first day in which he began to take sober counsels he throws himself back in the accounts of eternity and slides to the bottome of the hill from whence with sweat and labour of his hands and knees he had long been creeping he descends from the spirit to the flesh from honour to dishonour from wise principles to unthrifty practises like one of the vainer fellowes who grows a fool and a prodigall and a begger because he delights in inconsideration in the madnesse of drunkennesse and the quiet of a lazy and unprofitable life So that this man hath great cause to fear and if he does his fear is as the fear of enemies and not sons I do not say that it is a fear that is displeasing to God but it is such a one as may arrive at goodnesse and the fear of sons if it be rightly manag'd For we must know that no fear is displeasing to God no fear of it self whether it be fear of punishment or fear to offend the fear of servants or the fear of sons But the effects of fear doe distinguish the man and are to be entertain'd or rejected accordingly If a servile fear makes us to remove our sins and so passes us towards our pardon and the receiving such graces which may endear our duty and oblige our affection that fear is imperfect but not criminall it is the beginning of wisdome and the first introduction to it but if that fear sits still or rests in a servile minde or a hatred of God or speaking evill things concerning him or unwillingnesse to do our duty that which at first was indifferent or at the worst imperfect proves miserable and malicious so we do our duty it is no matter upon what principles we do it it is no matter where we begin so from that beginning we passe on to duties and perfection If we fear God as an enemy an enemy of our sins and of our persons for their sakes as yet this fear is but a servile fear it cannot be a filiall fear since we our selves are not sons but if this servile fear makes us to desire to be reconcil'd to God that he may no longer stay at enmity with us from this fear we shall soon passe to carefulnesse from carefulnesse to love from love to diligence from diligence to perfection and the enemies shall become servants and the servants shall become adopted sons and passe into the society and the participation of the inheritance of Jesus for this fear is also reverence and then our God in stead of being a consuming fire shall become to us the circle of a glorious crown and a globe of an eternall light SERMON IX Part III. I Am now to give account concerning the excesse of fear not directly and abstractedly as it is a passion but as it is subjected in Religion and degenerates into superstition For so among the Greeks fear is the ingredient and half of the constitution of that folly 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 said Hesychius it is a fear of God 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that 's more it is a timorousnesse the superstitious man is afraid of the gods said the Etymologist 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 fearing of God as if he were a tyrant and an unreasonable exacter of duty upon unequall terms and disproportionable impossible degrees and unreasonable and great and little instances 1. But this fear some of the old Philosophers thought unreasonable in all cases even towards God himself and it was a branch of the Epicurean Doctrine that God medled not any thing below and was to be loved and admired but not feared at all and therefore they taught men neither to fear death nor to fear punishment after death nor any displeasure of God His terroribus ab Epicuro soluti non metuimus Deos said Cicero and thence came this acceptation of the word that superstition should signifie an unreasonable fear of God It is true he and all his scholars extended the case beyond the measure and made all fear unreasonable but then if we upon grounds of reason and divine revelation shall better discern the measure of the fear of God whatsoever fear we find to be unreasonable we may by the same reason call it superstition and reckon it criminall as they did all fear that it may be call'd superstition their authority is sufficient warrant for the grammar of the appellative and that it is criminall we shall derive from better principles But besides this there was another part of its definition 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the superstitious man is also an Idolater 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 one that is afraid of something besides God The Latines according to their custome imitating the Greeks in all their learned notices of things had also the same conception of this and by their word Superstitio understood the worship of Daemons or separate spirits by which they meant either their minores Deos or else their 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 their braver personages whose souls were supposed to live after death the fault of this was the object of their Religion they gave a worship or a fear to whom it was not due for when ever they worship'd the great God of heaven and earth they never cal'd that superstition in an evill sense except the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 they that beleeved there was no God at all Hence came the etymology of superstition it was a worshipping or fearing the spirits of their dead Heroes quos superstites credebant whom they thought to be alive after their 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Deification or quos superstantes credebant standing in places and thrones above us and it alludes to that admirable description of old age which Solomon made beyond all the Rhetorick of the Greeks and Romans Also they shall be afraid of that which is high and fears shall be in the way intimating the weaknesse of old persons who if ever they have been religious are apt to be abused into superstition They are afraid of that which is high that is of spirits and separate souls of those excellent beings which dwell in the regions above meaning that then they are superstitious However fear is most commonly its principle alwaies its ingredient For if it enter first by credulity and a weak perswasion yet it becomes incorporated into the spirit of the man and thought necessary and the action it perswades to dares not be omitted for fear of an evill themselves dream of upon this account the sin is reducible to two heads the 1. is Superstition of an undue object 2. Superstition of an undue expression to a right object 1. Superstition of an undue object is that which the Etymologist cals 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the worshipping of idols the Scripture addes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a sacrificing to Daemons in St. Paul and in Baruch where although we usually read it sacrificing to Devils yet it was but accidentall that they were such for those indeed
to hope to have amends made to their condition by the sentence of the day of Judgement Evill and sad is their condition who cannot be contented here nor blessed hereafter whose life is their misery and their conscience is their enemy whose grave is their prison and death their undoing and the sentence of Dooms-day the beginning of an intolerable condition 3. The third sort of accusers are the Devils and they will do it with malicious and evill purposes The Prince of the Devils hath 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for one of his chiefest appellatives The accuser of the Brethren he is by his professed malice and imployment and therefore God who delights that his mercy should triumph and his goodnesse prevail over all the malice of men and Devils hath appointed one whose office is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to reprove the accuser and to resist the enemy and to be a defender of their cause who belong to God The holy Spirit is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a defender the evill spirit is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the accuser and they that in this life belong to one or the other shall in the same proportion be treated at the day of Judgement The Devill shall accuse the Brethren that is the Saints and servants of God and shall tell concerning their follies and infirmities the sins of their youth and the weaknesse of their age the imperfect grace and the long schedule of omissions of duty their scruples and their fears their diffidences and pusillanimity and all those things which themselves by strict examination finde themselves guilty of and have confessed all their shame and the matter of their sorrowes their evill intentions and their little plots their carnall confidences and too fond adherences to the things of this world their indulgence and easinesse of government their wilder joyes and freer meals their losse of time and their too forward and apt compliances their trifling arrests and little peevishnesses the mixtures of the world with the things of the Spirit and all the incidences of humanity he will bring forth and aggravate them by the circumstance of ingratitude and the breach of promise and the evacuating all their holy purposes and breaking their resolutions and rifling their vowes and all these things being drawn into an intire representment and the bils clog'd by numbers will make the best man in the world seem foul and unhandsome and stained with the characters of death and evill dishonour But for these there is appointed a defender The holy Spirit that maketh intercession for us shall then also interpose and against all these things shall oppose the passion of our blessed Lord and upon all their defects shall cast the robe of his righteousnesse and the sins of their youth shall not prevail so much as the repentance of their age and their omissions be excused by probable intervening causes and their little escapes shall appear single and in disunion because they were alwaies kept asunder by penitentiall prayers and sighings and their seldome returns of sin by their daily watchfulnesse and their often infirmities by the sincerity of their souls and their scruples by their zeal and their passions by their love and all by the mercies of God and the sacrifice which their Judge offer'd and the holy Spirit made effective by daily graces and assistances These therefore infallibly go to the portion of the right hand because the Lord our God shall answer for them But as for the wicked it is not so with them for although the plain story of their life be to them a sad condemnation yet what will be answered when it shall be told concerning them that they despised Gods mercies and feared not his angry judgements that they regarded not his word and loved not his excellencies that they were not perswaded by the promises nor afrighted by his threatnings that they neither would accept his government nor his blessings that all the sad stories that ever hapned in both the worlds in all which himself did escape till the day of his death and was not concerned in them save only that he was called upon by every one of them which he ever heard or saw or was told of to repentance that all these were sent to him in vain But cannot the Accuser truly say to the Judge concerning such persons They were thine by creation but mine by their own choice Thou didst redeem them indeed but they sold themselves to me for a trifle or for an unsatisfying interest Thou diedst for them but they obeyed my commandements I gave them nothing I promised them nothing but the filthy pleasures of a night or the joyes of madnesse or the delights of a disease I never hanged upon the Crosse three long hours for them nor endured the labours of a poor life 33 years together for their interest only when they were thine by the merit of thy death they quickly became mine by the demerit of their ingratitude and when thou hadst cloathed their soul with thy robe and adorned them by thy graces we strip'd them naked as their shame and only put on a robe of darknesse and they thought themselves secure and went dancing to their grave like a drunkard to a fight or a flie unto a candle and therefore they that did partake with us in our faults must divide with us in our portion and fearfull interest This is a sad story because it ends in death and there is nothing to abate or lessen the calamity It concerns us therefore to consider in time that he that tempts us will accuse us and what he cals pleasant now he shall then say was nothing and all the gains that now invite earthly souls and mean persons to vanity was nothing but the seeds of folly and the harvest is pain and sorrow and shame eternall * But then since this horror proceeds upon the account of so many accusers God hath put it into our power by a timely accusation of our selves in the tribunall of the court Christian to prevent all the arts of aggravation which at Dooms-day shall load foolish and undiscerning souls He that accuses himself of his crimes here means to forsake them and looks upon them on all sides and spies out his deformity and is taught to hate them he is instructed and prayed for he prevents the anger of God and defeats the Devils malice and by making shame the instrument of repentance he takes away the sting and makes that to be his medicine which otherwise would be his death and concerning this exercise I shall only adde what the Patriarch of Alexandria told an old religious person in his hermitage having asked him what he found in that desert he was answered only this Indesinenter culpare judicare meipsum to judge and condemn my self perpetually that is the imployment of my solitude The Patriarch answered Non est alia via There is no other way By accusing our selves we shall make the Devils malice uselesse
desire Were they not made unwillingly weakly and wandringly and abated with sins in the greatest part of thy life Didst thou pray with the same affection and labour as thou didst purchase thy estate Have thy alms been more then thy oppressions and according to thy power and by what means didst thou judge concerning it How much of our time was spent in that and how much of our estate was spent in this But let us goe one step further How many of us love our enemies or pray for and doc good to them that persecute and affront us or overcome evill with good or turn the face again to them that strike us rather then be reveng'd or suffer our selves to be spoil'd or robbed without contention and uncharitable courses or lose our interest rather then lose our charity And yet by these precepts we shall be judged I instance but once more Our blessed Saviour spake a hard saying Every idle word that men shall speak they shall give account thereof at the day of Judgement For by thy words thou shalt be justified and by thy words thou shalt be condemned and upon this account may every one weeping and trembling say with Job Quid faciam cum resurrexerit ad judicandum Deus What shall I doe when the Lord shall come to judgement Of every idle word O blessed God! what shall become of them who love to prate continually to tell tales to detract to slander to back-bite to praise themselves to undervalue others to compare to raise divisions to boast 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Who shall be able to stand upright not bowing the knee with the intolerable load of the sins of his tongue If of every idle word we must give account what shall we doe for those malicious words that dishonor God or doe despite to our Brother Remember how often we have tempted our Brother or a silly woman to sin and death How often we have pleaded for unjust interests or by our wit have cousened an easie and a beleeving person or given evill sentences or disputed others into false perswasions Did we never call good evill or evill good Did we never say to others thy cause is right when nothing made it right but favour and money a false advocate or a covetous Judge 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 so said Christ every idle word that is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 so St. Paul uses it every false word every lie shall be called to judgement or as some Copies read it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 every wicked word shall be called to judgment For by 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 idle words are not meant words that are unprofitable or unwise for fooles and silly persons speak most of those and have the least accounts to make but by vaine the Jewes usually understood false and to give their mind to vanity or to speak vanity is all one as to mind or speak falshoods with malicious and evill purposes But if every idle word that is every vain and lying word shall be called to judgment what shall become of men that blaspheme God or their Rulers or Princes of the people or their Parents that dishonour the Religion and disgrace the Ministers that corrupt Justice and pervert Judgment that preach evill doctrines or declare perverse sentences that take Gods holy Name in vain or dishonour the Name of God by trifling and frequent swearings that holy Name by which wee hope to bee saved and which all the Angels of God fall down and worship These things are to be considered for by our own words we stand or fall that is as in humane Judgements the confession of the party and the contradiction of himselfe or the failing in the circumstances of his story are the confidences or presumptions of law by which Judges give sentence so shall our words be not onely the means of declaring a secret sentence but a certain instrument of being absolved or condemned But upon these premises we see what reason we have to fear the sentence of that day who have sinned with our tongues so often so continually that if there were no other actions to be accounted for we have enough in this account to make us die and yet have committed so many evill actions that if our words were wholly forgotten wee have infinite reason to feare concerning the event of that horrible sentence The effect of which consideration is this that we set a guard before our lips and watch over our actions with a care equall to that fear which shall be at Doomes-day when we are to passe our sad accounts But I have some considerations to interpose 1. But that the sadnesse of this may a little be relieved and our endevours be encouraged to a timely care and repentance consider that this great sentence although it shall passe concerning little things yet it shall not passe by little portions but by generall measures not by the little errors of one day but by the great proportions of our life for God takes not notice of the infirmities of honest persons that alwayes endevour to avoid every sin but in little intervening instances are surprized but he judges us by single actions if they are great and of evill effect and by little small instances if they be habituall No man can take care concerning every minute and therefore concerning it Christ will not passe sentence but by the discernible portions of our time by humane actions by things of choice and deliberation and by generall precepts of care and watchfulnesse this sentence shall be exacted 2ly The sentence of that day shall be passed not by the proportions of an Angell but by the measures of a Man the first follies are not unpardonable but may bee recovered and the second are dangerous and the third are more fatall but nothing is unpardonable but perseverance in evill courses 3ly The last Judgement shall bee transacted by the same Principles by which we are guided here not by strange and secret propositions or by the fancies of men or by the subtilties of uselesse distinctions or evill perswasions not by the scruples of the credulous or the interest of sects nor the proverbs of prejudice nor the uncertain definitions of them that give laws to subjects by expounding the decrees of Princes but by the plain rules of Justice by the ten Commandements by the first apprehensions of conscience by the plain rules of Scripture and the rules of an honest mind and a certain Justice So that by this restraint and limit of the finall sentence we are secur'd we shall not fall by scruple or by ignorance by interest or by faction by false perswasions of others or invincible prejudice of our own but we shall stand or fall by plain and easie propositions by chastity or uncleannesse by justice or unjustice by robbery or restitution and of this wee have a great testimony by our Judge and Lord himselfe Whatsoever yee shall bind in earth shall be
be not of an indifferent nature it becomes sinfull by giving countenance to a vice or making vertue to become ridiculous 5. If it be not watcht that it complies with all that heare it becomes offensive and injurious 6. If it be not intended to fair and lawfull purposes it is sowre in the using 7. If it be frequent it combines and clusters into a formall sinne 8. If it mingles with any sin it puts on the nature of that new unworthinesse beside the proper uglynesse of the thing it selfe and after all these when can it be lawfull or apt for Christian entertainment The Ecclesiasticall History reports that many jests passed between St. Anthony the Father of the Hermits and his Scholar St. Paul and St. Hilarion is reported to have been very pleasant and of a facete sweet and more lively conversation and indeed plaisance and joy and a lively spirit and a pleasant conversation and the innocent caresses of a charitable humanity is not forbidden plenum tamen suavitatis gratiae sermonem non esse indecorum St. Ambrose affirmed and here in my text our conversation is commanded to be such 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that it may minister grace that is favour complacence cheerfulnesse and be acceptable and pleasant to the hearer and so must be our conversation it must be as far from sullennesse as it ought to be from lightnesse and a cheerfull spirit is the best convoy for Religion and though sadnesse does in some cases become a Christian as being an Index of a pious minde of compassion and a wise proper resentment of things yet it serves but one end being useful in the onely instance of repentance and hath done its greatest works not when it weeps and sighs but when it hates and grows carefull against sin But cheerfulnesse and a festivall spirit fills the soule full of harmony it composes musick for Churches and hearts it makes and publishes glorifications of God it produces thankfulnesse and serves the ends of charity and when the oyle of gladnesse runs over it makes bright and tall emissions of light and holy fires reaching up to a cloud and making joy round about And therefore since it is so innocent and may be so pious and full of holy advantage whatsoever can innocently minister to this holy joy does set forward the work of Religion and Charity And indeed charity it selfe which is the verticall top of all Religion is nothing else but an union of joyes concentred in the heart and reflected from all the angles of our life and entercourse It is a rejoycing in God a gladnesse in our neighbors good a pleasure in doing good a rejoycing with him and without love we cannot have any joy at all It is this that makes children to be a pleasure and friendship to be so noble and divine a thing and upon this account it is certaine that all that which can innocently make a man cheerfull does also make him charitable for grief and age and sicknesse and wearinesse these are peevish and troublesome but mirth and cheerfulnesse is content and civil and compliant and communicative and loves to doe good and swels up to felicity onely upon the wings of charity In this account here is pleasure enough for a Christian in present and if a facete discourse and an amicable friendly mirth can refresh the spirit and take it off from the vile temptations of peevish despairing uncompâ—ying melancholy it must needs be innocent and commendable And we may as well be refreshed by a clean and a brisk discourse as by the aire of Campanian wines and our faces and our heads may as well be anointed and look pleasant with wit and friendy entercourse as with the fat of the Balsam tree and such a conversation no wise man ever did or ought to reprove But when the jest hath teeth and nails biting or scratching our Brother* when it is loose and wanton* when it is unseasonable* and much or many* when it serves ill purposes* or spends better time* then it is the drunkennesse of the soul and makes the spirit fly away seeking for a Temple where the mirth and the musick is solemne and religious But above all the abuses which ever dishonoured the tongues of men nothing more deserves the whip of an exterminating Angel or the stings of scorpions then profane jesting which is a bringing of the Spirit of God to partake of the follies of a man as if it were not enough for a man to be a foole but the wisdome of God must be brought into those horrible scenes He that makes a jest of the words of Scripture or of holy things playes with thunder and kisses the mouth of a Canon just as it belches fire and death he stakes heaven at spurnpoint and trips crosse and pile whether ever he shall see the face of God or no he laughs at damnation while he had rather lose God then lose his jest may which is the horror of all he makes a jest of God himselfe and the Spirit of the Father and the Son to become ridiculous Some men use to read Scripture on their knees and many with their heads uncovered and all good men with fear and trembling with reverence and grave attention Search the Scriptures for therein you hope to have life eternall and All Scripture is written by inspiration of God and is fit for instruction for reproofe for exhortation for doctrine not for jesting but he that makes that use of it had better part with his eyes in jest and give his heart to make a tennisball and that I may speak the worst thing in the world of it it is as like the materiall part of the sin against the holy Ghost as jeering of a man is to abusing him and no man can use it but he that wants wit and manners as well as he wants Religion 3. The third instance of the vain trifling conversation and immoderate talking is revealing secrets which is a dismantling and renting off the robe from the privacies of humane entercourse and it is worse then denying to restore that which was intrusted to our charge for this not onely injures his neighbors right but throws it away and exposes it to his enemy it is a denying to give a man his own arms and delivering them to another by whom he shall suffer mischief He that intrusts a secret to his friend goes thither as to sanctuary and to violate the rites of that is sacriledge and profanation of friendship which is the sister of Religion and the mother of secular blessing a thing so sacred that it changes a Kingdome into a Church and makes Interest to be Piety and Justice to become Religion But this mischief growes according to the subject matter and its effect and the tongue of a babbler may crush a mans bones or break his fortune upon her owne wheel and whatever the effect be yet of it self it is the betraying of a trust and by reproach oftentimes
the longest and latest before it be obtained A man does not begin to know him self till he be old and then he is well stricken in death A mans heart at first being like a plain table unspotted indeed but then there is nothing legible in it As soon as ever we ripen towards the imperfect uses of our reason we write upon this table such crooked characters such imperfect configurations so many fooleries and stain it with so many blots and vitious inspersions that there is nothing worth the reading in our hearts for a great while and when education and ripenesse reason and experience Christian philosophy and the grace of God hath made fair impressions and written the law in our hearts with the finger of Gods holy spirit we blot out this handwriting of Gods ordinances or mingle it with false principles and interlinings of our our own we disorder the method of God or deface the truth of God either we make the rule uneven we bribe or abuse our guide that we may wonder with an excuse Or if nothing else will do it we turn head and professe to go against the laws of God Our Hearts are blinde or our hearts are hardned for these are two great arguments of the wickednesse of our hearts they do not see or they will not see the wayes of God or if they do they make use of their seeing that they may avoid them 1. Our hearts are blinde wilfully blind I need not instance in the ignorance and involuntary nescience of men though if we speak of the necessary parts of religion no man is ignorant of them without his own fault such ignorance is alwayes a direct sin or the direct punishment of a sin A sin is either in its bosom or in its retinue But the ignorance that I now intend is a voluntary chosen delightful ignorance taken in upon designe even for no other end but that we may perish quietly and infallibly God hath opened all the windows of Heaven and sent the Sun of Righteousnesse with glorious apparition and hath discoverd the abysses of his own wisdom made the second person in the Trinity to be the doctor and preacher of his sentences and secrets and the third person to be his Amanuensis or scribe and our hearts to be the Book in which the doctrine is written and miracles and prophecies to be its arguments and all the world to be the verification of it and those leaves contain within their folds all that excellent morality which right reason pickt up after the shipwrack of nature and all those wise sayings which singly made so many men famous for preaching some one of them all them Christ gathered and added some more out of the immediate book of Revelation So that now the wisdom of God hath made every mans heart to be the true Veronica in which he hath imprinted his own lineaments so perfectly that we may dresse our selves like God and have the aire and features of Christ our Elder-Brother that we may be pure as God is perfect as our Father meek and humble as the Son and may have the holy Ghost within us in gifts and Graces in wisdom and holinesse This hath God done for us and see what we do for Him We stand in our own light and quench Gods we love darknesse more then light and entertain our selves accordingly For how many of us are there that understand nothing of the wayes of God that know no more of the laws of Jesus Christ then is remaining upon them since they learned the childrens Catechisme But amongst a thousand how many can explicate and unfold for his own practise the ten Commandments And how many sorts of sins are there forbidden which therefore passe into action and never passe under the scrutinies of repentance because they know not that they are sinnes Are there not very many who know not the particular duties of meeknesse and never consider concerning Longsuffering and if you talk to them of growth in Grace or the spirit of obsignation or the melancholy lectures of the Crosse and imitation of and conformitie to Christs sufferings or adherences to God or rejoycing in him or not quenching the spirit you are too deep learned for them And yet these are duties set down plainly for our practise necessary to be acted in order to our Salvation We brag of light and reformation and fulnesse of the spirit in the mean time we understand not many parts of our dutie We enquire into something that may make us talk or be talked of or that we may trouble a Church or disturb the peace of mindes but in things that concern Holy living and that wisdom of God whereby we are wise unto Salvation never was any age of Christendom more ignorant then we For if we did not wink hard we must needs see that obedience to supreme Powers Denying of our selves Humility Peacefulnesse and Charity are written in such Capital text letters that it is impossible to be ignorant of them And if the heart of man had not rare arts to abuse the understanding it were not to be imagined that any man should bring the 13. Chapter to the Romans to prove the lawfulnesse of taking up Armes against our rulers but so we may abuse our selves at noon and go to bed if we please to call it midnight And there have been a sort of wittie men that maintained that snow was hot I wonder not at the probleme but that a man should beleeve his paradox and should let eternity go away with the fallacie and rather lose heaven then leave his foolish argument is a signe that wilfulnesse and the deceiving heart is the Sophister and the great ingredient into our Deception But that I may be more particular the heart of man uses devices that it may be ignorant 1. We are impatient of honest and severe reproofe and order the circumstances of our persons and addresses that we shall never come to the true knowledge of our condition Who will endure to heare his curate tell him that he is Covetous or that he is proud 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 It is Calumny and Reviling if he speak it to his head and relates to his person and yet if he speak onely in general every man neglects what is not recommended to his particular But yet if our Physitian tell us you look well Sir but a Feaver lurks in your spirits 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 drink Julips and abstain from flesh no man thinks it shame or calumny to be told so but when we are told that our liver is inflamed with lust or anger that our heart is vexed with envie that our eyes rowl with wantonnesse And though we think all is well yet we are sick sick unto death neer to a sad and fatal sentence we shall think that man that tells us so is impudent or uncharitable and yet he hath done him no more injury then a deformed man receives daily from his looking-glasse which
was made prince of the Catholickchurch and as our Head was so must the members be God made the same covenant with us that he did with his most holy Son Christ obtaind no better conditions for us then for himself that was not to be looked for the servant must not be above his master it is well if he be as his Master if the world persecuted him they will also persecute us and from the dayes of John the Baptist the kingdome of Heaven suffers violence and the violent take it by force not the violent doers but the sufferers of violence for though the old law was established in the promises of temporal prosperity yet the gospel is founded in temporal adversity It is directly a covenant of sufferings and sorrows for now the time is come that judgment must begin at the house of God that 's the sence and designe of the text and I intend it as a direct antinomy to the common perswasions of tyrannous carnal and vicious men who reckon nothing good but what is prosperous for though that proposition had many degrees of truth in the beginning of the law yet the case is now altered God hath established its contradictory and now every good man must look for persecution and every good cause must expect to thrive by the sufferings and patience of holy persons and as men do well and suffer evil so they are dear to God and whom he loves most he afflicts most and does this with a designe of the greatest mercy in the world 1. Then the state of the Gospel is a state of sufferings not of temporal prosperities this was foretold by the prophets a fountain shall go out of the house of the Lord irrigabit torrentem spinarum so it is in the vulgar latin and it shall water the torrent of thorns that is the state or time of the gospel which like a torrent shall cary all the world before it and like a torrent shall be fullest in ill weather and by its banks shall grow nothing but thorns and briers sharp afflictions temporal infelicities and persecution This sense of the words is more fully explained in the book of the prophet Isa. upon the ground of my people shall thorns and briers come up how much more in all the houses of the city of rejoycing which prophecy is the same in the stile of the prophets that my text is in the stile of the Apostles the house of God shall be watered with the dew of heaven and there shall spring up briers in it judgement must begin there but how much more in the houses of the city of rejoycing how much more among them that are at ease in Sion that serve their desires that satisfie their appetites that are given over to their own hearts lust that so serves themselves that they never serve God that dwell in the city of rejoycing they are like Dives whose portion was in this life who went in fine linnen and fared deliciously every day they indeed trample upon their briers and thorns and suffer them not to grow in their houses but the roots are in the ground and they are reserved for fuel of wrath in the day of everlasting burning Thus you see it was prophesied now see how it was performed Christ was the captain of our sufferings and he began He entred into the world with all the circumstances of poverty he had a star to illustrate his birth but a stable for his bed chamber and a manger for his cradle the angels sang hymnes when he was born but he was cold and cried uneasy and unprovided he lived long in the trade of a carpenter he by whom God made the world had in his first years the businesse of a mean and an ignoble trade he did good where ever he went and almost where ever he went was abused he deserved heaven for his obedience but found a crosse in his way thither and if ever any man had reason to expect fair usages from God and to be dandled in lap of ease softnes and a prosperous fortune he it was onely that could deserve that or any thing that can be good But after he had chosen to live a life of vertue of poverty and labour he entred into a state of death whose shame and trouble was great enough to pay for the sins of the whole world And I shall choose to expresse this mystery in the vvords of scripture he died not by a single or a sudden death but he was the Lambe slain from the beginning of the world For he was massacred in Abel saith Saint Paulinus he was tossed upon the waves of the Sea in the person of Noah It was he that went out of his Countrey when Abraham was called from Charran and wandred from his native soil He was offered up in Isaac persecuted in Jacob betrayed in Joseph blinded in Sampson affronted in Moses sawed in Esay cast into the dungeon with Jeremy For all these were types of Christ suffering and then his passion continued even after his resurrection for it is he that suffers in all his members it is he that endures the contradiction of all sinners it is he that is the Lord of life and is crucified again and put to open shame in all the sufferings of his servants and sins of rebels and defiances of Apostates and renegados and violence of Tyrants and injustice of usurpers and the persecutions of his Church It is he that is stoned in Saint Stephen flayed in the person of Saint Bartholomew he was rosted upon Saint Laurence his Gridiron exposed to lyons in Saint Ignatius burned in Saint Polycarpe frozen in the lake where stood fourty Martyrs of Cappadocia Unigenitus enim Dei ad peragendum mortis suae sacramentum consummavit omne genus humanarum passionum said Saint Hilary The Sacrament of Christs death is not to be accomplished but by suffering all the sorrows of humanity All that Christ came for was or was mingled with sufferings For all those little joyes which God sent either to recreate his person or to illustrate his office were abated or attended with afflictions God being more carefull to establish in him the Covenant of sufferings then to refresh his sorrows Presently after the Angels had finished their Halleluiahs he was forced to fly to save his life and the air became full of shrikes of the desolate mothers of Bethlehem for their dying Babes God had no sooner made him illustrious with a voyce from heaven and the descent of the Holy Ghost upon him in the waters of Baptisme But he was delivered over to be tempted and assaulted by the Devil in the wildernesse His transfiguration was a bright ray of glory but then also he entred into a cloud and was told a sad story what he was to suffer at Jerusalem And upon Palme-Sunday when he rode triumphantly into Jerusalem and was adorned with the acclamations of a King and a God he wet the Palmes with
when the box is newly broken but the want of it is no trouble we are well enough without it but vertue is like hunger and thirst it must be satisfied or we die and when we feel great longings after religion and faintings for want of holy nutriment when a famine of the word and sacraments is more intolerable and we think our selves really most miserable when the Church doors are shut against us or like the Christians in the persecution of the Vandals who thought it worse then death that there Bishops were taken from them If we understand excommunication or Church censures abating the disreputation and secular appendages in the sense of the spirit to be a misery next to hell it self then we have made a good progresse in the Charity and grace of God till then we are but pretenders or infants or imperfect in the same degree in which our affections are cold and our desires remisse For a constant and prudent zeal is the best testimony of our masculine and vigorous heats and an houre of fervour is more pleasing to God then a moneth of luke-warmnesse and indifferency 9 But as some are active onely in the presence of a good object but remisse and carelesse for the want of it so on the other side an infant grace is safe in the absence of a temptation but falls easily when it is in presence He therefore that would understand if he be grown in grace may consider if his safety consists onely in peace or in the strength of the spirit It is good that we will not seek out opportunities to sin but are not we too apprehensive of it when it is presented or do we not sink under when it presses us can we hold our tapers neer the flames and not suck it in greedily like Naphtha or prepared Nitre or can we like the children of the captivity walk in the midst of flames and not be scorched or consumed Many men will not like Judah go into high wayes and untie the girdles of harlots But can you reject the importunity of a beautious and an imperious Lady as Joseph did we had need pray that we be not led into temptation that is not onely into the possession but not into the allurements and neighbour-hood of it least by little and little our strongest resolutions be untwist and crack in sunder like an easie cord severed into single threds but if we by the necessity of our lives and manner of living dwell where a temptation will assault us then to resist is the signe of a great grace but such a signe that without it the grace turns into wantonnesse and the man into a beast and an angel into a Devil R. Moses will not allow a man to be a true penitent untill he hath left all his sin and in all the like circumstances refuses those temptations under which formerly he sinned and died and indeed it may happen that such a trial onely can secure our judgement concerning our selves and although to be tried in all the same accidents be not safe nor alwayes contingent and in such cases it is sufficient to resist all the temptations we have and avoid the rest and decree against all yet if it please God we are tempted as David was by his eyes or the Martyrs by tortures or Joseph by his wanton Mistris then to stand sure and to ride upon the temptation like a ship upon a wave or to stand like a rock in an impetuous storm that 's the signe of a great grace and of a well-grown Christian 10. No man is grown in grace but he that is ready for every work that chooses not his employment that refuses no imposition from God or his superiour a ready hand an obedient heart and a willing cheerful soul in all the work of God and in every office of religion is a great index of a good proficient in the wayes of Godlinesse The heart of a man is like a wounded hand or arme which if it be so cured that it can onely move one way and cannot turn to all postures and natural uses it is but imperfect and still half in health and half wounded so is our spirit if it be apt for prayer and close sifted in almes if it be sound in faith and dead in charity if it be religious to God and unjust to our neighbour there wants some integral part or there is a lamenesse and the deficiency in any one duty implyes the guilt of all said Saint James and bonum exintegrâ causâ malum exquâlibet particulari every fault spoils a grace But one grace alone cannot make a good man But as to be universal in our obedience is necessary to the being in the state of grace so readily to change imployment from the better to the worse from the honorable to the poor from usefull to seemingly unprofitable is a good Character of a well grown Christian if he takes the worst part with indifferency and a spirit equally choosing all the events of the divine providence Can you be content to descend from ruling of a province to the keeping of a herd from the work of an Apostle to be confined into a prison from disputing before Princes to a conversation with Shepherds can you be willing to all that God is willing and suffer all that he chooses as willingly as if you had chosen your own fortune In the same degree in which you can conform to God in the same you have approached towards that perfection whether we must by degrees arrive in our journey towards heaven This is not to be expected of beginners for they must be enticed with apt imployments and it may be their office and work so fits their spirits that it makes them first in love with it and then with God for giving it and many a man goes to heaven in the dayes of peace whose faith and hopes and patience would have been dashed in pieces if he had fallen into a storm or persecution Oppression will make a wise man mad saith Solomon there are some usages that will put a sober person out of all patience such which are besides the customes of this life and contrary to all his hopes and unworthy of a person of his quality and when Nero durst not die yet when his servants told him that the Senators had condemned him to be put to death more Majorum that is by scourging like a slave he was forced into a preternatural confidence and fel upon his own sword but when God so changes thy estate that thou art fallen into accidents to which thou art no otherwise disposed but by grace and a holy spirit and yet thou canst passe through them with quietnesse and do the work of suffering as well as the works of a prosperous imployment this is an argument of a great grace and an extraordinary spirit For many persons in a change of fortune perish who if they had still been prosperous had gone to heaven being tempted
any known sin if I should descend to particulars I might lay a snare to scrupulous and nice consciences This onely every confirmed habitual sinner does manifest the divine justice in punishing the sins of a short life with a never dying worm and a never quenched flame because we have an affection to sin that no time will diminish but such as would increase to eternal ages and accordingly as any man hath a degree of love so he hath lodged in his soul a spark which unless it be speedily effectively quenched will break forth into unquenchable fire Sermon XVIII THE FOOLISH EXCHANGE Matthew 16. Ver. 26. For what is a man profited if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul WHen the eternal mercy of God had decreed to rescue mankinde from misery and infelicity and so triumphed over his own justice the excellent wisdom of God resolved to do it in wayes contradictory to the appetites and designes of man that it also might triumph over our weaknesses and imperfect conceptions So God decreeing to glorifie his mercy by curing our sins and to exalt his wisdome by the reproof of our ignorance and the representing upon what weak and false principals we had built our hopes and expectations of felicity Pleasure and profit victory over our enemies riches and pompous honours power and revenge desires according to sensual appetites and prosecutions violent and passionate of those appetites health and long life free from trouble without poverty or persecution Hac sunt jucundissime Martialis vitam quae faciunt beatiorem These are the measures of good and evil the object of our hopes and fears the securing our content and the portion of this world and for the other let it be as it may But the Blessed Jesus having made revelations of an immortal duration of another world and of a strange restitution to it even by the resurrection of the body and a new investiture of the soul with the same upper garment clarified and made pure so as no Fuller on earth can whiten it hath also preached a new Philosophy hath cancelled all the old principles reduced the appetites of sence to the discourses of reason and heightned reason to the sublimities of the spirit teaching us abstractions and immaterial conceptions giving us new eyes and new objects and new proportions For now sensual pleasures are not delightful riches are drosse honours are nothing but the appendages of vertue and in relation to it are to receive their account but now if you would enjoy life you must die if you would be at ease you must take up Christs crosse and conform to his sufferings if you would save your life you must lose it and if you would be rich you must abound in good works you must be poor in spirit and despise the world and be rich unto God for whatsoever is contrary to the purchases and affections of this world is an endearment of our hopes in the world to come and therefore he having stated the question so that either we must quit this world or the other our affections I mean and adherencies to this or our interest and hopes of the other the choice is rendered very easie by the words of my text because the distance is not lesse then infinite and the comparison hath terms of a vast difference heaven and hell eternity and a moment vanity and real felicity life and death eternal all that can be hoped for and all that can be feared these are the terms of our choice and if a man have his wits about him and be not drunk with sensuality and senslessenesse he need not much to dispute before he passe the sentence For nothing can be given to us to recompence the losse of heaven and if our souls be lost there is nothing remaining to us whereby we can be happy What shall it profit a man or what shall a man give is there any exchange for a mans soul the question is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of the negative Nothing can be given for an 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or a price to satisfie for its losse The blood of the son of God was given to recover it or as an 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to God and when our souls were forfeit to him nothing lesse then the life and passion of God and man could pay the price Isay to God who yet was not concerned in the losse save onely that such was his goodnesse that it pitied him to see his creature lost But to us what shall be the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 what can make us recompence when we have lost our own souls and are lost in a miserable eternity what can then recompence us not all the world not ten thousand worlds and of this that miserable man whose soul is lost is the best judge For the qustion is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and hath a potential signification and means 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is suppose a man ready to die condemned to the sentence of a horrid death heightned with all the circumstances of trembling and amazement what would he give to save his life eye for eye tooth for tooth and all that a man hath will he give for his life and this turned to a proverb among the Jews for so the last words of the text are 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which proverb being usually meant concerning a temporal death and was intended to represent the sadnesses of a condemned person our blessed Saviour fits to his own purpose and translates to the signification of death eternal which he first revealed clearly to the world and because no interest of the world can make a man recompence for his life because to lose that makes him incapable of enjoying the exchange and he were a strange fool who having no designe upon immortality or vertue should be willing to be hanged for a thousand pound per annum this argument increases infinitely in the purpose of our Blessed Saviour and to gain the world and to lose our souls in the Christian sence is infinitely more madnesse and a worse exchange then when our souls signifie nothing but a temporal life and because possibly the indefinite hopes of Elysium or an honorable name might tempt some hardy persons to leave this world hoping for a better condition even among the heathens yet no excuse will acquit a Christian from madnesse If for the purchase of this world he lose his eternitie Here then first we will consider the propositions of the exchange the world and a mans soul by way of supposition supposing all that is propounded were obtained the whole world Secondly we will consider what is likely to be obtained really and indeed of the world and what are really the miseries of a lost soul For it is propounded in the text by way of supposition If a man should gain the world which no man ever did nor ever can and he
walked upon the pavements of heaven whose feet were clothed with stars whose eyes were brighter then the Sun whose voice is louder then thunder whose understanding is larger then that infinite space which we imagine in the uncircumscribed distance beyond the first orbe of heaven a person to whom felicity was as essential as life to God this was the onely person that was designed in the eternal decrees of the divine predestination to pay the price of a soul to ransom us from death lesse then this person could not do it for although a soul in its essence is finite yet there were many infinites which were incident and annexed to the condition of lost souls For all which because provision was to be made nothing lesse then an infinite excellence could satisfie for a soul who was lost to infinite and eternal ages who was to be afflicted with insupportable and indetermined that is next to infinite paines who was to bear the load of an infinite anger from the provocation of an eternal God and yet if it be possible that infinite can receive degrees this is but one half of the abysse and I think the lesser for that this person who was God eternal should be lessened in all his appearances to a span to the little dimensions of a man and that he should really become very contemptibly little although at the same time he was infinitely and unalterably great that is essential natural and necessary felicity should turn into an intolerable violent and immense calamity to his person that this great God should not be admitted to pay the price of our redemption unlesse he would suffer that horrid misery which that lost soul should suffer as it represents the glories of his goodnesse who used such rare and admirable instruments in actuating the designes of his mercy so it shewes our condition to have been very desperate and our losse invaluable A soul in Gods account is valued at the price of the blood and shame and tortures of the Son of God and yet we throw it a way for the exchange of sins that a man naturally is ashamed to own we lose it for the pleasure the sottish beastly pleasure of a night I need not say we lose our soul to save our lives for though that was our blessed Saviours instance of the great unreasonablenesse of men who by saving their lives lose them that is in the great account of Dooms-day though this I say be extreamly unreasonable yet there is something to be pretended in the bargain nothing to excuse him with God but something in the accounts of timerous men but to lose our souls with swearing that unprofitable dishonourable and unpleasant vice to lose our souls with disobedience or rebellion a vice that brings a curse and danger all the way in this life To lose our souls with drunkennesse a vice which is painfull and sickly in the very acting it which hastens our damnation by shortning our lives are instances fit to be put in the stories of fools and mad-men and all vice is a degree of the same unreasonablenesse the most splendid temptation being nothing but a prety well weaved fallacy a meer trick a sophisme and a cheating and abusing the understanding but that which I consider here is that it is an affront and contradiction to the wisdom of God that we should so slight and undervalue a soul in which our interest is so concerned a soul which he who made it and who delighted not to see it lost did account a fit purchase to be made by the exchange of his Son the eternal Son of God To which also I adde this additionall account that a soul is so greatly valued by God that we are not to venture the losse of it to save all the world For therefore whosoever should commit a sin to save kingdoms from perishing or if the case could be put that all the good men and good causes and good things in this world were to be destroyed by Tyranny and it were in our power by perjury to save all these that doing this sin would be so farre from hallowing the crime that it were to offer to God a sacrifice of what he most hates and to serve him with swines blood and the rescuing all these from a Tyrant or a hangman could not be pleasing to God upon those termes because a soul is lost by it which is in it self a greater losse and misery then all the evils in the world put together can out-ballance and a losse of that thing for which Christ gave his blood a price Persecutions and temporal death in holy men and in a just cause are but seeming evils and therefore not to be bought off with the losse of a soul which is a real but an intolerable calamity And if God for his own sake would not have all the world saved by sin that is by the hazarding of a soul we should do well for our own sakes not to lose a soul for trifles for things that make us here to be miserable and even here also to be ashamed 3. But it may be some natures or some understandings care not for all this therefore I proceed to the third and most material consideration as to us and I consider what it is to lose a soul which Hierocles thus explicates 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 An immortall substance can die not by ceasing to be but by losing all being well by becomming miserable And it is remarkable when our blessed Saviour gave us caution that we should not fear them that can kill the body onely but fear him he sayes not that can kill the soul But 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 him that is able to destroy the body and soul in hell which word signifieth not death but tortures For some have chosen death for sanctuary and fled to it to avoid intolerable shame to give a period to the sence of a sharp grief or to cure the earthquakes of fear and the damned perishing souls shall wish for death with a desire impatient as their calamity But this shall be denied them because death were a deliverance a mercy and a pleasure of which these miserable persons must despair of for ever I shall not need to represent to your considerations those expressions of Scripture which the Holy Ghost hath set down to represent to our capacities the greatnesse of this perishing choosing such circumstances of character as were then usuall in the world and which are dreadful to our understanding as any thing Hell fire is the common expression for the Eastern nations accounted burnings the greatest of their miserable punishments and burning malefactours was frequent brimstone and fire to Saint John Revel 14. 10. calls the state of punishment prepared for the Devil and all his servants he adding the circumstance of brimstone for by this time the Devil had taught the world more ingenious pains and himself was new escaped out of boiling oil and brimstone and such
word to instruct us his spirit to guide us his Angels to protect us his ministers to exhort us he revealed all our duty and he hath concealed whatsoever can hinder us he hath affrighted our follies with feare of death and engaged our watchfulnesse by its secret coming he hath exercised our faith by keeping private the state of souls departed and yet hath confirmed our faith by a promise of a resurrection and entertained our hope by some general significations of the state of interval His mercies make contemptible means instrumental to great purposes and a small herb the remedy of the greatest diseases he impedes the Devils rage and infatuates his counsels he diverts his malice and defeats his purposes he bindes him in the chaine of darknesse and gives him no power over the children of light he suffers him to walk in solitary places and yet fetters him that he cannot disturb the sleep of a childe he hath given him mighty power yet a young maiden that resists him shall make him flee away he hath given him a vast knowledge and yet an ignorant man can confute him with the twelve articles of his creed he gave him power over the winds and made him Prince of the air and yet the breath of a holy prayer can drive him as far as the utmost sea and he hath so restrained him that except it be by faith we know not whether there be any Devils yea or no for we never heard his noises nor have seen his affrighting shapes This is that great Principle of all the felicity we hope for and of all the means thither and of all the skill and all the strengths we haue to use those means he hath made great variety of conditions and yet hath made all necessary and all mutual helpers and by some instruments and in some respects they are all equal in order to felicity to content and final and intermedial satisfactions He gave us part of our reward in hand that he might enable us to work for more he taught the world arts for use arts for entertainment of all our faculties and all our dispositions he gives eternal gifts for temporal services and gives us whatsoever we want for asking and commands us to ask and theatens us if we will not ask and punishes us for refusing to be happy This is that glorious attribute that hath made order and health and harmony and hope restitutions and variety the joyes of direct possession and the joyes the artificial joyes of contrariety and comparison he comforts the poor and he brings down the rich that they may be safe in their humility and sorrow from the transportations of an unhappy and uninstructed prosperity he gives necessaries to all and scatters the extraordinary provisions so that every nation may traffick in charity and commute for pleasures He was the Lord of hosts and he is stil what he was but he loves to be called the God of peace because he was terrible in that but he is delighted in this His mercy is his glory and his glory is the light of heaven his mercy is the life of the creation and it fills all the earth and his mercy is a sea too and it fills all the abysses of the deep it hath given us promises for supply of whatsoever we need and relieves us in all our fears and in all the evils that we suffer his mercies are more then we can tell and they are more then we can feel for all the world in the abysse of the Divine mercies is like a man diving into the bottom of the sea over whose head the waters run insensibly and unperceived and yet the weight is vast and the sum of them is unmeasurable and the man is not pressed with the burden nor confounded with numbers and no observation is able to recount no sense sufficient to perceive no memory large enough to retain no understanding great enough to apprehend this infinity but we must admire and love and worship and magnify this mercy for ever and ever that we we may dwell in what we feel and be comprehended by that which is equal to God and the parent of all felicity And yet this is but the one half The mercies of giving I have now told of but those of forgiving are greater though not more He is ready to forgive and upon this stock thrives the interest of our great hope the hopes of a blessed immortality for if the mercies of giving have not made our expectations big enough to entertain the confidences of heaven yet when we think of the graciousnesse and readinesse of forgiving we may with more readinesse hope to escape hell and then we cannot but be blessed by an eternal consequence we have but small opinion of the Divine mercy if we dare not believe concerning it that it is desirous and able and watchful and passionate to keep us or rescue us respectively from such a condemnation the pain of which is insupportable and the duration is eternal and the extension is misery upon all our faculties and the intension is great beyond patience or natural or supernatural abilities and the state is a state of darknesse and despair of confusion and amazement of cursing and roaring anguish of spirit and gnashing of teeth misery universal perfect and irremediable From this it is which Gods mercies would so fain preserve us This is a state that God provides for his enemies not for them that love him that endeavour to obey though they do it but in weaknesse that weep truely for their sins though but with a shower no bigger then the drops of pitty that wait for his coming with a holy and pure flame though their lamps are no brighter then a poor mans candle though their strengths are no greater then a contrite reed or a strained arme and their fires have no more warmth then the smok of kindling flax if our faith be pure and our love unfained if the degree of it be great God will accept it into glory if it be little he will accept it into grace and make it bigger For that is the first instance of Gods readinesse to forgive he will upon any termes that are not unreasonable and that do not suppose a remanent affection to sin keep us from the intolerable paines of hell And indeed if we consider the constitution of the conditions which God requires we shall soon perceive God intends heaven to us as a meer gift and that the duties on our part are but little entertainments and exercises of our affections and our love that the Devil might not seize upon that portion which to eternal ages shall be the instrument of our happinesse For in all the parts of our duty it may be there is but one instance in which we are to do violence to our natural and first desires For those men have very ill natures to whom vertue is so contrary that they are inclined naturally to lust to drunkennesse and anger
Consumption is fallen under one of the solemnities and preparations to death but at the same instant the most healthful person is as neer death upon a more fatal and a more sudden but a lesse discerned cause There are but few persons upon whose foreheads every man can read the sentence of death written in the lines of a lingring sicknesse but they sometimes hear the passing bell ring for stronger men even long before their own knell calls at the house of their mother to open her womb and make a bed for them No man is surer of to morrow then the weakest of his brethren and when Lepidus and Aufidius stumbled at the threshold of the Senate and fell down and died the blow came from heaven in a cloud but it struck more suddenly then upon the poor slave that made sport upon the Theatre with a praemeditated and foredescribed death Quod quisque vitet nunquam homini satis cautum est in horas There are sicknesses that walk in darknesse and there are exterminating Angels that fly wrapt up in the curtains of immateriality and an uncommunicating nature whom we cannot see but we feel their force and sink under their sword and from heaven the vail descends that wraps our heads in the fatal sentence There is no age of man but it hath proper to it self some posterns and outlets for death besides those infinite and open ports out of which myriads of men and women every day passe into the dark and the land of forgetfulnesse Infancie hath life but in effigie or like a spark dwelling in a pile of wood the candle is so newly lighted that every little shaking of the taper and every ruder breath of air puts it out and it dies Childhood is so tender and yet so unwary so soft to all the impressions of chance and yet so forward to run into them that God knew there could be no security without the care and vigilance of an Angel-keeper and the eyes of Parents and the arms of Nurses the provisions of art and all the effects of Humane love and Providence are not sufficient to keep one childe from horrid mischiefs from strange and early calamities and deaths unlesse a messenger be sent from heaven to stand sentinel and watch the very playings and the sleepings the eatings and the drinkings of the children and it is a long time before nature makes them capable of help for there are many deaths and very many diseases to which poor babes are exposed but they have but very few capacities of physick to shew that infancy is as liable to death as old age and equally exposed to danger and equally uncapable of a remedy with this onely difference that old age hath diseases incurable by nature and the diseases of child-hood are incurable by art and both the states are the next heirs of death 3. But all the middle way the case is altered Nature is strong and art is apt to give ease and remedy but still there is no security and there the case is not altered 1 For there are so many diseases in men that are not understood 2. So many new ones every year 3 The old ones are so changed in circumstance and intermingled with so many collateral complications 4 The Symptoms are oftentimes so alike 5 Sometimes so hidden and fallacious 6 Sometimes none at all as in the most sudden and the most dangerous imposthumations 7 And then the diseases in the inward parts of the body are oftentimes such to which no application can be made 8 They are so far off that the effects of all medicines can no otherwise come to them then the effect and juices of all meats that is not till after two or three alterations and decoctions which change the very species of the medicament 9 And after all this very many principles in the art of Physick are so uncertain that after they have been believed seven or eight ages and that upon them much of the practise hath been established they come to be considered by a witty man and others established in their stead by which men must practise and by which three or four generations of men more as happens must live or die 10. And all this while the men are sick and they take things that certainly make them sicker for the present and very uncertainly restore health for the future that it may appear of what a large extent is humane calamity when Gods providence hath not onely made it weak and miserable upon the certain stock of a various nature and upon the accidents of an infinite contingency but even from the remedies which are appointed our dangers and our troubles are certainly increased so that we may well be likened to water our nature is no stronger our aboad no more certain If the sluces be opened it falls away and runneth apace if its current be stopped it swells and grows troublesome and spils over with a greater diffusion If it be made to stand still it putrefies and all this we do For 4. In all the processe of our health we are running to our grave we open our own sluces by vitiousnesse and unworthy actions we pour in drink and let out life we increase diseases and know not how to bear them we strangle our selves with our own intemperance we suffer the feavers and the inflammations of lust and we quench our souls with drunkennesse we bury our understandings in loads of meat and surfets and then we lie down upon our beds and roar with pain and disquietnesse of our souls Nay we kill one anothers souls and bodies with violence and folly with the effects of pride and uncharitablenesse we live and die like fools and bring a new mortality upon our selves wars and vexatious cares and private duels and publike disorders and every thing that is unreasonable and every thing that is violent so that now we may adde this fourth gate to the grave Besides Nature and Chance and the mistakes of art men die with their own sins and then enter into the grave in haste and passion and pull the heavy stone of the monument upon their own heads And thus we make our selves like water spilt on the ground we throw away our lives as if they were unprofitable and indeed most men make them so we let our years slip through our fingers like water and nothing is to be seen but like a showr of tears upon a spot of ground there is a grave digged and a solemn mourning and a great talk in the neighbourhood and when the dayes are finished they shall be and they shall be remembred no more And that 's like water too when it is spilt it cannot be gathered up again There is no redemption from the grave inter se mortales mutua vivunt Et quasi cursores vitäi lampada tradunt Men live in their course and by turns their light burns a while and then it burns blew and faint and men go to converse with
Spirits and then they reach the taper to another and as the hours of yesterday can never return again so neither can the man whose hours they were and who lived them over once he shall never come to live them again and live them better When Lazarus and the widows son of Naim and Tabitha and the Saints that appeared in Jerusalem at the resurrection of our blessed Lord arose they came into this world some as strangers onely to make a visit and all of them to manifest a glory but none came upon the stock of a new life or entred upon the stage as at first or to perform the course of a new nature and therefore it is observable that we never read of any wicked person that was raised from the dead Dives would fain have returned to his brothers house but neither he nor any from him could be sent but all the rest in the New Testament one onely excepted were expressed to have been holy persons or else by their age were declared innocent Lazarus was beloved of Christ those souls that appeared at the resurrection were the souls of Saints Tabitha raised by Saint Peter was a charitable and a holy Christian and the maiden of twelve years old raised by our blessed Saviour had not entred into the regions of choice and sinfulnesse and the onely exception of the widows son is indeed none at all for in it the Scripture is wholly silent and therefore it is very probable that the same processe was used God in all other instances having chosen to exemplifie his miracles of nature to purposes of the Spirit and in spirituall capacities So that although the Lord of nature did break the bands of nature in some instances to manifest his glory to succeeding great and never failing purposes yet besides that this shall be no more it was also instanced in such persons who were holy and innocent and within the verge and comprehensions of the eternall mercy We never read that a wicked person felt such a miracle or was raised from the grave to try the second time for a Crown but where he fell there he lay down dead and saw the light no more This consideration I intend to you as a severe Monitor and an advice of carefulnesse that you order your affairs so that you may be partakers of the first resurrection that is from sin to grace from the death of vitious habits to the vigour life and efficacy of an habituall righteousnesse For as it hapned to those persons in the New Testament now mentioned to them I say in the literall sense Blessed are they that have part in the first resurrection upon them the second death shall have no power meaning that they who by the power of Christ and his holy Spirit were raised to life again were holy and blessed souls and such who were written in the book of God and that this grace happened to no wicked and vitious person so it is most true in the spirituall and intended sense You onely that serve God in a holy life you who are not dead in trespasses and sins you who serve God with an early diligence and an unwearied industry and a holy religion you and you onely shall come to life eternall you onely shall be called from death to life the rest of mankind shall never live again but passe from death to death from one death to another to a worse from the death of the body to the eternall death of body and soul and therefore in the Apostles Creed there is no mention made of the resurrection of wicked persons but of the resurrection of the body to everlasting life The wicked indeed shall be haled forth from their graves from their everlasting prisons where in chains of darknesse they are kept unto the judgement of the great day But this therefore cannot be called in sensu favoris a resurrection but the solennities of the eternall death It is nothing but a new capacity of dying again such a dying as cannot signifie rest but where death means nothing but an intolerable and never ceasing calamity and therefore these words of my Text are otherwise to be understood of the wicked otherwise of the godly The wicked are spilt like water and shall never be gathered up again no not in the gatherings of eternity They shall be put into vessels of wrath and set upon the flames of hell but that is not a gathering but a scattering from the face and presence of God But the godly also come under the sense of these words They descend into their graves and shall no more be reckoned among the living they have no concernment in all that is done under the Sun Agamemnon hath no more to do with the Turks armies invading and possessing that part of Greece where he reigned then had the Hippocentaur who never had a beeing and Cicero hath no more interest in the present evils of Christendome then we have to do with his boasted discovery of Catilines conspiracie What is it to me that Rome was taken by the Gauls and what is it now to Camillus if different religions be tolerated amongst us These things that now happen concern the living and they are made the scenes of our duty or danger respectively and when our wives are dead and sleep in charnel houses they are not troubled when we laugh loudly at the songs sung at the next marriage feast nor do they envy when another snatches away the gleanings of their husbands passion It is true they envy not and they lie in a bosome where there can be no murmure and they that are consigned to Kingdoms and to the feast of the marriage-supper of the Lamb the glorious and eternall Bride-groom of holy souls they cannot think our marriages here our lighter laughings and vain rejoycings considerable as to them And yet there is a relation continued still Aristotle said that to affirm the dead take no thought for the good of the living is a disparagement to the laws of that friendship which in their state of separation they cannot be tempted to rescind And the Church hath taught in generall that they pray for us they recommend to God the state of all their Relatives in the union of the intercession that our blessed Lord makes for them and us and Saint Ambrose gave some things in charge to his dying brother Satyrus that he should do for him in the other world he gave it him I say when he was dying not when he was dead And certain it is that though our dead friends affection to us is not to be estimated according to our low conceptions yet it is not lesse but much more then ever it was it is greater in degree and of another kind But then we should do well also to remember that in this world we are something besides flesh and blood that we may not without violent necessities run into new relations but preserve the affections we bear to our dead when
the body such as contemplation of God and conversing with spirits and receiving those influences and rare immissions which coming from the Holy and mysterious Trinity make up the crown of glory it follows that the necessity of the bodies ministery is but during the state of this life and as long as it converses with fire and water and lives with corn and flesh and is fed by the satisfaction of material appetits which necessity and manner of conversation when it ceases it can be no longer necessary for the soul to be served by phantasmes and material representations 5. And therefore when the body shall be re-united it shall be so ordered that then the body shall confesse it gives not any thing but receives all its being and operation its manner and abode from the soul and that then it comes not to serve a necessity but to partake a glory For as the operations of the soul in this life begin in the body and by it the object is transmitted to the soul so then they shall begin in the soul and pass to the body and as the operations of the soul by reason of its dependence on the body are animal natural and material so in the resurrection the body shall be spiritual by reason of the preeminence influence and prime operation of the soul. Now between these two states stands the state of separation in which the operations of the soul are of a middle nature that is not so spirituall as in the resurrection and not so animal and natural as in the state of conjunction To all which I adde this consideration That our souls have the same condition that Christs soul had in the state of separation because he took on him all our nature and all our condition and it is certain Christs soul in the three dayes of his separation did exercise acts of life of joy and triumph and did not sleep but visited the souls of the Fathers trampled upon the pride of Devils and satisfied those longing souls which were Prisoners of hope and from all this we may conclude that the souls of all the servants of Christ are alive and therfore do the actions of life and proper to their state and therefore it is highly probable that the soul works clearer and understands brighter and discourses wiser and rejoyces louder and loves noblier and desires purer and hopes stronger then it can do here But if these arguments should fail yet the felicity of Gods Saints cannot fail For suppose the body to be a necessary instrument but out of tune and discomposed by sin and anger by accident and chance by defect and imperfections yet that it is better then none at all and that if the soul works imperfectly with an imperfect body that then she works not at all when she hath none and suppose also that the soul should be as much without sense or perception in death as it is in a deep sleep which is the image and shadow of death yet then God devises other means that his banished be not expelled from him For 2. God will restore the soul to the body and raise the body to such a perfection that it shall be an Organ fitt to praise him upon it shall be made spiritual to minister to the soul when the soul is turned into a Spirit then the soul shall be brought forth by Angels from her incomparable and easie bed from her rest in Christs Holy Bosome and be made perfect in her being and in all her operations And this shall first appear by that perfection which the soul shall receive as instrumental to the last judgement for then she shall see clearly all the Records of this world all the Register of her own memory For all that we did in this life is laid up in our memories and though dust and forgetfulnesse be drawn upon them yet when God shall lift us from our dust then shall appear clearly all that we have done written in the Tables of our conscience which is the souls memory We see many times and in many instances that a great memory is hindered and put out and we thirty years after come to think of something that lay so long under a curtain we think of it suddenly and without a line of deduction or proper consequence And all those famous memories of Simonides and Theodectes of Hortensius and Seneca of Sceptius Metrodorus and Carneades of Cyneas the Embassadour of Pyrrhus are onely the Records better kept and lesse disturbed by accident and desease For even the memory of Herods son of Athens of Bathyllus and the dullest person now alive is so great and by God made so sure a record of all that ever he did that assoon as ever God shall but tune our instrument and draw the curtains and but light up the candle of immortality there we shal finde it all there we shall see all and all the world shall see all then we shall be made fit to converse with God after the manner of Spirits we shall be like to Angels In the mean time although upon the perswasion of the former discourse it be highly probable that the souls of Gods servants do live in a state of present blessednesse and in the exceeding joyes of a certain expectation of the revelation of the day of the Lord and the coming of Jesus yet it will concern us onely to secure our state by holy living and leave the event to God that as S. Paul said whether present or absent whether sleeping or waking whether perceiving or perceiving not we may be accepted of him that when we are banished this world and from the light of the sun we may not be expelled from God and from the light of his countenance but that from our beds of sorrows our souls may passe into the bosome of Christ and from thence to his right hand in the day of sentence For we must all appear before the judgement seat of Christ then if we have done wel in the body we shal never be expelled from the beatifical presence of God but be domesticks of his family and heires of his Kingdom and partakers of his glory Amen I Have now done with my Text but yet am to make you another Sermon I have told you the necessity and the state of death it may be too largely for such a sad story I shal therefore now with a better compendium teach you how to live by telling you a plain narrative of a life which if you imitate and write after the copy it will make that death shall not be an evil but a thing to be desired and to be reckoned amongst the purchases and advantages of your fortune When Martha and Mary went to weep over the grave of their brother Christ met them there and preached a Funeral Sermon discoursing of the resurrection and applying to the purposes of faith and confession of Christ and glorification of God We have no other we can have no better precedent
way of naturall or proper operation it is not vis but facultas not an inherent quality that issues out actions by way of direct emanation like naturall or acquired habits but it is a grace or favour done to the person and a qualification of him in genere politico he receives a politick publick and solemn capacity to intervene between God and the people and although it were granted that the people could do the externall work or the action of Church ministeries yet they are actions to no purpose they want the life and all the excellency unlesse they be done by such persons whom God hath called to it and by some means of his own hath expressed his purpose to accept them in such ministrations And this explication will easily be verified in all the particulars of the Priests power because all the ministeries of the Gospell are in genere orationis unlesse we except preaching in which God speaks by his servants to the people the minister by his office is an intercessor with God and the word used in Scripture for the Priests officiating signifies his praying 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as they were ministring or doing their Liturgy the work of their supplications and intercession and therefore the Apostles positively included all their whole ministery in these two but we will give our selves to the word of God and to prayer the prayer of consecration the prayer of absolution the prayer of imposition of hands they had nothing else to doe but pray and preach And for this reason it was that the Apostles in a sense neerest to the letter did verifie the precept of our blessed Saviour Pray continually that is in all the offices acts parts and ministeries of a dayly Liturgy This is not to lessen the power but to understand it for the Priests ministery is certainly the instrument of conveying all the blessings of the people which are annexed to the ordinary administration of the Spirit But when all the office of Christs Priesthood in heaven is called intercession for us and himself makes the sacrifice of the Crosse effectuall to the salvation and graces of his Church by his prayer since we are ministers of the same Priesthood can there be a greater glory then to have our ministery like to that of Jesus not operating by virtue of a certain number of syllables but by a holy solemn determined and religious prayer in the severall manners and instances of intercession according to the analogy of all the religions in the world whose most solemn mystery was then most solemn prayer I mean it in the matter of sacrificing which also is true in the most mysterious solemnity of Christianity in the holy Sacrament of the Lords supper which is hallowed and lifted up from the common bread and wine by mysticall prayers and solemn invocations of God And therefore S. Dionysius calls the forms of consecration 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 prayers of consecration and S. Cyrill in his 3 mystagogique Catechism says the same The Eucharisticall bread after the invocations of the holy Ghost is not any longer common bread but the body of Christ. For although it be necessary that the words which in the Latin Church have been for a long time called the words of consecration which indeed are more properly the words of institution should be repeated in every consecration because the whole action is not completed according to Christs pattern nor the death of Christ so solemnly enunciated without them yet even those words also are part of a mysticall prayer and therefore as they are not onely intended there 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by way of history or narration as Cabasil mistakes so also in the most ancient Liturgies they were not onely read 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or as a meer narrative but also with the form of an addresse or invocation Fiat hic panis corpus Christi fiat hoc vinum sanguis Christi Let this bread be made the body of Christ c. So it is in S. James his Liturgy S. Clement S. Marks and the Greek Doctors And in the very recitation of the words of institution the people ever used to answer Amen which intimates it to have been a consecration in genere orationis called by S. Paul benediction or the bread of blessing and therefore S. Austin expounding those words of S. Paul Let prayers and supplications and intercessions and giving of thanks be made saith Eligo in his verbis hoc intelligere quod omnis vel pene omnis frequent at ecclesia ut precationes accipiamus dictas quas fecimus in celebratione sacramentorum antequam illud quod est in Domini mensâ accipiat benedici orationes cum benedicitur ad distribuendum comminuitur quam totam orationem pene omnis ecclesia Dominicâ oratione concludit The words and form of consecration he calls by the name of orationes supplications the prayers before the consecration preces and all the whole action oratio and this is according to the stile and practise and sense of the whole Church or very neer the whole And S. Basil saith that there is more necessary to consecration then the words recived by the Apostles and by the Evangelists * The words of invocation in the shewing the bread of the Eucharist and the cup of blessing who of all the Saints have left to us For we are not content with those which the Apostle and the Evangelists mention but both before and after we say other words having great power towards the mystery 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which we have received by tradition These words set down in Scripture they retained as a part of the mystery cooperating to the solemnity manifesting the signification of the rite the glory of the change the operation of the Spirit the death of Christ and the memory of the sacrifice but this great work which all Christians knew to be done by the holy Ghost the Priest did obtain by prayer and solemn invocation according to the saying of Proclus of C. P. speaking of the tradition of certain prayers used in the mysteries and indited by the Apostles as it was said but especially in S. James his Liturgy By these prayers saith he they expected the coming of the holy Ghost that his divine presence might make the bread and the wine mixt with water to become the body and bloud of our blessed Saviour And S. Justin Martyr very often calls the Eucharist food made sacramentall and eucharisticall by prayer and Origen we eat the bread holy and made the body of Christ by prayer Verbo Dei per obsecrationem sanctificatus bread sanctified by the word of God and by prayer viz. the prayer of consecration prece mystica is S. Austins expression of it Corpus Christi sanguinem dicimus illud tantum quod ex fructibus terrae acceptum pree mystica consecratum ritè sumimus That onely we call the
intercession and prayer must suppose all holinesse or else it is nothing and therefore all that in which men need Gods Spirit all that is in order to prayer Baptisme is but a prayer and the holy Sacrament of the Lords Supperl is but a prayer a prayer of sacrifice representative and a prayer of oblation and a prayer of intercession and a prayer of thanksgiving and obedience is a prayer and begs and procures blessings and if the Holy Ghost hath sanctified the whole man then he hath sanctified the prayer of the man and not till then and if ever there was or could be any other praying with the spirit it was such a one as a wicked man might have and therefore it cannot be a note of distinction between the good and bad between the saints and men of the world But this onely which I have described from the fountains of Scripture is that which a good man can have and therefore this is it in which we ought to rejoyce that he that glories may glory in the Lord. Thus I have as I could described the effluxes of the Holy Spirit upon us in his great chanels But the great effect of them is this That as by the arts of the spirits of darknesse and our own malice our souls are turned into flesh not in the naturall sense but in the morall and Theologicall and animalis homo is the same with carnalis that is his soul is a servant of the passions and desires of the flesh and is flesh in it s operations and ends in it s principles and actions So on the other side by the Grace of God and the promise of the Father and the influences of the Holy Ghost our souls are not onely recovered from the state of flesh and reduced back to the intirenesse of animall operations but they are heightned into spirit and transform d into a new nature And this is a new Article and now to be considered S. Hierom tels of the Custome of the Empire When a Tyrant was overcome they us d to break the head of his Statues and upon the same Trunk to set the head of the Conquerour and so it passed wholly for the new Prince So it is in the kingdom of Grace As soon as the Tyrant sin is overcome and a new heart is put into us or that we serve under a new head instantly we have a new Name given us and we are esteemed a new Creation and not onely changed in manners but we have a new nature within us even a third part of an essentiall constitution This may seem strange and indeed it is so and it is one of the great mysteriousnesses of the Gospel Every man naturally consists of soul and body but every Christian man that belongs to Christ hath more For he hath body and soul and spirit My Text is plain for it If any man have not the Spirit of Christ he is none of his and by Spirit is not meant onely the graces of God and his gifts enabling us to do holy things there is more belongs to a good man then so But as when God made man he made him after his own image and breath'd into him the spirit of life and he was made in animam viventem into a living soul then he was made a man So in the new creation Christ by whom God made both the worlds intends to conform us to his image and he hath given us the spirit of adoption by which we are made sons of God and by the spirit of a new life we are made new creatures capable of a new state intitled to another manner of duration enabled to do new and greater actions in order to higher ends we have new affections new understandings new wils Veter a transierunt ecce omnia nova facta sunt All things are become new And this is called the seed of God when it relates to the principle and cause of this production but the thing that is produced is a spirit and that is as much in nature beyond a soul as a soul is beyond a body This great Mystery I should not utter but upon the greatest authority in the world and from an infallible Doctor I mean S. Paul who from Christ taught the Church more secrets then all the whole Colledge besides And the very God of peace sanctifie you wholly and I pray God that your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blamelesse unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. We are not sanctified wholly nor preserved in safety unlesse besides our souls and bodies our spirit also be kept blamelesse This distinction is nice and infinitely above humane reason but the word of God saith the same Apostle is sharper then a two-edged sword piercing even to the dividing asunder the soul and the spirit and that hath taught us to distinguish the principle of a new life from the principle of the old the celestiall from the naturall and thus it is The spirit as I now discourse of it is a principle infused into us by God when we become his children whereby we live the life of Grace and understand the secrets of the Kingdom and have passions and desires of things beyond and contrary to our naturall appetites enabling us not onely to sobriety which is the duty of the body not onely to justice which is the rectitude of the soul but to such a sanctity as makes us like to God * For so saith the Spirit of God Be ye holy as I am be pure be perfect as your heavenly Father is pure as he is perfect which because it cannot be a perfection of degrees it must be in similitudine naturae in the likenesse of that nature which God hath given us in the new birth that by it we might resemble his excellency and holinesse And this I conceive to be the meaning of S. Peter According as his divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain to life and godlinesse that is to this new life of godlinesse through the knowledge of him that hath called us to glory and vertue whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises that by these you might be partakers of the Divine nature so we read it But it is something mistaken it is not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The Divine nature for Gods nature is indivisible and incommunicable but it is spoken participative or per analogiam partakers of a Divine nature that is of this new and God-like nature given to every person that serves God whereby he is sanctified and made the childe of God and framed into the likenesse of Christ. The Greeks generally call this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a gracious gift an extraordinary super addition to nature not a single gift in order to single purposes but an universall principle and it remains upon all good men during their lives and after their death and is that white stone spoken of in the Revelation and in it
a new name written which no man knoweth but he that hath it And by this Godssheep at the day of judgement shall be discerned from goats If their spirits be presented to God pure and unblameable this great 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 this talent which God hath given to all Christians to improve in the banks of grace and of Religion if they bring this to God increased and grown up to the fulnesse of the measure of Christ for it is Christs Spirit and as it is in us it is called the supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ then we shall be acknowledged for sons and our adoption shall passe into an eternall inheritance in the portion of our elder Brother I need not to apply this Discourse The very mystery it self is in the whole world the greatest engagement of our duty that is imaginable by the way of instrument and by the way of thankfulnesse Quisquis magna dedit voluit sibi magna rependi He that gives great things to us ought to have great acknowledgements and Seneca said concerning wise men That he that doth benefit to others hides those benefits as a man layes up great treasures in the earth which he must never see with his eyes unlesse a great occasion forces him to dig the graves and produce that which he buried but all the while the man was hugely rich and he had the wealth of a great relation so it is with God and us For this huge benefit of the Spirit which God gives us is for our good deposited in our souls not made for forms and ostentation not to be looked upon or serve little ends but growing in the secret of our souls and swelling up to a treasure making us in this world rich by title and relation but it shall be produced in the great necessities of doomesday In the mean time if the fire be quenched the fire of Gods Spirit God will kindle another in his anger that shall never be quenched but if we entertain Gods Spirit with our own purities and imploy it diligently and serve it willingly for Gods Spirit is a loving Spirit then we shall really be turned into spirits Irenaeus had a proverbiall saying Perfecti sunt qui tria sine querelâ Deo exhibent They that present three things right to God they are perfect that is a chast body a righteous soul and a holy spirit and the event shall be this which Maimonides expressed not amisse though he did not at all understand the secret of this mystery The soul of a man in this life is in potentiâ ad esse spiritum it is designed to be a spirit but in the world to come it shall be actually as very a spirit as an Angel is and this state is expressed by the Apostle calling it the earnest of the spirit that is here it is begun and given us as an antepast of glory and a principle of Grace but then we shall have it in plenitudine regit idem spiritus artus Orbe alio Here and there it is the same but here we have the earnest there the riches and the inheritance But then if this be a new principle and be given us in order to the actions of a holy life we must take care that we receive not the Spirit of God in vain but remember it is a new life and as no man can pretend that a person is alive that doth not alwayes do the works of life so it is certain no man hath the Spirit of God but he that lives the life of grace and doth the works of the Spirit that is in all holinesse and justice and sobriety Spiritus qui accedit animo vel Dei est vel Daemonis said Tertullian Every man hath within him the Spirit of God or the spirit of the devil The spirit of fornication is an unclean devil and extremely contrary to the Spirit of God and so is the spirit of malice or uncharitablenesse for the Spirit of God is the Spirit of love for as by purities Gods Spirit sanctifies the body so by love he purifies the soul and makes the soul grow into a spirit into a Divine nature But God knows that even in Christian societies we see the devils walk up and down every day and every hour the devil of uncleannesse and the devil of drunkennesse the devil of malice and the devil of rage the spirit of filthy speaking and the spirit of detraction a proud spirit and the spirit of rebellion and yet all call Christian. It is generally supposed that unclean spirits walk in the night and so it used to be for they that are drunk are drunk in the night said the Apostle but Suidas tels of certain Empusae that used to appear at Noon at such time as the Greeks did celebrate the Funerals of the Dead and at this day some of the Russians fear the Noon-day Devil which appeareth like a mourning widow to reapers of hay and corn and uses to break their arms and legs unlesse they worship her The Prophet David speaketh of both kindes Thou shalt not be afraid for the terrour by night and a ruinâ daemonio meridiano from the Devil at noon thou shalt be free It were happy if we were so but besides the solemn followers of the works of darknesse in the times and proper seasons of darknesse there are very many who act their Scenes of darknesse in the face of the Sun in open defiance of God and all lawes and all modesty There is in such men the spirit of impudence as well as of impiety And yet I might have expressed it higher for every habituall sin doth not onely put us into the power of the devil but turns us into his very nature just as the Holy Ghost transforms us into the image of God Here therefore I have a greater Argument to perswade you to holy living then Moses had to the sons of Israel Behold I have set before you life and death blessing and cursing so said Moses but I adde that I have upon the stock of this Scripture set before you the good Spirit and the bad God and the devil choose unto whose nature you will be likened and into whose inheritance you will be adopted and into whose possession you will enter If you commit sin ye are of your father the Devil ye are begot of his principles and follow his pattern and shall passe into his portion when ye are led captive by him at his will and remember what a sad thing it is to go into the portion of evil and accursed spirits the sad and eternall portion of Devils But he that hath the Spirit of God doth acknowledge God for his Father and his Lord he despises the world and hath no violent appetites for secular pleasures and is dead to the desires of this life and his hopes are spirituall and God is his joy and Christ is his pattern and his support and Religion is his imployment and godlinesse