the strength of that Grace which God gave me heretofore But as God infuseth a Soul into every man and that Soul elicites a new Act in it self before that man produce any action so God infuses a particular Grace into every good work of mine and so prevents me before I co-operate with him For as Nature in her highest exaltation in the best Morall man that is cannot flow into Grace Nature cannot become Grace so neither doth former Grace flow into future Grace but I need a distinct influence of God a particular Grace for every good work I do for every good word I speak for every good thought I conceive When God gives me accesse into his Library leave to consider his proceedings with man I find the first book of Gods making to be the Book of Life The Book where all their names are written that are elect to Glory But I find no such Book of Death All that are not written in the Book of Life are certainly the sonnes of Death To be pretermitted there there to be left out wraps them up at least leaves them wrapt up in death But God hath not wrought so positively nor in so primary a consideration in a book of Death as in the Book of Life As the aftertimes made a Book of Wisdome out of the Proverbs of Salomon and out of his Ecclesiastes but yet it is not the same Book nor of the same certainty so there is a Book of Life â—ere but that is not the same book that is in Heaven nor of the same certainty For in this Book of Life which is the Declaration and Testimony which the Church gives of our Election by those marks of the Elect which she seeth in the Scriptures and believeth that she seeth in us a man may be Blotted out of the Book of the living as David speaketh and as it is added there Not written with the Righteous Intimating that in some cases and in some Book of Life a man may have been written in and blotted out and written in again The Book of Life in the Church The Testimony of our Election here admits such expunctions and such redintegrations but Gods first Book his Book of Mercy for this Book in the Church is but his Book of Evidence is inviolable in it self and all the names of that Book indelible In Gods first Book the Book of Life Mercy hath so much a precedency and primogeniture as that there is nothing in it but Mercy In Gods other Book his Book of Scripture in which he is put often to denounce judgements as well as to exhibite mercies still the Tide sets that way still the Biass leads on that hand still his method directs us ad Primogenitum to his first-born to his Mercy So he began in that Book He made man to his Image and then he blest him Here is no malediction no intermination mingled in Gods first Act in Gods first purpose upon man In Paradise there is That if he eat the forbidden fruit if he will not forbear that that one Tree He shall die But God begins not there before that he had said of every tree in the Garden thou maist freely eat neither is there more vehemency in the punishment then in the libertie For as in the punishment there is an ingemination Morte morieris Dying thou shalt die that is thou shalt surely die so in the liberty there was an ingemination too Comedendo comedes Eating thou shalt eat that is thou maist freely eat In Deut. we have a fearfull Chapter of Maledictions but all the former parts of that Chapter are blessings in the same kind And he that reads that Chapter will beginne at the beginning and meet Gods first-born his Mercy first And in those very many places of that Book where God divides the condition If you obey you shall live if you rebell you shall die still the better Act and the better condition and the better reward is placed in the first place that God might give us possession In jure Primogeniti in the right of his first-born his mercy And where God pursues the same method and first dilates himself and expatiates in the way of mercy I will beat down his foes before his face and plague them that hate him when after that he is brought to say If his children forsake my Law I will visit their transgression with the rod where first he puts it off for one Generation from himself to his Children which was one Mercy And then he puts it upon a forsaking an Apostasie and not upon every sinne of infirmity which was another Mercy when it comes to a correction it is but a milde correction with the râ—d And in that he promises to visite them to manifest himself and his purpose to them in the correction all which are higher and higher degrees of Mercy yet because there is a spark of anger a tincture of judgement mingled in it God remembers his first-born his Mercy and returns where he begun Neverthelesse my Covenant will I not break nor alter the things that is gone out of my lips once have I sworn by my Holinesse that I will not lie unto David There are elder pictures in the world of Water then there are any of oyl but those of oyl have got above them and shall outlive them Water is a frequent embleme of Affliction in the Scriptures and so is oyl of Mercy If at any time in any place of Scripture God seemed to begin with water with a judgement yet the oyl will get to the top in that very judgement you may see that God had first a mercifull purpose in inflicting that medicinall judgement for his mercy is his first-born His Mercy is new every morning saith the Prophet not onely every day but as soon as it is day Trace God in thy self and thou shalt find it so If thou beest drowzie now and unattentive curious or contentious or quarrelsome now now God leaves thee in that indisposition and that is a judgement But it was his Mercy that brought thee hither before In every sinne thou hast some remorse some reluctation before thou do that sinne and that pre-reluctation and pre-remorse was Mercy If thou hadst no such remorse in thy last sinne before the sinne and hast it now this is the effect of Gods former mercy and former good purpose upon thee to let thee see that thou needest the assistance of his Minister and of his Ordinance to enable thee to lay hold on Mercy when it is offered thee Can any calamity fall upon thee in which thou shalt not be bound to say I have had blessings in a greater measure then this If thou have had losses yet thou hast more out of which God took that If all be lost perchance thou art but where thou begunst at first at nothing If thou begunst upon a good heighth and beest fallen from that and fallen low yet as God
necessity that the bloud of Christ Jesus should be shed To satisfie Christs own sitto that thirst which was upon him when he was upon the Crosse there was a necessity too that Christ should bleed to death On our part there was an absolute and a primary necessity God in his justice requiring a satisfaction nothing could redeem us by way of satisfaction but the bloud of his Sonne And though there were never act more voluntary more spontaneous then Christs dying for man nor freer from all coaction and necessity of that kind yet after Christ had submitted himselfe to that Decree and contract that passed between him and his Father that he by shedding his bloud should redeem Mankind there lay a necessity upon Christ himselfe to shed his bloud as himselfe says first to his Disciples that went with him to Emans Nonne opâ—rtuit ought not Christ to suffer all these things do ye not find by the prophets that he was bound to do it and then to his Apostles at Ierusalem Sic opertuit Thus it behoved Christ to suffer There was then an absolute necessity upon us an obedientiall necessity upon Christ that his bloud must be shed But to let him dye in a wantonnesse to let out all that precious liquor and taste no drop of it to draw out all that immaculate and unvaluable bloud and make no balsamum no antidote no plaister no fomentation in the application of that bloud to labour still under a burning fever of lust and ambition and presumption and finde no cooling julips there in the application of that bloud to labour under a cold damp of indevotion and under heartlesse desperation and find no warming Cordialls there to be still as farre under judgements and executions for finne as if there had been no Messias sent no ransome given no satisfiaction made not to apply this bloud thus shed for us by those meanes which God in his Church presents to us this puts Christ to his wofull Interjection to cast out this wo upon us which he had rather have left out wo be unto the world which though it begin in a vae dolentis a voice of condoling and lamenting yet it is also vae minantis a voice of threatning and intermination denoting the infallibility of Judgements and that 's our next consideration I thinke we find no words in Christs mouth so often as vae and Amen Each of them hath two significations as almost all Christs words and actions have consolation and commination For as this vae signifies as before a sorrow wo that is wo is me for this will fall upon you and signifies also a Judgment inevitable and infallible wo that is wo be unto you for this Judgement shall fall upon you so Amen is sometimes vox Asserentis and signifies verè verily Verily I say unto you when Christ would confirm and establish a beleefe in some doctrine or promise of his as when he says Amen Amen verily verily I say unto you he that beleeveth on me the works that I doe shall he doe also and greater works then these shall he doe so it is vox Asserentis a word of assertion and it is also vox Deserentis a word of desertion when God denounces an infallibility an unavoydablenesse an inevitablenesse in his judgements Amen dico verily I say unto thee thou shalt by no meanes come out thence till thou hast paid the uttermost farthing so this Amen signifies Fiat this shall certainly be thus done And this seale this Amen as Amen is Fiat is always set to his vae as his vae is vox minantis whensoever God threatens any Judgement he meanes to execute that Judgement as farre as he threatens it God threatens nothing in terrorem onely onely to frighten us every vae hath his Amen every Judgement denounced a purpose of execution This then is our wofull case every man may find upon record in the Scriptures a vae denounced upon that sinne which he knows to be his sinne and if there be a vae there is an Amen too if God have said it shall it shall be executed so that this is not an execution of a few condemned persons but a Massacre of all It is not a Decimation as in a rebellion to spare nine and hang the tenth but it is a washing a sweeping away of all every man may find a Judgement upon record against him It doth not acquit him that he hath not committed an adultery and yet is he sure of that He may have done that in a looke in a letter in a word in a wish It doth not acquit him that he hath not done a murder and yet is he sure of that He may have killed a man in not defending him from the oppression of another if he have power in his hand and he may have killed in not relieving if he have a plentifull fortune He may have killed in not reprehending him who was under his charge wheÌ„ he saw him kil himself in the sinful ways of death As they that write of Poysons and of those creatures that naturally maligne and would destroy man do name the Flea as well as the Viper because the Flea sucks as much bloud as he can so that man is a murderer that stabs as deep as he can though it be but with his tongue with his pen with his frowne for a man may kill with a frowne in withdrawing his countenance from that man that lives upon so low a pasture as his countenance nay he may kill with a smile with a good looke if he afford that good looke with a purpose to delude him And beloved how many dye of this disease how many dye laughing dye of a tickling how many are overjoyed with the good looks and with the familiarity of greater persons then themselves and led on by hopes of getting more wa st that they have An adultery a murder may be done in a dreame if that dreame were an effect of a murderous or an adulterous thought conceived before The Apostle says I know nothing by my selfe yet am I not thereby justified we sinne some sinnes that all the world sees and yet we see not but then how many more which none in the world sees but our selves Scarce any man scapes all degrees of any sinne scarce any man some great degree of some great sinne no man escapes so but that he may find upon record in the Scriptures a vae and an Amen a Judgment denounced and an execution sealed against him And if that be our case where is there any roome for this milder signification of these two words vae and Amen which we spoke of before as they are words of Consolation If because God hath said Stipendium peccati mors est the wages of sinne is death because I have sinned I must dye what can I doe in a Prayer can I flatter God what can I doe in an Almes Can I bribe God or frustrate his
washed in my own tears and either out of compunction for my self or compassion for others I passe through this world as through a valley of tears where tears settle and swell and when I passe out of this world I leave their eyes whose hands close mine full of tears too can these persons this Image of God this God himself this glorious God and this vessell of earth this earth it self this inglorious worm of the earth meet without disparagement They doe meet and make a mariage because I am not a body onely but a body and s oul there is a mariage and Christ maries me As by the Law a man might mary a captive woman in the Warres if he shaved her head and pared her nails and changed her clothes so my Saviour having fought for my soul fought to blood to death to the death of the Crosse for her having studied my soul so much as to write all those Epistles which are in the New Testament to my soul having presented my soule with his own picture that I can see his face in all his temporall blessings having shaved her head in abating her pride and pared her nails in contracting her greedy desires and changed her clothes not to fashion her self after this world my soul being thus fitted by himself Christ Jesus hath maried my soul maried her to all the three intendments mentioned in the secular mariage first in ustionem against burning That whether I burn my self in the fires of tentation by exposing my self to occasions of tentation or be reserved to be burnt by others in the fires of persecution and martyrdome whether the fires of ambition or envy or lust or the everlasting fires of hell offer at me in an apprehension of the judgements of God yet as the Spirit of God shall wipe all tears from mine eyes so the tears of Christ Jesus shall extinguish all fires in my heart and so it is a mariage In ustionem a remedy against burning It is so too In prolificationem for children first vae soli woe unto that single soul that is not maried to Christ that is not come into the way of having issue by him that is not incorporated in the Christian Church and in the true Church but is yet in the wildernesse of Idolatry amongst the Gentiles or in the Labyrinth of superstition amongst the Papists vae soli woe unto that single man that is not maried unto Christ in the Sacraments of the Church and vae sterili woe unto them that are barren after this spirituall mariage for that is a great curse in the Prophet Ieremy Scribe virum istum sterilem write this man childlesse that implied all calamities upon him And assoon as Christ had laid that curse upon the Fig-tree Let no fruit grow upon thee for ever presently the whole tree withered no fruit no leafes neither nor body left To be incorporated in the body of Christ Jesus and bring forth no fruits worthy of that profession is a wofull state too Vae soli woe unto the Gentiles not maried unto Christ and vae sterili woe unto inconsiderate Christians that think not upon their calling that conceive not by Christ but there is a vae praegnanti too wo unto them that are with child and are never delivered that have good conceptions religious dispositions holy desires to the advancement of Gods truth but for some collaterall respects dare not utter them nor bring them to their birth to any effect The purpose of his mariage to us is to have children by us and this is his abundant and his present fecundity that working now by me in you in one instant he hath children in me and grand children by me He hath maried me in ustionem and in prolem against burning and for children but can he have any use of me in adjutorium for a helper Surely if I be able to feed him and clothe him and harbour him and Christ would not condemne men at the last day for not doing these if man could not doe them I am able to help him too Great persons can help him over sea convey the name of Christ where it hath not been preached yet and they can help him home again restore his name and his truth where superstition with violence hath disseised him And they can help him at home defend his truth there against all machinations to displant and dispossesse him Great men can help him thus and every man can help him to a better place in his own heart and his own actions then he hath had there and to be so helped in me and helped by me to have his glory thereby advanced Christ hath maried my soul And he hath maried it in aeternum for ever which is the third and last Circumstance in this spirituall as it was in the secular mariage And here the aeternum is enlarged in the secular mariage it was an eternity considered onely in this life but this eternity is not begun in this world but from all eternity in the Book of life in Gods eternall Decree for my election there Christ was maried to my soul. Christ was never in minority never under years there was never any time when he was not as ancient as the Ancient of Days as old as his Father But when my soul was in a strange minority infinite millions of millions of generations before my soul was a soul did Christ mary my soul in his eternall Decree So it was eternall it had no beginning Neither doth he interrupt â—his by giving me any occasion of jealousie by the way but loves my soul as though there were no other soul and would have done and suffered all that he did for me alone if there had been no name but mine in the Book of life And as he hath maried me to him in aeternum for ever before all beginnings and in aeternum for ever without any interruptions so I know that whom he loves he loves to the end and that he hath given me not a presumptuous impossibility but a modest infallibility that no sin of mine shall divorce or separate me from him for that which ends the secular mariage ends not the spirituall not death for my death does not take me from that husband but that husband being by his Father preferr'd to higher titles and greater glory in another state I doe but goe by death where he is become a King to have my part in that glory and in those additions which he hath received there And this hath led us to our third and last mariage our eternall mariage in the triumphant Church And in this third mariage the persons are the Lamb and my soul The mariage of the Lamb is come and blessed are they that are called to the mariage Supper of the Lamb says S. Iohn speaking of our state in the generall Resurrection That Lamb that was brought to the slaughter and opened not his mouth
It was then his Deed and it was his gift it was his Deed of gift and it hath all the formalities and circumstances that belong to that for here is a seale in his blood and here is a delivering pregnantly implied in this word which is not onely Dedit he gave but Tradidit he delivered First Dedit he gave himselfe for us to his Father in that eternall Decree by which he was Agnus occisus ab origine mundi The Lamb slain from the beginning of the world And then Tradidit he delivered possession of himselfe to Death and to all humane infirmities when he took our Nature upon him and became one of us Yea this word implies a further operativenesse and working upon himself then all this for the word which the Apostle uses here for Christ giving of himselfe is the same word which the Evangelists use still for Iudas betraying of him so that Christ did not onely give himselfe to the will of the Father in the eternall Decree nor onely deliver himselfe to the power of death in his Incarnation but he offered he exhibited he exposed we may say he betrayed himselfe to his enemies and all this for worse enemies to the Iewes that Crucified him once for us that make finne our sport and so make the Crucifying of the Lord of life a Recreation It was a gift then free and absolute Hee keeps us not in fear of Resumption of ever taking himselfe from the Church again nay he hath left himself no power of Revocation I am with you sayes he to the end of the world To particular men he comes he knocks and he enters and he stays and hesups and yet for their unworthinesse goes away again but with the Church he is usque ad consummationem till the end It is a permanent gift Dedit and Dedit seipsum It was he that did it That which he did was to give and that which he gave was himselfe Now since the Holy Ghost that is the God of unity and peace hath told us at once that the satisfaction for our sins is Christ himselfe and hath told us no more Christ entirely Christ altogether let us not divide and mangle Christ or tear his Church in pieces by froward and frivolous difputations whether Christ gave his divinity for us or his humanity whether the divine Nature or the humane Nature redeemed us for neither his divinity nor his humanity is Ipse He himselfe and Dedit seipsum He gave himselfe Let us not subdivide him into lesse pieces then those God and Man and enquire contentiously whether he suffered in soul as well as in body the pains of Hâ—ll as well as the sting of Death the Holy-Ghost hath presented him unite and knit together For neither soul nor body was Ipse He himselfe and Dedit seipsum He gave himselfe let us least of all shred Christ Iesus into lesse scruples and atoms then these Soul and body and dispute whether consisting of both it were his active or his passive obedience that redeemed us whether it were his death and passion onely or his innocency and fulfilling of the Law too let us onely take Christ himselfe for onely that is said he gave himselfe It must be an Innocent person and this Innocent person must die for us seperate the Innocency and the Death and it is not Ipse it is not Christ himselfe and Dedit seipsum it was himselfe Let us abstain from all such curiosities which are all but forc'd dishes of hot brains and not sound meat that is from all perverse wranglings whether God or Man redeemed us and then whether this God and Man suffered in soule or in body and then whether this person consisting of soule and body redeemed us by his action or by his passion onely for as there are spirituall wickednesses so there are spirituall wantonnesses and unlawfull and dangerous dallyings with mysteries of Divinity Money that is changed into small pieces is easily lost gold that is beat out into leaf-gold cannot be coyned nor made currant money we know the Heathens lost the true God in a thrust they made so many false gods of every particular quality and attribute of God that they scattered him and evacuated him to an utter vanishing so doth true and sound and nourishing Divinity vanish away in those impertinent Questions All that the wit of Man adds to the Word of God is all quicksilver and it evaporates easily Beloved Custodi Depositum sayes the Apostle keep that which God hath revealed to thee for that God himselfe cals thy Talent it hath weight and substance in it Depart not from thy old gold leave not thy Catechism-divinity for all the School-divinity in the world when we have all what would we have more if we know that Christ hath given himselfe for us that we are redeemed and not redeemed with corruptible things but with the precious blood of Christ Jesus we care for no other knowledge but that Christ and Christ crucified for us for this is another and a more peculiar and profitable giving of himselfe for thee when he gives himselfe to thee that is when he gives thee a sense and apprehension and application of the gift to thy self that Christ hath given himselfe to thy selfe We are come now to his exchange what Christ had for himselfe when he gave himselfe And he had a Church So this Apostle which in this place writes to the Ephesians when he preached personally to the Ephesians he told them so too The Church is that Quam acquisivit sanguine suo which he purchased with his bloud Here Christ bought a Church but I would there were no worse Simony then this Christ received no profit from the Church and yet he gave himselfe for it and he stayes with it to the end of the world Here is no such Non-residency as that the Church is left unserved other men give enough for their Church but they withraw themselves and necessary provision And if we consider this Church that Christ bought and paid so dearly for it was rather an Hospitall then a Church A place where the blind might recover sight that is Men borne in Paganisme or Superstition might see the true God truly worshipped and where the lame might be established that is those that Halted between two Religions might be rectified in the truth where the Deaf might receive so quicke a hearing as that they might discerne Musique in his Thunder in all his fearefull threatnings that is mercy in his Judgments which are still accompanied with conditions of repentance and they might finde Thunder in his Musique in all his promises that is threatnings of Judgements in our misuse of his mercies Where the hereditary Leper the new borne Child into whose marrow his fathers transgression cleaves in originall sinne and he that hath enwrapped Implicatos morbos one disease in another in Actuall sinnes might not onely come if he would but be intreated to come yea
speake for him After that first and heavy curse of Almighty God upon Man Morte morieris If thou eate thou shalt die and die twice thou shall die a bodily thou shalt die a spirituall death a punishment which no sentence of any law or law-maker could ever equall to deterre Men from offending by threatning to take away their lives twice and by inflicting a spirituall death eternally upon the Soule after we have all incurred that malediction Morte moriemur we shall die both death we cannot thinke to scape any lesse malediction of any law and therefore we are all Intestabiles we are all intestable in all these senses and apprehensions which we have touched upon We can make no testament of our owne we have no good thing in us to dispose we have no good inclination no good disposition in our Will we can make no use of anothers testament not of the double testaments of Almighty God for in the Old testament he gives promises of a Messias but we bring into the world no Faith to apprehend those promises and in the New testament he gives a performance the Messias is come but he is communicable to us no way but by baptisme and we cannot baptize our selves we can profit no body else by our testimony we are not able to endure persecution for the testimony of Christ to the edification of others we are not able to doe such workes as may shine before Men to the glorifying of our God Neither doth the testimony of others doe us any good for neither the Martyrdome of so many Millions in the primitive Church nor the execution of so many judgments of God in our owne times doe restifie any thing to our Consciences neither at the last day when those Saints of God whom we have accompanied in the outward worship of God here in the visible Church shall be called to the right hand and we detruded to the left shall they dare to open their mouthes for us or to testifie of us or to say Why Lord these Men when they were in the world did as we did appeared and served thee in thy house as we did they seem'd to goe the same way that we did upon Earth why goe they a sinister way now in heaven We are utterly intestable we can give nothing we can take nothing nothing will be beleeved from us who are all falshood it selfe nor can we be releeved by any thing that any other will say for us As long as we are considered under the penalty of that law this is our case Interdicti intestabiles we are accursed and so as that we are intestable Now as this great malediction Morte marieris in volves all other punishments upon whom that falls all fall so when our Saviour Christ Jesus hath a purpose to take away that or the most dangerous part of that the spirituall death when he will reverse that judgment Aqua igni interdicitur to make us capable of his water and his fire when he will reverse the intestabiles the inteâ—â—ability and make us able to receive his graces by faith and declare them by works then as he that will reedifie a demolished house begins not at the top but at the bottome so Christ Jesus when he will make this great preparation this great reedification of mankind he beginnes at the lowest step which is that we may have use of the testimony of others in our behalfe and he proceeds strongly and effectually he produces three witnesses from heaven so powerfull that they will be heard they will be beleeved and three witnesses on earth so neare us so familiar so domestique as that they will not be denied they will not be discredited Three are three that beare Record in heaven and three that beare record in earth Since then Christ Jesus makes us all our owne Iury able to conceive and judge upon the Evidence and testimony of these three heavenly and three earthly witnesses let us draw neare and hearken to the evidence and consider three things Testimonium esse Quid sit and Qui testes That God descends to meanes proportionable to Man he affords him witnesse and secondly the matter of the proofe what all these six witnesses testifie what they establish Thirdly the quality and value of the witnesses and whether the matter be to be beleeved for their sakes and for their reasons God requires nothing of us but Testimony for Martyrdome is but that A Martyr is but a witnesse God offers us nothing without testimony for his Testament is but a witnesse Teste ipso is shrewd evidence when God says I will speake and I will testifie against thee I am God even thy God when the voice of God testifies against me in mine owne conscience It is more pregnant evidence then this when his voice testifies against me in his word in his Scriptures The Lord testified against Israel by all the Prophets and by all the Seers When I can never be alone but that God speakes in me but speakes against me when I can never open his booke but the first sentence mine eye is upon is a witnesse against me this is fearfull evidence But in this text we are not in that storme for he hath made us Testabiles that is ready to testifie for him to the effusion of our bloud and Testabiles that is fit to take benefit by the testament that hee hath made for us The effusion of his bloud which is our second branch what is testified for us what these witnesses establish First then that which a sinner must be brought to understand and beleeve by the strength of these witnesses is Integritas Christi not the Integrity as it signifies the Innocency of Christ but integrity as it signifies Intireness not as it is Integer vitae but Integra vita not as he kept an integrity in his life but as he onely is intirely our life That Christ was a person composed of those two Natures divine and humane whereby he was a fit and a full satisfaction for all our sinnes and by death could be our life for when the Apostle writ this Epistle it seemes there had been a schisme not about the Mysticall body of Christ the Church but even about the Naturall that is to say in the person of Christ there had been a schisme a separation of his two natures for as we see certainly before the death of this Apostle that the Heresie of Ebion and of Cerinthus which denied the divine nature of Christ was set on foot for against them purposely was the Gospell of Saint Iohn written so by Epiphanius his ranking of the Heresies as they arose where he makes Basilides his Heresie which denied that Christ had any naturall body to be the fourth herefie and Ebions to be the tenth it seemes that they denied his humanity before they denied his Divinity And therefore it is well collected that this Epistle of Saint Iohn being written long
but every poore soule in the Church may heare all these three witnesses testifying to him Integrum Iesum suum that all which Christ Jesus hath done and suffered appertaines to him but yet to bring it nearer him in visible and sensible things There are tres de terra three upon earth too The first of these three upon earth is the Spirit which Saint Augustine understands of the spirit the soule of Christ for when Christ commended his spirit into the hands of his Father this was a testimony that he was Verus hemo that he had a soule and in that he laid downe his spirit his soule for no Man could take it from him and tooke it againe at his pleasure in his resurrection this was a testimony that he was Verus Deus true God And so says Saint Augustine Spiritus The spirit that is anima Christi the soule of Christ did testifie De integritate Iesu all that belonged to Jesus as he was God and as he was Man But this makes the witnesses in heaven and the witnesses in earth all one for the personall testimony of Christs preaching and living and dying the testimony which was given by these three Persons of the Trinity was all involv'd in the first rank of witnesses Those three which are in heaven Other later Men understand by the Spirit here the Spirit of every Regenerate Man and that in the other heavenly witnesses the spirit is Spiritus sanctus the spirit that is holy in it selfe the holy Ghost and here it is Spiritus sanctificatus that spirit of Man which is made holy by the holy Ghost according to that The same spirit beareth witnesse with our spirit that we are the children of God But in this sense it is too particular a witnesse too singular to be intended here for that speakes but to one Man at once The spirit therefore here is Spiritus oris the word of God the Gospell and the preaching and ministration thereof We are made Ministers of the New testament of the spirit that giveth life And if the ministration of death were glorious how shall not the ministration of the spirit be more glorious It is not therefore the Gospell meerly but the preaching of the Gospell that is this spirit Spiritus sacerdotis vehioulum Spiritus Dei The spirit of the Minister is not so pure as the spirit of God but it is the chariot the meanes by which God will enter into you The Gospell is the Gospell at home at your house and there you doe well to read it and reverence it as the Gospell but yet it is not Spiritus it is not this Spirit this first witnesse upon earth but onely there where God hath blessed it with his institution and ordinance that is in the preaching thereof The stewardship and the dispensation of the graces of God the directing of his threatnings against refractary and wilfull sinners the directing of his promises to simple and supple and conâ—rite penitents the breaking of the bread the applying of the Gospell according to their particular indigences in the preaching thereof this is the first witnesse The second witnesse here is The water and I know there are some Men which will not have this to be understood of the water of Baptisme but onely of the naturall effect of water that as the abtutions of the old law by water did purge us so we have an inward testimony that Christ doth likewise wash us cleane so the water here must not be so much as water but a metaphoricall and figurative water These men will not allow water in this place to have any relation to the sacrament and Saint Ambrose was so far from doubting that water in this place belonged to the sacrament that he applies all these three witnesses to the Sacrament of Baptisme Spiritus mentem renovat All this is done in Baptisme says he The Spirit renewes and disposes the mind Aqua perficit ad Lavacrum The water is applied to cleanse the body Sanguis Spectat ad preâ—lium and the bloud intimates the price and ransome which gives force and virtue to this sacrament And so also says he in another place In sanguine mors in the bloud there is a representation of death in the water of our buriall and in the spirit of our owne life Some will have none of these witnesses on earth to belong to baptisme not the water and Ambrose will have all spirit and water and bloud to belong to it Now both Saint Ambrose who applies all the three witnesses to Baptisme and those later men which deny any of the witnesses to belong to baptisme doe both depart from the generall acceptation of these words that water here and onely that signifies the Sacrament of baptisme For as in the first creation the first thing that the spirit of God is noted to have moved upon was the waters so the first creature that is sanctified by Christs institution to our Salvation is this element of water The first thing that produced any living sensible creature was the water Primus liquor qnod viveret edidit ne mirum sit quod in Baptismo aquae aâ—nimare noverunt water brought forth the first creatures says Tertullian That we should not wonder that water should bring forth Christians The first of Gods afficting miracles in Egypt was the changing of water into bloud and the first miracle of grace in the new Testament was the changing of water into wine at the mariage So that water hath still been a subject and instrument of Gods conversation with man So then Aqua janua ecclesiae we cannot come into the Church but by water by baptisme for though the Church have taken knowledge of other Baptismes Baptisma sanguinis which is Martyrdome and Baptisma Flaminis which is a religious desire to be baptized when no meanes can be got yet there is no other sacrament of Baptisme but Baptisma Fluminis the Baptisme of water for the rest Conveniunt in causando sed non in significando says the Schoole that is God doth afford a plentifull retribution to the other baptismes Flaminis and Sanguinis but God hath not ordained them to be outward seales and significations of his grace and to be witnesses of Iesus his comming upon earth as this water is And therefore they that provide not duly to bring their children to this water of life not to speake of the essentiall necessity thereof they take from them one of the witnesses that Iesus is come into them and as much as they can they shut the Church dore against them they leave them out of the Arke and for want of this water cast them into that generall water which overflowes all the rest of the world which are not brought within the Covenant by this water of baptisme For though in the first Translation of the new Testament into Syriaque that be said in the sixth verse that Jesus is come per manus
the Sacrament and that hath this effect ut sensum minuat in minimis toliat consensum in magnis peccatis That grace that God gives in the Sacrament makes us lesse sensible of small tentations they move us not and it makes us resist and not yeild to the greatest tentations since I am in this state Quomodo inquinubo How shall I defile them The difference will be of whom thou askest this question If thou aske the world the world will tell thee well enough Quomodo How It will tell thee that it is a Melancholy thing to sit thinking upon thy sinnes That it is an unsociable thing to seeke him who cannot be seen an invisible God That it is poore company to passe thy time with a Priest Thou maiest defile thy selfe againe by forgetting thy sinnes and so doing them over againe And thou maist defile thy selfe againe by remembring thy sins and so sinne over thy sinnes againe in a sinfull delight of thy passed sinnes and a desire that thou couldst commit them againe There are answers enough to this Quomodo How how should I defile them if thou aske the world but aske thy Saviour and he shall tell thee That whosoever hath this water shall never thirst more but that water shall be in him an everlasting spring that is he shall find meanes to keep himselfe in that cleannesse to which he is come and neither things present nor things to come shall separate him from the love of God Thus the voice of this religious indignation Quomodo is how is it possible but it is also Quomodo how that is why should I The first is how should I be so base the other how should I be so bold Though I have my pardon written in the bloud of my Saviour sealed to me in his Sacrament brought home to me in the testimony of the holy Ghost pleaded for me at the tribunall of the Father yet as Princes pardons have so Gods pardons have too this clause It a quod se bene gerat He that is pardoned must continue of good behaviour for whensoever he breakes the peace he forfeits his pardon When I returne to my repented sinnes againe I am under the burden of all my former sinnes and my very repentance contracts the nature of a sinne and therefore Quomodo how should I that is why should I defile them To restore you to your liberty and to send you away with the meditation which concernes you most consider what an astonishment this would be that when Christ Jesus shall lay open the great volumes of all your sinnes to your sight who had forgot them and to their sight from whom you had disguised them at the last judgement when you shall heare all the wantonnesses of your youth all the Ambitions of your middle years all the covetous desires of your age published in that presence and thinke then this is the worst that can be said or laid to my charge this is the last indictment and the last evidence there shall follow your very repentances in the list of your sinnes and it shall be told you and all the world then Here and here you deluded that God that forbore to inflict his Judgements upon new vowes new contracts new promises between you and him even your repentances shall bind up that booke and tye your old sinnes and new relapses into one body And let this meditation bring you ad vocem gratulantis to rejoyce once againe in this Lavi pedes that you have now washed your feet in a present sorrow and ad vocem indignantis to a stronger indignation and faster resolution then heretofore you have had never to defile them againe SERMON IX Preached at a Churching MICAH 2. 10. Arise and depart for this is not your Rest. ALL that God asks of us is that we love him with all our heart All that he promises us is that he will give us rest round about us Judah sought the Lord with a whole desire and he gave her rest round about her Now a Man might think himselfe well disposed for Rest when he lies down I will lay me down and sleep in peace sayes David but it is otherwise here Arise and depart for here that is in lying and sleeping is not your Rest sayes this Prophet These words have a three-fold acceptation and admit a three-fold exposition for first they are a Commination the Prophet threatens the Jewes Secondly they are a Commonition the Prophet instructs all future ages Thirdly they areâ—a Consolation which hath reference to the Consummation of all to the rising at the generall Judgement First he foretels the Jewes of their imminent captivity Howsoever you build upon the pactum salis the Covenant of salt the everlasting Covenant that God will be your God and this land your land yet since that confidence sears you up in your sins Arise and depart for this is not your rest your Ierusalem must be chang'd into Babylon there 's the Commination Secondly he warns us who are bedded and bedrid in our sins howsoever you say to your selves Soule take thy rest enjoy the honors the pleasures the abundances of this world Tush the Lord sees it not The Master will not come we may ly still safely and rest in the fruition of this Happinesse yet this Rest will betray you this rest will deliver you over to eternall disquiet And therefore arise and depart for this is not your Rest and that 's the Commonition And in the third acceptation of the words as they may have relation to the Resurrection they may well admit a little inversion Howsoever you feel a Resurrection by grace from the works of death and darknesse in this life yet in this life there is no assurednesse that he that is risen and thinks he stands shall not fall here you arise and depart that is rise from your sins and depart from your sinfull purposes but you arise and depart so too that you fall and depart again into your sinfull purposes after you have risen and therefore Depart and arise for here is not your rest till you depart altogether out of this world and rise to Judgement you can have no such rest as can admit no disquiet no perturbation but then you shall and that 's the Consolation First then as the words concern the Iewes Here is first an increpation a rebuke that they are fallen from their station and their dignity implied in the first word Arise for then they were fallen Secondly here is a demonstration in the same word That though they lik'd that state into which they were fallen which was a security and stubbornnesse in their sins yet they should not enjoy even that security and that stubbornnesse that fall of theirs but they should lose that though it were but a false contentment yet they should be rouâ—'d out of that Arise first arise because you are fallen and then arise though you think your selves at easeâ— by that fall And
and fetch it againe And then it was rotten and good for nothing for says he as the girdle cleaveth to the loines so have I tyed to me the house of Israel and Iudah that they might be my people that they might have a name and a praise and a glory but they would not heare Therefore say unto them Every bottle shall be filled with wine Here was a promise of plenty and they shall say unto thee Doe not we know that every bottle shall be filled with wineâ— that God is bound to give us this plenty because he hath tyed himselfe by oath and covenunt and promise But behold I fill all the inhabitants with drunkennesse since they trust in their plenty that shall be an occasion of sinne to them and I will dash them against one another even the father and sonnes together I will not spare I will not pity I will not have compassion but destroy them God could not promise more then he did in this place at first he could not depart farther from that promise then by their occasion he came to at last Gods promise goes no farther with Moses himselfe My presence shall goe with thee and I will give thee rest If we will steale out of Gods presence into darke and sinfull corners there is no rest promised Receive my words says Solomon and the years of thy life shall be many Trust in the Lord says David and doe good performe both stand upon those two leggs faith and works not that they are alike there is a right and a left legge but stand upon both upon one in the sight of God upon the other in the sight of Man Trust in the Lord and doe good and then shall dwell in the land and be fed assuredly That paradise that peace of Conscience which God establishes in thee by faith hath a condition of growth and encrease from faith to faith heaven it selfe in which the Angells were had a condition they might they did fall from thence The land of Canaan was their own land and the rest of that land their Rest by Gods oath and covenant and yet here was not their rest not here nor for any thing expressed or intimated in the word any where else Here was a Nunc dimittis but not in pace The Lord lets them depart and makes them depart but not in peace for their eyes saw no salvation they were sent away to a heavy captivity Beloved we may have had a Canaan an inheritance a comfortable assurance in our bosomes in our consciences and yet heare that voice after that here is not our rest except as Gods goodnesse at first moved him to make one oath unto us of a conditionall rest as our sins have put God to his second oath that he sware we should not have his rest so our repentance bring him to a third oath as I live I would not the death of a sinner that so he doe not onely make a new contract with us but give us withall an ability to performe the conditions which he requires SERMON X. Preached at the Churching of the Countesse of Bridgewater MICAH 2â— 10. second Sermon THus far we have proceeded in the first acceptation of these words according to their principall and literall sense as they appertain'd to the Iewes and their staâ—e so they were a Commination As they appertain to all succeeding Ages and to us so they are a Commonition an alarm to raise us from the sleep and death of sin And then in a third acceptation they are a Consolation that at last we shall have a rising and a departing into such a state in the Resurrection as we shall no more need this voice Arise and depart because we shall be no more in danger of falling no more in danger of departing from the presence and contemplation and service and fruition of God And in both these latter senses the words admit a just accommodation to this present occasion God having rais'd his honorable servant and hand-maid here present to a sense of the Curse that lyes upon women for the transgression of the first woman which is painfull and dangerous Child-birth and given her also a sense of the last glorious resurrection in having rais'd her from that Bed of weaknesse to the ability of coming into his presence here in his house First then to consider them in the first of these two latter senses as a Commonition to them that are in the state of sin first there is an increpation implied in this word Arise when we are bid arise we are told that we are faln sin is an unworthy descent and an ignoble fall Secondly we are bid to doe something and therefore we are able to doe something God commands nothing impossible so as that that degree of performance which he will accept should be impossible to the man whom his grace hath affected That which God will accept is possible to the godly And thirdly that which he commands here is deriv'd into two branches We are bidden to riseâ— that is to leave our bed our habit of sin and then not to be idle when we are up but to depart not onely to depart from the Customâ— but from tentations of Recidiâ—ation and not onely that but to depart into another way a habit of Actions contrary to our former Sins And then all this is press'd and urged upon us by a Reason The Holy Ghost appears not like a ghost in one sodain glance or glimmering but he testifies his presence and he presses the businesse that he comes for And the reason that he uses here is Quia non requies because otherwise we lose the Pondus animae the weight the ballast of our soule rest and peace of Conscience for howâ—ever there may be some rest some such shew of Rest as may serve a carnall man a little while yet sayes our Text it is not your Rest it conduces not to that Rest which God hath ordained for you whom he would direct to a better Rest. That Rest your Rest is not here not in that which is spoken of here not in your lying still you must rise from it not in your standing still you must depart from it your Rest is not here but yet since God sends us away because our Rest is not here he does tacitly direct â—s thereby where there is Rest And that will be the third acceptation of these words to which we shall come anone For that then which rises first the increpation of our fall implied in the word Arise there is nothing in which that which is the mother of all vertues discretion is more tryed then in the conveying and imprinting profitably a rebuke an increpation a knowledge and sense of sinne in the conscience of another The rebuke of sin is like the fishing of Whales the Marke is great enough one can scarse misse hitting but if there be not sea room and line enough a dexterity in
over the pursuite of it till you overtake it Persquere follow it but first Inquire says David seek after it find where it is for here is not your rest Vnaquâ—que res in sua patria fortior If a Starre were upon the Earth it would give no light If a tree were in the Sea it would give no fruit every tree is fastest rooted and produces the best fruit in the soile that is proper for it Now here we have no continuing City but we seek one when we finde that we shall finde rest Here how shall we hope for it for our selves Intus pugnae foris timores we feel a warre of concupiscencies within aand we feare a battery of tentations without Si dissentiunt in domo uxor maritus periculâ—sa molestia says Saint Augustine If the Husband and wife agree not at home it is a troublesome danger and that 's every mans case for Care conjux our flesh is the wife and the spirit is the husband and they two will never agree But si dominetur uxor perversa pax says he and that 's a more ordinary case then we are aware of that the wife hath got the Mastery that the weaker vessell the flesh hath got the victory and then there is a show of peace but it is a stupidity a security it is not peace Let us depart out of our selves and looke upon that in which most ordinarily we place an opinion of rest upon worldly riches They that will be rich fall into tentations and snares and into many foolish and noysome lusts which drowne Men in perdition and in destruction for the desire of money is the root of evill Not the having of Money but the desire of it for it is Theophylacts observation that the Apostle does not say this of them that are rich but of them that will be made rich that set their heart upon the desire of riches and will be rich what way soever As the Partridge gathereth the young which she hath not brought forth so he that gathereth riches and not by right shall leave them in the midst of his dayes and at his end shall be a foole he shall not make a wise will But shall his folly end at his end or the punishment of his folly We see what a restlesse fool he is all the way first because he wants roome he says he will pull downe his barnes and build new thus farre there 's no rest in the Diruit and adificat in pulling downe and building up Then he says to his soule live at ease he says it but he gives no ease he says it as he shall say to the Hills fall downe and cover usâ— but they shall stand still and his soule shall heare God say whilest he promises himselfe this case O foole this night they shall fetch away thy soule God does not onely not tell him who shall have his riches but he does not tell him who shall have his soule He leaves him no affurance no ease no peace no rest Here. This rest is not then in these things not in their use for they are got with labor and held with feare and these labour and feare admit no rest not in their nature for they are fluid and transitory and moveable and these are not attributes of rest If that word doe not reach to Land the land is not movable yet it reaches to thee when thou makest thine Inventory put thy selfe amongst the moveables for thou must remove from it though it remove not from thee So that what rest foever may be imagined in these things it is not your rest for howsoever the things may seem to rest yet you doe not It is not here at all not in that Here which is intimated in this Text not in the falling that is Here for sinne is a stupidity it is not a rest not in the rising that is Here for this remorse this repentance is but as a surveying of a convenient ground or an emptying of an inconvenient ground to erect a building upon not in the departing that is here for in that is intimated a building of new habits upon the ground so prepared and so a continuall and laborious travaile no rest falling and rising and departing and surveying and building are no words of rest for give these words their spirituall sense that this sense of our fall which is remorse after sinne this rising from it which is repentance after sinne this departing into a safer station which is the building of habits contrary to the former doe bring an ease to the conscience as it doth that powerfully and plentifully yet as when we journey by Coach we have an ease in the way but yet our rest is at home so in the ways of a regenerate Man there is an unexpressible ease and consolation here but yet even this is not your rest for as the Apostle says If I be not an Apostle unto others yet doubtlesse I am unto you so what rest soever others may propose unto themseleves for you whose conver sation is in heaven for this world to the righteous is Atrium templi and heaven is that Temple it selfe the Militant Church is the porch the Triumphant is the Sanctum Sanctorum this Church and that Church are all under one roofe Christ Jesus for you who appertaine to this Church your rests is in heaven And that consideration brings us to the last of the three interpretations of these words The first was a Commination a departing without any Rest propos'd to the Jewes The second was a Commonition a departing into the way towards Rest proposed to repentant sinners And this third is a Consolation a departing into Rest it selfe propos'd to us that beleeve a Resurrection It is a consolation and yet it is a funerall for to present this eternall Rest we must a little invert the words to the departing out of this world by death and so to arise to Judgement Depart and arise for c. This departing then is our last Exodus our last passeover our last transmigration our departing out of this life And then the Consolation is placed in this that we are willing and ready for this departing Qua gratia breve nobis tempus praescripsit Deus How mercifully hath God proceeded with Man in making his life short for by that means he murmurs the lesse at the miseries of this life and he is the lesse transported upon the pleasures of this life because the end of both is short It is a weaknesse sayes Saint Ambrose to complain De immaturitate mortis of dying before our time for we were ripe for death at our birth we were born mellow Secundum aliquem modum immortalis dici posset homo si esset tempus intra quod mori non posset is excellently said by the same Father If there were any one minute in a mans life in which he were safe
from death a man might in some sort be said to be immortall for that minute but Man is never so Nunquam ei vicinius est posse vivere quà m posse mori That proposition is never truer This man may live to morrow then this proposition is This man may dy this minute Though then shortnesse of life be a malediction to the wicked The bloudy and deceitfull men shall not live halfe their dayes there 's the sentence the Judgement the Rule And they were cut down before their time there 's the execution the example God hath threatned God hath inflicted shortnesse of dayes to the wicked yet the Curse consists in their indisposition in their over-loving of this world in their terrors concerning the next world and not meerly in the shortnesse of life for this Ite depart out of this world is part of the Consolation I have a Reversion upon my friend and though I wish it not yet I am glad if he die Men that have inheritances after their fathers are glad when they dye though not glad that they die yet glad when they die I have a greater after the death of this body and shall I be loath to come to that Yet it is not so a Consolation as that we should by any means be occasions to hasten our own death Multi Innocentes ab aliis occiduntur à seipso nemo Many men get by the malice of others if thereby they dy the sooner for they are the sooner at home and dy innocently but no man dies innocently that dies by his own hand or by his own hast We may not doe it never we may not wish it alwayes nor easily Before a perfect Reconciliation with God it is dangerous to wish death David apprehended it so I said O my God take me not away in the midst of my dayes In an over tender sense and impatience of our own Calamities it is dangerous to desire death too Very holy men have transgressed on that hand Elias in his persecution came inconsiderately to desire that he might die It is enough ô Lord take away my soule He would tell God how much was enough And so sayes Iob My soule chuseth rather to be strangled and to die then to be in my bones He must have that that his soule chuses But to omit many cases wherein it is not good nor safe to wish Death certainly when it is done primarily in respect of God for his glory and then for the respect which is of our selves it is onely to enjoy the sight and union of God and that also with a Conditionall submission to his will and a tacite and humble reservation of all his purposes we may think David's thought and speak David's words My soule thirsteth for God even for the living God when shall I come and appeare before the presence of my Living God Saint Paul had David's example for it when he comes to his Cupio dissolvi to desire to be dissolved And Saint Augustine had both their examples when he sayes so affectionately Eia Domine videam ut hîc moriar O my God let me see thee in this life that I may die the death of the Righteous dy to sin moriar ut te videam let me dy absolutely that I may see thee essentially Here we may be in his Presence we see his state there we are in his Bedchamber and see his eternall and glorious Rest. The Rule is good given by the same Father Non injustum est justo optare mortem A righteous man may righteously desire deathâ— Si Deus non dederit injustum erit non tolerare vitam amarissimam but if God affords not that ease he must not refuse a laborious life So that this departing is not a going before we be call'd Christ himselfe stay'd for his ascension till he was taken up But when these comes a Lazare veni foras that God calls us from this putrefaction which we think life let us be not onely obedient but glad to depart For without such an Ite there is no such Surgite as is intended here without this departing there is no good rising without a joyfull Transmigration no joyfull Resurrection He that is loth to depart is afraid to rise againe and he that is afraid of the Resurrection had rather there were none and he that had rather there were none aâ—t â—aecitate aut animosâ—tate says S. Augustine either he will make himselfe beleeve that there is none or if he cannot overcome his Conscience so absolutely he will make the world beleeve that he beleeves there is none and truly to lose our sense of the Resurrection is as heavy a losse as of any one point of Religion It is the knot of all and hath this priviledge above all that though those Joyes of heaven which we shall possesse immediately after our death be infinite yet even to these infinite Joyes the Resurrection given an addition and enlarges even that which was infinite And therefore is Iob so passionately desirous that this doctrine of the Resurrection might be imparted to all imprinted in all Oh that my words more now written Oh that they were written in a book and graven with an Iron pen in lead and stone for ever what is all this that Iob recommends with so much devotion to all I am sure that my Redeemer liveth and be shall stand the last on Earth and though after my skin wormes destroy this body yet I shall see God in my flesh whom I my selfe shall see and mine eyes shall behold and none either for me This doctrine of the Resurrection had Iob so vehement and so early a care of Neither could the malicious and pestilent inventions of man no not of Satan himselfe abolish this doctrine of the Resurrection for as Saint Hierome observes from Adrian's time to Constantin's for 180 yeares in the place of Christs birth they had set up an Idoll a statue of Adonis In the place of his Crucifying they had set up an Idoll of Venus and in the place of his Resurrection they had erected a Iâ—â—pâ—ter in opinion that these Idolatrous provisions of theirs would have abolish'd the Mysteries of our Religion but they have outliv'd all them and shall outlive all the world eternally beyond all Generations And therefore doth Saint Ambrose apply well and usefully to our Death and Resurrection to our departing and rising these words Come my people enter then into thy Chambers and shut thy dores after thee Hide thy selfe for a very little while untill the Indignation passeover thee that is Goe quietly to your graves attend your Resurrection till God have executed his purpose upon the wicked of this world Murmur not to admit the dissolution of body and soul upon your death-beds nor the resolution and putrefaction of the body alone in your graves till God be pleased to repaire all in a full consummation and
to his owne fleshly passions as some others take it judge not you so neither first judge not that ye be not judged that is as Saint Ambrose interprets it well enough Nolite â—udicare de judiciis Dei when you see Gods judgments fall upon a man when you see the tower of Silo fall upon a man doe not you judge that that man had sinned more then you when you see another borne blind doe not you thinke that he or his Father had sinned and that you onely are derived from a pure generation especially nâ—n maledic as surdo speake not evill of the deafe that heares not That is as Gregory interprets it if not literally yet appliably and usefully calumniate not him who is absent and cannot defend himselfe it is the devills office to be Accusator fratrum and though God doe not say in the law Non erit yet he says Non erit criminator it is not plainely there shall be no Informer for as we dispute and for the most part affirme in the Schoole that though we could we might destroy no intire species of those creatures which God made at first though it be a Tyger or a viper because this were to take away one link of Gods chaine out of the world so such vermine as Informers may not for some good use that there is of them be taken away though it be not non erit there shall be none yet it is at least by way of good counsaile to thee non eris thou shalt not be the man thou shalt not be the Informer and for resisting those that are we are bound not onely not to harme our neighbours house but to help him if casually his house fall on fire wee are bound where where wee have authority to stoppe the mouthes of other calumniators where wee have no authority yet since as the North wind driveth away raine an angry countenance driveth away a back-biting tongue at least deale so with a libeller with a calumniator for he that lookes pleasantly and hearkens willingly to one libell makes another occasions a second always remember Davids case when he thought that he had been giving judgment against another he was more severe more heavy then the law admitted The law was that he that had stoln the sheep should returne fourefold and Davids anger was kindled says the text and he said and he swore As the Lord liveth that man shall restore fourfold Et filius mortis and he shall surely dyes O judicis superfluentem justitiam O superabundant and overflowing Justice when we judge another in passion But this is judicium secundum carnem according to which Christ judges no man for Christ is love and that non cogitat malum love thinks no evill any way The charitable man neither meditates evill against another nor beleeves not easily any evill to be in another though it be told him Lastly Christ judges no man Ad internecionem he judges no man so in this world as to give a finall condemnation upon him here There is no error in any of his Judgments but there is an appeal from all his Judgments in this world There is a verdict against every man every man may find his case recorded and his sinne condemned in the law and in the Prophets there is a verdict but before Judgment God would have every man sav'd by his book by the apprehension and application of the gratious promises of the Gospell to his case and his conscience Christ judges no man so as that he should see no remedy but to curse God and die not so as that he should say his sinne is greater then God could forgive for God sent not his Sonne into the world to condemne the world but that the world through him might be saved Doe not thou then give malitious evidence against thy selfe doe not weaken the merit nor lessen the value of the bloud of thy Saviour as though thy sinne were greater then it Doth God desire thy bloud now when he hath abundantly satisfied his justice with the bloud of his Sonne for thee what hast thou done hast thou come hypocritically to this place upon collaterall reasons and not upon the direct service of God not for love of Information of Reformation of thy selfe If that be thy case yet if a man hear my words says Christ and beleeve not I judge him not he hath one that judgeth him says Christ and who is that The word that I have spoken the same shall judge him It shall but when It shall judge him says Christ at that last day for till the last day the day of his death no man is past recovery no man's salvation is impossible Hast thou gone farther then this Hast thou admitted scruples of diffidence and distrust in Gods mercy and so tasted of the lees of desperation It is true perpetrare flagitium est mors anima sed desper are est descensus ad inferos In every sinne the soule dies but in desperation it descends into hell but yet portae inferi non praevalebunt even the gates of this hell shall not prevaile against thee Assist thy selfe argue thine own case desperation it selfe may be without infidelity desperation aswell as hope is rooted in the desire of happinesse desperation proceeds out of a feare and a horror of sinne desperation may consist with faith thus farre that a man may have a true and faithfull opinion in the generall that there is a remission of sinne to be had in the Church and yet have a corrupt imagination in the particular that to him in this sinfull state that he is in this remission of sinnes shall not be applied so that the resolution of the Schoole is good Desperatio potest esse 〈◊〉 solo excessu boni desperation may proceed from an excesse of that which is good in it selfe from an excessive over fearing of Gods justice from an excessive over hating thine own sinnes Et virtute quis malè utitur Can any man make so ill use of so great virtues as the feare of God and the hare of sinne yes they may so froward a weed is sinne as that it can spring out of any roote and therefore if it have done so in thee and thou thereby have made thy case the harder yet know stil that Objectum speâ— est arduâ— et possibile the true object of hope is hard to come by but yet possible to come by and therefore as David said By my God have I leaped over a wall so by thy God maist thou breake through a wall through this wall of obduration which thou thy selfe hast begunne to build about thy selfe Feather thy wings againe which even the flames of hell have touched in these beginnings of desperation feather them againe with this text Neminem judicat Christ judges no man so as a desperate man judges himselfe doe not make thy selfe beleeve that thou hast sinned
that thou art now and when thou shalt be nothing againe thou shalt be made better then thou art yet And Redderationem quâ factus es ego reddam rationem quâ fies Doe thou tell me how thou wast made then and I will tell thee how thou shalt be made hereafter And yet as Solomon sends us to creatures to creatures of a low rank station to Ants Spiders for instruction so Saint Gregory sends us to creatures to learne the Resurrection Lux quotidie moritur quotidie resurgit That glorious creature that first creature the light dyes every day and every day hath a resurrection In arbustis folia resurrectione erumpunt from the Cedar of Libanus to the Hyssop upon the wall every leafe dyes every yeare and every yeare hath a Resurrection Vbi in brevitate seminis tam immensa arbor latuit as he pursues that meditation If thou hadst seen the bodies of men rise our of the grave at Christs Resurrection could that be a stranger thing to thee then if thou hadst never seen nor hard not imagined it before to see an Oake that spreads so farre rise out of an Akorne Or if Churchyards did vent themselves every spring and that there were such a Resurrection of bodies every yeare when thou hadst seen as many Resurrections as years the Resurrection would be no stranger to thee then the spring is And thus this and many other good and reverend men and so the holy Ghost himselfe sends us to Reason and to the Creature for the doctrine of the Resurrection Saint Paul allowes him not the reason of a man that proceeds not so Thou fool says he that which thou sowest is not quickned except it dye but then it is It is truly harder to conceive a translation of the body into heaven then a Resurrection of the body from the earth Num in hominibus terra degenerat quae omnia regenerare consuevit Doe all kinds of earth regenerate and shall onely the Churchyard degenerate Is there a yearely Resurrection of every other thing and never of men Omnia pereunde servantur All other things are preserved and continued by dying Tu homo solus ad hoc morieris ut pereas And canst thou O man suspect of thy selfe that the end of thy dying is an end of thee Fall as low as thou canst corrupt and putresie as desperately as thou canst sis nihil thinke thy selfe nothing Ejus est nihilum ipsum cujus est totum even that nothing is as much in his power as the world which he made of nothing And as he called thee when thou wast not as if thou hadst been so will he call thee againe when thou art ignorant of that being which thou hast in the grave and give thee againe thy former and glorifie it with a better being The Iews then if they had no other helpes might have as naturall men may preparations a Priore and illustrations a Posteriore for the doctrine of the Resurrection The Iews had seen resuscitations from the dead in particular persons and they had seen miraculous cures done by their Prophets And Gregory Nyssen says well that those miraculous cures which Christ wrought with a Tolle grabatum and an Este sanus and no more they were praeludia resurrectionis halfe-resurrections prologues and inducements to the doctrine of the resurrection which shall be transacted with a Surgite mortui and no more So these naturall helps in the consideration of the creature are praeludia resurrectionis they are halfe-resurrections and these naturall resurrections carry us halfe way to the miraculous resurrection But certainely the Iews who had that which the Gentiles wanted The Scriptures had from them a generall though not an explicite knowledge of the resurrection That they had it we see by that practise of Iudas the Maccabee in gathering a contribution to send to Ierusalem which is therefore commended because he was therein mindefull of the Resurrection Neither doth Christ find any that opposed the doctrine of the Resurrection but those who though they were tolerated in the State because they were otherwise great persons were absolute Heretiques even amongst the Iews The Sadduces And Saint Paul when finding himselfe to bee oppressed in Judgement hee used his Christian wisedome and to draw a strong party to himselfe protested himselfe to bee of the sect of the Pharisees and that as they and all the rest in generall did he maintained the Resurrection he knew it would seem a strange injury and an oppression to be called in question for that that they all beleeved Though therefore our Saviour Christ who disputed then onely against the Sadduces argued for the doctrine of the Resurrection onely from that place of the Scripture which those Sadduces acknowledged to be Scripture for they denied all but the bookes of Moses and so insisted upon those words I am the God of Abraham the God of Isaac and the God of Iacob yet certainely the Iews had established that doctrine upon other places too though to the Sadduces who accepted Moses onely Moses were the best evidence It is evident enough in that particular place of Daniel Many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake some to everlasting life and some to shame and everlasting contempt And in Daniel that word many must not be restrained to lesse then all Daniel intends by that many that how many soever they are they shall all arise as Saint Paul does when he says By one mans disobedience many were made sinners that is All for death passed over all men for all have sinned And Christ doth but paraphrase that place of Daniel who says Multi many when he says Omnes all All that are in the grave shall heare his voyce and shall come forth They that have done good unto the resurrection of life and they that have done evill to the resurrection of damnation This then being thus far settled that the Iews understood the resurrection and more then that they beleeved it and therefore as they had light in nature they had assurance in Scripture come we now to that which was our last purpose in this first part whether in this text in these words of Iob though after my skin wormes destroy my body there be any such light of the Resurrection given It is true that in the new Testament where the doctrine of the resurrection is more evidently more liquidly delivered then in the old though it be delivered in the old too there is no place cited out of the book of Iob for the resurrection and so this is not But it is no marvaile both upon that reason which we noted before that they who were to be convinced were such as received onely the books of Moses and therefore all citations from this booke of Iob or any other had been impertinently and frivolously employed and because in the new Testament
there is but one place of this booke of Iob cited at all To the Corinthians the Apostle makes use of those words in Iob God taketh the wise in their owne craft And more then this one place is not I thinke cited out of this booke of Iob in the new Testament But the authority of Iob is established in another place you have heard of the patience of Iob and you have seen the end of the Lord says Saint Iames. As you have seen this so you have heard that seen and heard one way out of the Scripture you have hard that out of the booke of Iob you have seen this out of the Gospell And further then this there is no naming of Iobs person or his booke in the new Testament Saint Hierome confesses that both the Greeke and Latine Copies of this booke were so defective in his time that seven or eight hundred verses of the originall were wanting in the booke And for the originall it selfe he says Obliquus totus liber fertur lubricus it is an uncertaine and slippery book But this is onely for the sense of some places of the book And that made the authority of this book to be longer suspended in the Church and oftner called into question by particular men then any other book of the Bible But in those who have for many ages received this book for Canonicall there is an unanime acknowledgement at least tacitely that this peece of it this text When after my skin wormes shall destroy my body yet in my flesh I shall see God does establish the Resurrection Divide the expositors into three branches for so the world will needs divide them The first the Roman Church will call theirs though they have no other title to them but that they received the same translation that they doe And all they use this text for the resurrection Verba viri in gentilitate positi erubescamus It is a shame for us who have the word of God it selfe which Iob had not and have had such a commentary such an exposition upon al the former word of God as the reall and actuall and visible resurrection of Christ himselfe Erubescamus verba viri in gentilitate positi let us be ashamed and confounded if Iob a person that lived not within the light of the covenant saw the resurrection more clearly and professed it more constantly then we doe And as this Gregory of Rome so Gregory Nyssen understood Iob too For he considers Iobs case thus God promised Iob twofold of all that he had lost And in his sheep and camels and oxen and asses which were utterly destroyed and brought to nothing God performes it punctually he had all in a double proportion But Iob had seven sonnes and three daughters before and God gives him but seven sonnes and three daughters againe And yet Iob had twofold of these too for Postnati cum prioribus numerantur quia omnes deo vivunt Those which were gone and those which were new given lived all one life because they lived all in God Necquicquam aliud est mors nisi viti ositatis expiatio Death is nothing else but a devesting of those defects which made us lesse fit for God And therefore agreeably to this purpose says Saint Cyprian Scimus non amitti sed praemitti thy dead are not lost but lent Non recedere sed praecedere They are not gone into any other wombe then we shall follow them into nec acquirendae atrae vestes pro iis qui albis induuntur neither should we put on blacks for them that are clothed in white nor mourne for them that are entred into their Masters joy We can enlarge our selfes no farther in this consideration of the first branch of expositors but that all the ancients tooke occasion from this text to argue for the resurrection Take into your Consideration the other two branches of moderne expositors whom others sometimes contumeliously and themselves sometimes perversly have call'd Lutherans and Calvinists and you may know that in the first ranke Osiander and with him all his interpret these words so And in the other ranke Tremellius and Pellicanus heretofore Polanus lately and Piscator for the present All these and all the Translators into the vulgar tongues of all our neighbours of Europe do all establish the doctrine of the Resurrection by these words this place of Iob. And therefore though one and truly for any thing I know but one though one to whom we all owe much for the interpretation of the Scriptures do think that Iob intends no other resurrection in this place but that when he shall be reduc'd to the miserablest estate that can bee in this life still he will look upon God and trust in him for his restitution and reparation in this life let us with the whole Christian Church embrace and magnifie this Holy and Heroicall Spirit of Iob Scio says he I know it which is more in him then the Credo is in us more to know it then in that state then to believe it now after it hath been so evidently declar'd not onely to be a certain truth but to be an article of faith Scio Redemptorem says he I know not onely a Creator but a Redeemer And Redemptorem meum My Redeemer which implies a confidence and a personall application of that Redemption to himself Scio vivere says he I know that he lives I know that hee begunne not in his Incarnation I know he ended not in his death but it always was and is now and shall for ever be true Vivit that he lives still And then Scio venturum says he too I know hee shall stand at the last day to Judge me and all the world And after that and after my skinne and body is destroyed by worms yet in my flesh I shall see God And so have you as much as we proposed for our first part That the Jews do now that they always did believe a Resurrection That as naturall men and by naturall reason they might know it both in the possibility of the thing and in the purpose of God that they had better helpes then naturall reason for they had divers places of their Scripture and that this place of Scripture which is our text hath evermore been received for a proof of the Resurrection Proceed we now to those particulars which constitute our second part such instructions concerning the Resurrection as arise out of these words Though after my skinne worms destroy my body yet in my flesh I shall see God In this second part the first thing that was propos'd was That the Saints of God are not priviledg'd from this which fell upon Iob This Death this dissolution after death Upon the Morte morieris that double death interminated by God upon Adam there is a Non obstante Revertere turn to God and thou shalt not dy the death not the second
vestruâ—â— it is not for you to know times and seasons Before in his state of mortality 〈…〉 ignor antibus he pretended to know no more of this then they that knew nothing After when he had invested immortality per sui exceptionem says that Father he excepts none but himselfe all the rest even the Apostles were left ignorant thereof For this non est vestrum it is not for you is part of the last sentence that ever Christ spake to them If it be a convenient answer to say Christ knew it not as man how bold is that man that will pretend to know it And if it be a convenient interpretation of Christs words that he knew it not that is knew it not so as that he might tell it them how indiscreet are they who though they may seem to know it will publish it For thereby they fill other men with scruples and vexations and they open themselves to scorne and reproach when their predictions prove false as Saint Augustine observed in his time and every age hath given examples since of confident men that have failed in these conjectures It is a poore pretence to say this intimation this impression of a certaine time prepares men with better dispositions For they have so often been found false that it rather weakens the credit of the thing it selfe In the old world they knew exactly the time of the destruction of the world that there should be an hundred twenty years before the flood came And yet upon how few did that prediction though from the mouth of God himselfe work to repentance Naâ—â— found grace in Gods eyes but it was not because he mended his life upon that prediction but he was grations in Gods sight before At the day of our death we write Pridiâ—râ—surrâ—ctioniâ— the day before the resurrection It is Vigilia resurectionis Our Easter Eve Adveniat regnum tuum possesse my soule of thy kingdome then And Fiâ—â— voluntas tua my body shall arise after but how soon after or how late after thy will bee done then by thy selfe and thy will bee knowne till then to thy selfe We passe on As in Massa damnata the whole lump of mankind is under the condemnation of Adams sinne and yet the good purpose of God severs some men from that condemnation so at the resurrection all shall rise but not all to glory But amongst them that doe Ego says Iob I shall I as I am the same man made up of the samebody and the same soule Shall I imagine a difficulty in my body because I have lost an Arme in the East and a leg in the West because I have left some bloud in the North and some bones in the South Doe but remember with what ease you have sate in the chaire casting an account and made a shilling on one hand a pound on the other or five shillings below ten above because all these lay easily within your reach Consider how much lesse all this earth is to him that sits in heaven and spans all this world and reunites in an instant armes and legs bloud and bones in what corners so ever they be scattered The greater work may seem to be in reducing the soul That that soule which sped so ill in that body last time it came to it as that it contracted Originall sinne then and was put to the slavery to serve that body and to serve it in the ways of sinne not for an Apprentiship of seven but seventy years after that that soul after it hath once got loose by death and liv'd God knows how many thousands of years free from that body that abus'd it so before and in the sight and fruition of that God where it was in no danger should willingly nay desirously ambitiously seek this scuttered body this Eastern and Western and Northern and Southern body this is the most inconsiderable consideration and yet Ego I I the same body and the same soul shall be recompact again and be identically numerically individually the same man The same integrity of body and soul and the same integrity in the Organs of my body and in the faculties of my soul too I shall be all there my body and my soul all my body all my soul I am not all here I am here now preaching upon this text and I am at home in my Library considering whether S. Gregory or S. Hierome have said best of this text before I am here speaking to you and yet I consider by the way in the same instant what it is likely you will say to one another when I have done you are not all here neither you are here now hearing me and yet you are thinking that you have heard a better Sermon somewhere else of this text before you are here and yet you think you could have heard some other doctrine of down-right Predestinations and Reprobation roundly delivered somewhere else with more edification to youâ— you are here and you remember your selves that now yee think of it This had been the fittest time now when every body else is at Church to have made such and such a private visit and because you would bee there you are there I cannot say you cannot say so perfectly so entirely now as at the Resurrection Ego I am here I body and soul I soul and faculties as Christ sayd to Peter Noli timere Ego sum Fear nothing it is I so I say to my selfe Noli timere My soul why art thou so sad my body why dost thou languish Ego I body and soul soul and faculties shall say to Christ Jesus Ego sum Lord it is I and hee shall not say Nescio te I know thee not but avow me and place me at his right hand Ego sum I am the man that hath seen affliction by the rod of his wrath Ego sum and I the same man shall receive the crown of glory which shall not fade Ego I the same person Ego videbo I shall see I have had no looking-glasse in my grave to see how my body looks in the dissolution I know not how I have had no houre-glasse in my grave to see how my time passes I know not when for when my eylids are closed in my death-bed the Angel hath said to me that time shall be no more Till I see eternity the ancient of days I shall see no more but then I shall Now why is Iob gladder of the use of this sense of seeing then of any of the other He is not He is glad of seeing but not of the sense but of the Object It is true that is said in the School Viciniùs se habent potentiae sensitivae ad animam quà m corpus Our sensitive faculties have more relation to the soul then to the body but yet to some purpose and in some measure all the senses shall be in our glorifyed bodies In actu or in potentiâ
upon thee and true that God is angry vehemently angry But Expone juststiam irae Dei deal clearly with the world and clear God and confesse it is because of thy sinne When Cain says My sin is greater then can be forgiven that word Gnavon is ambiguous it may bee sinne it may bee punishment and wee know not whether his impatience grew out of the horrour of his sinne or the weight of his punishment But here wee are directed by a word that hath no ambiguity Kata signifies sin and nothing but sinne Here the holy Ghost hath fixed thee upon a word that will not suffer thee to consider the punishment nor the cause of the punishment the anger but the cause of that anger and all the sin Wee see that the bodily sicknesse and the death of many is attributed to one kind of sinne to the negligent receiving of the Sacrament For this cause many are weak and sick amongst you and many sleep Imaginem judicii ostenderat God had given a representation of the day of Judgement in that proceeding of his for then we shall see many men condemned for sinnes for which we never suspected them so wee thinke men dye of Fevers whom we met lately at the Sacrament and God hath cut them off perhaps for that sin of their unworthy receiving the Sacrament My miseries are the fruits of this Tree Gods anger is the arms that spreads it but the root is sin My sin which is another consideration We say of a Possession Transit cum onere It passes to me with the burthen that my Father laid upon it his debt is my debt so does it with the sin too his sin by which he got that possession is my sin if I know it and perchance the punishment mine though I know not the sin Adams sin 6000 years agoe is my sin and their sin that shall sinne by occasion of any wanton writings of mine will be my sin though they come after Wofull riddle sin is but a privation and yet there is not such another positive possession sin is nothing and yet there is nothing else I sinned in the first man that ever was and but for the mercy of God in something that I have said or done might sin that is occasion sin in the last man that ever shall be But that sin that is called my sinne in this text is that that is become mine by an habituall practise or mine by a wilfull relapse into it And so my sin may kindle the anger of God though it bee but a single sinne One sinne as it is delivered here in the singular and no farther Because of my sinne Every man may find in himself Peccatum complicatum sinne wrapped up in sinne a body of sin We bring Elements of our own earth of Covetousnesse water of unsteadfastnesse ayre of putrefaction and fire of licentiousnesse and of these elements we make a body of sinne as the Apostle says of the Naturall body There are many members but one body so we may say of our sin it hath a wanton eye a griping hand an itching ear an insatiable heart and feet swift to shed blood and yet it is but one body of sin It is all â—and yet it is but One But let it be simply and singularly but One which is a miracle in sin truly I think an impossibility in sin to be single to be but One for that unclean Spirit which possessed the man that dwelt amongst the tombs carryed it at first as though he had been a single Devill and he alone in that man I I adjure thee says he to Christ and torment not me not me so far in the singular but when Christ puts him to it he confesses we are many and my name is legion So though thy sinne slightly examined may seem but One yet if thou dare presse it it will confesse a plurality a legion if it be but One yet if that One be made thine by an habituall love to it as the plague needs not the help of a Consumption to kill thee so neither does Adultery need the help of Murder to damn thee For this making of any One sin thine thine by an habituall love thereof will grow up to the last and heaviest waight intimated in that phrase which is also in this clause of the Text In facie paccati that this sin will have a face that is a confidence and a devesting of all 〈◊〉 or disguises There cannot bee a heavier punishment laid upon any sinne then Christ lays upon scandall It were better for him a mil-stone were hanged about his neck and hee drowned in the Sea If something worse then such a death belong to him surely it is eternall Death And this this eternall death is interminated by Christ in cases where there is not always sinne in the action which wee doe but if we doe any action so as that it may scandalize another or occasion sin in him we are bound to study and favour the weaknesse of other men and not to doe such things as they may think sins We must prevent the mis-interpretation yea the malice of other men for though the fire be theirs the fewell or at least the â—ellows is ours The uncharitablenesse the malice is in them but the awaking and the stirring thereof is in our carelesnesse who were not watchfull upon our actions But when an action comes to be sin indeed and not onely occasionally sin because it scandalizes another but really sin in it selfe then even the Poet tels you Maxima debetur pueris reverentia si quid Tâ—rpe paras Take heed of doing any sinne in the sight of thy Child for if we break through that wall we shall come quickly to that faciâ—m Sacerdotis non erubuerunt they will not be afraid nor ashamed in the presence of the Priest they will look him in the face nay receive at his hands and yet sin their sinne that minute in their hearts and to that also faciem seniorum non erubuerunt they will not be afraid nor ashamed of the Office of the Magistrate but sin for nothing or sin at a price bear out or buy out all their sins They sin as Sodom and bide it not is the highest charge that the Holy Ghost could lay upon the sinner When they come to say Our lips are ours who is Lord ever us They will say so of their hands and of all their bodies They are ours who shall forbid us to doe what wee will with them And what lack these open sinners of the last judgement and the condemnation therof That judgement is that men shall stand naked in the sight of one another and all their sinnes shall be made manifest to all and this open sinner does so and chuses to doe so even in this world When David prays so devoutly to be cleansed from his secret sins and Saint Paul glories so devoutly in having renounced the
into this life I would not wish to have come into this world And now that God hath made this life a Bridge to Heaven it is but a giddy and a vertiginous thing to stand long gazing upon so narrow a bridge and over so deep and roaring waters and desperate whirlpools as this world abounds with So teach us to number our dayes saith David that we may apply our hearts unto wisedome Not to number them so as that we place our happinesse in the increase of their number What is this wisedome he tells us there He asked life of thee and thou gavest it him But was that this life It was Length of dayes for ever and ever the dayes of Heaven As houses that stand in two Shires trouble the execution of Justice the house of death that stands in two worlds may trouble a good mans resolution As death is a sordid Postern by which I must be thrown out of this world I would decline it But as death is the gate by which I must enter into Heaven would I never come to it certainly now now that Sinne hath made life so miserable if God should deny us death he multiplied our misery We are in this Text upon blessings appropriated to the Christian Church and so to these times And in theseTimes we have not so long life as the Patriarchs had before They were to multiply children for replenishing the world and to that purpose had long life We multiply sinnes and the children and off-spring of sinnes miseries and therefore may be glad to get from this generation of Vipers God gave his Children Manna and Quails in the Wildernesse where nothing else was to be had but when they came to the Land of Promise that Provision ceas'd God gave them long life in the times of Nature and long though shorter then before in the times of the Law because in nature especially but in the Law also it was hard to discern hard to attain the wayes to Heaven But the wayes to Heaven are made so manifest to us in the Gospel as that for that use we need not long life and that is all the use of our life here He that is ready for Heaven hath lived to a blessed age and to such an intendment a childe newly baptized may be elder then his Grandfather Therefore we receive long life for a blessing when God is pleased to give it though Christ entered it into no Petition of his Prayer that God would give it and so though we enter it into no Petition nor Prayer we receive it as a blessing too when God will afford us a deliverance a manumission an emancipation from the miseries of this life Truely I would not change that joy and consolation which I proposed to my hopes upon my Death-bed at my passage out of this world for all the joy that I have had in this world over again And so very a part of the Joy of Heaven is a joyfull transmigration from hence as that if there were no more reward no more recompence but that I would put my self to all that belongs to the duty of an honest Christian in the world onely for a joyfull a cheerfull passage out of it And farther we shall not exercise your patience or your devotion upon these three pieces which constitute our first part The Primogeniture of Gods Mercy which is first in all The specification of Gods Mercy long Life as it is a figure of and a way to eternity and then the association of Gods Mercy that Death as well as Life is a blessing to the Righteous So then we have brought our Sunne to his Meridianall height to a full Noon in which all shadows are removed for even the shadow of death death it self is a blessing and in the number of his Mercies But the Afternoon shadows break out upon us in our second part of the Text. And as afternoon shadowes do these in our Text do also they grow greater and greater upon us till they end in night in everlasting night The sinner being a hundred years old shall be accursed Now of shadowes it is appliably said Vmbrae non sunt tenebrae sed densior lux shadowes are not utter darknesse but a thicker light shadowes are thus much nearer to the nature of light then darknesse is that shadowes presume light which darknesse doth not shadowes could not be except there were light The first shadowes in this dark part of our Text have thus much light in them that it is but the sinner onely the sinner that is accursed The Object of Gods malediction is not man but sinfull man If God make a man sinne God curses the man but if sinne make God curse God curses but the sinne Non talem Deum tuum putes qualis nec tu debes esse Never propose to thy self such a God as thou wert not bound to imitate Thou mistakest God if thou make him to be any such thing or make him to do any such thing as thou in thy proportion shouldst not be or shouldst not do And shouldst thou curse any man that had never offended never transgrest never trespast thee Can God have done so Imagine God as the Poet saith Ludere in humanis to play but a game at Chesse with this world to sport himself with making little things great and great things nothing Imagine God to be but at play with us but a gamester yet will a gamester curse before he be in danger of losing any thing Will God curse man before man have sinned In the Law there are denuntiations of curses enjoyned and multiplied There is maledictus upon maledictus but it is maledictus homo cursed be the man He was not curst by God before he was a man nor curst by God because he was a man but if that man commit Idolatry Adultery Incest Beastiality Bribery Calumny as the sinnes are reckoned there there he meets a particular curse upon his particular sinne The book of Life is but names written in Heaven all the Book of Death that is is but that in the Prophet when names are written in the Earth But whose names are written in the Earth there They that depart from thee shall be written in the Earth They shall be when they depart from thee For saith he They have forsaken the Lord the Fountain of Living water They did not that because their names were written in the Earth but they were written there because they did that Our Saviour Christ came hither to do all his Fathers will and he returned cheerfully to his Father again as though he had done all when he had taken away the sinnes of the world by dying for all sinnes and all sinners But if there were an Hospitall of miserable men that lay under the reprobation and malediction of Gods decree and not for sinne the blood of that Lamb is not sprinkled upon the Postills of that doore Forgive me O Lord O Lord forgive
24. Take heed what you heare WHether that which is recorded by this Evangelist in and about this Chapter be one intire Sermon of our Saviours preached at once or Notes taken and erected from severall Sermons of his we are no further curious to inquire then may serve to ground this Note that if it were one intire Sermon our Saviour preached methodically and eased his hearers with certain landmarks by the way with certain divisions certain transitions and callings upon them to observe the points as they arose For as he beginneth so Hearken Behold so he returneth to that refreshing of their considerations Et dixit illis He said unto them and Again he said unto them seaven or eight times in this Chapter so many times he calleth upon them to observe his passing from one point to another If they be but Notes of severall Sermons we onely note this from that That though a man understand not a whole Sermon or remember not a whole Sermon yet he doth well that layeth hold upon such Notes therein as may be appliable to his own case and his own conscience and conduce to his own edification The widow of Sarepta had no Palaces to build and therefore she went not out to survay Timber she had onely a poore cake to bake to save her own and her childs life and she went out to gather a few sticks two sticks as she told the Prophet Elias to do that work Every man that cometh to heare here every man that cometh to speak here cometh not to build Churches nor to build Common-wealths to speak onely of the duties of Kings and of Prelates and of Magistrates but that poore soul that gathers a stick or two for the baking of her own cake that layeth hold upon any Note for the rectifying of her own perverseness hath performed the commandment of this Text Take heed what ye heare He that is drowning will take hold of a bulrush and even that bulrush may stay him till stronger means of succour come If you would but feel that you are drowning in the whirlepooles of sinne and Gods judgements for sin and would lay hold upon the shallowest man be that man dignified with Gods Character the Character of Orders and lay hold upon the meanest part of his speach be that speach dignified with Gods Ordinance be it a Sermon even I and any thing that I say here and say thus spoken by a Minister of God in the house of God by the Ordinance of God might stop you till you heard better and you might be the fitter for more if you would but take heed now what you heard Take heed what you heare These words were spoken by Christ to his Apostles upon this occasion He had told them before That since there was a candle lighted in the world it must not be put under a bushell nor under a bed verse 21. That all that is hid should be made manifest That all that was kept secret should come abroad verse 22. That if any man had ears to heare he might heare verse 23. That is that the Mystery of salvation which had been hid from the world till now was now to be published to the world by their Preaching their Ministery their Apostleship And that therefore since he was now giving them their Commission and their instructions since all that they had in charge for the salvation of the whole world was onely that that he delivered unto them that which they heard from him they should take heed what they heard Take heed what you heare In which he layeth a double obligation upon them First All that you hear from me you are to preach to the world and therefore Take heed what you heare forget none of that And then you are to preach no more then you heare from me and therefore Take heed what you heare adde nothing to that Be not over-timorous so to prevaricate and forbear to preach that which you have truely heard from me But be not over-venturous neither to pretend a Commission when you have none and to preach that for my word which is your own passion or their purpose that set you up And when we shall have considered these words in this their first acceptation as they were spoken literally and personally to the Apostles we shall see also that by reflexion they are spoken to us the Ministers of the Gospell and not onely to us of the Reformation but to our Adversaries of the Romane perswasion too and therefore in that part we shall institute a short comparison whether they or we do best observe this commandment Take heed what you heare Preach all that preach nothing but that which you have received from me And having passed through these words in both those acceptations literally to the Apostles and by reflexion to all the Ministers of the Gospell the Apostles being at this time when these words were spoken but Hearers they are also by a fair accommodation appliable to you that are Hearers now Take heed what you heare And since God hath extended upon you that glorification that beatification as that he hath made you regale Sacerdotium a royall Priesthood since you have a Regality and a Priesthood imprinted upon you since by the prerogative which you have in the Gospell of the Kingdome of Christ Jesus and the co-inheritance which you have in that Kingdome with Christ Jesus himself you are Regum genus and Sacerdotum genus of kin to Kings and of kin to Priests be carefull of the honour of both those of whose honour you have the honour to participate and take heed what you heare of Kings take heed what you heare of Priests take heed of hearkning to seditious rumours which may violate the dignity of the State or of schismaticall rumours which may cast a cloud or aspersion upon the government of the Church Take heed what you hear First then as the words are spoken in their first acceptation literally to the Apostles the first obligation that Christ layes upon them is the publication of the whole Gospell Take heed what you heare for all that which you hear from me the world must heare from you for for all my death and resurrection the world lies still surrounded under sinne and Condemnation if this death and resurrection be not preached by you unto them Therefore the last words that ever our Saviour spoke unto them were a ratification of this Commission You shall be my witnesses both in Ierusalem and in Iudea and in Samaria and unto the uttermost parts of the earth God proceeds legally Publication before Judgement God shall condemn no man for not beleeving in Christ to whom Christ was never manifested 'T is true that God is said to have come to Eliah in that still small voice and not in the strong wind not in the Earth-quake not in the fire So God says Sibilabâ— populum meum I will but kisse I will but whisper for my
January 7. 1620. JOB 13. 15. Loe though he slay me yet will I trust in him THe name by which God notified himselfe to all the world at first was Qui sum I am this was his style in the Commission that he gave to Moses to Pharaoh say that he whose name is I am hath sent thee forthere God would have it made known that all Essence all Beeing all things that fall out in any time past or present or future had their dependece upon him their derivation from him their subsistence in him But then when God contracts himselfe into a narrower consideration not to be considered as God which implies the whole Trinity but as Christ which is onely the second Person and when he does not so much notifie himselfe to the whole world as to the Christian Church then he contracts his name too from that spacious and extensive Qui sum I am which includes all time to Alpha and Omega first and last which are peeces of time as we see in severall places of the Revelation he styles himselfe when God speakes to the whole world his name is Qui sum I am that all the world may confesse that all that is is nothing but with relation to him when he speakes to a Christian his name is Alpha and Omega first and last that a Christian may in the very name of God fixe his thoughts upon his beginning and upon his end and ever remember that as a few years since in his Cradle he had no sense of that honour those riches those pleasures which possesses his time now so God knowes how few days hence in his grave he shall have no sense no memory of them Our whole life is but a parenthesis our receiving of our soule and delivering it back againe makes up the perfect sentence Christ is Alpha and Omega and our Alpha and Omega is all we are to consider Now for all the letters in this Alphabet of our life that is for all the various accidents in the course thereof we cannot study a better booke then the person of Iob. His first letter his Alpha we know not we know not his Birth His last letter his Omega we know not we know not his Death But all his other letters His Children and his riches we read over and over againe How he had them how he lost them and how he recovered them By which though it appeare that those temporall things doe also belong to the care and provision of a godly man yet it appears too that neither his first care nor his last care appertaines to the things of this world but that there is a Primùm quaerite something to be sought for before The kingdome of God And there is a Memorare novissima something to be thought on after The Ioyes of heaven And then Catera adjicientur says Christ All other cares are allowable by way of Accessary but not as principall And therefore though this History of Iob may seeme to spend it selfe upon the relation of Iobs temporall passages of his wealth and poverty of his sicknesse and recovery yet if we consider the Alpha and Omega of the booke it selfe the first beginning and the later end thereof we shall see in both places a care of the Holy ghost to shew us first Iobs righteousnesse and then his riches first his Goodnesse and then his Goods in both places there is a Catechisme a Confession of his faith before and then an Inventory and Catalogue of his wealth for in the first place it is sayd He was an upright and just man and feared God and eschewed evill and then his Children and his substance follow And in the last place it is said That Iob was accepted by God and that he prayed for those friends which had vext him and then it is that his former substance was doubled unto him This world then is but an Occasionall world a world onely to be us'd and that but so as though we us'd it not The next world is the world to be enjoy'd and that so as that we may joy in nothing by the way but as it directs and conduces to that end Nay though we have no Joy at al though God deny us all conveniencies here Etiamsi occiderit though he end a weary life with a painefull death as there is no other hope but in him so there needs no other for that alone is both abundant and infallible in it selfe Now as no History is more various then Iobs fortune so is no phrase no style more ambiguous then that in which Iobs history is written very many words so expressed very many phrases so conceived as that they admit a diverse a contrary sense for such an ambiguity in a single word there is an example in the beginning in Iobs wife we know not from the word it selfe whether it be Benedicas or maledicas whether she sayd Blesse God and die or Curse God And for such an ambiguity in an intire sentence the words of this text are a pregnant and evident example for they may be directly and properly thus rendered out of the Hebrew Behold he will kill me I will not hope and this seemes to differ much from our reading Behold though he kill me yet will I trust in him And therefore to make up that sense which our translation hath which is truely the true sense of the place we must first make this paraphrase Behold he will kill me I make account he will kill me I looke not for life at his hands his will be done upon me for that And then the rest of the sentence I will not hope as we read it in the Hebrew must be supplyed or rectified rather with an Interrogation which that language wants and the translators use to add it where they see the sense require it And so reading it with an Interrogation the Originall and our translation will constitute one and the same thing It will be all one sense to say with the Originall Behold he will kill me that is let him kill me yet shall not I hope in him and to say with our translation Behold though he kill me yet will I hope in him And this sense of the words both the Chaldee paraphrase and all translations excepting onely the Septuagint do unanimously establish So then the sense of the words being thus fixed we shall not distract your understandings or load your memories with more then two parts Those for your ease and to make the better impression we will call propositum and praepositum first the purpose the resolution of a godly man which is to rely upon God and then the consideration the inducement the debatement of this beforehand That no Danger can present it selfe which he had not thought of before He hath carried his thoughts to the last period he hath stirred the potion to the last scruple of Rheuharb and Wormewod which is in it he hath digested the worst he hath considered Death
it selfe and therefore his resolution stands unshak'd Etiamsi occiderit Though he dy for it yet he will trust in God In the first then The Resolution the purpose it selfe we shall consider Quem and Quid The Person and the Affection To whom Iob will beare so great and so reverent a respect and then what this respect is I will trust in him I would not stay you upon the first branch upon the person as upon a particular consideration though even that The person upon whom in all cases we are to rely be entertainement sufficient for the meditation of our whole life but that there arises an usefull observation out of that name by which Iob delivers that person to us in this place Iob says though He kill me yet he will trust in him but he tells us not in this verse who this He is And though we know by the frame and context that this is God yet we must have recourse to the third verse to see in what apprehension and what notion in what Character and what Contemplation in what name and what nature what Attribute and what Capacity Iob conceived and proposed God to himselfe when he fix'd his resolution so intirely to rely upon him for as God is a jealous God I am sure I have given him occasion of jealousy and suspicion I have multiplied my fornications and yet am not satisfied as the prophet speakes As God is a Consuming fire I have made my selfe fuell for the fire and I have brought the fires of lust and of ambition to kindle that fire As God visits the sinnes of fathers upon Children I know not what sinnes my fathers and grandfathers have layd up in the treasure of Gods indignation As God comes to my notion in these formes Horrendum it were a fearefull thing to flesh and bloud to deliver ones selfe over to him as he is a jealous God and a Consuming fire But in that third verse Iob sets before him that God whom he conceives to be Shaddai that is Omnipotens Allmighty I will speake to the Allmighty and I desire to dispute with God Now if we propose God to our selves in that name as he is Shaddai we shall find that word in so many significations in the scriptures as that no misery or calamity no prosperity or happinesse can fall upon us but we shall still see it of what kinde so ever it be descend from God in this acceptation as God is Shaddai For first this word signifies Dishoner as the Septuagint translate it in the Proverbs He that Dishonoreth his parents is a shamelesse child There 's this word Shaddai is the name of God and yet Shaddai signifies Dishonor In the prophet Esay it signifies Depredation a forcible and violent taking away of our goods vae praedanti says God in that place woe to thee that spoyledst and wast not spoyled Shaddai is the name of God and yet Shaddai is spoyle and violence and depredation In the prophet Ieremy the word is carried farther there it signifies Destruction and an utter Dâ—vastation Dâ—vastati sumus says he we unto us for we are Destroy'd The word is Shaddai and is Destruction though Shaddai be the name of God yea the word reaches to a more spirituall affection it extends to the understanding and error in that and to the Conscience and sinne in that for so the Septuagint makes use of this word in the Proverbs To deceive and to ly and in one place of the Psalmes they interpret the word of the Devil himselfe So that recollecting all these heavy significations of the word Dishonor and Disreputation force and Depredation Ruine and Devastation Error and Illusion the Devill and his Tentations are presented to us in the same word as the name and power of God is that when so ever any of these doe fall upon us in the same instant when we see and consider the name and quality of this calamity that falls we may see and consider the power and the purpose of God which inflicts that Calamity I cannot call the calamity by a name but in that name I name God I cannot feel an affliction but in that very affliction I feel the hand and if I will the medicinall hand of my God If therefore our Honour and Reputation decay all honor was a beame of him and if he have sucked that beame into himselfe let us follow it home let us labor to be honorable in him glorified in him and our honor is not extinguished in this world but growne too glorious for this world to comprehend If spoyle and Depredation come upon us that we be covered with wrath and persecuted slaine and not spared That those that fed delicately perish in the streets and they that were brought up in scarlet embrace the Dunghill and that the hands of pitifull women have sodden their owne children as the prophet complains in the Lamentations if there be such an irreparable Devastation upon us as that we be broken as an Earthern vessell in the breaking whereof there remaines not a sheard to fetch fire from the hearth nor water from the pit That our estate be ruined so as that there is nothing left not onely for future posterity but not for the present family yet still God and the calamity are together God does not send it but bring it he is there as soone as the calamity is there and calling that calamity by his owne name Shaddai he would make that very calamity a candle to thee by which thou mightst see him that if thou wert not so puffed up before as that thou forgotst to say Dominus dedit It was the Lord that gave all thou shouldst not be so dejected so rebellious now as not to say Dominus tulit It is the Lord that hath taken and committed to some better steward those treasures of his which he saw thou dost employ to thine owne danger Yea if those spirituall afflictions which reach to the understanding and are intimated and involved in this word in this name of God doe fall upon us That we call for our lovers and they deceive us as we told you the word did signifie deceit that is we come to see how much we mistooke the matter when we fell in love with wordly things as certainely once in our lives though it be but upon our Death beds we doe come to discover that deceit yea when the deceit is so spirituall as that it reaches not onely to the understanding but to the Conscience that that have been deceived either with security at one time or with anxieties and unnecessary scruples and impertinent perplexities at another if this spirituall deceit have gone so high as that wee came to thinke our selves to be amongst them of whom the prophet sayes Ah Lord God surely thou hast deceived thy people and Ierusalem that we come to suspect that God hath misled us in a false religion all this while and that there is
against us but yet with our ten thousand we may meet their twenty thousand if we have put on Christ and be armed with him and his holy patience and constancy but from whom may we derive an assurance that we shall have that armor that patience that constancy First a Christian must purpose to Doe and then in cases of necessity to suffer And give me leave to make this short note by the way no man shall suffer like a Christian that hath done nothing like a Christian God shall thanke no man for dying for him and his glory that contributed nothing to his glory in the actions of his life very hardly shall that man be a Martyr in a persecution that did not what he could to keep off persecution Thus then Iob comes first to the Si occiderit If he should kill me If Gods anger should proceed so far as so far it may proceed Let no man say in a sicknesse or in any temporall calamity this is the worst for a worse thing then that may fall five and thirty years sicknesse may fall upon thee and as it is in that Gospell a worse thing then that Distraction and desperation may fall upon thee let no Church no State in any distress say this is the worst for onely God knowes what is the worst that God can doe to us Iob does not deny here but that this Si occiderit if it come to a matter of life it were another manner of triall then either the si irruerent Sabaei if the Sabaeans should come and drive his Cattell and slay his servants more then the si ignis caderet if the fire of God should fall from heaven and devoute all more then the si ventus concuteret if the winde of the wildernesse should shake downe his house and kill and all his children The Devill in his malice saw that if it came to matter of life Iob was like enough to be shaked in his faith Skin for skin and all that ever a man hath will he give for his life God foresaw that in his gracious providence too and therefore he took that clause out of Satans Commission and inserted his veruntamen animam ejus servae medle not with his life The love of this life which is naturall to us and imprinted by God in us is not sinfull Few and evill have the days of my pilgrimage been says lacob to Pharaeoh though they had been evill which makes our days seem long and though he were no young man when he said so yet the days which he had past he thought few and desired more When Eliah was fled into the wildernesse and that in passion and vehemence he said to God Sufficit Domine tolle animam meam It is enough O Lord now take away my life if he had been heartily thoroughly weary of his life he needed not to have fled from Iesabel for he fled but to save his life The Apostle had a Cupie dissolvi a desire to be dissolved but yet a love to his brethren corrected that desire and made him finde that it was far better for him to live Our Saviour himselfe when it came to the pinch and to the agony had a Transeat Calix a naturall declining of death The naturall love of our naturall life is not ill It is ill in many cases not to love this life to expose it to unnecessary dangers is alwayes ill and there are overtures to as great sinnes in hating this life as in loving it and therefore Iobs first consideration is si occideret if he should kill me if I thought he would kill me this were enough to put me from trusting in any But Iobs consideration went farther then to the si occideret Though he should kill me for it comes to an absolute assurance that God will kill him for so it is in the Originall Ecce occidet Behold I see he will kill me I have I can have no hope of life at his hands T is all our cases Adam might have liv'd if he would but I cannot God hath placed an Ecce a marke of my death upon every thing living that I can set mine eye upon every thing is a remembrancer every thing is a Judge upon me and pronounces I must dye The whole frame of the world is mortall Heaven and Earth passe away and upon us all there is an irrecoverable Decree past statutum est It is appointed to all men that they shall once dye But when quickly If thou looke up into the aire remember that thy life is but a winde If thou see a cloud in the aire aske St. Iames his question what is your life and give St. Iames his answer It is a vapour that appeareth and vanisheth away If thou behold a Tree then Iob gives thee a comparison of thy selfe A Tree is an embleme of thy selfe nay a Tree is the originall thou art but the copy thou art not so good as it for There is hope of a tree as you reade there if the roote wax old if the stock be dead if it be cut down yet by the sent of the waters it will bud but man is sick and dyeth and where is he he shall not wake againe till heaven be no more Looke upon the water and we are as that and as that spilt upon the ground Looke to the earth and we are not like that but we are earth it self At our Tables we feed upon the dead and in the Temple we tread upon the dead and when we meet in a Church God hath made many echoes many testimonies of our death in the walls and in the windowes and he onely knowes whether he will not make another testimony of our mortality of the youngest amongst us before we part and make the very place of our buriall our deathbed Iobs contemplation went so far not onely to a Si occideret to a possibility that he might dye but to an Ecce occidet to an assurance that he must dye I know there is an infalliblenesse in the Decree an inevitablenesse in nature an inexorablenesse in God I must dye And the word beares a third interpretation beyond this for si occiderit is not onely if he should kill me as he maâ— if he will and it may be he will nor onely that I am sure he will kill me I know I must dye but the word may very well be also though he have killed me So that Iobs resolution that he will trust in God is grounded upon all these considerations That there is exercise of our hope in God before death in the agony of death and after death First in our good dayes and in the time of health Memorare novissima sayes the wise man we must remember our end our death But that we cannot forget every thing presents that to us But his counsell there is in omnibus operibus In all thine undertakings in all thine actions remember thine end when thou art in any worldly
of nature to behold him so as to fixe upon him in meditation God benights us or eclipses us or casts a cloud of medicinall afflictions and wholsome corrections upon us Naturally we dwell longer upon the consideration of God when we see the Sun eclipsed then when we see it rise we passe by that as an ordinary thing and so in our afflictions we stand and looke upon God and we behold him A man may see God and forget that ever he saw him When saw we thee hungry or naked or sick or in prison say those mercilesse men they forgot but Christ remembers that they did see him but not behold him see him and looke off see him so as aggravated their sin more then if they had never seene him But that man who through his owne red glasse can see Christ in that colour too through his own miseries can see Christ Jesus in his blood that through the calumnies that have been put upon himselfe can see the revilings that were multiplyed upon Christ that in his own imprisonment can see Christ in the grave and in his owne enlargement Christ in his resurrection this man this Enosh beholds God and he beholds him é longinquo which is another step in this branch he sees him afar off Now this seeing afar off is not a phrase of diminution a circumstance of extenuation as though it were lesse to see God afar off and more to see him neerer This far off is far from that it is a power of seeing him so as wheresoever I am or wheresoever God is I can see him at any distance Being established in my foundation upon God being built up by faith in that notion of God in which he hath manifested himselfe to me in his Sonne being mounted and raised by dwelling in his Church being made like unto him in suffering as he suffered I can see round about me even to the Horizon and beyond it I can see both Hemispheres at once God in this and God in the next world too I can see him in the Zenith in the highest point and see how he works upon Pharaoh on the Throne and I can see him in the Nadir in the lowest dejection and see how he workes upon Ioseph in the prison I can see him in the East see how mercifully he brought the Christian Religion amongst us and see him in the West see how justly he might remove that againe and leave us to our own inventions I can see him in the South in a warme and in the North in a frosty fortune I can see him in all angles in all postures Abraham saw God coming to him as he fate at the doore of his Tent and though as the Text sayes there God stood by him yet sayes the Text too Abraham ran to meet God I can see God in the visitation of his Spirit come to me and when he is so he is already in me but I must run out to meet him that is labour to hold him there and to advance that manifestation of himselfe in me Abraham saw God comming Moses saw God going his glory passing by he saw posteriora his hinder parts so I can see God in the memory of his blessings formerly conferred upon me And Moses saw him too in a burning bush in thornes and fire And had I no other light but the fire of a pile of faggots in that light I could see his light I could see himselfe Let me be the man of this Text this Enosh to say with Ieremy I am the man that hath seene affliction by the rod of his wrath Let me have had this third concoction that as I am Adam a man of earth wrought upon that wheele and as I am a Christian a vessell in his house a member of his Church wrought upon that wheele so let me be vir dolorum a man of affliction a vessell baked in that furnace fitted by Gods proportion and dosis of his corrections to make a right use of his corrections and I can see God E longinquo afar off I can see him writing downe my name in the booke of life before I was borne and I can see him giving his Angels The Angell of the great Counsell Christ Jesus himselfe and his spirit charge of my preservation all the way and of my transmigration upon my death-bed and that is E longinquo from before I was to after I shall be no more There remaines a word more 'T is scarce well said for there remaines not a word more There is not another word and yet there is another branch in the Text. This man not every man as before this Enosh not every Adam as before he sees not onely as before but he beholds afarre off and so farre we are gone but what beholds he afarre off That the Text tels us not Before there was an illud Every man may see that aske what is that and I can tell you I have told you out of the coherence of the Text It is Gods workes manifesting himselfe even to the naturall man But this man this Enosh raised by his dejection rectified by humiliation may behold what here is no illud no such word as that no object limited and therefore it is that which no eye hath seene nor eare heard nor heart of man conceived it is God in the glory and assembly of his immortall Saints in heaven How many times go we to Comedies to Masques to places of great and noble resort nay even to Church onely to see the company If I had no other errand to heaven but the communion of Saints the fellowship of the faithfull Lo see that flock of Lambs Innocent unbaptized children recompensed with the twice-baptized Martyrs baptized in water and baptized in their owne blood and that middle sort the children baptized in blood and not in the water that rescued Christ Jesus by their death under Herod to see the Prophets and the Evangelists and not know one from the other by their writings for they all write the same things for prophecy is but antidated Gospell and Gospell but postdated prophecy to see holy Matrons saved by the bearing and bringing up of children and holy Virgins saved by restoring their bodies in the integrity that they received them sit all upon one seate to see Princes and Subjects crowned all with one crowne and rich and poore inherit one portion to see this scene this Court this Church this Catholique Church not onely Easterne and Westerne but Militant and Triumphant Church all in one roome together to see this Communion of Saints this fellowship of the faithfull is worth all the paynes that that sight costs us in this world But then to see the head of this Church the Sunne that shed all these beames the God of glory face to face to see him sicuti est as he is to know him at cognitus as I am knowne what darke and inglorious fortune would I not passe thorow
her selfe had no Crown but that which he gave her The Crown that she gave him was that substance that he received from her our flesh our nature our humanity and this Athanasius and this Saint Ambrose calls the Crown wherewith his Mother crowned him in this text his infirm his humane nature Or the Corwn wherewith his Mother corwned him was that Crown to which that infirme nature which he tooke from her submitted him which was his passion his Crown of thornes for so Tertullian and divers others take this Crown of his from her to be his Crown of thorns Woe to the Crown of pride whose beauty is a fading flower says the Prophet But blessed be this Crown of Humiliation whose flower cannot fade Then was there truly a Rose amongst Thorns when through his Crown of Thorns you might see his title Iesus Nazarenus for in that very name Nazarenus is involved the signification of a flower the very word signifies a flower Esay's flower in the Crown of pride fades and is removed This flower in the Crown of Thornes fades not nor could be removed for for all the importunity of the Jews Pilate would not suffer that title to be removed or to be changed still Nazarenus remained and still a rose amongst thorns You know the curse of the earth Thorns and thistles shall it bring forth unto thee It did so to our Solomon here it brought forth thornes to Christ and he made a Crown of those thorns not onely for himself but for us too Omnes aculei mortis in Dominici Corporis tolerantia â—btusi sunt All the thorns of life and death are broken or blunted upon the head of our Solomon and now even our thorns make up our Crown our tribulation in life our dissolution in death conduce to our glory Behold him crowned with his Mothers Crown for even that brought him to his Fathers Crown his humiliation to exaltation his passion to glory Behold your Solomon your Saviour again and you shall see another beam of Comfort in your tribulations from his for even this Humiliation of his is called his Espousals his marriage Behold him crowned in the day of his Espousals His Spouse is the Church His marriage is the uniting of himselfe to this Spouse in his becomming Head of the Church The great City the heavenly Jerusalem is called The Bride and The Lambs wife in the Revelation And he is the Head of this body the Bridegroom of this Bride the Head of this Church as he is The first-borne of the Dead Death that dissolves all ours made up this marriage His Death is his Marriage and upon his Death flowed out from his side those two Elements of the Church water and bloud The Sacraments of Baptisme and of the Communion of himself Behold then this Solomon crowned and married both words of Exaltation and Exultation and both by Death and trust him for working the same effects upon thee That thou though by Death shalt be crowned with a Crown of Glory and married to him in whose right and merit thou shalt have that Crown And Behold him once again and you shall see not a beam but a stream of comfort for this day which is the day of his death he calls here The day of the gladnesse of his heart Behold him crowned in the day of the gladnesse of his heart The fulnesse the compasse the two Hemispheres of Heaven are often designed to us in these two names Ioy and Glory If the Crosse of Christ the Death of Christ present us both these how neare doth it bring how fully doth it deliver Heaven it self to us in this life And then we heare the Apostle say We see Iesus for the suffering of Death crowned with Honour and Glory There is half Heaven got by Death Glory And then for the joy that was set before him he indured the Crosse There is the other half Ioy All Heaven purchased by Death And therefore if any man suffer as a Christian let him not be ashamed saith the Apostle but let him glorifie God In isto Nomine as the vulgate read it In that behalfe as we translate it But In isto Nomine saith S. August Let us glorifie God in that Name Non solum in nomine Christiani sed Chriani patientis not onely because he is a Christian in his Baptisme but a Christian in a second Baptisme a Baptisme of bloud not onely as he hath received Christ in accepting his Institution but because he hath conformed himself to Christ in fulfilling his sufferings And therefore though we admit naturall and humane sorrow in the calamities which overtake us and surround us in this life for as all glasses will gather drops and tears from externall causes so this very glasse which we looke upon now our Solomon in the Text our Saviour had those sadnesses of heart toward his Passion and Agonies in his passion yet count it all Ioy when you fall into tentations saith the Apostle All Ioy that is both the interest and the principall hath the earnest and the bargain for if you can conceive joy in your tribulations in this world how shall that joy be multiplied unto you when no tribulation shall be mingled with it There is not a better evidence nor a more binding earnest of everlasting Joy in the next world then to find Ioy of heart in the tribulations of this fixe thy self therefore upon this first glasse this Solomon thy Saviour Behold King Solomon crownd c. and by conforming thy self to his holy sadnesse and humiliation thou shalt also become like him in his Joy and Glory But then the hand of God hath not set up but laid down another Glasse wherein thou maist see thy self a glasse that reflects thy self and nothing but thy selfe Christ who was the other glasse is like thee in every thing but not absolutely for sinne is excepted but in this glasse presented now The Body of our Royall but dead Master and Soveraigne we cannot we doe not except sinne Not onely the greatest man is subject to naturall infirmities Christ himself was so but the holiest man is subject to Originall and Actuall sinne as thou art and so a â—it glasse for thee to see thy self in Ieat showes a man his face as well as Crystall nay a Crystall glasse will not show a man his face except it be steeled except it be darkned on the backside Christ as he was a pure Crystall glasse as he was God had not been a glasse for us to have seen our selves in except he had been steeled darkened with our humane nature Neither was he ever so throughly darkened as that he could present us wholly to our selves because he had no sinne without seeing of which we do not see our selves Those therefore that are like thee in all things subject to humane infirmities subject to sinnes and yet are translated and translated by Death to everlasting Ioy and Glory
own Iesuits though some whom in that Canon they seeme to follow make this Booke of Lamentations but an Appendix to the Prophecy of Ieremy determines for all that Canon that it is a distinct Book Indeed if it were not the first Chapter would have been called the 53 of Ieremy and not the first of the Lamentations But that which gives most assurednesse is That in divers Hebrew Bibles it is placed otherwise then wee place it and not presently and immediately after the Prophecy of Ieremy but discontinued from him though hee were never doubted to be the Author thereof The Booke is certainly the Prophet Ieremies and certainly a distinct booke But whether the Book be a history or a Prophecy whether Ieremy lament that which hee had seen or that which he foresees calamities past or future calamities things done or things to be done is a question which hath exercised and busied divers Expositors But as we say of the Parable of Dives and Lazarus that it is a Historicall parable and a Parabolicall history some such persons there were and some such things were really done but some other things were figuratively symbolically parabolically added So wee say of Ieremies Lamentation It is a Propheticall history and a Historicall prophecy Some of the sad occasions of these Lamentations were past when he writ and some were to come after for we may not despise the testimony of the Chalde Paraphrasts who were the first that illustrated the Bible in that Nation nor of S. Hierome who was much conversant with the Bible and with that Nation nor of Iosephus who had justly so much estimation in that Nation nor of those later Rabbins who were the learnedest of that Nation who are all of opinion that Ieremy writ these Lamentations after hee saw some declinations in that State in the death of Iosiah and so the Book is Historicall but when he onely foresaw their transportation into Babylon before that calamity fell upon them and so it is Propheticall Or if we take the exposition of the others That the whole Booke was written after their transportation into Babylon and to be in all parts Historicall yet it is Propheticall still for the Prophet laments a greater Desolation then that in the utter ruine and devastation of the City and Nation which was to fall upon them after the death of Christ Iesus Neither is any peece of this Booke the lesse fit to be our Text this day because it is both Historicall and Propheticall for they from whom God in his mercy gave us a Deliverance this day are our Historicall Enemies and our Propheticall Enemies historically wee know they have attempted our ruine heretofore and prophetically wee may bee sure they will doe so againe whensoever any new occasion provokes them or sufficient power enables them The Text then is as the Booke presented to Ezckiel In it are written Lamentations and Mournings and Woe and all they are written within and without says the Text there within as they concern the Iews without as they are appliable to us And they concern the Iews Historically attempts upon that State Ieremy had certainly seen and they concern them prophetically for farther attempts Ieremy did certainly foresee They are appliable to us both ways too Historically because wee have seen what they would have done And Prophetically because wee foresee what they would doe So that here is but a difference of the Computation here is stilo veteri and stilo nove here is the Iews Calendar and the Papists Calendar In the Jews Calendar one Babylon wrought upon the people of God and in the Papists Calendar another Babylon Stilo veteri in the Jews Calendar 700 yeare before Christ came there were pits made and the breath of their nostrils The anointed of the Lord was taken in their pits Stilo nove in the Papists Calendar 1600 yeare after Christ came in all fulnesse in all clearnesse There were pits made againe and The breath of our nostrils The anointed of the Lord was almost taken in those pits It is then Ieremies and it is a distinct Book It concernes the Iews and it concerns us too And it concernes us both both wages Historically and Prophetically But whether Ieremy lament here the death of a good King of Iosiah for so Saint Hierome and many of the Ancients and many of the Iewes themselves take it and thinke that those words in the Chronicles have relation to these Lamentations And Ieremy lamented for Iosiah and all the people speake of him in their Lamentations Or whether he lament the transportation and the misery of an ill King of Zedekiah as is more ordinarily and more probably held by the Expositours we argue not we dispute now we imbrace that which arises from bothâ— That both good Kings and bad Kings Iosiah and Zedekiah are the anointed of the Lord and the breath of the nostrills that is The life of the people and therefore both to be lamented when they fall into dangers and consequently both to be preserved by all means by Prayer from them who are private persons by counsell from them who have that great honour and that great charge to be near them in that kinde and by support and supplly from all of all sorts from falling into such dangers These considerations will I thinke have the better impression in you if we proceed in the handling of them thus First the main cause of the Lamentation was the Ruine or the dangerous declination of the Kingdome of that great and glorious State The Kingdome But then they did not seditiously sever the King and the Kingdome as though the Kingdome could doe well and the King ill That safe and he in danger for they see cause to lament because misery was fallen upon the Person of the King perchance upon Iosiah a good a religious King perchance but upon Zedekiah a worse King yet which soever it be they acknowledge him to be Vnctus Domini The anointed of the Lord and to be Spiritus narium The breath of their nostrills When this person therefore was fallen into the pits of the Enemy the Subject laments but this lamenting because he was fallen implies a deliverance a restitution he was fallen but he did not ly there so the Text which is as yet but of Lamentation will grow an houre hence to be of Congratulation and then we shall see That whosoever in rectified affections hath lamented a danger and then congratulated a deliverance he will provide against a relapse a falling again into that or any other danger by all means of sustaining the Kingdome and the King in safety and in honour Our first step then in this Royall progresse is That the cause of this Lamentation was the declination the diminution of the Kingdome If the Center of the world should be moved but one inch out of the place it cannot be reckoned how many miles this Island or any building in it would be thrown out of
them To sever the King and the Kingdome and pretend the weale of the one without the other is to shake and discompose Gods building Historically this was the Jewes case when Ieremy lamented here if he lamented the declination of the State in the death of the King Iosiah And if he lamented the transportation of Zedekiah and that that crosse were not yet come upon them Or if he lamented the future devastation of that Nation occasioned by the death of the King of Kings Christ Jesus when he came into the world this was their case prophetically Either way historically or prophetically Ieremy looks upon the Kingdome but yet through that glasse through the King The duty of the Day and the order of the Text invites us to an application of this branch too Our adversaries did not come to say to themselves Nolumus Regnum hoc we will not have this Kingdome stand the materiall Kingdome the plenty of the Land they would have been content to have but the formall Kingdome that is This forme of Government by a Soveraigne King that depends upon none but God they would not have So that they came implicitely 〈◊〉 Nolumus Regnum hoc we will not have this Kingdome governed thus and they came explicitely to a Nolumus Regem hunc as the Jewes were resolved of Christ We will not have this King to governe at all Non hunc Will you not have him you were at your Nolumus hanc long before Her whom God had set over you before him you would not have Your not Anniversary but Hebdomadary Treasons cast upon her a necessity of drawing blood often and so your Nolumus hâ—nc your desire that she were gone might have some kinde of ground or colour But for your Nolumus hunc for this King who had made no Inquisition for blood who had forborne your very pecuniary penalties who had as himself witnesses of himself made you partakers with his Subjects of his own Religion in matters of grace and in reall benefits and in Titles of Honour Quare fremuerant Why did these men rage and imagine a vaine thing What they did historically we know They made that house which is the hive of the Kingdome from whence all her honey comes that house where Iustice her self is conceived in their preparing of Laws and inanimated and quickned and borne by the Royall Assent there given they made that whole house one Murdring peece and charged that peece with Peers with People with Princes with the King and meant to discharge it upward at the face of heaven to shoot God at the face of God Him of whom God hath said Dii estis You are Gods at the face of God that had said so as though they would have reproached the God of heaven and not have been beholden to him for such a King but shoot him up to him and bid him take his King again with a nolumus hunc regnare we will not have this King to reign over us This was our case Historically and what it is Prophetically as long as that remains to bee their doctrine which he against whom that attempt was principally made found by their examination to be their doctrine That they and no Sect in the world but they did make Treason an article of Religion That their Religion bound them to those attempts so long they are never at an end Till they dis-avow those Doctrines that conduce to that prophetically they wish prophetically they hope for better successe in as ill attempts It is then the kingdome that Ieremy laments but his nearest object is the King Hee laments him First let it be as with S. Hierome many of the Ancients and with them many of the later Rabbins will have it for Josiah for a good King in whose death the honour and the strength of the kingdome took that deadly wound to become tributary to a forain Prince for to this lamentation they refer those words of the Prophet which describe a great sorrow In that day shall there be a great mourning in Ierusalem as the mourning of Hadadrimmon in the valley of Megiddon which was the place where Iosiah was slain There shall be such a lamentation says the Prophet in this interpretation as was for the death of Iosiah This then was for him for a good King Wherein have we his goodnesse expressed Abundantly Hee did that which was right in Gods fight And whose Eye need he fear that is right in the Eye of God But how long did he so To the end for Nero who had his Quinquennium and was a good Emperour for his first five years was one of the worst of all Hee that is ill all the way is but a Tyran Hee that is good at first and after ill an Angels face and a Serpents taile make him a Monster Iosiah began well and persevered so He turned not aside to the right â—and nor to the left That is if we apply it to the Iosiah of our times neither to the fugitive that leaves our Church and goes to the Roman nor to the Separatist that leaves our Church and goes to none In the eighteenth year of his reign Iosiah undertook the reparation of Gods house If we apply this to the Iosiah of our times I think in that year of his reign he visited this Church and these wals and meditated and perswaded the reparation thereof In one word Like unto Iosiah there was no King before nor after And therefore there was just cause of lamentation for this King for Iosiah historically for the very loss of his person prophetically for the misery of the State after his death Our errand is to day to apply all these branches to the day Those men who intended us this cause of lamentation this day in the destruction of our Iosiah spared him not because he was so because so because he was a Iosiah because he was good no not because he was good to them his benefits to them had not mollified them towards him for that is not their way Both the French Henries were their own and good to them but did that rescue either of them from the knife And was not that Emperour whom they poisoned in the Sacrament their own and good to them and yet was that any Antidote against their poison To so reprobate a sense hath God given them over herein as that though in their Books they ly heaviest upon Princes of our Religion yet truly they have destroyed more of their own then of ours Thus it is Historically in their proceedings past And Prophetically it can be but thus since no King is good in their sense if he agree not to all points of Doctrine with them And when that is done not good yet except he agree in all points of Iurisdiction too and that no King can doe that will not be their Farmer of his Kingdome Their Authours have disputed Auferibilitatem Papae whether the Church of God might not be
to the search of the Scriptures All they and they are no small number for there they are said to be ten thousand times ten thousand and thousands of thousands All they say there We are all made Kings and Priests unto our God Begin a Lambe and thou will become a Lion Reade the Scriptures modestly humbly and thou shalt understand them strongly powerfully for hence is it that Saint Chrysâ—stome more then once and Saint Gregory after him meet in that expression That the Scriptures are a Sea in which a Lambe may wade and an Elephant may swimme And this is the Gospell of those poore poore in understanding To those that are spiritually poore wrung in their souls stung in their Consciences fretted galled exulcerated viscerally even in the bowells of their Spirit insensible inapprehensive of the mercies of God in Christ the Lord and his Spirit hath sent me to preach the Gospell also That Gospell Blessed are the poore in Spirit for theirs it the Kingdome of Heaven and to recollect and redintegrate that broken and scattered heart by enabling him to expostulate and chide his owne soule with those words of comfort which the Holy Ghost offereth him once and again and again Why art thou cast downe O my soule and why art thou disquieted in me Hope thou in God and yet praise him for the light of his countenance Words of inexpresible comfort yet praise him for the light of his countenance Though thou sit in darknesse and in the shadow of death yet praise him for the light of his Countenance Whatsoever thy darknesse be put not out that candle The light of his Countenance Maintain that light discerne that light and whatsoever thy darknesse seemed it shall prove to be but an over shadowing of the Holy Ghost And so beloved if you have sufficiently considered first our generall easinesse of falling into the Passive scandall of being offended in others by misinterpreting their proceedings and then the generall scandals which the world tooke at Christ and his Gospell The Philosophers that it was an ignorant religion where you saw That the learneder the adversary is the sooner he is satisfied And the worldly and carnall man that it was a dishonourable an unpleasurable an unprofitable Religion where you saw that it were no Diminution to our Religion if it were all that but it is none of it If you have also considered the particular passive scandall that Christ deprehended in those two Disciples of Iohn That they would doe more then Christ practised or prescribed where you saw also the distemper of those that are derived from them both those that thinke there are some sinners whom Christ cannot save and those who thinke there are no sinners whom they cannot save by their Supererogations And considered lastly the way that Christ tooke to devest these men of this offence and passive scandall which was to call them to the consideration of good workes and of the best workes which he that doth them can doe where you have also seen that Christ makes that our best work To preach the Gospell to the poore both because the poore are destitute of other comforts and because their very poverty hath soupled them and mellowed them and macerated and matured and disposed them by corrections to instructions If you have received all this you have received all that we proposed for the first part the injunction the precept the way Be not sandalized be not offended in me And now that which I suspected at first is faln upon me that is to thrust our other part into a narrow conclusioÌ„ though it be blessednesse it selfe everlasting blessednesse so we must so we shall blessed is he there 's the remuneration the promise the end whosoever is not offended in me Blessed The Heathen who saw by the light of nature that they could have no Beeing if there were no God for it is from one of themselves that Saint Paul says in him we live and move and have our Beeing and Genus cjus suâ—us we are the off-spring of God saw also by the same light of nature that they could have no well-being if there were no Blessednesse And therefore as the Heathen multiplied Gods to themselves so did they also multiply blessednesse They brought their Iupiters to three hundred says Varro And from the same author from Varro does Saint Augustin collect almost three hundred severall opinions of Blessednesse But In multitudine nullitas says Tertullian excellently as where there are many Gods there is no God so where there are many blessednesses imagined there is no blessednesse possessed Not but that as the Sunne which moves onely in his owne Spheare in heaven does yet cast downe beames and influences into this world so that blessednesse which is truly onely in heaven does also cast downe beames and influences hither and gild and enamell yea inanimate the blessings of God here with the true name the true nature of blessednesse For though the vulgat edition doe read that place thus Beatum dixerant populum the world thought that people blessed that were so that is Temporally blessed as though that were but an imaginary and not a true blessednesse and howsoever it have seemed good to our Translators to insert into that verse a discretive particle a particle of difference Yea Blessed are the people that are so that is Temporally blessed Yea blessed are the people whose God is the Lord yet in truth in the Originall there is no such discretive particle no word of difference no yea in the text but both the clauses of that verse are carried in one and the same tenor Blessed are the people that are so Blessed are the people whose God is the Lord that is that people whom the Lord hath blessed so with Temporall blessings is bound to beleeve those temporall blessings to be seales and evidences to them that the Lord is their God So then there is a Viatory a preparatory an initiatory an inchoative blessednesse in this life What is that All agree in this definition that blessednesse is that in quo quiescit animus in which the minde the heart the desire of man hath settled and rested in which it found a Centricall reposednesse an acquiescence a contentment Not that which might satisfie any particular man for so the object would be infinitely various but that beyond which no man could propose any thing And is there such ablessednesse in this life There is Fecisti nos Domine ad te inquietum est Cor nostrum donec quiescat in te Lord thou hast made us for thy selfe and our heart cannot rest till it get to thee But can we come to God here We cannot Where 's then our viatory our preparatory our initiatory our in choative blessednesse Beloved though we cannot come to God here here God comes to us Here in the prayers of the Congregation God comes to us here in his Ordinance of Preaching God
we shall also see that all those particular that did aggravate the affliction in the former part That they were from the Lord from his Rod from the Rod of his wrath doe all exalt our comfort in this That it is a particular comfort that our afflictions are from the Lord Another that they are from his Rod and another also that they are from the Rod of his wrath First then in our first art and the first branch thereof The Generality of affliction considered in the nature thereof We met all generally in the first Treason against our selves without exception all In Adams rebellion who was not in his loins And in a second Treason we met all too in the Treason against Christ Iesus we met all All our sins were upon his shoulders In those two Treasons we have had no exception no exemption The penalty for our first Treason in Adam in a great part we doe all undergoe we doe all die though not without a lothnesse and colluctation at the time yet without a deliberate desire to live in this world for ever How loth soever any man be to die when death comes yet I thinke there is no man that ever formed a deliberate Prayer or wish that he might never die That penalty for our first Treason in Adam we do bear And would any be excepted from bearing any thing deduced from his second Treason his conspiracy against Christ from imitation of his Passion and fulfilling his sufferings in his body in bearing cheerfully the afflictions and tribulations of this life Omnis caro corruper at and thou art within that generall Indictment all flesh had corrupted his way upon Earth Statutum est omnibus mori and thou art within that generall Statute It is appointed unto all men once to die Anima quae peccaverit ipsa morietur and thou art within that generall Sentence and Judgement Every soul that sinneth shall die The death of the soul. Out of these generall Propositions thou canst not get And when in the same universality there commeth a generall pardon Deus vult omnes slavos God will have all men to be saved Because that Pardon hath in it that Ita quod that condition Omnem filium Hee scâ—urgeth every sonne whom he receiveth wouldst thou lose the benefit of that Adoption that Filiation that Patrimony and Inheritance rather then admit patiently his Fatherly chastisements in the afflictions and tribulations in this life Beloved the death of Christ is given to us as a Hand-writing for when Christ naild that Chirographum that first hand-writing that had passed between the Devill and us to his Crosse he did not leave us out of debt nor absolutely discharged but he laid another Chirographum upon us another Obligation arising out of his death His death is delivered to us as a writing but not a writing onely in the nature of a peece of Evidence to plead our inheritance by but a writing in the nature of a Copy to learne by It is not onely given us to reade but to write over and practise Not onely to tell us what he did but how we should do so too All the evills and mischiefes that light upon us in this world come for the most part from this Quia fruimur utendis because we thinke to injoy those things which God hath given us onely to use God hath given us a use of things and we set our hearts upon them And this hath a proportion an assimilation an accommodation in the death of Christ. God hath proposed that for our use in this world and we think to enjoy it God would have us doe it over again and we think it enough to know that Christ hath done it already God would have us write it and we doe onely read it God would have us practise the death of Christ and we do but understand it The fruition the enjoying of the death of Christ is reserved for the next life To this life belongs the use of it that use of it to fulfill his sufferings in our bodies by bearing the afflictions and tribulations of this life For Priùs Trophaeum Crucis erexit deinde Martyribus tradidit erigendum first Christ set up the victorious Trophee of his Crosse himself and then he delivered it over to his Martyrs to do as he had done Nor are they onely his Martyrs that have actually died for him but into the signification of that name which signifies a Witnesse fall all those who have glorified him in a patient and constant bearing the afflictions and tribulations of this life All being guilty of Christs death there lies an obligation upon us all to fulfill his sufferings And this is the generality of afflictions as we consider them in their own nature Now this generality is next expressed in this word of exaltation Gheber Ego vir I am the man It was that man that is denoted and signified in that name that hath lien under affliction and therefore no kinde of man was likely to scape There are in the Originall Scriptures four words by which man is called four names of man and any of the others if we consider the origination of the words might better admit afflictions to insult upon him then this Gheber vir I am the man At first man is called Ishe a word which their Grammarians derive à sonitu from a sound from a voice Whether mans excellency be in that that he can speak which no other creature can doe or whether mans impotency be in that that he comes into the world Crying in this denomination in this word man is but a sound but a voyce and that is no great matter Another name of man is Adam and Adam is no more but earth and red earth aud the word is often used for blushing When the name of man imports no more but so no more but the frailty of the earth and the bashfull acknowledgement and confession of that frailty in infinite infirmities there is no great hope of scaping afflictions in this name Adam Lesse in his third name Enosh for Enosh signifies aegrum calamitosum a person naturally subject to and actually possest with all kindes of infirmities So that this name of man Enosh is so farre from exempting him as that it involves him it overflows him in afflictions He hath a miserable name as well as a miserable nature Put them in fear O Lord says David that they may know they are but men but such men as are denoted in that name of man Enosh for there that name is expressed weak and miserable men Now to collect these as man is nothing but a frivolous an empty a transitory sound or but a sad and lamentable voice he is no more in his first name Ishe As man is nothing but red earth a moldring clod of infirmities and then blushing that is guilty sensible and ashamed of his own miserable condition and man is
afflictions of Christ and therefore must all fulfill his sufferings in our flesh And then secondly in this name of Exaltation Gheber man in the highest consideration of man is the subject of affliction And lastly in the person of Ieremy in whom we have made our use of those three observations First That no man is so necessary to God as that God cannot be without him Then That no man is excused of future calamities by former And lastly That he whom God hath exercised with afflictions is bound to glorifie God in the declaration thereof shut wee up this branch with that story of S. Ambrose who in a journey from Milan to Rome passing sometime in the evening with his Host and hearing him brag that he had never had any crosse in his life S. Ambrose presently removed from thence to another house with that protestation That either that man was very unthankfull to God that would not take knowledge of his corrections or that Gods measure was by this time full and hee would surely and soundly and suddenly poure down all together And so we passe to our other branch of this first part from the extent and generality of afflictions to the weight and vehemence of them expressed in three heavy circumstances That they are His the Lords That they are from his Rod That they are from the Rod of his wrath I am the man that have seen afflictions by the rod of his mouth First they are aggravated in that they are Ejus His The Lords It is ordinary in the Scriptures that when the Holy Ghost would expresse a superlative or the highest degree of any thing to expresse it by adding to it the name of God So in many places fortitudo Domini and timor Domini The power of the Lord and the fear of the Lord doe not import that power which is in the Lord nor that fear which is to be conceived by us of the Lord but the power of the Lord and the fear of the Lord denote the greatest power and the greatest fear that can be conceived As in particular when Saul and his company were in such a dead sleep as that David could enter in upon them and take his speare and his pot of water from under his head this is there called sopor Domini the sleep of the Lord was upon him the heaviest the deadliest sleep that could be imagined so may these Afflictions in our Text be conceived to bee exalted to a superlative heighth by this addition that They and the Rod and the wrath are said to be His The Lords But this cannot well be the sense nor the direct proceeding and purpose of the Holy Ghost in this place because where the addition of the name of God constitutes a superlative that name is evidently and literally expressed in that place as fortitudo Det sopor Dei and the rest But here the name of God is onely by implication by illation by consequence All necessary but yet but illation but implication but consequence For there is no name of God in this verse but because in the last verse of the former chapter the Lord is expresly named and the Lords Anger and then this which is the first verse of this chapter and connected to that refers these afflictions and rods and wrath to Him The rod of his wrath it must necessarily bee to him who was last spoken of The Lord They are Ejus His and therefore heavy Then is an Affliction properly Gods Affliction when thou in thy Conscience canst impute it to none but God When thou disorderest thy body with a surfeit nature will submit to sicknesse When thou wearest out thy selfe with licentiousnesse the sin it self will induce infirmities when thou transgressest any law of the State the Iustice of the State will lay hold upon thee And for the Afflictions that fall upon thee in these cases thou art able to say to thy selfe that they would have falne upon thee though there had been no God or though God had had no rod about him no anger in him Thou knowest in particular why and by whose or by what means these Afflictions light upon thee But when thou shalt have thy Conscience clear towards such and such men and yet those men shall goe about to oppresse thee when thou labourest uprightly in thy calling and yet doest not prosper when thou studiest the Scriptures hearkenest to Sermons observest Sabbaths desirest conferences and yet receivest not satisfaction but still remainest under the torture of scruples and anxieties when thou art in S. Pauls case Nihili conscius That thou knowest nothing by thy selfe and yet canst not give thy selfe peace Though all Afflictions upon Gods Children be from him yet take knowledge that this is from him more intirely and more immediately and that God remembers something in thee that thou hast forgot And as that fit of an Ague or that pang of the Gout which may take thee to day is not necessarily occasioned by that which thou hast eaten to day but may be the effect of some former disorder so the affliction which lights upon thee in thine age may be inflicted for the sinnes of thy youth Thy affliction is his The Lords And the Lord is infinite and comprehends all at once and ever finds something in thee to correct something that thou hast done or something that thou wouldest have done if the blessing of that correction had not restrained thee And therefore when thou canst not pitch thy affliction upon any particular sinne yet make not thy selfe so just as that thou make God unjust whose Judgements may be unsearchable but they cannot be unjust This then is the first weight that is laid upon our afflictions that they are His The Lords and this weight consists in this That because they are his they are inevitable they cannot be avoyded And because they are His they are certainly just and cannot be pleaded against nor can we ease our selves with any imagination of an innocency as though they were undeserved And the next weight that is laid upon them is that they are In virga ejus in his rod. For though this Metaphore the Rod may seeme to present but an easie correction such as that If thou beat thy childe with a rod be shall not dye It will not kill him yet there is more weight then so in this Rod for the word here is Shebet and Shebet is such a Rod as may kill If a man smite his servant with a Rod so that he dye under his hand he shall be surely punished Beloved whether Gods Rod and his correction shall have the savour of life unto life or of death unto death consists much in the hand that is to receive it and in the stomach that is to digest it As in Gods Temporall blessings that he raines downe upon us it is much in our gathering and inning and spending them whether it shall be frumenti or