joyned to the element or to the Action then there is a true Sacrament are ill understood by two sorts of Menâ— first by them that say that it is not verbum Deprecatorium nor verbum Conciâ—natâ—riuâ— not the word of Prayer nor the word of preaching but verbum Consecratorium and verbum Sacramentale that very phrase and forme of words by which the water is sanctified and enabled of it selfe to cleanse our Soules and secondly these words are ill understood by them who had rather their children dyed unbaptized then have them baptized without a Sermon whereas the use of preaching at baptisme is to raise the whole Congregation to a consideration what they promised by others in their baptisme and to raise the Father and the Sureties to a consideration what they undertake for the childe whom they present then to be baptized for therefore says Saint Augustine Acoedaâ— verbum there is a necessity of the word Non quâ—a dicitur sed quia creditur not because the word is prâ—ached but because it is beleeved and That Beleese faith belongs not at all to the incapacity of the child but to the disposition of the rest A Sermon is usefull for the congregation not necessary for the child and the accomplishment of the Sacrament From hence then arises a convenience little lesse then necessary in a kind that this administration of the Sacrament be accompanied with preaching but yet they that would evict an absolute necessity of it out of these words force them too much for here the direct meaning of the Apostle is That the Church is cleansed by water through the word when the promises of God expressed in his word are sealed to us by this Sacrament of Baptisme for so Saint Augustine answers himselfe in that objection which he makes to himselfe Cum per Baptisâ—â—â— fundati sint quare sermoni tribuit radicem He answers In Sermone intelligendus Baptismusâ— Quia sine Sermone non perficitur It is rooted it is grounded in the word and therefore true Baptisme though it be administred without the word that is without the word preached yet it is never without the word because the whole Sacrament and the power thereof is rooted in the word in the Gospell And therefore since this Sacrament belongs to the Church as it is said here that Christ doth cleanse his Church by Baptisme as it is argued with a strong probability That because the Apostles did baptize whole families therefore they did baptize some children so we argue with an invincible certainty that because this Sacrament belongs generally to the Church as the initiatory Sacrament it belongs to children who are a part and for the most part the most innocent part of the Church To conclude As all those Virgins which were beautifull were brought into Susan Ad domum mulierum to be anointed and persumed and prepared there for Assuerus delight and pleasure though Assuerus tooke not delight and pleasure in them all so we admit all those children which are within the Covenant made by God to the elect and their seed In domum Sanctorum into the houshold of the faithfull into the communion of Saints whom he chooseth for his Mariage day that is for that Church which he will settle upon himselfe in heaven we know not but we know that he hath not promised to take any into that glory but those upon whom he hath first shed these fainter beames of glory and sanctification exhibited in this Sacrament Neither hath he threatned to exclude any but for sinne after And therefore when this blessed child derived from faithfull parents and presented by sureties within the obedience of the Church shall have been so cleansed by the washing of water through the word it is presently sealed to the possession of that part of Christs purchase for which he gave himselfe which are the meanes of preparing his Church in this life with a faithfull assurance I may say of it and to it Iam mundus es Now you are cleanâ— through the word which Christ hath spoken unto you The Seale of the promises of his Gospell hath sanctified and cleansed you but yet Mandatus mundandus says Saint Augustine upon that place It is so sanctified by the Sacrament here that it may be farther sanctified by the growth of his graces and be at last a member of that glorious Church which he shall settle upon himselfe without spot or wrinkle which was the principall and final purpose of that great love of his whereby he gave himselfe for us and made that love first a patterne of Mens loves to their wives here and then a meanes to bring Man and wife and child to the kingdome of heaven Amen SERMON VI. Preached at a Christning 1 JOHN 5. 7 8. For there are three which beare record in heaven The Father the Word and the Holy Ghost and these three are one And there are three which beare record in the Earth The Spirit and the water and the bloud and these three agree in one IN great and enormous offences we find that the law in a well governed State expressed the punishment upon such a delinquent in that form in that curse Igni aqua interdicitor let him have no use of fire and water that is no use of any thing necessary for the sustentation of life Beloved such is the miserable condition of wretched Man as that we come all into the world under the burden of that curse Aqua igni interdicimâ—r we have nothing to doe naturally with the spirituall water of life with the fiery beames of the holy Ghost till he that hath wrought our restitution from this banishment restore us to this water by powring out his owne bloud and to this lively fire by laying himselfe a cold and bloudlesse carcasse in the bowels of the Earth till he who haptized none with waâ—er direct his Church to doe that office towards us and he without whom none was baptized with fire perfect that Ministeriall worke of his Church with the effectuall seales of his grace for this is his testimony the witnesse of his love Yea that law in cases of such great offences expressed it selfe in another Malediction upon such offenders appliable also to us Intestabiles sunte let them be Intestable Now this was a sentence a Condemnation so pregnant so full of so many heavy afflictions as that he who by the law was made intestable was all these ways intestable First he was able to make no Testament of his owne he had lost all his interest in his owne estate and in his owne will Secondly he could receive no profit by any testament of any other Man he had lost all the effects of the love and good disposition of other Men to him Thirdly he was Intestable so as that he could not testifie he should not be beleeved in the behalfe of another and lastly the testimony of another could doe him no good no Man could be admitted to
one person in him My flesh shall no more be none of mine then Christ shall not be man as well as God SERMON XV. Preached at Lincolns Inne 1 COR. 15. 50. Now this I say Brethren that flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdome of God SAint Gregory hath delivered this story That Eutychius who was Bishop of Constantinople having written a book of the Resurrection and therein maintained that errour That the body of Christ had not that our bodies in the Resurrection should not have any of the qualities of a naturall body but that those bodies were in subtilitatem redacta so rarifyed so refined so attenâ—ated and reduced to a thinnesse and subtlenesse that they were aery bodies and not bodies of flesh and blood This error made a great noise and raised a great dust till the Emperour to avoid scandall which for the most part arises out of publick conferences was pleased to hear Eutychius and Gregory dispute this point privately before himself and a small company And that upon conference the Emperour was so well satisfyed that hee commanded Eutychius his books to bee burnt That after this both Gregory and Eutychius fell sicke but Eutychius dyed and dyed with this protestation In hâc carne in this flesh taking up the flesh of his hand in the presence of them that were there in this flesh I acknowledge that I and all men shall arise at the day of Judgement Now the principall place of Scripture which in his book and in that conference Eutychius stood upon was this Text these words of Saint Paul This I say brethren that flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdome of God And the directest answer that Gregory gave to it was Caro secundum culpam non regnabit sed Caro secundum naturam sinfull flesh shall not but naturall flesh that is flesh indued with all qualities of flesh all such qualities as imply no defect no corruption for there was flesh before there was sin such flesh and such blood shall inherit the Kingdome of God As there have been more Heresies about the Humanity of Christ then about his Divinity so there have been more heresies about the Resurrection of his body and consequently of ours then about any other particular article that concerns his Humiliation or Exaltation Simon Magus strook deepest at first to the root That there was no Resurrection at all The Gnosticks who took their name from knowledge as though they knew all and no body else any thing which is a pride transferr'd through all Heretickes for as that sect in the Roman Church which call themselves Ignorantes and seem to pretend to no knowledge doe yet believe that they know a better way to heaven then all other men doe so that sect amongst them which called themselves Nullanos Nothings thought themselves greater in the Kingdome of God then either of the other two sects of diminution the Minorits or the Minims did These Gnosticks acknowledged a Resurrection but they said it was of the soul onely and not of the body for they thought that the soul lay dead at least in a dead sleep till the Resurrection Those Heretickes that are called the Arabians did as the Gnosticks did affirm a temporary death of the soul as well as of the body but then they allowed a Resurrection to both soul and body after that death which the Gnostickes did not but to the soul onely Hymeneus and Philetus of whom Saint Paul speakes they restrained the Resurrection to the soule but then they restrained this Resurrection of the soule to this life and that in those who were baptized the Resurrection was accomplished already Eutychius whom wee mentioned before enlarged the Resurrection to the body as well as to the soul but enlarged the qualities of the body so far as that it was scarce a body The Armenian hereticks said that it was not onely Corpus humâ—num but Corpus masculinum That all should rise in the perfecter sex and none as women Origen allowed a Resurrection and allowed the Body to be a naturall body but the contracted the time he said that when we rose we should enjoy the benefits of the resurrection even in bodily pleasures for a thousand years and then be annihilated or absorpted and swallowed up into the nature and essence of God himselfe for it will be hard to state Origens opinion in this point Origen was not herein well understood in his owne time not doe we understand him now for the most part but by his accusers and those that have written against him Divers of these Heretiques for the maintenance of their severall heresies perverted this Scripture Flesh and bloud cannot inherit the kingdome of God and that occasioned those Fathers who opposed those heresies so diverse from one another to interpret these words diversly according to the heresie they opposed All agree that they are an argument for the resurrection though they seem at first to oppose it For this Chapter hath three generall parts first Resurrectionem esse that there shall be a Resurrection which the Apostle proves by many and various arguments to the thirty fifth verse And then Quati corpore the body shall rise but some will say How are the dead raised and with what body doe they come in that thirty fifth verse And lastly Quid de superstitibus what shall become of them who shall be found alive at the day We shall all be changed verse fifty one Now this text is the knot and corollary or all the second part concerning the qualities of the bodies in the resurrection Now says the Apostle now that I have said enough to prove that a resurrection there is now now that I have said enough what kind of bodies shall arise now I show you as much in the Negative as I have done in the Affirmative now I teach you what to avoid as well as I have done what to affect now this I say brethren that flesh and bloud cannot inherit the kingdome of God Now though those words be primarily principally intended of the last Resurrection yet in a secondary respect they are appliable in themselves and very often applied by the ancients to the first Resurrection our resurrection in this life Tertullian hath intimated and presented both together elegantly when he says of God Nobis arrhabonem spiritus reliquit arrhabonem à nobis accepit God hath given us his earnest and a pawn from him upon earth in giving us the holy Ghost and he hath received our earnest and a pawn from us into heaven by receiving our nature in the body of Christ Jesus there Flesh and bloud when it is conformed to the flesh and bloud of Christ now glorified and made like his by our resurrectien may inherite the kingdome of God in heaven Yea flesh and bloud being conformed to Christ by the sanctification of the holy Ghost here in this world may inherit the kingdome of God here upon earth for God hath a
kingdome here and there is a Communion in Armes as well as a communion in Triumph Leaving then that acceptation of flesh and bloud which many thinke to be intended in this text that is Animalis caro flesh and bloud that must be maintained by eating and drinking and preserved by propagation and generation that flesh and that bloud cannot inherit heaven where there is no marying nor giving in mariage but Erimus sicut Angeli we shall be as the Angels though such a heaven in part Mahomet hath proposed to his followers a heaven that should abound with worldly delights and such a heaven the Disciples of Origen and the Millenarians that look for one thousand years of all temporall felicity proposed to themselves And though amongst our latter men Cajetan doe thinke that the Apostle in this text bent himselfe upon that doctrine non caro non Animalis caro flesh and bloud that is no carnall no worldly delights are to be looked for in heaven leaving that sense as too narrow and too shallow for the holy Ghost in this place in which he hath a higher reach we shall determine our selves at this time in these too acceptations of this phrase of speech first non caro that is non caro corrupta flesh and bloud cannot sinfull flesh corrupt flesh flesh not discharged of sinfull corruption here by repentance and Sanctification and the operation of Gods spirit such flesh cannot inherit the kingdome of God here Secondly noncar◠is non car◠corruptibilis flesh and bloud cannot that is flesh that is yet subject to corruption and dissolution and naturall passions and impressions tending to defectivenesse flesh that is still subject to any punishment that God lays upon flesh for sinne such flesh cannot inherit the kingdome of God hereafter for our present possession of the kingdome of God here our corrupt flesh must be purged by Sanctification here for the future kingdome our naturall Corruptiblenesse must be purged by glorification there We will make the last part first as this flesh and this bloud by devesting the corruptiblenesse it suffers here by that glorification shall inherit that kingdome and not stay long upon it neither For of that we have spoken conveniently before of the resurrection it selfe Now we shall looke a little into the qualities of bodies in the resurrection and that not in the intricacies and subtilties of the Schoole but onely in that one patterne which hath been given us of that glory upon earth which is the Transfiguration of Christ for that Transfiguration of his was a representation of a glorified body in a glorified state And then in the second place we shall come to our first part what that flesh and bloud is that is denied to be capable of the inheritance of that kingdome here that is that earnest of heaven and that inchoation of heaven which may be had in this world and in that part we shall see what this inheritance what this title to heaven here and what this kingdome of God that heaven which is proposed to us here is First then for the first acceptation which is of the later resurrection no man denies that which Melancthon hath collected and established to be the summe of this text Statuit resurrectionem in corpore sed non quale jam corpus est The Apostle establishes a resurrection of the body but yet not such a body as this is It is the same body and yet not such a body which is a mysterious consideration that it is the same body and yet not such as it selfe nor like any other body of the same substance But what kind of body then We content ourselves with that Transfiguratio specimen appositissimum Resurrectionis the Transfiguration of Christ is the best glasse to see this resurrection and state of glory in But how was that transfiguration wrought We content our selves with Saint Hieromes expressing of it non pristinam amisit veritatem vel formam corporis Christ had still the same ture and reall body and he had the same forme and proportion and lineaments and dimensions of his body in it selfe Transfiguratio non faciem subtraxit sed splendorem ad didit sayes he It gave him not another face but it super-immitted such a light such an illustration upon him as by that irradiation that coruscation the beames of their eys were scattered and disgregated dissipated so as that they could not collect them as at other times nor constantly and confidently discerne him Moses had a measure a proportion of this but yet when Moses came down with his shining face though they were not able to looke long upon him they knew him to be Moses When Christ was transfigured in the presence of Peter Iames and Iohn yet they knew him to be Christ. Transfiguration did not so change him nor shall glorification so change us as that we shall not be known There is nothing to convince a man of error nothing in nature nothing in Scriptures if he beleeve that he shall know those persons in heaven whom he knew upon earth and if he conceive soberly that it were a lesse degree of blessednesse not to know them then to know them he is bound to beleeve that he shall know them for he is bound to beleeve that all that conduces to blessednes shall be given him The School resolves that at the Judgement all the sins of all shall be manifested to all even those secret sinfull thoughts that never came out of the heart And when any in the School differs or departs from this cōmon opinion they say onely that those sins which have been in particular repented shall not be manifested all others shall And therefore it is a deep uncharitablenes to reproach any man of sins formerly repented and a deep uncharitablenesse not to beleeve that he whom thou seest at the Communion hath repented his former sins Reproach no man after thou hast seen him receive with last years sins except thou have good evidence of his Hypocrisie then or of his Relapsing after For in those two cases a man remaines or becomes againe guilty of his former sinnes Now if in heaven they shall know the hearts of one another whose faces they never knew before there is lesse difficulty in knowing them whom we did know before From this transfiguration of Christ in which the mortall eye of the Apostles did see that representation of the glory of Christ the Schooles make a good argument that in heaven we shall doe it much more And though in this case of the Transfiguration in which the eyes of mortall men could have no proportion with that glory of heaven this may bee well said to have been done either Moderando lumen that God abated that light of glory or Confortando visum that God exalted their sense of seeing supernaturally no such distinctions or modifications will bee needfull in heaven because how highly soever the body of my
Fifty SERMONS PREACHED BY THAT LEARNED AND REVEREND DIVINE JOHN DONNE D r IN DIVINITY Late Deane of the Cathedrall Church of S. PAULS London The Second Volume LONDON Printed by Ia. Flesher for M. F. I. Marriot and R. Royston MDCXLIX TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE BASIL EARLE OF DENBY My very good Lord and Patron My Lord IN a season so tempestuous it is a great encouragement to see your Lordship called to the Helme who in your publique negociations having spent so many yeares in that so famed Common-wealth of Venice must of necessity have brought home such excellent Principles of Government that if our Fate doe not withstand your Directions we may reasonably at last expect to see our new Brittish Lady excell that ancient Adriatique Queene Neither can I offend much against the State in begging your Patronage and perusall of this Book knowing that your Lordship first mastered all the Learning of Padoa before you did adventure upon that wise Senate who amongst all her other greatnesses has ever had a principall care that Learning might not be diminished When these Sermons were preached they were terminated within the compasse of an houre but your acceptance may make them outlive the very Churches that they were preached in and give them such a perpetuity that Nec Jovis Ira nec Amor edacior multò poterit abolere For though a fiery zeale in succeeding ages hath often both ruined the Temples and casheired the gods that were worshipped in them Yet such sacrifices as these have beemy laies kept unburnt and we are suffered to know those religions that we are not allowed to practice Nor can I expect any greater advantage for the paines I have taken in publishing this Book then that posterity may know I did it when I had the favor and protection of your Lordship and was allowed to stile my selfe Your Lordships most humble Servant JO. DONNE FOR THE RIGHT HONOURABLE BOLSTRED WHITLOCK RICHARD KEEBLE 〈◊〉 JOHN LEILE Lords Commissioners of the Great Seale THe reward that many yeares since was proposed for the publishing these Sermons having been lately conferred upon me under the authority of the Great Seale I thought my selfe in gratitude bound to deliver them to the world under your Lordships protection both to show how carefull you are in dispensing that part of the Churches treasure that is committed to your disposing and to encourage all men to proceed in their industry when they are sure to find so just and equall Patrons whose fame and memory must certainely last longer then Bookes can find so noble Readers and whose present favors doe not onely keep the Living alive but the Dead from dying Your Lordships most humble Servant JO. DONNE A Table directing to the severall Texts of SCRIPTURE handled in this Book Sermons preached at Mariages Sermon I. Preached at the Earl of Bridgwaters house in London on MATTH 22. 30. For in the Resurrection they neither mary nor are given in Mariage but are as the Angels of God in heaven p. 1. Serm ' II. GEN. 2. 18. And the Lord God said It is not good that the man should be alone I will make him a Help meet for him p. 9. Serm. III. HOSEA 2. 19. And I will mary thee unto me for ever p. 15 Sermons preached at Christnings Serm. IV. REVEL 7. 17. For the Lamb which is in the midst of the Throne shall governe them and shall leade them unto the lively fountaines of waters and God shall wipe away all teares from their eyes p. 23 Serm. V. EPHES. 5. 25 26 27. Husbands love your wives even at Christ loved the Church and gave himselfe for it that he might sanctifie it and cleanse it by the washing of water through the Word That he might make it unto himselfe a glorious Church not having spot or wrinckle or any such thing but that it should be holy and without blame p. 31 Serm. VI. 1 JOH 5. 7 8. For there are three which beare record in Heaven the Father the Word and the Holy Ghost and these three are one And there are three which beare record in the Earth The Spirit and the water and the blood and these three agree in one p. 39 Serm. VII GAL. 3. 27. For all yee that are baptized into Christ have put on Christ. p. 50. Sermons preached at Churchings Serm. VIII CANT 5. 3. I have washed my feet how shall I defile them p. 59. Serm. IX MICAH 2. 10. Arise and depart for this is not your rest p. 67. Serm. X. A second Serm. on the same Text. p. 74. Sermons preached at Lincolns-Inne Serm. XI GEN. 28. 16 17. Then Iacob awoke out of his sleep and said Surely the Lord is in this place and I was not aware And he was afraid and said How fearefull is this place This is none other but the House of God and this is the gate of Heaven p. 83 Serm. XII JOH 5. 22. The Father judgeth no man but hath committed all judgement to the Sonne p. 94. Serm. XIII JOH 8. 15. I judge no man p. 101. Serm. XIIII JOB 19. 26. And though after my skin wormes destroy this body yet in my flesh shall I see God p. 106. Serm. XV. 1 COR. 15. 50. Now this I say Brethren that flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdome of God p. 118. Serm. XVI COLOS. 1. 24. Who now rejoyce in my sufferings for you and fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh for his bodies sake which is the Church p. 128. Serm. XVII MAT. 18. 7. Wo unto the world because of offences p. 136. Serm. XVIII A second Serm. on the same Text. p. 142 Serm. XIX PSAL. 38. 2. For thine arrowes stick fast in me and thy hand presseth me sore p. 158. Serm. XX. PSA 38. 3. There is no soundnesse in my flesh because of thine anger neither is there any rest in my bones because of my sinne p. 162. Serm. XXI PSAL. 38. 4. For mine iniquities are gone over my head as a heavy burden they are too heavy for me p. 174. Serm. XXII A second Serm. on the same Text. p. 186. Serm. XXIII A third Serm. on the same Text. p. 192. Sermons preached at White-Hall Serm. XXIV EZEK 34. 19. And as for my flocke they eate that which ye have trodden with your feet and they drink that which yee have fouled with your feet 199. Serm. XXV A second Serm. on the same Text. p. 208. Serm. XXVI ESAI 65. 20. For the childe shall die a hundred yeers old but the sinner being a hundred yeers old shall be accursed p. 218 Serm. XXVII MARK 4. 24. Take heed what you hear p. 228 Serm. XXVIII GEN. 1. 26. And God said Let us make man in our own Image after our likenesse p. 239. Serm. XXIX A second Serm. on the same Text. p. 250 Sermons preached to the Nobility Serm. XXX JOB 13. 15. Loe though he slay me yet will I trust in him p. 262. Serm. XXXI JOB 36.
may be equall as the Devill is a Spirit and a condemned soule a spirit yet that soule shall have a Body too to be tormented with it which the Devill shall not How little we know our selves which is the end of all knowledge But we hast to the next branch In the Resurrection we shall be like to the Angels of God in Heaven But in what lies this likenesse In how many other things soever this likenesse may ly yet in this Text and in our present purpose it lies onely in this Non nubent In the Resurrection they shall not mary But did Angels never mary or as good or at least as ill as mary How many of the ancients take those words That the sonnes of God saw the daughters of Men that they were faire and they tooke them wives of all which they chose to be intended of Angels They offer to tell us how many these maried Angels were Origen saies sixty or seventy They offer to tell us some of their names Aza was one of these maried Angels and Azael was another But then all those who doe understand these words The sonnes of God to be intended of Angels who being sent downe to protect Men fell in love with Women and maried them all I say agree that those Angels that did so never returned to God againe but fell with the first fallen under everlasting Condemnation So that still the Angels of God in Heaven those Angels to whom we shall be like in the Resurrection doe not mary not so much as in any such mistaking they doe not because they need not they need not because they need no second Eternity by the continuation of children for says S. Luke they cannot die Adams first immortality was but this Posse non mori that he needed not to have died he should not have died The Angels immortality and ours when we shall be like them in the Resurrection is Non posse mori that we cannot die for whosoever dies is Homicida sui sayes Tertullian he kills himselfe and sinne is his sword In heaven there shall no such sword be drawn we need not say that the Angels in heaven have that we when we shall be like them in the Resurrection shall so invest an immortality in our nature as that God could not inflict Death upon them or us there if we sinned But because no sinne shall enter there no Death shall enter there neither for Death is the wages of sinne Not that no sinne could enter there if we were left to our selves for in that place Angels did sinne And fatendum est Angelos natura mutabiles saies S. Augustine Howsoever Angels be changed in their Condition they retaine still the same nature and by nature they are mutable But that God hath added another prerogative by way of Confirmation to that state so as that that Grace which he gives us here which is that nothing shall put a necessity of sinning upon us or that we must needs sinne God multiplies upon us so there as that we can conceive no inclination to sinne Therein we shall be like the Angels that we cannot die And the nearer we come to that state in this life the liker we are to those Angels here Now beloved onely he that is Dead already cannot die He that in a holy mortification is Dead the Death of the righteous dead to sinne he lives shall we dare to say so yes we may he lives a blessed Death for such a Death is true life And by such a heavenly Death Death of the righteous Death to sinne he is in possession of a heavenly life here in an inchoation though the consummation and perfection be reserved for the next world which is our last circumstance and the Conclusion of all At the Resurrection we shall be like the Angels Till then we shall not and therefore must not looke for Angelicall perfections here but beare one anothers infirmities It is as yet but in Petition fiat voluntas Thy will be done in Earth as it is in Heaven And as long as there is an Earth it will be but in Petition His will will not be done in Earth as it is in Heaven when all is Heaven to his Saints all will be well but not all till then In the meane time remember all especially you whose Sacramentall that is Mysterious and significative union now is a Type of your union with God in as neare and as fast a band as that of Angels for you shall be as the Angels of God in Heaven That the office of the Angels in this world is to Assist and to supply Defects You are both of noble extraction there 's no defect in that you need not supply one another with Honour you are both of religious Education there 's no defect in that you need not supply one another with fundamentall instructions Both have your parts in that testimony which S. Gregory gave of your Nation at Rome Angli Angeli you have a lovelinesse fit for one another But though I cannot Name no nor Thinke any thing wherein I should wish that Angelicall disposition of supporting or supplying defects yet when I consider that even he that said Ego pater unum sumus I and the Father are one yet had a time to say utquid dereliquisti My God my God why hast thou forsaken me I consider thereby that no two can be so made one in this world but that that unity may be though not Dissolved no nor Rent no nor Endangered yet shaked sometimes by domestique occasions by Matrimoniall encumbrances by perversnesse of servants by impertinencies of Children by private whisperings and calumnies of Strangers And therefore to speake not Prophetically that any such thing shall fall but Provisionally if any such thing should fall my love and my duty and my Text bids me tell you that perfect happinesse is to be staid for till you be as the Angels of God in heaven here it is a faire portion of that Angelicall happinesse if you be alwaies ready to support and supply one another in any such occasionall weaknesses The God of Heaven multiply the present joy of your parents by that way of making you joyfull parents also and recompense your obedience to parents by that way of giving you obedient Children too The God of heaven so joine you now as that you may be glad of one another all your life and when he who hath joined you shall separate you againe establish you with an assurance that he hath but borrowed one of you for a time to make both your joies the more perfect in the Resurrection The God of Heaven make you alwaies of one will and that will alwaies conformable to his conserve you in the sincere truth of his Religion feast you with the best feast Peace of conscience and carry you through the good opinion and love of his Saints in this world to the association of his Saints and Angels and one
in your private and publique devotions will ye not fast for this kingdome in cutting off superfluities will ye not fight for this kingdome in resisting suggestions will ye not take Counsaile for this kingdome in consulting with religious friends will ye not give subsidies for this kingdome in relieving their necessities for whom God hath made you his stewards weigh and measure your selves and spend that be negligent of that which is least and worst in you Is your soule lesse then your body because it is in it How easily lies a letter in a Boxe which if it were unfolded would cover that Boxe unfold your soule and you shall see that it reaches to heaven from thence it came and thither it should pretend whereas the body is but from that earth and for that earth upon which it is now which is but a short and an inglorious progresse To contract this the soule is larger then the body and the glory and the joyes of heaven larger then the honours and the pleasures of this world what are seventy years to that latitude of continuing as long as the Ancient of dayes what is it to have spent our time with the great ones of this time when when the Angels shall come and say that Time shall be no more we shall have no beeing with him who is yesterday and to day and the same for ever we see how ordinarily ships goe many leagues out of their direct way to fetch the winde Spiritus spirat ubi vult sayes Christ the spirit blowes where he will and as the Angel took Habakkâ—k by the haire and placed him where he would this winde the spirit of God can take thee at last by thy gray haires and place thee in a good station then Spirat ubi vult he blowes where he will and spirat ubi vis he blowes where thou wilt too if thou beest appliable to his inspirations They are but hollow places that returne Ecchoes last syllables It is but a hollownesse of heart to answer God at last Be but as liberall of thy body in thy mortifications as in thy excesse and licentiousnesse and thou shalt in some measure have followed Gods example for the publique to pretermit the private for the larger and better to leave the narrower and worser respects To proceed when we made that observation that God pretermitted the private for the publique we noted that God did not say non bonum Homini It was not good for man to be alone man might have done well enough in that state so as his solitarinesse might have been supplied with a farther creation of more men In making the inventaries of those goods which man possesseth in the world we see a great Author says In possessionibus sunt amici inimici not onely our friends but even our enemies are part of our goods and we may raise as much profit from these as from those It may be as good a lesson to a mans sonne Study that enemy as Observe that friend As David says propitius fuisti ulciscens Thou heardst them ô Lord our God and wast favour able unto them and didst punish all their inventions it was part of his mercy part of his favour that he did correct them So we may say to our enemy I owe you my watchfulnesse upon my selfe and you have given me all the goodnesse that I have for you have calumniated all my indifferent actions and that kept me from committing enormous ill ones And if then our enemies be in possessionibus to be inventaried amongst our goods might not man have been abundantly rich in friends without this addition of a woman Quanto congruentius says S. Augustine how much more conveniently might two friends live together then a man and a woman God doth not then say non bonum homini man got not so much by the bargaine especially if we consider how that wife carried her selfe towards him but that for his particular he had been better aloneâ— nor he does not say now non bonum hunc hominem esse solum It is not good for any man to be alone for Qui potest capere capiat says Christ he that is able to receive it let him receive it What That some make themselves Eunuchs for the kingdome of heaven that is the better to un-entangle themselves from those impediments which hinder them in the way to heaven they abstaine from mariage and let them that can receive it receive it Now certainly few try whether they can receive this or no. Few strive few fast few pray for the gift of continency few are content with that incontinency which they have but are sorry they can expresse no more incontinency There is a use of mariage now which God never thought of in the first institution of mariage that it is a remedy against burning The two maine uses of mariage which are propagation of Children and mutuall assistance were intended by God at the present at first but the third is a remedy against that which was not then for then there was no inordinatenesse no irregularity in the affections of man And experience hath taught us now that those climates which are in reputation hottest are not uninhabitable they may be dwelt in for all their heat Even now in the corruption of our nature the clime is not so hot as that every one must of necessity mary There may be fire in the house and yet the house not on fire there may be a distemper of heate and yet no necessity to let blood The Roman Church injures us when they say that we prefer mariage before virginity and they injure the whole state of Christianity when they oppose mariage and chastity as though they were incompatible and might not consist together They may for mariage is honourable and the bed undefiled and therefore it may be so S. Augustine observes in mariage Bonuam fidei a triall of one anothers truth and that 's good And bonum prolis a lawfull meanes of propagation and that 's good and bonum Sacramenti a mysticall representation of that union of two natures in Christ and of him to us and to his Church and that 's good too So that there are divers degrees of good in mariage But yet for all these goodnesses God does not say non bonum it is not good for any man to be alone but Qui capere potest capiat according to Christs comment upon his Fathers text He that can containe and continue alone let him doe so But though God do not say non homini It is not good for the man that he be alone nor quemvis hominem it is not good for every man to be alone yet considering his generall purpose upon all the world by man he sayes non bonum for that end it is not good that man should be alone because those purposes of God could not consist with that solitude of man In that production and in that survay
no husband such a superiority no father such a soverainty but that there lies a burden upon them too to consider with a compassionate sensiblenesse the grievances that oppresse the other part which is coupled to them For if the servant the wife the sonne be oppressed worne out annihilated there is no such thing left as a Master or a husband or a father They depend upon one another and therefore he that hath not care of his fellow destroys himselfe The wife is to submit herselfe and so is the husband too They have a burden both There is a greater subjection lies upon her then upon the Man in respect of her transgression towards her husband at first Eyen before there was any Man in the world to sollicite or tempt her chastity she could sinde another way to be salfe and treacherous to her husband both the husband and the wife offended against God but the husband offended not towards his wife but rather eate the Apple Ne contristaretur delicias suas as S. Hierome assignes the cause left by refusing to cate when she had done so he should deject her into a desperate sense of her sinne And for this fault of hers her Subjection was so much aggravated Thy desire shall be subject to thy husband and he shall rule over thee But if she had not committed that fault yet there would have been a mutuall subjection between them as there is even in Nature between both the other couples for if Man had continued in innocency yet it is most probably thought that as there would certainly have been Mariage and so children so also there would have been Magistracy and propriety and authority and so a mutuall submitting a mutuall assisting of one another in all these three relations Now that submitting of which the Apostle speakes of here is a submitting to one another a bearing of one anothers burthens what this submission is on the wives part is expressed in the two former verses And I forbeare that because husbands at home are likely enough to remember them of it but in the duty in the submitting of the husband we shall consider first what that submitting is and that is love Husbands love your wives Even the love of the husband to the wife is a burthen a submitting a descent and secondly the patterne and example of this love Even as Christ loved his Church In which second part as sometimes the accessory is greater then the principall the Symptome the accident is greater then the disease so that from which the comparison is drawn in this place is greater then that which is illustrated by it the love of Christ to his Church requires more consideration then the love of the husband to the wife and therefore it will become us to spend most of our thoughts upon that and to consider in that Quod factum and Quis sinis what Christ did for his Church and that was a bounty which could not be exceeded seipsum tradidit he gave he delivered himselfe for it And then secondly what he intended that should worke and that was first that he might make it to himselfe a glorious Church and without spot and wrinkle in the Triumphant state of the Church at last And then that whilst it continues in a Militant state upon Earth it might have preparations to that glory by being sanctified and cleansed by the washing of water through his Word he provides the Church meanes of sanctification here by his Word and Sacraments First then De Amoremaritali of this contracting a Mans love to the person of a wife of one woman as we find an often exclamation in the Prophets Onus visionis The burden of my prophecy upon Nineveh and Onus verbi Domini The burden of the word of God upon Israel so there is Onus amoris a burden of love when a Man is appointed whom he shall love When Onan was appointed by his father Iudah to goe in to his brothers widow and to doe the office of a kinsman to her he conceived such an unwillingnesse to doe so when he was bid as that he came to that detestable act for which God slew him And therefore the Panegyrique that raised his wit as high as he could to praise the Emperour Constantine and would expresse it in praising his continence and chastity he expressed it by saying that he waried young that as soon as his years endangered him formavit animum maritalem nihil de concessu atati voluptatibus admittens he was content to be a husband and accepted not that freedome of pleasure which his years might have excused He concludes it thus Novum jam tum miraculum Iuvenis â—xorius Behold a miracle such a young Man limiting his affections in a wife At first the heates and lusts of youth overflow all as the waters overflowed all at the beginning and when they did so the Earth was not onely barren there were no Creatures no herbs produced in that but even the waters themselves that did overflow all were barren too there were no fishes no fowls produced out of that as long as a Mans affections are scattered there is nothing but accursed barrennesse but when God says and is heard and obeyed in it Let the waters be gathered into one place let all thy affections be setled upon one wife then the earth and the waters became fruitfull then God gives us a type and figure of the eternity of the joyes of heaven in the succession and propagation of children here upon the earth It is true this contracting of our affections is a burden it is a submitting of our selves All States that made Lawes and proposed rewards for maried Men conceived it so that naturally they would be loth to doe it God maried his first couple as soone as he made them he dignified the state of Mariage by so many Allegories and figures to which he compares the uniting of Christ to his Church and the uniting of our soules to Christ and by directing the first Miracle of Christ to be done at a Mariage Many things must concurre to the dignifying of Mariage because in our corrupt nature the apprehension is generall that it is burdenous and a submitting and a descending thing to mary And therefore Saint Hierome argues truly out of these words Husbands love your Wifes Audiant Episcopi audiant presbyteri audiant doctores subjectis suis se esse subjectos let Bishops and Priests and Doctors learne in this that when they have maried themselves to a charge They are become subject to their Subjects For by being a husband I become subject to that sex which is naturally subject to Man though this subjection be no more in this place but to love that one woman Love then when it is limited by a law is a subjection but it is a subjection commanded by God Nihil majus à te subjecti animo factum est quam quod imper are coepistiâ— A Prince
compelled to come as it is expressed in the Gospell when the Master of the feast sends into the streets and to the hedges to compell blind and lame to come in to his feast A fountaine breaks out in the wildernesse but that fountaine cares not whether any Man come to fetch water or no A fresh and fit gale blowes upon the Sea but it cares not whether the Mariners hoise saile or no A rose blowes in your garden but it calls you not to smell to it Christ Jesus hath done all this abundantly he hath bought an Hospitall he hath stored it with the true balme of Palestine with his bloud which he shed there and he calls upon you all to come for it Hoe every one that thirsteth you that have no money come buy Wine and Milke without money eate that which is good and let your soules delight in fatnesse and I will make an everlasting Covenant with you even the sure mercies of David This Hospitall this way and meanes to cure spirituall diseases was all that Christ had for himselfe but he improved it he makes it a Church and a glorious Church which is our last consideration Quis sinis to what end he bestowed all this cost His end was that he might make it to himselfe a glorious Church not having spot or wrinkle but that end must be in the end of all here it cannot be Cum tot a dicat ecclesia quamdiu hîc est Dimitte debita nostra non utique hîc est sine macula et ruga Since as yet the whole Church says forgive us our Trespasses the Church as yet is not without spots or wrinkles The wrinkles are the Testimonies of our age that is our sinne derived from Adam and the spots are the sinnes which we contract our selves and of these spots and wrinkles we cannot be delivered in this world And therefore the Apostle says here that Christ hath bestowed all this cost on this purchase ut sisteret sibi Ecclesiam that he might setle such a glorious and pure Church to himselfe first ut sisteret that he might setle it which can onely be done in heaven for here in Earth the Church will always have earthquakes Opartet haereses esse stormes and schismes must necessarily be the Church is in a warfare the Church is in a pilgrimage and therefore here is no setling And then he doth it ut sisteret sibi to setle it to himselfe for in the tyranny of Rome the Church was in some sort setled things were carried quietly enough for no Man durst complaine but the Church was setled all upon the Vicar and none upon the Parson the glory of the Bishop of Rome had eclipsed and extinguished the glory of Christ Iesus In other places we have seen the Church setled so as that no man hath done or spoken any thing against the government thereof but this may have been a setling by strong hand by severed discipline and heavy Lawes we see where Princes have changed the Religion the Church may be setled upon the Prince or setled upon the Prelates that is be serviceable to them and be ready to promote and further any purpose of theirs and all this while not be setled upon Christ this purpose ut sisteret sibi to setle such a glorious Church without spot or wrinkle holy to himselfe is reserved for the Triumphant time when she shall be in possession of that beauty which Christ foresaw in her long before when he said Thou art all faire my love and there is no spot in thee and when we that shall be the Children of the Mariage Chamber◠shall be glad and rejoice and give glory to him because the Mariage of the Lambe is come and his wife hath made her selfe ready that is we that are of that Church shall be so clothed as that our own clothes shall not defile us againe as Io◠complaines that they doe as long as we are in this world for though I make me never so cleane yet mine own clothes defile me againe as it is in that place But yet Beloved Christ hath not made so improvident a bargaine as to give so great a rate himselfe for a Church so farre in reversion as till the day of Judgement That he should enter into bonds for this payment from all eternity even in the eternall decree between the Father and him that he should really pay this price his precious bloud for this Church one thousand six hundred years agoe and he should receive no glory by this Church till the next world◠Here was a long lease here were many lives the lives of all the men in the world to be served before him But it is not altogether so for he gave himselfe that he might settle such a Church then a glorious and a pure Church but all this while the Church is building in heaven by continuall accesse of holy Soules which come thither and all the way he workes to that end He sanctifies it and cleanses it by the washing of water through the word as we find in our Text. He therefore stays not so long for our Sanctification but that we have meanes of being sanctified here Christ stays not so long for his glory but that he hath here a glorious Gospell his Word and mysterious Sacraments here Here then is the writing and the Seale the Word and the Sacrament and he hath given power and commandement to his Ministers to deliver both writing and Seale the Word and Baptisme to his children This Sacrament of Baptisme is the first It is the Sacrament of inchoation of Initiation The Sacrament of the Supper is not given but to them who are instructed and presum'd to understand all Christian duties and therefore the Word if we understand the Word for the Preaching of the Word may seeme more necessary at the administration of this Sacrament then at the other Some such thing seems to be intimated in the institution of the Sacraments In the institution of the Supper it is onely said Take and eate and drinke and doe that in remembrance of me and it is onely said that they sand a Pslame and s◠departed In the institution of Baptisme there is more solemnity more circumstance for first it was instituted after Christs Resurrection and then Christ proceeds to it with that majesticall preamble All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth◠and therefore upon that title he gives power to his Apostles to joine heaven and earth by preaching and by baptisme but here is more then singing of a Psalme for Christ commands them first to teach and then to baptize and then after the commandement of Baptisme he refreshes that commandement againe of teaching them whom they baptized to observe all things that he had commanded them I speake not this as though Baptisme were uneffectuall without a Sermon S. Angustines words Accedat yerbum fiat Sacramentum when the Word is
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
was come and gone for so much as belonged to the accomplishing of the types of the old law then Christ came againe to us by water and bloud in that wound which he received upon his side from which there flowed out miraculously true water true bloud This wound Saint Augustine calls Ianuam utriusque Sacramenti the doore of both sacraments where we see he acknowledges but two and both presented in this water and bloud and so certainely doe most of the fathers make this wound if not the foundation yet at least a sacrament of both the sacraments And to this water and bloud doth the Apostle here without doubt aime principally which he onely of all the Evangelists hath recorded and with so great asseveration and assurednesse in the recording thereof He that saw it bare record and his record is true and he knoweth that he saith truth that yee might beleeve it Here then is the matter which these six witnesses must be beleeved in here is Integritas Iesu quae non solvenda the intirenesse of Christ Jesus which must not be broken That a Saviour which is Iesus appointed to that office that is Christ figured in the law by ablutions of water and sacrifices of bloud is come and hath perfected all those figures in water and bloud too and then that he remaines still with us in water and bloud by meanes instituted in his Church to wash away our uncleannesses and to purge away our iniquities and to apply his worke unto our Soules this is Integritas Iesu Iesus the sonne of God in heaven Jesus the Redeemer of man upon earth Jesus the head of a Church to apply that to the end this is Integritas Iesu all that is to be beleeved of him Take thus much more that when thou comest to hearken what these witnesses shall say to this purpose thou must finde something in their testimony to prove him to be come not onely into the world but into thee He is a mighty prince and hath a great traine millions of ministring spirits attend him and the whole army of Martyrs follow the Lambe wheresoever he goes Though the whole world be his Court thy soule is his bedchamber there thou maist contract him there thou maist lodge and entertaine Integrum Iesum thy whole Saviour And never trouble thy selfe how another shall have him if thou have him all leave him and his Church to that make thou sure thine owne salvation When he comes to thee he comes by water and by bloud If thy heart and bowels have not yet melted in compassion of his passion for thy soule if thine eyes have not yet melted in tears of repentancâ— and contrition he is not yet come by water into thee If thou have suffered nothing for sinne nor found in thy selfe a chearfull disposition to suffer if thou have found no wresting in thy selfe no resistance of Concupiscences he that comes not to set peace but to kindle this war is not yet come into thee by bloud Christ can come by land by purchases by Revenues by temporall blessings for so he did still convey himselfe to the Jewes by the blessing of the land of promise but here he comes by water by his owne passion by his sacraments by thy tears Christ can come in a mariage and in Musique for so he delivers himselfe to the spouse in the Canticles but here he comes in bloud which comming in water and bloud that is in meanes for the salvation of our soules here in the militant Church is the comming that he stands upon and which includes all the Christian Religion and therefore he proves that comming to them by these three great witnesses in heaven and three in earth For there are three which beare record in heaven The Father the word and the holy Ghost and these three are one And there are three which bear record in the earth The spirit and the water and the bloud and these three agree in one By the mouth of two or three witnesses every word shall be confirmed says Christ out of the law That 's as much as can be required in any Civill or Criminall businesse and yet Christ gives more testimony of himselfe for here he produces not Duos testes but Duas Classes two rankes of witnesses and the fullest number of each not two but three in heaven and three in earth And such witnesses upon earth as are omni exceptione majores without all exception It is not the testimony of earthly men for when Saint Paul produces them in abundance The Patriarch the Iudges the Prophets the elders of the old times of whom he exhibits an exact Catalogue yet he calls all them but Nubes testium cloudes of witnesses for though they be cloudes in Saint Chrysostomes sense that they invest us and enwrap us and so defend us from all diffidence in God we have their witnesse what God did for them why should we doubt of the like though they be cloudes in Athanasius sense they being in heaven showre downe by their prayers the dew of Gods grace upon the Church Though they be cloudes they are but cloudes some darkenesse mingled in them some controversies arising from them but his witnesses here are Lux inaccessibilis that light that no eye can attaine to and Pater Luminum the father of lights from whom all these testimonies are derived When God imployed a man to be the witnesse of Christ because men might doubt of his testimony God was content to assigne him his Compurgators when Iohn Baptist must preach that the kingdome of God was at hand God fortifies the testimony of his witnesse then Hic enim est for this is he of whom that is spoken by the prophet Esay and lest one were not enough he multiplies them as it is written in the prophets Iohn Baptist might be thought to testifie as a man and therefore men must testifie for him but these witnesses are of a higher nature these of heaven are the Trinity and those of earth are the sacraments and seales of the Church The prophets were full of favor with God Abraham full of faith Stephen full of the Holy Ghost many full of grace and Iohn Baptist a prophet and more then a prophet yet never any prophet never any man how much soever interessed in the favor of Almighty God was such an instrument of grace as a sacrament or as Gods seales and institutions in his Church and the least of these six witnesses is of that nature and therefore might be beleeved without more witnesses To speake then first of the three first the Father the Word and the Holy Ghost it was but a poore plot of the devill to goe about to rob us of their testimony for as long as we have the three last the spirit the water and bloud we have testimony enough of Christ because God is involved in his ordinance and though he be not tyed to the worke of the
Sacrament yet he is always present in it Yet this plot the devill had upon the Church And whereas this first Epistle of Saint Iohn was never doubted to be Canonicall whereas both the other have been called into some question yet in this first Epistle the first verse of this text was for a long time removed or expung'd whether by malice of Heretiques or negligence of transcribers The first Translation of the new testament which was into Syriaque hath not this verse That which was first called Vulgata editio had it not neither hath Luther it in his Germane translation very many of the Latine Fathers have it not and some very ancient Greeke Fathers want it though more ancient then they have it for Athanasius in the Councell of Nice cites it and makes use of it and Cyprian beheaded before that Councell hath it too But now he that is one of the witnesses himselfe the Holy Ghost hath assured the Church that this verse belongs to the Scripture and therefore it becomes us to consider thankfully and reverently this first ranke of witnesses the Father the Word and the Holy Ghost The Father then hath testified De integritate Christi of this intirenesse that Christ should be all this and doe all this which we have spoken of abundantly he begunne before Christ was borne in giving his name Thou shalt call his name Iesus for he shall save his people from sin Well how shall this person be capable to doe this office of saving his people from sinne Why in him say God the father in the representation of an Angell shall be fulfilled that prophecy A virgin shall beare a Sonne and they shall call his name Emanuel which is by interpretation God with us This seemes somewhat an incertaine testimony of a Man with an Alià s dictus with two names God says he shall be called Iesus that the prophecy may be fulfilled which says he shall be called Emanuel but therein consists Integritas Christi this intirenesse he could not be Jesus not a Saviour except he were Emanuel God with us God in our nature Here then is Jesus a Saviour a Saviour that is God and Man but where is the Testimony De Christo that he was anointed and prepared for this sacrifice that this worke of his was contracted between the Father and him and acceptable to him It is twice testified by the Father both in Christs act of humiliation when he would be Baptized by Iohn when he would accept an ablution who had no uncleannesse then God says This is my beloved Sonne in whom I am well pleased he was well pleased in his person and he was well pleased in his act in his office And he testifies it againe in his first act of glory in his transfiguration where the Father repeates the same words with an addition Heare him God is pleased in him and would have Men pleased in him too He testified first onely for Iosephs sak that had entertained and lodged some scrupulous suspition against his wife the Blessed Virgine His second testimony at the baptisme had a farther extent for that was for the confirmation of Iohn Baptist of the preacher himselfe who was to convey his doctrine to many others His third testimony in the transfiguration was larger then the Baptisme for that satisfied three and three such as were to carry it farre Peter and Iames and Iohn All which no doubt made the same use of his testimony as we see Peter did who preached out of the strength of his manifestation we followed not deceivable fables but with our owne eyes we saw his Majesty for he received of God the Father honor and glory when there came such a voice to him from the Excellent glory This is my beloved Sonne in whom I am well pleased But yet the Father gave a more free a more liberall testimony of him then this at his Conception or Baptisme or Transfiguration when upon Christs prayer Father glorifie thy Name there came a voice from heaven I have both glorified it and will glorifie it againe For this all the people apprehended some imputed it to Thunder some to an Angel but all heard it and all heard Christs comment upon it That that voice came not for him but for their sakes so that when the Father had testified of a Iesus a Saviour and a Christ a Saviour sent to that purpose and a Sonne in whom he is pleased and whom we must heare when it is said of him moreover Gratificavit â—â—s in Dilectâ— he hath made us accepted in his beloved this is his way of comming in water and bloud that is in the sacraments of the Church by which we have assurance of being accepted by him and this is this Integritas Christi the intirenesse of Christ testified by our first witnesse that bears record in heaven The father The second witnesse in heaven is verâ—um The Word and that is a welcome message for it is Christ himselfe It is not so when the Lord sends a word The Lord sent a word unto Iacob and it lighted upon Israelâ— there the word is a judgement and an execution of the Judgement for that word that signifies 2 word there in the same letters exactly signifies a pestilence a Calamity It is a word and a blow but the word here is verbum cara that Word which for our sakes was made our selves The word then in this place is the second person in the Trinity Christ Iesus who in this Court of heaven where there is no corruption no falsification no passion but fair and just proceeding is admitted to be a witnesse in his owne cause It is Iesus that testifies for Iesus now when he was upon earth and said If I should beare witnesse of my selfe my witnesse were not true whether we take those words to be spoken per Coâ—nlventiam by an allowance and concession It is not true that is I am content that you should not beleeve my witnesse of my selfe to be true as Saint Cyrill understand them or whether we take them Humana mare that Christ as a man acknowledged truely and as he thought that inlegall proceeding a mans owne testimony ought not to be beleeved in his owne behalfe as Athanâ—â—ius and Saint Ambrose understand them yet Christ might safely say as he did Though I beare a record of my selfe yet my record is true why because I know whence I come and whither I goe Christ could not be Singularis â—â—stis a single witnesseâ— He was alwayes more then one witnesse because he had alwayes more then 〈◊〉 God and man and therefore Christ instructing Nicodemus speakes plurally we speake that 〈◊〉 know we testifie that we have seene and you receive not Testimoniâ—â— nâ—strum our witnesseâ— he does not say my witnesse but ours because although a singular yet he was a plurall person too His testimony then was credible but how did he testifie Integritatem this intirenesse
all that belonged to our faithâ— All consists in this that he was Iesus capable in his nature to be a Saviour that he was Christus ordained and sent for that office and then Quod venit that be was come and come in aqus sanguine in water and bloud in sacraments which might apply him to us That he was Iesus a person capable his miracles testified aloud and frequently that he was Christ anointed and sent for that his reference of all his actions to his Father testified both these were enwrapped in that that he was the Sonne of God and that he professed himselfe upon the earth to be so for so it appeares plainely that he had plainely done We have a law say the Jews to Pilate and by our law he ought to die because he made himselfe the Sonne of God And for the last part that he came In aqua sanguine in water and bloud in such meanes as were to continue in the Church for our spirituall reparation and sustentation he testified that in preaching so piercing Sermons in instituting so powerfull Sacraments in assuring us that the love of God expressed to mankind in him extended to all persons and all times God so loved the world that he gave his onely begotten Sonne that whoseever beleeveth in him should not perish but have life everlasting And so the words beare record De Integritate of this Intirenesse of the whole worke of our Redemption and therefore Christ is not onely truely called a Martyr in that sense as Martyr signifies a witnesse but he is truly called a Martyr in that sense as we use the word ordinarily for he testified this truth and suffered for the testimony of it and therefore he is called Jesus Christ Martyr a faithfull witnesse And there is Martyrium a Martyrdome attributed to him where it is said Jesus Christ under Pontius Pilate witnessed a good confession so he was a speaking and a doing and a suffering witnesse Now for the third witnesse in heaven which is the holy Ghost we may contract our selves in that for the whole work was his Before Ioseph and Mary came together she was found with Child of the holy Ghost which if we take it as Saint Basil and divers others of the Fathers doe that Ioseph found it by the holy Ghost that is the holy Ghost informed him of it then here the holy Ghost was a witnesse to Ioseph of this Conception but we rather take it as it is most ordinarily taken that the Angell intimated this to Ioseph That that which was conceived in her was of the holy Ghost and then the holy Ghost did so primarily testifie this decree of God to send a Iesus and a Christ for our Redemption that himselfe was a blessed and bountifull actor in that Conception he was conceived by him by his overshadowing So that the holy Ghost did not onely testifie his comming but he brought him And then for his comming in Aqua sanguine in water and bloud that is in Sacraments in meanes by which he might be able to make his comming usefull and appliable to us first the holy Ghost was a pregnant witnesse of that at his Baptisme for the holy Ghost had told Iohn Baptist before-hand That upon whomsoever he should descend and tarry still that should be he that should baptize with the holy Ghost and then according to those Markes he did descend and tarry still upon Christ Iesus in his baptisme And after this falling upon him and tarrying upon him which testified his power in all his life expressed in his doctrine and in his Sermons after his death and Resurrection and Ascension the holy Ghost gave a new testimony when he fell upon the Apostles in Cloventongues and made them spirituall channells in which this water and bloud the meanes of applying Christ to us should be convey'd to all Nations and thus also the third witnesse in heaven testified De integritate of this intirenesse of Iesus Of these three witnesses then which are of heaven we shall need to adde no more but that which the text addes that is That these three are one that is not onely one in Consent they all testifie of one point they all speake to one Intergatory Ad integritatem Christi to prove this intirenesse of Christ but they are Vnum Essentia The Father the Sonne and the holy Ghost are all one Godhead and so meant and intended to be in this place And therefore as Saint Hierome complained when some Copies were without this seventh verse that thereby we had lost a good argument for the unity of the three Persons because this verse said plainely that the three witnesses were all one so I am sorry when I see any of our later expositors deny that in this place there is any proofe of such an unity but that this Vnum sunt They are one is onely an unity of consent and not of essence It is an unthrifty prodigality howsoever we be abundantly provided with arguments from other places of Scriptures to prove this Vnity in Trinity to cast away so strong an argument against Iew and Turke as is in these words for that and for the consubstantiality of Christ which was the Tempest and the Earthquake of the Primitive Church raised by Arius and his followers then and God knowes not extinguished yet Thus much I adde of these three witnesses that though they be in heaven their testimony is upon the earth for they need not to testifie to one another this matter of Jesus The Father heares of it every day by the continuall intercession of Christ Jesus The Sonne feeles it every day in his new crucifying by our sinnes and in the perfecution of his Mysticall body here The holy Ghost hath a bitter sense of it in our sinnes against the holy Ghost and he hath a loving sense of it in those abundant seas of graces which flow continually from him upon us They need no witnesses in heaven but these three witnesses testifie all this to our Consciences And therefore the first author that is observed to have read and made use of this seventh verse which was one of the first Bishops of Rome he reads the words thus Tres in nobis there are three in us which beare witnesse in heaven they testifie for our sakes and to establish our assurance De Integritate Iesu that Jesus is come and come with meanes to save the world and to save us And therefore upon these words Saint Bernard collects thus much more that there are other witnesses in heaven which restifie this worke of our Redemption Angels and Saints all the Court all the Quire of heaven testifie it but catera nobis occults says he what all they doe we know not but according to the best dispositions here in this world we acquaint our selves and we choose to keep company with the best and so not onely the poore Church s the earth
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
aquarum by the power of waters many waters and in this verse this witnesse is delivered in the plurall spirit and waters and so waters in that signification which signification they have often in the Scriptures that is affliction and tribulation be good testimonies that our Lord Jesus doth visit us though the waters of Coâ—trition and repentant teares be another good testimony of that too yet that water which testifies the presence of Jesus so as that it doth always infallibly bring Jesus with it for the Sacraments are never without Grace whether it be accepted or no there it is â— That water which is made equall with the preaching of the Word so farre as to be a fellow-witnesse with the Spirit that is onely the Sacrament of baptisme without which in the ordinary dispensation of God no soule can be surer that Jesus is come to him then if he had never heard the Word preached he mistakes the spirit the first witnesse if he refuse the water the second The third witnesse upon earth is bloud and that is briefly the Communion of the body and bloud of Iesus in the Lords Supper But how is that bloud upon earth I am not ashamed to confesse that I know not how but the bloud of Christ is a witnesse upon earth in the Sacrament and therefore upon the earth it is Now this Witnesse being made equall with the other two with preaching and with baptisme it is as necessary that he that will have an assuranceâ— that Iesus is come into him doe receive this Sacrament as that he doe heare Sermâ—nâ— and that he be baptized An over vehement urging of this necessity brought in an erroneous custome in the Primitive Church That they would give the Sacrament of the body of Christ to Children as soon as they were baptized yea and to dead man too But because this Sacrament is accompanied with precepts which can belong onely to Men of understanding for they must doe it in Remembrance and they must discerne the Lords body therefore the necessity lies onely upon such as are come to those graces and to that understanding For they that take it and doe not discerne it not know what they do they take it dangerously But else for them to whom this Sacrament belongs if they take it not their hearing of Sermons and their baptisme doth them no good for what good can they have done them if they have not prepared themselves for it And therefore as the Religion of the Church holds a stubborne Recusant at the table at the Communion bord as farre from her as a Recusant at the Pew that is a Non-communicant as ill as a not commer or a not hearer so I doubt not but the wisdome of the state weighs them in the same balance For these three agree in one says the text that is first they meet in one Man and then they testifie the same thing that is Integritatem Iesu that Iesus is come to him in outward Meanes to save his soule If his conscience find not this testimony all these availe him nothing If we remaine vessells of anger and of dishonour still we are under the Vae vâ—bis Hypocritis woe unto you Hypocrites that make cleane onely the outside of your cuppes and Platters That baptize and wash your owne and your childrens bodies but not their mindes with instructions When we shall come to say Docuisti in plateis we have heard thee preach in our streets we have continued our hearing of thy Word when we say Manducavimus coram te we have eate in thy presence at thy table yea Manducavimus tâ— we have eaten thee thy selfe yet for all this outward show of these three witnesses of Spirit and Water and bloud Preaching and Baptisme and Communion we shall heare that fearfull disclaiming from Christ Jesus Nescio vos I know not whence you are But these witnesses he will always heare if they testifie for us that Jesus is come unto us for the Gospell and the preaching thereof is as the deed that conveys Iesus unto us the water the baptisme is as the Seale that assures it and the bloud the Sacrament is the delivery of Christ into us and this is Integritas Iesu the entire and full possession of him To this purpose therefore as we have found a Trinity in heaven and a Trinity in earth so we must make it up a Trinity of Trinities and finde a third Trinity in our selves God created one Trinity in us the observation and the enumeration is Saint Bernards which are those three faculties of our soule the reason the memory the will That Trinity in us by another Trinity too by suggestion towards sin by delight in sinne by consent to sinne is fallen into a third Trinity The memory into a weaknesse that that comprehends not God it glorifies him not for benefits received The reasen to a blindnesse that that discernes not what is true and the will to a perversnesse that that wishes not what 's good But the goodnesse of God by these three witnesses on earth regenerates and reestablishes a new Trinity in us faith and hope and charity Thus farre that devout Man carries it And if this new Trinity faith and hope and charity witnesse to us Integritatem Christi all the worke of Christ If my faith testifie to me that Christ is sealed to my soule and my hope testifie that at the Resurection I shall have a perfect fruition in soule and body of that glory which he purchased for every beleever and my charity testifies to the world that I labour to make sure that salvation by a good life then there 's a Trinity of Trinities and the six are made nine witnesses There are three in heaven that testifie that this is done for all Mankinde Three in the Church that testifie this may be done for me and three in my soule that testifie that all this is applied to me and then the verdict and the Judgement must necessarily goe for me And beloved this Judgement will be grounded upon this intirenesse of Jesus and therefore let me dismisse you with this note That Integritas is in continuitate not in contignitate It is not the touching upon a thing nor the comming neare to a thing that makes it intire a fagot where the sticks touch a peece of cloth where the threds touch is not intire To come as neare Christ as we can conveniently to trie how neare we can bring two Religions together this is not to preserve Integritatem Iesu In a word Intirenesse excludes deficiency and redundancy and discontinuance we preserve not intirenesse if we preserve not the dignity of Christ in his Church and in his discipline and that excludes the defective Separatist we doe not preserve that entirenesse if we admit traditions and additions of Men in an equality to the word of God and that excludes the redundant Papist neither doe we preserve the entirenesse if we admit a discontinuance
conscience There is a washing then absolutely generally necessary the water of Baptisme and a washing occasionally necessary because we fall into actuall sinnes the bloud of our Saviour in the Sacrament and there is a washing between these preparatory to the last washing the water of Contrite and repentant teares in opening our selves to God and shutting up of our selves against future tentations of the two first the two Sacraments sons in Ecclesia the whole spring and river is in the Church there is no baptisme no bloud of Christ but in the Church And of this later which is most properly ablutio pedum the washing of the feet that is teares shed in repentance of our sinfull lives of this water there is Pelvis in Ecclesia the Bason is in the Church for our best repentance though this repentance be at home in our owne hearts doth yet receive a Seale from the absolution of Gods Ministers in the Church But yet though there be no cleansing but from the spirit of God no ordinary working of Gods spirit but in the Church and his ordinances there yet we our selves are not so left out in this work but that the spouse here and every carefull soule here says truly Ego lavi I my selfe have washed my feet which is our third branch It is said often in Philosophy Nihil in intellectu quod non prius in sensu till some sense apprehend a thing the Iudgment cannot debate it nor discourse it It may well be said in Divinity too Nihil in gratia quod non prius in natura there is nothing in grace that was not first in nature so farre as that grace always finds nature and naturall faculties to work on though that nature be not disposed to the receiving of grace when it comes yet that nature and those faculties which may be so disposed by grace are there before that grace comes And the grace of God doth not work this cleansing but where there is a sweet and souple and tractable and ductile disposition wrought in that soule This disposition is no cause why God gives his grace for there is no cause but his own meer and unmeasurable goodnesse But yet without such a disposition God would not give that and therefore let us cleanse our selves from all filthinesse says the Apostle There is something which we ourselves may doe A Man that had powred out himselfe in a vehement and corrupt solicitation of the chastity of any woman if he found himselfe surprized by the presence of a husband or a father he could give over in the midst of a protestation A Man that had set one foot into a house of dangerous provocations if he saw â— bill of the plague upon the doore he could goe backe A Man that had drawne his sword to rob a passenger if he saw a hue and cry come could give over that and all this is upon the Ego lavi I have washed without use of grace his owne naturall reason declines him from that sinne then How long shall we make this bad use of this true doctrine that because we cannot doe enough for our salvation therefore we will doe nothing Shall I see any Man shut out of heaven that did what he could upon earth Thou that canst mourne for any worldly losse mourne for thy sinne Thou that lovest meetings of company for society and conversation love the meeting of the Saints of God in the Congregation and communion of Saints Thou that lovest the Rhetorique the Musique the wit the sharpnesse the eloquence the elegancy of other authors love even those things in the Scriptures in the word of God where they abound more then in other authors Put but thy affections out of their ordinary sinfull way and then Lavasti pedes thou hast washed thy feet and God will take thy work in hand and raise a building farre beyond the compasse and comprehension of thy foundation that which the soule began but in good nature shall be perfected in grace But doe it quickly for the glory of this soule here was in the Lavi It is not Lavabo that she had already not that she would wash her feet since thou art come to know thy naturall uncleannesse and baptisme for that and thine actuall uncleannesse and that for that there is a River that brings thee into the maine Sea the water of repentance leads thee to the bottomelesse Sea of the bloud of thy Saviour in the Sacrament continue not in thy foulenesse in confidence that all shall be drowned in that at last whensoever thou wilt come to it It was a common but an erroneous practise even in the Primitive Church to defer their baptisme till they were old because an opinion prevailed upon them that baptisme discharged them of all sinnes they used to be baptized then when they were past sinning that so they might passe out of this world in that innocency which their baptisme imprinted in them And out of this custome Men grew to be the more carelesse all their lives because all was done at once in baptisme But says Saint Augustine in that case and it was his owne case It were uncharitably said Vulneretur amplius that if we saw a Man welter in his bloud and wounded in divers places it were uncharitably said Vulneretur amplius give him two or three wounds more for the Surgeon is not come yet It is uncharitably said to thine owne soule Vulneretur amplius take thy pleasure in sinne yet when I come to receive the Sacrament I will repent altogether doe not thinke to put off all to the washing weeke all thy sinnes all thy repentance to Easter and the Sacrament then There may be a washing then and no drying thou maist come to weep the teares of desperation to seek mercy with teares and not find it teares for worldly losses teares for sinne teares for bodily anguish may overflow thee then and whereas Gods goodnesse to those that are his is ut abstergat omnem Lachrymam to wipe all teares from their eyes absterget nullam Lachrymam he may leave all unwiped upon thee he may leave thy soule to sinke and to shipwracke under this tempest and inundation and current of divers tides teares of all kinds and ease of none for those of whom it is said Deus absterget omnem lachrymam God shall wipe all teares from their eyes are they Qui laverunt Stolas as we see there who have already washed their long robes and made them white in the bloud of the Lambe who have already by teares of repentance become worthy receivers of the seale of reconciliation in the Sacrament of his body and bloud To them God shall wipe all teares from their eyes but to the unrepentant sinner he shall multiply teares from teares for the losse of a horse or of a house to teares for the losse of a soule and wipe no teare from his eyes But yet though this Lavi exclude the Lavabo as it
reuniting of body and soule in a blessed Resurrection Ite Surgite depart so as you may desire to rise Depart with an In manus tuas and with a Veni Domiâ—e Iesu with a willing surrendring of your soules and a cheerfull meeting of the Lord Jesus For else all hope of profit and permanent Rest is lost for as Saint Hierome interprets these very words Here we are taught that there is no rest in this life Sed quasiâ—â—â— mortuis resurgentes ad sublime tendere ambulare post Daminum Iesum we depart when we depart from sin and we rise when we raise our selves to a conformity with Christ And not onely after his example but after his person that is to hasten thither whither he is gone to prepare us a Room For this Rest in the Text though it may be understood of the Land of Promise and of the Church and of the Arke and of the Sabbath for if we had time to pursue them we might make good use of all these acceptations yet we accept Chrysostâ—me's acceptation best Requies est ipse Christus our rest is Christ himselfe Not onely that rest that is in Christ peace of conscience in him but that Rest that Christ is in eternall rest in his kingdome There remaineth a Rest to the people of God besides that inchoation of Rest which the godly have here there remains a fuller Rest. Iesus is entred into his Rest sayes the Apostle there his Rest was not here in this world and Let us study to enter into thatâ— Rest sayes he for no other can accomplish our peace It is righteousnesse with God is recompence tribulation to them that trouble you and to you which are troubled Rest but when in this world no when the Lord Iesus shall sheâ— himselfe from heaven with his mighty Angels then comes your Rest for for the grave the body lies still but it is not a Rest because it is not sensible of that lying still In heaven the body shall rest rest in the sense of that glory This Rest then is not here Not onely not Here at this Here was taken in the first interpretation Here in the Earth but not Here in the second interpretation not in Repentance it selfe for all the Rest of this life even the spirituall Rest is rather a Truce then a peace rather a Cessation then an end of the war For when these words I will set the Egyptians against the Egyptians Every one shall fight against his brother and every one against his neighbour City against City and Kingdome against Kingdome may be interpreted and are so interpreted of the time of the Gospell of Christ Jesus when Christ himselfe says Nolite putare quod venerim mittere pacem in terrâ Never think that I came to settle peace or Rest in this world Nay when Christ sayes None of them that were bidden shall come to his supper and that may be verified of any Congregation none of us that are call'd now shall come to that Rest a Man may be at a security in an opinion of Rest and be far from it A man may be neerer Rest in a troubled Conscience then in a secure Here we have often Resurrections that is purposes to depart from sin but they are such Resurrections as were at the time of Christs Resurrection when as the strongest opinion is Resurrexerunt iterum morituri Many of the dead rose but they died again we rise from our sins here but here we fall again Monumenta aperta sunt it is Saint Hierome's note The graves were opened presently upon Christs death but yet the bodies did not arise till Christs Resurrection The godly have an opening of their graves they see some light some of their weight some of their Earth is taken from them but a Resurrection to enter into the City to follow the Lamb to come into an established security that they have not till they be united to Christ in heaven Here we are still subject to relapses and to looking back Memento uxoris Lâ—t Ipsa in loco manet transeuntes monet Shee is fixed to a place that she might settle those that are not fix'd Vt quid in statuam salis conversa si non homines ut sapiant condiat to teach us the danger of looking back till we be fix'd she is fix'd When the Prophetâ— Eliahâ— was at the dore of Desperation an Angell touch'd him and said Vp and eat and there was bread and water provided and he did eat but he slept again and we have some of these excitations and we come and eat and drink even the body and bloud of Christ but we sleep again we doe not perfect the work Our Rest Here then is never without a fear of losing it This is our best state To fear leâ—t at any time by forsaking the promise of entring into his rest we should seem to be depriv'd The Apostle disputes not neither doe I whether we can be depriv'd or no but he assures us that we may fall back so far as that to the Church and to our own Consciences we may seem to be depriv'd and that 's argument enough that here is no Rest. To end all though there be no Rest in all this world no not in our sanctification here yet this being a Consolation there must be rest some where And it is In superna Civitate unde amicus non exit quâ inimicus non intrat In that City in that Hierusalem where there shall never enter any man whom we doe not love nor any goe from us whom we doe love Which though we have not yet yet we shall have for upon those words because I live ye shall live also Saint Augustine sayes that because his Resurrection was to follow so soon Christ takes the present word because I doe live But because their life was not to be had here he says Vivetis you shall live in heaven not Vivitis for here we doe not live So as in Adam we all die even so in Christ shall all be made alive says the Apostle All our deaths are here present now now we dy our quickning is reserv'd for heaven that 's future And therefore let us attend that Rest as patiently as we doe the things of this world and not doubt of it therefore because we see it not yet even in this world we consider invisible things more then visible Vidimus pelagus non autem mercedem The Merchant sees the tempestuous Sea when he does not see the commodities which he goes for Videmus terram non autem messem The Husbandman sees the Earth and his labour when he sees no harvest and for these hopes that there will be a gain to the Merchant and a harvest to the Labourer Naturae fidimus we rely upon Creatures for our Resurrection fide usâ—orem habemus Coranatum Not Nature not Sea
will confesse many fleshly infirmities and then it is the sounder for that though not for the infirmity yet for the confession of the infirmity Neither let that hand that reaches out to this body in a guiltinesse of pollution and uncleannesse or in a guiltinesse of extortion or undeserved see ever hope to signe a conveyance that shall fasten his inheritance upon his children to the third generation ever hope to assigne a will that shall be observed after his death ever hope to lift up it selfe for mercy to God at his death but his case shall be like the case of Iudas if the devill have put in his heart to betray Christ to make the body and bloud of Christ Jesus false witnesses to the congregation of his hypocriticall sanctity Satan shall enter into him with this sop and seale his condemnation Beloved in the bowels of that Jesus who is coming into you even in spirituall riches it is an unthrifty thing to anticipate your monies to receive your rents before they are due and this treasure of the soule the body and bloud of your Saviour is not due to you yet if you have not yet passed a mature and a severe examination of your conscience It were better that your particular friends or that the congregation should observe in you an abstinence and forbearing to day and make what interpretation they would of that forbearing then that the holy Ghost should deprehend you in an unworthy receiving lest as the Master of the feast said to him that came without his wedding garment then when he was set Amice quomodo intrâsti friend how came you in so Christ should say to thee then when thou art upon thy knees and hast taken him into thy hands Amice quomodo intrabo friend how can I enter into thee who hast not swept thy house who hast made no preparation for me But to those that have he knocks and he enters and he â—ups with them and he is a supper to them And so this consideration of making Churches of our houses and of our hearts leads us to a third part the particular circumstances in Iacobs action In which there is such a change such a dependence whether we consider the Metall or the fashion the severall doctrines or the sweetnesse and easinesse of raising them as scarce in any other place a fuller harmony The first linke is the Tunc Iacob then Iacob which is a Tunc consequentiae rather then a Tunc temporis It is not so much at what time Iacob did or said this as upon what occasion The second linke is Quid operatum what this wrought upon Iacob It awaked him out of his sleep A third is Quid ille what he did and that was Et dixit he came to an open profession of that which he conceived he said and a fourth is Quid dixit what this profession was And in that which is a branch with much fruit a pregnant part a part containing many parts thus much is considerable that he presently acknowledged and assented to their light which was given him the Lord is in this place And he acknowledged his owne darknesse till that light came upon him Et ego nesciebam I knew it not And then upon this light received he admitted no scruple no hesitation but came presently to a confident assurance Verè Dominus surely of a certainty the Lord is in this place And then another doctrine is Et timuit he was afraid for all his confidence he had a reverentiall feare not a distrust but a reverent respect to that great Majesty and upon this feare there is a second Et dixit he spoke againe this feare did not stupifie him he recovers againe and discerned the manifestation of God in that particular place Quam terribilis how fearfull is this place And then the last linke of this chaine is Quid inde what was the effect of all this and that is that he might erect a Monument and marke for the worship of God in this place Quia non nisi domus because this is none other then the house of God and the gate of heaven Now I have no purpose to make you afraid of enlarging all these points I shall onely passe through some of them paraphrastically and trust them with the rest for they insinuate one another and trust your christianly meditation with them all The first linke then is the Tunc Iacob the occasion then Iocob did this which was that God had revealed to Iocob that vision of the ladder whose foot stood upon earth and whose top reached to heaven upon which ladder God stood and Angels went up and down Now this ladder is for the most part understood to be Christ himselfe whose foot that touched the earth is his humanity and his top that reached to heaven his Divinity The ladder is Christ and upon him the Angels his Ministers labour for the edifying of the Church And in this labour upon this ladder God stands above it governing and ordering all things according to his providence in his Church Now when this was revealed to Iacob now when this is revealed to you that God hath let fall a ladder a bridge between heaven and earth that Christ whose divinity departed not from heaven came downe to us into this world that God the father stands upon this ladder as the Originall hath it Nitzab that he leanes upon this ladder as the vulgar hath it Innixus scalae that he rests upon it as the holy Ghost did upon the â—ame ladder that is upon Christ in his baptisme that upon this ladder which stretches so farre and is provided so well the Angels labour the Ministers of God doe their offices when this was when this is manifested then it became Iacob and now it becomes every Christian to doe something for the advancing of the outward glory and worship of God in his Church when Christ is content to be this ladder when God is content to govern this ladder when the Angels are content to labour upon this ladder which ladder is Christ and the Christian Church shall any Christian Man forbeare his help to the necessary building and to the sober and modest adorning of the materiall Church of God God studies the good of the Church Angels labour for it and shall Man who is to receive all the profit of this doe nothing This is the Tunc Iacob when there is a free preaching of the Gospell there should be a free and liberall disposition to advance his house Well to make haste the second linke is Quid operatum what this wrought upon Iacob and it is Iacob awoke out of his sleep Now in this place the holy Ghost imputes no sinfull sleep to Iacob but it is a naturall sleep of lassitude and wearinesse after his travell there is an ill sleep an indifferent and a good sleep which is that heavenly sleep that tranquillity which that soul which is at peace with
of rising as some exaltation of his power that he is to Judge And that place in the beginning of that Psalme many of the antients read in the future Dijudicabit God shall judge the Gods because the frame of the Psalme seems to referre it to the last Judgment Turtullian reads it Dijudicavit as a thing past God hath judged in all times and the letter of the text requires it to be in the present Dijudicat Collect all and Judgment is so essentiall to God as that it is coeternall with him he hath he doth and he will judge the world and the Judges of the world other Judges die likemen weakely and they fall that 's worse ignominiously and they fall like Princes that 's worst fearfully and yet scornfully and when they are dead and faln they rise no more to execute Judgment but have Judgment executed upon them the Lord dyes not nor he falls not and if he seem to slumber the Martyrs under the Altar awake him with their Vsque quo Domine how long O Lord before thou execute Iudgment And he will arise and Judge the world for Judgment is his God putteth downe one and setteth up another says David where hath he that power Why God is the Judge not a Judge but the Judge and in that right he putteth downe one and setteth up another Now for this Judgment which we place in God we must consider in God three notions three apprehensions three kinds of Judgment First God hath Iudicium detestationis God doth naturally know and therefore naturally detest evill for no man in the extreamest corruption of nature is yet fallen so far as to love or approve evill at the same time that he knows and acknowledges it to be evill But we are so blind in the knowledge of evill that we needed that great supplement and assistance of the law it self to make us know what was evill Moses magnifies and justly the law Non appropinquâ—vit says Moses God came not so neare to any nation as to the Iews Non taliter fecit God dealt not so well with any nation as with the Iews and wherein because he had given them a law and yet we see the greatest dignity of this law to be That by the law is the knowledge of sinne for though by the law of nature written in our hearts there be some condemnation of some sinnes yet to know that every sinne was Treason against God to know that every sinne hath the reward of death and eternall death annexed to it this knowledge we have onely by the law Now if man will pretend to be a Judge what an exact knowledge of the law is required at his hand for some things are sinne to one nation which are not to another as where the just authority of the lawfull Magistrate changes the nature of the thing and makes a thing naturally indifferent necessary to them who are under his obedience some things are sinnes at one time which are not at another as all the ceremoniall law created new sinnes which were not sinnes before the law was given nor since it expir'd some things are sinnes in a man now which will not be sinnes in the same man to morrow as when a man hath contracted a just scruple against any particular action it is a sinne to doe it during the scruple and it may be sinne in him to omit it when he hath devested the scruple onely God hath Iudicium detestationis he knows and therefore detests evill and therefore flatter not thy self with a Tush God sees it not or Tush God cares not Doth it disquiet him or trouble his rest in heaven that I breake his Sabbath here Doth it wound his body or draw his bloud there that I swear by his body and bloud here Doth it corrupt any of his virgins there that I sollicit the chastity of a woman here Are his Martyrs withdrawn from their Allegeance or retarded in their service to him there because I dare not defend his cause nor speake for him nor fight for him here Beloved it is a degree of superstition and an effect of an undiscreet zeale perchance to be too forward in making indifferent things necessary and so to imprint the nature and sting of sin where naturally it is not so certainly it a more slippery and irreligious thing to be too apt to call things meerely indifferent and to forget that even in eating and drinking waking and sleeping the glory of God is intermingled as if we knew exactly the prescience and foreknowledge of God there could be nothing contingent or casuall for though there be a contingency in the nature of the thing yet it is certain to God so if we considered duly wherein the glory of God might be promov'd in every action of ours there could scarce by any action so indifferent but that the glory of God would turne the scale and make it necessary to me at that time but then private interests and private respects create a new indifferency to my apprehension and calls me to consider that thing as it is in nature and not as it is considered with that circumstance of the glory of God and so I lose that Iudicium detestationis which onely God hath absolutely and perfectly to know and therefore to detest evill and so he is a Judge And as he is a Judge so Iudicat rem he judges the nature of the thing he is so too as he hath Iudicium discretionis and so Iudicat personam he knows what is evill and he discernes when thou committest that evill Here you are fain to supply defects of laws that things done in one County may be tryed in another And that in offences of high nature transmarine offences may be inquir'd and tryed here But as the Prophet says Who measured the waters in the hollow of his hand or meted 〈◊〉 the heavens with a span who comprehended the dust of the earth in a measure or weighed the mountains in a scale So I say who hath divided heaven into shires or parishes or limited the territories and Jurisdictions there that God should not have Iudicium discretionis the power of discerning all actions in all places When there was no more to be seen or considered upon the whole earth but the garden of Paradise for from the beginning Deliciae ejus esse cum filiis hominum Gods delight was to be with the sons of men and man was only there shal we not deminish God nor speak too vulgarly of him to say that he hovered like a Falcon over Paradise and that from that height of heaven the piercing eye of God saw so little a thing as the forbidden fruit and what became of that and the reaching â—are of God heard the hissing of the Serpent and the whispering of the woman and what was concluded upon that Shall we think it little to have seen to have things done in Paradise when there was nothing else to divert
his eye nothing else to distract his counsels nothing else done upon the face of the earth Take the earth now as it is replenished and take it either as it is torn and crumbled into raggs and shivers not a kingdome not a family not a man agreeing with himselfe Or take it in that concord which is in it as All the Kings of the earth set themselves and all the Rulers of the earth take counsell together against the Lord take it in this union or this division in this concord or this discord still the Lord that sitteth in the heavens discernes all looks at all laughs at all and hath them all in derision Earthly Judges have their distinctions and so their restrictions some things they cannot know what mortall man can know all Some things they cannot take knowledge of for they are bound to evidence But God hath Iudicium discretionis no mist no cloud no darknesse no disguise keeps him from discerning and judging all our actions and so he is a Judge too And he is so lastly as he hath Iudicium retributionis God knows what is evill he knows when that evill is done and he knows how to punish and recompense that evill for the office of a Judge who judges according to a law being not to contract or extend that law but to declare what was the true meaning of that Law-maker when hee made that law God hath this judgement in perfection because hee himself made that law by which he judges and therefore when he hath said Morte morieris If thou do this thou shalt die a double death where he hath said Stipendium peccati mors est every sin shall be rewarded with death If I sinne against the Lord who shall entreat for me Who shall give any other interpretation any modification any Non obstante upon his law in my behalf when he comes to judge me according to that law which himself hath made Who shall think to delude the Judge and say Surely this was not the meaning of the Law-giver when he who is the Judge was the Law-maker too And then as God is Judge in all these respects so is he a Judge in them all Sine Appellatione and Sine judiciis man cannot appeal from God God needs no evidence from man for for the Appeal first to whom should we appeal from the Soveraign 〈◊〉 Wrangle as long as ye will who is Chief Justice and which Court hath Juris 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 over another I know the Chief Justice and I know the Soveraign 〈…〉 the King of heaven and earth shall send his ministring Spirits his Angels to the 〈◊〉 and bowels of the Earth and to the bosome and bottome of the Sea and Earth must deliver Corpus cum causâ all the bodies of the dead and all their actions to receive a judgement in this Court when it will be but an erroneous and frivolous Appeal to call to the Hils to fall down upon us and the Mountains to cover and hide us from the wrathfull judgment of God He is a Judge then Sine appellatione without any Appeal from him he is so too Sine judiciis without needing any evidence from us Now if I be wary in my actions here incarnate Devils detractors and informers cannot accuse me If my sinne come not to action but lye onely in my heart the Devill himself who is the accuser of the brethren hath no evidence against me but God knows my heart doth not he that pondereth the heart understand it where it is not in that faint word which the vulgar Edition hath expressed it in inspector cordium That God sees the heart but the word is Tochen which signifies every where to weigh to number to search to examine as the word is used by Salomon again The Lord weigheth the spirits and it must be a ready hand and exact scales that shall weigh spirits So that though neither man nor Devill nay nor my self give evidence against me yea though I know nothing by my selfe I am not thereby justified why where is the farther danger In this which follows there in Saint Paul He that judges me is the Lord and the Lord hath meanes to know my heart better then my self And therefore as Saint Augustine makes use of those words Abyssus Abyssum invocat one depth cals upon another The infinite depth of my sins must call upon the more infinite depth of Gods mercy for if God who is Judge in all these respects judicio detestationis he knows and abhors evill and judicio discretionis he discerns every evill person and every evill action judicio retributionis he can and will recompense evill with evill And all these Sine Appellatione we cannot appeal from him Sine judiciis he needs no evidence from us If this judgement enter into judgement with me not onely not I but not the most righteous man no nor the Church whom he hath washed in his blood that she might be without spot or wrinckle shall appear righteous in his sight This being then thus that Iudgement is an unseparable character of God the Father being Fons Deitatis the root and spring of the whole Deity how is it said that the Father judgeth no man Not that we should conceive a wearinesse or retiring in the Father or a discharging of himself upon the shoulders and labours of another in the administration and judging of this world for as it is truly said that God rested the seventh day that is he rested from working in that kind from creating so it is true that Christ says here My Father worketh yet and I work and so as it is truly said here The Father judgeth no man it is truly sayd by Christ too of the Father I seek not mine own glory there is one that seeketh and judgeth still it is true that God hath Iudicium detestationis Thy eyes are pure eyes O Lord and cannot behold iniquity says the Prophet still it is true that hee hath Iudicium discretionis because they committed villany in Israel and I know it saith the Lord still it is true that he hath Iudicium retributionis The Lord killeth and maketh alive he bringeth down to the grave and bringeth up still it is true that he hath all these sine appellatione for go to the Sea or Earth or Hell as David makes the distribution and God is there and he hath them sine judiciis for our witnesse is in heaven and our record is on high All this is undeniably true and besides this that great name of God by which he is first called in the Scriptures Elohim is not inconveniently deriv'd from Elah which is Iurare to swear God is able as a Judge to minister an oath unto us and to draw evidence from our own consciences against our selves so that then the Father he judges still but he judges as God and not as the Father In the three great judgements of God the
that thou hast not received he asks that question of a man that which is received is received as man For as Bellarmine in a place where he disposes himself to quarrell at some few words of Calvins though he confesse the matter to be true and as he cals it there Catholique says Essentiam genitam negamus we confesse that Christ hath not his essence from his Father by generation the relation the filiation he hath from his Father he hath the name of Son but he hath not this execution of this judgement by that relation by that filiation still as the Son of God he hath the capacity as the Sonne of man he hath the execution And therefore Prosper that follows S. Augustine limits perchance too narrowly to the very flesh to the humanity Ipsa not Ipsae â—rit Iudex quae sub Iudice stetit and ipsa judicabit quae judicatae est where he places not this Judgement upon the mixt person which is the safest way of God and man but upon man alone God hath appointed a day in which he will judge the world in righteousnesse But by whom By that man whom he hath ordained God will judge still but still in Christ and therefore says S. Augustine upon those words Arise O Lord and judge the earth Cui Deo dicitur surge nisi ei qui dormivit What God doth David call upon to arise but that God who lay down to sleep in the grave as though he should say says August Dormivisti judicatus à terra surge judâ—ca terram So that to collect all though judgement be such a character of God as he cannot devest yet the Father hath committed such a Judgement to the Sonne as none but he can execute And what is that Omne judicium all judgement that is omne imperium omnem potestatem It is presented in the name of Judgement but it involves all It is literally and particularly Judgement in S. Iohn The Father hath given him authority to execute judgement It is extended unto power in Saint Matthew All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth And it is enlarg'd as far farther as can be expressed or conceived in another place of Saint Matthew All things are deliver'd to me of my Father Now all things our Saviour Christ Jesus exercises either per carnem or at least in carne whatsoever the Father does the Sonne does too In carne because now there is an unseparable union betwixt God and the humane nature The Father creates new souls every day in the inanimation of Children and the Sonne creates them with him The Father concurs with all second causes as the first moving cause of all naturall things and all this the Sonne does too but all this in carne Though he be in our humane flesh he is not the lesse able to doe the acts belonging to the Godhead but per carnem by the flesh instrumentally visibly he executes judgement because he is the Son of man God hath been so indulgent to man as that there should be no judgement given upon man but man should give it Christ then having all Judgment we refresh to your memory those three Judgements which we toucht upon before first the Judgement of our Election severing of vessels of honour and dishonor next the Judgement of our Justification here severing of friends from enemies and then the Judgment of our Glorification severing sheep from goats and for the first of our Election As if I were under the condemnation of the Law for some capitall offence and going to execution and the Kings mercy expressed in a sealed pardon were presented me I should not stand to enquire what mov'd the King to doe it what hee said to any body else what any body else said to him what hee saw in mee or what hee look't for at my hands but embrace that mercy cheerfully and thankfully and attribute it onely to his abundant goodnesse So when I consider my selfe to have been let fall into this world in massa Damnata under the generall condemnation of mankind and yet by the working of Gods Spirit I find at first a desire and after a modest assurance that I am delivered from that condemnation I enquire not what God did in his bed-chamber in his cabinet counsell in his eternall decree I know that hee hath made Iudicium electionis in Christ Jesus And therefore that I may know whether I doe not deceive my selfe in presuming my self to be of that number I come down and examine my selfe whether I can truly tell my conscience that Christ Jesus dyed for mee which I cannot doe if I have not a desire and an endevour to conform my self to him And if I do that there I finde my Predestination I am a Christian and I will not offer to goe before my Master Christ Jesus I cannot be sav'd before there was a Saviour In Christ Jesus is Omne judicium all judgement and therefore the judgment of Election the first separation of vessels of honour and dishonour in Election and Reprobation was in Christ Jesus Much more evidently is the second judgement of our Justification by means ordain'd in the Christian Church the Judgement of Christ it is the Gospel of Christ which is preacht to you there There is no name given under heaven whereby you should be saved there are no other means wherby salvation should be applyed in his name given but those which he hath instituted in his Church So that when I come to the second â—udgement to try whether I stand justifyed in the sight of Christ or no I come for that Judgement to Christ in his Church Doe I remember what I contracted with Christ Jesus when I took the name of a Christian at my entrance into his Church by Baptism Doe I find I have endevoured to perform those Conditions Doe I find a remorse when I have not performed them Doe I feele the remission of those sinnes applyed to me when I hear the gracious promises of the Gospel shed upon repentant sinners by the mouth of his Minister Have I a true and solid consolation without shift or disguise or flattering of my conscience when I receive the seal of his pardon in the Sacrament Beloved not in any morall integrity not in keeping the conscience of an honest man in generall but in using well the meanes ordain'd by Christ in the Christian Church am I justified And therefore this Judgement of Justification is his too And then the third and last judgement which is the judgment of Glorification that 's easily agreed by all to appertain unto Christ Idem Iesus The same Iesus that ascended shall come to judgement Videbunt quem pupugerant Every eye shall see him and they also which pierc't him Then the Son of man shall come in glory and he as man shall give the judgement for things done or omitted towards him as man for not feeding for not clothing for
well Articulus resurrectionis propria Ecclesiaevox It is the Christian Church that hath delivered to us the article of the resurrection Nature says it not Philosophy says it not it is the language and the Idiotisme of the Church of God that the resurrection is to be beleeved as an article of faith For though articles of faith be not facta Ecclesiae they are dicta Ecclesiae though the Church doe not make articles yet she declares them In the Creation the way was Dixit facta sunt God spake and so things were made In the Gospell the way is Fecit dicta sunt God makes articles of faith and the Church utters them presents them That 's manifestè verum evidently undeniably true that Nature and Philosophy say nothing of articles of faith But even in Nature and in Philosophy there is some preparation A priore and much illustration A posteriore of the Resurrection For first we know by naturall reason that it is no such thing as God cannot doe It implies no contradiction in it selfe as that new article of Transubstantiation does It implies no defectivenesse in God as that new article The necessity of a perpetuall Vicar upon earth does For things contradictory in themselves which necessarily imply a falshood things arguing a defectivenesse in God which implies necessarily a derogation to his nature to his naturall goodnesse to that which we may justly call even the God of God that which makes him God to us his mercy such things God himselfe cannot doe not things which make him an unmercifull a cruell a precondemning God But excepting onely such things God who is that Quod cum dicitur non potest dici whom if you name you cannot give him halfe his name for if you call him God he hath not his Christen name for he is Christ as well as God a Saviour as well as a Creator Quod cum astimatur non potest aestimari If you value God weigh God you cannot give him halfe his weight for you can put nothing into the balance to weight him withall but all this world and there is no single sand in the sea no single dust upon the earth no single atome in the ayre that is not likelyer to weigh down all the world then all the world is to coâ—â—â—pose pose God What is the whole world to a soule says Christ but what are all the soules of the world to God What is man that God should be mindefull of him that God should ever thinke of him and not forget that there is such a thing such a nothing Quod cum definitur ipsa definitione crescit says the same Father If you limit God with any definition hee growes larger by that definition for even by that definition you discerne presently that he is something else then that definition comprehends That God Quem omnia nesciunt metuendo sciunt whom no man knows perfectly yet every man knows so well as to stand in feare of him this incomprehensible God I say that works and who shall let it can raise our bodies again from the dead because to doe so implies no derogation to himselfe no contradiction to his word Our reason tells us he can doe it doth our reason tell us as much of his will that he will doe it Our reason tells us that he will doe whatsoever is most convenient for the Creature whom because he hath made him he loves and for his owne glory Now this dignity afforded to the dead body of man cannot be conceived but as a great addition to him Nor can it be such a diminution to God to take man into heaven as it was for God to descend and to take mans nature upon him upon Earth A King does not diminish himselfe so much by taking an inferior person into his bosome at Court as he should doe by going to live with that person in the Countrey or City and this God did in the incarnation of his Sonne It cannot be thought inconvenient it cannot be thought hard Our reason tells us that in all Gods works in all his materiall works still his latter works are easier then his former The Creation which was the first and was a meer production out of nothing was the hardest of all The specific ation of Creatures and the disposing of them into their severall kinds the making of that which was made something of nothing before a particular thing a beast afowle a fish a plant a man a Sun or Moon was not so hard as the first production out of nothing And then the conservation of all these in that order in which they are first created and then distinguished the Administration of these creatures by a constant working of second causes which naturally produce their effects is not so hard as that And so accordingly and in that proportion the last worke is easiest of all Distinction and specification easier then creation conservatioâ— and administration easier then that distinction and restitution by resurrection easiest of all Tertullian hath expressed it well Plus est fecisse quam refecisse dedisse quam reddidisse It is a harder work to make then to mend and to give thee that which was mine then to restore thee that which was thine Et institutio carnis quà m destitutio It is a lesse matter to recover a sicke man then to make a whole man Does this trouble thee says Iustin Martyr and Athenagor as proceeds in the same way of argumentation too in his Apology does this trouble thee Quòd homo à piscibus piscis ab homine comeditar that one man is devoured by a fish and then another man that eats the flesh of that fish eats and becomes the other man Id nec hominem resolvit in piscem nec piscem in hominem that first man did not become that fish that eate him nor that fish become that second man that eate it sed utriusque resolutio fit in elementa both that man and that fish are resolved into their owne elements of which they were made at first Howsoever it be if thine imagination could carry thee so low as to thinke not onely that thou wert become some other thing a fish or a dogge that had fed upon thee and so thou couldst not have thine owne body but therewithall must have his body too but that thou wert infinitely farther gone that thou wert anâ—â—ilated become nothing canst thou chuse but thinke God as perfect now at least as he was at first and can hee not as easily make thee up againe of nothing as he made thee of nothing at first Recogita quid fueris antequam esses Thinke over thy selfe what wast thou before thou wast any thing Meminisses utique si fuisses If thou hadst been any thing then surely thou wouldst remember it now Qui non eras factus es Cum iterum non eris fies Thou that wast once nothing wast made this
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
death But upon that part of the sentence In pulverem reverteris To dust thou shalt return there is no Non obstante though thou turn to God thou must turn into the grave for hee that redeem'd thee from the other death redeem'd not himself from this Carry this consideration to the last minute of the world when we that remain shall bee caught up in the clouds yet even that last fire may be our fever those clouds our winding sheets that rapture our dissolution and so with Saint Augustine most of the ancients most of the latter men think that there shall be a sudden dissolution of body and soul which is death and a sudden re-uniting of both which is resurrection in that instant Quis Homeo is Davids question What man is he that liveth and shall not see death Let us adde Quis Deoram What god is he amongst the Gentiles that hath not seen death Which of their three hundred Iupiters which of their thousands of other gods have not seen death Mortibus morjuntur we may adde to that double death in Gods mouth another death The gods of the Gentiles have dyed thrice In body in soul and in fame for though they have been glorified with a Deification nor one of all those old gods is at this day worshipt in any part of the world but all those temporary and transitory Gods are worn out and dead in all senses Those gods who were but men fall under Davids question Quis Home And that man who was truly God fals under it too Christ Jesus He saw death though he saw not the death of this text Corruption And if we consider the effusion of his precious blood the contusion of his sacred flesh the extention of those sinews and ligaments which tyed heaven and earth together in a reconciliation the departing of that Intelligence from that sphear of that high Priest from that Temple of that Dove from that Arke of that soul from that body that dissolution which as an ordinary man he should have had in the grave but that the decree of God declar'd in the infallibility of the manifold prophesies preserv'd him from it had been but a slumber in respect of these tortures which he did suffer The Godhead staid with him in the grave and so he did not corrupt but though our souls be gone up to God our bodies shall Corruption in the skin says Iob In the outward beauty These be the Records of velim these be the parchmins the endictments and the evidences that shall condemn many of us at the last day our own skins we have the book of God the Law written in our own hearts we have the image of God imprinted in our own souls wee have the character and seal of God stamped in us in our baptism and all this is bound up in this velim in this parchmin in this skin of ours and we neglect book and image and character and feal and all for the covering It is not a clear case if we consider the originall words properly That Iesabel did paint and yet all translators and expositors have taken a just occasion out of the ambiguity of those words to cry down that abomination of painting It is not a clear case if we consider the propriety of the words That Absolon was hanged by the hair of the head and yet the Fathers and others have made use of that indifferency and verisimilitude to explode that abomination of cherishing and curling haire to the enveagling and ensnaring and entangling of others Iudicium patietur aeternum says Saint Hierome Thou art guilty of a murder though no body die Quia vinum attulisti si faisset qui bibisset Thou hast poyson'd a cup if any would drink thou hast prepar'd a tentation if any would swallow it Tertullian thought he had done enough when he had writ his book De Habitu muliâ—bri against the excesse of women in clothes but he was fain to adde another with more vehemence De cultu foeminarum that went beyond their clothes to their skin And he concludes Illud ambitionis crimen there 's vain-glory in their excesse of clothes but Hoc prostitutionis there 's prostitution in drawing the eye to the skin Pliny says that when their thin silke stuffes were first invented at Rome Excogitatum ad faeminas denudandas It was but an invention that women might go naked in clothes for their skins might bee seen through those clothes those thinne stuffes Our women are not so carefull but they expose their nakednesse professedly and paint it to cast bird-lime for the passengers eye Beloved good dyet makes the best Complexion and a good Conscience is a continuall feast A cheerfull heart makes the best blood and peace with God is the true cheerfulnesse of heart Thy Saviour neglected his skin so much as that at last hee scarse had any all was torn with the whips and scourges and thy skin shall come to that absolute corruption as that though a hundred years after thou art buryed one may find thy bones and say this was a tall man this was a strong man yet we shall soon be past saying upon any relique of thy skinne This was a fair man Corruption seises the skinne all outward beauty quickly and so it does the body the whole frame and constitution which is another consideration After my skinne my Body If the whole body were an eye or an ear where were the body says Saint Paul but when of the whole body there is neither eye nor ear nor any member left where is the body And what should an eye do there where there is nothing to be seen but loathsomnesse or a nose there where there is nothing to be smelt but putrefaction or an ear where in the grave they doe not praise God Doth not that body that boasted but yesterday of that priviledge above all creatures that it onely could goe upright lie to day as flat upon the earth as the body of a horse or of a dogge And doth it not to morrow lose his other priviledge of looking up to heaven Is it not farther remov'd from the eye of heaven the Sunne then any dogge or horse by being cover'd with the earth which they are not Painters have presented to us with some horrour the sâ—cleton the frame of the bones of a mans body but the state of a body in the dissolution of the grave no pencil can present to us Between that excrementall jelly that thy body is made of at first and that jelly which thy body dissolves to at last there is not so noysome so putrid a thing in nature This skinne this outward beauty this body this whole constitution must be destroy'd says Iobâ— in the next place The word is well chosen by which all this is expressed in this text Nakaph which is a word of as heavy a signification to expresse an utter abolition and annihilation as perchance can be
Father or of my friend shall bee glorifyed there mine eyes shall be glorifyed as much and we are both kept in the same proportion there as wee had towards one another here here my naturall eye could see his naturall face and there mine eye is as much mended as his body is and my sense as much exalted as mine object And as well as I may know that I am I I may know that He is He for I shall not know my selfe nor that state of glory which I am then in by any light of Nature which I brought thither but by that light of Glory which I shall receive there When therefore a man finds that this consideration does him good in his conversation and retards him towards some sinnes how shall I stand then when all the world shall see that my solicitation hath brought such a woman to the stews to the Hospitall to hell who had scap'd all this if I had not corrupted her at first which no man in the world knew before and all shall know then Or that my whispering and my calumny hath overthrown such a man in his place in his reputation in his fortune which he himself knew not before and all shall know then Or that my counsell or my example hath been a furtherance to any mans spirituall edification here He that in rectified reason and a rectified conscience finds this in Gods name let him beleeve yea for Gods sake let him take heed of not beleeving that we shall know one another Actions and Persons in the Resurrection as the Apostles did know Christ at the Transfiguration which was a Type of it This Transfiguration then upon earth was the same glory which Christ had after in heaven Qualis venturus talis apparuit such as all eyes shall see him to be when he comes in glory at last those Apostles saw him then but of the particular circumstances even of this transfiguration upon earth there is but little said to us Let us modestly take that which is expressed in it and not search over-curiously farther into that which is signifyed and represented by it which is the state of glory in the Resurrection First his face shin'd as the Sunne says that Gospell he could not take a higher comparison for our Information and for our admiration in this world then the Sunne And then the Saints of God in their glorifyed state are admitted to the same comparison The righteous shall shine out as the Sunne in the Kingdome of the Father the Sunne of the firmament which should be their comparison will be gone But the Sun of grace and of glory the Son of God shall remain and they shall shine as he that is in his righteousnesse In this transfiguration his clothes were white says the text but how white the holy Ghost does not tell us at once as white as snow says Saint Mark as white as light says Saint Matthew Let the garments of the glorifyed Saints of God be their bodies and then their bodies are as white as snow as snow that fall's from heaven and hath touâ—ht no pollution of the earth For though our bodies have been upon earth and have touched pitch and have been defiled yet that will not lye in proof not be given in evidence Though he that drew me and I that was drawen too know in what unclean places and what unclean actions this body of mine hath been yet it lyes not in proof it shall not be given in evidence for Accusator fratrum The accuser of the brethren is cast down the Devill shall find nothing against me And if I had spontaneum Daemonem as Saint Chrysostome speaks a bosome Devill and could tempt my self though there had been no other tempter in this world so I have spontanâ—um Demonem a bosome accuser a conscience that would accuse me there if I accuse my self there I reproach the mercy of God who hath seal'd my pardon and made even my body what sins soever had discoloured it as white as snow As white as snow and as white as light says that Gospel Light implies an active power Light is operative and works upon others The bodies of the Saints of God shall receive all impressions of glory in themselves and they shall doe all that is to bee done for the glory of God there There they shall stand in his service and they shall kneel in his worship and they shall fall in his reverence and they shall sing in his glory they shall glorifie him in all positions of the body They shall be glorified in themselves passively and they shall glorifie God actively sicut Nix sicut Lux their beeing their doing shall be all for him Thus they shall shine as the Sun Thus their garments shall be white white as snow in being glorified in their own bodies white as light in glorifying God in all the actions of those bodies Now there is thus much more considerable and applyable to our present purpose in this tranfiguration of Christ that there was company with them Be not apt to think heaven in an Ermitage or a Monastery or the way to heaven a sullen melancholy Heaven and the way to it is a Communion of Saints in a holy cheerfulnesse Get thou thither make sure thine own salvation but be not too hasty to think that no body gets thither except he go thy way in all opinions and all actions There was company in the transfiguration but no other company then Moses and Elias and Christ and the Apostles none but they to whom God had manifested himself otherwise then to a meer naturall man otherwise then as a generall God For in the Law and in the Padagogie and Schoolmastership and instruction thereof God had manifested himself particularly by Moses In Elias and the Prophets whom God sent in a continuall succession to refresh that manifestation which he had given of himself in the Law before in the example of these rules in him who was the consummation of the Law and the Prophets Christ Iesus And then in the Application of all this by the Apostles and by the Church established by them God had more particularly manifested himself then to naturall men Moses Elias Christ and the Apostles make up the houshold of the faithfull and none have interest in the Resurrection but in and by these These to whom and by whom God hath exhibited himself to his Church by other notions then as one universall God For nothing will save a man but to believe in God so as God hath proposed himself in his Son in his Scriptures in his Christ. These were with him in the transfiguration and they talked with him says that text As there is a Communion of Saints so there is a Communication of Saints Think not heaven a Charter-house where men who onely of all creatures are enabled by God to speak must not speak to one another The Lord of heaven is
covered himself with a cloud so that prayer could not passe thorough That was the misery of Ierusalem But in the acts and habits of sin we cover our selves with a roof with an arch which nothing can shake nor remove but Thunder and Earthquakes that is the execution of Gods fiercest judgments And whether in that fall of the roof that is in the weight of Gods judgments upon us the stones shall not brain us overwhelm and smother and bury us God only knows How his Thunders and his Earthquakes when we put him to that will work upon us he onely knows whether to our amendment or to our destruction But whil'st we are in the consideration of this arch this roof of separation between God and us by sin there may be use in imparting to you an observation a passage of mine own Lying at Aiâ— at Aquisgrane a well known Town in Germany and fixing there some time for the benefit of those Baths I found my self in a house which was divided into many families indeed so large as it might have been a little Parish or at least a great lim of a great one But it was of no Parish for when I ask'd who lay over my head they told me a family of Anabaptists And who over theirs Another family of Anabaptists and another family of Anabaptists over theirs and the whole house was a nest of these boxes severall artificers all Anabaptists I ask'd in what room they met for the exercise of their Religion I was told they never met for though they were all Anabaptists yet for some collaterall differences they detested one another and though many of them were near in bloud alliance to one another yet the son would excommunicate the father in the room above him and the Nephew the Uncle As S. Iohn is said to have quitted that Bath into which Cerinthus the Heretique came so did I this house I remembred that Hezekiah in his sicknesse turn'd himself in his bed to pray towards that wall that look'd to Ierusalem And that Daniel in Babylon when he pray'd in his chamber opened those windows that look'd towards Ierusalem for in the first dedication of the Temple at Ierusalem there is a promise annext to the prayers made towards the Temple And I began to think how many roofs how many floores of separation were made between God and my prayers in that house And such is this multiplicity of sins which we consider to be got over us as a roof as an arch many arches many roofs for though these habituall sins be so of kin as that they grow from one another and yet for all this kindred excommunicate one another for covetousnesse will not be in the same roome with prodigality yet it is but going up another stair and there 's the tother Anabaptist it is but living a few years and then the prodigall becomes covetous All the way they separate us from God as a roof as an arch then an arch will bear any weight An habituall sin got over our head as an arch will stand under any sicknesse any dishonour any judgement of God and never sink towards any humiliation They are above our heads sicus tectum as a roofe as an arch and they are so toe sicut clamor as a voice ascending not stopping till they come to God O my God I am confounded and ashamed to lift up mine eyes to ther O my God why not thine eyes there is a cloud a clamour in the way for as it follows Our iniquities are encreased over our heads and our trespasse is grown up to the heaven I think to retain a learned man of my counsell and one that is sute to be heard in the Court and when I come to instruct him I finde mine adversaries name in his book before and he is all ready for the other party I think to finde an Advocate in heaven when I will and my sin is in heaven before mee The voice of Abels bloud and so of Cains sin was there The voice of Sodomes transgression was there Bring down that sin again from heaven to earth Bring that voice that cries in heaven to speake to Christ here in his Church upon earth by way of confession bring that clamorous sin to his bloud to be washed in the Sacrament for as long as thy sin cries in heaven thy prayers cannot be heard there Bring thy sinne under Christs feet there when hee walks amongst the Candlesticks in the light and power of his Ordinances in the Church and then thine absolution will be upon thy head in those seals which he hath instituted and ordained there and thy cry will be silenced Till then supergrâ—sse caput thine iniquities will be over thy head as a roof as a cry and in the next place sicut aqua as the overflowing of waters We consider this plurality this multiplicity of habituall sinnes to bee got over our heads as waters especially in this that they have stupefied us and taken from us all sense of reparation of our sinfull condition The Organ that God hath given the naturall man is the eye he sees God in the creature The Organ that God hath given the Christian is the ear he hears God in his Word But when we are under water both senses both Organs are vitiated and depraved if not defeaâ—ed The habituall and manifold sinner sees nothing aright Hee sees a judgement and cals it an accident He hears nothing aright He hears the Ordinance of Preaching for salvation in the next world and he cals it an invention of the State for subjection in this world And as under water every thing seems distorted and crooked to man so does man himself to God who sees not his own Image in that man in that form as he made it When man hath drunk iniquity like water then The flouds of wickadnesse shall make him afraid The water that he hath swum in the sin that he hath delighted in shall appear with horrour unto him As God threatens the pride of Tyrus I shall bring the deep upon thee and great waters shall cover thee That God will execute upon this sinner And then upon every drop of that water upon every affliction every tribulation he shall come to that fearfulnesse Waters flowed over my head then said I I am câ—â— off Either he shall see nothing or see no remedy no deliverance from desperation Keep low these waters as waters signifie sin and God shall keep them low as they signifie punishments And his Dove shall return to the Ark with an Olive leaf to shew thee that the waters are abated he shall give thee a testimony of the return of his love in his Oyle and Wine and Milk and Honey in the temporall abundances of this life And si impleat Hydrias aqua if he doe fill all your vessels with water with water of bitternesse that is fill and exercise all your patience and
scorne an imprisonment a penury and then upon that calamity there is laid the anger and indignation of God and then upon that the weight of mine own sinnes this is too much to settle me it is enough to sinke me it is a burden in which the danger arises from the last addition in that which is last laid on for as the sceptique Philosopher pleases himselfe in that argumentation that either a penny makes a man rich or he can never be rich for says he if he be not rich yet the addition of a penny more would make him rich or if not that penny yet another or another so that at last it is the addition of a penny that makes him rich so without any such fallacious or facetious circumvention in our case it is the last addition that that we look on last that makes our burden insupportable when upon our calamity we see the anger of God piled up and upon that our sin when I come to see my sin in that glasse in that glasse not in a Saviour bleeding for me but in a Judge frowning upon mee when my sins are so far off from me as that they are the last thing that I see for if I would look upon my sins first with a remorsefull a tearfull a repentant eye either I should see no anger no calamity or it would not seem strange to me that God should bee angry nor strange that I should suffer calamities when God is angry Therefore is sin heavy as a burden because it is the last thing that I lay upon my selfe and feel not that till a heavy load of calamity and anger be upon me before But then as when we come to be unloaded of a burden that that was lasâ— laid on is first taken off so when we come by any meanes though by the sense of a calamity or of the anger of God to a sense of our sin before the calamity it selfe be taken off the sin is forgiven When the Prophet found David in this state the first act that the Prophet came to was the Transtulit peccatum God hath taken away thy sinne but the calamity was not yet taken away The child begot in sin shall surely die though the sin be pardoned The fruit of the tree may be preserved and kept after the tree it selfe is cut down and burnt The fruit and off spring of our sin calamity may continue upon us after God hath removed the guiltinesse of the sin from us In the course of civility our parents goe out before us in the course of Mortality our parents die before us In the course of Gods mercy it is so too The sin that begot the calamity is dead and gone the calamity the child and off spring of that sin is alive and powerfull upon us But for the most part as if I would lift an iron chain from the ground if I take but the first linke and draw up that the whole chain follows so if by my repentance I remove the uppermost weight of my load my sin all the rest the declaration of the anger of God and the calamities that I suffer will follow my sin and depart from me But still our first care must be to take off the last weight the last that comes to our sense The sin You have met I am sure in old Apophtbegms an answer of a Philosopher celebrated that being asked what was the heaviest thing in the world answered Senex Tyrannus An old Tyran For a Tyran at first dares not proceed so severely but when he is established and hath continued long he prescribes in his injuries and those injuries become Laws As sin is a Tyran so he is got over our head in Dominie as we shewed you in the supergressaesunt in our former part As he is an old Tyran so he is the heaviest burden that can be imagined An inveterate sin is an inveterate sore we may hold out with it but hardly cure it we may slumber it but hardly kill it Weigh sin in heaven heaven could not beare it in the Angels They fell In the waters The Sea could not beare it in Ionas He was cast in In the earth That could not beare it in Dathan and Abiram They were swallowed And because all the inhabitants of the earth are sin it selfe The earth it selfe shall reel to and fro as a Drunkard and shall be removed like a Cottage and the transgression thereof shall be heavy upon it and it shall fall and notrise againe There 's the totall the finall fall proper to the wicked they shall fall so shall the godly And fall every day and fall seven times a day but they shall rise againe and stand in judgement The wicked shall not doe so They shall rise rise to judgement and they shall stand stand for judgement stand to receive judgement and then not fall but be cast out out of the presence of God and cast down down into an impossibility of rising for ever for ever for ever There is a lively expressing of this deadly weight this burden in the Prophet Zechary First there was a certaine vessell a measure shewed and the Angel said Hic est oculus This is the sight says our first translation This is the resemblance through all the earth says our second That is to this measure and to that that is figured in it every man must look this every man must take into his consideration what is it In this measure sate a woman whose name was Wickednesse At first this woman this wickednesse sate up in this vessell she had not filled the measure she was not laid securely in it she was not prostrate not groveling but her nobler part her head was yet out of danger she sate up in it But before the Vision departs she is plunged wholly into that measure into darknesse into blindnesse and not for a time for then there was a cover says the text and agreat cover and a great cover of Lead put upon that vessell and so a perpetuall imprisonment no hope to get out and heavy fetters no ease to be had within Hard ground to tread upon and heavy burdens to carry first a cover that is an excuse a great cover that is a defence and a glory at last of Lead all determines in Desperation This is when the multiplicity and indifferencie to lesser sins and the habituall custome of some particular sin meet in the aggravating of the burden for then they are heavyer then the sand of the Sea says the holy Ghost where he expresses the greatest weight by the least thing Nothing lesse then a graine of sand nothing heavyer then the sands of the Sea nothing easier to resist then a first tentation or a single sinne in it selfe nothing heavyer nor harder to devest then sinnes complicated in one another or then an old Tyran and custome in any one sin And therefore it was evermore a familiar phrase with the Prophets when they were
our sakes not onely sinfull but sin it self And as one cruell Emperour wished all mankinde in one man that hee might have beheaded mankinde at one blow so God gathered the whole nature of sinne into one Christ that by one action one passion sin all sin the whole nature of sinne might bee overcome It was sin that was upon Christ else God could not have been angry with him nor pleased with us It was sin and his own sin Mine iniquities says Christ in his Type and figure David and in his body the Church and we may be bold to adde in his very person Mine iniquities Many Heretiques denied his body to be his Body they said it was but an airy an imaginary an illusory Body and denied his Soul to be his Soul they said he had no humane soul but that his divine nature supplied that and wrought all the operations of the soul. But we that have learnt Christ better know that hee could not have redeemed man by that way that was contracted betweene him and his Father that is by way of satisfaction except he had taken the very body and the very soul of man And as verily as his humane nature his body and soul were his his sins were his too As my mortality and my hunger and thirst and wearinesse and all my naturall infirmities are his so my sins are his sins And now when my sins are by him thus made his sins no Hell-Devill not Satan no Earth-Devill no Calumniator can any more make those sins my sins then he can make his divinity mine As by the spirit of Adoption I am made the childe of God the seed of God the same Spirit with God but yet I am not made God so by Christs taking my sins I am made a servant of my God a Beads-man of my God a vassall a Tributary debtor to God but I am no sinner in the sight of God no sinner so as that man or the Devill can impute that sin unto me then when my Saviour hath made my sins his As a Soldier would not part with his scars Christ would not They were sins that lay upon him part with our sins And his sins and as it follows in his Type David sins in a plurality many sins I know nothing in the world so manifold so plurall so numerous as my sins And my Saviour had all those But if every other man have not so many sins as I he owes that to Gods grace and not to the Devils forbearance for the Devill saw no such parts nor no such power in me to advance or hinder his kingdome no such birth no such education no such place in the State or Church as that he should be gladder of me then of other men He ministers tentations to all and all are overcome by his tentations And all these sins in all men were upon Christ at once All twice over In the root and in the fruit too In the bullein and in the coin too In grosse and in retail In Originall and in Actuall sin And howsoever the sins of former ages the sins of all men for 4000 years before which were all upon him when he was upon the Crosse might possibly be numbred as things that are past may easilier fall within a possibility of such an imagination yet all those sinnes which were to come after he himself could not number for hee as the Sonne of man though hee know how long the world hath lasted knowes not how long this sinfull world shall last and when the day of Judgement shall be And all those future sins were his sins before they were committed They were his before they were theirs that doe them And lest this world should not afford him sins enow he took upon him the sins of heaven it self not their sins who were fallen from heaven and fallen into an absolute incapacity of reconciliation but their sins which remained in heaven Those sins which the Angels that stand would fall into if they had not received a confirmation given them in contemplation of the death and merits of Christ Christ took upon him for all things in Earth and Heaven too were reconciled to God by him for if there had been as many worlds as there are men in this which is a large multiplication or as many worlds as there are sins in this which is an infinite multiplication his merit had been sufficient to all They were sins his sins many sinnes the sinnes of the world and then as in his Type David Supergressae his sins these sins were got above him And not as Davids or ours by an insensible growth and swelling of a Tide in Course of time but this inundation of all the sins of all places and times and persons was upon him in an instant in a minute in such a point as admits and requires a subtile and a serious consideration for it is eternity which though it doe infinitely exceed all time yet is in this consideration lesse then any part of time that it is indivisible eternity is so and though it last for ever is all at once eternity is so And from this point this timelesse time time that is all time time that is no time from all eternity all the sins of the world were gone over him And in that consideration supergressae caput they were gone over his head Let his head bee his Divine nature yet they were gone over his head for though there bee nothing more voluntary then the love of God to man for he loves us not onely for his own sake or for his own glories sake but he loves us for his loves sake he loves us and loves his love of us and had rather want some of his glory then wee should not have nay then he should not have so much love towards us though this love of his be an act simply voluntary yet in that act of expressing this love in the sending a Saviour there was a kinde of necessity contracted on Christs part such a contract had passed between him and his Father that as himself says there was an oportuit pati a necessity that he should suffer all that he suffered and so enter into glory when he was come so there was an oportuit venire a necessity a necessity induced by that contract that he should come in that humiliation and smother and suppresse the glory of the divine nature under a cloud of humane of passible of inglorious flesh So be his divine nature this head his sins all our sins made his were gone above his head And over his head all those ways that we considered before in our selves Sicut tectum sicut fornix as a roof as an arch that had separated between God and him in that he prayed and was not heard when in that Transeat Calix Father if it be possible let this cup passe from me the Cup was not onely not taken out of his hands but filled up
to descend from heaven yet it did first ascend from the earth and retains still some such earthly parts as sheep cannot digest So howsoever these Revelations and Inspirations seem to fall upon us from heaven they arise from the earth from our selves from our own melancholy and pride or our too much homelinesse and familiarity in our accesses and conversation with God or a facility in beleeving or an often dreaming the same thing And with these Dews of Apparitions and Revelations did the Romane Church make our fathers drunk and giddy And against these does S. Augustine devoutly pray and praise God that he had delivered him from the curiosity of sipping these dews of hearkning after these apparitions and revelations But so ordinary were these apparitions then as that any son or nephew or friend could discern his fathers or uncles or companions soul ascending out of Purgatory into heaven and know them as distinctly as if they kept the same haire and beard and bodily lineaments as they had upon earth And as a ship which hath struck Sail will yet goe on with the winde it had before for a while so now when themselves are come to acknowledge That it was the unanime opinion of the Fathers that the souls of the dead did not appeare after death but that it was still the Devil howsoever sometimes that that he proposed were holy religious yet we see a great Author of theirs attribute so much to these apparitions and revelations that when he pretends to prove all controversies by the Fathers of the Church he every where intermingles that reverend Book of Brigids Revelations that they might also have some Mothers of the Church too which is not disproportionall in that Church if they have had a woman Pope to have Mothers of the Church too I speak not this as though God might not or did not manifest his will by women The great mystery of the Resurrection of Christ was revealed to women before men and to the sinfullest woman of company first But I speak of that bold injury done to the mysteries of the Christian Religion by pouring out that dew upon the grasse the Revelations of S. Brigid upon the controversies of Religion A book of so much blasphemy and impertinency and incredibility that if a Heathen were to be converted he would sooner be brought to beleeve Ovids Metamorphoses then Brigids Revelations to conduce to Religion And this is also another conformity between the two Babylons the Chaldean and the Italian Babylon that we could not receive our grasse pure but infected and dewed with these frivolous nay pernicious apparitions and Revelations But press we a little closer to the very steps metaphor of the holy Ghost who here lays the corrupting of the sheeps grasse in this That the shepheards had troden it down And this treading down will be pertinently considered two ways Tertullian in his Book De habitu muliebri notes two excesses in womens dressing One he cals Ornatum the other cultum One mundum muliebrem the other according to the liberty that he takes in making words Immundum muliebrem the first is a superfluous diligence in their dressing but the other an unnaturall addition to their complexion the first he pronounces to be always ad ambitionem for pride but the other ad prostitutionem for a worse for the worst purpose These two sorts of Excesses doe note these two kindes of treading down the grasse which we intend of which one is the mingling of too much humane ornament and secular learning in preaching in presenting the word of God which word is our grasse The other is of mingling humane Traditions as of things of equall value and obligation with the Commandements of God For the first humane ornament if in those pastures which are ordain'd for sheep you either plant rare and curious flowers delightfull onely to the eye or fragrant and odoriferous hearbs delightfull onely to the smell nay be they medicinall hearbs usefull and behovefull for the preservation and restitution of the health of man yet if these specious and glorious flowers and fragrant and medicinall hearbs be not proper nourishment for sheep this is a treading down of the grasse a pestering and a suppressing of that which appertained to them So if in your spirituall food our preaching of the Word you exact of us more secular ornament then may serve as Saint Augustine says Ad ancillationem to convey and usher the true word of life into your understandings and affections for both those must necessarily be wrought upon more then may serve ad vehiculum for a chariot for the word of God to enter and triumph in you this is a treading down of the grasse a filling of that ground which was ordained for sheep with things improper and impertinent to them If you furnish a Gallery with stuffe proper for a Gallery with Hangings and Chairs and Couches and Pictures it gives you all the conveniencies of a Gallery walks and prospect and ease but if you pester it with improper and impertinent furniture with Beds and Tables you lose the use and the name of a Gallery and you have made it a Wardrobe so if your curiosity extort more then convenient ornament in delivery of the word of God you may have a good Oration a good Panegyrique a good Encomiastique but not so good a Sermon It is true that Saint Paul applies sentences of secular Authors even in matters of greatest importance but then it is to persons that were accustomed to those authors and affected with them and not conversant not acquainted at all with the phrase and language of Scripture amongst us now almost every man God be blessed for it is so accustomed to the text of Scripture as that he is more affected with the name of David or Saint Paul then with any Seneca or Plutarch I am far from forbidding secular ornament in divine exercises especially in some Auditories acquainted with such learnings I have heard men preach against witty preaching and doe it with as much wit as they have and against learned preaching with as much learning as they could compasse If you should place that beast which makes the Bezoar stone in a pasture of pure but onely grasse it is likely that out of his naturall faculty he would petrifie the juyce of that grasse and make it a stone but not such a medicinall stone as he makes out of those herbes which he feeds upon Let all things concur in the name of God to the advancing of his purpose in his ordinance which is to make his will acceptable to you by his word onely avoid excesse in the manner of doing it Saint Augustines is an excellent rule when after in his book De Doctrina Christiana he had taught a use of all Arts in Divinity he allows them onely thus far ut cum ingenia his reddantur exercitatiora cavendum ne reddantur maligniora that when a man by
prepared a Whale to transport Ionas before Ionas was cast into the Sea God prepared thee a holy Patience before he reduced thee to the exercise of that Patience If thou couldest apprehend nothing done for thy self yet all the mercies that God hath exhibited to others are former mercies to thee in the Pattern and in the Seal and in the Argument thereof They have had them therefore thou shalt All Gods Prophecies are thy Histories whatsoever he hath promised others he hath done in his purpose for thee And all Gods Histories are thy Prophesies all that he hath done for others he owes thee Hast thou a hardnesse of heart knowest thou not that Christ hath wept before to entender that hardnesse hast thou a palenesse of soul in the apparition of God in fire and in judgement knowest thou not that Christ hath bled before to give a vigour and a vegetation and a verdure to that palenesse is thy sinne Actuall sinne knowest thou not that there is a Lamb bleeding before upon the Altar to expiate that Is thy terrour from thy inherence and encombrance of Originall sinne knowest thou not that the effect of Baptism hath blunted the sting of that sinne before art thou full of sores putrid and ulcerous sores full of wounds through and through piercing wounds full of diseases namelesse and complicate diseases knowest thou not that there is a holy Charm a blessed Incantation by which thou art though not invulnerable yet invulnerable unto death wrapt up in the eternall Decree of thine Election that 's thy pillar the assurance of thine Election If thou shake that if thou cast down that Pillar if thou distrust thine Election with Samson who pulled down pillars in his blindnesse in thy blindnesse thou destroyest thy self Begin where thou wilt at any Act in thy self at any act in God yet there was mercy before that for his mercy is eternall eternall even towards thee I could easily think that that that past between God and Moses in their long conversation that that that past between Christ and Moses in his trans-figuration that that that past between Saint Paul and the Court of Heaven in his extasie was instruction and manifestation on one part and admiration and application on the other part of the mercy of God Earth cannot receive Heaven cannot give such another universall soul to all all persons all actions as Mercy And were I the childe of this Text that were to live a hundred years I would ask no other marrow to my bones no other wine to my heart no other light to mine eyes no other art to my understanding no other eloquence to my tongue then the power of apprehending for my self and the power of deriving and conveying upon others by my Ministery the Mercy the early Mercy the everlasting Mercy of yours and my God But we must passe to the consideration of this immense Light in that one Beam wherein it is exhibited here that is long life The childe shall die a hundred years old Long life is a blessing as it is an image of eternity as Kings are blessings because they are Images of God And as to speak properly a King that possest the whole earth hath no proportion at all to God he is not a dramme not a grain not an atome to God so neither if a thousand Methusalems were put in one life had that long life any proportion to eternity for Finite and Infinite have no proportion to one another But yet when we say so That the King is nothing to God we speak then between God and the King and we say that onely to assist the Kings Religious humiliation of himself in the presence of God But when we speak between the King and our selves his Subjects there we raise our selves to a just reverence of him by taking knowledge that he is the Image of God to us So though long life be nothing to eternity yet because we need such Glasses and such Images as God shews us himself in the King so he shewes us his eternitie in a long life In this that the Patriarchs complain every where of the shortnesse of life and neernesse of death Iacob at a hundred and thirtie yeares tells Pharaoh that his dayes were few In this that God threatens the shortnesse of life for a punishment to Eli God saies There shall not be an old man in thy house for ever In this that God brings it into Promise and enters it as into his Audite and his revenue With long life will I satisfie him and shew him my salvation That God would give him long life and make that long life a Type of Eternity In this that God continues that promise into performance and brings it to execution in some of his chosen servants at a hundred and twenty Moses his eyes were not dim nor his naturall force abated and Caleb saith of himself I am this day 85. yeares old and as my strength was at first for warre so is my strength now In all these and many others we receive so many testimonies that God brings long life out of his Treasurie as an immediate blessing of his And therefore as such his blessing let us pray for it where it is not come yet in that apprecation and acclamation of the antient generall Councells Multos annos Caesari Aeternâ—s annos Caesari Long life to our Cesar in this world everlasting life to our Cesar in the world to come and then let us reverence this blessing of long life where it is come in honouring those Ancient heads by whose name God hath been pleased to call himself Antiquuâ— dierum the ancient of dayes and let us not make this blessing of long life impossible to our selves by disappointing Gods purpose of long life upon us by our surfets our wantonnesse our quarrels which are all Goths and Vandals and Giants called in by our selves to fight with God against us But yet so receive we long life as a blessing as that we may also find a blessing in departing from this life For so manifold and so multiforn are his blessings as even death it self hath a place in this Sphear of blessings The childe shall live a hundred yeares but yet The childe shall die When Paradise should have extended as man should have multiplied and every holy family every religious Colony have constituted a new Paradise that as it was said of Egypt when it abounded with Hermitages in the Primitive persecutions That Egypt was a continuall City of Hermitages so all the world should have been a continuall Garden of Paradises when all affections should have been subjects and all creatures servants and all wives helpers then life was a sincere blessing But but a mixt blessing now when all these are so much vitiated onely a possible blessing a disputable a conditionable a circumstantiall blessing now If there were any other way to be saved and to get to Heaven then by being born
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
but look to that which is neare thee not so much to those Decrees which have no conditions as to be able to plead conditions performed or at least a holy sorrow that thou hast not performed them Videte Cavete see that you doe heare God else every rumor will scatter you But take heed what you heare else you may come to call conditionall things absolute And lastly since Satan will be speaking too Videte be sure you doe heare him be sure you discerne it to be his voice and know what leads you into tentation For you may hear a voice that shall say youth must have pleasures and greatnesse must have State and charge must have support And this voice may bring a young man to transfer all his wantonesse upon his years when it is the effect of high dyet or licentious discourse or wanton Images admitted and cherished in his fancy and this voice may bring great officers to transfer their inaccessiblenesse upon necessary State when it is an effect of their own lazinesse or indulgence to their pleasures and this voice may bring rich landlords to transfer all their oppression of tenants to the necessity of supporting the charge of wives and children when it is an effect of their profusenesse and prodigality Nay you may heare a voice that may call you to this place and yet be his voice which is that which Saint Augustine confesses and laments that even to these places persons come to look upon one another that can meet no where else Videte see you doe heare that you doe discerne the voice for that is never Gods voice that puts upon any man a necessity of sinning out of his years and constitution out of his calling and profession out of his place and station out of the age and times that he lives in out of the pleasure of them that he lives upon or out of the charge of them that live upon him But then Cavete take heed what you heare from him too especially then when he speakes to thee upon thy death-bed at thy last transmigration then when thine eares shall be deafe with the cryes of a distressed and a distracted family and with the found and the change of the found of thy last bell then when thou shalt heare a hollow voice in thy selfe upbraiding thee that thou hast violated all thy Makers laws worn out all thy Saviours merits frustrated all the endeavours of his blessed Spirit upon thee evacuated all thine own Repentances with relapses then when thou shalt see or seem to see his hand turning the streame of thy Saviours bloud into another channell and telling thee here 's enough for Iew and Turke but not a drop for thee then when in that multiplying glasse of Despaire which he shall present every sinfull thought shall have the proportion of an Act and every Act of a Habite when every Circumstance of every sin shall enter into the nature of the sin it selfe and vary the sinne and constitute a particular sinne and every particular sinne shall be a sinne against the holy Ghost Take heed what you heare and be but able to say to Satan then as Christ said to Peter in his name Vade retro Satan come after me Satan come after me tomorrow come a minute after my soule is departed from this body come to me where I shall be then and when thou seest me washed in the bloud of my Saviour clothed in the righteousnesse of my Saviour lodged in the bosome of my Saviour crowned with the merits of my Saviour confesse that upon my death-bed thou wast a lyer and wouldest have been a murderer and the Lord shall and I in him shall rebuke thee See that yee refuse not him that speaketh says the Apostle not any that speakes in his name but especially not him whom he names there that speakes better things then the bloud of Abel for the bloud of Abel speakes but by way of example and imitation the bloud of Christ Jesus by way of Ransome and satisfaction Heare what that bloud says for you in the eares of the Father and then no singing of the flatterer no lisping of the tempter no roaring of the accuser no thunder of the destroyer shall shake thy holy constancy Take heed what you heare remember what you have heard and the God of heaven for his Sonne Christ Jesus sake by the working of his blessed Spirit prosper and emprove both endeavours in you Amen SERMON XXVIII Preached to the King at the Court in April 1629. GEN. 1. 26. And God said Let us make man in our Image after our likenesse NEver such a frame so soon set up as this in this Chapter For for the thing it selfe there is no other thing to compare it with For it is All it is the whole world And for the time there was no other time to compare it with for this was the beginning of time In the beginning God created Heaven and Earth That Earth which in some thousands of years men could not look over nor discern what form it had for neither Lactantius almost three hundred years after Christ nor Saint Augustine more then one hundred years after him would beleeve the earth to be round that earth which no man in his person is ever said to have compassed till our age That earth which is too much for man yet for as yet a very great part of the earth is unpeopled that earth which if we will cast it all but into a Mappe costs many Months labour to grave it nay if we will cast but a peece of an acre of it into a garden costs many years labour to fashion and furnish it All that earth and then that heaven which spreads so farre as that subtile men have with some appearance of probability imagined that in that heaven in those manifold Sphears of the Planets and the Starres there are many earths many worlds as big as this which we inhabite That earth and that heaven which spent God himselfe Almighty God six days in furnishing Moses sets up in a few syllables in one line In principio in the beginning God created heaven and earth If a Livy or a Guicciardine or such extensive and voluminous authors had had this story in hand God must have made another world to have made them a Library to hold their Books of the making of this world Into what Wire would they have drawn out this earth Into what leafe-gold would they have beate out these heavens It may assist our conjecture herein to consider that amongst those men who proceed with a sober modesty and limitation in their writing and make a conscience not to clogge the world with unnecessary books yet the volumes which are written by them upon this beginning of Genesis are scarce lesse then infinite God did no more but say let this and this be done And Moses does no more but say that upon Gods saying it was done God required not nature to help him to do
and our North and South at another tyde and another gale First then we looke towards our East the fountaine of light and of life There this world beganne the Creation was in the east And there our next world beganne too There the gates of heaven opened to us and opened to us in the gates of death for our heaven is the death of our Saviour and there he lived and dyed there and there he looked into our west from the east from his Terasse from his Pinacle from his exaltation as himselfe calls it the Crosse. The light which arises to us in this east the knowledge which we receive in this first word of our text Faciamus Let us where God speaking of himselfe speakes in the Plurall is the manifestation of the Trinity the Trinity which is the first letter in his Alphabet that ever thinks to read his name in the book of life The first note in his Gammut that ever thinks to sing his part in the Quire of the Triumphant Church Let him him have done as much as all the Worthies and suffered as much as all Natures Martyrs the penurious Philosophers let him have known as much as they that pretend to know Omne scibile all that can be known nay and in-intelligibilia In-investigabilia as Turtullian speakes un-understandable things unrevealed decrees of God Let him have writ as much as Aristotle writ or as is written upon Aristotle which is multiplication enough yet he hath not learnt to spel that hath not learnt the Trinity not learnt to pronounce the first word that cannot bring three Persons into one God The subject of naturall philosophy are the foure elements which God made the Subject of supernaturall philosophy Divinity are the three elements which God is and if we may so speake which make God that is constitute God notifie God to us Father Sonne and holy Ghost The naturall man that hearkens to his owne heart and the law written there may produce Actions that are good good in the nature and matter and substance of the worke He may relieve the poore he may defend the oppressed But yet he is but as an open field and though he be not absolutely barren he bears but grasse The godly man he that hath taken in the knowledge of a great and a powerfull God and enclosed and hedged in himselfe with the feare of God may produce actions better then the meere naturall man because he referres his actions to the glory of his imagined God But yet this man though he be more fruitfull then the former more then a grassy field yet he is but a ploughed field and he bears but corne and corne God knowes choaked with weeds But that man who hath taken hold of God by those handles by which God hath delivered and manifested himselfe in the notions of Father Sonne and holy Ghost he is no field but a garden a Garden of Gods planting a Paradise in which grow all things good to eate and good to see spirituall resection and spirituall recreation too and all things good to cure He hath his beeing and his diet and his physique there in the knowledge of the Trinity his beeing in the mercy of the Father his physique in the merits of the Sonne his diet his daily bread in the daily visitations of the holy Ghost God is not pleased not satisfied with our bare knowledge that there is a God For it is impossible to please God without faith and there is no such exercise of faith in the knowledge of a God but that reason and nature will bring a man to it When we professe God in the Creed by way of beleefe Credo in Deum I beleeve in God in the same article we professe him to be a Father too I beleeve in God the father Almighty And that notion the Father necessarily implies a second Person a Sonne And then we professe him to be maker of heaven and earth And in the Creation the holy Ghost the Spirit of God is expresly named So that we doe but exercise reason and nature in directing our selves upon God We exercise not faith and without faith it is impossible to please God till we come to that which is above nature till we apprehend a Trinity We know God we beleeve in the Trinity The Gentiles multiplyed Gods There were almost as many Gods as men that beleeved in them And I am got out of that thrust and out of that noise when I am come into the knowledge of one God But I am got above staires got in the Bedchamber when I am come to see the Trinity and to apprehend not onely that I am in the care of a great and a powerfull God but that there is a Father that made me a Sonne that Redeemed me a holy Ghost that applies this good purpose of the Father and Sonne upon me to me The root of all is God But it is not the way to receive fruits to dig to the root but to reach to the boughs I reach for my Creation to the Father for my Redemption to the Sonne for my sanctification to the holy Ghost and so I make the knowledge of God a Tree of life unto me and not otherwise Truly it is a sad Contemplation to see Christians scratch and wound teare one another with the ignominious invectives and uncharitable names of of Heretique and Schismatique about Ceremoniall and Problematicall and indeed but Criticall verball controversies and in the meane time the foundation of all the Trinity undermined by those numerous those multitudinous Anthills of Socinians that overflow some parts of the Christian world and multiply every where And therefore the Adversaries of the Reformation were wise in their generation when to supplant the credit of both those great assistants of the Reformation Luther and Calvin they impute to Calvin fundamentall error in the Divinity of the second Person of the Trinity the Sonne And they impute to Luther a detestation of the very word Trinity and an expunction thereof in all places of the Liturgy where the Church had received that word They knew well if that slander could prevaile against those persons nothing that they could say could prevaile upon any good Christians But though in our doctrine we keep up the Trinity aright yet God knowes in our practice we doe not I hope it cannot be said of any of us that he beleeves not the Trinity but who amongst us thinkes of the Trinity considers the Trinity Father and Sonne doe naturally imply and induce one another and therefore they fall oftner into our consideration But for the holy Ghost who feels him when he feels him Who takes knowledge of his working when he works Indeed our Fathers provided not well enough for the worship of the whole Trinity nor of the holy Ghost in particular in the endowments of the Church and Consecrations of Churches and possessions in their names What a spirituall dominion in the prayers and worship of
the people what a temporall dominion in the possessions of the world had the Virgin Mary Queen of heaven and Queen of earth too She was made joint purchaser of the Church with her Sonne and had as much of the worship thereof as he though she paid her fine in milke and he in bloud And till a new Sect came in her Sonnes name and in his name the name of Jesus tooke the regency so farre out of that Queen Mothers hands and sued out her Sonnes Livery so farre as that though her name be used the Virgin Mary is but a feoffee in trust for them all was hers And if God oppose not these new usurpers of the world posterity will soon see Saint Ignatius worth all the Trinity in possessions and endowments as that sumptuous and splendid foundation of his first Temple at Rome may well create a conjecture and suspicion Travaile no farther Survay but this City And of their not one hundred Churches the Virgin Mary hath a dozen The Trinity hath but one Christ hath but one The holy Ghost hath none But not to goe into the City nor out of our selves which of us doth truly and considerately ascribe the comforts that he receives in dangers or in distresses to that God of all comfort the comforter the holy Ghost We know who procured us our Presentation and our dispensation you know who procured you your offices and your honours Shall I ever forget who gave me my comfort in sicknesse Who gave me my comfort in the troubles and perplexities and diffidencies of my conscience The holy Ghost brought you hither The holy Ghost opens your eares and your hearts here Till in all your distresses you can say Veni Creator Spiritus come holy Ghost and that you feel a comfort in his comming you can never say Veni Domine Iesu come Lord Jesus come to Judgement Never to consider the day of Judgement is a fearfull thing But to consider the day of Judgement without the comfort of the holy Ghost is a thousand times more fearfull This Seale then this impression this notion of the Trinity being set upon us in the first Creation in this first plurall word of our text Faciamus Let us for Father Sonne and holy Ghost made man and this seale being re-imprinted upon us in our second Creation our Regeneration in Baptisme Man is Baptized In the name of the Father of the Sonne and of the holy Ghost This notion of the Trinity being our distinctive Character from Iew and Gentile This being our specifique forme why does not this our forme this soule of our Religion denominate us why are we not called Trinitarians a name that would embrace the profession of all the Persons but onely Christians which limits and determines us upon one The first Christians amongst whose manifold Persecutions scorne and contempt was not the least in contempt and scorne were called Nazarai Nazarites in the mouth of the Vulgar and Galilâ—i Galilaeans in the mouth of Iulian and Iudaei Iews in the mouth of Nero when he imputed the burning of Rome his owne act to them and Christiani as Tertullian says that they could accuse Christians of nothing but the name of Christians and yet they could not call them by their right name but Chrestians which was gentle quiet easie patient men made to be troden upon They gave them divers names in scorne yet never called them Trinitarians Christians themselves amongst themselves were called by divers names in the Primitive Church for distinction Fideles the faithfull and Fratres the Brethren and Discipuli Disciples And after by common custome at Antioch Christians And after that they say by a councell which the Apostles held at the same city at Antioch there passed an expresse Canon of the Church that they should be called so Christians And before they had this name at Antioch first by common usage after by a determinate Canon to be called Christians from Christ at Alexandria they were called most likely from the name of Jesus Iesseans And so Philo Iudaeus in that book which he writes De Iessenis intends by his Iessenis Christians and in divers parts of the world into which Christians travell now they find some elements some fragments some reliques of the Christian Religion in the practice of some religious Men whom those Countreys call Iesseans doubtlesly derived and continued from the name of Jesus So that the Christians took many names to themselves for distinction Brethren Disciples faithfull And they had many names put upon them in scorne Nazarites Galilaeans Iews Chrestians and yet they were never never by Custome amongst themselves never by commandement from the Church never in contempt from others called Trinitarians the profession of the Trinity being their specifique forme and distinctive Character why so Beloved the name of Christ involv'd all not onely because it is a name that hath a dignity in it more then the rest for Christ is an anointed person a King a Messiah and so the profession of that Name conferrs an Unction a regall and a holy Unction upon us for we are thereby a royall Priesthood but because in the profession of Christ the whole Trinity is professed How often doth the Sonne say that the Father sent him And how often that the Father will and that he will send the Holy Ghost This is life eternall says he to know thee the onely true God and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent And sent with all power in heaven and in earth This must be professed Father and Sonne And then no man can professe this no man can call Jesus the Lord but by the holy Ghost So that as in the persecutions in the primitive Church the Martyrs which were hurried to tumultuary executions and could not be heard for noise in excusing themselves of Treason and sedition and crimes imputed to them to make their cause odious did use in the sight of the people who might see a gesture though they could not heare a protestation to signe themselves with the signe of the Crosse to let them know for what profession they died so that the signe of the Crosse in that use thereof in that time was an abridgement and a Catechisme of the whole Christian Religion so is the professing of the name of Christ the professing of the whole Trinity As he that confesses one God is got beyond the meer naturall man And he that confesses a Sonne of God beyond him So is neither got to the full truth till he confesse the holy Ghost too The foole sayes in his heart there is no God The foole says David The emphaticall foole in the highest degree of folly But though he get beyond that folly he is a foole still if he say there is no Christ For Christ is the wisdome of the Father And a foole still if he deny the holy Ghost for who shall apply Christ to him but the holy Ghost Etiam Christiani Nomen superficies est
is excellently said by Tertullian the name and profession of a Christian is but a superficiall outside sprinckled upon my face in Baptisme or upon mine outward profession in actions if I have not in my heart a sense of the holy Ghost that he applies the mercies of the Father and the merits of the Sonne to my soule As Saint Paul said Whilest you are without Christ you are without God It is an Atheisme with Saint Paul to be no Christian. So whilest you are without the holy Ghost you are without Christ. It is Antichristian to deny or not to confesse the holy Ghost For as Christ is the manifestation of the Father so the holy Ghost is the application of the Sonne Therein onely are we Christians that in the profession of that name of Christ we professe all the three Persons In Christ is the whole Trinity because as the Father sent him so he sent the holy Ghost And that 's our specifique forme that 's our distinctive Character from Iew and Gentile the Trinity But then is this specifique forme this distinctive Character the notion of the Trinity conveied to us exhibited imprinted upon us in our Creation in this word this plurall word in the mouth of our one God Faciamus Let us us It is here and here first This is an intimation and the first intimation of the Trinity from the mouth of God in all the Bible It is true that though the same faith which is necessary to salvation now were always necessary and so in the old Testament they were bound to beleeve in Christ as well as in the new and consequently in the whole Trinity yet not so explicitly nor so particularly as now Christ calling upon God in the name of Father says I have manifested thy name unto the men thou gavest me out of the world They were men appropriated to God men exempt out of the world yet they had not a cleer manifestation of Father and Sonne the doctrine of the Trinity till Christ manifested it to them I have manifested thy name thy name of Father And therefore the Jewish Rabbins say that the Septuagint the first translators of the Bible did disguise some places of the Scriptures in their translation lest Ptolomee for whom they translated it should be scandalized w h those places that this textwasone of those places which say they though it be otherwise in the Copies of the Septuagint which we have now they translated Faciam and not Faciamus that God said here I will make in the singular and not Let us make man in the plurall lest that plurall word might have misled King Ptâ—lomee to thinke that the Iews had a plurall Religion and worshipped divers Gods So good an evidence doe they confesse this text to be for some kinde of plurality in the Godhead Here then God notified the Trinity and here first for though we accept an intimation of the Trinity in the first line of the Bible where Moses joynes a plurall name Elohim with a singular Verbe Bara and so in construction it is Creavit Dii Gods created heaven and earth yet besides that that is rather a mysterious collection then an evident conclusion of a plurality of Persons though we read that in that first verse before this in the twenty sixth yet Moses writ that which is in the beginning of this chapter more then two thousand years after God spake this that is in our text So long was Gods plurall before Moses his plurall Gods Faciamus before Moses Bara Elohim So that in this text beginnes our Catechisme Here we have and here first the saving knowledge of the Trinity For when God spake here to whom could God speake but to God Non cum rebus Creandis nox cum re nihili says Athanasius speaking of Gods first speaking when he said of the first creature Let there be light God spake not then to future things to things that were not When God spake first there was no creature at all to speake to When God spake of the making of man there were creatures But were there any creatures able to create or able to assist him in the creation of man Who Angels Some had thought so in Saint Basils time and to them Saint Basil says Súntne Illi God says let us make man to our Image And could he say so to Angels Are Angels and God all one Or is that that is like an Angell therefore like God It was Sua Ratio Suum verbum Sua sapientia says that Father God spake to his own word and wisdome to his own purpose and goodnesse And the Sonne is the word and wisdome of God and the holy Ghost is the goodnesse and the purpose of God that is the administration the dispensation of his purposes 'T is true that when God speakes this over againe in his Church as he does every day now this minute then God speakes it to Angels to the Angels of the Church to his Ministers he says Faciamus Let us us both together you and we make a man join mine Ordinance your preaching with my Spirit says God to us and so make man Preach the oppressor and preach the wanton and preach the calumniator into another nature Make the ravening Wolfe a Man that licentious Goate a man that insinuating Serpent a man by thy preaching To day if you will heare his voice heare us For here he calls upon us to joine with him for the making of man But for his first Faciamus which is in our text it is excellently said Dictum in senatu soliloquio It was spoken in a Senat and yet in a solitarinesse spoken in private and yet publiquely spoken spoken where there were divers and yet but one one God and three Persons If there were no more intended in this plurall expression us but as some have conceived that God spake here in the person of a Prince and Soveraigne Lord and therefore spake as Princes doe in the plurall We command and We forbid yet Saint Gregories caution would justly fall upon it Reverenter pensandum est it requires a reverend consideration if it be but so For God speakes so like a King in the plurall but seldome but five times in my account in all the Scriptures and in all five in cases of important consequence In this text first where God creates man whom he constitutes his Viceroy in the World here he speakes in his royall plurall And then in the next Chapter where he extends mans terme in his Vicegerency to the end of the world in providing man meanes of succession Faciamus Let us us make him a helper There he speakes in his royall plurall And then also in the third Chapter in declaring the hainousnesse of mans fault and arraigning him and all us in him God says Sicut unus ex nobis Man is become as one of us not content to be our Viceroy but our selves There 's his royall
I remember foure names by which man is often called in the Scriptures and of those foure three doe absolutely carry misery in their significations Three to one against any man that he is miserable One name of Man is Ish and that they derive à Sonitu Man is but a voice but a sound but a noise he begins the noise himselfe when he comes crying into the world and when he goes out perchance friends celebrate perchance enemies calumniate him with a diverse voice a diverse noise A melancholique man is but a groaning a sportfull man but a song an active man but a Trumpet a mighty man but a thunderclap Every man but Ish but a found but a noyse Another name is Enosh is meer Calamity misery depression It is indeed most properly Oblivion And so the word is most elegantly used by David Quid est homo where the name of man is Enosh And so that which we translate What is man that thou art mindefull of him is indeed What is forgetfulnesse that thou shouldest remember it That thou shouldest thinke of that man whom all the world hath forgotten First man is but a voice but a sound But because fame and honour may come within that name of a sound of a voice therefore he is overtaken with another dampe man is but oblivion his fame his name shall be forgotten One name man hath that hath some taste of greatnesse and power in it Gheber And yet I that am that man says the Prophet for there that name of man Gheber is used I am the man that hath seen affliction by the rod of Gods wrath Man Ish is so miserable as that he afflicts himselfe cryes and whines out his own time And man Enosh so miserable as that others afflict him and bury him in ignominious oblivion And man that is Gheber the greatest and powerfullest of men is yet but that man that may possibly nay that may justly see affliction by the rod of Gods wrath and from Gheber be made Adam which is the fourth name of man indeed the first name of man the name in this text and the name to which every man must refer himselfe and call himselfe by Earth and red Earth Now God did not say of man as of other creatures Let the earth bring forth hearbs and fruits and trees as upon the third day nor let the earth bring forth cattell and wormes as upon the sixth day the same day that he made man Non imperiaâ—i verbo sed familiari manu says Tertullian God calls not man out with an imperious Command but he leads him out with a familiar with his own hand And it is not Fiat homo but Faciamus not let there be but let us make man Man is but an earthen vessell 'T is true but when we are upon that consideration God is the Potter If God will be that I am well content to be this Let me be any thing so that that I am be from my God I am as well content to be a sheep as a Lion so God will be my Shepheard and the Lord is my shepheard To be a Cottage as a Castle so God will be the builder And the Lord builds and watches the City the house this house this City mee To be Rye as Wheate so God will be the husbandman And the Lord plants me and waters and weeds and gives the encrease and to be clothed in leather as well as in silke so God will be the Merchant and he cloathed me in Adam and assures me of clothing in clothing the Lillies of the field and is fitting the robe of Christs righteousness to me now this minute Adam is as good to me as Ghebaer a clod of earth as a hill of earth so God be the Potter God made man of earth not of ayre not of fire Man hath many offices that appertaine to this world and whilest he is here must not withdraw himselfe from those offices of mutuall society upon a pretence of zeale or better serving God in a retired life A ship will no more come to the harbour without Ballast then without Sailes a man will no more get to heaven without discharging his duties to other men then without doing them to God himselfe Man liveth not by bread onely says Christ But yet he liveth by bread too Every man must doe the duties every man must beare the incumbrances of some calling Pulvises Thou art earth he whom thou treadest upon is no less and he that treads upon thee is no more Positively it is a low thing to be but earth and yet thy low earth is the quiet Center There may be rest acquiescence content in the lowest Condition But comparatively earth is as high as the highest Challenge him that magnifies himselfe above thee to meet thee in Adam There bid him if he will have more Nobility more Greatness then thou take more originall sinne then thou hast If God have submitted thee to as much sinne and penalty of sinne as him he hath afforded thee as much and as noble earth as him And if he will not try it in the root in your equality in Adam yet in another Test another Furnace in the grave he must There all dusts are equall Except an Epitaph tell me who lies there I cannot tell by the dust nor by the Epitaph know which is the dust it speakes of if another have been laid before or after in the same grave Nor can any Epitaph be confident in saying here lies but here was laid For so various so vicissitudinary is all this world as that even the dust of the grave hath revolutions As the motions of an upper Spheare imprint a motion in a lower Spheare other then naturally it would have So the changes of this life worke after death And as envy supplants and removes us alive a shovell removes us and throwes us out of our grave after death No limbeque no weights can tell you this is dust Royall this Plebeian dust no Commission no Inquisition can say this is Catholique this is Hereticall dust All lie alike and all shall rise alike alike that is at once and upon one Command The Saint cannot acclerate The Reprobate cannot retard the Resurrection And all that rise to the right hand shall be equally Kings and all at the left equally what The worst name we can call them by or affect them with is Devill And then they shall have bodies to be tormented in which Devills have not Miserable unexpressible unimaginable Miserable condition where the sufferer would be glad to be but a Devill where it were some happinesse and some kinde of life to be able to dye and a great preferment to be nothing He made us all of earth and all of red earth Our earth was red even when it was in Gods hands a rednesse that amounts to a shamefastnesse to a blushing at our own infirmities is imprinted in us by Gods hand For this rednesse
is but a Conscience a guiltinesse of needing a continuall supply and succession of more and more grace And we are all red red so even from the beginning and in our best state Adam had the Angells had thus much of this infirmity that though they had a great measure of grace they needed more The prodigall child grew poore enough after he had received his portion and he may be wicked enough that trusts upon former or present grace and seeks not more This rednesse a blushing that is an acknowledgement that we could not subsist with any measure of faith except we pray for more faith nor of grace except we seek more grace we have from the hand of God And another rednesse from his hand too the bloud of his Sonne so that bloud was effused by Christ in the value of the ransome for All and accepted by God in the value thereof for All and this redness is in the nature thereof as extensive as the redness derived from Adam is Both reach to all So we were red earth in the hands of God as redness denotes our generall infirmities and as redness denotes the bloud of his Sonne our Saviour all have both But that redness which we have contracted from bloud shed by our selves the bloud of our own soules by sinne was not upon us when we were in the hands of God That redness is not his tincture not his complexion No decree of his is writ in any such red inke Our sinnes are our owne and our destruction is from ourselves We are not as accessaries and God as principall in this soule-murder God forbid we are not as executioners of Gods sentence and God the Malefactor in this soule-damnation God forbid Cain came not red in his brothers bloud out of Gods hands nor David red with Vriahs bloud nor Achitophel with his own nor Iudas with Christs or his owne That that Pilat did illusorily God can doe truely wash his hands from the bloud of any of these men It were a weake Plea to say I killed not that man but 't is true I commanded one who was under my command to kill him It is rather a prevarication then a justification of God to say God is not the author of sinne in any man but t is true God makes that man sinne that sinne God is Innocency and the beames that flow from him are of the same nature and colour Christ when he appeared in heaven was not red but white His head and haires were white as white wooll and as snow not head onely but haires too He and that that growes from him he and we as we come from his hands are white too His Angels that provoke us to the Imitation of that pattern are so in white Two men two Angels stood by the Apostles in white apparell The imitation is laid upon us by precept too At all times let thy garments be white Those actions in which thou appearest to the world innocent It is true that Christ is both My beloved is white and ruddy says the Spouse But the white was his owne his rednesse is from us That which Zipporah said to her husband Moses in anger the Church may say to Christ in thankfulnesse Verè sponsus Sanguinum thou art truly a bloudy husband to me Damim sanguinum of blouds blouds in the plurall for all our blouds are upon him This was a mercy to the Militant Church that even the Triumphant Church wondred at it They knew not Christ when he came up to heaven in red Who is this that commeth in red garments Wherefore is thy apparell red like him that treadeth in the winepresse They knew he went down in white in intire innocency and they wondred to see him returne in red But he satisfies them Calcavi you thinke I have troden the winepresse and you mistake it not I have troden the winepresse and Calcavi solus I have troden it alone all the redness all the bloud of the whole world is upon me And as he adds Non vir de gentibus of all people there was none with me with me so as to have any part in the Merit So of all people there was none without me without me so as to be excluded by me without their own fault from the benefit of my merit This redness he carried up to heaven for by the bloud of his Crosse came peace both to the things in earth and the things in heaven For that peccability that possibility of sinning which is in the Nature of the Angels of heaven would breake out into sinne but for that confirmation which those Angels have received in the bloud of Christ. This rednesse he carried to heaven and this rednesse he hath left upon earth that all we miserable clods of earth might be tempered with his bloud that in his bloud exhibited in his holy and blessed Sacrament our long robes might be made white in the bloud of the Lambe that though our sinnes be robes habits of sinne though long robes habits of long continuance in sinne yet through that rednesse which our sinnes have cast upon him we might come to participate of that whitenesse that righteousnesse which is his owne We that is all we for as to take us in who are of low condition and obscure station a cloud is made white by his sitting upon it He sate upon a great white cloud so to let the highest see that they have no whitenesse but from him he makes the Throne white by sitting upon it He sate upon a great white Throne It had not been great if it had not been white White is the colour of dilatation goodnesse onely enlarges the Throne It had not been white if he had not sate upon it That goodness onley which consists in glorifying God and God in Christ and Christ in the sincerity of his truth is true whitenesse God hath no rednesse in himselfe no anger towards us till he considers us as sinners God cast no rednesse upon us inflicts no necessity no constraint of sinning upon us We have dyed ourselves in sinnes as red as Scarlet we have drowned our selves in such a red Sea But as a garment that were washed in the red Sea would come out white so wonderfull works hath God done at the red Sea says David so doth his whitenesse worke through our red and makes this Adam this red earth Calculum candidum that white stone that receives a new name not Ish not Enosh not Gheber no name that tasts of misery or of vanity but that name renewed and manifested which was imprinted upon us in our elections the Sonnes of God the irremoveable the undisinheritable Sonnes of God Be pleased to receive this note at parting that there is Macula Alba a spot and yet white as well as a red spot a whitenesse that is an indication of a Leprosie as well as a rednesse Whole-pelagianisme to thinke nature alone sufficient
after he says that because the imaginations of the thoughts of mans heart were evill from his youth he would no more smite all things living as he had done for sinne he would destroy them and yet for sinne he would spare them when we examine our sinnes and finde them to be out of infirmity and not out of rebellion we may conclude Gods corrections to be by way of Medicin and not of poyson to be for our amendment and not for our annihilation and in that case there is spes veniae just hope of pardon Another degree of hope is spes gratiae hope of subsequent grace for as Saint Paul builds his argument If when we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Sonne much more being reconciled shall we be saved by his life in like manner every sinner may build his trust and hope in God He that hath pardoned us the sinnes we have done will much more assist us with his grace that we may be able to stand in that state with him to which he hath brought us He that succoured us when there was nothing in us but his enemies will much more send new supplies when the town is held for him and by his friends And this hope of pardon for that which is past and of grace for the present continues to the hope of glory to come of which glory we apprehend strong and effectuall beames here by conforming our selves to that Gospell which the Apostle calls the glorious Gospell of the blessed God and for the consummation of this glory we doe with patience abide for it says the Apostle which is the last of those three senses in which we noted this word in which Iob expresses his trust in God to be used in the Scriptures Iakal moratus est he did trust in nothing else did trust in him and then he staied his leasure Iacob makes a solemne prayer to God in Genesis 32. O God of my Fathers Abraham and Isaac then he remembers God of his promise Thou saydst unto me returne and I will doe thee good he tells him his danger I feare my brother Esau will come and smite me he makes his petition Deliver me from the hand of my brother And yet for all this though he trusted in God yet God infuses not that confidence into him as to goe on He sent his present to his brother but himselfe tarried there all night says the text Yea God was so far from giving him present meanes of deliverance that he made him worse able to deliver himselfe he wrastled with him and lam'd him but after all in Gods appointed time he and his brother were reconciled If thou pray to Almighty God in temporall in spirituall calamities if God doe not presently enlighten thine understanding in every controversie of Religion in every scruple of Conscience if he doe not rectifie thine estate when it is decayed thy reputation when thou art reproached yea if he wrastle with thee and lame thee that is bring all to a greater impotency and improbability of amendment then before yet thou hast thy Rule from Iob thou hast thy example from Iacob that to trust in God is not onely to trust in nothing else nor onely to hope particularly for pardon for grace for glory from him but it is to stay his leasure for the outward and inward seales of all his mercies and his benefits which he shall in his time bestow upon thee The ambitious man must stay till he whose office he expects be dead the Covetous man must stay till the six moneths be run before his use come in Though thou have a religious ambition a holy covetousnesse even at Gods graces thou must stay his time Os aperui attraxi says David I opened my mouth and panted because I loved thy Commandements He loved them and he longed for them yet he had not presently a full satisfaction Domine labia mea aperies says he also first it must be the Lord that must open our lippes in all our petitions It must not be the anguish of the calamity onely nor the desire of that which thou prayest for onely that must open thy lippes but the Lord that is the glory of God when the Lord hath opened thy lips in a rectified prayer then followes the Aperuit manus the eyes of all things waite upon him he gives them their meate in due season he opens his hand filles every living thing at his good pleasure Here 's plentifull opening and filling and filling every thing but still in due season that due season expressed At his pleasure for as that is the Nature of every thing which God hath imprinted in it so that is the season of every thing which God hath appointed for it Thou wouldest not pray for harvest at Christmas seek not unseasonable comforts out of Musique or Comedies or Conversation or Wine in thy distresses but seek it at the hand of God and stay his leasure for else thou doest not trust in him We have now passed over all those branches which constituted our first part that which we called Propositum what is the purpose and resolution of a godly man in Iob that he would not scatter his thoughts in trusting upon Creatures and yet he would not suffer his thoughts to vanish and evaporate he would rest them upon something and not leave all to fortune he would rest upon God and yet stay his time for the execution of his gracious purposes There remaines yet that which we called praepositum in which we intended the foundation and ground of that purpose and resolution which seems in Iob to have been a debatement in himselfe a contemplation of all dangers the worst was death and yet Si occiderit if I dye for it and dye at his hands Though he kill me yes will I trust in him For when the children of God take that resolution to suffer any affliction which God shall lay upon them patiently and cheerfully it must not be a sodaine a rash an undebated resolution but they must consider why they undertake it and in whose strength they shall be able to doe it They must consider what they have done for God before they promise themselves the glory of suffering for him When they which enterprised the building of Babel did no more but say to one another Come let us make bricke go to let us build a towre whose top may reach to heaven how quickly they were scattered over the earth The way is if you minde to build to sit downe and count the cost if you purpose to suffer for Christ to look to your stock your strength and from whence it comes The King that intends a war in that Gospell takes counsaile whether he be able with his tenne thousand to meet the enemy with twenty thousand We are too weake for our enemy the world the flesh and the Devill are mustered
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
expounded dilated by Orators The Father of Orators testifies Nihil tam perspicuum there is nothing so evident as that there is a soveraigne power that made and governes all Dost thou love learning as it is contracted brought to a quintessence wrought to a spirit by Philosophers the eldest of all them in that whole book Quod Deus latens simul patens est testifies all that and nothing but that that as there is nothing so dark so there is nothing so cleare nothing so remote nothing so neare us as God Dost thou love learning as it is sweetned and set to musique by Poets the King of the Poets testifies the same Mens agitat molem magno se corpore miscet that is a great an universall spirit that moves a generall soule that inanimates and agitates every peece of this world But Saint Paul is a more powerfull Orator then Cicero and he says The invisible things of God are seen by things which are made and thereby man is made inexcuseable Moses is an ancienter Philosopher then Trismegistus and his picture of God is the Creation of the world David is a better Poet then Virgil and with David Coeli enarrant the heavens declare the glory of God The power of oratory in the force of peâ—swasion the strength of conclusions in the pressing of Philosophy the harmony of Poetry in the sweetnesse of composition never met in any man so fully as in the Prophet Esay nor in the Prophet Esay more then where he says Levate Oculos Lift up your eyes on high and behold who hath created these things behold them therefore to know that they are created and to know who is their creator All other authors we distinguish by tomes by parts by volumes but who knowes the volumes of this Author how many volumes of Spheares involve one another how many tomes of Gods Creatures there are Hast thou not room hast thou not money hast thou not understanding hast thou not leasure for great volumes for the bookes of heaven for the Mathematiques nor for the books of Courts the Politiques take but the Georgiques the consideration of the Earth a farme a garden nay seven foot of earth a grave and that will be book enough Goel lower every worme in the grave lower every weed upon the grave is an abridgement of all nay lock up all doores and windowes see nothing but thy selfe nay let thy selfe be locked up in a close prison that thou canst not see thy selfe and doe but feel thy pulse let thy pulse be intermitted or stupefied that thou feel not that doe but thinke and a worme a weed thy selfe thy pulse thy thought are all testimonies that All this All and all the parts thereof are opus a work made and opus ejus his work made by God He that made a Clock or an Organ will be sure to ingrave his Me fecit such a man made me he that builds a faire house takes it ill if a passenger will not aske whose house is it he that bred up his Sonne to a capacity of noble employments looks that the world should say he had a wise and an honourable Father Can any man look upon the frame of this world and not say there is a powerfull upon the administration of this world and not say there is a wise and a just hand over it Thus is the object 't is but Illud the world but such a world as may well justifie Saint Hieromes translation who renders it Illum not onely that every man may see it the work the world but may see him God in that work That 's the object not onely the work but the workman God in the work and the meanes is that man may see it that is by that spectacle he may see God what of God how much of God Is it his essence For that the resolution of the School is sufficient Nulla visio naturalis in terris no man can see God in this world and live but no man can see God in the next world and dye there visio is beatitudo sight is salvation Yet Nulla visio corporalis in Coelis These bodily eyes even then when they are glorified shall not see the Essence of God our mortal eyes do not see bodies here they see no substance they see onely quantities and dimensions our glorified bodily eyes shall see the glory shed out of God but the very essence of God those glorified bodily eyes shall not see but the eyes of our soul shall be so enlightned as that they shal see God Sicuti est even in his essence which the best illumined most sanctified men are very far from in this life Now the sight of God in this text is the knowledge of God to see God is but to know that there is a God And can man as a naturall man doe that See God so as to know that there is a God Can hee doe it Nay can he chuse but doe it The question hath divided the School those two great and well known families of the School whom we call Thomists and Scotists the first say that this proposition Deus est is per se nota evident in it selfe and the others deny that But yet they differ but thus far that Thomas thinks that it is so evident that man cannot chuse but know it though he resist it The other thinks in it selfe it is but so evident as that a man may know it if he imploy his naturall faculties without going any farther thus much indeed thus little they differ Now the holy Ghost is the God of Peace and doth so far reconcile these two in this text as that first in our reading it is That man may see God and that Scotus does not deny but in the Originall in the Hebrew it is Casu and Casu is viderunt not every man may but every man hath seen God Though it goe not absolutely so far as Thomas every man must no man can chuse but see God yet it goes so far further then Scotus who ends in every man may as that it says every man hath seen God So that our labour never lies in this to prove to any man that he may see God but onely to remember him that he hath seen God not to make him beleeve that there is a God but to make him see that he does beleeve it Quid habes quod non accepisti And hast thou received any thing and not seen not known him that gave it Who hath infused comfort into thee into thy distresses Thine own Morall constancy Who infused that Who hath imprinted terrors in thee A dampe in thine owne heart Who imprinted it Sweare to me now that thou beleevest not in God and before midnight thou wilt tell God that thou dost Miserable distemper not to see God in the light and see him in the darke not to see him at noon and see him fearfully at
midnight not to see where we all see him in the Congregation and to see him with terror in the Suburbs of despaire in the solitary chamber Man may sayes Scotus man must he cannot chuse sayes Thomas man hath seen God sayes the holy Ghost Man that is every man and that 's our last branch in this first part The inexcusablenesse goes over man over all men Because they would not see invisible things in visible they are inexcusable all Death passed upon all men for all have sinned All sinners all dead Is Gods right hand shorter then his left his mercy shrunk and his justice stretched no certainly certainly every man may see him Man cannot hide himselfe from God God does not hide himselfe from man not from any man Col-Adam Omnis home even in that low name that lowest acceptation of man as he is but derived from earth as he is but earth he may see God We have divers names for man in Hebrew at least foure This that makes him but earth Adam is the meanest and yet Col-Adam Every man may see God David cals us to the contemplation of the heavens Coeli enarrant and Iob to the contemplation of the firmament of the Pleiades and Orion and Arcturus and the ordinances of heaven but it is not onely the Mathematician that sees God Demini terra the earth is the Lords and all that dwell therein all in all corners of the earth may see him David tels us They that go down to the sea in ships they see the works of the Lord and his wonders in the deep but it is not onely the Mariner the discoverer that discovers God but he that puts his hand to the plough and looks not back may see God there Let him be filius terra the sonne of the earth without noble extraction without knowne place of uncertaine parents even Melchisedeck was so Let him be filius percussionis the sonne of affliction a man that hath inward heavy sentences and heavy executions of the law Let him be filius mortis the sonne of death as Saul said to Ionathan of David a man designed to dye nay let him be filius Belial the sonne of iniquity and of everlasting perdition there is no lownesse no naturall no spirituall dejection so low but that that low man may see God Let him be filius terrae the sonne of the earth and of no body else let him be Dominus terrae Lord of the earth busied upon the earth and nothing else let him be hospes terrae a guest a tenant an inmate of the earth halfe of him in the earth and the rest no where else this poore man this worldly man this dying man may see God To end this you can place the spheare in no position in no station in which the earth can eclipse the Sun you can place this clod of earth man in no ignorance in no melancholy in no oppression in no sinne but that he may but that he does see God The Marrigold opens to the Sunne though it have no tongue to say so the Atheist does see God though he have not grace to confesse it We have past through our first part and the three branches of that The object God in his works and the faculty that apprehends seeing that is knowing and the person indued with the faculty every man even Adam In our second part which is a tacite answer to a likely objection Is not God in the highest heaven afar off yes but man may see afar off we have the same three branches too and yet not the same the same object God but in another manifestation then in his worke in glory the same faculty seeing but with other manner of eyes glorified eyes the same person man but not man as he is Adam a meere naturall and earthly man but man as he is Enosh who by having tasted Gods corrections or by having considered the miseries of this world is prepared for the joy and glory of the next And in this part we will begin with the person man Man may behold it afar off How different are the wayes of God from the ways of man the eyes of God from the eyes of man and the wayes and eyes of a godly man from the eyes and wayes of a man of this world We looke still upon high persons and after high places and from those heights we thinke we see far but he that will see this object must lye low it is best discerned in the dark in a heavy and a calamitous fortune The naturall way is upward I can better know a man upon the top of a steeple then if he were halfe that depth in a well but yet for higher objects I can better see the stars of heaven in the bottome of a well then if I stood upon the highest steeple upon earth If I twist a cable of infinite fadomes in length if there be no ship to ride by it nor anchor to hold by it what use is there of it If Mannor thrust Mannor and title flow into title and bags powre out into chests if I have no anchor faith in Christ if I have not a ship to carry to a haven a soule to save what 's my long cable to me If I adde number to number a span a mile long if at the end of all that long line of numbers there be nothing that notes pounds or crownes or shillings what 's that long number but so many millions of millions of nothing If my span of life become a mile of life my penny a pound my pint a gallon my acre a sheere yet if there be nothing of the next world at the end so much peace of conscience so much joy so much glory still all is but nothing multiplied and that is still nothing at all 'T is the end that qualifies all and what kinde of man I shall be at my end upon my death-bed what trembling hands and what lost legs what deafe eares and what gummy eyes I shall have then I know and the nearer I come to that disposition in my life the more mortified I am the better I am disposed to see this object future glory God made the Sun and Moon and Stars glorious lights for man to see by but mans infirmity requires spectacles and affliction does that office Gods meaning was that by the sun-shine of prosperity and by the beames of honour and temporall blessings a man should see farre into him but I know not how he is come to need spectacles scarse any man sees much in this matter till affliction shew it him God made the ballance even riches may show God and poverty may show God let the two Testaments the old and the new be the ballance and so they are even the blessednesse of the old Testament runs all upon temporall blessings and worldly riches Blessed in the city and in the field blessed in the fruit of thy cattell and
them all Grieve not the holy Ghost whereby you are sealed unto the day of Redemption says the Apostle they were sealed and yet might resist the Spirit and grieve the Spirit and quench the Spirit if by a continuall watchfulnesse over their particular actions they did not refresh those seales formerly received in their Creation in Christs incarnation in their Baptisme and in their beginnings of faith to themselves and plead them to the Church and to the world by such a declaration of a holy life But these seales being so many and so univesall that argues still that which we especially seek to establish that is the Accessiblenesse the communicablenesse the sociablenesse the affection shall I say the Ambition that God hath to have us all Now how is this extensivenesse declared here in our text It is declared in the great number of those who were sealed both before and after to the consideration of both which we are invited by this phrase which beginnes the text After this for before that Iohn saw this there were one hundred forty foure thousand sealed Is that then that one hundred forty foure thousand intended for a small number If it had been so it would rather have been said of such a Tribe but twelve thousand and but twelve thousand of such a Tribe but God as expressing a joy that there were so many repeats his number of twelve thousand twelve times over of Iuda twelve thousand of Levi twelve thousand and twelve thousand of every Tribe So that then we may justly take this number of twelve and twelve thousand for an indefinite and uncertain number and as Saint Augustine does wheresoever he finds that number of twelve as the twelve Thrones where the Saints shall judge the world and divers such we may take that number of twelve and twelve pro universitate salvandorum that that number signifies all those who shall be saved If we should take the number to be a certaine and exact number so many and no more yet this number hath relation to the Iews onely And of the Iews it is true that there is so long a time of their exclusion so few of them doe come in since Christ came into the world as that we may with Saint Augustine interpret that place of Genesis where Abrahams seed is compared both to the Starres of heaven and to the dust of the earth that the Stars of heaven signifie those that shall be saved in heaven and the dust of the earth those that perish and the dust of the earth may be more then the Stars of heaven though by the way there are an infinite number of Stars more then we can distinguish and so by Gods grace there may be an infinite number of soules saved more then those of whose salvation we discerne the ways and the meanes Let us embrace the way which God hath given us which is the knowledge of his Sonne Christ Iesus what other way God may take with others how he wtought upon Iob and Naaman and such others as were not in the Covenant let us not inquire too curiously determine too peremptorily pronounce too uncharitably God be blessed for his declaring his good-wil towards us his will be done his way upon others Truly even those places which are ordinarily understood of the paâ—city of the Iews that shall be saved will receive a charitable interpretation and extension God says in Ieremy I will take you one out of a City two out of a family yet he says he wil do this therefore because he is married to them so that this seems to be an act of his love And therefore I had rather take it that God would take a particular care of them one by one then that he would take in but one and one As it is in that place of Esay In that day ye shall be gathered one by one o yee children of Israel that is in the day of Christ of his comming to and toward Judgement Howsoever they come in but thinly yet by the way yet the Apostle pleads in their behalfe thus Hath God cast away his people God forbid At this present says he there is a Remnant then when they had newly crucified Christ God had a care of them God hath given them the spirit of slumber says he also it is but a slumber not a death not a dead sleep Have they stumbled that they should fall Fall utterly God forbid But says he as concerning the Gospell they are enemies for your sakes that is that room might be made for you the Gentiles but as touching election they are beloved for their Fathers sakes that is they have interest by an ancient title which God will never disannull And therefore a great part of the ancient and later men too doe interpret divers passages of Saint Paul of a generall salvation of the Iews that all shall be effectually wrought upon to salvation before the second comming of Christ. I end this concerning the Iews with this note that in all these Tribes which yeelded to this sealing twelve thousand a peece the Tribe of Dan is left out it is not said that any were sealed of the Tribe of Dan many have enquired the reason and satisfied themselves over easily with this that because Antichrist was to come of that Tribe that Tribe is forsaken It is true that very many of the Fathers Irenaeus Ambrose Augustine Gregory and more then these have thought so that Antichrist must be of that Tribe but yet for all that profession which they make in the Roman Church of adhering to the Fathers one amongst them says Incertum be the Fathers as clear and as unanimous as they will in it it is a very uncertain a very disputable thing and another says fabulosum est be the Fathers as earnest as they will it is but a poeticall and a fabulous thing that Antichrist must come of the Tribe of Dan. But he that hath most of the workes of Antichrist upon him of any person in the world now is thus far of the Tribe of Dan Dan signifies Iudgement And he will needs be the Judge of all faith and of all actions too and so severe a Judge as to give an irrevocable Judgement of Damnation upon all that agree not with them in all points Certainly this Tribe of Dan that is of such uncharitable Judges of all other men that will afford no salvation to any but themselves are in the greatest danger to be left out at this generall seale nothing hinders our own salvation more then to deny salvation to all but our selves This then which was done before though it concerne but the Iews was in a great number and was a great argument of Gods sociable application of himselfe to man but that which was after was more A great multitude which no man could number of all nations c. Gods mercy was not confined nor determined upon the Iews
that this place of Saint Pauls to the Corinthians is one of these places of which Saint Peter saith Quaedam difficilia There are some things in Saint Paul hard to be understood Saint Augustines meaning is that the difficulty is in the next words how any man should build hay or stubble upon so good a foundation as Christ how any man that pretendeth to live in Christ should live ill for in the other there can be no difficulty how Christ Jesus to a Christian should be the onely foundation And therefore to place salvation or damnation in such an absolute Decree of God as should have no relation to the fall of man or reparation in a Redeemer this is to remove this stone out of the foundation for a Christian may be well content to beginne at Christ If any man therefore have laid any other foundation to his Faith or any other foundation to his Actions possession of great places alliance in great Families strong parties in Courts obligation upon dependants acclamations of people if he have laid any other foundations for pleasure and contentment care of health and complexion appliablenesse in conversation delightfulnesse in discourses cheerefulnesse in disportings interchanging of secrets and such other small wares of Courts and Cities as these are whosoever hath laid such foundations as these must proceed as that Generall did who when he received a besieged Towne to mercy upon condition that in signe of subjection they should suffer him to take off one row of stones from their walls he tooke away the lowest row the foundation and so ruined and demolished the whole walls of the Citie So must he that hath these false foundations that is these habits divest the habite roote out the lowest stone that is the generall and radicall inclination to these disorders For he shall never be able to watch and resist every particular temptation if he trust onely to his Morall Constancy No nor if he place Christ for the roofe to cover all his sinnes when he hath done them his mercy worketh by way of pardon after not by way of Non obstante and priviledge to doe a sinne before hand but before hand we must have the foundation in our eye when we undertake any particular Action in the beginning we must looke how that will suite with the foundation with Christ for there is his first place to be Lapis fundamentalis And then after we have considered him first in the foundation as we are all Christians he growes to be Lapis Angularis the Corner stone to unite those Christians which seem to be of divers ways divers aspects divers professions together as wee consider him in the foundation there he is the root of faith As we consider him in the Corner there hee is the root of charity In Esay hee is both together A sure foundation and a Corner stone as he was in the place of Esay Lapis probatus I will lay in Sion a tryed stone and in the Psalm Lapis reprobatus a stone that the builders refused In this consideration he is Lapis approbatus a stone approved by all sides that unites all things together Consider first what divers things he unites in his own person That he should be the sonne of a woman and yet no sonne of man That the sonne of a woman should be the sonne of God that mans sinfull nature and innocency should meet together a man that should not sinne that Gods nature and mortality should meet together a God that must die Briefly that he should doe and suffer so many things impossible as man impossible as God Thus hee was a Corner stone that brought together natures naturally incompatible Thus he was Lapis Angularis a Corner stone in his Person Consider him in his Offices as a Redeemer as a Mediatour and so hee hath united God to man yea rebellious man to jealous God Hee is such a Corner stone as hath united heaven and earth Jerusalem and Babylon together Thus in his Person and thus in his Offices Consider him in his power and hee is such a Corner stone as that hee is the God of Peace and Love and Union and Concord Such a Corner stone as is able to unite and reconcile as it did in Abrahams house a Wife and a Concubine in one bed a covetous Father and a wastfull Sonne in one family a severe Magistrate and a licentious people in one City an absolute Prince and a jealous People in one Kingdome Law and Conscience in one Government Scripture and tradition in one Church If we would but make Christ Jesus and his peace the life and soule of all our actions and all our purposes if we would mingle that sweetnesse and supplenesse which he loves and which he is in all our undertakings if in all controversies booke controversies and sword controversies we would fit them to him and see how neere they would meet in him that is how neere we might come to be friends and yet both sides be good Christians then wee placed this stone in his second right place who as hee is a Corner stone reconciling God and man in his owne Person and a Corner stone in reconciling God and mankinde in his Office so hee desires to bee a Corner stone in reconciling man and man and setling peace among our selves not for worldly ends but for this respect that wee might all meet in him to love one another not because wee made a stronger party by that love not because wee made a sweeter conversation by that love but because wee met closer in the bosome of Christ Jesus where wee must at last either rest altogether eternally or bee altogether eternally throwne out or bee eternally separated and divorced from one another Having then received Christ for the foundation stone wee beleeve aright and for the Corner stone we interpret charitably the opinions and actions of other men The next is that hee bee Lapis Iacob a stone of rest and security to our selves When Iacob was in his journey hee tooke a stone and that stone was his pillow upon that hee slept all night c. resting upon that stone hee saw the Ladder that reached from heaven to earth it is much to have this egresse and regresse to God to have a sense of being gone from him and a desire and meanes of returning to him when wee doe fall into particular sinnes it is well if wee can take hold of the first step of this Ladder with that hand of David Domine respice in Testamentum O Lord consider thy Covenant if wee can remember God of his Covenant to his people and to their seed it is well it is more if wee can clamber a step higher on this ladder to a Domine labia mea aperies if we come to open our lips in a true confession of our wretched condition and of those sinnes by which we have forfeited our interest in that Covenant it is more and
wardrobe not to make an Inventory of it but to finde in it something fit for thy wearing Iohn Baptist was not the light he was not Christ but he bore witnesse of him The light of faith in the highest exaltation that can be had in the Elect here is not that very beatificall vision which we shall have in heaven but it beares witnesse of that light The light of nature in the highest exaltation is not faith but it beares witnesse of it The lights of faith and of nature are subordinate Iohn Baptists faith beares me witnesse that I have Christ and the light of nature that is the exalting of my naturall faculties towards religious uses beares me witnesse that I have faith Onely that man whose conscience testifies to himself and whose actions testifie to the world that he does what he can can beleeve himself or be beleeved by others that he hath the true light of faith And therefore as the Apostle saith Quench not the Spirit I say too Quench not the light of Nature suffer not that light to goe out study your naturall faculties husband and improve them and love the outward acts of Religion though an Hypocrite and though a naturall man may doe them Certainly he that loves not the Militant Church hath but a faint faith in his interest in the Triumphant He that cares not though the materiall Church fall I am afraid is falling from the spirituall For can a man be sure to have his money or his plate if his house be burnt or to preserve his faith if the outward exercises of Religion faile He that undervalues outward things in the religious service of God though he begin at ceremoniall and rituall things will come quickly to call Sacraments but outward things and Sermons and publique prayers but outward things in contempt As some Platonique Philosophers did so over-refine Religion and devotion as to say that nothing but the first thoughts and ebullitions of a devout heart were fit to serve God in If it came to any outward action of the body kneeling or lifting up of hands if it came to be but invested in our words and so made a Prayer nay if it passed but a revolving a turning in our inward thoughts and thereby were mingled with our affections though pious affections yet say they it is not pure enough for a service to God nothing but the first motions of the heart is for him Beloved outward things apparell God and since God was content to take a body let not us leave him naked nor ragged but as you will bestow not onely some cost but some thoughts some study how you will clothe your children and how you will clothe your servants so bestow both cost and thoughts thinke seriously execute cheerfully in outward declarations that which becomes the dignity of him who evacuated himselfe for you The zeale of his house needs not eat you up no nor eat you out of house and home God asks not that at your hands But if you eat one dish the lesse at your feasts for his house sake if you spare somewhat for his reliefe and his glory you will not be the leaner nor the weaker for that abstinence Iohn Baptist bore witnesse of the light outward things beare witnesse of your faith the exalting of our naturall faculties beare witnesse of the supernaturall We do not compare the master and the servant and yet we thank that servant that brings us to his master We make a great difference between the treasure in the chest and the key that opens it yet we are glad to have that key in our hands The bell that cals me to Church does not catechise me nor preach to me yet I observe the sound of that bell because it brings me to him that does those offices to me The light of nature is far from being enough but as a candle may kindle a torch so into the faculties of nature well imployed God infuses faith And this is our second couple of lights the subordination of the light of nature and the light of faith And a third payre of lights of attestation that beare witnesse to the light of our Text is Lux aeternorum Corporum that light which the Sunne and Moone and those glorious bodies give from heaven and lux incensionum that light which those things that are naturally combustible and apt to take fire doe give upon earth both these beare witnesse of this light that is admit an application to it For in the first of these the glorious lights of heaven we must take nothing for stars that are not stars nor make Astrological and fixed conclusions out of meteors that are but transitory they may be Comets and blazing starres and so portend much mischiefe but they are none of those aeterna corpora they are not fixed stars not stars of heaven So is it also in the Christian Church which is the proper spheare in which the light of our text That light the essentiall light Christ Jesus moves by that supernaturall light of faith and grace which is truly the Intelligence of that spheare the Christian Chruch As in the heavens the stars were created at once with one Fiat and then being so made stars doe not beget new stars so the Christian doctrine necessary to salvation was delivered at once that is intirely in one spheare in the body of the Scriptures And then as stars doe not beget stars Articles of faith doe not beget Articles of faith so as that the Councell of Trent should be brought to bed of a new Creed not conceived before by the holy Ghost in the Scriptures and which is a monstrous birth the child greater then the Father as soon as it is borne the new Creed of the Councell of Trent to containe more Articles then the old Creed of the Apostles did Saint Iude writing of the common salvation as he calls it for Saint Iude it seems knew no such particular salvation as that it was impossible for any man to have salvation is common salvation exhorts them to contend earnestly for that faith which was once delivered unto the Saints Semel once that is at once semel simul once altogether For this is also Tertullians note that the rule of faith is that it be una immobilis irreformabilis it must not be deformed it cannot be Reformed it must not be mard it cannot be mended whatsoever needs mending and reformation cannot be the rule of faith says Tertullian Other foundation can no man lay then Christ not onely no better but no other what other things soever are added by men enter not into the nature and condition of a foundation The additions and traditions and superedifications of the Roman Church they are not lux aeternorum corporum they are not fixed bodies they are not stars to direct us they may be meteors and so exercise our discourse and Argumentation they may raise controversies And they may be Comets and so
exercise our feares and our jealousies they may raise rebellions and Treasons but they are not fixed and glorious bodies of heaven they are not stars Their non-communions for communions where there are no communicants are no communions when they admit no bread at all no wine at all all is transubstantiated are no communions their semi-communions when they admit the bread to be given but not the wine their sesqui-communions Bread and Wine to the taste and to all other trialls of bread and wine and yet that bread and wine the very body and the very bloud of Christ their quotidian miracles which destroy and contradict even the nature of the miracle to make miracles ordinary and fixed constant and certain for as that is not a miracle which nature does so that 's not a miracle which man can doe certainly constantly infallibly every day and every day every Priest can miraculously change bread into the body of Christ and besides they have certaine fixed shops and Marts of miracles in one place a shop of miracles for barrennesse in another a shop for the tooth-ache To contract this their occasionall Divinity doctrines to serve present occasions that in eighty eight an Hereticall Prince must necessarily be excommunicated and an Hereticall Prince excommunicated must necessarily be deposed but at another time it may be otherwise and conveniencies and dispensations may be admitted these and such as these traditionall occasionall Almanack Divinity they may bee Comets they may be Meteors they may raine bloud and raine fire and raine hailestones hailstones as big as Talents as it is in the Revelation milstones to grinde the world by their oppressions but they are not lux aeternorum corporum the light of the stars and other heavenly bodies for they were made at once and diminish not encrease not Fundamentall articles of faith are always the same And that 's our application of this lux aeternorum corporum the light of those heavenly bodies to the light of our Text Christ working in the Church Now for the consideration of the other light in this third couple which is lux incensionum the light of things which take and give light here upon earth if we reduce it to application and practise and contract it to one Instance it will appeare that the devotion and zeale of him that is best affected is for the most part in the disposition of a torch or a knife ordained to take fire and to give light If it have never been lightned it does not easily take light but it must be bruised and beaten first if it have been lighted and put out though it cannot take fire of it self yet it does easily conceive fire if it be presented within any convenient distance Such also is the soule of man towards the fires of the zeale of Gods glory and compassion of others misery If there be any that never tooke this fire that was never affected with either of these the glory of God the miseries of other men can I hope to kindle him It must be Gods worke to bruise and beat him with his rod of affliction before he will take fire Paulus revelatione compulsus ad fidem St. Paul was compelled to believe not the light which he saw but the power which he felt wrought upon him not because that light shined from heaven but because it strooke him to the earth Agnoscimus Christum in Paulo prius cogentem deinde docentem Christ begun not upon St. Paul with a catechisme but with a rod. If therefore here be any in Pauls case that were never kindled before Almighty God proceed the same way with them and come so neare to a friendship towards them as to be at enmity with them to be so mercifull to them as to seeme unmercifull to be so well pleased as to seeme angry that so by inflicting his medicinall afflictions he may give them comfort by discomfort and life by death and make them seeke his face by turning his face from them and not to suffer them to continue in a stupid inconsideration and lamentable senslesnesse of their miserable condition but bruise and breake them with his rod that they may take fire But for you who have taken this fire before that have been enlightned in both Sacraments and in the preaching of the word in the meanes and in some measure of practise of holinesse heretofore if in not supplying oyle to your Lamps which God by his ordinance had kindled in you you have let this light go out by negligence or inconsideration or that storms of worldly calamities have blowne it out do but now at this instant call to minde what sin of yesterday or t'other day or long ago begun and practised and prevailed upon you or what future sinne what purpose of doing a sinne to night or to morrow possesses you do but thinke seriously what sinne or what crosse hath blown out that light that grace which was formerly in you before that sinne or that crosse invaded you and turne your soul which hath been enlightned before towards this fire which Gods Spirit blowes this minute and you will conceive new fire new zeale new compassion As this Lux incensionum kindles easily when it hath been kindled before so the soule accustomed to the presence of God in holy meditations though it fall asleep in some darke corner in some sinne of infirmity a while yet upon every holy occasion it takes fire againe and the meanest Preacher in the Church shall worke more upon him then the foure Doctors of the Church should be able to do upon a person who had never been enlightned before that is never accustomed to the presence of God in his private meditations or in his outward acts of Religion And this is our third couple of lights that beares witnesse that is admit an application to the light of our Text and then the fourth and last couple which we consider is Lux Depuratarum Mixtionum the light and lustre of precious stones and then Lux Repercussionum the light of Repercussion and Reflexion when one body though it have no light in it self casts light upon other bodies In the application of the first of these lights Depuratarum Mixtionum precious stones we shall onely apply their making and their value Precious stones are first drops of the dew of heaven and then refined by the sunne of heaven When by long lying they have exhal'd and evaporated and breathed out all their grosse matter and received another concoction from the sunne then they become precious in the eye and estimation of men so those actions of ours that shall be precious or acceptable in the eye of God must at first have been conceived from heaven from the word of God and then receive another concoction by a holy deliberation before we bring those actions to execution lest we may have mistaken the roote thereof Actions precious or acceptable in Gods eye must be holy purposes
shall feare the Lord and his goodnesse in the later dayes And beyond this land there is no more Sea beyond this mercy no more Judgement for with this mercy the Chapter ends Consider our text then as a whole Globe as an intire Spheare and then our two Hemispheares of this Globe our two parts of this text will bee First that no perversnesse of ours no rebellion no disobedience puts God beyond his mercy nor extinguishes his love still hee calls Israel rebellious Israel his Children nay his owne anger his owne Judgements then when hee is in the exercise thereof in the execution thereof puts him not beyond his mercy extinguishes not his love hee hides not his face from them then hee leaves them not then in the darke hee accompanies their calamity with a light hee makes that time though cloudy though overcast yet a day unto them the Children of Israel shall abide many days in this case But then as no disobedience removes God from himself for he is love and mercy so no interest of ours in God doth so priviledge us but that hee will execute his Judgements upon his Children too even the Children of Israel shall fall into these Calamities And from this first part wee shall passe to the second from these generall considerations That no punishments should make us desperate that no favours should make us secure we shall passe to the particular commination and judgements upon the children of Israel in this text without King without Prince c. In our first part we stop first upon this declaration of his mercy in this fatherly appellation Children the children of Israel He does not call them children of Israel as though hee disavowed them and put them off to another Father but therefore because they are the Children of Israel they are his Children for hee had maried Israel and maried her to himselfe for ever Many of us are Fathers and from God here may learne tendernesse towards children All of us are children of some parents and therefore should hearken after the name of Father which is nomen pietatis potestatis a name that argues their power over us and our piety towards them and so concernes many of us in a double capacity as we are children and parents too but all of us in one capacity as we are children derived from other parents God is the Father of man otherwise then he is of other creatures He is the Father of all Creatures so Philo calls all Creatures sorâ—res suas his sisters but then all those sisters of man all those daughters of God are not alike maried God hath placed his Creatures in divers rankes and in divers conditions neither must any man thinke that he hath not done the duty of a Father if he have not placed all his Sonnes or not matched all his daughters in a condition equall to himselfe or not equall to one another God hath placed creatures in the heavens and creatures in the earth and creatures in the sea and yet all these creatures are his children and when he looked upon them all in their divers stations he saw omnia valde bora that all was very well And that Father that imploies one Sonne in learning another to husbandry another to Merchandise pursues Gods example in disposing his children his creatures diversly and all well Such creatures as the Raine though it may seem but an imperfect and ignoble creature fallen from the wombe of a cloud have God for their Father God is the Father of the Raine And such creatures as light have but God for their Father God is Pater lâ—minum the Father of lights Whether we take lights there to be the Angels created with the light some take it so or to be the severall lights set up in the heavens Sun and Moon and Stars some take it so or to be the light of Grace in infusion by the Spirit or the light of the Church in manifestation by the word for all these acceptations have convenient Authors and worthy to be followed God is the Father of lights of all lights but so he is of raine and clouds too And God is the Father of glory as Saint Paul styles him of all glory whether of those beames of glory which he sheds upon us here in the blessings and preferments of this life or that waight of glory which he reserves for us in the life to come From that inglorious drop of raine that falls into the dust and rises no more to those glorious Saints who shall rise from the dust and fall no more but as they arise at once to the fulnesse of Essentiall joy so arise daily in accidentiall joyes all are the children of God and all alike of kin to us And therefore let us not measure our avowing or our countenancing of our kindred by their measure of honour or place or riches in the world but let us looke how fast they grow in the root that is in the same worship of the same God who is ours and their Father too He is nearest of kin to me that is of the same religion with me as they are creatures they are of kin to me by the Father but as they are of the same Church and religion by Father and mother too Philo calls all creatures his sisters but all men are his brothers God is the Father of man in a stronger and more peculiar and more masculine sense then of other Creatures Filius particeps con-dominus cum patre as the law calls the Sonne the partner of the Father and fellow-Lord joint-Lord with the Father of all the possession that is to descend so God hath made man his partner and fellow-Lord of all his other creatures in Moses his Dominamini when he gives man a power to rule over them and in Davids Omnia subjecisti when he imprints there a naturall disposition in the creature to the obedience of man So high so very high a filiation hath God given man as that having another Sonne by another filiation a higher filiation then this by an eternall generation yet he was content that that Sonne should become this Sonne that the Sonne of God should become the Sonne of Man God is the Father of all of man otherwise then of all the rest but then of the children of Israel otherwise then of all other men For he bought them and is not be thy Father that hath bought thee says God by Moses Not to speake of that purchase which he made by the death of his Sonne for that belongs to all the world he bought the Jews in particular at such a price such silver and such gold such temporall and such spirituall benefits such a Land and such a Church such a Law and such a Religion as certainly he might have had all the world at that price If God would have manifested himselfe poured out himselfe to the Nations as hee did to
properly Protestant And though the Injunctions of our Church declare the sense of those times concerning Images yet they are wisely and godly conceived for the second is That they shall not extoll Images which is not that they shall not set them up but as it followeth They shall declare the abuse thereof And when in the 23 Injunction it is said That they shall utterly extinct and destroy amongst other things pictures yet it is limited to such things and such pictures as are monuments of feigned miracles and that Injuction reaches as well to pictures in private houses as in Churches and forbids nothing in the Church that might be retained in the house For those pernicious Errors which the Romane Church hath multiplied in this point not onely to make Images of men which never were but to make those Images of men very men to make their Images speak and move and weep and bleed to make Images of God who was never seen and to make those Images of God very gods to make their Images doe daily miracles to transferre the honour due to God to the Image and then to encumber themselves with such ridiculous riddles and scornfull distinctions as they doe for justifying unjustifiable unexcusable uncolourable enormities Va Idololatris woe to such advancers of Images as would throw down Christ rather then his Image But Vae Iconeclastis too woe to such peremptory abhorrers of Pictures and to such uncharitable condemners of all those who admit any use of them as had rather throw down a Church then let a Picture stand Laying hold upon S. Hieromes exposition that fals within the Vae the Commination of this Text to be without those Sacrifices those Ephods those Images as they are outward helps of devotion And laying hold not upon S. Hierome but upon Christ himselfe who is the God of love and peace and unity yet fals under a heavy and insupportable Vae to violate the peace of the Church for things which concern it not fundamentally Problematicall things are our silver but fundamentall our gold problematicall out sweat but fundamentall our blood If our Adversaries would be bought in with our silver with our sweat we should not be difficult in meeting them halfe way in things in their nature indifferent But if we must pay our Gold our Blood our fundamentall points of Religion for their friendship A Fortune a Liberty a Wife a Childe a Father a Friend a Master a Neighbour a Benefactor a Kingdome a Church a World is not worth a dramme of this Gold a drop of this Blood Neither will that man who is truly rooted in this foundation redeeme an Empoverishing an Emprisoning a Dis-inheriting a Confining an Excommunicating a Deposing with a dramme of this Gold with a drop of this Blood the fundamentall Articles of our Religion Blessed be that God who as he is without change or colour of change hath kept us without change or colour of change in all our foundations And he in his time bring our Adversaries to such a moderation as becomes them who doe truly desire that the Church may bee truly Catholique one stock in one fold under one Shepherd though not all of one colour of one practise in all outward and disciplinarian points Amen SERMON XLII A Sermon Preached in Saint Pauls in the Evening November 23. 1628. PROV 14. 31. He that oppresseth the poore reprocheth his Maker but he that honoureth him hath mercy on the poore Part of the first Lesson for that Evening Prayer THese are such words as if we were to consider the words onely might make a Grammar Lecture and a Logick Lecture and a Rhetorick and Ethick a Philosophy Lecture too And of these foure Elements might a better Sermon then you are like to heare now be well made Indeed they are words of a large of an extensive comprehension And because all the words of the Word of God are in a great measure so that invites me to stop a little as upon a short first part before the rest or as upon a long entrie into the rest to consider not onely the powerfulnesse of the matter but the sweetnesse and elegancy of the words of the Word of God in generall before I descend to the particular words of this Text He that oppresseth the poore c. We may justly accommodate those words of Moses to God the Father What God is there in Heaven or in Earth that can doe according to thy workes And those words of Ieremie to God the Sonne Behold and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow And those to the Holy Ghost which are in Esay Loquimini ad Cor speake to the heart speake comfortably to my People And those of Saint Iohn too A voyce of Thunder and after A voyce of seaven Thunders talking with me for who can doe like the Father who can suffer like the Sonne who can speake like the Holy Ghost Eloquia Domini eloquia casta saith David The words of the Lord are chaste words sincere pure words no drosse no profanenesse no such allay mingled with them for as it followeth there They are as silver tried and purified seaven times in the fire They are as that silver that is so tried and they are as that fire that trieth it It is Castum a Pure Word in it self and then it is powerfull upon the Hearer too Ignitum Eloquium tuum vehementer saith he Thy word hath the vehement operation of fire and therefore thy servant loveth it well as it followeth there Therefore because it pierces But therefore especially because it carrieth a sweetnesse with it For the sting of the Serpent pierces and the toothe of the Viper pierces but they carry venenosam salivam a venimous and mischievous liquour with them But Dulcia faucibus super Mel Thy words are sweeter to my mouth then Hony then Hony it selfe For verba composita saith Solomon chosen words studied premeditated words pleasing words so we translate it are as a Hony-combe Now in the Hony combe the Hony is collected and gathered and dispensed and distributed from the Hony-combe And of this Hony-combe is wax wax apt for sealing derived too The distribution of this Hony to the Congregation The sealing of this Hony to the Conscience is in the outward Ordinance of God and in the labour of the Minister and his conscionable fitting of himselfe for so great a service But the Hony-Combe is not the Hony The gifts of the man is not the Holy Ghost Iacob laid this blessing upon his sonne Naphtali Dabit Eloquia pulchritudinis That he should be a well-spoken and a perswasive man For of a defect in this kinde Moses complained and so did Esay and Ieremie did so too when they were to be imployed in Gods service Moses that he was of uncircumcised Esay that he was of unclean lips and Ieremie that he was a Childe and could not speak and therefore this was a Blessing upon
Naphtali that hee should bee a well-spoken and a perswasive man For so Moses after God had farther inabled him saith Give eare O yee Heavens and I will speake Heare O Earth the words of my mouth My mouth saith Moses The Minister of God that cometh with convenient gifts and due preparation may speak such things as Earth and Heaven it selfe may be content to heare For when Saint Paul saith That to the Principalities and Powers in Heavenly places the manifold wisdome of God is made known by the Church that is by the Ministery and Service of the Church and by that which is done here wee may congruously and piously beleeve that even those Principalities and Powers in Heavenly places The Angels of Heaven doe heare our Sermons and hearken how the glory of God is communicated and accepted and propagated through the Congregation and as they rejoyce at the conversion of a Sinner so rejoyce also at the means of their Conversion the powerfull and the congruous preaching of the Word of God And therefore let no man though an Angell of the Church though an Archangell of the Church Bishop or Archbishop refuse to heare a man of imeriour place or inferiour parts to himself neither let any man be discouraged by the fewnesse or meannesse of his Hearers For as the Apostle saith with relation to Abraham Entertain strangers for thereby some have entertained Angels unawares so preach to all and that seat that thou thinkest empty may have Angels in it To them is the manifold Wisedome of God made knowne by the Church and Angels are here here for the augmentation of their owne Ioy in their fresh knowledge of the propagation of the Kingdome of God in this Congregation and they are here for their Accusation that are not here but frivolously and causelessely absent or negligently absently present if they be here Therefore Moses might say Give eare O yee Heavens though it bee but I that speake And hee might add as he doth there My Doctrine shall droppe as the rain and my speech shall distll as the dew And why Because I will publish the Name of the Lord saith Moses there because I will deliver the Messages of my God to his People What though you doe must this be ascribed unto you no Moses claimeth not that for when hee had said Give eare O yee Heavens let no man thinke himselfe too high or too wise to heare me and called it his Doctrine and his speech because he published the Name of the Lord yet he transferreth all upon God himselfe He establisheth their attentions with that Ascribe yee Greatnesse unto our God It becommeth me to make my selfe as acceptable a messenger as I can and to infuse the Word of God into you as powerfully as I can but all that I can doe is but a small matter the greatnesse of the worke lieth in your Application and that must proceed from the Word of God it selfe quickned by his Spirit and therefore Ascribe all Greatnesse unto our God for that is the Hony whatsoever or whosoever be the Hony-combe Truely when I reade a Sermon of Chrysostome or of Chrysologus or of Ambrose Men who carry in the very signification of their Names and in their Histories the attributes of Hony mouthed and Golden-mouthed Men I finde my selfe oftentimes more affected with the very Citation and Application of some sentence of Scripture in the middest or end of one of their Sermons then with any witty or forcible passage of their owne And that is it which Saint Hierome doth especially magnifie in Saint Paul After he had said Quotiescunque lego non verba mihi videor sed tonitrua audire wheresoever I open Saint Pauls Epistles it is not a word or a sentence but a clappe of Thunder that flieth out he addeth moreover Legatis doe but use your selves to the reading of Saint Pauls Epistles Videbitis in testimoniis quae sumit ex veteri Testamento quà m Artifex sit quà m prudens you will easily see how artificially how dexterously how cunningly and how discreetly he makes his use of those places which he citeth out of the Old Testament Videntur verba Innocontis rusticani you would take them saith hee sometimes for words of some plain Country-man as some of the Prophets were no other But before Saint Paul have done with those words Fulmina sunt capiunt omne quod tangunt hee maketh you see that they are flashes of lightning and that they possesse and melt affect and dissolve every soul they touch And hence it is Beloved that I return so often at home in my private Meditations that I present so often to Gods People in these Exercises this Consideration That there are not so exquisite so elegant Bookes in the World as the Scriptures neither is any one place a more pregnant example thereof for the purity and elegancy for the force and power for the largenesse and extention of the words then these which the Holy Ghost hath taken in this Text Hee that oppresseth the poore reproaches his Master c. And so we passe from this first Consideration The power and Elegancy of the whole word of God in generall to the same consideration in these particular words The Matter which in the generall is but this That the poor must bee relieved being a Doctrine obvious to all The Manner wil rather be our object at this time How the Holy Ghost by Solomons hand hath enwrapped this Doctrine in these words How the Omission of this Duty is aggravated how the performance thereof is celebrated in this Text and in the force and elegancies thereof Mans perversenesse hath changed Gods method God made man good but in a possibility of being ill Now God findes man ill but in a possibility of being good When man was good and enabled to continue so God began with him with affirmative Commandements Commandements that implied liberty and Soveraignty such as that Subjicite Dominamini Subdue the Creature and rule over the Creature and he comes not till after to Negative to Prohibitive Commandments Commandments that imply infirmity and servility such as this Of this Tree thou shalt not eate upon thy life this life and the next thou shalt not But now because God findes man ill and prone to bee worse God is faine to change his method and to begin and stop him at first with negative and prohibitive Commandments So he does in the thirty fourth Psalm ver 14. which is also again repeated first Depart from evill and then Doe good For man brings with him something into the world now to forget and to unlearn before he can take out any new lesson Man is so farre from being good of himselfe as that he must forget himselfe devest himselfe forsake himselfe before he can be capable of any good And such is the method of our Text Because God sees a naturall declination in man to abuse his power to the
Oppresse not that soule by violence by Fraud nor by Scorne which was the other signification of this word Oppression Hoc nos perdit quod divina quoque eloquia in facetias in dicteria vertamus Damnation is a serious thing and this aggravates it that we slight and make jests at that which should save us the Scriptures and the Ordinances of God For by this oppression of thy poore soule by this Violence this Fraud this Scorne thou wilt come to Reproach thy Maker to impute that losse of thy soule which thou hast incurred by often breach of Lawes evidently manifested to thee to his secret purpose and un-revealed will then which thou canst not put a greater Reproach a greater Contumely a greater Blasphemy upon God For God cannot bee God if hee bee not innocent nor innocent if hee draw bloud of mee for his owne Act. But if thou show mercy to this soule mercy in that signification of the word as it denotes an actuall performance of those things that are necessary for the making sure of thy salvation or if thou canst not yet attaine to those degrees of Sanctification mercy in that signification of the word as the word denotes hearty and earnest Prayer that thou couldest Lord I beleeve Lord help mine unbeliefe Lord I stand yet yet Lord raise mee when I fall Honorabis Deum thou shalt honour God in the sense of the word in this Text thou shalt enlarge God amplifie dilate God that is the Body of God the Church both here and hereafter For thou shalt adde a figure to the number of his Saints and there shall bee a Saint the more for thee Thou shalt adde a Theme of Joy to the Exultation of the Angels They shall have one occasion of rejoycing the more from thee Thou shalt adde a pause a stop to that Vsquequo of the Martyrs under the Altar who solicite God for the Resurrection for Thou shalt adde a step to the Resurrection it selfe by having brought it so much nearer as to have done thy part for the filling up of the number of the Saints upon which fulnesse the Resurrection shall follow And thou shalt adde a Voyce to that Old and ever-new Song that Catholique Hymne in which both Churches Militant and Triumphant shall joyne Blessing Honour Glory and Power bee unto him that sitteth upon the Throne and to the Lambe for ever and ever Amen SERMON XLIII A Sermon upon the fist of Novemb. 1622. being the Anniversary celebration of our Deliverance from the Powder Treason Intended for Pauls Crosse but by reason of the weather Preached in the Church LAMENT 4. 20. The breath of our nostrils the Anointed of the Lord was taken in their pits The Prayer before the Sermon O LORD open thou my lips and my mouth shall shew forth thy praise for thou O Lord didst make haste to help us Thou O Lord didst make speed to save us Thou that sittest in heaven didst not onely looke down to see what was done upon the Earth but what was done in the Earth and when the bowels of the Earth were with a key of fire ready to open and swallow us the bowels of thy compassion were with a key of love opened to succour us This is the day and these are the houres wherein that should have been acted In this our Day and in these houres We praise thee O God we acknowledge thee to bee the Lord All our Earth doth worship thee The holy Church throughout all this Land doth knowledge thee with commemorations of that great mercy now in these houres Now in these houres it is thus commemorated in the Kings House where the Head and Members praise thee Thus in that place where it should have been perpetrated where the Reverend Judges of the Land doe now praise thee Thus in the Universities where the tender youth of this Land is brought up to praise thee in a detestation of their Doctrines that plotted this Thus it is commemorated in many severall Societies in many severall Parishes and thus here in this Mother Church in this great Congregation of thy Children where all of all sorts from the Lievtenant of thy Lievtenant to the meanest sonne of thy sonne in this Assembly come with hearts and lippes full of thankesgiving Thou Lord openest their lippes that their mouth may shew forth thy prayse for Thou O Lord diddest make haste to helpe them Thou diddest make speede to save them Accept O Lord this Sacrifice to which thy Spirit giveth fire This of Praise for thy great Mercies already afforded to us and this of Prayer for the continuance and enlargement of them upon the Catholick Church by them who pretend themselves the onely sonnes thereof dishonoured this Day upon these Churches of England Scotland and Ireland shaked and threatned dangerously this Day upon thy servant our Soveraigne for his Defence of the true Faith designed to ruine this day upon the Prince and others derived from the same roote some but Infants some not yet Infants enwrapped in dust and annihilation this day upon all the deliberations of the Counsell That in all their Consultations they may have before their eyes the Record and Registers of this Day upon all the Clergie That all their Preaching and their Governement may preclude in their severall Iurisdictions all re-entrances of that Religion which by the Confession of the Actours themselves was the onely ground of the Treason of this day upon the whole Nobilitie and Commons all involved in one Common Destruction this Day upon both our Universities which though they lacke no Arguments out of thy Word against the Enemies of thy Truth shall never leave out this Argument out of thy Works The Historie of this Day And upon all those who are any wayes afflicted That our afflictions bee not multiplyed upon us by seeing them multiplyed amongst us who would have diminished thee and annihilated us this Day And lastly upon this Auditory assembled here That till they turne to ashes in the Grave they may remember that thou tookest them as fire-brands out of the fire this Day Heare us O Lord and hearken to us Receive our Prayers and returne them with Effect for his sake in whose Name and words wee make them Our Father which art c. The SERMON OF the Authour of this Booke I thinke there was never doubt made but yet that is scarce safely done which the Councell of Trent doth in that Canon which numbers the Books of Canonicall Scriptures to leave out this Book of Lamentations For though I make no doubt but that they had a purpose to comprehend and involve it in the name of Ieremy yet that was not enough for so they might have comprehended and involved Genesis and Deuteronomie and all between those two in one name of Moses and so they might have comprehended and involved the Apocalypse and some Epistles in the name of Iohn and have left out the Book it selfe in the number But one of their
without a pope they have made a problematicall a disputable matter and some of their Authours have diverted towards an affirmation of it but Aufleribilitas potestatis to imagine a King without Kingly Soveraignty never came into probleme into disputation We all lamented and bitterly and justly the losse of our Deborah though then we saw a Iosiah succeeding but if they had removed our Iosiah and his Royall children and so this form of government where or who or what had been an object of Consolation to us The cause of lamentation in the losse of a good King is certainly great and so it was if Ieremy lamented Iosiah but if it were but for zedekiah an ill King as the greater part of Expositors take it yet the lamentation you see is the same How ill a King was Zedekiah As ill as Iosiah was good that 's his measure He did evill in the sight of the Lord according to all that Iehoiakim had done Here is his sinne sinne by precedent and what had Iehoiakim done He had done evill in the sight of the Lord according to all that his Fathers had done It is a great and a dangerous wickednesse which is done upon pretext of Antiquity The Religion of our Fathers the Church of our Fathers the Worship of our Fathers is a pretext that colours a great deale of Superstition He did evill as his Fathers there was his comparative evill And his positive evill I meane his particular sinne was That he humbled not himself to Gods Prophets to Ieremy speaking from the mouth of the Lord there was irreligiousnesse And then He broke the Oath which he had sworne by God there was perâ—idiousnesse faithlesnsse And lastly He stiffned his neck and hardned his heart from turning to the Lord of Israel there was impenitiblenesse Thus evill was Zedekiah irreligious to God treacherous to man impenitible to himself and yet the State and men truly religious in the State the Prophet lamented him not his spirituall defections by sinne for they did not make themselves Judges of that but they lamented the calamities of the Kingdome in the losse even of an evill King That man must have a large comprehension that shall adventure to say of any King He is an ill King he must know his Office well and his actions well and the actions of other Princes too who have correspondence with him before he can say so When Christ sayes Let your communication be yea yea and nay nay for whatsoever is more then this that is when it comes to swearing that cometh of evill Saint Augustine does not understand that of the evill disposition of that man that sweares but of them who will not beleeve him without wearing Many times a Prince departs from the exact rule of his duty not out of his own indisposition to truth and clearnesse but to countermine underminers That which David sayes in the eighteenth Psalme David speaks not of man but of God himself Cum perverso perveriêris With the froward thou wilt show thy self froward God who is of no froward nêature may be made froward with crafty neighbours a Prince will be crafty and perchance false with the false Alas to looke into no other profession but our owne how often do we excuse Dispensations and pluralities and non-residencies with an Omnes faciunt I do but as other men of my profession do Allow a King but that That he does but as other Kings do Nay but this He does but as other Kings put him to a necessity to do and you will not hastily call a King an ill King When God gives his people for old shoes and sells them for nothing and at the same time gives his and their enemies abundance when God commands Abraham to sacrifice his own and onely Sonne and his enemies have Children at their pleasure as David speaks To give your selves the liberty of humane affection you would think God an ill God but yet for all this his children are to him a Royall Priesthood and a holy Nation and all their tears are in his bottles and registred in his booke for all this When Princes pretermit in some things the present benefit of their Subjects and confer favours upon others give your selves the liberty to judge of Princes actions with the affections of private men and you may think a King an ill King But yet we are to him as David sayes His brethren his bone his flesh and so reputed by him God himselfe cannot stand upright in a naturall mans interpretation nor any King in a private mans But then how soone our adversaries come to call Kings ill Kings we see historically when they boast of having deposed Kings Quia minus utiles Because some other hath seemed to them fitter for the Government and we see it prophetically by their allowing those Indictments and Attainders of Kings which stand in their books De Syndicatu That that King which neglects the duties of his place and they must prescribe the duty and judge the negligence too That King that exercises his Prerogative without just cause and they must prescribe the Prerogative and judge the cause That that King that vexes his Subjects That that King that gives himselfe to intemperate hunting for in that very particular they instance that in such cases and they multiply these cases infinitely Kings are in their mercy and subject to their censures and corrections We proceed not so in censuring the actions of Kings we say with St. Cyrill Impium est dicere Regi Iniquè agis It is an impious thing in him who is onely a private man and hath no other obligations upon him to say to the King or of the King He governs not as a King is bound to do we remit the judgement of those their actions which are secret to God and when they are evident and bad yet we must endevour to preserve their persons for there is a danger in the losse and a lamentation due to the losse even of Zedekiah for even such are uniti Domini The anoynted of the Lord and the breath of our nostrils First as it lies in our Text The King is spiritus narium the breath of our uostrills First Spiritus is a name most peculiarly belonging to that blessed Person of the glorious Trinity whose Office it is to convay to insinuate to apply to us the Mercies of the Father and the Merits of the Sonne He is called by this Name by the word of this Text Ruach even in the beginning of the Creation God had created Heaven and Earth and then The Spirit of God susâ—labat saith Pagnins translation and so saith the Chalde Paraphrase too it breathed upon the waters and so induced or deduced particular formes So God hath made us a little World of our own This Iland He hath given us Heaven and Earth The truth of his Gospel which is our earnest of Heaven and the abundance of the Earth a
invested in the light of joy and my body in the light of glory How glorious is God as he looks down upon us through the Sunne How glorious in that glasse of his How glorious is God as he looks out amongst us through the king How glorious in that Image of his How glorious is God as he calls up our eyes to him in the beauty and splendor and service of the Church How glorious in that spoufe of his But how glorious shall I conceive this light to be cum sub loco viderim when I shall see it in his owne place In that Spheare which though a Spheare is a Center too In that place which though a place is all and every where I shall see it in the face of that God who is all face all manifestration all all Innotescence to me for facies Deiest qua Deus nobis innotescit that 's Gods face to us by which God manifests himselfe to us I shall see this light in his face who is all face and yet all hand all application and communication and delivery of all himselfe to all his Saints This is Beatitudo in Auge blessednesse in the Meridionall height blessednesse in the South point in a perpetuall Sommer solstice beyond which nothing can be proposed to see God so Then There And yet the farmers of heaven and hell the merchants of soules the Romane Church make this blessednesse but an under degree but a kinde of apprentiship after they have beatified declared a man to be blessed in the fruition of God in heaven if that man in that inferiour state doe good service to that Church that they see much profit will rise by the devotion and concurrence of men to the worship of that person then they will proceed to a Canonization and so he that in his Novitiat and years of probation was but blessed Ignatius and blessed Xavier is lately become Saint Xavier aud Saint Ignatius And so they pervert the right order and method which is first to come to Sanctification and then to Beatification first to holinesse and then to blessednesse And in this method our blessed God bee pleased to proceed with us by the operation of his holy Spirit to bring us to Sanctification here and by the merits and intercession of his glorious Sonne to Beatification hereafter That so not being offended in him but resting in those meanes and seales of reconciliation which thou hast instituted in thy Church wee may have life and life more abundantly life of grace here and life of glory there in that kingdome which thy Sonne our Saviour Christ Jesus hath purchased for us with the inestimable price of his incorruptible bloud Amen SERMON XLV Preached at Saint Dunstans Aprill 11. 1624. The first sermon in that Church as Vicar thereof DEUT. 25. 5. If brethren dwell together and one of them die and have no Childe the Wife of the dead shall not mary without unto a stranger her husbands brother shall goe in unto her and take her to him to wife and performe the duty of an husbands brother unto her FRom the beginning God intimated a detestation a dislike of singularity of beeing Alone The first time that God himselfe is named in the Bible in the first verse of Genesis hee is named plurally Creavit Dit Gods Gods in the plurall Created Heaven and Earth God which is but one would not appeare nor bee presented so alone but that hee would also manifest more persons As the Creator was not Singular so neither were the creatures First he created heaven and earth both together which were to be the generall parents and out of which were to bee produced all other creatures and then he made all those other creatures plurally too Male and female created hee them And when he came to make him for whose sake next to his own glory he made the whole world Adam he left not Adam alone but joyned an Eve to him Now when they were maried we know but wee know not when they were divorced we heare when Eve was made but not when shee dyed The husbands death is recorded at last the wives is not at all So much detestation hath God himselfe and so little memory would hee have kept of any singularity of being alone The union of Christ to the whole Church is not expressed by any metaphore by any figure so oft in the Scripture as by this of Mariageâ— and there is in that union with Christ to the whole Church neither husband nor wife can ever die Christ is immortall as hee is himselfe and immortall as hee is the head of the Church the Husband of that wife for that wife the Church is immortall too for as a Prince is the same Prince when he fights a battaile and when hee triumphs after the victory so the militant and the triumphant Church is the same Church There can bee no widower There can bee no Dowager in that case Hee cannot shee cannot die But then this Metaphore this spirituall Mariage holds not onely betweene Christ and the whole Church in which case thee can be no Widow but in the union between Christs particular Ministers and particular Churches and there in that case the husband of that wife may die The present Minister may die and so that Church be a Widow And in that case and for provision of such Widows wee consider the accommodation of this Law If brethren dwell together and one of them die and have no childe the wife of the dead shall not mary without unto a stranger c. This law was but a permissive law rather a dispensation then a law as the permitting of usury to bee taken of strangers and the permitting of divorces in so many cases were At most it was but a Iudiciall law and therefore layes no obligation upon any other nation then them to whom it was given the Iews And therefore wee enquire not the reasons of that law the reasons were determined in that people wee examine not the conveniences of the law the conveniences were determined in those times wee lay hold onely upon the Typique signification and appliablenesse of the law as that secular Mariage there spoken of may be appliable to this spirituall Mariage the Mariage of the Minister to the Church If brethren dwell together c. From these words then wee shall make our approaches and application to the present occasion by these steps First there is a mariage in the case The taking and leaving of a Church is not an indifferent an arbitrary thing It is a Mariage and Mariage implies Honour It is an honourable estate and that implies charge it is a burdensome state There is Honos and Onus Honour and labour in Mariage You must bee content to afford the honour wee must bee content to endure the labour And so in that point as our Incumbencie upon a Church is our Mariage to that Church wee shall as farre as the occasion admits see
think that of all this Congregation which lookes me in the face now I should not meet one at the Resurrection at the right hand of God! And for so much as concerns me it is all one if none of you be saved as if none of you be saved by my help my means my assistance my preaching If I put you upon miraculous wayes to be saved without hearing or upon extraordinary wayes to be saved by hearing others this shall aggravate my condemnation though you be saved How much more heavy must my burden be if by my negligence both I and you perish too So then this calling this marriage is a burden every way When at any midnight I heare a bell toll from this steeple must not I say to my selfe what have I done at any time for the instructing or rectifying of that mans Conscience who lieth there now ready to deliver up his own account and my account to Almighty God If he be not able to make a good account he and I are in danger because I have not enabled him and though he be for himself able that delivers not me if I have been no instrument for the doing of it Many many burdens lie upon this calling upon this marriage but our recompense is that marriage is as well an honourable as a painefull calling If be a Father where is mine Honour faith God If you can answer God why you have it in your Prophets They have it that satisfieth him that dischargeth you For he that receiveth them receiveth him But if Christ who repeats that complaint in every one of us That a Prophet hath no honour in his own Countrie that a Pastor is least respected of his own stock you have not your Quctus est for the honour due to God God never discharges the honour due to him if it be not paid into their hands whom he sendeth for it to them upon whom he hath directed it Would the King believe that man to honour him that violateth his Image or that calumniateth his Ambassadour Every man is the Image of God every Creature is the Ambassadour of God The Heavens and as well as the Heavens the Earth declare the glory of God but the Civill Magistrate and the Spirituall Paster who have married the two Daughters of God The state and the Church are the Images and Ambassadours of God in a higher and more peculiar sense and for that marriage are to be honoured And then Honour implieth that by which Honour subsisteth maintenance and they which withdraw that injuriously or with-hold that contentiously dishonour God in the dishonour of his servants and so make this marriage this calling onely burdensome and not honourable So then the interest of your particular Minister and the particular Church being such as between Man and Wife a marriage we consider the uses of marriage in Gods first intention and apply them to this marriage Gods first intentions in marriage were two In adjutorium for mutuall helpers and in prolem for procreation and education of Children For both these are we made Husbands of Churches in prolem to assist in the regeneration of Children for the inheritance of Heaven and in adjutorium to be helpers to one another And therefore if the husband the Pastor put the wife his flock in a circumcision to pare themselves to the quick to take from their necessary means to sustain their families to satisfie him the wife will say as Zipporah said to Moses sponâ— sus sanguinum a bloudy husband art thou that exactest and extortest more then is due In that case the Husband is no helper But if we be alwayes ready to help your children over the threshold as Saint Augustine calls Baptisme Limen Ecclesiae alwayes ready to Baptize the Children if we be alwayes ready to help you in all your spirituall diseases to that Cordiall that Balsamum the body and bloud of Christ Iesus If we be alwayes ready to help you in all your bodily distresses ready even at your last gasp to open your eyes then when your best friends are ready to close them ready to deliver your souls into the hands of God when all the rest about you are ready to receive into their hands that which you leave behinde you and then ready to lay up the garments of your soules your bodies in the wardrobe the grave till you call for them and put them on again in the resurrection then are we truely helpers true husbands and then if the Wife will say as Iobs wife to the husband Curse God and die be sorry that thou hast taken this Profession upon thee and live in penury and die in povertie In a word if he presse too much if she withdraw too much this frustrates Gods purpose in making that a marriage they are not mutuall helpers to one another These were Gods two principall intentions in marriage in adjutorium in prolem But then mans fall induced a third in remedium That for a remedy against burning and to avoid fornication every man should have his own wife every woman her own husband And so in remedium for a remedy against spirituall fornication of running after other men in other places out of disaffection to their own Pastor or over affecting another God hath given every wife her own husband Every Church her own Pastor And to all these purposes our function is a marriage It is a marriage it deserves the honour it undertakes the burden of that state and then it is a marriage of a widow of a Church left in widow-hood by the death of her former husband In the Law literally God forbad the High Priest to marry a widdow The Romane Church continues that literally and more they extend it that which was in figure enjoined to the High Priest onely they in fact extend to all Priests no man that ever married a widow may be a priest though she be dead when he desires orders There is no question but there is a more exemplary sanctity required in the Priest then in other persons and more in those who are in high places in the Church then in those of inferiour Jurisdictions and the name and title of Virginity hath ever been exhibited as an Embleme as a Type of especiall Sanctity And as such the Apostle uses it when he saith That he would present the Church of Corinth as a chaste Virgine to Christ That is as chaste as a Virgin though married for so he saith in the words immediately before That he had espoused them to a husband As marriage is an honourable state though in poverty so is the bed undefiled with strange lust a chaste bed even in marriage And in the accommodation of the Figure to the present occasion our marriage to severall Churches If we might marry no widowes no Churches which had been wives to former husbands we should finde few Virgins that is Churches newly erected for us But when the wife of a former husband is left
they their beeing their ever-lasting well-beeing for their service You will scarce receive a servant that is come from another man without testimony If you put your selves out of Gods service whither will ye goe In his service and his onely is perfect freedome And therefore as you love freedome and liberty bee his servants and call the freedome of the Gospel the best freedome and come to the Preaching of that He cals you children as you are servants filii familiares and he cals you children as you are Alumni nurse-children filii mammillares as he requires the humility and simplicity of little children in you For Cum simplicibus sermocinatio ejus as the vulgat reads that place Gods secret discourse is with the single heart The first that ever came to Christ so as he came to us in blood they that came to him so before he came so to us that died for him before he died for them were such sucking children those whom Herod slew As Christ thought himself bound to thank his Father for that way of proceeding I thank thee O Father Lord of heaven and earth that thou hast revealed these things unto babes so Christ himself pursues the same way Suffer little children and forbid them not to come unto me for of such is the Kingdome of heaven Of such not onely of those who were truly literally children children in age but of such as those Talium est regnum coelorum such as come in such a disposition in the humility in the simplicity in the singlenesse of heart as children do An habituall sinner is always in minority always an Infant an Infant to this purpose All his acts all the bands of an Infant are void all the outward religious actions even the band and contract of Baptism in an habituall sinner is void and ineffectuall He that is in the house and favour of God though he be a child a child to this purpose simple supple tractable single-hearted is as Adam was in the state of Innocency a man the first minute able to stand upright in the sight of God And out of one place of Esay our Expositors have drawn conveniently enough both these conclusions A child shall die 100 years old says the Prophet that is say some a sinner though he live 100 years yet he dies a child in ignorance And then say others and both truly He that comes willingly when God cals though he die a child in age he hath the wisdome of 100 years upon him There is not a graver thing then to be such a child to conform his will to the will of God Whether you consider temporall or spirituall things you are Gods children For for temporall if God should take off his hand withdraw his hand of sustentation all those things which assist us temporally would relapse to the first feeble and childish estate and come to their first nothing Armies would be but Hospitals without all strength Councell-tables but Bedlams without all sense and Schools and Universities but the wrangling of children if God and his Spirit did not inanimate our Schools and Armies and Councels His adoption makes us men therefore because it makes us his children But we are his children in this consideration especially as we are his spirituall children as he hath nursed us fed us with his word In which sense the Apostle speaks of those who had embraced the true Religion in the same words that the Prophet had spoken before Behold I and the children that God hath given me And in the same sense the same Prophet in the same place says of them who had fallen away from the true Religion They please themselves in the children of strangers In those men who have derived their Orders and their Doctrine from a forein Jurisdiction In that State where Adoptions were so frequent in old Rome a Plebeian could not adopt a Patrician a Yeoman could not adopt a Gentleman nor a young man could not adopt an old In the new Rome that endevours to adopt all in an imaginary filiation you that have the perfect freedome of Gods service be not adopted into the slavery and bondage of mens traditions you that are in possession of the ancient Religion of Christ and his Apostles be not adopted into a yonger Religion Religio à religando That is Religion that binds that binds that is necessary to salvation That which we affirm our adversaries deny not that which we professe they confesse was always necessary to salvation They will not say that all that they say now was always necessary That a man could not be saved without beleeving the Articles of the Councell of Trent a week before that Councell shut up You are his children as children are servants and If he be your Lord where is his fear you are his children as he hath nursed you with the milk of his word and if he be your Father so your foster Father where is his love But he is your Father otherwise you are not onely Filii familiares children because servants nor onely Filii mammillares children because noursed by him but you are also Filii viscerales children of his bowells For we are otherwise allied to Christ then we can be to any of his instruments though Angels of the Church Prophets or Apostles and yet his Apostle says of one whom he loved of Onesimus Receive him that is mine owne bowells my Sonne says he whom I have begotten in my hands How much more art thou bound to receive and refresh those bowells from which thou art derived Christ Iesus himselfe Receive him Refresh him Carry that which the wiseman hath said Miserere animae tuae bee mercifull to thine owne soule higher then so and Miserere salvatoris tui have mercy upon thine owne Saviour put on the bowells of mercy and put them on even towards Christ Iesus himselfe who needs thy mercy by beeing so tome and mangled and embowelled by blasphemous oaths and execrations For beloved it is not so absurd a prayer as it is conceived if Luther did say upon his death bed Oremus pro Domino nostro Iesu Christo Let us pray for out Lord and Saviour Iesus Christ. Had we not need pray for him If he complaine that Saul persecutes him had we not need pray for him It is a seditious affection in civill things to divide the King and the kingdome to pray to fight for the one and leave out the other is seditiously done If the kingdome of Christ need thy prayers and thy assistance Christ needs it If the Body need it the Head needs it If thou must pray for his Gospell thou must pray for him Nay thou canst not pray for thy selfe but thou must pray for him for thou art his bowells when thou in thy forefathers the first Christians in the Primitive Church wast persecuted Christ cryed out why persecutest thou me Christ made thy case his because thou wast of his
teach valour yes And nothing but feare True feare As Moses his Serpents devoured the false serpents so doth true fear all false fear There is nothing so contrary to God as false fear neither in his own nature nor in his love to us Therefore Gods first Name in the Bible and the Name which he sticks to in all the worke of the Creation is his Name of Power Elohim El is fortis Deus The God of Power and it is that Name in the plurall multiplied power All Power And what can he feare God descends to many other humane affections you shall read that God was Angry and sory and weary But non timuit Deus God was never afraid Neither would God that man should be So his first blessing upon man was to fill the earth and to subdue the creatures and to rule over them and to eat what he would upon the earth All Acts of Power and of Confidence As soon as hee had offended God the first impotency that he found in himself was fear I heard thy voice and I was afraid says he He had heard the voice of Lions and was not afraid There is not a greater commination of a curse then that They shall be in a great fear where no fear is Which is more vehemently expressed in another place I will set my face against you and yu shall flye when none pursues you I will send a faintnesse into their hearts and the sound of a shaken leafe shall chase them as a sword Flase feare is a fearfull curfe To feare that all favours and all preferments will goe the wrong way and that therefore I must clap on a byasse and goe that way too this inordinate fear is the curse of God Davids last counsail to Solomon but reflecting upon us all was Be thou strong therefore and show thy selfe a man E Culmine corruens ad gyrum laboris venit The Davill fell from his place in heaven and now is put to compasse the earth The fearfull man that fals from his morall and his Christian constancy from the fundamentall rules of his religion fals into labyrinths of incertitudes and impertinencies and ambiguities and anxieties irresolutions Militia vita our whole life is a warfare God would not chuse Cowards hee lad rather we were valiant in the fighting of his battels for battels and exercise of valour we are sure to have God sent a Cain into the world before an Abel An Enemy before a Champion Abel non suspicor qui non habet Cain Gregor we never heare of an Abel but there is a Cain too And therefore think it not strange concerning the fiery triall as though some strange thing happened unto you Make account that this world is your Scene your Theater and that god himself sits to see the combat the wrestling Vetuit Deus mortem Iob Iob was Gods Champion and God forbad Satan the taking away of Iobs life for if he die sayes God in the mouth of that Father Theatrum nobis non amplius plaeudetar My Theater will ring with no more Plaudites I shall bee no more glorified in the valour and constancy of my Saints my Champions God delights in the constant and valiant man and therefore a various a timorous man frustrates disappoints God My errand then is to teach you valour and must my way be to intimidate you to teach you feare yes still there is no other fortitude but the fear of the Lord. We told you before sadnesse and fear differ but in the present and future And as for the present Nihil aliud triste quà m Deum offendere There is no just cause of sadnesse but to have sinned against God for sudden sadnesse arising in a good Conscience is a sparke of fire in the Sea it must goe out so there is no just cause of fear but in Gods displeasure Mens in timore Domini constituta non invenit extra quod metuat God is all and if I be established in him what thing can I fear when there is nothing without him nothing simply at least nothing that can hurt me Quae sunt in mundo non nocentiis qui extra mundum sunt This world cannot hurt him that made it nor them that are laid up in him Ionas did but change his vessell his ship when he entred the Whale he was not shipwracked God was his Pilot there as well as in the ship and therefore he as confident there It is meant of Christ which is spoken in the person in Wisdome Who so hearkneth unto me shall dwell safely and be quiet from the feare of evill And therefore when you heare of warres and commotions be not terrified these things must come to passe but the end is not by and by Imaginations and tentations and alienations and tribulations must come But this is not the end the end that God lookes for is that by the benefit of his fear we should stand out all these So thē to teach you the fear of the Lord is to teach you what it doth that you may love it and what it is that you may know it That w ch it doth is that it makes you a constant a confident a valiant man That which God who is alwayes the same loves How doth it that Thus. As he that is falne into tha Kings hand for debt to him is safe from other creditors so is he that fears the Lord form other fears He that loves the Lord loves him witl all his love he that fears the Lord fears him withall his fear too God takes no half affections Upon those words Be not high-minded but fear Clement of Alexandria hath another reading super-time over-feare that is carry thy fear to the highest place place thy fear there where it may be above all other fears In the multitude of dreams there are divers vanities but feare thou the Lord. All fearfull things passe away as dreams as vanities to him that fears the Lord They offer at him but in vain if he be established with that fear In Christ there was no bone broken In him that feares the Lord no constant purpose is ever shaken Of Iob it is said that he was perfect and upright That is a rare wonder but the wonder is qualified in the addition He feared God So are they put together in Simeon Iustus timoratus he was a just man how should he be otherwise He feared God Consider your enemies and be not deceived with an imagination of their power but see whether they be worthy of your feare if you feare God The World is your enemy sed vicit mundum be of good cheare for I have overcome the world saith Christ. If it were not so yet we are none of it ye are not of the world for I have chosen you out of the that world Howsoever the world would doe us no harm the world would be good
nor over-mourne for that which as we have induced it upon our selves so God shall deliver us from at last that is both death and corruption after death and captivity in that comfortlesse state but for the resurection For so long we are to be dust and so long lasts the Serpents life Satans power over man dust must he eate all the days of his life In the meane time for our comfort in the way when this Serpent becomes a Lyon yet there is a Lyon of the Tribe of Iudah that is too strong for him so if he who is Serpens serpens humi the Serpent condemned to creep upon the ground doe transforme himselfe into a flying Serpent and attempt our nobler faculties there is Serpens exaltatus a Serpent lifted up in the wildernesse to recover all them that are stung and feel that they are stung with this Serpent this flying Serpent that is these high and continued sinnes The creeping Serpent the groveling Serpent is Craft the exalted Serpent the crucified Serpent is Wisdome All you worldly cares all your crafty bargaines all your subtill matches all your diggings into other means estates all your hedgings in of debts all your planting of children in great allyances all these diggings and hedgings and plantings savour of the earth and of the craft of that Serpent that creeps upon the earth But crucifie this craft of yours bring all your worldly subtilty under the Crosse of Christ Jesus husband your farmes so as you may give a good account to him presse your debts so as you would be pressed by him market and bargaine so as that you would give all to buy that field in which his treasure and his pearle is hid and then you have changed the Serpent from the Serpent of perdition creeping upon the earth to the Serpent of salvation exalted in the wildernesse Creeping wisedome that still looks downward is but craft Crucified wisedome that looks upward is truly wisedome Between you and that ground Serpent God hath kindled a war and the nearer you come to a peace with him the farther ye go from God and the more ye exaspetate the Lord of Hosts and you whet his sword against your own souls A truce with that Serpent is too near a peace to condition with your conscience for a time that you may continue in such a sin till you have paid for such a purchase married such a daughter bought such an annuity undermined and eaten out such an unthrift this truce though you mean to end it before you die is too near a peace with that Serpent between whom and you God hath kindled an everlasting war A cessation of Arms that is not to watch all his attempts and tentations not to examine all your particular actions A Treaty of Peace that is to dispute and debate in the behalf and favour of a sin to palliate to disguise to extenuate that sin this is too near a peace with this Serpent this creeping Serpent But in the other Serpent the crucified Serpent God hath reconciled to himself all things in heaven and earth and hell You have peace in the assistance of the Angels of heaven Peace in the contribution of the powerfull prayers and of the holy examples of the Saints upon earth peace in the victory and triumph over the power of hell peace from sins towards men peace of affections in your selves peace of conscience towards God From your childhood you have been called upon to hold your peace To be content is to hold your peace murmure not at God in any corrections of his and you doe hold this peace That creeping Serpent Satan is war and should be so The crucified Serpent Christ Jesus is peace and shall be so for ever The creeping Serpent eats our dust the strength of our bodies in sicknesses and our glory in the dust of the grave The crucified Serpent hath taken our flesh and our blood and given us his flesh and his blood for it And therefore as David when he was thought base for his holy freedome in dancing before the Ark said he would be more base so since we are all made of red earth let him that is red be more red Let him that is red with the blood of his own soul be red again in blushing for that rednesse and more red in the Communion of the blood of Christ Jesus whom we shall eat all the days of our life and be mystically and mysteriously and spiritually and Sacramentally united to him in this life and gloriously in the next In this state of dust and so in the territory of the Serpent the Tyrant of the dead lies this dead brother of ours and hath lien some years who occasions our meeting now and yearly upon this day and whose soul we doubt not is in the hands of God who is the God of the living And having gathered a good Gomer of Manna a good measure of temporall blessings in this life and derived a fair measure thereof upon them whom nature and law directed it upon and in whom we beseech God to blesse it hath also distributed something to the poor of this Parish yearly this day and something to a meeting for the conserving of neighbourly love and something for this exercise In which no doubt his intention was not so much to be yearly remembred himself as that his posterity and his neighbours might be yearly remembred to doe as he had done For this is truly to glorifie God in his Saints to sanctifie our selves in their examples To celebrate them is to imitate them For as it is probably conceived and agreeably to Gods Justice that they that write wanton books or make wanton pictures have additions of torment as often as other men are corrupted with their books or their pictures so may they who have left permanent examples of good works well be beleeved to receive additions of glory and joy when others are led by that to do the like And so they who are extracted and derived from him and they who dwelt about him may assist their own happiness and enlarge his by following his good example in good proportions Amen SERMON XLVIII Preached at St. Dunstans LAMENT 3. 1. I am the man that hath seen affliction by the rod of his wrath YOU remember in the history of the Passion of our Lord and Saviour Christ Jesus there was an Ecce homo a shewing an exhibiting of that man in whom we are all blessed Pilat presented him to the Jews so with that Ecce homo Behold the man That man upon whom the wormwood and the gall of all the ancient Prophecies and the venome and malignity of all the cruell instruments thereof was now poured out That man who was left as a tender plant and as a roote out of a dry ground without forme or beauty or comelinesse that wee should desire to see him as the Prophet Esay exhibits him That man who upon the brightnesse of
expressed that David determined himself or declared his choice of any of the three Hee might conceive a hope that God would forbear all three As when another Prophet Nathan had told him The childe shall surely die yet David said for all that determined assurance Who can tell whether the Lord will be gracious to me that the child may live and he fasted a fast and mourned and prayed for the childes life Beloved no commination of God is unconditioned or irrevocable But in this case David intimates some kinde of election Let me fall into the hands of the Lord for his mercies are exceeding great and not into the hands of men Susanna when shee was surprised and in a straight too though of another kind she resolves that it is better for her to fall into the hands of men let men defame her let men accuse her condemn her execute her rather then sin in the sight of God and so fall into his hands So that if wee compare offences wee were better offend all the Princes of the earth then offend God because he is able to cast body and soul into hell fire But when the offence is done for the punishment which follows God forgives a treason sooner then thy neighbour will a trespasse God seales thee a Quietus est in the bloud of his Son sooner then a Creditor will renue a bond or withdraw an Action and a Scandalum magnatum will lie longer upon thee here then a blasphemâ— against God in that Court. And therefore as it is one degree of good husbandry in ill husbands to bring all their debts into one hand so doest thou husband thy afflictions well if thou put them all upon thy debts to God and leave out the consideration of Instruments And he shall deale with thee as hee did with David there that plague which was threatned for three days he will end in one In that trouble which if men had had their will upon thee would have consumed thee thou shalt stand unconsumed For if a man wound thee it is not in his power though hee be never so sorry for it whether that wound shall kill thee or no but if the Lord wound thee to death he is the life he can redeem thee from death and if hee doe not he is thy resurrection and recompenses thee with another and a better life And so lies our first comfort that it is Ejus His The Lords And a second is that it is In virga ejus In his rod. Iob would fain have come to a cessation of arms before hee came to a treaty with God Let the Lord take away his rod from me sayes he and let not his fear terrifie me Them would I speak As long as his rod was upon him and his fears terrified him it was otherwise he durst not But truly his feares should not terrifie us though his rod be upon us for herein lies our comfort That all Gods rods are bound up with that mercy which accompanied that rod that God threatned David to exercise upon his son Solemon If he commit iniquity I will chasten him with the rod of men I will let him fall into the hands of men This was heavy Therefore it is eased with that Cordiall But my mercy shall not depart away from him as I took it from Saul But for this mercy the oppressions of men were mercilesse But all Gods rods are bound up with this mercy and therein lies our comfort And for the rods of other men O my people be not afraid of the Assyrian says God Why blessed Lord shalâ— the Assyrian doe thy people no harm yes says God there He shall smite them with a rod and he shall lift up his staffe against them Some harm he shall doe He shall smite them with a rod And he shall threaten more offer at more he shall lift up his staffe where then is the peoples reliefe and comfort In this The Lord of Hosts shall stir up a scourge for him God shall appear in that notion of power The Lord of Hosts and he shall encounter his enemies and the enemies of his friends with a scourge upon them against their rod upon us Gods own rods are bound up in mercy they end in mercy And for the rods of other men God cuts them in pieces and their owners with his sword Gods owne rods even towards his owne Children are sometimes as that rod which he put into Moses hand was chang'd into Serpents Gods owne rods have sometimes a sting and a bitternesse in them but then they are chang'd from their owne nature Naturally Gods roddes towards us are gentle and harmlesse When Gods rod in Moses hand was changed to a Serpent it did no harme that did but devoure the other Serpents when Gods rods are heaviest upon us if they devoure other rods that is enable us to put off the consideration of the malice and oppression of other Men and all displeasure towards them and lay all upon God for our sinnes these serpentine rods have wrought a good effect When Moses his Rod was a Serpent yet it return'd quickly to a Rod againe how bitter so ever Gods corrections be they returne soone to their naturall sweetnesse and though the correction continue the bitternesse does not with this Rod Moses tam'd the Sea and divided that but he drowned none in that Sea but the Aegyptians Gods rod will cut and divide between thy soule and spirit but he will destroy nothing in thee not thy Morality not thy Christianity but onely thine owne Aegyptians thy Persecutors thy concupiscencies But all this while we have but deduced a comfort out of thy Word Quia Virga though that be a rod but this is a comfort Quia Virga therefore because that is a Rod for this word which is here a Rod is also in other places of Scriptures an Instrument not of correction but direction Feed thy sheep with thy Rod saies God and there it is a Pastorall Rod the direction of the Church Virga rectitudinis virgaregni tui saies David The Scepter of thy kingdome is a right Scepter and there its a royall rod the protection of the state so that all comforts that are deriv'd upon us by the direction of the Church and by the protection of the State are recommended to us and conferr'd upon us in this His Rod. Nor is it onely a Rod of comfort by implication and consequence but expresly and literally it is so Though I should walke thorough the valley of the shadow of death I will feare no evill Thy rod and thy staffe they comfort me He had not onely a comfort though he had the rod but he had not had so much comfort except he had had it we have not so good evidence of the joyes of the next life except we have the sorrowes of this The discomfort then lies not in this That the affliction is ejus his the Lords
by nature they are Spirits but by office they are Angels and when they see so good effect of their service as that a Sinner is converted There is joy in the presence of the Angels of God Christ himselfe had a spirituall office and employment To give light to the blind and to inflict blindnesse upon those who thought they saw all And when that was done Exultavit in spiritu in that houre Christ rejoyced in the Spirit and said I thank thee ô Father Lord of Heaven and Earth c. To have something to doe to doe it and then to Rejoyce in having done it to embrace a calling to performe the Duties of that calling to joy and rest in the peacefull testimony of having done so this is Christianly done Christ did it Angelically done Angels doe it Godly done God does it As the Bridegroome rejoyceth in his Bride so doth thy God rejoyce in thee Example as well as the Rule repeats it to you Gaudete semper But how farre may we carry this joy To what outward declarations To laughing Saint Basil makes a round answer to a short question An in Universum ridere non licet May a Man laugh in no case Admodum perspicuum est It is very evident that a Man may not because Christ saies Vae vobis Wo be unto you that laugh And yet Saint Basil himselfe in another place sayes which we are rather to take in explanation than in contradiction of himselfe that that woe of Christ is cast in obstreperum Sonum non in sinceram hilaritatem upon a dissolute and undecent and immoderate laughting not upon true inward joy howsoever outwardly expressed At the promise of a Son Abraham fell on his face and laughed a religious Man and a grave Man 100 yeares old expressed this joy of his heart by this outward declaration Hierome's Translation reads it Risit in Corde he laughed within himselfe because Saint Hierome thought that was a weaknesse a declination towards unbeliefe to laugh at Gods promise as he thinks Abraham did But Saint Paul is a better Witnesse in his behalf Against hope he believed in hope he was not weake in faith he staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief Quòd risit non incredulitatis sed exultation is indicium fuit his laughing was no ebbe of faith but a flood of joy It is not as S. Hierome takes it Risit in Corde putans celare deum apertè ridere non ausus he kept-in his laughing and durst not laugh out But as St. Ambrose says well Risus non irrisio diffidentis sed exultatio gratulantis he laughed not in a doubtfull scorne of Gods promise but in an overflowing of his own joy It is well expressed and well concluded O virum aeterno risu vere dignum sempiternae jueunditati bene praeparatum This was good evidence that he was a man well disposed for the joyes of heaven that he could conceive joy in the temporall blessings of God and that he thought nothing mis-becomming him that was an outward declaration of this joy It is a dangerous weaknesse to forbeare outward declarations of our sense of Gods goodnesse for feare of mis-interpretations to smother our present thankfulnesse for fear that some should say it was a levity to thank God so soon till God had done the whole work For God does sometimes leave half his work undone because he was not thanked for it When David danced and leaped and shouted before the Arke if he laughed too it mis-became him not Not to feele joy is an argument against religious tendernesse not to show that joy is an argument against thankfulnesse of the heart that is a stupidity this is a contempt A merry heart maketh a cheerfull countenance If it be within it will be without too Except I heare thee say in thine actions Gaudeo I do rejoyce I cannot know that thou hast heard the Apostle say Gaudete Joy for Gods blessings to us joy for Gods glory to himself may come ad Risum and farther Not onely ad Ridendum but ad Irridendum not onely to laugh in our own prosperity but to laugh them to scorne that would have impeached it They are put both together in God himself Ridebo and Irridebo I will laugh at your calamities and I will mock when your feare cometh And this being in that place intended of God is spoken in the person of Wisdome It mis-becomes not wisdome and gravity to laugh in Gods deliverances not to laugh to scorne those that would have blown up Gods Servants when it is carried so high as to the Kings of the Earth and the Rulers that take counsell against the Lord and against his Anoynted we may come Ad Gaudium to joy in Gods goodnesse but because their place and persons are sacred we leave the Ridere and the Irridere to God who says ver 4. That he will laugh at them and hold them in derision But at lower instruments lower persons may laugh when they fill the world with the Doctrine of killing of Kings and meane that that should animate men against such Kings as they call Heretiques and then finde in experience that this hath wrought onely to the killing of Kings of their own Religion we lament justly the event but yet we forbeare our Ridere and our Irridere at the crossing and the frustrating of their plots and practises Pharaohs Army was drowned Et Cecinit Moses Moses sung Sisera was slaine Et Cecinit Deborah Deborah sung Thus in the disappointing of Gods enemies Gods servants come to outward manifest signes of joy Not by a libellous and scurrill prophanation of persons that are sacred but in fitting Psalmes and Sermons and Prayers and publique Writings to the occasion to proceed to a Ridere and Irridere and as Saint Augustine reades that place of the Proverbs Superridere to laugh Gods Enemies into a confusion to see their Plots so often so often so often frustrated For so farre extends Gaudete Rejoyce evermore Joy then and cheerefulnesse is Sub praecepto it hath the nature of a commandment and so he departs from a commandment that departs and abandons himself into an inordinate sadnesse And therefore David chides his soule Why art thou cast down O my soul why art thou disquiesed within me And though he come after to dispute against this sadnesse of the soul which he had let in Hope yet in God and yet the Lord will command his loving kindnesse and my prayer shall be unto the God of my life yet he could not put it off but he imagines that he heares his enemies say Where is thy God and when he hath wrestled himself weary he falls back again in the last verse to his first faintnesse Why art thou cast down O my soule why art thou disquieted within me For As he that taketh away a garment in cold weather so is he that singeth Songs to