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
and our own consciences dear and be reconciled to the Judge by the severities of an early repentance and then we need to fear no accusers SERMON III. Part III. 3. IT remaines that we consider the Sentence it self We must receive according to what we have done in the body whether it be good or bad Judicaturo Domino lugubre mundus immugiet tribus ad tribum pectora ferient Potentissimi quondam reges nudo latere palpitabunt so St. Hierom meditates concerning the terror of this consideration The whole world shall groan when the Judge comes to give his Sentence tribe and tribe shall knock their sides together and through the naked breasts of the most mighty Kings you shall see their hearts beat with fearfull tremblings Tunc Aristotelis argumenta parum proderunt cum venerit filius pauperculae quaestuariae judicare orbem terra Nothing shall then be worth owning or the means of obtaining mercy but a holy conscience all the humane craft and trifling subtilties shall be uselesse when the Son of a poor Maid shall sit Judge over all the world When the Prophet Joel was describing the formidable accidents in the day of the Lords Judgement and the fearfull Sentence of an angry Judge he was not able to expresse it but flammered like a Childe or an amazed imperfect person A. A. A. diei quia propè est Dies Domini it is not sense at first he was so amazed he knew not what to say and the Spirit of God was pleased to let that signe remain like Agamemnon's sorrow for the death of Iphigenia nothing could describe it but a vail it must be hidden and supposed and the stammering tongue that is full of fear can best speak that terror which will make all the world to cry and shriek and speak fearfull accents and significations of an infinite sorrow and amazement But so it is there are two great days in which the fate of all the world is transacted This life is mans day in which man does what he please and God holds his peace Man destroys his Brother and destroyes himselfe and confounds Governments and raises Armies and tempts to sin and delights in it and drinks drunk and forgets his sorrow and heaps up great estates and raises a family and a name in the Annals and makes others fear him and introduces new Religions and confounds the old and changeth Articles as his interest requires and all this while God is silent save that he is loud and clamorous with his holy precepts and over-rules the event but leaves the desires of men to their owne choice and their course of life such as they generally choose But then God shall have his day too the day of the Lord shall come in which he shall speak and no man shall answer he shall speak in the voyce of thunder and fearfull noyses and man shall doe no more as he please but must suffer as he hath deserved When Zedekiah reigned in Jerusalem and persecuted the Prophets and destroyed the interests of Religion and put Jeremy into the Dungeon God held his peace save onely that he warned him of the danger and told him of the disorder but it was Zedekiah's day and he was permitted to his pleasure But when he was led in chains to Babylon and his eyes were put out with burning Basons and horrible circles of reflected fires then was Gods day and his voyce was the accent of a fearfull anger that broke him all in pieces It will be all our caâ—es unlesse we hear God speak now and doe his work and serve his interest and bear our selves in our just proportions that is as such the very end of whose being and all our faculties is to serve God and doe justice and charities to our Brother For if we doe the work of God in our own day wee shall receive an infinite mercy in the day of the Lord. But what that is is now to be inquired What wee have done in the body But certainly this is the greatest terror of all The thunders and the fires the earthquakes and the trumpets the brightnesse of holy Angels and the horror of accursed Spirits the voyce of the Archangel who is the Prince of the heavenly host and the Majesty of the Judge in whose service all that Army stands girt with holinesse and obedience all those strange circumstances which have been already reckoned and all those others which wee cannot understand are but little praeparatories and umbrages of this fearfull circumstance All this amazing Majesty and formidable praeparatories are for the passing of an eternall Sentence upon us according to what we have done in the body Woe and alas and God help us all All mankind is an enemy to God his nature is accursed and his manners are depraved It is with the nature of man and with all his manners as Philemon said of the nature of foxes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Every fox is crafty and mischievous and if you gather a whole herd of them there is not a good natur'd beast amongst them all so it is with man by nature he is the child of wrath and by his manners he is the child of the Devill wee call Christian and wee dishonour our Lord and we are Brethren but we oppresse and murther one another it is a great degree of sanctity now a-days not to be so wicked as the worst of men and wee live at the rate as if the best of men did design to themselves an easier condemnation and as if the generality of men consider'd not concerning the degrees of death but did beleeve that in hell no man shall perceive any ease or refreshment in being tormented with a slower fire For consider what we doe in the body 12 or 14 years passe before we choose good or bad and of that which remaines above halfe is spent in sleep and the needs of Nature for the other halfe it is divided as the Stag was when the beasts went a hunting the Lyon hath five parts of sixe The businesse of the world takes so much of our remaining portion that Religion and the service of God have not much time left that can be spar'd and of that which can if we consider how much is allowed to crafty arts of cousenage to oppression and ambition to greedy desires and avaritious prosecutions to the vanities of our youth and the proper sins of every age to the meer idlenesse of man and doing nothing to his fantastick imaginations of greatnesse and pleasures of great and little devices of impertinent law-suites and uncharitable treatings of our Brother it will be intolerable when we consider that we are to stand or fall eternally according to what we have done in the body Gather it all together and set it before thy eyes Almes and Prayers are the summe of all thy good Were thy prayers made in feare and holinesse with passion and
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
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
be filled up by his body the Church and happy are they that put in the greatest symbol for in the same measure you are partakers of the sufferings of Christ in the same shall ye be also of the consolation And therefore concerning S. Paul as it was also concerning Christ there is nothing or but very little in Scripture relating to his person and chances of his private life but his labours and persecutions as if the holy Ghost did think nothing fit to stand upon record for Christ but sufferings And now began to work the greatest glory of the divine Providence here was the case of Christianity at stake The world was rich and prosperous learned and full of wise men the Gospel was preached with poverty and persecution in simplicity of discourse and in demonstration of the Spirit God was on one side and the Devil on the other they each of them dressed up their city Babylon upon Earth Jerusalem from above the Devils city was full of pleasure triumphs victories and cruelty good news and great wealth conquest over Kings and making nations tributary They bound Kings in chains and the Nobles with links of iron and the inheritance of the Earth was theirs the Romans were Lords over the greatest parts of the world and God permitted to the Devil the Firmament and increase the wars and the successe of that people giving to him an intire power of disposing the great changes of the world so as might best increase their greatnesse and power and he therefore did it because all the power of the Romane greatnesse was a professed enemy to Christianity and on the other side God was to build up Jerusalem and the kingdom of the Gospel and he chose to build it of hewen stone cut and broken the Apostles he chose for Preachers and they had no learning women and mean people were the first Disciples and they had no power the Devil was to lose his kingdom and he wanted no malice and therefore he stirred up and as well as he could he made active all the power of Rome and all the learning of the Greeks and all the malice of Barbarous people and all the prejudice and the obstinacy of the Jews against this doctrine and institution which preached and promised and brought persecution along with it On the one side there was scandalum crucis on the other patientia sanctorum and what was the event They that had overcome the world could not strangle Christianity But so have I seen the Sun with a little ray of distant light challenge all the power of darknesse and without violence and noise climbing up the hill hath made night so to retire that its memory was lost in the joyes and spritefulnesse of the morning and Christianity without violence or armies without resistance and self-preservation without strength or humane eloquence without challenging of priviledges or fighting against Tyranny without alteration of government and scandall of Princes with its humility and meeknesse with tolerations and patience with obedience and charity with praying and dying did insensibly turn the world into Christian and persecution into victory For Christ who began and lived and died in sorrows perceived his own sufferings to succeed so well and that for suffering death he was crowned with immortality resolved to take all his Disciples and servants to the fellowship of the same suffering that they might have a participation of his glory knowing God had opened no gate of heaven but the narrow gate to which the Crosse was the key and since Christ now being our High Priest in heaven intercedes for us by representing his passion and the dolours of the Crosse that even in glory he might still preserve the mercies of his past sufferings for which the Father did so delight in him he also designes to present us to God dressed in the same robe and treated in the same manner and honoured with the marks of the Lord Jesus He hath predestinated us to be conformable to the image of his Son And if under a head crowned with thorns we bring to God members circled with roses and softnesse and delicacy triumphant members in the militant Church God will reject us he will not know us who are so unlike our elder brother For we are members of the Lamb not of the Lion and of Christs suffering part not of the triumphant part and for three hundred yeers together the Church lived upon blood and was nourished with blood the blood of her own children Thirty three Bishops of Rome in immediate succession were put to violent and unnaturall deaths and so were all the Churches of the East and West built the cause of Christ and of Religion was advanced by the sword but it was the sword of the persecutours not of resisters or warriours They were all baptized into the death of Christ their very profession and institution is to live like him and when he requires it to die for him that is the very formality the life and essence of Christianity This I say lasted for three hundred yeers that the prayers and the backs and the necks of Christians fought against the rods and axes of the persecutours and prevailed till the Countrey and the Cities and the Court it self was filled with Christians And by this time the army of Martyrs was vast and numerous and the number of sufferers blunted the hangmans sword For Christ first triumphed over the princes and powers of the world before he would admit them to serve him he first felt their malice before he would make use of their defence to shew that it was not his necessity that required it but his grace that admitted Kings and Queens to be nurses of the Church And now the Church was at ease and she that sucked the blood of the Martyrs so long began now to suck the milk of Queens Indeed it was a great mercy in appearance and was so intended but it proved not so But then the Holy Ghost in pursuance of the designe of Christ who meant by sufferings to perfect his Church as himself was by the same instrument was pleased now that persecution did cease to inspire the Church with the spirit of mortification and austerity and then they made Colleges of sufferers persons who to secure their inheritance in the world to come did cut off all their portion in this excepting so much of it as was necessary to their present being and by instruments of humility by patience under and a voluntary undertaking of the Crosse the burden of the Lord by self deniall by fastings and sackcloth and pernoctations in prayer they chose then to exercise the active part of the religion mingling it as much as they could with the suffering And indeed it is so glorious a thing to be like Christ to be dressed like the prince of the Catholick church who was so a man of sufferings and to whom a prosperous and unafflicted person is very unlike that in all ages
phantastick images imagining that he saw the Scythians flaying him alive his daughters like pillars of fire dancing round about a cauldron in which himself was boyling and that his heart accused it self to be the cause of all these evils And although all tyrants have not imaginative and phantastick consciences yet all tyrants shall die and come to judgement and such a man is not to be feared nor at all to be envied and in the mean time can he be said to escape who hath an unquiet conscience who is already designed for hell he whom God hates and the people curse and who hath an evil name and against whom all good men pray and many desire to fight and all wish him destroyed and some contrive to do it is this man a blessed man Is that man prosperous who hath stolen a rich robe is in fear to have his throat cut for it and is fain to defend it with the greatest difficulty and the greatest danger Does not he drink more sweetly that takes his beaverage in an earthen vessel then he that looks and searches into his golden chalices for fear of poison and looks pale at every sudden noise and sleeps in armour and trusts no body and does not trust God for his safety but does greater wickednesse onely to escape a while un punished for his former crimes Aurobibitur venenum No man goes about to poison a poor mans pitcher nor layes plots to forrage his little garden made for the hospital of two bee hives and the feasting of a few Pythagorean herbe eaters 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 They that admire the happinesse of a prosperous prevailing Tyrant know not the felicities that dwell in innocent hearts and poor cottages and small fortunes A Christian so long as he preserves his integrity to God and to religion is bold in all accidents he dares die and he dares be poor but if the persecutor dies he is undone Riches are beholding to our fancies for their value and yet the more we value the riches the lesse good they are and by an overvaluing affection they become our danger and our sin But on the other side death and persecution loose all the ill that they can have if we do not set an edge upon them by our fears and by our vices From our selves riches take their wealth and death sharpens his arrows at our forges and we may set their prices as we please and if we judge by the spirit of God we must account them happy that suffer And therefore that the prevailing oppressor Tyrant or persecutor is infinitly miserable onely let God choose by what instruments he will govern the world by what instances himself would be served by what waies he will chastise the failings and exercise the duties and reward the vertues of his servants God sometimes punishes one sinne with another pride with adultery drunkennesse with murder carelesnesse with irreligion idlenesse with vanity penury with oppression irreligion with blasphemy and that with Atheisme and therefore it is no wonder if he punishes a sinner by a sinner And if David made use of villains and profligate persons to frame an armie and Timoleon destroy'd the Carthaginians by the help of souldiers who themselves were sacrilegious and Physitians use the poison to expel poisons and all common-wealths take the basest of men to be their instruments of justice and executions we shall have no further cause to wonder if God raises up the Assyrians to punish the Israelites and the Egyptians to destroy the Assyrians and the Ethiopians to scourge the Egyptians and at last his own hand shall separate the good from the bad in the day of separation in the day when he makes up his Iewels 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Soph. Elect. God hath many ends of providence to serue by the hands of violent and vitious men by them he not onely checks the beginning errours and approaching sins of his predestinate but by them he changes governments and alters kingdoms and is terrible among the sons of men for since it is one of his glories to convert evil into good and that good into his own glory and by little and little to open and to turn the leaves and various folds of providence it becomes us onely to dwell in duty and to be silent in our thoughts and wary in our discourses of God and let him choose the time when he will prune his vine and when he will burn his thorns how long he will smite his servants and when he will destroy his enemies In the dayes of the primitive persecutions what prayers how many sighings how deep groanes how many bottles of tears did God gather into his repository all praying for ease and deliverances for Halcyon dayes and fine sunshine for nursing fathers and nursing mothers for publick assemblies and open and solemn sacraments And it was 3 hundred years before God would hear their prayers and all that while the persecuted people were in a cloud but they were safe and knew it not and God kept for them the best wine untill the last they ventured for a crown and fought valiantly they were faithful to the death and they received a crown of life and they are honored by God by angels and by men whereas in all the prosperous ages of the Church we hear no stories of such multitudes of Saints no record of them no honour to their memorial no accident extraordinary scarce any made illustrious with a miracle which in the dayes of suffering were frequent and popular And after all our fears of sequestration and poverty of death or banishment our prayers against the persecution and troubles under it we may please to remember that twenty years hence it may be sooner it wil not be much longer all our cares and our troubles shall be dead and then it shall be enquired how we did bear our sorrows and who inflicted them and in what cause and then he shall be happy that keeps company with the persecuted and the persecutors shall be shut out amongst dogs and unbelievers He that shrinks from the yoke of Christ from the burden of the Lord upon his death-bed will have cause to remember that by that time all his persecutions would have been past and that then there would remain nothing for him but rest and crowns and scepters When Lysimachus impatient and overcome with thirst gave up his kingdom to the Getae and being a captive and having drank a lusty draught of wine and his thirst was now gone he fetched a deep sigh and said Miserable man that I am who for so little pleasure the pleasure of one draught lost so great a Kingdom such will be their case who being impatient of suffering change their persecution into wealth and an easie fortune they shall finde themselves miserable in the separations of eternity losing the glories of heaven for so little a
us choose God and let God choose all the rest for us it being indifferent to us whether by poverty or shame by lingring or a sudden death by the hands of a Tyrant Prince or the despised hands of a base usurper or a rebell we receive the crown and do honour to God and to Religion 3. Whoever suffer in a cause of God from the hands of cruell and unreasonable men let them not be too forward to prognosticate evil and death to their enemies but let them solace themselves in the assurance of the divine justice by generall consideration and in particular pray for them that are our persecutours Nebuchadnezzar was the rod in the hand of God against the Tyrians and because he destroyed that city God rewarded him with the spoil of Egypt and it is not alwayes certain that God will be angry with every man by whose hand affliction comes upon us And sometimes two armies have met and fought and the wisest man amongst them could not say that either of the Princes had prevaricated either the lawes of God or of Nations and yet it may be some superstitious easie and half witted people of either side wonder that their enemies live so long And there are very many cases of warre concerning which God hath declared nothing and although in such cases he that yeelds and quits his title rather then his charity and the care of so many lives is the wisest and the best man yet if neither of them will do so let us not decree judgements from heaven in cases where we have no word from heaven and thunder from our Tribunals where no voice of God hath declared the sentence But in such cases where there is an evident tyranny or injustice let us do like the good Samaritan who dressed the wounded man but never pursued the thief let us do charity to the afflicted and bear the crosse with noblenesse and look up to Jesus who endured the crosse and despised the shame but let us not take upon us the office of God who will judge the Nations righteously and when he hath delivered up our bodies will rescue our souls from the hands of unrighteous judges I remember in the story that Plutarch tels concerning the soul of Thespesius that it met with a Prophetick Genius who told him many things that should happen afterwards in the world and the strangest of all was this That there should be a King Qui bonus cum sit tyrannide vitam finiet An excellent Prince and a good man should be put to death by a rebell and usurping power and yet that Prophetick soul could not tell that those rebels should within three yeers die miserable and accursed deaths and in that great prophecy recorded by Saint Paul That in the last dayes perillous times should come and men should be traitours and selvish having forms of godlinesse and creeping into houses yet could not tell us when those men should come to finall shame and ruine onely by a generall signification he gave this signe of comfort to Gods persecuted servants But they shall proceed no further for their folly shall be manifest to all men that is at long running they shall shame themselves and for the elects sake those dayes of evil shall be shortned But you and I may be dead first And therefore onely remember that they that with a credulous heart and a loose tongue are too decretory and enunciative of speedy judgements to their enemies turn their religion into revenge and therefore do beleeve it will be so because they vehemently desire it should be so which all wise and good men ought to suspect as lesse agreeing with that charity which overcomes all the sins and all the evils of the world and sits down and rests in glory 4. Do not trouble your self by thinking how much you are afflicted but consider how much you make of it For reflex acts upon the suffering it self can lead to nothing but to pride or to impatience to temptation or a postacy He that measures the grains and scruples of his persecution will soon sit down and call for ease or for a reward will think the time long or his burden great will be apt to complain of his condition or set a greater value upon his person Look not back upon him that strikes thee but upward to God that supports thee and forward to the crown that is set before thee and then consider if the losse of thy estate hath taught thee to despise the world whether thy poor fortune hath made thee poor in spirit and if thy uneasie prison sets thy soul at liberty and knocks off the fetters of a worse captivity For then the rod of suffering turns into crowns and scepters when every suffering is a precept and every change of condition produces a holy resolution and the state of sorrows makes the resolution actuall and habituall permanent and persevering For as the silk-worm eateth it self out of a seed to become a little worm and there feeding on the leaves of mulberies it grows till its coat be off and then works it self into a house of silk then casting its pearly seeds for the young to breed it leaveth its silk for man and dieth all white and winged in the shape of a flying creature So it the progresse of souls when they are regenerate by Baptisme and have cast off their first stains and the skin of world 〈…〉 by feeding on the leaves of Scriptures and the fruits of 〈…〉 and the joyes of the Sacrament they incircle themselves in the rich garments of holy and vertuous habits then by leaving their blood which is the Churches seed to raise up a new generation to God they leave a blessed memory and fair example and are themselves turned into Angels whose felicity is to do the will of God as their imployments was in this world to suffer it fiat voluntas tua is our daily prayer and that is of a passive signification thy will be done upon us and if from thence also we translate it into an active sence and by suffering evils increase in our aptnesses to do well we have done the work of Christians and shall receive the reward of Martyrs 5. Let our suffering be entertained by a direct election not by collateral ayds and phantastick assistances It is a good refreshment to a weak spirit to suffer in good company and so Phocion encouraged a timerous Greek condemned to die and he bid him be confident because that he was to die with Phocion and when 40 Martyrs in Cappadocia suffered and that a souldier standing by came and supplyed the place of the one Apostate who fell from his crown being overcome with pain it added warmth to the frozen confessors and turnd them into consummate Martyrs But if martyrdom were but a phantastick thing or relyed upon vain accidents and irregular chances it were then very necessary to be assisted by images of things and any thing lesse then the
But we must make these and all other the dutis of religion our imployments our care the work and end for which we came into the world and remember that we never do the work of men nor serve the ends of God nor are in the proper imployment and businesse of our life but when we worship God or live like wise or sober persons or do benefit to our brother I will not turne this discourse into a reproofe but leave it represented as a duty Remember that God sent you into the world for religion we are but to passe through our pleasant fields or our hard labours but to lodge a little while in our faire palaces or our meaner cottages but to bait in the way at our full tables or with our spare diet but then onely man does his proper imployment when he prayes and does charity and mortifies his unruly appetites and restrains his violent passions and becomes like to God and imitates his holy Son and writes after the coppies of Apostles and Saints Then he is dressing himself for eternity where he must dwell or abide either in an excellent beatifical country or in a prison of amazment and eternal horrour And after all this you may if you please call to minde how much time you allovv to God and to your souls every day or every moneth or in a year if you please for I fear the account of the time is soon made but the account for the neglect vvill be harder And it vvill not easily be ansvvered that all our dayes and years are little enough to attend perishing things and to be svvallowed up in avaritious and vain attendances and we shall not attend to religion with a zeal so great as is our revenge or as is the hunger of one meale Without much time and a wary life and a diligent circumspection we cannot mortify our sins or do the first works of grace I pray God we be not found to have grown like the sinnews of old age from strength to remisnesse from thence to dissolution and infirmity and death Menedemus was wont to say that the young boyes that went to Athens the first year were wise men the second year Philosophers the third Orators and the fourth were but Plebeians and understood nothing but their own ignorance And just so it happens to some in the progresses of religion at first they are violent and active and then they satiate all the appetites of religion and that which is left is that they were soon weary and sat down in displeasure and return to the world and dwell in the businesse of pride or mony and by this time they understand that their religion is declined and passed from the heats and follies of youth to the coldnesse and infirmities of old age The remedies of which is onely a diligent spirit and a busie religion a great industry a full portion of time in holy offices that as the Oracle said to the Cirrheans noctes diesque belligerandum they could not be happy unlesse they waged war night and day that is unlesse we perpetually fight against our own vices and repell our Ghostly enemies and stand upon our guard we must stand for ever in the state of babes in Christ or else return to the first imperfections of an unchristened soul and an unsanctified spirit That 's the first particular 2. The second step of our growth in grace is when vertues grow habitual apt and easie in our manners and dispositions For although many new converts have a great zeal and a busie spirit apt enough as they think to contest against all the difficulties of a spiritual life yet they meet with such powerful oppositions from without and a false heart within that their first heats are soon broken and either they are for ever discouraged or are forced to march more slowly and proceed more temperately for ever after 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 It is an easie thing to commit a wickednesse for temptation and infirmity are alwayes too neer us But God hath made care and sweat prudence and diligence experience and watchfulnesse wisdom and labour at home and good guides abroad to be instruments and means to purchase vertue The way is long and difficult at first but in the progresse and pursuit we finde all the knots made plain and the rough wayes made smooth jam monte potitus Ridet Now the spirit of grace is like a new soul within him and he hath new appetites and new pleasures when the things of the world grow unsavory and the things of religion are delicious when his temptations to his old crimes return but seldom and they prevail not at all or in very inconsiderable instances and stay not at all but are reproached with a penitentiall sorrow and speedy amendment when we do actions of vertue quickly frequently and with delight then we have grown in grace in the same degree in which they can perceive these excellent dispositions Some persons there are who dare not sin they dare not omit their hours of prayer and they are restlesse in their spirits till they have done but they go to it as to execution they stay from it as long as they can and they drive like Pharoahs charets with the wheels off sadly and heavily and besides that such persons have reserved to themselves the best part of their sacrifice and do not give their will to God they do not love him with all their heart they are also soonest tempted to retire and fall off Sextius Romanus resigned the honours and offices of the city and betook himself to the severity of a Philosophical life But when his unusual diet and hard labour began to pinch his flesh and he felt his propositions smart and that which was fine in discourse at a Symposiack or an Academical dinner began to sit uneasily upon him in the practise he so despaired that he had like to have cast himself into the sea to appease the labours of his religion Because he never had gone further then to think it a fine thing to be a wise man he would commend it but he was loth to pay for it at the price that God and the Philosopher sot upon it But he that is grown in grace and hath made religion habitual to his spirit is not at ease but when he is doing the works of the new man he rests in religion and comforts his sorrows with thinking of his prayers and in all crosses of the world he is patient because his joy is at hand to refresh him when he list for he cares not so he may serve God and if you make him poor here he is rich there and he counts that to be his proper service his worke his recreation and reward 3. But because in the course of holy living although the duty be regular and constant yet the sensible relishes and the flowrings of affections the zeal and the visible expressions do not alwayes make
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
and pride and covetousnesse and unthankefulnesse and disobedience Most men that are tempted with lust could easily enough entertain the sobrieties of other counsels as of temperance and justice or religion if it would indulge to them but that one passion of lust persons that are greedy of mony are not fond of amorous vanities nor care they to sit long at the wine and one vice destroyes another and when one vice is consequent to another it is by way of punishment and dereliction of the man unlesse where vices have cognation and seem but like several degrees of one another and it is evil custome and superinduced habits that make artificiall appetites in most men to most sins But many times their naturall temper vexes them into uneasie dispositions and aptnesses onely to some one unhandsome sort of action that one thing therefore is it in which God demands of thee mortification and self deniall Certain it is There are very many men in the world that would fain commute their severity in al other instances for a licence in their one appetite they would not refuse long prayers after a drunken meeting or great almes to gether with one great lust but then consider how easie it is for them to go to heaven God demands of them for his sake their own to crucifie but one natural lust or one evil habit for all the rest they are easie enough to do themselves God will give them heaven where the joy is more then one and I said it is but one mortification God requires of most men for if those persons would extirp but that one thing in which they are principally tempted it is not easily imaginable that any lesse evill to which the temptation is trifling should interpose between them and their great interest If Saul had not spared Agag the people could not have expected mercy and our little and inferiour appetites that rather come to us by intimation and consequent adherences then by direct violence must not dwell with him who hath crossed the violence of his distempered nature in a beloved instance since therefore this is the state of most men and God in effect demands of them but one thing and in exchange for that will give them all good things it gives demonstration of his huge easinesse to redeem us from that intolerable evil that is equally consequent to the indulging to one or to twenty sinful habits 2. Gods readinesse to pardon appears in this that he pardons before we ask for he that bids us ask for pardon hath in designe and purpose done the thing already for what is wanting on his part in whose onely power it is to give pardon and in whose desire it is that we should be pardoned and who commands us to lay hold upon the offer he hath done all that belongs to God that is all that concerns the pardon there it lies ready it is recorded in the book of life it wants nothing but being exemplified and taken forth and the Holy spirit stands ready to consigne and passe the privy signet that we may exhibit it to devils and evil men when they tempt us to despair or sin 3. Nay God is so ready in his mercy that he did pardon us even before he redeemed us for what is the secret of the mysterie that the eternal Son of God should take upon him our nature and die our death and suffer for our sins and do our work and enable us to do our own he that did this is God he who thought it no robbery to be equal with God he came to satisfie himself to pay to himself the price for his own creature and when he did this for us that he might pardon us was he at that instant angry with us was this an effect of his anger or of his love that God sent his Son to work our pardon and salvation Indeed we were angry with God at enmity with the the Prince of life but he was reconciled to us so far as that he then did the greatest thing in the world for us for nothing could be greater then that God the Son of God should die for us here was reconciliation before pardon and God that came to die for us did love us first before he came this was hasty love But it went further yet 4. God pardoned us before we sinned and when he foresaw our sin even mine and yours he sent his son to die for us our pardon was wrought and effected by Christs death above 1600. years ago and for the sins of to morrow and the infirmities of the next day Christ is already dead already risen from the dead and does now make intercession and atonement And this is not onely a favour to us who were born in the due time of the Gospel but to all mankinde since Adam For God who is infinitely patient in his justice was not at all patient in his mercy he forbears to strike and punish us but he would not forbear to provide cure for us and remedy for as if God could not stay from redeeming us he promised the Redeemer to Adam in the beginning of the worlds sin Christ was the lamb slain from the begining of the world and the covenant of the Gospel though it was not made with man yet it was from the beginning performed by God as to his part as to the ministration of pardon The seed of the woman was set up against the dragon as soon as ever the Tempter had won his first battle and though God laid his hand and drew a vail of types and secresy before the manifestation of his mercies yet he did the work of redemption and saved us by the covenant of faith and the righteousnesse of believing and the mercies of repentance the graces of pardon and the blood of the slain lamb even from the fall of Adam to this very day and will do till Christs second coming Adam fell by his folly and did not perform the covenant of one little work a work of a single abstinence but he was restored by faith in the seed of the woman and of this righteousnesse Noah was a preacher and by faith Enoch was traslated and by faith a remnant was saved at the flood and to Abraham this was imputed for righteousnesse and to all the Patriarks and to al the righteous judges and holy Prophets and Saints of the old Testament even while they were obliged so far as the words of their covenant were expressed to the law of works their pardon was sealed kept with in the vail within the curtains of the sanctuary and they saw it not then but they feel it ever since and this was a great excellency of the Divine mercy unto them God had mercy on all mankinde before Christs manifestation even beyond the mercies of their covenant they were saved as we are by the seed of the woman by God incarnate by the lamb slain from the beginning of
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