save all men For to exclude others from that Kingdome is a tyrannie an usurpation and to exclude thy selfe is a sinfull and a rebellious melancholy But as melancholy in the body is the hardest humour to be purged so is the melancholy in the soule the distrust of thy salvation too Flashes of presumption a calamity will quench but clouds of desperation calamities thicken upon us But even in this inordinate dejection thou exaltest thy self above God and makest thy worst better then his best thy sins larger then his mercy Christ hath a Greek name and an Hebrew name Christ is Greeke Iesus is Hebrew He had commission to save all nations and he hath saved all Thou givest him another Hebrew name and another Greek Apoc. 9.11 when thou makest his name Abaddon and Apollyon a Destroyer when thou wilt not apprehend him as a Saviour and love him so which is our second Part in our order proposed at first If any man love not c. In the former part 2 Part. we found it to be one argument for the Deitie of Christ That he was Iehovah The Lord we have another here That this great branch nay this very root of all divine worship due to God is required to be exhibited to this person That is Love Cicero If any man love not c. If any man could see Vertue with his eye he would be
not good to take knowledge of enemies Manifestat inimicos many times that is better forborne yet in all cases it is good to know them Especially in our case in the Text Eph. 6.12 because our enemies intended here are of themselves Princes of darknesse They can multiply clouds and disguisings their kingdome is in the darknesse Sagittant in obscuro Psal 11.2 Psal 143.3 They shoot in the darke I am wounded with a tentation as with the plague and I know not whence the arrow came Collocavit me in obscuris The enemy hath made my dwelling darknesse I have no window that lets in light but then this Angel of light shews me who they are But then Inimici Angeli if we were left to our selves it were but a little advantage to know who our enemies were when we knew those enemies to be Angels persons so far above our resistance Eph. 6.12 For but that S. Paul mollifies and eases it with a milder word Est nobis colluctatio That we wrestle with enemies that thereby we might see our danger is but to take a fall not a deadly wound if we look seriously to our worke we cannot avoyd falling into sins of infirmity but the death of habituall sin we may Quare moriemini domus Israel He does not say why would ye fall but why will ye die ye house of Israel it were a consideration inough to make us desperate of victory to heare him say that this though it be but a wrestling is not against flesh and blood but against principalities and powers and spirituall wickednesses in high places None of us hath got the victory over flesh and blood and yet we have greater enemies then flesh and blood are Some disciplines some mortifications we have against flesh and blood we have S. Pauls probatum est his medicine if we will use it Castigo corpus 1 Cor. 9.27 I keep under my body and bring it into subjection for that we have some assistance Even our enemies become our friends poverty or sicknesse will fight for us against flesh and blood against our carnall lusts but for these powers and principalities I know not where to watch them how to encounter them I passe my time sociably and merrily in cheerful conversation in musique in feasting in Comedies in wantonnesse and I never heare all this while of any power or principality my Conscience spies no such enemy in all this And then alone between God and me at midnight some beam of his grace shines out upon me and by that light I see this Prince of darknesse and then I finde that I have been the subject the slave of these powers and principalities when I thought not of them Well I see them and I try then to dispossesse my selfe of them and I make my recourse to the powerfullest exorcisme that is I turne to hearty and earnest prayer to God and I fix my thoughts strongly as I thinke upon him and before I have perfected one petition one period of my prayer a power and principality is got into me againe Esay 29.10 Spiritus soporis The spirit of slumber closes mine eyes and I pray drousily Esa 19.14 Or spiritus vertiginis the spirit of deviation and vaine repetition and I pray giddily and circularly and returne againe and againe to that I have said before Luk. 9.55 and perceive not that I do so and nescio cujus spiritus sim as our Saviour said rebuking his Disciples who were so vehement for the burning of the Samaritans you know not of what spirit you are I pray and know not of what spirit I am I consider not mine own purpose in prayer And by this advantage this doore of inconsideration enters spiritus erroris 1 Tim. 4.1 The seducing spirit the spirit of error and I pray not onely negligently but erroniously dangerously for such things as disconduce to the glory of God and my true happinesse Hosea 4.12.5.4 if they were granted Nay even the Prophet Hosea's spiritus fornicationum enters into me The spirit of fornication that is some remembrance of the wantonnesse of my youth some mis-interpretation of a word in my prayer that may beare an ill sense some unclean spirit some power or principality hath depraved my prayer and slackned my zeale And this is my greatest misery of all that when that which fights for me and fights against me too sicknesse hath laid me upon my last bed then in my weakest estate these powers and principalities shall be in their full practise against me And therefore it is one great advancement of thy deliverance to be brought by this Angel that is by the Ministery of the Gospel of Christ to know that thou hast Angels to thine enemies And then another is to know their number and so the strength of their confederacy for in the verse before the Text they are expressed to be foure I saw foure Angels c. Foure legions of Angels foure millions nay Quatuor Angeli foure Creations of Angels could do no more harme then is intended in these foure for as it is said in the former verse They stood upon the foure corners of the earth they bestrid they cantoned the whole world Thou hast opposite Angels enow to batter thee every where and to cut off and defeat all succours all supplies that thou canst procure or propose to thy selfe absolute enemies to one another will meet and joyne to thy ruine and even presumption will induce desperation We need not be so literall in this as S. Hierome who indeed in that followed Origen to thinke that there is a particular evill Angel over every sin That because we finde that mention of the spirit of error and the spirit of slumber and the spirit of fornication we should therefore thinke that Christ meant by Mammon Mat. 6.24 a particular spirit of Covetousnesse and that there be severall princes over severall sins This needs not when thou art tempted never aske that Spirits name his name is legio for he is many Mar. 5.9 Take thy selfe at the largest as thou art a world there are foure Angels at thy foure corners Let thy foure corners be thy worldly profession thy calling and another thy bodily refection thy eating and drinking and sleeping and a third thy honest and allowable recreations and a fourth thy religious service of God in this place which two last that is recreation and religion God hath been pleased to joyn together in the Sabbath in which he intended his own glory in our service of him and then the rest of the Creature too let these foure thy calling thy sleeping thy recreation thy religion be the foure corners of thy world and thou shalt find an Angel of tentation at every corner even in thy sleep even in this house of God thou hast met them The Devill is no Recusant he will come to Church and he will lay his snares there When that day
15. That some men were baptized Pro mortuis for dead that is as good as dead past all hope of recovery So he dyed then Now beloved who hath seene a Father or a friend or a neighbour or a malefactor dye Luke 16.30 and hath not beene affected with his dying words Nay Father Abraham sayes Dives that will not serve That they have Moses and the Prophets Sermons will not serve their turnes But if one went to them from the Dead they would repent And the nearest to this is if one speake to them that is going to the dead If he had beene a minute in Heaven thou wouldst beleeve him and wilt thou not beleeve him a minute before Did not Iacob observe the Angels ascending as well as descending upon that ladder Trust a good soule going to God as well as comming from God And then as our Casuists say That whatsoever a man is bound to do In articulo mortis at the point of death by way of Confession or otherwise he is bound to doe when he comes to the Sacrament or when he undertakes any action of danger because then he should prepare himselfe as if he were dying so when you come to heare us here who are come from God heare us with such an affection as if we were going to God as if you heard us upon our death-beds The Pulpit is more then our death-bed for we are bound to the same truth and sincerity here as if we were upon our death-bed and then Gods Ordinance is more expresly executed here then there He that mingles falshood with his last dying words deceives the world inexcusably because he speakes in the person of an honest man but he that mingles false informations in his preaching does so much more because he speaks in the person of God himselfe They to whom S. Paul spake there are said all to have wept and to have fallen on Pauls necke and to have kissed him But it is added they sorrowed most of all for those words That they should see his face no more When any of those men to whom for their holy calling and their religious paines in their calling you owe and pay a reverence are taken from you by death or otherwise there is a godly sorrow due to that and in a great proportion In the death of one Elisha King Ioash apprehended a ruine of all He wept over his face 2 King 13.14 and said O my father my father the Charet of Israel and the horsemen thereof He lost the solicitude of a father he lost the power and strength of the Kingdome in the losse of one such Prophet But when you have so sorrowed for men upon whom your devotion hath put and justly put such a valuation remember that a greater losse then the losse of a thousand such men may fall upon you Consider the difference betweene the Candle and the Candlestick betweene the Preacher of the Gospel and the Gospel it selfe betweene a religious man and Religion it selfe The removing of the Candlestick and the withdrawing of the Gospel and the prophaning of Religion is infinitely a greaten losse then if hundreds of the present labourers should be taken away from us Mat. 8.12.21.43 Apoc. 2.5 The children of the kingdome may be cast into utter darknesse and That kingdome may be given to others which shall bring forth the fruits thereof and The Lord may come and come quickly and remove our Candlestick out of his place pray we that in our dayes he may not And truly where God threatens to doe so in the Revelation it is upon a Church of which God himselfe gives good testimony The Church of Ephesus of her Labours that is Preaching Ver. 2. of her Patience that is suffering of her Impatience her not suffering the evill that is her integrity and impartiality without connivence or toleration And of her not fainting that is perseverance and of her having the Nicolaitans that is sincerity in the truth Ver. 6. and a holy animosity against all false Doctrines And yet sayes he I have something to say against thee When thou hast testified their assiduity in Preaching their constancy in suffering their sincerity in beleeving their integrity in professing their perseverance in continuing their zeale in hating of all error in others when thou thy selfe hast given this evidence in their behalfe canst thou Lord Jesu have any thing to say against them what then shall we we that faile in all these look to heare from thee what was their crime Because they had left their first love Left the fulnesse of their former zeale to Gods cause Now if our case be so much worse then theirs as that we are not onely guilty of all those sins of which Christ discharges them and have not onely left our first love but in a manner lost all our love all our zeale to his glory and be come to a luke warmnesse in his service and a generall neglect of the meanes of grace how justly may we feare not onely that he will come and come quickly but that he may possibly be upon his way already to remove our Candlestick and withdraw the Gospel from us And if it be a sad thing to you to heare a Paul a holy man say You shall see my face no more on this side the Ite maledicti Go ye accursed into hell fire there cannot be so sad a voyce as to heare Christ Jesus say You shall see my face no more Facies Dei est qua Deus nobis innotescit sayes S. Augustin That is the face of God to us by which God manifests himselfe to us God manifests himselfe to us in the Word and in the Sacraments If we see not them in their true lines and colours the Word and Sacraments sincerely and religiously preached and administred we doe not see them but masks upon them And if we do not see them we do not see the face of Christ And I could as well stand under his Nescio vos which he said to the negligent Virgins I know you not or his Nescivi vos which he said to those that boast of their works Mat. 7.22 I never knew you as under this fearfull thunder from his mouth You shall see my face no more I will absolutely withdraw or I will suffer prophanenesse to enter into those meanes of your salvation Word and Sacraments which I have so long continued in their sincerity towards you and you have so long abused Blessed God say not so to us yet yet let the tree grow another yeare before thou cut it downe And as thou hast digged about it by bringing judgements upon our neighbours so water it with thy former raine the dew of thy grace and with thy later raine the teares of our contrition that we may still seethy face here and hereafter here in thy kingdome of Grace hereafter in thy kingdome of Glory which thou hast purchased for us with the inestimable price of thine
conformity to Angels But divers others of the Ancients have taken Soule and Spirit for different things even in the Intellectuall part of man somewhat obscurely I confesse and as some venture to say unnecessarily if not dangerously It troubled S. Hierome sometimes Ad Hedibiam l. 12. Epist 150 how to understand the word Spirit in man but he takes the easiest way he dispatches himselfe of it as fast as he could that is to speake of it onely as it was used in the Scriptures Famosa quaestio sayes he sed brevi sermone tractanda It is a question often disputed but may be shortly determined Idem spiritus hic ac in iis verbis Nolite extinguere spiritum When we heare of the Spirit in a Man in Scriptures we must understand it of the gifts of the Spirit for so fully to the same purpose sayes S. Chrysostome Spiritus est charisma spiritus The Spirit is the working of the Spirit The gifts of the Spirit and so when we heare The Spirit was vexed The Spirit was quenched still it is to be understood The gifts of the Spirit And so as they restraine the signification of Spirit to those gifts onely though the word do indeed in many places require a larger extension so do many restraine this word in our text The Soule onely Ad sensum to the sensitive faculties of the soule that is onely to the paine and anguish that his body suffered But so far at least David had gone in that which he said before My bones are vexed Now Ingravescit morbus The disease festers beyond the bone even into the marrow it selfe His Bones were those best actions that he had produced and he saw in that Contemplation that for all that he had done he was still at best but an unprofitable servant if not a rebellious enemy But then when he considers his whole soule and all that ever it can do he sees all the rest will be no better The poyson he sees is in the fountaine the Canker in the roote the rancor the venom in the soule it selfe Corpus instrumentum anima ars ipsa sayes S. Basil The body and the senses are but the tooles and instruments that the soule works with But the soule is the art the science that directs those Instruments The faculties of the soule are the boughs that produce the fruits and the operations and particular acts of those faculties are the fruits but the soule is the roote of all And David sees that this art this science this soule can direct him or establish him in no good way That not onely the fruits his particular acts nor onely the boughs and armes his severall faculties but the roote it selfe the soule it selfe was infected His bones are shaken he dares not stand upon the good he hath done his soule is so too he cannot hope for any good he shall do He hath no merit for the past he hath no free-will for the future that is his case This troubles his bones Turbata this troubles his soule this vexes them both for the word is all one in both places as our last Translators have observed and rendred it aright not vexed in one place and troubled in the other as our former Translators had it But in both places it is Bahal and Bahal imports a vehemence both in the intensnesse of it and in the suddennesse and inevitablenesse of it And therefore it signifies often Praecipitantiam A headlong downfall and irrecoverablenesse And often Evanescentiam an utter vanishing away and annihilation David whom we alwayes consider in the Psalmes not onely to speake literally of those miseries which were actually upon himselfe but prophetically too of such measures and exaltations of those miseries as would certainly fall upon them as did not seeke their sanation their recovery from the God of all health looking into all his actions they are the fruits and into all his faculties they are the boughs and into the root of all the soule it selfe considering what he had done what he could do he sees that as yet he had done no good he sees he should never be able to doe any His bones are troubled He hath no comfort in that which is growne up and past And his soule is sore troubled for to the trouble of the soule there is added in the Text that particle Valde It is a sore trouble that falls upon the soule A troubled spirit who can beare because he hath no hope in the future He was no surer for that which was to come then for that which was past But he that is all considered in that case which he proposes he comes as the word signifies ad praecipitantiam That all his strength can scarce keepe him from precipitation into despaire And he comes as the word signifies too ad Evanescentiam to an evaporating and a vanishing of his soule that is even to a renouncing and a detestation of his immortality and to a willingnesse to a desire that he might die the death of other Creatures which perish altogether and goe out as a Candle This is the trouble the sore trouble of his soule who is brought to an apprehension of Gods indignation for not performing Conditions required at his hands and of his inability to performe them and is not come to the contemplation of his mercy in supply thereof There is Turbatio Timoris Mat. 2.3 Psal 107.27 A trouble out of feare of danger in this world Herods trouble When the Magi brought word of another King Herod was troubled and all Ierusalem with him There is Turbatio confusionis The Mariners trouble in a tempest Their soule melteth for trouble Luk. 10.41 Luk. 1.29 sayes David There is Turbatio occupationis Martha's trouble Martha thou art troubled about many things sayes Christ There is Turbatio admirationis The blessed Virgins trouble When she saw the Angel she was troubled at his saying To contract this John 11.33 There is Turbatio compassionis Christs own trouble When he saw Mary weepe for her brother Lazarus he groaned in the spirit and was troubled in himselfe But in all these troubles Herods feare The Mariners irresolution Martha's multiplicity of businesse The blessed Virgins sudden amazement Our Saviours compassionate sorrow as they are in us worldly troubles so the world administers some means to extemiate and alleviate these troubles for feares are overcome and stormes are appeased and businesses are ended and wonders are understood and sorrows weare out But in this trouble of the bones and the soule in so deepe and sensible impressions of the anger of God looking at once upon the pravity the obliquity the malignity of all that I have done of all that I shall doe Man hath but one step between that state and despaire to stop upon to turne to the Author of all temporall and all spirituall health the Lord of life with Davids prayer Psal 51.10 Cor mundum crea Create a cleane heart within me
determine wholly and entirely in God too and in his glory Quoniam non in morte Do it O Lord For in Death there is no remembrance of thee c. In some other places Propter misericordiam Psal 40.11 David comes to God with two reasons and both grounded meerely in God Misericordia veritas Let thy Mercy and thy Truth alwaies preserve me In this place he puts himselfe wholly upon his mercy for mercy is all or at least the foundation that sustaines all or the wall that imbraces all That mercy which the word of this text Casad imports is Benignitas in non promeritum Mercy is a good disposition towards him who hath deserved nothing of himselfe For where there is merit there is no mercy Nay it imports more then so For mercy as mercy presumes not onely no merit in man but it takes knowledge of no promise in God properly For that is the difference betweene Mercy and Truth that by Mercy at first God would make promises to man in generall and then by Truth he would performe those promises but Mercy goeth first and there David begins and grounds his Prayer at Mercy Mercy that can have no pre-mover no pre-relation but begins in it selfe For if we consider the mercy of God to mankinde subsequently I meane after the Death of Christ so it cannot bee properly called mercy Mercy thus considered hath a ground And God thus considered hath received a plentifull and an abundant satisfaction in the merits of Christ Jesus And that which hath a ground in man that which hath a satisfaction from man Christ was truly Man fals not properly precisely rigidly under the name of mercy But consider God in his first disposition to man after his fall That he would vouchsafe to study our Recovery and that he would turne upon no other way but the shedding of the blood of his owne and innocent and glorious Son Quid est homo aut filius hominis What was man or all mankinde that God should be mindfull of him so or so mercifull to him When God promises that he will be mercifull and gracious to me if I doe his Will when in some measure I doe that Will of his God begins not then to be mercifull but his mercy was awake and at worke before when he excited me by that promise to doe his Will And after in my performance of those duties his Spirit seales to me a declaration that his Truth is exercised upon mee now as his mercy was before Still his Truth is in the effect in the fruit in the execution but the Decree and the Roote is onely Mercy God is pleased also when we come to him with other Reasons When we remember him of his Covenant When we remember him of his holy servants Abraham Isaac and Iacob yea when we remember him of our owne innocencie in that particular for which wee may be then unjustly pursued God was glad to heare of a Righteousnesse and of an Innocencie and of cleane and pure hands in David when hee was unjustly pursued by Saul But the roote of all is in this Propter misericordiam Doe it for thy mercie sake For when we speake of Gods Covenant it may be mistaken who is and who is not within that Covenant What know I Of Nations and of Churches which have received the outward profession of Christ we may be able to say They are within the Covenant generally taken But when we come to particular men in the Congregation there I may call a Hypocrite a Saint and thinke an excomunicate soule to be within the Covenant I may mistake the Covenant and I may mistake Gods servants who did and who did not dye in his favour What know I We see at Executions when men pretend to dye cheerefully for the glory of God halfe the company will call them Traitors and halfe Martyrs So if we speake of our owne innocency we may have a pride in that or some other vicious and defective respect as uncharitablenesse towards our malicious Persecutors or laying seditious aspersions upon the justice of the State that may make us guilty towards God though wee be truly innocent to the World in that particular But let mee make my recourse to the mercy of God and there can bee no errour no mistaking And therefore if that and nothing but that be my ground God will Returne to me God will Deliver my soule God will Save me For his mercy sake that is because his mercy is engaged in it And if God were to sell me this Returning this Delivering this Saving and all that I pray for what could I offer God for that so great as his owne mercy in which I offer him the Innocencie the Obedience the Blood of his onely Son If I buy of the Kings land I must pay for it in the Kings money I have no Myne nor Mint of mine owne If I would have any thing from God I must give him that which is his owne for it that is his mercy And this is to give God his mercy To give God thanks for his mercy To give all to his mercy And to acknowledge that if my works be acceptable to him nay if my very faith be acceptable to him it is not because my works no nor my faith hath any proportion of equivalencie in it or is worth the least flash of joy or the least spangle of glory in Heaven in it selfe but because God in his mercy onely of his mercy meerely for the glory of his mercy hath past such a Covenant Crede fac hoc Beleeve this and doe this and thou shalt live not for thy deed sake not nor for thy faith sake but for my mercy sake And farther we carry not this first reason of the Prayer arising onely from God There remaines in these words another Reason In morte in which David himselfe and all men seeme to have part Quia non in morte For in death there is no remembrance of thee c. Upon occasion of which words because they seeme to imply a lothnesse in David to dye it may well be inquired why Death seemed so terrible to the good and godly men of those times as that evermore we see them complaine of shortnesse of life and of the neerenesse of death Certainely the rule is true in naturall and in civill and in divine things as long as wee are in this World Nolle meliorem est corruptio primae habitudinis Picus Heptapl l. 7. proem That man is not well who desires not to be better It is but our corruption here that makes us loth to hasten to our incorruption there And besides many of the Ancients and all the later Casuists of the other side and amongst our owne men Peter Martyr and Calvin assigne certaine cases in which it hath Rationem boni The nature of Good and therefore is to be embraced to wish our dissolution and departure out of this World and yet many good and
thereof does not wholly extinguish Grace nor grieve the Spirit of God in us And such sinnes God covers saies David here Now what is his way of covering these sins As Sin in this notion is not so deepe a wound upon God as Transgression in the other Covering so Covering here extends not so far as Forgiving did there There forgiving was a taking away of sin by taking that way That Christ should beare all our sins it was a suffering a dying it was a penall part and a part of Gods justice executed upon his one and onely Son here it is a part of Gods mercy in spreading and applying the merits and satisfaction of Christ upon all them whom God by the Holy Ghost hath gathered in the profession of Christ and so called to the apprehending and embracing of this mantle this garment this covering the righteousnesse of Christ in the Christian Christ In which Church and by his visible Ordinances therein the Word and Sacraments God covers hides conceales even from the inquisition of his owne justice those smaller sins which his servants commit and does not turne them out of his service for those sins So the word the word is Casah which we translate Covering is used Prov. 12.23 A wise man concealeth knowledge that is Does not pretend to know so much as indeed he does So our mercifull God when he sees us under this mantle this covering Christ spread upon his Church conceales his knowledge of our sins and suffers them not to reflect upon our consciences in a consternation thereof So then as the Forgiving was Auferre ferendo a taking away of sin by taking all sin upon his owne person So this Covering is Tegere attingendo To cover sin by comming to it by applying himselfe to our sinfull consciences in the meanes instituted by him in his Church for they have in that language another word Sacac which signifies Tegere obumbrando To cover by overshadowing by refreshing This is Tegere obumbrando To cover by shadowing when I defend mine eye from the offence of the Sun by interposing my hand betweene the Sun and mine eye at this distance a far off But Tegere attingendo is when thus I lay my hand upon mine eye and cover it close by that touching In the knowledge that Christ hath taken all the sins of all the world upon himselfe that there is enough done for the salvation of all mankinde I have a shadowing a refreshing But because I can have no testimony that this generall redemption belongs to me who am still a sinner except there passe some act betweene God and me some seale some investiture some acquittance of my debts my sins therefore this second beame of Davids Blessednesse in this his Catechisme shines upon me in this That God hath not onely sowed and planted herbs and Simples in the world medicinall for all diseases of the world but God hath gathered and prepared those Simples and presented them so prepared to me for my recovery from my disease God hath not onely received a full satisfaction for all sinne in Christ but Christ in his Ordinances in his Church offers me an application of all that for my selfe and covers my sin from the eye of his Father not onely obumbrando as hee hath spread himselfe as a Cloud refreshing the whole World in the value of the satisfaction but Attingendo by comming to me by spreading himself upon me as the Prophet did upon the dead Child Mouth to mouth Hand to hand In the mouth of his Minister he speaks to me In the hand of the Minister he delivers himselfe to me and so by these visible acts and seales of my Reconciliation Tegit attingendo He covers me by touching me He touches my conscience with a sense and remorse of my sins in his Word and he touches my soule with a faith of having received him and all the benefit of his Death in the Sacrament And so he covers sin that is keepes our sins of infirmity and all such sins as do not in their nature quench the light of his grace from comming into his Fathers presence or calling for vengeance there Forgiving of transgressions is the generall satisfaction for all the world and restoring the world to a possibility of salvation in the Death of Christ Covering of sin is the benefit of discharging and easing the conscience by those blessed helps which God hath afforded to those whom he hath gathered in the bosome and quickned in the wombe of the Christian Church And this is the second beame of Blessedness cast out by David here and then the third is The not imputing of iniquity Blessed is the man to whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity In this also Impute as in the two former we did we consider this Imputing and then this Iniquity in the roote and Original signification of the two words When in this place the Lord is said not to impute sinne it is meant That the Lord shall not suffer me to impute sinne to my selfe The word is Cashab and Cashab imports such a thinking such a surmising as may be subject to error and mistaking To that purpose we finde the word where Hannah was praying 1 Sam. 1.12 and Eli the Priest who saw her lips move and heard no prayer come from her thought she had been drunke Imputed drunkennesse unto her and said How long wilt thou be drunke put away thy wine So that this Imputing is such an Imputing of ours as may be erronious that is an Imputing from our selves in a diffidence and jealousie and suspition of Gods goodnesse towards us To which purpose we consider also that this word which we translate here Iniquity Gnavah is oftentimes in the Scripture used for punishment as well as for sinne and so indifferently for both as that if we will compare Translation with Translation and Exposition with Exposition it will be hard for us to say Gen. 4.13 whether Cain said Mine iniquity is greater then can be pardoned or My punishment is greater then I can beare and our last Translation which seems to have been most carefull of the Originall takes it rather so My punishment in the Text and lays the other My sinne aside in the Margin So then this Imputing being an Imputing which arises from our selves and so may be accompanied with error and mistaking that we Impute that to our selves which God doth not impute And this mis-imputing of Gods anger to our selves arising out of his punishments and his corrections inflicted upon us That because we have crosses in the world we cannot beleeve that we stand well in the sight of God or that the forgiving of Transgressions or Covering of sinnes appertains unto us we justly conceive that this not Imputing of Iniquity is that Serenitas Conscientiae That brightnesse that clearnesse that peace and tranquillity that calme and serenity that acquiescence and security of the Conscience in which I am delivered from all scruples and
yet this is still limited by the law of God so far as God hath instituted this power by his Gospel in his Church and far from inducing amongst us that torture of the Conscience that usurpation of Gods power that spying into the counsails of Princes supplanting of their purposes with which the Church of Rome hath been deeply charged And this usefull and un-mis-interpretable Confession which we speake of Adversum me is the more recommended to us in that with which David shuts up his Act as out of S. Hierome and out of our former translation we intimated unto you that he doth all this Adversum se I will confesse my sinnes unto the Lord against my selfe The more I finde Confession or any religious practise to be against my selfe and repugnant to mine owne nature the farther I will goe in it For still the Adversum me is Cum Deo The more I say against my selfe the more I vilifie my selfe the more I glorifie my God As S. Chry sostome sayes every man is Spontaneus Satan a Satan to himselfe as Satan is a Tempter every man can tempt himselfe so I will be Spontaneus Satan as Satan is an Accuser an Adversary I will accuse my selfe I consider often that passionate humiliation of S. Peter Exi à me Domine He fell at Iesus knees saying Depart from me for I am a sinfull man O Lord Luk. 5.8 And I am often ready to say so and more Depart from me O Lord for I am sinfull inough to infect thee As I may persecute thee in thy Children so I may infect thee in thine Ordinances Depart in withdrawing thy word from me for I am corrupt inough to make even thy saving Gospel the savor of death unto death Depart in withholding thy Sacrament for I am leprous inough to taint thy flesh and to make the balme of thy blood poyson to my soule Depart in withdrawing the protection of thine Angels from me for I am vicious inough to imprint corruption and rebellion into their nature And if I be too foule for God himselfe to come neare me for his Ordinances to worke upon me I am no companion for my selfe I must not be alone with my selfe for I am as apt to take as to give infection I am a reciprocall plague passively and actively contagious I breath corruption and breath it upon my selfe and I am the Babylon that I must goe out of Gen. 32.10 Mat. 8.8 or I perish I am not onely under Iacobs Non dignus Not worthy the least of all thy mercies nor onely under the Centurions Non dignus I am not worthy that thou shouldest come under my roofe That thy Spirit should ever speake to my spirit which was the forme of words in which every Communicant received the Sacrament in the Primitive Church Lord I am not worthy that thou shouldest enter under my roofe Nor onely under the Prodigals Non dignus Luke 15.21 Not worthy to be called thy sonne neither in the filiation of Adoption for I have deserved to be dis-inherited nor in the filiation of Creation for I have deserved to be annihilated Mark 1.7 But Non dignus procumbere I am not worthy to stoop down to fall down to kneele before thee in thy Minister the Almoner of thy Mercy the Treasurer of thine Absolutions So farre doe I confesse Adversum me against my selfe as that I confesse I am not worthy to confesse nor to be admitted to any accesse any approach to thee much lesse to an act so neare Reconciliation to thee as an accusation of my selfe or so neare thy acquitting as a self-condemning Be this the issue in all Controversies whensoever any new opinions distract us Be that still thought best that is most Adversum nos most against our selves That that most layes flat the nature of man so it take it not quite away and blast all vertuous indeavours That that most exalts the Grace and Glory of God be that the Truth And so have you the whole mystery of Davids Confession in both his Acts preparatory in resenting his sinfull condition in generall and survaying his conscience in particular And then his Deliberation his Resolution his Execution his Confession Confession of true sins and of them onely and of all them of his sins and all this to the Lord and all that against himselfe That which was proposed for the second Part must fall into the compasse of a Conclusion and a short one that is Gods Act Thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin This is a wide doore 2 Part. and would let out Armies of Instructions to you but we will shut up this doore with these two leaves thereof The fulnesse of Gods Mercy He forgives the sin and the punishment And the seasonablenesse the acceleration of his mercy in this expression in our text that Davids is but Actus inchoatus He sayes he will confesse And Gods is Actus consummatus Thou forgavest Thou hadst already forgiven the iniquity and punishment of my sin These will be the two leaves of this doore and let the hand that shuts them be this And this Particle of Connection which we have in the text I said And thou didst For though this Remission of sin be not presented here as an effect upon that cause of Davids Confession It is not delivered in a Quia and an Ergo Because David did this God did that for mans wil leads not the will of God as a cause who does all his acts of mercy for his mercies sake yet though it be not an effect as from a cause yet it is at least as a consequent from an occasion so assured so infallible as let any man confesse as David did and he shall be sure to be forgiven as David was For though this forgivenesse be a flower of mercy yet the roote growes in the Justice of God If wee acknowledge our sin 1 John 1.9 he is faithfull and just to forgive us our sin It growes out of his faithfulnesse as he hath vouchsafed to binde himselfe by a promise And out of his Justice as he hath received a full satisfaction for all our sins So that this Hand this And in our Text is as a ligament as a sinew to connect and knit together that glorious body of Gods preventing grace and his subsequent grace if our Confession come between and tie the knot God that moved us to that act will perfect all Here enters the fulnesse of his mercy Plenitudo Rev. 3 20. at one leafe of this doore well expressed at our doore in that Ecce sto pulso Behold I stand at the doore and knock for first he comes here is no mention of our calling of him before He comes of himselfe And then he suffers not us to be ignorant of his comming he comes so as that he manifests himself Ecce Behold And then he expects not that we should wake with that light and look out of our selves but he knocks
hid her then and hath manifested now that there was never any time when he had not some of his to oppose her tyrannie and her Idolatry They can name no time when wee cannot name some such And it would be much harder for them to name men in every age that have professed all the doctrines of the present Roman Church then for us to finde men that have opposed those points that we oppose Will they say that these were too few to constitute or establish or give name to a Church They were never so few 1 King 19.14 as Elias thought there had beene in his time when he said I onely am left no nor so few as God for Elias comfort named to him seven thousand they were more then so else they could not have found so many to kill as they did Howsoever since so great Schoolemen amongst them as Alexander Ales and so great Canonists amongst them as Cardinall Turrecremata Brondus in Apoc. c. 1. q. 11. with many others as they themselves call them Gravissimi Theologi of the gravest Divines asseveranter affirmant do dogmatically affirme that during the time that Christ lay in the Grave there was no faith and consequently no Church but onely in One in the person of the Virgin Mary in relation to which it is that in the Ceremonies of the Church they put out all their Candles but one in the Church at that time to denote that all the Apostles lost their faith and one She alone retained one If the Church were then in one person they may well afford a Church to have consisted of such numbers as the Lord did hide under his wings all the stormy time of their Persecutions Tu absconsio may the Primitive Church and the Reformed Church say Anima Thou hast beene our hiding place And so must every timerous soule too for you may remember that these words are by our Expositors ascribed to particular soules in the Church as well as to the Church in generall every such soule that for feare of tentations in the world is loth to come abroad from its retirednesse and venture on the publique view must rely upon that Tu absconsio The Lord is able to hide them able to cover them Iovinian the Heretique whom S. Hierom opposed would needs thinke or at least say That after Baptisme no man was tempted of the Devill not onely not overcome but not tempted But our Baptisme does not drowne the Devill Chrysost Pauci inter Athletas in expugnabiles Few wrastlers that never tooke fall none that may not since we are all at best but wrastlers Vita hominis piraterium sayes S. Ambrose what Copy soever he followed Ser. 42. Iob. 7.1 Ambrose Others read it Mans life is a warfare And that is labour enough and danger enough But to be still upon so unconstant an element as the water and still pursued by Pirats or consorted with Pirates is more and Vita Piraterium sayes he Mans life every mans life is spent amongst Pirats pursued by them or consorted with them The Devill hath not a more subtile tentation to ensnare me with then to bring me to thinke my selfe tentation-proofe above tentation Nemo diu fortis est Idem is excellently said by the same Father No man continues strong against tentations long For when he sees that some tentations have done him no harme hee growes negligent and slacke towards others Infoelix ego victonem me puto dum capior Miserable mistaking man that I am Hieron I thinke my selfe able to overcome any tentation and I am overcome even by that tentation of thinking so I thinke my selfe conquerour when I am captive and am chained to the Chariot when I thinke I sit in it Tranquillitas ista tempestas est This calme is a storme this security is a defeat For it is one of Davids heavy imprecations Veniat illi laqueus quem ignorat Psal 35.8 Ecclus. 34.9 Let him be catchedin a snare that he suspected not Destruction come upon him unawares so we read it We are tempted and it is well that we are so Qui non est tentatus quid scit He is an ignorant soule and knowes nothing that hath passed no tentations Nothing at all August not himselfe Nescit se homo nisi tentatione discat se Except he be taught in that Schoole The Schoole of tentations no man ever comes to know himselfe So then Leo. Laqueus est in securitate If I be secure and negligent that is a snare But Laqueus in timore too sayes he It is a snare cast by the Devils owne hand If I be over-timerous If upon pretence of hiding my selfe from tentations I withdraw my selfe from the offices of mutuall society Tu absconsio The Lord will be my hiding place from tentations that attempt me in my calling Eccl. 9.20 but not to hide me from a calling Scito quod in medio laqueorum ingrederis Know that thou walkest in the midst of snares but yet thou must walke Chrysost walke in a calling So S. Chrysostome reads that and adds He does not say Vide but Scito He does not say see them for they are invisible but know that there are snares and be wary August And then as S. Augustin sayes of the whole Church which was our first Consideration Ecclesia Catholica inter tentationes vivit inter tentationes crescit The whole Church is in the midst of tentations but lives and growes up in the midst of them So heare thy God say to thy soule which is the Consideration that we are now upon Son of man Ezek. 2.6 though bryars and thornes be with thee though thou dwell among Scorpions bee not afraid of their words nor dismaid with their lookes Proceed in a lawfull calling and God shall hide thee though with his Clouds And though he cover thee with a cloud of poverty with sicknesse with disgrace and if he see no other cover safe cover thee with the cloud of death and the grave all is to cover thee from the Tempter and thereby to preserve thee for himselfe which is our second part Thou art my hiding place Thou shalt preserve me from trouble If wee content our selves with that word which our Translators have chosen here Trouble 2 Part. Trouble Thou shalt preserve me from Trouble we must rest in one of these two senses Either that God shall arme and indue those that are his with such a constancy as those things that trouble others 2 Cor. 1.5 shall not trouble them but As the sufferings of Christ abound in them 2 Cor. 6.9 so their consolation also aboundeth by Christ As unknowne and yet well knowne as dying and behold we live as sorrowfull yet alwayes rejoycing as poore yet making many rich as having nothing and yet possessing all things For God uses both these wayes in the behalfe of his servants sometimes to suspend the working of that
that should worke their torment as he suspended the rage of the Lyons for Daniel and the heat of the fire in the furnace for the others Sometimes by imprinting a holy stupefaction and unsensiblenesse in the person that suffers So S. Laurence was not onely patient but merry and facetious when he lay broyling upon the fire and so we reade of many other Martyrs that they have beene lesse moved lesse affected with their torments then their Executioners or their Persecutors have beene That which troubled others never troubled them Or els the phrase must have this sense That though they be troubled with their troubles though God submit them so far to the common condition of men that they be sensible of them yet he shall preserve them from that trouble so as that it shall never overthrow them never sinke them into a dejection of spirit or diffidence in his mercy They shall finde stormes but a stout and strong ship under foote They shall feele Thunder and lightning but garlands of triumphant bayes shall preserve them They shall be trodden into the earth with scornes and contempts but yet as seed is buried to multiply to more So far this word of our Translators assist our devotion Thou shalt preserve me from trouble Thou shalt make me unsensible of it or thou shalt make me victorious in it But the Originall word Tzur hath a more peculiar sense Perplexity It signifies a straite a narrownesse a difficulty 2 Sam. 1.26 a distresse I am distressed for thee my brother Ionathan sayes David in this word when he lamented his irremediable his irrecoverable death So is it also Esa 21.3 Pangs have taken hold of me as the pangs of a woman that travaileth And so the word growes to signifie Psal 89.43 Aciem gladii Thou hast turned the edge of the sword and to signifie the top and precipice of a rock Psal 78.15 He clave the rocks in the wildernesse So that the word expresses Angustiam narrownesse pressure precipitation inextricablenesse in a word that will best fit us Perplexity and The Lord shall preserve me from perplexity And this may the Church and this may every good soule comfort it selfe in Thou shalt preserve me from perplexity Consider it first in the Church and then in our selves and first in the Primitive Ecclesia Primitiva and then in the reformed Church When God had brought his Church ex abscondito from his hiding place from poverty and contempt and solitarinesse and glorified it in the eyes of the world by many royall endowments and possessions with which Princes then become Christians and other great persons piously and graciously invested her though these were tentations to aspire to greater yet God preserved her from perplexities of all kinds from perplexing of Princes with her claims that they might not marry nor make leagues nor levy Armies but by her permission The Church called nothing her own but that which God had called His and given her that is Tithes All the rest shee acknowledged to have received from the bounty of pious benefactors This was her plea The Lord is my rock and my fortresse and my deliverer my strength my buckler Psal 18.2 and my high tower In all this Inventory in all this Armory and furniture of the Church there is never a sword Rocks and fortresses and bucklers and Towers but no sword no materiall sword in the Churches hand Arma nostra preces fletus Ambrose The Church fought with nothing but prayers and teares And as God delivered her from these perplexities from perplexing the affayres of Princes with her interest in their government so he delivered her from any perplexities in her own government No usurpation no offer of any Prince that attempted to invade or violate the true right of the Church no practise of any Heretiques how subtile how potent soever though they equalled though they exceeded the Church in number and in power as at some times the Arians did ever brought the Church to a perplexitie or to an apprehension of any necessitie of yeelding to sacrilegious Princes or to irreligious Heretiques in any point to procure their peace or to enjoy their rest but still they kept the dignitie of Priesthood intire and still they kept the truth of the Christian Religion intire no perplexity how they should subsist if they were so stiffe ever brought them to goe lesse to any prevarications or modifications either in matter of Religion towards Heretiques or in the execution of their religious function towards facrilegious usurpers So God preserved the Primitive Church from perplexitie shee was ever thankfull and submisse towards her benefactors shee was ever erect and constant against usurpers And this preservation from perplexity we consider in the reformed Church also When the fulnesse of time was come Ecclesia Reformata and that Church which lay in the bowels of the putative Church the specious Church the Romane Church that is those soules which groaned and panted after a Reformation were enabled by God to effect it when the Iniquity of Babylon was come to that height That whereas at first they tooke of Almes afterwards Monachi emunt Nobiles vendunt Monkes bought and Lords sold Hieron Ep. ad Demetr nay Monasteries bought and the Crowne sold when they went so far as to forgea Donation of Constantin by which they laid hold upon a great temporall state and after that so much farther as to renounce the Donation of Constantin by which for a long time the Roman Church claimed all their temporall state S. Peters patrimony and so at last came to say That all the states of all Christian Princes are held of the Church and really may be and actually are forfeited to her and may at her pleasure be re-assumed by her when for the art and science of Divinity it selfe they had buried it in the darknesse of the Schoole and wrapped up that that should save our soules in those perplexed and inextricable clouds of Schoole-divinitie and their Schoole-divinitie subject to such changes as that a Jesuit professes that in the compasse but of thirty yeares Tanner in Aquin p. 1. ad Lector since Gregory de Valentia writ Verè dici possit novam quodammodo Theologiam prognatam esse We may truly say that we have a new art of Divinity risen amongst us The Divinity of these times sayes he is not in our Church the same that it was thirty yeares since since all parts of the Christian Church were so incensed both with their heresie and their tyranny as that the Greeke Church which generally they would make the world beleeve is absolutely as they are is by some of their own Authors confessed to be more averse from them Stenartius Ep. Dedic ante Calecam and more bitter against them then Luther or Calvin since upon all these provocations God was pleased to bring this Church the Reformed Church not onely to light but
possesse immortality and impossibility of dying onely in a continuall dying when as a Cabinet whose key were lost must be broken up and torne in pieces before the Jewell that was laid up in it can be taken out so thy body the Cabinet of thy soule must be shaked and shivered by violent sicknesse before that soule can goe out And when it is thus gone out must answer for all the imperfections of that body which body polluted it And yet though this soule be such a loser by that body it is not perfectly well nor fully satisfied till it be reunited to that body againe when thou remembrest Mat. 26.36 and oh never forget it that Christ himselfe was heavy in his soule unto Death Mat. 26.39 That Christ himselfe came to a Si possibile If it be possible let this Cup passe That he came to a Quare dereliquisti Mat. 27.46 a bitter sense of Gods dereliction and forsaking of him when thou considerest all this compose thy selfe for death but thinke it not a light matter to dye Death made the Lyon of Judah to roare and doe not thou thinke that that which we call going away like a Lambe doth more testifie a conformity with Christ then a strong sense and bitter agony and colluctation with death doth Christ gave us the Rule in the Example He taught us what we should doe by his doing it And he pre-admitted a fearfull apprehension of death A Lambe is a Hieroglyphique of Patience but not of stupidity And death was Christs Consummatum est All ended in death yet he had sense of death How much more doth a sad sense of our transmigration belong to us to whom death is no Consummatum est but an In principio our account and our everlasting state begins but then Apud te propitiatio Psal 130.4 ut timearis In this knot we tie up all With thee there is mercy that thou mightest be feared There is a holy feare that does not onely consist with an assurance of mercy Pro. 21.15 but induces constitutes that assurance Pavor operantibus iniquitatem sayes Solomon Pavor horror and servile feare jealousie and suspition of God diffidence and distrust in his mercy and a bosome-prophecy of self-destruction Destruction it selfe so we translate it be upon the workers of iniquity Pavor operantibus iniquitatem And yet sayes that wise King Pro. 28.14 Beatus qui semper Pavidus Blessed is that man that alwayes fears who though he alwayes hope and beleeve the good that God will shew him yet also feares the evills that God might justly multiply upon him Blessed is he that looks upon God with assurance but upon himselfe with feare For though God have given us light by which we may see him even in Nature for He is the confidence of all the ends of the Earth and of them that are a far of upon the Sea Though God have given us a clearer light in the Law and experience of his providence upon his people throughout the Old Testament Though God have abundantly infinitely multiplied these lights and these helpes to us in the Christian Church where he is the God of salvation yet as he answers us by terrible things in that first acceptation of the words which I proposed to you that is Gives us assurances by miraculous testimonies in our behalfe that he will answer our patient expectation by terrible Judgements and Revenges upon our enemies In his Righteousnesse that is In his faithfulnesse according to his Promises and according to his performances of those Promises to his former people So in the words considered the other way In his Holinesse that is in his wayes of imprinting Holinesse in us He answers us by terrible things in all those particulars which we have presented unto you By infusing faith but with that terrible addition Damnabitur He that beleeveth not shall be damned He answers us by composing our manners and rectifying our life and conversation but with terrible additions of censures and Excommunications and tearings off from his own body which is a death to us and a wound to him He answers us by enabling us to speake to him in Prayer but with terrible additions for the matter for the manner for the measure of our Prayer which being neglected our very Prayer is turned to sin He answers us in Preaching but with that terrible commination that even his word may be the savor of death unto death He answers us in the Sacrament but with that terrible perplexity and distraction that he that seemes to be a Iohn or a Peter a Loving or a Beloved Disciple may be a Iudas and he that seems to have received the seale of his reconciliation may have eat and drunke his own Damnation And he answers us at the houre of death but with this terrible obligation That even then I make sure my salvation with feare and trembling That so we imagine not a God of wax whom we can melt and mold when and how we will That we make not the Church a Market That an over-homelines and familiarity with God in the acts of Religion bring us not to an irreverence nor indifferency of places But that as the Militant Church is the porch of the Triumphant so our reverence here may have some proportion to that reverence which is exhibited there Revel 4.10 where the Elders cast their Crownes before the Throne and continue in that holy and reverend acclamation Thou art worthy O Lord to receive Glory and Honor and Power for as we may adde from this Text By terrible things O God of our salvation doest thou answer us in righteousnesse SERM. LXIX The fifth of my Prebend Sermons upon my five Psalmes Preached at S. Pauls PSAL. 66.3 Say unto God How terrible art thou in thy works Through the greatnesse of thy Power shall thine Enemies submit themselves unto thee IT is well said so well as that more then one of the Fathers seeme to have delighted themselves in having said it Titulus Clavis The Title of the Psalme is the Key of the Psalme the Title opens the whole Psalme The Church of Rome will needs keepe the Key of heaven and the key to that Key the Scriptures wrapped up in that Translation which in no case must be departed from There the key of this Psalm the Title thereof hath one bar wrested that is made otherwise then he that made the Key the Holy Ghost intended it And another bat inserted that is one clause added which the Holy Ghost added not Where we reade in the Title Victori To the chiefe Musician they reade In finem A Psalme directed upon the end I think they meane upon the later times because it is in a great part a Propheticall Psame of the calling of the Gentiles But after this change they also adde Resurrectionis A Psalme concerning the Resurrection and that is not in the Hebrew nor any thing in the place thereof And after one Author
same thing againe I beleeve in the Holy Ghost but doe not finde him if I seeke him onely in private prayer But in Ecclesia when I goe to meet him in the Church when I seeke him where hee hath promised to bee found when I seeke him in the execution of that Commission which is proposed to our faith in this Text in his Ordinances and meanes of salvation in his Church instantly the savour of this Myrrhe is exalted and multiplied to me not a dew but a shower is powred out upon me and presently followes Communio Sanctorum The Communion of Saints the assistance of Militant and Triumphant Church in my behalfe And presently followes Remissio peceatorum The remission of sins the purifying of my conscience in that water which is his blood Baptisme and in that wine which is his blood the other Sacrament and presently followes Carnis resurrectio A resurrection of my body My body becomes no burthen to me my body is better now then my soule was before and even here I have Goshen in my Egypt incorruption in the midst of my dunghill spirit in the midst of my flesh heaven upon earth and presently followes Vita aeterna Life everlasting this life of my body shall not last ever nay the life of my soul in heaven is not such as it is at the first For that soule there even in heaven shall receive an addition and accesse of Joy and Glory in the resurrection of our bodies in the consummation When a winde brings the River to any low part of the banke instantly it overflowes the whole Meadow when that winde which blowes where he will The Holy Ghost leads an humble soule to the Article of the Church to lay hold upon God as God hath exhibited himselfe in his Ordinances instantly he is surrounded under the blood of Christ Jesus and all the benefits thereof The communion of Saints the remission of sins the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting are poured out upon him And therefore of this great worke which God hath done for man in applying himselfe to man in the Ordinances of his Church S. Augustine sayes Obscuriùs dixerunt Prophetae de Christo August quà m de Ecclesia The Prophets have not spoken so clearely of the person of Christ as they have of the Church of Christ Hieron for though S. Hierom interpret aright those words of Adam and Eve Erunt duo in carnem unam They two shall be one flesh to be applyable to the union which is betweene Christ and his Church Ephes 5. for so S. Paul himselfe applies them that Christ and his Church are all one as man and wife are all one yet the wife is or at least it had wont to be so easilier found at home then the husband wee can come to Christs Church but we cannot come to him The Church is a Hill and that is conspicuous naturally but the Church is such a Hill as may be seene every where August S. Augustine askes his Auditory in one of his Sermons doe any of you know the Hill Olympus and himselfe sayes in their behalfe none of you know it no more sayes he do those that dwell at Olympus know Giddabam vestram some Hill which was about them trouble not thy selfe to know the formes and fashions of forraine particular Churches neither of a Church in the lake nor a Church upon seven hils but since God hath planted thee in a Church where all things necessary for salvation are administred to thee and where no erronious doctrine even in the confession of our Adversaries is affirmed and held that is the Hill and that is the Catholique Church and there is this Commission in this text meanes of salvation sincerely executed So then such a Commission there is and it is in the Article of the Creed that is the ubi We are now come in our order to the third circumstantiall branch the Vnde Vnde from whence and when this Commission issued in which we consider that since we receive a deepe impression from the words which our friends spake at the time of their death much more would it worke upon us if they could come and speake to us after their death You know what Dives said Si quis ex mortuis Luke 16. If one from the dead might goe to my Brethren he might bring them to any thing Now Primitiae mortuorum The Lord of life and yet the first borne of the dead Christ Jesus returnes againe after his death to establish this Commission upon his Apostles It hath therefore all the formalities of a strong and valid Commission Christ gives it Ex mero motu meerely out of his owne goodnesse He foresaw no merit in us that moved him neither was he moved by any mans solicitations for could it ever have fallen into a mans heart to have prayed to the Father that his Son might take our Nature and dye and rise again and settle a course upon earth for our salvation if this had not first risen in the purpose of God himself Would any man ever have solicited or prayed him to proceed thus It was Ex mero motu out of his owne goodnesse and it was Ex certa scientia He was not deceived in his grant he knew what he did he knew this Commission should be executed in despight of all Heretiques and Tyrans that should oppose it And as it was out of his owne Will and with his owne knowledge so it was Ex plenitudine potestatis He exceeded not his Power for Christ made this Commission then Mat. 28.18 when as it is expressed in the other Euangelist he produced that evidence Data est mihi All power is given to me in Heaven and in earth where Christ speakes not of that Power which he had by his eternall generation though even that power were given him for he was Deus de Deo God of God nor he speakes not of that Power which was given him as Man which was great but all that he had in the first minute of his conception in the first union of the two Natures Divine and Humane together but that Power from which he derives this Commission is that which he had purchased by his blood and came to by conquest Ego vici mundum sayes Christ I have conquered the world and comming in by conquest I may establish what forme of Government I will and my will is to governe my Kingdome by this Commission and by these Commissioners to the Worlds end to establish these meanes upon earth for the salvation of the world And as it hath all these formalities of a due Commission made without suite made without error made without defect of power so had it this also that it was duely and authentically testified for though this Euangelist name but the eleven Apostles to have beene present and they in this case might be thought Testes domestici Witnesses that witnesse to their owne
when the Calvinists satisfie themselves in doing that duty that they doe preach for sayes he Docetis sed nemo misit You doe preach but you have no calling if it were not too serious a thing to laugh at would he not allow us to be as merry and to say too Missi estis sed non docetis Perchance you may have a calling but I am sure you do not preach for if we consider their practise their secular Clergy those which have the care of soules in Parishes they doe not preach and if we consider their Lawes and Canons their Regular Clergy their Monks and Fryers should not preach abroad out of their own Cloysters And preaching was so far out of use amongst them as that in these later ages Cheppinus de Jure Monast under Innocentius the third they instituted Ordinem praedicantium An order of Preachers as though there had been no order for preaching in the Church of God till within these foure hundred yeares And we see by their Patent for preaching what the cause of their institution was It was because those who onely preached then that is the Humiliati which was another Order were unlearned and therefore they thought it not amisse to appoint some learned men to preach The Bishops tooke this ill at that time that any should have leave to preach within their Diocesses and therefore they had new Patents to exempt them from the Jurisdiction of the Bishops and they had liberty to preach every where Modò non vellicent Papam As long as they said nothing against the Pope they might preach It is therefore but of late yeares and indeed especially since the Reformation began that the example of others hath brought them in the Roman Church to a more ordinary preaching whereas the penalty of this Text lies upon all them who have that calling and doe it not and so it does upon them too who doe not beleeve that they are bound to seeke their salvation from preaching from that ordinance and institution I cannot remember that in any History for matter of fact nor in the framing or institution of any State for matter of Law there hath ever been such a Law or such a practise as that of Preaching Every where amongst the Gentils particularly amongst the Romans where there was a publique Office to be Conditor Precum according to emergent occasions to make Collects and Prayers for the publique use we finde some resemblance some representation of our common Prayer our Liturgie and in their ablutions and expiations we finde some resemblance of our Sacraments but no where any resemblance of our Preaching Certaine anniversary Panegyriques they had in Rome which were Coronation Sermons or Adoption Sermons or Triumph Sermons but all those upon the matter were but civill Commemorations But this Institution of keeping the people in a continuall knowledge of their religious duty by continuall preaching was onely an ordinance of God himselfe for Gods own people For after that in the wisedome of God 1 Cor. 1.21 the world by wisedome knew not God It pleased God sayes the Apostle by the foolishnesse of Preaching to save them that beleeve What was this former wisedome of God that that could not save man it was twofold First God in his wisedome manifests a way to man to know the Creator by the creature Rom. 1.20 That the invisible things of him might be seene by the visible And this gracious and wise purpose of God tooke not effect because man being brought to the contemplation of the creature rested and dwelt upon the beauty and dignity of that and did not passe by the creature to the Creator and then Gods wisedome was farther expressed in a second way when God manifested himselfe to man by his Word in the Law and in the Prophets and then man resting in the letter of the Law and going no farther and resting in the outside of the Prophets and going no farther not discerning the Sacrifices of the Law to be Types of the death of Christ Jesus nor the purpose of the Prophets to be to direct us upon that Messias that Redeemer Ipsa quae per Prophetas locuta est Clem. Alex. sapientia sayes Clement the wisedome of God in the mouth of the Prophets could not save man and then when the wisedome of Nature and the wisedome of the Law the wisedome of the Philosophers and the wisedome of the Scribes became defective and insufficient by mans perversenesse God repayred and supplyed it by a new way but a strange way by the foolishnesse of preaching for it is not onely to the subject to the matter to the doctrine which they were to preach that this foolishnesse is referred To preach glory by adhering to an inglorious person lately executed for sedition and blasphemy to preach salvation from a person whom they saw unable to save himselfe from the Gallowes to preach joy from a person whose soule was heavy unto death this was Scandalum Iudaeis 1 Cor. 1.23 sayes the Apostle even to the Jewes who were formerly acquainted by their Prophets that some such things as these should befall their Messias yet for all this preparation it was Scandalum the Jewes themselves were scandalized at it it was a stumbling blocke to the Iewes but Graecis stultitia sayes the Apostle there the Gentils thought this doctrine meere foolishnesse But not onely the matter but the manner not onely the Gospel but even preaching was a foolishnesse in the eyes of man For if such persons as the Apostles were heires to no reputation in the State by being derived from great families bred in no Universities nor sought to for learning persons not of the civilest education Sea-men Fishermen not of the honestest professions Matthew but a Publican if such persons should come into our streets and porches and preach I doe not say such doctrine as theirs seemed then but if they should preach at all should not we thinke this a meere foolishnesse did they not mock the Apostles and say they were drunke Act. 2.13 as early as it was in the morning Did not those two sects of Philosophers who were as farre distant in opinions as any two could be the Stoiques and the Epicureans Acts 17.18 concurre in defaming S. Paul for preaching when they called him Seminiverbium a babling and prating fellow But the foolishnesse of God is wiser then men said that Apostle 1 Cor. 1.25 and out of that wisedome God hath shut us all under the penalty of this Text If we that are peachers and you that are hearers doe not beleeve that this preaching is the ordinance of God for the salvation of soules This then is matter of faith Euangelium That preaching is the way and this is matter of faith too that that which is preached must be matter of faith for the Commission is Praedicate Euangelium Preach but preach the Gospel And that is first Euangelium solum Preach the Gospel onely adde
as well that because Christ is called Porta A Gate therefore when Samson is said to have carried a Gate Samson must be a Christopher and carry Christ And because Christ is a vine and a way and water and bread wheresoever any of these words are they must be intended of Christ not to stand upon the argument and inconsequence I say this word Baptisme hath not that signification which he would have it have here in any of those other places of Scripture which he cites to this purpose They are but two and may quickly be considered The first is when Christ askes the ambitious Apostles Mat. 20.20 Luk. 12.50 Are yee able to drinke of the Cup that I shall drinke of and to be baptized with the baptisme that I shall be baptized with The second is in S. Luke I must be baptized with a Baptisme and how am I grieved till it be ended In both which places Christ doth understand by this word Baptisme his Passion That is true And so ordinarily in the Christian Church as the dayes of the death of the Martyrs were called Natalitia Martyrum The Birth-dayes of the Martyrs so Martyrdome it selfe was called a Baptisme Baptisma sanguinis The Baptisme of Blood That is also true but what then was the Passion of Christ himselfe such an affliction as Bellarmine speakes of here and argues from in this place that is an affliction so inflicted upon himselfe and undertaken by himselfe as that then when he did beare it he might have forborne it and refused to beare it Though nothing were more voluntary then Christs submitting himselfe to that Decree of dying for man yet when that Decree was passed to which he had a privity nothing was more necessary nor unavoydable to any man then the Death of the Crosse was to Christ neither could he not onely not have saved us but not have been exalted in his humane nature himselfe if he had not dyed that death for all that was wrapped up in the Decree and from that grew out the propterea exaltatus and the oportuit pati That all those things Christ ought to suffer And therefore therefore because he did suffer all that he was exalted And will Bellarmine say that the Martyrdome of the Martyrs in the primitive Church was so voluntarily sustained as that they might have forsaken the cause of Christ and refused Martyrdome and yet have been saved and satisfied the purpose or the commandement of God upon them If from us Bellarmine will not heare it let him heare a man of his own profession not onely of his own Religion but so narrowly of his own profession as to have been a publique Reader of Divinity in a great University as well as he Estius And he sayes Sunt aliqui recentiores qui baptizari interpretantur affligi There are some sayes he not all nor the most and therefore it is not so manifest a place Sunt aliqui recentiores There are some of the later men sayes he not of the Fathers or Expositors in the primitive Church and therefore it is not so reverend and uncontrolable an opinion But onely some few later men there are sayes he that thinke that Baptisme in this place is to be understood of Affliction But sayes the same Doctor It is an Interpretation valde figurata rara wholly relying upon a figure and a figure very rarely used so rarely sayes he Vt non ab alio quam à Christo usurpetur That never any but Christ in the Scriptures called Affliction Baptisme So that it lacks thus much of being a manifest proofe for Purgatory as Bellarmine pretends That it is neither the common sense but of a few nor the ancient sense but of a few later men nor a sense obvious and ordinary and literall but figurative and that figure not communicated to others but onely applied by Christ and appropriated to his Passion which was not a passion so undergone as that then when he suffered it he might have refused it which is necessary for that Doctrine which Bellarmine would evict from it But because Bellarmine in whom perchance the Spirit of a Cardinall hath not overcome the Spirit of a Jesuit will admit no competition nor diversity of opinion except it be from one of his own Order we have Iustinian a man refined in that Order Iustinian a Jesuit as well as he an Italian and so hath his naturall and nationall refining as well as he and one whose books are dedicated to the Pope as well as his and so hath had an Oraculous refining by an allowance Oraculo vivae vocis by the breath of life the Oracle of truth the Popes approbation as well as he and thus much better That Iustinians never were but Bellarmines books have been threatned by the Inquisition And Iustinian never was but Bellarmine hath been put to his Retractations And he sayes onely this of this place Aliqui referunt ad corporis vexationes pro Mortuis Some men refer these words to bodily afflictions sustained by men alive for the Dead Et haec sententia multis vehementer probatur sayes he This interpretation hath much delighted and satisfied many men Sed potest dici sayes he By their leaves this may be said If S. Paul aske Why doe men afflict themselves in the behalfe of them that are dead it may be answered sayes he That if they doe so they are fools in doing so S. Paul intends certainly to prove the Resurrection by these words neither sayes he could the Resurrection of the body be proved by all S. Pauls argument if that were admitted to be the right sense of the place for what were all this to the Resurrection of the body which is S. Pauls scope and purpose in the place If men were baptized that is as Bellarmine would have it if they did suffer voluntarily and unnecessarily affliction for the Dead that is to deliver their soules out of Purgatory what would all this conduce to the proofe of the Resurrection of the body But that we may have a witnesse against him in all his capacities as wee have produced one as he is a Jesuit and another equall to him as he was publique Professor so to consider him as a Cardinall for as a Cardinall Bellarmine hath changed his opinion in some things that he held before he was hood-wincked with his Hat to consider him therefore so we have a witnesse against him in the Consistory Cardinall Cajetan Cajetan who finds no baptisme of teares nor penance in these words no application of any affliction sustained voluntarily by the living in the behalfe and contemplation of the dead but adhering to that which is truly the purpose of the Apostle to prove the resurrection of the body hee sayes In hoc quòd merguntur sub aqua mortuos gerunt When in Baptisme they are as it were buried under the water as the forme of Baptizing was then by Immersion of the whole body and not onely
afflictionis Verse 16. Studied and premeditated plots and practises swallowe mee possesse me intirely In all these dayes I shall not onely have a Zoar to flie to if I can get out of Sodom joy if I can overcome my sorrow There shall not be a Goshen bordering upon my Egypt joy if I can passe beyond or besides my sorrow but I shall have a Goshen in my Egypt nay my very Egypt shall be my Goshen I shall not onely have joy though I have sorrow but therefore my very sorrow shall be the occasion of joy I shall not onely have a Sabbath after my six dayes labor but Omnibus diebus a Sabbath shall enlighten every day and inanimate every minute of every day And as my soule is as well in my foot as in my hand though all the waight and oppression lie upon the foot and all action upon the hand so these beames of joy shall appeare as well in my pillar of cloud as in theirs of fire in my adversity as well as in their prosperity And when their Sun shall set at Noone mine shall rise at midnight they shall have damps in their glory and I joyfull exaltions in my dejections And to end with the end of all In die mortis In the day of my death and that which is beyond the end of all and without end in it selfe The day of Judgement If I have the testimony of a rectified conscience that I have accustomed my selfe to that accesse to God by prayer and such prayer as though it have had a body of supplication and desire of future things yet the soule and spirit of that prayer that is my principall intention in that prayer hath been praise and thanksgiving If I be involved in S. Chrysostoms Patent Orantes non natura sed dispensatione Angeli fiunt That those who pray so that is pray by way of praise which is the most proper office of Angels as they shall be better then Angels in the next world for they shall be glorifying spirits as the Angels are but they shall also be glorified bodies which the Angels shall never bee so in this world they they shall be as Angels because they are employed in the office of Angels to pray by way of praise If as S. Basil reads those words of that Psalme not spiritus meus but respiratio mea laudet Dominum Not onely my spirit but my very breath not my heart onely but my tongue and my hands bee accustomed to glorifie God In die mortis in the day of my death when a mist of sorrow and of sighes shall fill my chamber and a cloude exhaled and condensed from teares shall bee the curtaines of my bed when those that love me shall be sorry to see mee die and the devill himselfe that hates me sorry to see me die so in the favour of God And In die Iudicii In the day of Judgement when as all Time shall cease so all measures shall cease The joy and the sorrow that shall be then shall be eternall no end and infinite no measure no limitation when every circumstance of sinne shall aggravate the condemnation of the unrepentant sinner and the very substance of my sinne shall bee washed away in the blood of my Saviour when I shall see them who sinned for my sake perish eternally because they proceeded in that sinne and I my selfe who occasioned their sin received into glory because God upon my prayer and repentance had satisfied me early with his mercy early that is before my transmigration In omnibus diebus In all these dayes the dayes of youth and the wantonnesses of that the dayes of age and the tastlesnesse of that the dayes of mirth and the sportfulnesse of that and of inordinate melancholy and the disconsolatenesse of that the days of such miseries as astonish us with their suddennesse and of such as aggravate their owne waight with a heavy expectation In the day of Death which pieces up that circle and in that day which enters another circle that hath no pieces but is one equall everlastingnesse the day of Judgement Either I shall rejoyce be able to declare my faith and zeale to the assistance of others or at least be glad in mine owne heart in a firme hope of mine owne salvation And therefore beloved as they whom lighter affections carry to Shewes and Masks and Comedies As you your selves whom better dispositions bring to these Exercises conceive some contentment and some kinde of Joy in that you are well and commodiously placed they to see the Shew you to heare the Sermon when the time comes though your greater Joy bee reserved to the comming of that time So though the fulnesse of Joy be reserved to the last times in heaven yet rejoyce and be glad that you are well and commodiously placed in the meane time and that you sit but in expectation of the fulnesse of those future Joyes Returne to God with a joyfull thankfulnesse that he hath placed you in a Church which withholds nothing from you that is necessary to salvation whereas in another Church they lack a great part of the Word and halfe the Sacrament And which obtrudes nothing to you that is not necessary to salvation whereas in another Church the Additionall things exceed the Fundamentall the Occasionall the Originall the Collaterall the Direct And the Traditions of men the Commandements of God Maintaine and hold up this holy alacrity this religious cheerfulnesse For inordinate sadnesse is a great degree and evidence of unthankfulnesse and the departing from Joy in this world is a departing with one piece of our Evidence for the Joyes of the world to come SERM. LXXX Preached at the funerals of Sir William Cokayne Knight Alderman of London December 12. 1626. JOH 11.21 Lord if thou hadst been here my brother had not died GOd made the first Marriage and man made the first Divorce God married the Body and Soule in the Creation and man divorced the Body and Soule by death through sinne in his fall God doth not admit not justifie not authorize such Super-inductions upon such Divorces as some have imagined That the soule departing from one body should become the soule of another body in a perpetuall revolution and transmigration of soules through bodies which hath been the giddinesse of some Philosophers to think Or that the body of the dead should become the body of an evill spirit that that spirit might at his will and to his purposes informe and inanimate that dead body God allowes no such Super-inductions no such second Marriages upon such divorces by death no such disposition of soule or body after their dissolution by death But because God hath made the band of Marriage indissoluble but by death farther then man can die this divorce cannot fall upon man As farre as man is immortall man is a married man still still in possession of a soule and a body too And man is for ever immortall in both Immortall in
119.136 Rivers of waters ran 161. E. 135.7 He causeth the vapours 264. B. 136.4 Facit mirabilia magna 215. C. 139.21 Doe not I hate them 99. C. 145.15 The eyes of all wait 684. D. 146.3 Put not your trust in Princes 483. A. PROVERBS 11.13 The fruit of the righteous 84. A. 12.23 A wise man concealeth 565. C. 13.22 The wealth of the sinner c. 83. C. 14.23 He shall have hope 83. D. 17.6 The glory of children 84. A. 25.16 Fill not thy selfe with honey 63. E. ECCLES 10.10 If the iron be blunt we must 356. C. 10.20 Those that have wings 92. D. 38.9 Myson in thy sicknesse c. 110. C. CANTICLES 1.8 O thou fairest among women 119. E. 2.15 Take us the little Foxes for they devoure the Vine 117. A. 782. B. 4.12 My Sister my Spouse is a garden en closed 515. C. 8.6 Set me as a seal on thy heart 456. D. ESAY 7.13 Is it a small thing to weary men 15. A. 9.6 A childe is given to us a Son is borne to us 86. C. 9.6 Counsellor The mighty God 6. B. 14.12 How art thou faln from heaven 187. B. 18.1 Wo to the land shadowing with wings 671. B. 27.7 Hath he smitten him as he smote those that smote him 505. D. 36.21 They held their peace and 410. B. 38.2 Hezekiah turned his face toward the wall and prayed 251. D. 40.15 As a drop upon the Bucket 64. D. 40.31 They that waite upon the Lord shall renew their strength 637. C. 53.10 It pleased the Lord to bruise him but 181. A. 55.8 My thoughts are not your 25. B. 58.11 Thou shalt be a spring of water 660. D. 60.1 Arise shine for thy light is come 188. E. JEREMIAH 1.10 Behold I have this day 734. B. 5.1 Run to and fro through the streets of 422. A. 18.2 Arise and goe downe 147. B. LAMENTATIONS 1.2 She weepeth continually in the night 540. A. 2.19 Poure out thy heart like water 591. D. 2.10 Women eat their children of a span long 146. D. 215. D. 4.8 My skin cleaves to my bones 519. B. EZECHIEL 9.4 Set a mark upon the foreheads 537. E. 16.29 Thou hast multiplied thy fornications c. 24. C. 44.2 This gate shall be shut c. 22. E. HOSEA 14.2 Take unto you words and turn 578. C. MICAH 2.13 The breaker is gone up before 181. B. HABAKKUK 2.4 The just shall live c. 79. C. 2.18 What good can an Idol or c 117. D. HAGGAI 2.9 The glory of the later house c. 30. D. ECCLUS 7.36 Remember the end and 371. B. 38.1 Honour a Physitian with 187. B. 38.15 He that sinneth before his 187. B. MATTHEVV 1.25 Till she brought forth her Son 22. E. 5.48 Be yee perfect as your Father in heaven is 823. A. 5.23 If thou bring thy gift to the Altar and 33. C. 7.19 He taught them as one 690. E. 9.2 My sonne be of good cheare 343. C. 10.39 He that finds his life 150. C. 16.24 He that will follow me let 732. C. 16.28 There be some standing here 259. A. 19.28 In the regeneration 181. A. 20.23 It is not mine to give 761. E. 21.44 He that falls upon this stone 665. B. 24.20 Pray that your flight be not in the Winter 580. B. 28.19 Goe and teach all Nations 47. B. MARKE 9.24 Lord I beleeve 669. C. LUKE 1.28 Blessed art thou amongst women 18. C. 4.23 Physitian heale thy selfe 420. B. 4.32 They were astonished at his 691. A. 7.29 The Pharisees and Lawyers rejected 366. D. 12.32 Feare not little flock for c. 45. C. 228. B. JOHN 1.3 4. All things were made by him 667. E. 1.16 Grace for grace 310. E. 1.9 He was that light c. 78. B. 345. C. 1.16 Of his fulnesse have all we received and grace for grace 4. C. 2.4 Woman what have I to doe with thee 23. D. 5.25 Verily verily I say unto you the houre 150. E. 5.17 My Father worketh 240. A. 5.39 Search the Scriptures 339. B. 8.11 Sin no more 110. A. 9.10 I am the doore 752. D. 10.3 His sheep heare his voice 66. D. 10.11 The good shepheard giveth his life for the sheepe 63. A. 19.29 They put it upon Hyssop 646. A. 20.16 Touch me not for 821. D. ACTS 1.22 There was a necessity of one 180. C. 17.11 The Bereans searched the c. 472. E. 20.22 I goe bound in the Spirit 473. C. ROMANS 6.21 What fruit had yee then 65. D. 8.15 Whereby we cry Abba Father 27. D. 8.21 The creature it selfe also shall be delivered from the bondage c. 9. D. 8.23 Our selves have the first fruits 293. B. 1 CORINTHIANS 1.20 God hath made the wisedome of this world foolishnesse 180. B. 6.3 We shall judge the Angels 235. A. 6.20 Yee are bought with a price 26. D. 10.13 No tentation shall befall us but 789. B. 15.8 As of one borne out of due 460. D. 15.3 Christ dyed for our sins 397. B. 15.28 God shall be all in all 231. B. 15.29 For the dead 56. D. 2 CORINTHIANS 7.1 Let us cleanse our selves 118. A. 12.7 A thorne in the flesh the messenger of Satan 526. E. 527. A. 12.9 My grace is sufficient for thee 527. D. EPHESIANS 1.10 That God might gather in one 9. D. 2.12 Without Christ without God 71. C. 3.19 That they are filled with all the 4. C. 5.14 Awake thou that sleepest 188. E. 11.6 Without faith it is impossible 105. A. PHILIPPIANS 4.8 If there be any vertue 681. A. COLOSSIANS 3.5 Mortifie your members 151. B. 1 THESSALONIANS 4.7 God hath not called us to c. 117. E. 5.25 I pray God your spirit 335. E. 1 TIM 2.1 I exhort you that supplications and prayers c. 510. D. TITUS 2.14 Christ gave himselfe for us 77. C. HEBREVVES 4.12 The Word of God pierces c. 335. D. 517. B. 4.12 A two edged sword 139. B. 11.35 Others were tortured c. 150. C. 13.22 I beseech you brethren suffer 610. D. JAMES 1.17 The Father of lights 385. B. 5.3 Your gold and your silver c. 81. B. 5.11 You have seene the end c. 399. A. 1 PETER 2.5 Built of lively stones 35. A. 2 PETER 1.19 We have also a more sure word of prophecie 59. E. 1 JOHN 3.2 Now we are the sonnes of God 120. C. 5.16 There is a sin unto death 348. E. REVELATION 3.14 Thus saith Amen 53. A. 12.4 The Dragons taile drew the 240. E. 12.7 Michael and his Angels fought against the Dragon 146. E. 17.2 The great Whore sitteth upon 310. B. 22.11 He that is holy 594. D. ⧠The Table of such Authors as are either cited illustrated or refelled in this BOOKE A ABulensis 7. A. B. 50. A. 314. D. 763. C. Aerius 781. B. Alcazar 184. B. Alvarez 693. C. Alexander Alensis 379. D. 603. C. Alcoranum 379. C. 744. C. Ambrosius 18. A. 24. A. 38. A. 88. A. 105. D. 106. A. 110. E. 262. D.
E Citation of Scripture the words much more the Chapter and verse not alwayes observed in it 250. C. 325. D Complements of their abuse and use 176. A. B. C. 412. D Comforts how easily we mistake false Comforts for true 279. E. 382. D. 383. A. B 501. A Of the true Comfort of the Holy Ghost 353. D Of that Comfort and consolation which the Minister of the Gospell is to preach to all people 746. A. B C Confession to the Priest in some cases usefull and necessary 558. A 568. A. 589. B. C How necessary to Confesse 569. D. 586. E Confidence true Confidence proceeds onely from true goodnesse 171. E Confirmation whether a Sacrament 329. C The use and benefit of it ibid. D. E Continency that trial not made as should be whether young people can Conteine from marriage 217. B C Contrition Confession and Satisfaction three parts of true Repentance 568. A Conventicles against their private opinions 228. C Against them 455. A They are no Bodies 756. D Consideration of our selves and our insufficiencies how necessary 44. D. 45. A. c. Constitutions No sins to be layd and fathered upon them 90. A Corporations how they have no soules 99. A Covering of sinnes what good and what bad 569. E It is good to cover them from giving other men examples 570. A Counsell not to be given unlesse we love those to whom we give it 93. C How many miscarry in that poynt ibid. D Craft and that cunning and Craft which men affect in their severall Callings 411. D Creatures how farre we may love the Creatures and how farre not 398. E Curiosity against the excesse of it in matter of Knowledge 63. E. 64. A. 411. E. 563. B. 701. A Conscience obdurate and over-tender the effects of either 587. B. C. D Curses and Imprecations whether we may use them 401. C. D. 555. E D DAmned the consummation of their torment wherein it consisteth in the opinion of the Schoole 344. B More shall be saved than damned 765. C Of the torments of the damned 776. B. C The absence of God the greatest torment of the damned ibid. D Day of Judgement the manner of proceeding in it 140. B Fearefull even to the best 200. B. C The certainty and uncertainty of it 271. D To be had ever in remembrance and why 371. B. 389. C. 392. A Death how it may be desired of us and how not 38. A. B. C. D. 148. B. C. 531. D. E Against the ambition of it in the pseudomartyrs 142. C The word Fortasse hath place in all things but Death 147. C. D It is a law a tribute and a duty and how 147. E. 148. A We not to grudge if we dy soon or others live longer ibid. B Death how an enemy to mankinde and how not ibid E God made it not but maketh use of it 188. B Of undergoing Death for Christ 400. A B Not a banishment to good men but a visitation of their friends 463. C Death why so terrible to the good men of former times 532. D The often contemplation of Death takes much from the feare of it 473. E Debts of our Debts to God 87. C To our neighbours 93. E To our superiors 91. C To our selves 94. D Deceit and Deceiving the mischiefe of it 742. B The law will not suppose it either in a father or a master ibid. 42. Decrees of God to be considered only by the Execution 330. C None absolute considering man before a Sinner 675. C. D. E Departing from sinne to be generall 552. A We are not to retaine any one 568. D Deprecating of afflictions whether or no lawfull 504. B. C. D. E Desperation the sin of it greater and worse than that of presumption 398. C Severall sects there have been but never any of Despayring men 346. A Against it 360. D E God brings his servants to humiliation often but never to Desperation 464. Destroying whether man may lawfully destroy any one hurtfull species in the world 527. B 620. C De viâ the name of such as were Christians in the former times that is men of that way according to S. Chrysostome 426. B Devils capable of mercy according to many of the Fathers 66. A The Devils quoting of Scripture 338. C Devotion a serious sedulous and impatient thing 244. E It is good to accompany our selves to a generall Devotion 512 D It must be constant 586. B And not taken up by chance ibid. C Disciplining and mortifying Acts after God hath forgiven us our sinnes commended 546. E They inferre neither Purgatory nor Indulgences nor Satisfaction 547. A They are sharp arrows from a sweet hand ib. The necessity of them to make our Repentance entire 568. B Discretion the mother and nurse of all vertues 577. B What Discretion is to be used in telling people of their sinnes ibid. Division the fore-runner of destruction 138. D. E Not alwayes unlawfull to sow Division amongst men when they agree too well to ill purposes 493. D Doubting the way to know the truth 322. D Duels the inhumanity and sinne of them 5. E Duties of our calling not to be disputed but executed 41. A Of our generall weaknesse and impotency in spirituall Duties 513. C E EArly seeking of God what it is 245. C. D God is an Early God 809. A. B And we to seeke him Early ibid. D. E Eloquence required in the delivery of Gods Word 47. D Enemies profit to be made of them 98. A We come too soone to the name and then carry it too farre 98. C God and Religion both have Enemies 375 D 703. C How we may and how we may not hate our Enemies ibid. D. E Our Enemies are Gods Enemies 704. A Errours in the way almost as dangerous as Errours in the end 639. A. D Of the Errours of the Fathers of the Church 490. A About administring the Sacrament to children about the state of the soule after death c. 739. E Not good for the Church to play with small Errours and tolerate them when shee may as easily redresse them 782. B Esay rather an Evangelist than a Prophet 54. B Evill none from God 168. C. D Nothing is naturally Evill 171. A Example in all our actions and purposes wee to propose unto our selves some patterne or Example 667. D. Examples what power they have in matter of instruction 572. D. 593. A What care is to be taken in making the inordinate acts of some Holy men in Scripture our Examples 155. C. D. 488. D. E. 489. A. 526. E How farre Example works above precept or command 165. B Of giving good Examples to others 420. C God follows his own Examples 522. E Of giving bad Examples unto other men 570. A. 573. E Excommunication the use of it amongst the Druides and the Jewes 402. A Much tendernesse to be used in excommunicating any from the Church 667. A How many men excommunicare themselves without any Church-censure ib. B. C. 418.
perplexities and scruples in understanding and conscience and into desperation at last And this is the Greatnesse Solutis doloribus inferni In another sense then David speaks that of Christ There it is that the sorrowes of hell were loosed that is were slacked dissolved by him But here it is that the sorrowes of hell are loosed that is let loose upon thee and when thou shalt heare Christ say from the Crosse Behold and see if ever there were any sorrow like my sorrow thou shalt finde thy sorrow like his in the Greatnesse and nothing like his in the Goodnesse Christ bore that sorrow that every man might rejoyce and thou wouldest be the more sorry if every man had not as much cause of desperate sorrow as thou hast Many and great are the sorowes of the wicked and then eternall too which is more then intimated in that the Originall hath neither of those particles of supplement which are in our Translations no such shall come no such shall be nor no shall at all but onely Many sorrowes to the wicked Many and great now more and greater hereafter All for ever if they amend not It is not Eternall They have had sorrowes but they are overblown nor that they have them but patience shall outweare them nor that they shall have them but they have a breathing time to gather strength before hand But as it was in the beginning is now and ever shall be Sorrowes upon them and upon them for ever Whatsoever any man conceives for ease in this case Esay 33.11 it is a false conception You shall conceive chaffe and bring forth stubble And this stubble is your vaine hope of a determination of this sorrow But the wicked shall not be able to lodge such a hope though this hope if they could apprehend it would be but an aggravating of their sorrowes in the end It is eternall no determination of time afforded to it Ibid. ver 14. For They shall bee as the burning of lime and as thornes cut up shall they bee burnt in the fire Who amongst us shall dwell with the devouring fire Who amongst us shall dwell with that everlasting burning It is a devouring fire and yet it is an everlasting burning The Prophet asks Who can dwell there In that intensenesse who can last Deut. 32.22 They that must and that is All the wicked Fire is kindled in my wrath saith God Yet may not teares quench it Teares might if they could be had But It shall burne to the bottome of hell saith God there And Dives that could not procure a drop of water to coole his tongue there can much lesse procure a repentant teare in that place There as S. Iohn speakes Revel 18.8 Plagues shall come in one day Death and Sorrow and Famine But it is in a long day Short for the suddennesse of comming for that is come already which for any thing we know may come this minute before we be at an end of this point or at a period of this sentence So it is sudden in comming but long for the enduring For it is that day Ibid. when They shall be burnt with fire for strong is the Lord God that will condemne them That is argument enough of the vehemence of that fire that the Lord God who is called the strong God makes it a Master-piece of his strength to make that fire Art thou able to dispute out this Fire and to prove that there can be no reall no materiall fire in Hell after the dissolution of all materiall things created If thou be not able to argue away the immortality of thine owne soule but that that soule must last nor to argue away the eternity of God himselfe but that that must last thou hast but little ease in making shift to give a figurative interpretation to that fire and to say It may be a torment but it cannot be a fire since it must be an everlasting torment nor to give a figurative signification to the Worme and to say It may bee a paine a remorse but it can bee no worme after the generall dissolution since that Conscience in which that remorse and anguish shall ever live must live ever If there bee a figure in the names and words of Fire and Wormes there is an indisputable reality in the sorrow in the torment and in the manifoldnesse and in the weightinesse and in the everlastingnesse thereof For in the inchoation of these sorrowes in this life and in the consummation of them in the life to come The sorrowes of the wicked are many and great and eternall This then is the portion prepared here The Person Psal 50.18 Thy portion was with the Adulterers as our last Translators have exprest that place in their Margin Thy portion was with them here in this world and thy portion shall be with them for ever for God expresses all kind of wickednesse carnall and spirituall in that name of Adultery throughout the body of the Scriptures And therefore when you meet judgements denounced against Adulterers never thinke that those judgements concerne not you if you have forborne that one sin and yet even that sinne may have beene committed in a looke in a letter in a word in a wish in a dreame when S. Iames saith Yee Adulterers and Adulteresses Iam. 4 4. know you not this Thinke not that S. Iames cals not upon you if you be but Covetous but Ambitious but Superstitious and no Adulteters for every aversion from the Creatour every converting to the creature is Adultery Even in nature you are made for that marriage In the covenant of God you were betroathed and affianced for that marriage In the Sacrament of Baptisme you were actually personally married and in the other Sacrament there is a consummation of that marriage And every departing from that contract which you made with God at your Baptisme and renewed at your receiving the other Sacrament is an Adultery Thus a Hermite is a husband and a Nun a wife and thus both may bee adulterers though in a Wildernesse though in a Cloyster August Si deseris Deum qui te fecit amas illa quae fecit adultera es If thou turne from God that made thee to those things that he made this is an adultery Therefore Christ calls them An evill and adulterous generation because they sought a signe Matt. 12.39 because they turned upon other wayes of satisfaction then he had ordained for them that was adultery And as David saith Thy portion was with adulterers here so as theirs is said to be Revel 21.8 Thy portion also shall be in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone which is the second death Thou art this person if thou be this adulterer which is intended in this emphaticall word The wicked So then as these Sorrowes in our Text are an inchoative Hell The wicked they are such wounds as induce such pangs as precede
even the second death sorrowes that flow into desperation and impenitiblenesse and impenitiblenesse is hell As the torment is an inchoative hell so is the person the Wicked here an inchoated Devill It is S. Chrysostoms spontaneus daemon and voluntarius daemon He that is a devill to himselfe that could be and would be ambitious in a Spittle licentious in a Wildernesse voluptuous in a Famine and abound with tentations in himselfe though there were no devill Most of the names of the devill in the Scripture denote some action of his upon us As he is called The Prince of the power of the Ayre there he is called so because as it is added there Ephes 2.2 Hee works in the children of disobedience As the ayre works upon our bodies this Prince of the Ayre works upon our minds how works he hee deceives Revel 12.9 Hee deceived the whole world saith S. Iohn from this infinuation hee hath those other names there the great Dragon and the old Serpent When hee hath crept in as a Serpent then hee growes A roaring Lyon He professes his power he disguises not a tentation then he growes Satan an Adversary an Enemy he opposes all good endeavors in us then he growes Diabolus an Accuser an accuser to God an accuser to our owne conscience and when he hath made our sinne as great as it can be in our practise when by age or sicknesse or poverty he cannot multiply our sinnes for the present then by his multiplying glasse he multiplies the sins of our former times and presents them greater then even the mercies of God or the merits of Christ Jesus So he growes in mischievous names according to his mischievous actions and practises upon us but then out of himselfe arises the most vehement and the most collective name that is given him in all the Scriptures 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and that with the emphaticall article The wicked one One that is all wickednesse one that is the wickednesse of all One who if he had no object to direct his wickednesse upon no subject to exercise his wickednesse in If God should proclaime so generall a Pardon That all men All should effectually be saved and so all hope to have enlarged his Kingdome be withdrawne yet would still be as wicked and as opposite to God as he is So then by this character of Multiplicity Plurality this emphaticall note of the wicked in our Text the person whose portion this sorrow is this sorrow which is a brand of Hell at least a match by which Hell fire it selfe is kindled is not hee that is an Adulterer or that is a Murtherer not hee that hath fallen into some particular sinnes though great and continued those great sinnes in habits though long for David fell so and yet found a holy sorrow a medicinall sorrow but it is the wicked he that runnes headlong into all wayes of wickednesse and usque ad finem precludes or neglects all wayes of recovery That is glad of a tentation and afraid of a Sermon that is dry wood and tinder to Satans fire if he doe but touch him and is ashes it selfe to Gods Spirit if he blow upon him That from a love of sinne at first because it is pleasing comes at last to a love of sinne because it is sinne because it is liberty because it is a deliverance of himselfe from the bondage as he thinks it of the law of God and from the remorse and anguish of considering sinne too particularly This is the person in whom at first by this emphaticall note the wicked we designe a Plurality as we called it that is a Complicated a Multiplied a Compact sinner a Body rather a Carkasse of Many of All sins all that have fallen within his reach And then in the word we noted also a Singularity That upon such a sinner upon every such sinner these Many these Great these Eternall sorrowes shall fall and tarry As in the former Circumstance Singularity we noted that it was the They that aggravated it it was not an An an Adulterer an Ambitious man but a The The wicked whom God enwrapped in this irrecoverable this undeterminable sorrow so here it is not a This or That This wicked or that wicked man but The wicked every wicked man is surrounded with this sorrow He can propose no comfort in a decimation as in popular Rebellions where nine may be spared and the tenth man hanged No nor so much hope as to have nine hanged and the tenth spared He is not in Sodoms case That a few righteous might have saved the wicked Ezek. 14.20 But he feeles a necessity of applying to himselfe that If Noah Daniel and Iob were in the midst of them as I live saith the Lord God they should deliver neither Son August nor Daughter Iussisti Domine sic est ut poena sit sibi omnis inordinatus animus It is thy pleasure O God and thy pleasure shall be infallibly accomplished that every wicked person should be his owne Executioner He is Spontaneus Daemon as S. Chrysostome speaks an In-mate an in-nate Devill a bosome devill a selfe-Devill That as he could be a tempter to himselfe though there were no Devill so he could be an Executioner to himselfe though there were no Satan and a Hell to himselfe though there were no other Torment Sometimes he staies not the Assises but prevents the hand of Justice he destroies himselfe before his time But when he staies he is evermore condemned at the Assises Let him sleepe out as much of the morning as securelyas he can embellish and adorne himselfe as gloriously as he can dine as largely and as delicately as he can weare out as much of the afternoone in conversation in Comedies in pleasure as hee can sup with as much distension and inducement of drousinesse as he can that he may scape all remorse by falling asleepe quickly and fall asleepe with as much discourse and musicke and advantage as he can he hath a conscience that will survive and overwatch all the company he hath a sorrow that shall joyne issue with him when he is alone and both God and the devill who doe not meet willingly shall meet in his case and be in league and be one the sorrowes side against him The anger of God and the malice of the devill shall concurre with his sorrow to his farther vexation No one wicked person by any diversion or cunning shall avoid this sorrow for it is in the midst and in the end of all his forced contentments Prov. 14.13 Even in laughing the heart is sorrowfull and the end of that mirth is heavinesse The person is The wicked Communication Every wicked person He hath no reliefe in a decimation that some may scape Nor reliefe in the communication of the torment It is no ease to him that so many beare a part with him In some afflictions in the world men lay hold