even now Heirs of a kingdom Jam. 2. 5. The wise that shall inherit Glory Prov. 3. 35. Heads destinated to a Diadem in Tertullian's expression which their Heavenly Father hath prepared for and will at last put upon them who alone too makes them fit to wear it meet to be Partakers of the Inheritance of the Saints in light III. How differently soever the Children of God may share in the same Inheritance This is certain that every one's share therein shall be the Gift of his Heavenly Father The word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 here imports it The Apostle alluding to the Division of the Land of Canaan a Type of Heaven which God had appointed to be done by lot wherein Himself we know had the main hand according to that of Solomon Prov. 16. 33. The lot is cast into the lap but the whole disposition thereof is of the Lord. Thus it was in the Choice of Matthias to the Apostleship Act. 1. And thus it is as to our share in the Inheritance of Glory It falls to us by lot by the disposition of God the Father we have no part here but what he gives us And if so then no merit of Condignity nor so much as of Congruity can be pleaded by us And truly one would think it were sufficient to partake of the Inheritance without making out our own Title to it That we might be content to be Heirs without coming in as Purchasers or if we will needs be so to be Purchasers on Christ's score and not our own But this is too low and mean for some men who come with Counters in their hand ready to reckon with God to shew Him how much he is in their debt and who stick not to tell Him to his face that He is an unjust Master if he pay them not their due wages But 1. Our Lord Himself hath told us That God is beforehand with us That whatsoever we can doe is due from us to Him That when we shall have done all those things which are commanded us we must say that we are unprofitable servants and have done but that which was our duty to doe Luk. 17. 10. And then what merit can there be in paying just debts And 2. St. Paul hath told us That we can doe no good thing without Him too who worketh in us both to will and to doe of his good pleasure Phil. 2. 13. So that He crowns His own gifts in us and rewards not our deservings Besides 3. Our goodness extendeth not to God says David Psal. 16. 2. And being unusefull how can it be meritorious Nay our best works are so imperfect and so sinfull too that the utmost they can expect is but a Pardon and not a Reward And were they never so good and perfect yet what proportion can they bear to such a Reward as an Inheritance in light Our light affliction which is but for a moment to a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory 2 Cor. 4. 17. where we must not let pass an elegant Antithesis For Affliction there is Glory For Light affliction a Weight of glory And for Momentary affliction an Eternal weight of glory to shew the vast disproportion between these things so vast that even Martyrdom it self the highest utmost proof of our love to God is in St. Paul's account nothing in comparison of that Glory we expect For I reckon says he that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us Rom. 8. 18. IV. And lastly The very word Inheritance excludes all Purchase on our part For this were to renounce Succession to cast off all Filial Duty and Affection not to own our selves Sons but mercenary Purchasers yea and Purchasers of an Inheritance already purchased for us by Christ and for his sake freely bestowed upon us by our Heavenly Father out of His own pure Goodness and Bounty to which alone we must ascribe it For we all the best of us have sinned and come short of the glory of God Rom. 3. 23. And we are told ch 6. 23. that The wages of sin our proper wages is death but the gift of God is eternal life The Apostle might have said and indeed the Antithesis or Opposition there seem'd to require it But the wages of Righteousness is eternal life But he altered the Phrase on set-purpose and chose rather to say The gift of God is eternal life That we might from this change of the Phrase learn That although we procure Death unto our selves yet 't is God that bestows eternal life on us That as He hath called us to his kingdom and glory 1 Thess. 2. 12. so he gives that glory and that kingdom for no other reason but because He is pleased so to doe It is your Father's good pleasure for into God the Father's good pleasure Christ resolves it to give you a kingdome Luk. 12. 32. No merit nor so much as any good disposition in us for it He propares it for us Matt. 20. 23. And he prepares us for it too here in the Text by making us meet to be partakers thereof For what meetness could he find in us for such an Inheritance Title to it we have none being by nature the Children of wrath and disobedience Eph. 2. 2 3. Mere Intruders here and Usurpers The Kingdom of Heaven suffereth violence and we the violent take it by force Mat. 11. 12. Qualifications proper for it we have none too That An Inheritance in light we darkness That An Inheritance incorruptible undefiled and that fadeth not away 1 Pet. 1. 4. we corruptible polluted and still decaying 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 cries out our Apostle We are not sufficient not fit for the word signifies either as of our selves but our sufficiency or fitness call it which you will is of God 2 Cor. 3. 5. 2 Pet. 1. 4. who as He makes us Partakers of his divine Nature so meet Partakers of the divine Inheritance not by pouring out the divine Essence but by communicating to us those divine Qualities which will fit and prepare us for the Sight thereof by putting light into our Understandings and holiness into our Wills without which no man shall see the Lord Heb. 12. 14. By cleansing our hearts and washing our hands that so we may ascend into the hill of the Lord dwell and rest in his Tabernacle Psal. 15. 24. He gives us Faith and with that a Prospect of our Inheritance and He gives us Hope and with that an Interest therein And to summ up all in one He gives us his Holy Spirit the earnest of that Inheritance Eph. 1. 14. who worketh all our works in us writes his laws in our hearts and by softning makes them capable of his divine Impressions In short That divine Spirit which by Regenerating makes us new Creatures and so fit Inhabitants for the new Jerusalem calling us first to Vertue and then to Glory to that as
besides that the use of Vertue should be very mean if it should no otherwise make us happy than beasts are who contenting themselves with what merely sufficeth nature are more vigorous and some of them longer liv'd than men It may be questionable whether a dry Platonical Idea of a Vertue perishing with our selves or a bare moral complacency in it might in the balance of reason weigh down those other more sensual delights which gratifie our lower faculties or a severe and morose Vertue have charms in it equal to all those various pleasures which sooth and flatter our appetites much more whether a calamitous one such as that of a Christian usually is a vertue still under a cloud and ever as it were on the rack persecuted hated and afflicted here and never to be considered hereafter Far be it from me to decry moral Vertue which even Heathens have granted to be a reward to it self but surely in the supposed case of annihilation very short of a full and complete one and to cry it up as some doe to the weakning of our belief and hope of the Immortality of the Soul however at first blush it may seem plausible is in effect no better than a subtle invention to ruine Vertue by it self since it cannot possibly subsist but by the belief and support of another life For setting this aside what would Vertue be but a bare Notion what but a gaudy rattle to still and please Children but of little force to persuade men to quit a present sensible delight for a bare Philosophical though never so taking Speculation Vertue may carry a big Title she may appear the fairest thing of the world and be the least usefull while men expect no other advantage of their good actions but the content of having done them 'T is what she brings charms us more than her self her beauty would have no attractive had she no dowry she would soon be laid aside as the most unprofitable thing of the Earth did she not give us assurance of some better reward hereafter than what she now bestows The joys vertuous actions afford do so far affect us as they are an earnest of greater and those satisfactions which spring from good deeds are so far to be prized as they promise and entitle us to higher ones If we are pleased in doing good here 't is that we may hereafter find it and if we sow in grace 't is because we hope one day to reap in glory Vertue without Immortality can never content us and our longings after that are strong arguments of it when we wish we prove it and that we may attain it 't is evident because we so passionately desire it O quà m vilis contempta res est homo nisi supra humana se erexerit says the Moralist That man is not so much as a man that is not a great deal more than so that raises not himself above himself that looks not beyond his threescore and ten years nor above the ground he treads on The vilest worm were happier than he if his hopes were laid up where his body shall be He has a Heaven in prospect and the expected joys of that quite swallow up his miseries on Earth Now indeed is the time of his sowing but not of his harvest His work is here but not his wages His good Master that employs shall one day fully pay him who gives him some of that pay in hand but bids him look for more and that blessed hope bears him up against all the discouragements of this life sweetens his afflictions here and makes him happy in his very unhappiness while he comfortably expects to be more happy than he can now fansie himself ever to be because he is fully persuaded that there is another far better and more glorious life in reversion which brings in the third and last Observation III. That there is another Life remaining the Expectation whereof makes a Christian of all other men most happy both here and hereafter This I am not now to prove to Christians because it is a truth to be supposed by them as it is in this Text by St. Paul Christ has sufficiently demonstrated it by his rising from the dead and the force of our Apostle's argument here would be quite lost if we should in the least doubt of it And to speak clearly This grand Article of the Christian Faith The Resurrection is a Truth to be taken for granted by all good Christians Infidels may deny it Atheists may wish it were not but all good Christians must confess and hope it They have little reason to question that which 't is their highest interest should be All their designs are laid in it and their hopes built upon it If they be content to suffer here 't is in hope to reign hereafter If with Christ they be willing to endure the cross and the shame of this life 't is for the joy that is set before them in the next A joy which throughly apprehended cheers them up in their greatest dumps enlightens their very dungeons turns their prisons into Palaces their Hell into a Heaven their torments into delights and their beds of hot burning coals into those of down It makes their afflictions infinitely more pleasant than the Epicures most exquisite pleasures can be A joy before which sorrow can no more stand than a mist before the Sun that presently chases away that evil Spirit of Melancholy which seizes the happy Worldling in the midst of all his jollities damps his spirits makes his chaplets of Roses wither on his head and is that stinking fly which spoils his most fragrant ointment as oft as he shall seriously consider that he must one day become a part of his own lands lye down for ever in the dust and his honour with him which yet is the best he can expect For such a one can no otherwise look upon Death than as a Serjeant to arrest him whereas to the good Christian 't is but a Messenger of joyfull tydings to tell him that his corruption must put on incorruption This is his hope and 't is founded in Christ's Resurrection who ever since he tasted death for us hath sweetned that bitter Cup so bitter before that time that St. Paul assures us That through fear of death men were all their life-time subject to bondage For it made their pleasures less delightfull their vertues more harsh and tedious and all their afflictions most insupportable Whereas now they are so far from being insupportable that they are most easie to us who know that being light and but for a moment they work for us a far more exceeding eternal weight of glory How sad and deplorable then must their condition be who are without this hope and without God in the world as the Apostle describes Heathens to be and yet how many Christians content themselves with no better whose thoughts are bounded with the same objects
that pull'd out by thy powerfull Redeemer how can it now hurt thee It may possibly hiss at but it cannot bite thee Look upon the Serpent lifted up for thee on the Cross and this Serpent's sting if it has any to wound it can have none to kill thee If thy Saviour has not quite destroy'd this thine enemy at least he has brought it under and made it subject like the Gibeonites if not banished 't is enslaved and made now instrumental to Christ's Kingdom Loose thou then the bands of thine iniquity and those of death which Christ has broken shall no more be able to hold thee than they could doe him Death in its most affrighting shapes to thee is but a scare-crow 't is but the shadow of death while God is with thee Nay 't is but an 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a going out a departing in peace to a Holy Simeon 'T was no more between God and Moses but go up and dye as 't was said to another Prophet up and eat Ever since our Lord has swallow'd death up in victory our Tombs become Death's Graves more than ours Sepulchrum non jam mortuum sed mortem devorat says a Father Our Bodies are not lost in the Earth but laid up to be improved like Porcellane-dishes which the ground does not consume but refine In the Transfiguration that body of Moses which was hid in the valley of Moab appeared glorious in the Mount of Tabor And though we appear now like Aaron's dry rod yet that dry rod shall at last bud and bring forth fruit unto glory The Israelites garments indeed in the Wilderness waxed not worse for wearing but though our Bodies which are the garments of our Souls doe so and are rent and torn by afflictions and death yet God can and will mend them Nay when these Temples of the Holy Ghost we carry about us are dissolved he will so build them up that as it was said of the first and second Jewish Temples Haggai 2. 9. the glory of our latter houses shall be greater than that of the former Diruta stante Major Troja fuit God will bless us as he did Job more at our latter end than at our beginning and Exalt us as he did Christ by our Sufferings If with him we drink of the brook in the way tast of his Cup he will lift up our heads too We shall be like him as now He is A golden Head and Members of Clay suit not well together This is our great comfort that Christ is risen for if the Head be above water the Body is safe Joseph is alive said Jacob and that news revived the drooping Patriarch So when we hear that Christ our elder Brother the first-begotten from the dead is alive too let us take courage go and find him out seek him not in the Grave He is not there he is risen and why should we seek the living among the dead but in Heaven where he now is and set our affections on things above and not on things below It befits us not to lye in our Beds of ease and pleasure to lye sleeping there when Christ is up such a spiritual Lethargy does not suit with a Resurrection How are we conformable to Him if when He is risen up we remain still in the Grave of our Corruptions How are we Limbs of his Body if while He hath perfect dominion over death death hath dominion over us if while he is alive and glorious we lye rotting in the dust of death O let us then rouse our selves up this day with the Lion of the Tribe of Judah Let this be our Resurrection-day too and that it may be so let it be our Passion-day also as it is our Lord's For as he rose this day for us so does he now this day dye for us too And although St. Paul tells us Rom. 6. 9. That Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more and that death hath no more dominion over him or to speak in the Language of the Text that he be not holden of it yet in regard of the constant vertue and benefit of his Death and Passion he may be said to dye daily for us who receive him worthily in the Blessed Sacrament Let me then bespeak you in the words of St. Thomas utter'd upon another occasion Joh. 11. 16. Let us also go and dye with him Dye with him unto sin that we may live unto God through him Rom. 6. 9 10. Let us feed on him by Faith flock like true Eagles to his Holy Carcass and eat thereof that we may live This is the way to be raised to glory Whoso eateth my flesh and drinketh my bloud hath Eternal life is even now in possession of it and I will raise him up at the last day says Christ himself Joh. 6. 54. The very touch of the Prophet Elias's bones Ecclesiasticus 48. 5. could raise up a dead Man to a Temporal and shall not the sense and application of Christ crucified be able to quicken us who are dead in trespasses and sins to a spiritual and immortal Life O let us then be planted with him in the likeness of his Death that we may be also in the likeness of his Resurrection Rom. 6. 5. Now the God of peace that brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus that great Shepherd of the Sheep through the bloud of the Everlasting Covenant make you perfect in every good work to doe his Will working in you that which is well-pleasing in his sight through Jesus Christ To whom with the Father c. Amen Soli Deo gloria in aeternum A SERMON Preached on Whit-sunday JOHN XVI 7. Nevertheless I tell you the truth it is expedient for you that I go away for if I go not away the Comforter will not come unto you but if I depart I will send him unto you WE find the Disciples here in a very sad and disconsolate Condition Christ had told them that He was going his way to Him that sent Him V. 5. and thereupon Sorrow had filled their hearts V. 6. And no marvel for they were to be separated from one who hitherto had been their only comfort and support Had we been under the same circumstances we should no doubt have equally resented that loss They had had the happy advantage of beholding his glorious Miracles wrought by his All-powerfull Voice in the cure of Diseases in the confusion of Devils and the raising of the Dead They had heard those his ravishing Discourses which forc'd his most implacable Enemies in spight of all their prejudice against Him to confess That never Man spake as He did They had been Eye-witnesses of that Eminent Holiness that pure and unspotted Innocence which gave beauty and lustre to all his actions and of that glory too which discovered Him to be the only Son of God full of Grace and Truth And now unless we can suppose them void of all natural affection and