accrues to us we shall see that though it be presented by Reason before and illustrated by Reason after yet the roote and foundation thereof is in Faith though Reason may chafe the wax yet Faith imprints the seale for the Resurrection is not a conclusion out of naturall Reason but it is an article of supernaturall Faith and though you assent to me now speaking of the Resurrection yet that is not out of my Logick nor out of my Rhetorique but out of that Character and Ordinance which God hath imprinted in me in the power and efficacy whereof I speak unto you as often as I speak out of this place As I say we determine our first part in this How the assurance of this Resurrection accrues to us so when we descend to our second part That is the consolation which we receive whilest we are In via here upon our way in this world out of the contemplation of that Resurrection to glory which we shall have In patria at home in heaven and how these two Resurrections are arguments and evidences of one another we shall look upon some correspondencies and resemblances between naturall death and spirituall death by sin and between the glorious Resurrection of the body and the gracious Resurrection of the soule that so having brought bodily death and bodily Resurrection and spirituall death and spirituall Resurrection by their comparison into your consideration you may anon depart somewhat the better edified in both and so enjoy your present Resurrection of the soule by Grace with more certainty and expect the future Resurrection of the body to glory with the more alacrity and chearfulnesse Though therefore we may hereafter take just occasion of entring into a war 1. Part. in vindicating and redeeming these words seased and seduced by our adversaries to testifie for their Purgatory yet this day being a day of peace and reconciliation with God and man we begin with peace with that wherein all agree That these words Else what shall they do that are baptized for dead If the dead rise not at all why are they baptized for dead must necessarily receive such an Exposition as must be an argument for the Resurrection This baptisme pro mortuis for dead must be such a baptisme as must prove that the Resurrection For that the Apostle repeats twice in these few words Else sayes he that is if there be no Resurrection why are men thus baptized And again if the dead rise not why are men thus baptized Indeed the whole Chapter is a continuall argument for the Resurrection from the beginning thereof to the 35. ver he handles the An sit whether there be a Resurrection or no For if that be denyed or doubted in the roote in the person of Christ whether he be risen or no the whole frame of our religion fals and every man will be apt and justly apt to ask that question which the Indian King asked when he had been catechized so far in the articles of our Christian religion as to come to the suffered and crucified and dead and buried impatient of proceeding any farther and so losing the consolation of the Resurrection he asked only Is your God dead and buried then let me return to the worship of the Sun for I am sure the Sun will not die If Christ be dead and buried that is continue in the state of death and of the grave without a Resurrection where shall a Christian look for life Therefore the Apostle handles and establishes that first that assurance A Resurrection there is From thence he raises and pursues a second question De modo But some man will say sayes he How are the dead raised up and with what body come they forth And in these questions De modo there is more exercise of reason and of discourse for many times The matter is matter of faith when the manner is not so but considerable and triable by reason Many times for the matter we are all bound and bound upon salvation to think alike But for the manner we may think diversly without forfeiture of salvation or impeachment of discretion For he is not presently an indiscreet man that differs in opinion from another man that is discreet in things that fall under opinion Absit superstito Geâ—son hoc est superflua religio sayes a moderate man of the Romane Church This is truly superstition to bring more under the necessity of being beleeved then God hath brought in his Scriptures superfluous religion sayes he is superstition Remove that and then as he addes there Contradictoria quorum utrumque probabile credi possunt Where two contrary opinions are both probable they may be embraced and beleeved by two men and those two be both learned and discreet and pious and zealous men And this consideration should keep men from that precipitation of imprinting the odious and scandalous names of Sects or Sectaries upon other men who may differ from them and from others with them in some opinions Probability leads me in my assent and I think thus Let me allow another man his probability too and let him think his way in things that are not fundamentall They that do not beleeve alike in all circumstances of the manner of the Resurrection may all by Gods goodnesse meet there and have their parts in the glory thereof if their own uncharitablenesse do not hinder them And he that may have been in the right opinion may sooner misse heaven then he that was in the wrong if he come uncharitably to condemne or contemne the other for in such cases humility and love of peace may in the sight of God excuse and recompence many errours and mistakings And after these of the Matter of the Manner of the Resurrection the Apostle proceeds to a third question of their state and condition whom Christ shall finde alive upon Earth at his second comming and of them he sayes onely this Ecce mysterium vobis dico Behold I tell you a mystery a secret we shall not all sleep that is not dye so as that we shall rest any time in the grave but we shall all be changed that is receive such an immutation as that we shall have a sudden dissolution of body and soul which is a true death and a sudden re-union of body and soule which is a true resurrection in an instant in the twinkling of an eye Thus carefull and thus particular is the Apostle that the knowledge of the resurrection might be derived unto us Now of these three questions which he raises and pursues first whether there be a Resurrection then what manner of Resurrection and then what kinde of Resu rrection they shall have that live to the day of Judgement our Text enters into the first For for the first That a resurrection there is the Apostle opens severall Topiques to prove it One is from our Head and Patterne and Example Christ Jesus For so he argues first If the dead be not raised
Fundamentall point the Resurrection of the dead and then an instruction for manners arising out of that That they mourn not intemperately for the dead as they do saith he which have no hope of seeing them again who are gone For we know that they which are gone are gone but into another room of the same house this world and the next do but make up God a house they are gone but into another Pue of the same Church the Militant and the Triumphant do but make up God a Church Ver. 14. If we beleeve that Iesus dyed and rose again sayes our Apostle even so them also which sleep in Iesus will God bring with him with him For howsoever they have lien ingloriously in the dust all this while all this while they have been with God and he shall bring them with him But the Thessalonians were not so hard in beleeving the Resurrection 1 Cor. 15.35 as curious in enquiring the order of the Resurrection And as among the Corinthians some inquired de modo How are the dead raised and with what body do they come So among the Thessalonians some inquired de Ordine in what order for precedency shall the last scean of this last act of man be transacted What difference between them that were dead thousands of yeares before and them whom Christ shall finde alive at his second comming Them the Apostle satisfies We that are alive shall not prevent them that are asleep we shall not enter into heaven before them The dead in Christ shall first rise sayes he and then then enters our Text Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meete the Lord in the ayre and so shall be ever with the Lord. Then Divisie When This Then in our text is an apprehensive and a comprehensive word It reaches to and layes hold upon that which the Apostle sayes before the text in the fifteenth and sixteenth verses Then when the dead in Christ are first risen and risen by Christs comming down from heaven in clamore in a shout in the voice of the Archangel and in the Trumpet of God Then when that is done We that are alive and remain shall bee wrought upon and all being joyned in one body They and we together shall be caught up in the clouds to meet the Lord in the ayre and so shall we be ever with the Lord. So that in these words we shall have three things to consider which will constitute three parts in this exercise First the raising of those that were dead before Secondly the changing of them who are alive then And lastly our union in our exaltation and possession of the kingdome of God We together with them shall be caught up Neither of these three parts will be swallowed down in a generality There must passe a Mastication a re-division into more particular branches upon them all For in the first which the first word of our Text Then induces which is the raising of them who were dead before we shall consider first That the dead are not forgotten though they have dwelt long in the house of forgetfulnesse nor lost though they have lyen long in the dust of dispersion nor neglected nor deferred that others might be preferred before them which shall be alive then for sayes the Apostle We shall not prevent them but they shall rise first How shall they rise For that is also a second consideration induced by our first word Then Then when they shal be raised in virtute Christi in the power of Christ for sayes the Text The Lord himself shall descend from heaven to raise them And how shall he exercise how shall he execute and declare his power in their raising It shall be In clamore with a shout and in the voyce of the Arch-angel and the Trumpet of God And in these three Branches That the dead shall rise first That they shall rise in the power of Christ That that power shall be thus expressed In a shout in the voyce of the Arch-angell in the Trumpet of God we shall determine that first Part. When that is done and done so we shall be wrought upon We that are alive and remain then where we shall first see that some shall be alive and remain then when Christ comes And then consider their state and condition how they being then cloathed with bodies of corruption shall be capable of that present entrance into glory and in that disquisition we shall end our second Part. And then in our third and last part The glorious Union of these two Armies Those which were dead and those which are alive we shall consider first That here is no mention at all of any Resurrection of the wicked but onely of them that sleep in Christ They shall rise And then those that are to partake of this glory are thus proceeded with They are caught up Rapiuntur Caught up in the Clouds In Nubibus Exalted into the Ayre In Aera There to meet the Lord Obviam Domino And so to be with the Lord for ever We shall be and be with the Lord and be with the Lord for ever which are blessed and glorious gradations if we may have time to insist upon them which we may best hope for this day of all others for this day we have two dayes in one This day both Gods Sons arose The Sun of his Firmament and the Son of his bosome And if one Sun doe set upon us the other will stay as long as our devotion last God went not from Abraham till Abraham had no more to say Gen. 18. ult No more will Christ from us First then for our first Branch of our first part the rising of the dead 1 Part. the first man that was laid in the dust of the earth Abel loses nothing by lying so long there He loses nothing that men of later ages gain For if we live to the comming of Christ to Judgement we shall not prevent them we shall have no precedency of them that were dead ages before No man is superannuated in the grave that he is too old to enter into heaven where the Master of the house is The ancient of dayes No man is bed-rid with age in the grave that he cannot rise It is not with God as it is with man we doe but God does not forget the dead and as long as God is with them they are with him Psal 56.9 As he puts all thy teares into his bottles so he puts all the graines of thy dust into his Cabinet and the windes that scatter the waters that wash them away carry them not out of his sight He remembers that we are but dust but dust then when we lie in the grave Psal 103.14 and yet he remembers us But his memory goes farther then so He remembers that we were but dust alive at our best They dye sayes David and they returne to their
constitutions or onely a testimony of outward conformity which should be signaculum viaticum a seale of pardon for past sins and a provision of grace against future But he that is well prepared for this strips himselfe of all these vae desiderantibus of all these comminations that belong to carnall desires and he shall be as Daniel was vir desideriorum a man of chast and heavenly desires onely hee shall desire that day of the Lord as that day signifies affliction here with David Psal 119.17 Bonum est mihi quòd humiliasti me I am mended by my sicknesse enriched by my poverty and strengthened by my weaknesse and with S. Bern. desire Irascar is mihi Domine O Lord be angry with me for if thou chidest me not thou considerest me not if I taste no bitternesse I have no Physick If thou correct me not I am not thy son And he shall desire that day of the Lord as that day signifies the last judgement with the desire of the Martyrs under the Altar Vsquequo Domine How long O Lord ere thou execute judgement And he shall desire this day of the Lord as this day is the day of his own death with S. Pauls desire Cupio dissolvi I desire to be dissolved and to be with Christ And when this day of the Lord as it is the day of the Lords resurrection shall come his soule shall be satified as with marrow and with fatnesse in the body and bloud of his Saviour and in the participation of all his merits as intirely as if all that Christ Jesus hath said and done and suffered had beene said and done and suffered for his soule alone Enlarge our daies O Lord to that blessed day prepare us before that day seale to us at that day ratifie to us after that day all the daies of our life an assurance in that Kingdome which thy Son our Saviour hath purchased for us with the inestimable price of his incorruptible bloud To which glorious Son of God c. SERMON XV. Preached at VVhite-hall March 8. 1621. 1 COR. 15.26 The last Enemie that shall be destroyed is Death THis is a Text of the Resurrection and it is not Easter yet but it is Easter Eve All Lent is but the Vigill the Eve of Easter to so long a Festivall as never shall end the Resurrection wee may well begin the Eve betimes Forty yeares long was God grieved for that Generation which he loved let us be content to humble our selves forty daies to be fitter for that glory which we expect In the Booke of God there are many Songs there is but one Lamentation And that one Song of Solomon nay some one of Davids hundred and fiftie Psalmes is longer then the whole booke of Lamentations Make way to an everlasting Easter by a short Lent to an undeterminable glory by a temporary humiliation You must weepe these teares teares of contrition teares of mortification before God will wipe all teares from your eyes You must dye this death this death of the righteous the death to sin before this last enemy Death shal be destroyed in you and you made partakers of everlasting life in soule and body too Our division shall be but a short Divisio and our whole exercise but a larger paraphrase upon the words The words imply first That the Kingdome of Christ which must be perfected must be accomplished because all things must be subdued unto him is not yet perfected not accomplished yet Why what lacks it It lacks the bodies of Men which yet lie under the dominion of another When we shall also see by that Metaphor which the Holy Ghost chooseth to expresse that in which is that there is Hostis and so Militia an enemie and a warre and therefore that Kingdome is not perfected that he places perfect happinesse and perfect glory in perfect peace But then how far is any State consisting of many men how far the state and condition of any one man in particular from this perfect peace How truly a warfare is this life if the Kingdome of Heaven it selfe have not this peace in perfection And it hath it not Quia hostis because there is an enemy though that enemy shall not overthrow it yet because it plots and workes and machinates and would overthrow it this is a defect in that peace Who then is this enemy An enemy that may thus far thinke himselfe equall to God that as no man ever saw God and lived so no man ever saw this enemy and lived for it is Death And in this may thinke himselfe in number superiour to God that many men live who shall never see God But Quis homo is Davids question which was never answered Is there any man that lives and shall not see death An enemie that is so well victualled against man as that he cannot want as long as there are men for he feeds upon man himselfe And so well armed against Man as that he cannot want Munition while there are men for he fights with our weapons our owne faculties nay our calamities yea our owne pleasures are our death And therefore he is Novissimus hostis saith the Text The last enemy We have other Enemies Satan about us sin within us but the power of both those this enemie shall destroy but when they are destroyed he shall retaine a hostile and triumphant dominion over us But Vsque quo Domine How long O Lord for ever No Abolebitur wee see this Enemy all the way and all the way we feele him but we shall see him destroyed Abolebitur But how or when At and by the resurrection of our bodies for as upon my expiration my transmigration from hence as soone as my soule enters into Heaven I shall be able to say to the Angels I am of the same stuffe as you spirit and spirit and therefore let me stand with you and looke upon the face of your God and my God so at the Resurrection of this body I shall be able to say to the Angel of the great Councell the Son of God Christ Jesus himselfe I am of the same stuffe as you Body and body Flesh and flesh and therefore let me sit downe with you at the right hand of the Father in an everlasting security from this last enemie who is now destroyed death And in these seven steps we shall passe apace and yet cleerely through this paraphrase We begin with this Vestig 1. Quia desunt Corpora That the Kingdome of Heaven hath not all that it must have to a consummate perfection till it have bodies too In those infinite millions of millions of generations in which the holy blessed and glorious Trinity enjoyed themselves one another and no more they thought not their glory so perfect but that it might receive an addition from creatures and therefore they made a world a materiall world a corporeall world they would have bodies In that noble part of that world which Moses
Lord and thou only knowest Which is also the sense of those words Heb. 11.35 Others were tortured and accepted not a deliverance that they might obtain a better Resurrection A present deliverance had been a Resurrection but to be the more sure of a better hereafter they lesse respected that According to that of our Saviour Mat. 10.39 He that findes hi life shall lose it He that fixeth himself too earnestly upon this Resurrection shall lose a better This is then the propheticall Resurrection for the future but a future in this world That if Rulers take counsell against the Lord the Lord shall have their counsell in derision If they take armes against the Lord the Lord shall break their Bows and cut their Spears in sunder Psal 2.4 If they hisse and gnash their teeth and say we have swallowed him up If we be made their by-word their parable their proverb their libell the theame and burden of their songs as Iob complaines yet whatsoever fall upon me dmage distresse scorn or Hostis ultimus death it self that death which we consider here death of possessions death of estimation death of health death of contentment yet Abolebitur it sahll be destroyed in a Resurrection in the return of the light of Gods countenance upon me even in this world And this is the first Resurrection But this first Resurrection 2. Apeecatis which is but from temporall calamities doth so little concerne a true and established Christian whether it come or no for still Iobs Basis is his Basis and his Centre Etiamsi occiderit though he kill me kill me kill me in all these severall deaths and give me no Resurrection in this world yet I will trust in him as that as though this first resurrection were no resurrection not to be numbred among the rersurrections S. Iohn calls that which we call the second which is from sin the first resurrection Blessed and holy is be who hath part in the firstresurrection And this resurrection Christimplies Apoe 20.6 John 5.25 when he saies Verely verely I say unto you the houre is comming and now is when the dead shall heare the ovyce of the Son of God and they that heare it shall live That is by the voyce of the word of life the Gospell of repentance they shall have a spirituall resurrection to a new life S. Austine and Lactantius both were so hard in beleeving the roundnesse of the earth that they thought that those homines pensiles as they call them those men that hang upon the other cheek of the face of the earth those Antipodes whose feet are directly against ours must necessarily fall from the earth if the earth be round But whither should they fall If they fall they must fall upwards for heaven is above them too as it is to us So if the spirituall Antipodes of this world the Sons of God that walk with feet opposed in wayes contrary to the sons of men shall be said to fall when they fall to repentance to mortification to a religious negligence and contempt of the pleasures of this life truly their fall is up wards they fall towards heaven God gives breath unto the people upon the earth sayes the Prophet Et spiritum his qui calcant illam Esay 45.5 Our Translation carries that no farther but that God gives breath to people upon the earth and spirit to them that walk thereon But Irenaeus makes a usefull difference between afflatus and spiritus that God gives breath to all upon earth but his spirit onely to them who tread in a religious scorne upon earthly things Is it not a strange phrase of the Apostle Mortifie your members fornication uncleanenesse inordinate affections He does not say mortifie your members against those sins Col. 3.5 but he calls those very sins the members of our bodies as though we were elemented and compacted of nothing but sin till we come to this resurrection this mortification which is indeed our vivification Till we beare in our body the dying of our Lord Iesus that the life also of Iesus may be made manifest in our body 2 Cor. 4.10 God may give the other resurrection from worldly misery and not give this A widow may be rescued from the sorrow and solitarinesse of that state by having a plentifull fortune there she hath one resurrection but the widow that liveth in pleasure is dead while she lives 1 Tim. 5.6 shee hath no second resurrection and so in that sense even this Chappell may be a Church-yard men may stand and sit and kneele and yet be dead and any Chamber alone may be a Golgotha a place of dead mens bones of men not come to this resurrection which is the renunciation of their beloved sin It was inhumanely said by Vitellius upon the death of Otho when he walkedin the field of carcasses where the battle was fought O how sweet a perfume is a dead enemy But it is a divine saying to thy soule O what a savor of life unto life is the death of a beloved sin What an Angelicall comfort was that to Ioseph and Mary in Aegypt after the death of Herod Arise for they are dead that sought the childes life Mat. 2.20 And even that comfort is multiplied upon thy soul when the Spirit of God saies to thee Arise come to this resurrection for that Herod that sin that sought the life the everlasting life of this childe the childe of God thy soule is dead dead by repentance dead by mortification The highest cruelty that story relates or Poets imagine is when a persecutor will not afford a miserable man death not be so mercifull to him as to take his life Thou hast made thy sin thy soule thy life inanimated all thy actions all thy purposes with that sin Miserere animatuae be so mercifull to thy selfe as to take away that life by mortification by repentance and thou art come to this Resurrection and thugh a man may have the former resurrection and not this peace in his fortune and yet not peace in his conscience yet whosoever hath this second hath an infallible seale of the third resurrection too to a fulnesse of glory in body as well as in soule For Spiritus maturam efficit carnem capacem incorruptelae this resurrection by the spirit Irenaeus mellowes the body of man and makes that capable of everlasting glory which is the last weapon by which the last enemy death shall be destroyed A morte Upon that pious ground that all Scriptures were written for us as we are Christians that all Scriptures conduce to the proofe of Christ and of the Christian state 3. A morte it is the ordinary manner of the Fathers to make all that David speaks historically of himselfe and all that the Prophet speaks futurely of the Jews if those place may be referred to Christ to referre them to Christ primarily and but by reflection and in a second
incorruptionem sicut anima per fidem Because our bodie shall be regenerated by glory there as our soules are by faith here Therefore Tertul. cals the Resurrection Exemplum spei nostrae The Originall out of which we copy out our hope and Clavem sepulchrorū nostrorum How hard soever my grave be locked yet with that key with the application of the Resurrection of Christ Jesus it will open And they are all names which expresse this well which Tertullian gives Christ Vadem obsidem fidejussorem resurrectionis nostrae That he is the pledge the hostage the surety of our Resurrection So doth that also which is said in the Schoole Sicut Adam forma morientium Theoph. it a Christus forma resurgentium Without Adam there had beene no such thing as death without Christ no such thing as a Resurrection But ascendit ille effractor as the Prophet speaks The breaker is gone up before and they have passed through the gate that is assuredly Mich. 2.13 infallibly they shall passe But what needs all this heat all this animosity all this vehemence about the Resurrection May not man be happy enough in heaven though his body never come thither upon what will ye ground the Resurrection upon the Omnipotence of God Asylum haereticorum est Omnipotentia Dei which was well said and often repeated amongst the Ancients The Omnipotence of God hath alwaies been the Sanctuary of Heretiques that is alwaies their refuge in all their incredible doctrines God is able to do it can do it You confesse the Resurrection is a miracle And miracles are not to be multiplied nor imagined without necessity and what necessity of bodies in Heaven Beloved we make the ground and foundation of the Resurrection to be not meerely the Omnipotency of God for God will not doe all that he can doe but the ground is Omnipotens voluntas Dei revelata The Almighty will of God revealed by him to us And therefore Christ joynes both these together Erratis Ye erre Mat. 22.29 not knowing the Scriptures nor the power of God that is not considering the power of God as it is revealed in the Scriptures for there is our foundation of this Doctrine we know out of the Omnipotence of God it may be and we know out of the Scriptures it must be That works upon our faith this upon our reason That it is man that must be saved man that must be damned and to constitute a man there must be a body as well as a soule Nay the Immortality of the soule will not so well lie in proofe without a resuming of the body For upon those words of the Apostle If there were no Resurrection we were the miserablest of all men the Schoole reasons reasonably Naturally the soule and body are united when they are separated by Death it is contrary to nature which nature still affects this union and consequently the soule is the lesse perfect for this separation and it is not likely that the perfect naturall state of the soule which is to be united to the body should last but three or foure score yeares and in most much lesse and the unperfect state that in the separation should last eternally for ever so that either the body must be beleeved to live againe or the soule beleeved to die Never therefore dispute against thine own happinesse never say God asks the heart that is the soule and therefore rewards the soule or punishes the soule and hath no respect to the body Nec auferamus cogitationes a collegio carnis saies Tertullian Never go about to separate the thoughts of the heart from the colledge from the fellowship of the body Siquidem in carne cum carne per carnem agitur quicquid ab anima agitur All that the soule does it does in and with and by the body And therefore saies he also Caro abluitur ut anima emaculetur The body is washed in baptisme but it is that the soule might be made cleane Caro ungitur ut anima consecretur In all unctions whether that which was then in use in Baptisme or that which was in use at our transmigration and passage out of this world the body was anointed that the soule might be consecrated Caro signatur saies Tertullian still ut anima muniatur The body is signed with the Crosse that the soule might be armed against tentations And againe Caro de Corpore Christi vescitur ut anima de Deo saginetur My body received the body of Christ that my soule might partake of his merits He extends it into many particulars and summes up all thus Non possunt in mercede separari quae opera conjungunt These two Body and Soule cannot be separated for ever which whilst they are together concurre in all that either of them doe Never thinke it presumption saies S. Gregory Sperare in te quod in se exhibuit Deus homo To hope for that in thy selfe which God admitted when he tooke thy nature upon him And God hath made it saies he more easie then so for thee to beleeve it because not onely Christ himselfe but such men as thou art did rise at the Resurrection of Christ And therefore when our bodies are dissolved and liquefied in the Sea putrified in the earth resolv'd to ashes in the fire macerated in the ayre Velut in vasa sua transfunditur caro nostra Tertul. make account that all the world is Gods cabinet and water and earth and fire and ayre are the proper boxes in which God laies up our bodies for the Resurrection Curiously to dispute against our owne Resurrection is seditiously to dispute against the dominion of Jesus who is not made Lord by the Resurrection if he have no subjects to follow him in the same way Wee beleeve him to be Lord therefore let us beleeve his and our Resurrection This blessed day Ille Iohn 2.19 Iohn 10.17 which we celebrate now he rose he rose so as none before did none after ever shall rise He rose others are but raised Destroy this Temple saies he and I will raise it I without imploying any other Architect I lay downe my life saies he the Jewes could not have killed him when he was alive If he were alive here now the Jesuits could not kill him here now except his being made Christ and Lord an anointed King have made him more open to them I have a power to lay it downe saies he and I have a power to take it up againe This day Nos Iohn 2.3 we celebrate his Resurrection this day let us celebrate our owne Our own not our one Resurrection for we need many Upon those words of our Saviour to Nicodemus Oportet denuo nasci speaking of the necessity of Baptisme Non solum denuo sed tertiò nasci oportet saies S. Bernard He must be born againe and againe againe by baptisme for Originall sin and for actuall sin againe by repentance Infoelix homo ego
for they shall have a composition still and every compounded thing may perish but they shal be so assured and with such a preservation as they shall alwaies know they shall never dye S. Augustine saies well Aug. Assit motio absit fatigatio assit potestas vescendi absit necessitas esuriendi They have in their nature a mortality and yet be immortall a possibility and an impossibility of dying with those two divers relations one to nature the other to preservation will consist together So in this soule that hath this first Resurrection from sin by grace a conscience of her owne infirmity that she may relapse and yet a testimony of the powerfulnesse of Gods Spirit that easily she shall not relapse may consist well together But the last seale of this holy confidence is reserved for that which is the third acceptation of this first Resurrection not from persecutions in this world nor from sin in this world but from all possibility of falling back into sin in the world to come and to this have divers Expositors referred these words this first resurrection Blessed and holy is he that hath part in this first Resurrection Now a Resurrection of the soule seemes an improper an impertinent an improbable 3 Part. an impossible forme of speech for Resurrection implies death and the soule does not dye in her passage to Heaven And therefore Damascen makes account De ortho sid l. 4. c. ult that he hath sufficiently proved the Resurrection of the body which seems so incredible if he could prove any Resurrection if there be any Resurrection at all saies he it must be of the body for the soule cannot dye therefore not rise Yet have not those Fathers nor those Expositors who have in this text acknowledged a Resurrection of the soule mistaken nor miscalled the matter Take Damascens owne definition of Resurrection Resurrectio est ejus quod cecidit secunda surrectio A Resurrection is a second rising to that state from which any thing is formerly fallen Now though by death the soule do not fall into any such state as that it can complaine for what can that lack which God fils yet by death the soule fals from that for which it was infused and poured into man at first that is to be the forme of that body the King of that Kingdome and therefore when in the generall Resurrection the soule returnes to that state for which it was created and to which it hath had an affection and a desire even in the fulnesse of the Joyes of Heaven then when the soule returnes to her office to make up the man because the whole man hath therefore the soule hath a Resurrection not from death but from a deprivation of her former state that state which she was made for and is ever enclined to But that is the last Resurrection and so the soule hath part even in that last Resurrection But we are in hand with the first Resurrection of the soule and that is when that soule which was at first breath'd from God and hath long suffered a banishment a close imprisonment in this body returnes to God againe The returning of the soule to him from whom it proceeded at first is a Resurrection of the soule Here then especially I feele the straitnesse of time two considerations open themselves together of such a largenesse as all the time from Moses his In principio when time began to the Angels Affidavit in this booke That shall say and sweare that time shall be no more were too narrow to contemplate these two Hemispheares of Man this Evening and Morning of Mans everlasting day The miseries of man in this banishment in this emprisonment in this grave of the soule the body And the glory and exaltation of that soule in her Resurrection to Heaven That soule which being borne free is made a slave to this body by comming to it It must act but what this body will give it leave to act according to the Organs which this body affords it and if the body be lame in any limme the soule must be lame in her operation in that limme too It must doe but what the body will have it doe and then it must suffer whatsoever that body puts it to or whatsoever any others will put that body to If the body oppresse it selfe with Melancholy the soule must be sad and if other men oppresse the body with injury the soule must be sad too Consider it is too immense a thing to consider it reflect but one thought but upon this one thing in the soule here and hereafter In her grave the body and in her Resurrection in Heaven That is the knowledge of the soule Here saies S. Augustine when the soule considers the things of this world Non veritate certior sed consuetudine securior She rests upon such things as she is not sure are true but such as she sees are ordinarily received and accepted for truths so that the end of her knowledge is not Truth but opinion and the way not Inquisition but ease But saies he when she proceeds in this life to search into heavenly things Verberatur luce veritatis The beames of that light are too strong for her and they sink her and cast her downe Et ad familiaritatem tenebrarum suarum non electione sed fatigatione convertitur and so she returnes to her owne darknesse because she is most familiar and best acquainted with it Non electione not because she loves ignorance but because she is weary of the trouble of seeking out the truth and so swallowes even any Religion to escape the paine of debating and disputing and in this lazinesse she sleeps out her lease her terme of life in this death in this grave in this body But then in her Resurrection her measure is enlarged and filled at once There she reads without spelling and knowes without thinking and concludes without arguing she is at the end of her race without running In her triumph without fighting In her Haven without sayling A free-man without any prentiship at full yeares without any wardship and a Doctor without any proceeding She knowes truly and easily and immediately and entirely and everlastingly Nothing left out at first nothing worne out at last that conduces to her happinesse What a death is this life what a resurrection is this death For though this world be a sea yet which is most strange our Harbour is larger then the sea Heaven infinitely larger then this world For though that be not true which Origen is said to say That at last all shall be saved nor that evident which Cyril of Alexandria saies That without doubt the number of them that are saved is far greater then of them that perish yet surely the number of them with whom we shall have communion in Heaven is greater then ever lived at once upon the face of the earth And of those who lived in our time how few did we
no such power of thine own soul and life not for the time not for the means of comming to this first Resurrection by death Stay therefore patiently stay chearfully Gods leasure till he call but not so over-chearfully as to be loath to go when he cals Reliefe in persecution by power reconciliation in sin by grace dissolution and transmigration to heaven by death are all within this first Resurrection But that which is before them all is Christ Jesus And therefore as all that the naturall man promises himself without God is impious so all that we promise our selves though by God without Christ is frivolous God who hath spoken to us by his Son works upon us by his Son too He was our Creation he was our Redemption he is our Resurrection And that man trades in the world without money and goes out of the world without recommendation that leaves out Christ Jesus To be a good Morall man and refer all to the law of Nature in our hearts is but Diluculum The dawning of the day To be a godly man and refer all to God is but Crepusculum A twylight But the Meridionall brightnesse the glorious noon and heighth is to be a Christian to pretend to no spirituall no temporall blessing but for and by and through and in our only Lord and Saviour Christ Jesus for he is this first Resurrection and Blessed and holy is he that hath part in this first Resurrection SERMON XX. Preached at S. Pauls in the Evening upon Easter-day 1625. JOHN 5.28 29. Marvell not at this for the houre is comming in the which all that are in the graves shall heare his voice And shall come forth They that have done good unto the Resurrection of Life And they that have done evill unto the Resurrection of Damnation AS the Sun works diversly according to the diverse disposition of the subject for the Sun melts wax and it hardens clay so do the good actions of good men upon good men they work a vertuous emulation a noble and a holy desire to imitate upon bad men they work a vicious and impotent envy a desire to disgrace and calumniate And the more the good is that is done and the more it works upon good men the more it disaffects the bad for so the Pharisees expresse their rancor and malignity against Christ Jâ—â—n 11.48 in this Gospel If we let him thus alone all men will beleeve in him And that they foresaw would destroy them in their reputation And therefore they enlarged their malice beyond Christ himselfe to him upon whom Christ had wrought a Miracle John 12.10 to Lazarus They consulted to put him to death because by reason of him many beleeved in Iesus Our Text leads us to another example of this impotency in envious men Christ in this Chapter had by his only word cured a man that had been eight and thirty yeares infirm and he had done this work upon the Sabbath They envyed the work in the substance but they quarrell the circumstance And they envy Christ but they turn upon the man who was more obnoxious to them and they tell him John 5. â—â— That it was not lawfull for him to carry his bed that day He discharges himself upon Christ I dispute not with you concerning the Law This satisfies me He that made me whole Veâ— â— bad me take up my bed and walk Thereupon they put him to finde out Jesus And when he could not finde Jesus Jesus found him and in his behalf offers himself to the Pharisees Then they direct themselves upon him and as the Gospell sayes They sought to slay him because he had done this upon the Sabbath And V. 16. as the patient had discharged himself upon Christ Christ discharges himself upon his Father doth it displease you that I work upon the Sabbath be angry with God be angry with the Father for the Father works when I work V. 17. V. 18. And then this they take worse then his working of Miracles or his working upon the Sabbath That he would say that God was his Father And therfore in the averring of that that so important point That God was his Father Christ grows into a holy vehemence and earnestnesse and he repeats his usuall oath Verily verily three severall times First ver 19. That whatsoever the Father doth He the Son doth also And then ver 24. He that beleeveth on me and him that sent me hath life everlasting And then again ver 25. The houre is comming and now is when the dead shall heare the voice of the Son of God and they that heare it shall live At this that the dead should live they marvelled But because he knew that they were men more affected with things concerning the body then spirituall things as in another story when they wondered that he would pretend to forgive sins because he knew that they thought it a greater matter to bid that man that had the Palsie take up his bed and walk then to forgive him his sins therefore he took that way which was hardest in their opinion he did bid him take up his bed and walk So here when they wondred at his speaking of a spirituall Resurrection to heare him say that at his preaching the dead that is men spiritually dead in their sins should rise again to them who more respected the body and did lesse beleeve a reall Resurrection of the body then a figurative Resurrection of the soul he proceeds to that which was in their apprehension the more difficult Marvell not at this sayes he here in our Text not at that spirituall Resurrection by preaching for the houre is comming in the which all that are in the graves c. and so he establishes the Resurrection of the body That then which Christ affirmes and avows is That he is the Son of God Divisio and that is the first thing that ever was done in Heaven The eternall generation of the Son that by which he proves this to these men is That by him there shall be a resurrection of the body and that is the last thing that shall be done in Heaven for after that there is nothing but an even continuance in equall glory Before that saies he that is before the resurrection of the body there shall be another resurrection a spirituall resurrection of the soule from sin but that shall be by ordinary meanes by Preaching and Sacraments and it shall be accomplished every day but fix not upon that determin not your thoughts upon that marvaile not at that make that no cause of extraordinary wonder but make it ordinary to you feele it and finde the effect thereof in your soules as often as you heare as often as you receive and thereby provide for another resurrection For the houre is comming in which all that are in their graves c. Where we must necessarily make thus many steps though but short ones First the dignity of
thought he could not speake more bitterly to that Tyran then to tell him As for thee thou shalt have no Resurrection unto life And so the Mother establisht her selfe too To her Sons she saies I gave you not life in my wombe Ver. 22. but doubtlesse the Creator that did will of his mercy give you life againe The soule needed not life againe for the soule never dyed the body that dyed Ver. 29. did Therefore her hope was in a Resurrection And to her youngest Son she said Be worthy of thy Brethren Take thy death that I may receive thee againe in mercy with thy Brethren All their establishment all their expectation all their issue was That they might obtaine a better Resurrection Now what was this that they qualified and dignified by that addition The better Resurrection Is it called better in that it is better then this life and determined in that comparison and degree of betternesse and no more Is it better then those honours and preferments which that King offered them and determined in that comparison and no more Or better then other men shall have at the last day for all men shall have a Resurrection and determined in that Or as S. Chrysostome takes it is it but a better Resurrection then that in the former part of this Text where dead children are restored to their mothers alive again Is it but a better Resurrection in some of these senses Surely better in a higher sense then any of these It is a supereminent degree of glory a larger measure of glory then every man who in a generall happinesse is made partaker of the Resurrection of the righteous is made partaker of Beloved There is nothing so little in heaven as that we can expresse it But if wee could tell you the fulnesse of a soul there what that fulnesse is the infinitenesse of that glory there how far that infinitenesse goes the Eternity of that happinesse there how long that happinesse lasts if we could make you know all this yet this Better Resurrection is a heaping even of that Fulnesse and an enlarging even of that Infinitenesse and an extention even of that eternity of happinesse For all these this Fulnesse this Infinitenesse this Eternity are in all the Resurrections of the Righteous and this is a better Resurrection We may almost say it is something more then Heaven for all that have any Resurrection to life have all heaven And something more then God for all that have any Resurrection to life have all God and yet these shall have a better Resurrection Amorous soule ambitious soule covetous soule voluptuous soule what wouldest thou have in heaven What doth thy holy amorousnesse thy holy covetousnesse thy holy ambition and voluptuousnesse most carry thy desire upon Call it what thou wilt think it what thou canst think it something that thou canst not think and all this thou shalt have if thou have any Resurrection unto life and yet there is a Better Resurrection When I consider what I was in my parents loynes a substance unworthy of a word unworthy of a thought when I consider what I am now a Volume of diseases bound up together a dry cynder if I look for naturall for radicall moisture and yet a Spunge a bottle of overflowing Rheumes if I consider accidentall an aged childe a gray-headed Infant and but the ghost of mine own youth When I consider what I shall be at last by the hand of death in my grave first but Putrifaction and then not so much as Putrifaction I shall not be able to send forth so much as an ill ayre not any ayre at all but shall be all insipid tastlesse savourlesse dust for a while all wormes and after a while not so much as wormes sordid senslesse namelesse dust When I consider the past and present and suture state of this body in this world I am able to conceive able to expresse the worst that can befall it in nature and the worst that can be inflicted upon it by man of fortune But the least degree of glory that God hath prepared for that body in heaven I am not able to expresse not able to conceive That man comes with a Barly corn in his hand to measure the compasse of the Firmament and when will he have done that work by that way he comes with a grain of dust in his scales to weigh the whole body of the world and when will he have done that work that way that bids his heart imagine or his language declare or his wit compare the least degree of the glory of any good mans Resurrection And yet there is a Better Resurrection A Better Resurrection reserved for them and appropriated to them That fulfill the sufferings of Christ in their flesh by Martyrdome and so become witnesses to that Conveyance which he hath sealed with his blood by shedding their blood and glorifie him upon earth as far as it is possible for man by the same way that he hath glorified them in heaven and are admitted to such a conformity with Christ as that if we may have leave to expresse it so they have dyed for one another Neither is this Martyrdome and so this Better Resurrection appropriated to a reall and actuall and absolute dying for Christ but every suffering of ours by which suffering he may be glorified is a degree of Martyrdome and so a degree of improving and bettering our Resurrection For as S. Ierome sayes That chastity is a perpetuall Martyrdome So every war maintained by us against our own desires is a Martyrdome too In a word to do good for Gods glory brings us to a Good but to suffer for his glory brings us to a Better Resurrection And to suffer patiently brings us to a Good but to suffer chearefully and more then that thankfully brings us to a Better Resurrection If all the torments of all the afflicted men from Abel to that soul that groanes in the Inquisition or that gaspes upon his death-bed at this minute were upon one man at once all that had no proportion to the least torment of hell nay if all the torments which all the damned in hell have suffered from Cain to this minute were at once upon one soul so as that soul for all that might know that those torments should have an end though after a thousand millions of millions of Generations all that would have no proportion to any of the torments of hell because the extention of those torments and their everlastingnesse hath more of the nature of torment and of the nature of hell in it then the intensnesse and the vehemency thereof can have So if all the joyes of all the men that have had all their hearts desires were con-centred in one heart all that would not be as a spark in his Chimney to the generall conflagration of the whole world in respect of the least joy that that soule is made partaker of that departs from this
judgements did God shew Adam Iudicia pessimorum spirituum sayes he the better to containe Adam in his duty God declared to him the judgement that he had executed upon those disobedient Angels So that as Adam if he had made a right use of Gods grace had been immortall in his body and yet not immortall then by nature as our bodies in the state of glory in the resurrection shall be immortall and yet not immortall then by nature so no Angell after this Confirmation that is the mediation of Christ applied to him shall fall For Quis Catholicus ignorat Aug. nullum novum Diabolum ex bonis Angelis futurum Who can pretend to be a Catholique and beleeve that ever there shall be any new Devill from amongst the good Angels And yet by the way many of the Ancient Fathers thought that those words That the sons of God saw the daughters of men to be faire and fell in love with them were meant of good Angels who fell in love with those women that were committed to their charge and that they sinned in so doing and that they never returned to heaven but fell to the first fallen Angels So that those Fathers have more then implied a possibility of falling into sin and punishment for sin in the good Angels But this none sayes now nor with any probability ever did It is enough that they stand confirmed confirmed by the grace of God in Christ Jesus so that now being in possession of the sight of God and the light of Gâ—ry their understanding is perfectly illustrated so that they can apprehend nothing erroneously and therefore their will is perfectly rectified so that they can desire nothing irregularly and therefore they cannot sin and therefore they cannot die for all sin is from the perversenesse of the will and all disorder in the will from errour in the understanding In heaven they are and we by our assimilation to them shall be free from both and impeccable and impassible by the continuall grace of God Though if they or we were left to our selves even there God could put no trust in his servants nor leave his Angels uncharged with folly And so we have done with the pieces which constitute our first part De quibus of whom these words are spoken First that they were spoken of Angels rejecting that single Capuccin who only denies it and then of good Angels accepting Calvins interpretation because though he be singular in applying this Text to that Doctrine yet in the Doctrine it self he hath authority enough and faire reasons for the Text it selfe and lastly how that which we call Confirmation in those Angels accrewes to them and how it works in them And so we passe to our second Part what is inferred upon these premisses what concluded upon these propositions what by our assimilation to Angels reflects upon us And here 2. Part. Testis Eliphaz because the matter is of much consideration we proposed first to be considered the waight and validity of the testimony in the person of him that gives it for many times the credit of the restimony depends much upon the credit of the witnesse And here it is not Iob himself it is but Eliphaz Eliphaz the Temanite an Alien a stranger to the Covenant and Church of God But surely no greater a stranger then those secular Poets whose sentences S. Paul cites not only in his Epistles but in his Sermons too Certainly not so great a stranger as the Devill and yet in how many places of Scripture are words spoken by the Devill himself inserted into the Scriptures and thereby so farre made the word of God as that the word of God the Bible were not perfect norintire to us if we had not those words of those Poets those words of the Devill himself in it How can I doubt but that God can draw good out of ill and make even some sin of mine some occasion of my salvation when the God of truth can make the word of the father of lies his word There is but one place in all this Book of Iob cited in the New Testament Job 5.13 that is He taketh the wise in their owne craft and those words are not spoken by Iob himself but by this very friend of Iob this Eliphaz that speaks in our Text 1 Cor. 3.19 and yet they are cited in the phrase and manner in which holy Scripture is ordinarily cited It is written sayes the Apostle there and so the Holy Ghost that spoke in S. Paul hath canonized the words spoken by Eliphaz But besides the credit which these words have Visio à posteriori that they are after inserted into the word of God which is another manner of credit and authentiquenesse then that which the Canonists speak of that when any sentence of a Father is cited and inserted into a Decretall Epistle of a Pope or any part of the Canon Law that sentence is thereby made authenticall and canonicall these words have their credit à priori for before be spake them to Iob he received them in a vision from God I had a vision in the night Ver. 12. sayes he and feare and trembling came upon me and a spirit stood before me and I heard this voyce Neither is there any necessity no nor reason to charge Eliphaz with a false relation or counterfaiting a revelation from God which he had not had as some Expositors have done For howsoever in some argumentations and applyings of things to Iobs particular case we may finde some errors in Eliphaz in modo probandi in the manner of his proceeding yet we shall not finde him to proceed upon false grounds and therefore we beleeve Eliphaz to have received this that he sayes from God in a vision and for the instruction of a man more in Gods favour then himself of Iob. Balaam had the reputation of a great Wizard and yet God made his Asse wiser then he and able to instruct and catechize him Generally we are to receive our instructions from Gods established Ordinances from his ordinary meanes afforded to us in his Church And where those meanes sufficient in themselves are duly exhibited to us we are not to hearken after revelations nor to beleeve every thing that may have some such apparance to be a revelation But yet we are not so to conclude God in his Law as that he should have no Prerogative nor so to binde him up in his Ordinances as that he never can or never does work by an extraordinary way of revelation Neither must the profusion of miracles the prodigality and prostitution of miracles in the Romane Church where miracles for every naturall disease may be had at some Shrine or miracle-shop better cheap then a Medicine a Drugge a Simple at an Apothecaries bring us to deny or distrust all miracles done by God upon extraordinary causes and to important purposes Eliphaz was a prophane person and yet received a Vision from
be well Christ said in his behalfe Verily I have not found so great faith no not in Israel When Christ makes so much of this single grain of Mustard-seed this little faith as to prefer it before all the faith of Israel surely faith went very low in Israel at that time Nay when Christ himself sayes speaking of his last comming after so many ages preaching of the Gospell When the Son of man comes shall he finde faith upon earth Luk. 18.8 any faith We have I say a blessed beam of comfort shining out of this text that it is no small number that is reserved for that Kingdome For whether the Apostle speak this of himself and the Thessalonians or of others he speaks not as of a few but that by Christs having preached the narrownesse of the way and the straitnesse of the gate our holy industry and endeavour is so much exalted which was Christs principall end in taking those Metaphors of narrow wayes and strait gates not to make any man suspect an impossibility of entring but to be the more industrious and endeavorous in seeking it that as he hath sent workmen in plenty abundant preaching so he shall return a plentifull harvest a glorious addition to his Kingdome both of those which slept in him before and of those which shall be then alive fit all together to be caught up in the clouds to meet him and be with him for ever for these two armies imply no small number Now of the condition of these men who shall be then alive and how being clothed in bodies of corruption they become capable of the glory of this text in our first distribution we proposed that for a particular consideration and the other branch of this second part and to that in that order we are come now I scarce know a place of Scripture more diversly read Immutabimur and consequently more variously interpreted then that place which should most enlighten us in this consideration presently under our hands which is that place to the Corinthians 1 Cor. 15.51 Non omnes dormiemus We shall not all sleep but we shall all be changed The Apostle professes there to deliver us a mystery Behold I shew you a mystery but Translators and Expositors have multiplyed mysticall clouds upon the words S. Chrysostome reads these words as we do Chrysost Non dormiemus We shall not all sleep but thereupon he argues and concludes that wee shall not all die The common reading of the ancients is contrary to that Omnes dormiemus sed non c. We shall all sleep but we shall not all be changed The vulgat Edition in the Romane Church differs from both and as much from the originall as from either Omnes resurgemus We shall all rise again but we shall not all be changed S. Hierome examines the two readings and then leaves the reader to his choice as a thing indifferent S. Augustine doth so too and concludes aquè Catholicos esse That they are as good Catholiques that reade it the one way as the other But howsoever that which S. Chrysostome collects upon his reading may not be maintained He reads as we do and without all doubt aright We shall not all sleep But what then Therefore shall we not all die To sleep there is to rest in the grave to continue in the state of the dead and so we shall not all sleep not continue in the state of the dead But yet Statutum est sayes the Apostle Heb. 9.27 as verily as Christ was once offered to beare our sinnes so verily is it appointed to every man once to die Rom. 5.12 And as verily as by one man sinne entred into the world and death by sinne so verily death passed upon all men for that all men have sinned So the Apostle institutes the comparison so he constitutes the doctrine in those two places of Scripture As verily as Christ dyed for all all shall die As verily as every man sins every man shall die In that change then which we who are then alive shall receive for though we shall not all sleep we shall all be changed we shall have a present dissolution of body and soul and that is truly a death and a present redintegration of the same body and the same soul and that is truly a Resurrection we shall die and be alive again before another could consider that we were dead but yet this shall not be done in an absolute instant some succession of time though undiscernible there is It shall be done In raptu in a rapture but even in a rapture there is a motion a transition from one to another place It shall be done sayes he In ictuoculi In the twinkling of an eye But even in the twinkling of an eie there is a shutting of the eie-lids and an opening of them again Neither of these is done in an absolute instant but requires some succession of time The Apostle in the Resurrection in our text constitutes a Prius something to be done first and something after first those that were dead in Christ shall rise first and then Then when that is done after that not all at once we that are alive shall be wrought upon we shall be changed our change comes after their rising so in our change there is a Prius too first we shall be dissolved so we die and then we shall be re-compact so we rise again This is the difference they that sleep in the grave put off and depart with the very substance of the body it is no longer flesh but dust they that are changed at the last day put off and depart with only the qualities of the body as mortality and corruption It is still the same body without resolving into dust but the first step that it makes is into glory Now transfer this to the spirituall Resurrection of thy soul by grace here Here Grace works not that Resurrection upon thy soul in an absolute instant And therefore suspect not Gods gracious purpose upon thee if thou beest not presently throughly recovered God could have made all the world in one day and so have come sooner to his Sabbath his rest but he wrought more to give us an example of labour and of patience in attending his leasure in our second Creation this Resurrection from sin as we did in our first Creation when we were not made till the sixt day But remember too that the last Resurrection from death is to be transacted quickly speedily And in thy first thy spirituall Resurrection from sin make haste The last is to be done In raptu in a rapture Let this rapture in the first Resurrection be to teare thy self from that company and conversation that leads thee into tentation The last is to be done Inictu oculi In the twinkling of an eye Let that in thy first Resurrection be The shutting of thine eyes from looking upon things in things upon creatures in creatures
same thing againe I beleeve in the Holy Ghost but doe not finde him if I seeke him onely in private prayer But in Ecclesia when I goe to meet him in the Church when I seeke him where hee hath promised to bee found when I seeke him in the execution of that Commission which is proposed to our faith in this Text in his Ordinances and meanes of salvation in his Church instantly the savour of this Myrrhe is exalted and multiplied to me not a dew but a shower is powred out upon me and presently followes Communio Sanctorum The Communion of Saints the assistance of Militant and Triumphant Church in my behalfe And presently followes Remissio peceatorum The remission of sins the purifying of my conscience in that water which is his blood Baptisme and in that wine which is his blood the other Sacrament and presently followes Carnis resurrectio A resurrection of my body My body becomes no burthen to me my body is better now then my soule was before and even here I have Goshen in my Egypt incorruption in the midst of my dunghill spirit in the midst of my flesh heaven upon earth and presently followes Vita aeterna Life everlasting this life of my body shall not last ever nay the life of my soul in heaven is not such as it is at the first For that soule there even in heaven shall receive an addition and accesse of Joy and Glory in the resurrection of our bodies in the consummation When a winde brings the River to any low part of the banke instantly it overflowes the whole Meadow when that winde which blowes where he will The Holy Ghost leads an humble soule to the Article of the Church to lay hold upon God as God hath exhibited himselfe in his Ordinances instantly he is surrounded under the blood of Christ Jesus and all the benefits thereof The communion of Saints the remission of sins the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting are poured out upon him And therefore of this great worke which God hath done for man in applying himselfe to man in the Ordinances of his Church S. Augustine sayes Obscuriùs dixerunt Prophetae de Christo August quà m de Ecclesia The Prophets have not spoken so clearely of the person of Christ as they have of the Church of Christ Hieron for though S. Hierom interpret aright those words of Adam and Eve Erunt duo in carnem unam They two shall be one flesh to be applyable to the union which is betweene Christ and his Church Ephes 5. for so S. Paul himselfe applies them that Christ and his Church are all one as man and wife are all one yet the wife is or at least it had wont to be so easilier found at home then the husband wee can come to Christs Church but we cannot come to him The Church is a Hill and that is conspicuous naturally but the Church is such a Hill as may be seene every where August S. Augustine askes his Auditory in one of his Sermons doe any of you know the Hill Olympus and himselfe sayes in their behalfe none of you know it no more sayes he do those that dwell at Olympus know Giddabam vestram some Hill which was about them trouble not thy selfe to know the formes and fashions of forraine particular Churches neither of a Church in the lake nor a Church upon seven hils but since God hath planted thee in a Church where all things necessary for salvation are administred to thee and where no erronious doctrine even in the confession of our Adversaries is affirmed and held that is the Hill and that is the Catholique Church and there is this Commission in this text meanes of salvation sincerely executed So then such a Commission there is and it is in the Article of the Creed that is the ubi We are now come in our order to the third circumstantiall branch the Vnde Vnde from whence and when this Commission issued in which we consider that since we receive a deepe impression from the words which our friends spake at the time of their death much more would it worke upon us if they could come and speake to us after their death You know what Dives said Si quis ex mortuis Luke 16. If one from the dead might goe to my Brethren he might bring them to any thing Now Primitiae mortuorum The Lord of life and yet the first borne of the dead Christ Jesus returnes againe after his death to establish this Commission upon his Apostles It hath therefore all the formalities of a strong and valid Commission Christ gives it Ex mero motu meerely out of his owne goodnesse He foresaw no merit in us that moved him neither was he moved by any mans solicitations for could it ever have fallen into a mans heart to have prayed to the Father that his Son might take our Nature and dye and rise again and settle a course upon earth for our salvation if this had not first risen in the purpose of God himself Would any man ever have solicited or prayed him to proceed thus It was Ex mero motu out of his owne goodnesse and it was Ex certa scientia He was not deceived in his grant he knew what he did he knew this Commission should be executed in despight of all Heretiques and Tyrans that should oppose it And as it was out of his owne Will and with his owne knowledge so it was Ex plenitudine potestatis He exceeded not his Power for Christ made this Commission then Mat. 28.18 when as it is expressed in the other Euangelist he produced that evidence Data est mihi All power is given to me in Heaven and in earth where Christ speakes not of that Power which he had by his eternall generation though even that power were given him for he was Deus de Deo God of God nor he speakes not of that Power which was given him as Man which was great but all that he had in the first minute of his conception in the first union of the two Natures Divine and Humane together but that Power from which he derives this Commission is that which he had purchased by his blood and came to by conquest Ego vici mundum sayes Christ I have conquered the world and comming in by conquest I may establish what forme of Government I will and my will is to governe my Kingdome by this Commission and by these Commissioners to the Worlds end to establish these meanes upon earth for the salvation of the world And as it hath all these formalities of a due Commission made without suite made without error made without defect of power so had it this also that it was duely and authentically testified for though this Euangelist name but the eleven Apostles to have beene present and they in this case might be thought Testes domestici Witnesses that witnesse to their owne
remembred of Death Why are these men thus baptized for the Dead And then here is Sanctum Sanctorum The innermost part of the Church The Holy of Holyes that is the manifestation of all the mysterious salvation belonging to soule and body in the Resurrection Why are these men thus baptized for the dead if there be no Resurrection Our first dayes worke in handling these words was to accept and then to apply that in which all agreed that these words were an argument for the Resurrection And we did both those offices we did accept it and so shew you how the assurance of the Resurrection accrues to us and what is the office of Reason and what is the office of Faith in that affayre And then we did apply it and so shew you divers resemblances and conformities between naturall Death and spirituall Death and between the Resurrection of the body to glory at last and the Resurrection of the soule by grace in the way and wherein they induced and assisted and illustrated one another And those two miles made up that Sabbath dayes journey When we shall returne to the handling of them the next day which will be the last we shall consider how these words have been misapplyed by our Adversaries of the Romane Church and then the severall Expositions which they have received from sound and Orthodoxall men that thence we may draw a conclusion and determination for our selves And in those two miles wee shall also make up that Sabbath Dayes journey when God shall be pleased to bring us to it This dayes Exercise shall be to consider that very point for the establishment whereof they have so detorted and mis-applyed these words which is their Purgatory That this Baptisme for the Dead must necessarily prove Purgatory and their Purgatory So then this Dayes Exercise will bee meerely Polemicall the handling of a Controversie which though it be not alwayes pertinent yet neither is it alwayes unseasonable There was a time but lately when he who was in his desire and intension the Peace-maker of all the Christian world as he had a desire to have slumbred all Field-drums so had he also to have slumbred all Pulpit-drums so far as to passe over all impertinent handling of Controversies meerly and professedly as Controversies though never by way of positive maintenance of Orthodoxall and fundamentall Truths That so there might be no slackning in the defence of the truth of our Religion and yet there might bee a discreet and temperate forbearing of personall and especially of Nationall exasperations And as this way had piety and peace in the worke it selfe so was it then occasionally exalted by a great necessity He who was then our hope and is now the breath of our nostrils and the Anointed of the Lord being then taken in their pits and in that great respect such exasperations the fitter to be forborne especially since that course might well bee held without any prevarication or cooling the zeale of the positive maintenance of the religion of our Church But things standing now in another state and all peace both Ecclesiasticall and Civill with these men being by themselves removed and taken away and hee whom we feared returned in all kinde of safety safe in body and safe in soule too whom though their Church could not their Court hath chatechised in their religion that is brought him to a cleere understanding of their Ambition for Ambition is their Religion and S. Peters Ship must saile in their Fleets and with their winds or it must sink and the Catholique and Militant Church must march in their Armies though those Armies march against Rome it selfe as heretofore they have done to the sacking of that Towne to the holding of the Pope himselfe in so sordid a prison for sixe moneths as that some of his nearest servants about him died of the plague to the treading under foot Priests and Bishops and Cardinals to the dishonouring of Matrons and the ravishing of professed Virgins and committing such insolencies Catholiques upon Catholiques as they would call us Heretiques for beleeving them but that they are their owne Catholique Authors that have written them Things being now I say in this state with these men since wee heare that Drums beat in every field abroad it becomes us also to returne to the brasing and beating of our Drums in the Pulpit too that so as Adam did not onely dresse Paradise but keepe Paradise and as the children of God did not onely build but build with one hand and fight with another so wee also may employ some of our Meditations upon supplanting and subverting of error as well as upon the planting and watering of the Truth To which purpose I shall prepare this day for the vindicating and redeeming of these words from the Adversary which will bee the worke of the next day by handling to day that point for which they have misapplied them which is Purgatory and the mother and the off-spring of that for what can that generation of vipers suck from this Text which is not If there be no such Purgatory but If there be no such Resurrection why then are these men baptized for the dead Heaven and earth shall passe away saith Christ but my word shall not passe away Matt 24.35 But rather then Purgatory shall passe away his word must admit such an Interpretation as shall passe away and evacuate the intention and purpose of the Holy Ghost therein How much of the earth is passed away from them wee know who acknowledge the mercy and might and miracle of Gods working in withdrawing so many Kingdomes so many Nations of the earth in so short time from the obedience and superstition of Rome as that if Controversies had been to have been tried by number they would have found as many against them as with them so much of the earth is passed from them How much of heaven is passed from them that is how much lesse interest and claime to heaven they can have now when God hath afforded them so much light and they have resisted it then when they were in so great a part under invincible ignorance God onely who is the onely Judge in such causes knowes and he of his goodnesse enlarge their title to that place by their conversion towards it But how much soever of earth or heaven passe away they will not lose an acre an inch of Purgatory For as men are most delighted with things of their owne making their owne planting their owne purchasing their owne building so are these men therefore inamoured of Purgatory Men that can make Articles of faith of their owne Traditions And as men to elude the law against new Buildings first build sheds or stables and after erect houses there as upon old foundations so these men first put forth Traditions of their owne and then erect those Traditions into Articles of faith as ancient foundations of Religion Men that make God himselfe of a piece of bread
the sorenesse of Circumcision they slew them all Gods justice required bloud but that bloud is not spilt but poured from that head to our hearts into the veines and wounds of our owne soules There was bloud shed but no bloud lost Before the Law was thorowly established when Moses came downe from God and deprehended the people in that Idolatry to the Calfe before he would present himselfe as a Mediator betweene God and them Exod. 32.28 32. for that sinne he prepares a sacrifice of bloud in the execution of three thousand of those Idolaters and after that he came to his vehement prayer in their behalfe And in the strength of the Law Heb. 9 22. all things were purged with bloud and without bloud there is no remission Whether we place the reason of this in Gods Justice which required bloud or whether we place it in the conveniency that bloud being ordinarily received to be sedes animae the seat and residence of the soule The soule for which that expiation was to be could not be better represented nor purified then in the state and seat of the soule in bloud or whether we shut up our selves in an humble sobriety to inquire into the reasons of Gods actions thus we see it was no peace no remission but in bloud Nor is that so strange as that which followes in the next place per sanguinem ejus by his bloud Before Per sanguinem ejus Psal 50.10 under the Law it was in sanguine hircorum vitulorum In the bloud of Goats and Bullocks here it is in sanguine ejus in his bloud Not his as he claims all the beasts of the forrest all the cattle upon a thousand hils and all the fowles of the mountaines to be his not his as he sayes of Gold and Silver The Silver is mine and the Gold is mine Hag. 2.8 not his as he is Lord and proprietary of all by Creation so all bloud is his no nor his as the bloud of all the Martyrs was his bloud which is a neare relation and consanguinity but his so as it was the precious bloud of his body the seat of his soule the matter of his spirits the knot of his life This bloud he shed for me and I have bloud to shed for him too though he call me not to the tryall nor to the glory of Martyrdome Sanguis animae meae voluntas mea The bloud of my soule is my will Bern. Scindatur vena ferro compunctionis open a veine with that knife remorce compunction ut si non sensus certe consensus peccati effluat That though thou canst not bleed out all motions to sinne thou maist all consent thereunto Noli esse nimium justus noli sapere plus quam oportet St. Bernard makes this use of those Counsels Be not righteous overmuch nor be not overwise Ecces 7.16 Cui putas venae parcendum si justitia sapientia egent minutione what veine maist thou spare if thou must open those two veines righteousnesse and wisedome If they may be superfluously abundant if thou must bleed out some of thy Righteousnesse and some of thy wisedome cui venae parcendum at what veine must thou not bleed Tostat in Levit fo 45. D. Now in all sacrifices where bloud was to be offerd the fat was to be offerd to If thou wilt sacrifice the bloud of thy soule as St. Bernard cals the will sacrifice the fat too If thou give over thy purpose of continuing in thy sin give over the memory of it and give over all that thou possessest unjustly and corruptly got by that sinne else thou keepest the fat from God though thou give him the bloud If God had given over at his second daies work we had had no sunne no seasons If at his fift we had had no beeing If at the sixt no Sabbath but by proceeding to the seventh we are all and we have all Naaman 2 Reg. 5.14 who was out of the covenant yet by washing in Jordan seven times was cured of his leprosie seaven times did it even in him but lesse did not Tostat in Levit 4. q. 16. The Priest in the Law used a seven-fold sprinkling of bloud upon the Altar and we observe a seven-fold shedding of bloud in Christ In his Circumcision and in his Agony in his fulfilling of that Prophesie gen as vellicantibus I gave my cheeks to them that plucked off the haire and in his scourging Esay 50.6 in his crowning and in his nayling and lastly in the piercing of his side These seven channels hath the bloud of thy Saviour found Poure out the bloud of thy soule sacrifice thy stubborne and rebellious will seaven times too seaven times that is every day and seaven times every day for so often a just man falleth And then Prov. 24.16 how low must that man lie at last if he fall so often and never rise upon any fall and therefore raise thy self as often and as soone as thou fallest Iericho would not fall Jos 6. but by being compassed seaven dayes and seaven times in one day Compasse thy selfe comprehend thy selfe seaven times many times and thou shalt have thy losse of bloud supplied with better bloud with a true sense of that peace which he hath already made and made by bloud and by his owne bloud and by the bloud of his Crosse which is the last branch of this second part Greater love hath no man then to lay downe his life for his friend yet he that said so Crux Joh. 15.13 did more then so more then lay downe his life for he exposed it to violences and torments and all that for his enemies But doth not the necessity diminish the love where a testament is there must also of necessity be the death of the testator Heb. 9.16 was there then a necessity in Christs dying simply a necessity of coaction there was not such as is in the death of other men naturall or violent by the hand of Justice There was nothing more arbitrary more voluntary more spontaneous then all that Christ did for man And if you could consider a time before the contract between the Father and him had passed for the redemption of man by his death we might say that then there was no necessity upon Christ that he must dye But because that contract was from all eternity Luc. 24.26 supposing that contract that this peace was to be made by his death there entred the oportuit pati That Christ ought to suffer all these things and to enter into his glory And so as for his death so for the manner of his death by the Crosse it was not of absolute necessity and yet it was not by casualty neither not because he was to suffer in that Nation which did ordinarily punish such Malefactors such as he was accused to be seditious persons with that manner of death but all this proceeded ex
consideration upon David or upon the Jews Thereupon doe the Father truly I think more generally more unanimely then in any other place of Scripture take that place of Ezekile which we spake of before to be primarily intended of the last resurrection but secundarily of the Jews restitution But Gasper Sanctius a learned Jesuit that is not so rare but an ingenuous Jesuit too though he be bound by the Councel Trent to interpret Scriptures according to the Fathers yet he here ackowledges the whole truth that Gods purpose was to prove by that which they did know which was the generall resurrection that which they knew not their temporall restitution Tertullian is vehement at first but after more supple Allegoricae Scripturae saies he resurrectionem subradiant aliae aliae determinant Some figurative places of Scripture doe intimate a resurrection and some manifest it and of those manifest places he takes this vision of Ezekiel to be one But he comes after to this Sit corporum rerum meánihilinterest let it sighnifie a temporall resurrection so it may signifie the generall resurrection of our bodies too saies he and I am well satisfied and then the truth satisfies him for it doth signifie both It is true that Tertullian sayes De vacuo similitudo non competit If the vision be but a comparison if there were no such thing as a resurrection the comparison did not hold De nullo par abola non convenit saies he and truly If there were no resurrection to which that Parable might have relation it were no Parable All that is true but there was a resurrection alwaies knowne to them alwaies beleeved by them and that made their present resurrection from that calamity the more easie the more intelligible the more credible the more discernable to them Let therefore Gods method be thy method fixe thy self firmly upon that beliefe of the penerall resurrection and thou wilt never doubt of either of the particular resurrections either from sin by Gods grace or from worldly calamities by Gods power For that last resurrection is the ground of all By that Verévicta mors saies Irenaeus this Last enemy death is truly destroyed because his last spoile the body is taken out of his hands The same body eadem ovis as the same Father notes Christ did not fetch another sheep to the flock in the place of that which was lost but the same sheep God shall not give me another abetter body at the resurrection but the same body made better for Sinon haberet caro salvari neutiquam verbum Dei caro factum fuisset If the flesh of man were not to be saved Idem the Anchor of salvation would never have taken the flesh of man upon him The punishment that God laid upon Adam In dolore in sudore In sweat and in sorrow sbalt thou eate thy bread is but Donecreverteris till man returne to dust but when Man is returned to dust Gen. 3.17 God returnes to the remembrance of that promise Awake and sing yethat dwell in the dust A mercy already exhibited to us in the person of our Saviour Christ Jesus Esay 26.19 in whom Per primitias benedixit campo saies S. Chrysostome as God by taking a handfull for the first Fruits gave ablessing to the wholw field so he hath sealed the bodies of all mankind to his glory by pre-assuming the body of Christ to that glory For by that there is now Commercium inter Coelum terram there is a Trade driven a Staple established betweene Heaven and earth Bernard Ibi caronostra hic Spiritus ejus Thither have we sent our flest and hither hath he sent his Spirti This is the last abolition of this enemy Death for after this the bodies of the Saints he cannot touch the bodes of the damned he cannot kill and if he could hee were not therein their enemy but their friend This is that blessed and glorious State of which when all the Apostles met to make the Creed they could say no more but Credo Resurrectionem I heleeve the Resurrection of the body and when those two Reverend Fathers to whom it belongs shall come to speake of it upon the day proper for it in this place and if all the Bishops that ever met in Councels should meet them here they could but second the Apostles Credo with their Anathema We beleeve and woe be unto them that doe not beleeve the Resurrection of the body but in gong about to expresse it the lips of an Angell would be uncircumcised lips and the tongue of an Archangell would stammer I offer not therefore at it but in respect of and with relation to that blessed State according to the doctrine and practise of our Church we doe pray for the dead for the militant Church upon earth and the trimphant Church in Heaven and the whole Catholique Church in Heaveen and earth we doe pray that God will be pleased to hasten that Kingdome that we with all others departed in the true Faith of his holy Name may have this perfect consummation both of body and soule in his everlasting glory Amen SERMON XVI preached at VVhite-hall the first Friday in Lent 1622. JOHN 11.35 Iesus wept I Am now but upon the Compassion of Christ There is much difference between his Compassion and his Passion as much as between the men that are to handle them here But Lacryma pass ionis Chrisi est vicaria August A great personage may speake of his Passion of his blood My vicargae is to speake of his Compassion and his teares Let me chafe the wax and melt your soules in a bath of his Teares now Let him set to the great Seale of his effectuall passion in his blood then It is a Common place I know to speake of teares I would you knew as well it were a common practise to shed them Though it be not so yet bring S. Bernards patience Libenter audiam qui non sibi plausum sed mihi planctum moveat be willing to heare him that seeks not your acclamation to himselfe but your humiliation to his and your God not to make you praise with them that praise but to make you weepe with them that weepe And Iesus wept The Masorites the Masorites are the Critiques upon the Hebrew Bible the Old Testament cnnot tell us who divided the Chapters of the Old Testament into verses Neither can any other tell us who did it in the New Testament Whoever did it seemes to have stopped in an amazement in this Text and by making an intire verse of these two words Iesus wept and no more to intimate that there needs no more for the exalting of our devotion to a competent heighth then to consider how and where and when and why Iesus wept There is not a shorter verse in the Bible not a larger Text. There is another as short Semper gaudete Rejoyce evermore and of that holy Joy
miser abilis casus saies he cui non sufficit una regeneratio Miserable man that I am and miserable condition that I am fallen into whom one regeneration will not serve So is it a miserable death that hath swallowed us whom one Resurrection will serve We need three but if we have not two we were as good be without one There is a Resurrection from worldly calamities a resurrection from sin and a resurrection from the grave First Exod. 10.17 1 Cor. 15.31 Psal 41.8 from calamities for as dangers are called death Pharaoh cals the plague of Locusts a death Intreat the Lord your God that he may take from me this death onely And so S. Paul saies in his dangers I dye daily So is the deliverance from danger called a Resurrection It is the hope of the wicked upon the godly Now that he lieth he shall rise no more that is Now that he is dead in misery he shall have no resurrection in this world Now this resurrection God does not alwaies give to his servants neither is this resurrection the measure of Gods love of man whether he do raise him from worldly calamities or no. The second is the resurrection from sin Apec 20.5 and therefore this S. Iohn calls The first Resurrection as though the other whether we rise from worldly calamities or no were not to be reckoned Anima spiritualiter cadit spiritualiter resurget saies S. Augustine Since we are sure there is a spirituall death of the soule let us make sure a spirituall resurrection too Audacter dicam saies S. Hierome I say confidently Cum omnia posset Deus suscitare Virginem post ruinam non potest Howsoever God can do all things he cannot restore a Virgin that is fallen from it to virginity againe He cannot do this in the body but God is a Spirit and hath reserved more power upon the spirit and soule then upon the body and therefore Audacter dicam I may say with the same assurance that S. Hierome does No soule hath so prostituted her selfe so multiplied her fornications but that God can make her a virgin againe and give her even the chastity of Christ himselfe Fulfill therefore that which Christ saies Iohn 5.25 The houre is comming and now is when the dead shall heare the voyce of the Son of God and they that heare shall live Be this that houre be this thy first Resurrection Blesse Gods present goodnesse for this now and attend Gods leasure for the other Resurrection hereafter 1 Cor. 15.20 He that is the first fruits of them that slept Christ Jesus is awake he dyes no more he sleepes no more Sacrificium pro te fuit sed à te accepit August quod pro te obtulit He offered a Sacrifice for thee but he had that from thee that he offered for thee Primitiae fuit sed tuae primitiae He was the first fruits but the first fruits of thy Corne Spera in te futurum quod praecess it in primitiis tuis Doubt not of having that in the whole Croppe which thou hast already in thy first fruits that is to have that in thy self which thou hast in thy Saviour And what glory soever thou hast had in this world Glory inherited from noble Ancestors Glory acquired by merit and service Glory purchased by money and observation what glory of beauty and proportion what glory of health and strength soever thou hast had in this house of clay The glory of the later house Hag. 2.9 shall be greater then of the former To this glory the God of this glory by glorious or inglorious waies such as may most advance his own glory bring us in his time for his Son Christ Jesus sake Amen SERMON XIX Preached at S. Pauls upon Easter-day in the Evening 1624. APOC. 20.6 Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first Resurrection IN the first book of the Scriptures that of Genesis there is danger in departing from the letter In this last book this of the Revelation there is as much danger in adhering too close to the letter The literall sense is alwayes to be preserved but the literall sense is not alwayes to be discerned for the literall sense is not alwayes that which the very Letter and Grammer of the place presents as where it is literally said That Christ is a Vine and literally That his flesh is bread and literally That the new Ierusalem is thus situated thus built thus furnished But the literall sense of every place is the principall intention of the Holy Ghost in that place And his principall intention in many places is to expresse things by allegories by figures so that in many places of Scripture a figurative sense is the literall sense and more in this book then in any other As then to depart from the literall sense that sense which the very letter presents in the book of Genesis is dangerous because if we do so there we have no history of the Creation of the world in any other place to stick to so to binde our selves to such a literall sense in this book will take from us the consolation of many spirituall happinesses and bury us in the carnall things of this world The first error of being too allegoricall in Genesis transported divers of the ancients beyond the certain evidence of truth and the second error of being too literall in this book fixed many very many very ancient very learned upon an evident falshood which was that because here is mention of a first Resurrection and of raigning with Christ a thousand years after that first Resurrection There should be to all the Saints of God a state of happinesse in this world after Christs comming for a thousand yeares In which happy state though some of them have limited themselves in spirituall things that they should enjoy a kinde of conversation with Christ and an impeccability and a quiet serving of God without any reluctations or cōcupiscences or persecutions yet others have dreamed on and enlarged their dreames to an enjoying of all these worldly happinesses which they being formerly persecuted did formerly want in this world and then should have them for a thousand yeares together in recompence And even this branch of that error of possessing the things of this world so long in this world did very many and very good and very great men whose names are in honour and justly in the Church of God in those first times stray into and flattered themselves with an imaginary intimation of some such thing in these words Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first Resurrection Thus far then the text is literall Divisio That this Resurrection in the text is different from the generall Resurrection The first differs from the last And thus far it is figurative allegoricall mysticall that it is a spirituall Resurrection that is intended But wherein spirituall or of what spirituall Resurrection In
the figurative exposition of those places of Scripture which require that way oft to be figuratively expounded that Expositor is not to be blamed who not destroying the literall sense proposes such a figurative sense as may exalt our devotion and advance our edification And as no one of those Expositors did ill in proposing one such sense so neither do those Expositors ill who with those limitations that it destroy not the literall sense that it violate not the analogy of faith that it advance devotion do propose another and another such sense So doth that preacher well also who to the same end and within the same limit makes his use of both of all those expositions because all may stand and it is not evident in such figurative speeches which is the literall that is the principall intention of the Holy Ghost Of these words of this first Resurrection which is not the last of the body but a spirituall Resurrection there are three expositions authorized by persons of good note in the Church Alcazar First that this first Resurrection is a Resurrection from that low estate to which persecution had brought the Church and so it belongs to this whole State and Church August nostri and Blessed are we who have our part in this first Resurrection Secondly that it is a Resurrection from the death of sin of actuall and habituall sin so it belongs to every particular penitent soul and Blessed art thou blessed am I if we have part in this first Resurrection And then thirdly because after this Resurrection it is said That we shall raign with Christ a thousand yeares Ribera which is a certain for an uncertain a limited for a long time it hath also been taken for the state of the soul in heaven after it is parted from the body by death for though the soul cannot be said properly to have a Resurrection because properly it cannot die yet to be thus delivered from the danger of a second death by future sin to be removed from the distance and latitude and possibility of tentations in this world is by very good Expositors called a Resurrection and so it belongs to all them who are departed in the Lord Blessed and holy is he that hath part in this first Resurrection And then the occasion of the day which we celebrate now being the Resurrection of our Lord and Saviour Christ Jesus invites me to propose a fourth sense or rather use of the words not indeed as an exposition of the words but as a convenient exaltation of our devotion which is that this first Resurrection should be the first fruits of the dead The first Rising is the first Riser Christ Jesus for as Christ sayes of himself that He is the Resurrection so he is the first Resurrection the root of the Resurrection He upon whom our Resurrection all ours all our kindes of Resurrections are founded and so it belongs to State and Church and particular persons alive and dead Blessed and holy is he that hath part in this first Resurrection And these foure considerations of the words A Resurrection from persecution by deliverance a Resurrection from sin by grace a Resurrection from tentation to sin by the way of death to the glory of heaven and all these in the first Resurrection in him that is the roote of all in Christ Jesus These foure steps these foure passages these foure transitions will be our quarter Clock for this houres exercise First then 1. Part. From persecution we consider this first Resurrection to be a Resurrection from a persecution for religion for the profession of the Gospell to a forward glorious passage of the Gospell And so a learned Expositor in the Romane Church carries the exposition of this whole place though not indeed the ordinary way yet truly not incommodiously not improperly upon that deliverance which God afforded his Church from those great persecutions which had otherwise supplanted her in her first planting in the primitive times Then sayes he and in part well towards the letter of the place The devill was chained for a thousand yeares and then we began to raign with Christ for a thousand yeares reckoning the time from that time when God destroyed Idolatry more fully and gave peace and rest and free exercise of the Christian religion under the Christian Emperours till Antichrist in the height of his rage shall come and let this thousand yeares prisoner Satan loose and so interrupt our thousand yeares raign with Christ with new persecutions In that persecution was the death of the Church in the eye of the world In that deliverance by Christian Emperours was the Resurrection of the Church And in Gods protecting her ever since is the chaining up of the devill and our raigning with Christ for those thousand yeares And truly beloved if we consider the low the very low estate of Christians in those persecutions tryed ten times in the fire ten severall and distinct persecutions in which ten persecutions God may seem to have had a minde to deale eavenly with the world and to lay as much upon his people whom he would try then as he had laid upon others for his people before and so to equall the ten plagues of Aegypt in ten persecutions in the primitive Church if we consider that low that very low estate we may justly call their deliverance a Resurrection For as God said to Jerusalem I found thee in thy blood and washed thee so Christ Jesus found the Church the Christian Church in her blood and washed her and wiped her washed her in his own blood which washes white and wiped her with the garments of his own righteousnesse that she might be acceptable in the sight of God and then wiped all teares from her eyes took away all occasions of complaint and lamentation that she might be glorious in the eyes of man and chearefull in her own such was her Resurrection We wonder and justly at the effusion at the pouring out of blood in the sacrifices of the old Law that that little countrey scarce bigger then some three of our Shires should spend more cattle in some few dayes sacrifice at some solemnities and every yeare in the sacrifices of the whole yeare then perchance this kingdome could give to any use Seas of blood and yet but brooks tuns of blood and yet but basons compared with the sacrifices the sacrifices of the blood of men in the persecutions of the Primitive Church For every Oxe of the Jew the Christian spent a man and for every Sheep and Lamb a Mother and her childe and for every heard of cattle sometimes a towne of Inhabitants sometimes a Legion of Souldiers all martyred at once so that they did not stand to fill their Martyrologies with names but with numbers they had not roome to say such a day such a Bishop such a day such a Generall but the day of 500. the day of 5000. Martyrs and the martyrdome of
a City or the Martyrdome of an Army This was not a red Sea such as the Jews passed a Sinus a Creek an Arm an Inlet a gut of a Sea but a red Ocean that overflowed and surrounded all parts and from the depth of this Sea God raised them and such was their Resurrection Such as that they which suffered lay and bled with more ease then the executioner stood and sweat and embraced the fire more fervently then he blew it and many times had this triumph in their death that even the executioner himself was in the act of execution converted to Christ and executed with them such was their Resurrection When the State of the Jews was in that depression in that conculcation in that consternation in that extermination in the captivity of Babylon as that God presents it to the Prophet in that Vision in the field of dry bones so Fili hominis Son of man as thou art a reasonable man dost thou think these bones can live that these men can ever be re-collected to make up a Nation The Prophet saith Domine tu scis Lord thou knowest which is not only thou knowest whether they can or no but thou knowest clearly they can thou canst make them up of bones again for thou madest those bones of earth before If God had called in the Angels to the making of man at first and as he said to the Prophet Fili hominis Son of man as thou art a reasonable man so he had said to them Filii Dei as you are the Sons of God illumined by his face do you think that this clod of red earth can make a man a man that shall be equall to you in one of his parts in his soul and yet then shall have such another part as that he whom all you worship my essentiall Son shall assume and invest that part himself can that man made of that body and that soul be made of this clod of earth Those Angels would have said Domine tu scis Lord thou must needs know how to make as good creatures as us of earth who madest us of that which is infinitely lesse then earth of nothing before To induce to facilitate these apprehensions there were some precedents some such thing had been done before But when the Church was newly conceived and then lay like the egge of a Dove and a Gyants foot over it like a worm like an ant and hill upon hill whelmed upon it nay like a grain of corn between the upper and lower Mill-stone ground to dust between Tyrans and Heretiques when as she bled in her Cradle in those children whom Herod slew so she bled upon her crutches in those decrepit men whom former persecutions and tortures had creepled before when East and West joyned hands to crush her and hands and brains joyned execution to consultation to annihilate her in this wane of the Moon God gave her an instant fulnesse in this exinanition instant glory in this grave an instant Resurrection But beloved the expressing the pressing of their depressions does but chafe the Wax the Printing of the seale is the reducing to your memory your own case and not that point in your case as you were for a few yeares under a sensible persecution of fire and prisons that was the least part of your persecution for it is a cheap purchase of heaven if we may have it for dying Mat. 13.44 To sell all we have to buy that field where we know the treasure is is not so hard as not to know it To part with all for the great Pearle not so hard a bargaine as not to know that such a Pearle there might have beene had we could not say heaven was kept from us when we might have it for a Fagot and when even our enemies helpt us to it but your greater affliction was as you were long before in an insensiblenesse you thought your selves well enough and yet were under a worse persecution of ignorance and of superstition when you in your Fathers were so farre from expecting a resurrection as that you did not know your low estate or that you needed a Resurrection And yet God gave you a Resurrection from it a reformation of it Now who have their parts in this first resurrection or upon what conditions have you it We see in the fourth verse They that are beheaded for the witnesse of Iesus that is that are ready to be so when the glory of Jesus shall require that testimony In the meane time as it followes there They that have not worshipped the Beast that is not applied the Honour and the Allegiance due to their Soveraign to any forraign State nor the Honor due to God that is infallibility to another Prelate That have not worshipped the Beast nor his Image sayes the Text that is that have not been transported with vain imaginations of his power and his growth upon us here which hath been so diligently Painted and Printed and Preached and set out in the promises and practises of his Instruments to delude slack and easie persons And then as it is added there That have not received his mark upon their foreheads That is not declared themselves Romanists apparently nor in their hands sayes the Text that is which have not under-hand sold their secret endeavours though not their publique profession to the advancement of his cause These men who are ready to be beheaded for Christ and have not worshipped the Beast nor the Image of the Beast nor received his mark upon their foreheads nor in their hands these have their parts in this first resurrection These are blessed and holy sayes our Text Blessed because they have meanes to be holy in this resurrection For the Lamb hath unclasped the book the Scriptures are open which way to holinesse our Fathers lacked And then our blessednesse is that we shall raigne a thousand yeares with Christ Now since this first resurrection since the reformation we have raigned so with Christ but 100. yeares But if we persist in a good use of it our posterity shall adde the Cypher and make that 100. 1000. even to the time when Christ Jesus shall come againe and as he hath given us the first so shall give us the last resurrection and to that come Lord Jesus come quickly and till that continue this This is the first resurrection 2 Part. Apeccato in the first acceptation a resurrection from persecution and a peaceable enjoying of the Gospell And in a second it is a resurrection from sin and so it hath a more particular appropriation to every person Aug. So S. Augustine takes this place and with him many of the Fathers and with them many of the sons of the Fathers better sons of the Fathers then the Romane Church will confesse them to be or then they are themselves The Expositors of the Reformed Church They for the most part with S. Augustine take this first resurrection to be a resurrection
the Resurrection marvaile at nothing so much as at this nothing is so marvailous so wonderfull as this And secondly the approach of the Resurrection The houre is comming And thirdly The generality All that are in the graves And then the instrument of the resurrection The voice of Christ that shall be heard And lastly the diverse end of the resurrection They shall come forth they that have done good c. God hath a care of the Body of man that is first And he defers it not that is next And he extends it to all that is a third And a fourth is That he does that last act by him by whom he did the first The Creation and all betweene the Redemption that is by his Son by Christ And then the last is that this is an everlasting separation and divorce of the good and the bad The bad shall never be able to receive good from the Good nor to doe harme to the Good after that First then Christ saies Ne miremini Marvaile not at this Ne miremini not at your spirituall resurrection not that a Sermon should worke upon man not that a Sacrament should comfort a man make it not a miracle nor an extraordinary thing by hearing to come to repentance and so to such a resurrection For though S. Augustine say That to convert a man from sin is as great a miracle as Creation yet S. August speaks that of a mans first conversion in which the man himselfe does nothing but God all Then he is made of nothing but after God hath renewed him and proposed ordinary meanes in the Church still to worke upon him he must not looke for miraculous working but make Gods ordinary meanes ordinary to him This is Panis quotidianus The daily bread which God gives you as often as you meet here according to his Ordinances Ne miremini stand not to wonder as though you were not sure but come to enjoy Gods goodnesse in his ordinary way here But it is Hoc Ne miremini hoc Wonder not at this but yet there are things which we may wonder at Nil admirari is but the Philosophers wisdome He thinks it a weaknesse to wonder at any thing That any thing should be strange to him But Christian Philosophy that is rooted in humility tels us in the mouth of Clement of Alexand. Principium veritatis est res admirari The first step to faith is to wonder to stand and consider with a holy admiration the waies and proceedings of God with man for Admiration wonder stands as in the midst betweene knowledge and faith and hath an eye towards both If I know a thing or beleeve a thing I do no longer wonder but when I finde that I have reason to stop upon the consideration of a thing so as that I see enough to induce admiration to make me wonder I come by that step and God leads me by that hand to a knowledge if it be of a naturall or civill thing or to a faith if it be of a supernaturall and spirituall thing And therefore be content to wonder at this That God would have such a care to dignifie and to crown and to associate to his own everlasting presence the body of man God himself is a Spirit and heaven is his place my soul is a spirit and so proportioned to that place That God or Angels or our Soules which are all Spirits should be in heaven Ne miremini never wonder at that But since we wonder and justly that some late Philosophers have removed the whole earth from the Center and carried it up and placed it in one of the Spheares of heaven That this clod of earth this body of ours should be carried up to the highest heaven placed in the eye of God set down at the right hand of God Miremini hoc wonder at this That God all Spirit served with Spirits associated to Spirits should have such an affection such a love to this body this earthly body this deserves this wonder The Father was pleased to breathe into this body at first in the Creation The Son was pleased to assume this body himself after in the Redemption The Holy Ghost is pleased to consecrate this body and make it his Temple by his sanctisication In that Faciamus hominem Let us all us make man that consuitation of the whole Trinity in making man is exercised even upon this lower part of man the dignifying of his body So far as that amongst the ancient Fathers very many of them are very various and irresolved which way to pronounce and very many of them cleare in the negative in that point That the soule of man comes not to the presence of God but remaines in some out-places till the Resurrection of the body That observation that consideration of the love of God to the body of man withdrew them into that error That the soul it self should lack the glory of heaven till the body were become capable of that glory too They therefore oppose God in his purpose of dignifying the body of man first who violate and mangle this body which is the Organ in which God breathes And they also which pollute and defile this body in which Christ Jesus is apparelled and they likewise who prophane this body which the Holy Ghost as the high Priest inhabites and consecrates Trangressors in the first kinde that put Gods Organ out of tune that discompose and teare the body of man with violence are those inhumane persecutors who with racks and tortures and prisons and fires and exquisite inquisitions throw downe the bodies of the true Gods true servants to the Idolatrous worship of their imaginary Gods that torture men into hell and carry them through the inquisition into damnation S. Augustine moves a question and institutes a disputation and carries it somewhat problematically whether torture be to be admitted at all or no. That presents a faire probability which he sayes against it we presume sayes he that an innocent man should be able to hold his tongue in torture That is no part of our purpose in torture sayes he that hee that is innocent should accuse himselfe by confession in torture And if an innocent man be able to doe so why should we not thinke that a guilty man who shall save his life by holding his tongue in torture should be able to doe so And then where is the use of torture Res fragilis periculosa quaestio sayes that Lawyer who is esteemed the law alone Vlpian It is a slippery triall and uncertaine to convince by torture For many times sayes S. Augustine againe Innocens luit pro incerto scelere certissimas poenas He that is yet but questioned whether he be guilty or no before that be knowne is without all question miserably tortured And whereas many times the passion of the Judge and the covetousnesse of the Judge and the ambition of the Judge are calamities heavy enough upon a man that is
Text which is a Resurrection to Judgement and to an account with God that God whom we have displeased exasperated violated wounded in the whole course of our life lest we should be terrified and dejected at the presence of that God the whole worke is referred to the Son of Man which hath himselfe formerly felt all our infirmities and hath had as sad a soule at the approach of death as bitter a Cup in the forme of Death as heavy a feare of Gods forsaking him in the agony of death as we can have And for sin it self I would not I do not extenuate my sin but let me have fallen not seven times a day but seventy seven times a minute yet what are my sins to all those sins that were upon Christ The sins of all men and all women and all children the sins of all Nations all the East and West and all the North and South the sins of all times and ages of Nature of Law of Grace the sins of all natures sins of the body and sins of the mind the sins of all growth and all extentions thoughts and words and acts and habits and delight and glory and contempt and the very sin of boasting nay of our belying our selves in sin All these sins past present and future were at once upon Christ and in that depth of sin mine are but a drop to his Ocean In that treasure of sin mine are but single money to his Talent And therefore that I might come with a holy reverence to his Ordinance in this place though it be but in the Ministery of man that first Resurrection is attributed to the Son of God to give a dignity to that Ministery of man which otherwise might have beene under-valued that thereby we might have a consolation and a cheerefulnesse towards it It is He that is the Son of God and the Son of man Christ which remembers us alfo that all that belongs to the expressing of the Law of God to man must be received by us who professe our selves Christians in and by and for and through Christ We use to ascribe the Creation to the Father but the Father created by the Word and his Word is his Son Christ When he prepared the Heavens I was there saies Christ Prov. 8.27 of himselfe in the person of Wisdome and when he appointed the foundations of the earth then was I by him as one brought up with him It is not as one brought in to him or brought in by him but with him one as old that is as eternall as much God as he We use to ascribe Sanctification to the Holy Ghost But the Holy Ghost sanctifies in the Church And the Church was purchased by the blood of Christ and Christ remaines Head of the Church usque in consummationem till the end of the world I looke upon every blessing that God affords me and I consider whether it be temporall or spirituall and that distinguishes the metall the temporall is my silver and the spirituall is my Gold but then I looke againe upon the Inscription Cujus Imago whose Image whose inscription it beares and whose Name and except I have it in and for and by Christ Jesus Temporall and Spirituall things too are but imaginary but illusory shadows for God convayes himselfe to us no other way but in Christ The benefit then in our Text the Resurrection is by him but it is limited thus Christum It is by hearing him They that are in their Graves shall heare c. So it is in the other Resurrection too the spirituall resurrection v. 25. There they must heare him that will live In both resurrections That in the Church now by Grace And that in the Grave hereafter by Power it is said They shall heare him They shall which seemes to imply a necessity though not a coaction But that necessity not of equall force not equally irresistible in both In the Grave They shall Though they be dead and senslesse as the dust for they are dust it selfe though they bring no concurrence no cooperation They shall heare that is They shall not chuse but heare In the other resurrection which is in the Church by Grace in Gods Ordinance They shall heare too that is There shall be a voice uttered so as that they may heare if they will but not whether they will or no as in the other cafe in the grave Therefore when God expresses his gathering of his Church in this world it is Sibilabo congregabo I will hisse or chirpe for them Zecha 10.8 and so gather them He whispers in the voyce of the Spirit and he speaks a little louder in the voice of a man Let the man be a Boanerges a Son of thunder never so powerfull a speaker yet no thunder is heard over all the world Mat. 24.31 But for the voyce that shall be heard at the Resurrection He shall send his Angels with a great sound of a Trumpet A great sound such as may be made by a Trumpet such as an Angell all his Angels can make in a Trumpet and more then all that 1 Thes 4.16 The Lord himselfe shall descend from Heaven and that with a shout and with the voice of an Archangel that is saies S. Ambrose of Christ himselfe And in the Trumpet of God that is also Christ himselfe So then you have the Person Christ The meanes A Voyce And the powerfulnesse of that voyce in the Name of an Archangell which is named but once more in all the Scriptures And therefore let no man that hath an holy anhelation and panting after the Resurrection suspect that he shall sleepe in the dust for ever for this is a voyce that will be heard he must rise Let no man who because he hath made his course of life like a beast would therefore be content his state in death might be like a beast too hope that he shall sleepe in the dust for ever for this is a voice that must be heard And all that heare shall come forth they that have done good c. He shall come forth Procedent even he that hath done ill and would not shall come forth You may have seene morall men you may have seen impious men go in confidently enough not afrighted with death not terrified with a grave but when you shall see them come forth againe you shall see them in another complexion That man that dyed so with that confidence thought death his end It ends his seventy yeares but it begins his seventy millions of generations of torments even to his body and he never thought of that Indeed Iudicii nisi qui vitae aeternae praedestinatus est non potest reminisci saies S. Ambrose No man can no man dares thinke upon the last Judgement but he that can thinke upon it with comfort he that is predestinated to eternall life Even the best are sometimes shaked with the consideration of the Resurrection because it
is impossible to separate the consideration of the Resurrection from the consideration of the Judgement and the terrors of that may abate the joy of the other Sive comedoâ—sive bibo saies S. Hierom Whether I eate or drink still me thinks I heare this sound Surgite mortui venite ad Iudicium Arise you dead and come to Judgement When it cals me up from death I am glad when it cals me to Judgement that impaires my joy Can I thinke that God will not take a strict account or can I be without feare if I thinke he will Non expavescere requisiturum est dicere non requiret is excellently said by S. Bernard If I can put off all feare of that Judgement I have put off all imagination that any such Judgement shall be But when I begin this feare in this life here I end this feare in my death and passe away cheerefully But the wicked begin this feare when the Trumpet sounds to the Resurrection and then shall never end it but as a man condemned to be halfe hang'd and then quartered hath a fearfull addition in his quartering after and yet had no ease in his hanging before so they that have done ill when they have had their hanging when they have suffered in soule the torments of Hell from the day of their death to the day of Judgement shall come to that day with feare as to an addition to that which yet was insinite before And therefore the vulgat Edition hath rendred this well Procedent They shall proceed they shall go farther and farther in torment But this is not the object of our speculation Conâ—lusio the subject of our meditation now we proposed this Text for the Contemplation of Gods love to man and therefore we rather comfort our selves with that branch and refresh our selves with the shadow of that That they who have done good shall come forth unto the Resurrection of life Alas the others shall live as long as they Lucifer is as immortall as Michael and Iudas as immortall as S. Peter August But Vita damnatorum mors est That which we call immortality in the damned is but a continuall dying howsoever it must be called life it hath all the qualities of death saving the ease and the end which death hath and damnation hath not They must come forth they that have done evill must do so too Neither can stay in their house their grave for their house though that house should be the sea shall be burnt downe all the world dissolv'd with fire But then They who have done evill shall passe from that fire into a farther heat without light They who have done good into a farther light without heat But fix upon the Conditions and performe them They must have done Good To have knowne Good to have beleeved it to have intended it nay to have preached it to others will not serve They must have done good They must be rooted in faith and then bring forth fruit and fruit in season and then is the season of doing good when another needs that good at thy hands God gives the evening raine but he gave the morning rain before A good man gives at his death but he gives in his life time too To them belongs this Resurrection of the body to life upon which since our Text inclines us to marvell rather then to discourse I will not venture to say with David Narrabo omnia mirabilia tua I will shew all thy wondrous works Psal 9.2 Psal 105.5 Psal 119 18. an Angels tongue could not shew them but I will say with him Mementote mirabilium Remember the marvellous works he hath done And by that God will open your eyes that you may behold the wondrous things that he will do Remember with thankfulnesse the severall resurrections that he hath given you from superstition and ignorance in which you in your Fathers lay dead from sin and a love of sin in which you in the dayes of your youth lay dead from sadnesse and dejection of spirit in which you in your worldly crosses or spirituall tentations lay dead And assure your self that that God that loves to perfect his own works when you shall lye dead in your graves will give you that Resurrection to life which he hath promised to all them that do good and will extend to all them who having done evill do yet truly repent the evill they have done SERMON XXI The first Sermon upon this Text Preached at S. Pauls in the Evening upon Easter-day 1626. 1 COR. 15.29 Else what shall they do that are baptized for dead If the dead rise not at all why are they then baptized for dead O Dit Dominus qui festum Domini unum putat diem sayes Origen God hates that man that thinks any of his Holy dayes last but one day That is that never thinks of a Resurrection but upon Easter-day I have therefore proposed words unto you which will not be determined this day That so when at any other time we return to the handling of then we may also return to the meditation of the Resurrection To which we may best give a beginning this day in which we celebrate the Resurrection of our Lord and Saviour Christ Jesus Aâ—d in his one Resurrection all those severall kinds of Resurrections which appertain unto us because howsoever these words have received divers good expositions from divers good Expositors and received one perverse exposition from our adversaries in the Romane Church who have detorted and deflected them to the maintenance of their Purgatory yet all agree that these words are an argument for the Resurrection and therefore proper to this day And yet this day we shall not so much inquire wherein and in what sense the words are an argument of the Resurrection as enjoy the assurance that they are so not so much distribute the Text into an explication of the particular words which is as the Mintage and Coyning of gold into severall lesser pieces as to lay up the whole wedge and ingot of Gold all at once in you that is the precious assurance of your glorious Resurrection In establishing whereof we shall this day make but this short passage Divisio by these two steps Glory in the end And Grace in the way The Glory of our bodies in the last Resurrection then And the Grace upon our souls in their present Resurrection now For as we do not dig for gold meerly and only for treasure but to dispense and issue it also for present provision and use not only for the future but for the present too So we doe not gather the doctrine of the Resurrection only for that dignity which the body shall receive in the Triumphant but also for the consolation which thereby our soules may receive in the Militant Church And therefore as in our first part which will be By what meanes the knowledge and assurance of the Resurrection of the body
they have brought it nearer to the understanding nay even to the very sense by producing some such things as even in nature doe not only resemble but as they apprehend evict a resurrection yet when all is done and all the reasons of Athenogaras and the Schoole and of S. Paul himselfe are waighed they determine all in this that they are faire and pregnant and convenient illustrations of that which was beleeved before and that they have force and power to encline to an assent and to create and beget such a probability as a discreet and sad and constant man might rest in and submit to But yet we shall finde also that though no man may speak a word or conceive a thought against the resurrection because for the matter we are absolutely and expresly concluded by the Scriptures yet a man may speak probably and dangerously against any particulur argument that is produced for the resurrection We beleeve it immediately intirely cheafully undisputably because we see it expresly delivered by the Holy Ghost And we embrace thankfully that sweetnesse and that fulnesse of that blessed Spirit that as he laies an obligation upon our faith by delivering the article positively to us so he is also pleased to accompany that Article with reasons and arguments proportionable to our reason and understanding for though those reasons do not so conclude us as that nothing might be said to the contrary or nothing doubted after yet the Holy Ghost having first begotten the faith of this Article Per ea augescit fides pinguescit as Luther speaks in another case By those reasons and arguments and illustrations that faith is nourished and maintained in a good habitude and constitution And of that kind are all the reasons brought by S. Paul here Argumentae Apostols The matter is positively delivered by him and so apprehended by us and his reasons as we said before issue out of two Topiques Be pleased to looke upon both The first is our patterne Christ Jesus He is risen therefore we shall In which though I have a faire illustration and consolation in that The Head is risen therefore the Body shall yet this reaches not to make my Resurrection like his for I shall not rise as he did And then from his other Topique his reasons rise thus If there be no Resurrection we that suffer thus much for the prefession of Christ are the miserablest men in the world Why so have not all Philosophers had Scholars and all Heretiques Disciples and all great Men flatterers and every private man affections And hath there not been as much suffered by occasion of these as S. Paul argues upon here and yet no imagination no expectation of a resurrection Leave out the consideration of Philosophers many of which suffered more then the Turks doe and yet the Turks suffer infinitely more in their Mortifications then the Papists doe Leave out the Heretiques which were so hungry of suffering that if they could not provoke others to kill them they would kill themselves Leave out the pressures of our own affections and concupiscencies and yet the covetous man is in a continuall starving and the licentious man in a continuall Consumption Take onely into your consideration the miserable vexation of the flatterer and humourer and dependant upon great persons that their time is not their owne nor their words their owne their joyes are not their owne nay their sorrowes are not their owne they might not smile if they would nor they may not sigh when they would they must doe all according to anothers mind and yet they must not know his minde consider this and you cannot say but that there is as much suffered in the world as this upon which S. Paul argues by them who place not their consolation nor their retribution in the hope of a resurrection He argues farther Edamus bibamus If there be no resurrection let us dissolve our selves into the pleasures of this world and enjoy them Why so too Have we not stories full of exemplar men that might be our patterns for sobriety and continency and denying themselves the sweetnesses of this life and yet never placed Consolation nor Retribution upon a Resurrection Would not S. Pauls own Pondus gloriae That there is an exceeding waight of eternall glory attending our afflictions serve our turne though that were determined in the salvation of the soule though there were no resurrection of the body It is strongly and wisely said by Aquinas Derogant fidei Christianae rationes non cogentes To offer reasons for any Article of faith which will not convince a man therein derogates from the dignity of that Article Therefore we must consider S. Pauls reasons as they were intended to Christians that had received the Article of the Resurrection into their faith before And then as God gave Adam a body immediately from himself but then maintained and nourished that body by other meanes so the holy Ghost by S. Paul gives the article of the Resurrection to our faith positively and then enables us to declare to our own consciences and to other mens understandings that we beleeve no impossible thing in beleeving the Resurrection for as it is the candle that lights me but yet I take a lanthorne to defend that candle from the wind so my faith assures me of the Resurrection but these reasons and illustrations assist that faith And so we have done with our first part How this assurance accrues unto us and passe in order to the other The consolation which we have from this resurrection of the body not onely in it selfe but as it gives us a sense of the spirituall resurrection of our soules from sinne by Grace We are assured then of a Resurrection and we see how that assurance growes 2. Part. But of what Of all Body and soule too For Quod cadit resurgit sayes S. Hierome All that is falne receives a resurrection and that is suppositum sayes the Schoole that is The person the whole man not taken in pieces soule alone or body alone but both For as Damascen expresses the same that S. Hierome intends Resurrectio est ejus quod cecidit iterata surrectio The Resurrection is a new rising of that which fell and Man fell A man is not saved a sinner is not redeemed I am not received into heaven if my body be left out The soule and the body concurred to the making of a sinner and body and soule must concur to the making of a Saint So it is in the last Resurrection so it is in the first which we consider now by Grace from sin And therefore we receive into comparison Triplicem casum a threefold fall and a threefold resurrection as in the naturall and bodily death so in the spirituall death of the soule also For first in naturall death there is Casus in separationem The man the person falls into a separation a divorce of body and soul and the resurrection from
shall know that I am the Lord God shall restore them to life and more to strength and more to beauty and comelinesse acceptable to himselfe in Christ Jesus Your way is Recollecting gather your selves into the Congregation and Communion of Saints in these places gather your sins into your memory and poure them out in humble confessions to that God whom they have wounded Gather the crummes under his Table lay hold upon the gracious promises which by our Ministery he lets fall upon the Congregation now and gather the seales of those promises whensoever in a rectified conscience his Spirit beares witnesse with your spirit that you may be worthy receivers of him in his Sacrament and this recollecting shall be your resurrection Beatus qui habet partem Apâ—â— 20.6 sayes S. Iohn Blessed is he that hath part in the first Resurrection for on such the second death hath no power He that rises to this Judgement of recollecting and of judging himselfe shall rise with a chearfulnesse and stand with a confidence when Christ Jesus shall come in the second Auâ— And Quando exacturus est in secundo quod dedit in primo when Christ shall call for an account in that second judgement how he hath husbanded those graces which he gave him for the first he shall make his possession of this first resurrection his title and his evidence to the second When thy body which hath been subject to all kindes of destruction here to the destruction of a Flood in Catarrhs and Rheums and Dropsies and such distillations to the destruction of a fire in Feavers and Frenzies and such conflagrations shall be removed safely and gloriously above all such distempers and malignant impressions and body and soule so united as if both were one spirit in it selfe and God so united to both as that thou shalt be the same spirit with God God began the first World but upon two Adam and Eve The second world after the Flood he began upon a greater stock upon eight reserved in the Arke But when he establishes the last and everlasting world in the last Resurrection he shall admit such a number as that none of us who are here now none that is or hath or shall be upon the face of the earth shall be denied in that Resurrection if he have truly felt this for Grace accepted is the infallible earnest of Glory SERMON XXII Preached at S. Pauls upon Easter-day 1627. HEB. 11.35 Women received their dead raised to life againe And others were tortured not accepting a deliverance that they might obtaine a better Resurrection MErcy is Gods right hand with that God gives all Faith is mans right hand with that man takes all David Psal 136. opens and enlarges this right hand of God in pouring out his blessings plentifully abundantly manifoldly there And in this Chapter the Apostle opens and enlarges this right hand of man by laying hold upon those mercies of God plentifully abundantly manifoldly by faith here There David powres downe the mercies of God in repeating and re-repeating that phrase For his mercy endureth for ever And here S. Paul carries up man to heaven by repeating and re-repeating the blessings which man hath attained by faith By faith Abel sacrificed By faith Enoch walked with God By faith Noah built an Arke c. And as in that Psalme Gods mercies are exprest two waies First in the good that God did for his servants He remembred them in their low estate Ver 23. Ver. 24. for his mercy endureth for ever And then againe He redeemed them from their enemies for his mercy endureth for ever And then also in the evill that he brought upon their enemies He slew famous Kings for his mercy endureth for ever And then He gave their land for an heritage for his mercy endureth for ever So in this Chapter the Apostle declares the benefits of faith two wayes also First how faith enriches us and accommodates us in the wayes of prosperity By faith Abraham went to a place which he received for an inheritance And so By faith Sarah received strength to conceive seed Ver. 8. Ver. 11. Ver. 34. And then how faith sustaines and establishes us in the wayes of adversity By faith they stopt the mouthes of Lions by faith they quencht the violence of fire by faith they escaped the edge of the sword in the verse immediatly before the Text. And in this verse which is our Text the Apostle hath collected both The benefits which they received by faith Women received their dead raised to life againe And then the holy courage which was infused by Faith in their persecutions Others were tortured not accepting deliverance that they might receive a better Resurrection And because both these have relation evidently pregnantly to the Resurrection for their benefit was that the Women received their dead by a Resurrection And their courage in their persecution was That they should receive a better Resurrection therefore the whole meditation is proper to this day in which wee celebrate all Resurrections in the Root in the Resurrection of the First fruits of the dead our Lord and Saviour Christ Iesus Our Parts are two How plentifully God gives to the faithfull Divisio Women receive their dead raised to life againe And how patiently the faithfull suffer Gods corrections Others were tortured not accepting c. Though they be both large considerations Benefits by Faith Patience in the Faithfull yet we shall containe our selves in those particulars which are exprest or necessarily implyed in the Text it selfe And so in the first place we shall see first The extraordinary consolation in Gods extraordinary Mercies in his miraculous Deliverances such as this Women received their dead raised to life again And secondly we shall seethe examples to which the Apostle refers here What women had had their dead restored to life againe And then lastly in that part That this affection of joy in having their dead restored to life againe being put in the weaker sexe in women onely we may argue conveniently from thence That the strength of a true and just joy lies not in that but that our virility our holy manhood our religious strength consists in a faithfull assurance that we have already a blessed communion with these Saints of God though they be dead and we alive And that we shall have hereafter a glorious Association with them in the Resurrection though we never receive our dead raised to life again in this world And in those three considerations we shall determine that first part And then in the other The Patience of the Faithfull Others were tortured c. we shall first look into the examples which the Apostle refers to who they were that were thus tortured And secondly the heighth and exaltation of their patience They would not accept a deliverance And lastly the ground upon which their Anchor was cast what established their patience That they might obtaine a better Resurrection
others have thought but that answers not the sicutiest and we know we shall see God not only the body of Christ as he is in his Essence Why did all that are said to have seene God face to face fee his Essence no. In earth God assumed some materiall things to appeare in and is said to have been seene face to face when he was seen in those assumed formes But in heaven there is no materiall thing to be assumed and if God be seen face to face there he is seen in his Essence S. Augustine summes it up fully In Psal 36.10 upon those words In lumine tuo In thy light we shall see light Te scilicet in te we shall see thee in thee that is sayes he face to face And then Vt cognitus what is it to know him as we are knowne First is that it which is intended here That we shall know God so as we are known It is not expressed in the Text so It is only that we shall know so not that we shall know God so But the frame and context of the place hath drawn that unanime exposition from all that it is meant of our knowledge of God then A comprehensive knowledge of God it cannot be To comprehend is to know a thing as well as that thing can be known and we can never know God so but that he will know himselfe better Our knowledge cannot be so dilated nor God condensed and contracted so as that we can know him that way comprehensively It cannot be such a knowledge of God as God hath of himselfe nor as God hath of us For God comprehends us and all this world and all the worlds that he could have made and himselfe But it is Nota similitudinis non aequalitatis As God knowes me so I shall know God but I shall not know God so as God knowes me It is not quantum but sicut not as much but as truly as the fire does as truly shine as the Sun shines though it shine not out so farre nor to so many purposes So then I shall know God so as that there shall be nothing in me to hinder me from knowing God which cannot be said of the nature of man though regenerate upon earth no nor of the nature of an Angell in heaven left to it selfe till both have received a super-illustration from the light of Glory And so it shall be a knowledge so like his knowledge as it shall produce a love like his love and we shall love him as he loves us For as S. Chrysostome and the rest of the Fathers whom Oecumenius hath compacted interpret it Cognoscam practicè idest accurrendo I shall know him Aug. that is imbrace him adhere to him Qualis sine fine festivitas what a Holy-day shall this be which no working day shall ever follow By knowing and loving the unchangeable the immutable God Mutabimur in immutabilitatem we shall be changed into an unchangeablenesse sayes that Father that never said any thing but extraordinarily He sayes more Idem Dei praesentia si in inferno appareret If God could be seene and known in hell hell in an instant would be heaven How many heavens are there in heaven how is heaven multiplied to every soule in heaven where infinite other happinesses are crowned with this this fight and this knowledge of God there And how shall all those heavens be renewed to us every day Qui non mir abimur hodiè Idem that shall be as glad to see and to know God millions of ages after every daies seeing and knowing as the first houre of looking upon his face And as this seeing and this knowing of God crownes all other joyes and glories even in heaven so this very crown is crowned 2 Pet. 1.4 There growes from this a higher glory which is participes erimus Divinae naturae words of which Luther sayes that both Testaments afford none equall to them That we shall be made partakers of the Divine nature Immortall as the Father righteous as the Son and full of all comfort as the Holy Ghost Let me dismisse you with an easie request of S. Augustine Fieri non potest ut seipsum non diligat qui Deum diligit That man does not love God that loves not himself doe but love your selves Imo solus se diligere novit qui Deum diligit Only that man that loves God hath the art to love himself doe but love your selves for if he love God he would live eternally with him and if he desire that and indeavour it earnestly he does truly love himself and not otherwise And he loves himself who by seeing God in the Theatre of the world and in the glasse of the creature by the light of reason and knowing God in the Academy of the Church by the Ordinances thereof through the light of faith indeavours to see God in heaven by the manifestation of himselfe through the light of Glory and to know God himself in himself and by himself as he is all in all Contemplatively by knowing as he is known and Practically by loving as he is loved SERMON XXIV Preached upon Easter-day 1629. JOB 4.18 Rehold he put no trust in his Servants And his Angels he charged with folly WE celebrate this day the Resurrection of our Lord and Saviour Christ Jesus Blessed for ever and in His all ours All that is the Resurrection of all Persons All that is the Resurrection of all kinds whether the Resurrection from calamities in this world Ezechiels Resurrection where God saies to him Putasne vivent Son of man doest thou thinke Ezek. 8.6 these scattered Bones can live againe or the Resurrection from sin S. Iohns Resurrection Apo. 20.5 1 Cor. 15. Blessed is he that hath his part in the first Resurrection Or of the Resurrection to Glory S. Pauls Resurrection that is more argued and more particularly established by that Apostle then by the rest This Resurrection to glory is the consummation of all the others therefore we looke especially at this and in this our qualification in this state of glory is thus expressed by our Saviour Christ himselfe Erimus sicut Angeli In the Resurrection Luke 20.36 we shall be as the Angels And that we might not flatter our selves in a dreame of a better estate then the Angels have in this text we have an intimation what their state and condition is Behold he put no trust in his Servants and his Angels he charged with folly In our handling of these words these shall be our two parts De quibus and De quo Divisio Of whom these words are spoken and then of what First what is positively said and then what is consequently inferred what proposed and what concluded what of the Angels and then what of us who shall be like the Angels In the first the Persons of whom these words are spoken because though our Interpreters vary in
Congregation will I blesse the Lord But yet I finde the highest exaltations and the noblest elevations of my devotion Psal 35.18 when I give thanks in the great Congregation and praise him among much people for so me thinks I come nearer and nearer to the Communion of Saints in Heaven Apoc. 21.22 Where it is therefore said that there is no Temple I saw no Temple in Heaven because all Heaven is a Temple And because the Lord God Almighty and the Lambe who fill all Heaven are Obviam Domino as S. Iohn sayes there the Temple thereof So far towards that as into the Ayre this text carries us Obviam Domino To meet the Lord. The Lord requires no more not so much at our hands as he does for us When he is come from the right hand of his Father in heaven into the ayre to meet us he is come farther then we are to go from the grave to meet him But we have met the Lord in many a lower place in many unclean actions have we met the Lord in our owne hearts and said to our selves Surely the Lord is here and sees us Gen. â—9 9 and with Ioseph How then can I doe this great wickednesse and sin against my God and yet have proceeded gone forward in the accomplishment of that sin But there it was Obviam Iesu Obviam Christo We met a Iesus We met a Christ a God of mercy who forgave us those sins Here in our text it is Obviam Domino We must meet the Lord He invests here no other name but that He hath laid aside his Christ and his Iesus names of Mercy and Redemption and Salvation and comes only in the name of power The Lord The Judge of quick and dead In which Judgement he shews no mercy All his mercy is exercised in this life and he that hath not received his portion of that mercy before his death shall never receive any There he judges only by our workes Whom hast thou fed whom hast thou clothed Then in judgement we meet the Lord the Lord of power and the last time that ever we shall meet a Iesus a Christ a God of mercy is upon our death-bed but there we shall meet him so as that when we meet him in another name The Lord in the ayre yet by the benefit of the former mercy received from Iesus We shall be with the Lord for ever First Erimus We shall Bee we shall have a Beeing Erimus There is nothing more contrary to God and his proceedings then annihilation to Bee nothing Do nothing Think nothing It is not so high a step to raise the poore out of the dust Psal 113.7 and to lift the needy from the dunghill and set him with Princes To make a King of a Beggar is not so much as to make a Worm of nothing Whatsoever God hath made thee since yet his greatest work upon thee was that he made thee and howsoever he extend his bounty in preferring thee yet his greatest largenesse is in preserving thee in thy Beeing And therefore his own name of Majesty is Jehovah which denotes his Essence his Beeing And it is usefully moved and safely resolved in the School that the devill himself cannot deliberately wish himselfe nothing Suddenly a man may wish himself nothing because that seemes to deliver him from the sense of his present misery but deliberately he cannot because whatsoever a man wishes must be something better then he hath yet and whatsoever is better is not nothing Nihil contrarium Deo August There is nothing truly contrary to God To do nothing is contrary to his working but contrary to his nature contrary to his Essence there is nothing For whatsoever is any thing even in that Beeing and therefore because it is hath a conformity to God and an affinity with God who is Beeing Essence it self In him we have our Beeing sayes the Apostle Act. 17.28 But here it is more then so not only In illo but Cum illo not only In him but With him not only in his Providence but in his Presence The Hypocrite hath a Beeing and in God but it is not with God Cum illc Esay 29.13 Qua cor longe With his lips he honours God but removes his heart far from him And God sends him after his heart that he may keep him at that distance as S. Gregory reads and interprets that place of Esay Redite praevaricatores ad cor Return O sinners follow your own heart Esay 46.8 and then I am sure you and I shall never meet Our Saviour Christ delivers this distance plainly Discedite à me Depart from me ye cursed into everlasting fire Mat. 25.42 Where the first part of the sentence is incomparably the heaviest the departing worse then the fire the intensnesse of that fire the ayre of that brimstone the anguish of that worm the discord of that howling and gnashing of teeth is no comparable no considerable part of the torment in respect of the privation of the sight of God the banishment from the presence of God an absolute hopelesnesse an utter impossibility of ever comming to that which sustaines the miserable in this world that though I see no Sun here I shall see the Son of God there The Hypocrite shall not do so we shall Bee and Bee with him and Bee with him for ever which is the last thing that doth fall under ours or can fall under any consideration Of S. Hierome S. Augustine sayes Quae Hicronymus neseivit Semper nullus hominum unquam seivit That that S. Hierome knew not no man ever knew And S. Cyril to whom S. Augustine said that said also to S. Augustine in magnifying of S. Hierome That when a Catholique Priest disputed with an Heretique and cited a passage of S. Hierome and the Heretique said Hierome lyed instantly he was struck dumb yet of this last and everlasting joy and glory of heaven in the fruition of God S. Hierome would adventure to say nothing no not then when he was devested of his mortall body dead for as soon as he dyed at Bethlem he came instantly to Hippo S. Augustines Bishoprick and though he told him Hieronymi anima sum I am the soule of that Hierome to whom thou art now writing about the joyes and glory of heaven yet he said no more of that but this Quid quaeris brevi immittere vasculo totum mare Canst thou hope to poure the whole Sea into a thimble or to take the whole world into thy hand And yet that is easier then to comprehend the joy and the glory of heaven in this life Nor is there any thing that makes this more incomprehensible then this Semper in our text the Eternity thereof That we shall be with him for ever For this Eternity this Everlastingnesse is not only incomprehensible to us in this life but even in heaven we can never know it experimentally and
all the Disciples 1 Part. in the mouth of S. Peter Thou art Christ the Son of the living God Christ replied thereunto some things Mat. 16.18 which had a more speciall and a more personall respect to Peter then to the rest yet were intended of the rest too so when Christ in this text promises the Comforter he does that most immediately and most personally to them to whom he then spoke but he intends it to us also and the holy Ghost shall teach us us that are in our selves Ignorant Ignorantes which is our first Discomfort The Schooles have made so many Divisions and sub-divisions and re-devisions and post-divisions of Ignorance that there goes as much learning to understand ignorance as knowleg One much elder then al they elder as some will have it then any but some of the first Secretaries of the Holy Ghost in the Bible that is Trismegistus hath said as much as all Nequitia animae Ignorantia Ignorance is not onely the drousinesse the sillinesse but the wickednesse of the soule Not onely dis-estimation in this world and damnification here but damnation in the next world proceeds from ignorance And yet here in this world knowledge is but as the earth and ignorance as the Sea there is more sea then earth more ignorance then knowledge and as if the sea do gaine in one place it loses in another so is it with knowledge too if new things be found out as many and as good that were knowne before are forgotten and lost What Anatomist knowes the body of man thorowly or what Casuist the soule What Politician knowes the distemper of the State thorowly or what Master the disorders of his owne family Princes glory in Arcanis that they have secrets which no man shall know and God knowes they have hearts which they know not themselves Thoughts and purposes indigested fall upon them and surprise them It is so in naturall in morall in civill things we are ignorant of more things then we know And it is so in divine and supernaturall things too for for them the Scripture is our onely light and of the Scripture S. Augustine professes Plur a se nescire quam scire That there are more places of Scripture that he does not then that he does understand Hell is darknesse the way to it is the cloud of Ignorance hell it self is but condensed Ignorance multiplied Ignorance To that David ascribes all the distempers of the world They doe not know neither will they understand they walke on in darknesse and therefore Psal 82.5 as he adds there All the foundations of all the earth are out of course He that had made the most absolute conquest of Ignorance in this world Solomon is the best Judge of it the best Counsellor against it and he saies As thou knowest not how thy bones grew in thy Mother Eccles 11.5 even so thou knowest not the works of God who worketh all We are all equally Ignorant of all of naturall of spirituall things What though This That man knoweth not his time Eccles 9.12 but is snared in an evill time If he knew his time no time would be evill unto him Yet though he know not the present time but let that passe inconsiderately yet if he consider the future he may recover But he does not that he cannot doe that Eccles 10.14 Man cannot tell what shall be saies Solomon But may he not learne No. For who can tell him saies he there For he knowes not how to goe to the City In vulgar in triviall things he is ignorant of his end and ignorant of his way Bene facere nesciverunt saies the Prophet Ier. 4.22 They have no knowledge to doe good and what followes Erubescere nescierunt They are not ashamed when they have done evill Nesciunt cujus spiritus sunt Luke 9.15 It was Christs increpation upon his owne Disciples They knew not of what spirit they were They discerned not betweene a zealous and a vindicative spirit Nescitis quid petatis was Christs increpation upon his Disciples too You know not what you aske And yet this Nequitia animae Mat. 20.22 this wickednesse of the soule this pestilence of the soule Ignorance have men ventured to call The mother of devotion But miserable Comforters are they in respect of the Comforter the Holy Ghost for as that Cum perver so perverteris is spoken of God Psal 18.27 That God will learne of the froward to be froward so God will learne of the ignorant to be ignorant ignorant of us and to those that doe not study him here he will say hereafter Nescio vos I know not you This then is our first discomfort of our selves we are ignorant and yet there is a greater vexation then this that naturally we have a desire of knowledge and naturally no meanes to attaine to it Ignorance may be said to worke Appetentes as an in-appetency in the stomach and as an insipidnesse a tastlesnesse in the palate But the desire of knowledge without meanes to attaine to it is as a hunger in a dearth or in a wildernesse Ignorance is a kinde of slumbering or stupidity but this desire without meanes is a continuall racking a continuall pressing a far greater vexation and torment ignorance may work as a Lethargy but this desire as a phrensie Esay 37.3 This is the day of trouble saies Ezechias in the bitternesse and passion of his soule and of rebuke and of blasphemy for the Children are come to the birth and there is not strength to bring them forth To a barrennesse that is never to have conceived there belonged amongst that people a kind of shame and contempt and that is our case in ignonorance which is the barrenness of the soule But to come to the throwes of Childbirth and then not to have strength or not to have helpe to be delivered that is the dangerous that is the deadly torment and that represents our soule in this desire of knowledge without means to attain to it And yet this vexation no man can devest It is an hereditary a naturall impression in man every man naturally sayes the Philosopher desires to know to learne And yet nature that imprinted that desire in every man hath not given every man not any man in nature meanes to satisfie that desire for even by nature man hath a desire to know supernaturall things Solomon was extended with this desire of knowledge 1 King 3.11 but he found no satisfaction till upon petition and contracting all his desires into that One Dan. 9.23 he obtained it of God Daniel was Vir desideriorum A man composed of desires Dan. 10.2 and of solicitude He professes that he mourned three full weekes He eate no pleasant bread Ver. 8. neither came flesh or wine into his mouth nor oyle upon his body His comlinesse was turned into corruption and he retained no strength till God
envy God that glory We reade of divers great actors in the first persecutions of the Christians who being fearefully tormented in body and soule at their deaths took care only that the Christians might not know what they suffered lest they should receive comfort and their God glory therein Certainly Herod would have been more affected if he had thought that we should have knowne how his pride was punished with those sudden wormes Acts 12.23 then with the punishment it selfe This is a self-reproofe even in this though he will not suffer it to break out to the edification of others there is some kinde of chiding himself for some thing mis-done But is there any comfort in this reproofe Consolatio Truly beloved I can hardly speak comfortably of such a man after he is dead that dyes in such a dis-affection loath that God should receive glory or his servants edification by these judgements But even with such a man if I assisted at his death-bed I would proceed with a hope to infuse comfort even from that dis-affection of his As long as I saw him in any acknowledgement though a negligent nay though a malignant a despitefull acknowledgement of God as long as I found him loath that God should receive glory even from that loathnesse from that reproofe from that acknowledgement That there is a God to whom glory is due I would hope to draw him to glorifie that God before his last gasp My zeale should last as long as his wives officiousnesse or his childrens or friends or servants obsequiousnesse or the solicitude of his Physitians should as long as there were breath they would minister some help as long as there were any sense of God I would hope to do some good And so much comfort may arise even out of this reproofe of the world as the world is only the wicked world In the last sense the world signifies the Saints the Elect the good men of the world Mundus sancti John 14.31 John 17.21 beleeving and persevering men Of those Christ sayes The world shall know that I love the Father And That the world may beleeve that thou hast sent me And this world that is the godliest of this world have many reproofes many corrections upon them That outwardly they are the prey of the wicked and inwardly have that Stimulum carnis which is the devils Solicitor and round about them they see nothing but profanation of his word mis-imployment of his works his creatures mis-constructions of his actions his judgements blasphemy of his name negligence and under-valuation of his Sacraments violation of his Sabbaths and holy convocations O what a bitter reproofe what a manifest evidence of the infirmity nay of the malignity of man is this if it be put home and throughly considered That even the goodnesse of man gets to no higher a degree but to have been the occasion of the greatest ill the greatest cruelty that ever was done the crucifying of the Lord of life The better a man is the more he concurred towards being the cause of Christs death which is a strange but a true and a pious consideration Dilexit mundum He loved the world and he came to save the world That is most especially and effectually those that should beleeve in him in the world and live according to that beliefe and die according to that life If there had been no such Christ had not died never been crucified So that impenitent men mis-beleeving men have not put Christ to death but it is we we whom he loves we that love him that have crucified him In what rank then of opposition against Christ shall we place our sins since even our faith and good works have been so farre the cause why Christ died that but for the salvation of such men Beleevers Workers Perseverers Christ had not died This then is the reproofe of the world that is of the Saints of God in the world Psal 84.10 that though I had rather be a doore-keeper in the house of my God I must dwell in the tents of wickednesse That though my zeale consume me because mine enemies have forgotten thy words Psal 119.138 I must stay amongst them that have forgotten thy words But this and all other reproofes that arise in the godly that we may still keep up that consideration that he that reproves us is The Comforter have this comfort in them that these faults that I indure in others God hath either pardoned in me or kept from me and that though this world be wicked yet when I shall come to the next world I shall finde Noah that had been drunk and Lot Gen. 9.21 Gen. 19.33 Numb 11.11 that had been incestuous and Moses that murmured at Gods proceedings and Iob and Ieremy and Ionas impatient even to imprecations against themselves Christs owne Disciples ambitious of worldly preferment his Apostles forsaking him his great Apostle forswearing him And Mary Magdalen that had been I know not what sinner and David that had been all I leave none so ill in this world but I may carry one that was or finde some that had been as ill as they in heaven and that blood of Christ Jesus which hath brought them thither is offered to them that are here who may be successors in their repentance as they are in their sins And so have you all intended for the Person the Comforter and the Action Reproofe and the Subject the World remaines only that for which there remaines but a little time the Time Cum venerit When the Comforter comes he will proceed thus We use to note three Advents three commings of Christ Cum venerit An Advent of Humiliation when he came in the flesh an Advent of glory when he shall come to judgement and between these an Advent of grace in his gracious working in us in this life and this middlemost Advent of Christ is the Advent of the Holy Ghost in this text when Christ works in us the Holy Ghost comes to us And so powerfull is his comming that whereas he that sent him Christ Jesus himself Came unto his own and his own received him not John 1.11 The Holy Ghost never comes to his owne but they receive him for onely by receiving him they are his owne for besides his title of Creation by which we are all his with the Father and the Son as there is a particular title accrewed to the Son by Redemption so is there to the Holy Ghost of certaine persons upon whom he sheds the comfort of his application The Holy Ghost picks out and chooses whom he will Spirat ubi vult perchance me that speake perchance him that heares perchance him that shut his eyes yester-night and opened them this morning in the guiltinesse of sin and repents it now perchance him that hath been in the meditation of an usurious contract of an ambitious supplantation of a licentious solicitation since he came hither into Gods
of spirit though it were Wine in the beginning it is lees and tartar in the end Inordinate sorrow growes into sinfull melancholy and that melancholy into an irrecoverable desperation The Wise-men of the East by a lesse light found a greater by a Star they found the Son of glory Christ Jesus But by darknesse nothing By the beames of comfort in this life we come to the body of the Sun by the Rivers to the Ocean by the cheerefulnesse of heart here to the brightnesse to the fulnesse of joy hereafter For beloved Salvation it selfe being so often presented to us in the names of Glory and of Joy we cannot thinke that the way to that glory is a sordid life affected here an obscure a beggarly a negligent abandoning of all wayes of preferment or riches or estimation in this World for the glory of Heaven shines downe in these beames hither Neither can men thinke that the way to the joyes of Heaven is a joylesse severenesse a rigid austerity for as God loves a cheerefull giver so he loves a cheerefull taker that takes hold of his mercies and his comforts with a cheerefull heart not onely without grudging that they are no more but without jealousie and suspition that they are not so much or not enough But they must be his comforts that we take in Deus Gods comforts For to this purpose the Apostle varies the phrase It was The Father of mercies To represent to us gentlenesse kindnesse favour it was enough to bring it in the name of Father But this Comfort a power to erect and settle a tottering a dejected soule an overthrowne a bruised a broken a troden a ground a battered an evaporated an annihilated spirit this is an act of such might as requires the assurance the presence of God God knows all men receive not comforts when other men think they do nor are all things comforts to them which we present and meane should be so Your Father may leave you his inheritance and little knowes he the little comfort you have in this because it is not left to you but to those Creditors to whom you have engaged it Your Wife is officious to you in your sicknesse and little knowes she that even that officiousnesse of hers then and that kindnesse aggravates that discomfort which lyes upon thy soul for those injuries which thou hadst formerly multiplied against her in the bosome of strange women Except the God of comfort give it in that seale in peace of conscience Nec intus nec subtus nec circa te occurrit consolatio sayes S. Bernard Non subtus not from below thee from the reverence and acclamation of thy inferiours Non circa not from about thee when all places all preferments are within thy reach so that thou maist lay thy hand and set thy foote where thou wilt Non intus not from within thee though thou have an inward testimony of a morall constancy in all afflictions that can fall yet not from below thee not from about thee not from within thee but from above must come thy comfort or it is mistaken S. Chrysostome notes and Areopagita had noted it before him Ex beneficiis acceptis nomina Deo affingimus We give God names according to the nature of the benefits which he hath given us So when God had given David victory in the wars by the exercise of his power then Fortitudo mea Psal 18.2 Psal 27.1 and firmamentum The Lord is my Rock and my Castle When God discovered the plots and practises of his enemies to him then Dominus illuminatio The Lord is my light and my salvation So whensoever thou takest in any comfort be sure that thou have it from him that can give it for this God is Deus totius consolationis The God of all comfort Preciosa divina consolatio nec omnino tribuitur admittentibus alienam Totius Bernardâ— The comforts of God are of a precious nature and they lose their value by being mingled with baser comforts as gold does with allay Sometimes we make up a summe of gold with silver but does any man binde up farthing tokens with a bag of gold Spirituall comforts which have alwayes Gods stampe upon them are his gold and temporall comforts when they have his stampe upon them are his silver but comforts of our owne coyning are counterfait are copper Because I am weary of solitarinesse I will seeke company and my company shall be to make my body the body of a harlot Because I am drousie I will be kept awake with the obscenities and scurrilities of a Comedy or the drums and ejulations of a Tragedy I will smother and suffocate sorrow with hill upon hill course after course at a voluptuous feast and drown sorrow in excesse of Wine and call that sickness health and all this is no comfort for God is the God of all comfort and this is not of God We cannot say with any colour as Esau said to Iacob Hast thou but one blessing my Father Gen. 17.38 for he is the God of all blessings and hath given every one of us many more then one But yet Christ hath given us an abridgement Vnum est necessarium Luke 10.42 there is but one onely thing necessary And David in Christ tooke knowledge of that before when he said Vnum petii One thing have I desired of the Lord What is that one thing All in one Psal 27.4 That I may dwell in the house ef the Lord not be a stranger from his Covenant all the dayes of my life not disseised not excommunicate out of that house To behold the beauty of the Lord not the beauty of the place only but to inquire in his Temple by the advancement and advantage of outward things to finde out him And so I shall have true comforts outward and inward because in both I shall finde him who is the God of all comfort Iacob thought he had lost Ioseph his Son And all his Sons Gen. 37.35 and all his Daughters rose up to comfort him Et noluit consolationem sayes the Text He would not be comforted because he thought him dead Rachel wept for her children and would not be comforted Mat. 2.18 because they were not But what aylest thou Is there any thing of which thou canst say It is not perchance it is but thou hast it not If thou hast him that hath it thou hast it Hast thou not wealth but poverty rather not honour but contempt rather not health but daily summons of Death rather yet Non omnia possidet cui omnia cooperantur in bonum Bernard If thy poverty thy disgrace thy sicknesse have brought thee the nearer to God thou hast all those things which thou thinkest thou wantest because thou hast the best use of them 1 Cor. 3.23 All things are yours sayes the Apostle why by what title For you are Christs and Christ is Gods Carry back your comfort to the
the annointing Oyle and powre it upon his head The Mitre as you may see there was upon his head then but then there was a Crowne upon the Mitre There is a power above the Priest the regall power not above the function of the Priest but above the person of the Priest 1 Sam. 10.1 24. But Unction was the Consecration of Kings too Samuel saluted Saul with a kisse and all the people shouted and sayd God save the King but Is it not sayes Samuel because the Lord hath annointed thee to be captaine over his inheritance Kings were above Priests and in extraordinary cases God raysed Prophets above Kings for there is no ordinary power above them But Unction was the Consecration of these Prophets too Elisha was annointed to be Prophet in Elias roome and such a Prophet as should have use of the Sword 1 Reg. 19.16 17. Him that scapes the Sword of Hazael Hazael was King of Syria shall the Sword of Iehu slay and him that scapes the Sword of Iehu Iehu was King of Israel shall the Sword of Elisha slay In all these in Priests who were above the people in Kings who in matter of Government were above the Priests in Prophets who in those limited cases expressed by God and for that time wherein God gave them that extraordinary employment were above Kings The Unction imprinted their Consecration they were all Christs and in them all thereby was that Nuncupatio potestatis which Lactantius mentions Unction Annointing was an addition and title of honour Psal 109. Psal 2.6 Deut. 18. Much more in our Christ who alone was all three A Priest after the Order of Melchizedek A King set upon the holy hill of Sion And a Prophet The Lord thy God will rayse up a Prophet unto him shall yee harken And besides all this threefold Unction Humanitas uncta Divinitate He had all the unctions that all the other had and this which none other had In him the Humanity was Consecrated anointed with the Divinity it selfe So then Nazian Cyrill Psal 95.7 unio unctio The hypostaticall union of the Godhead to the humane nature is his Conception made him Christ for oleo laetitia perfusus in unione Then in that union of the two natures did God annoint him with the oyle of gladnes above his fellows There was an addition something gained something to be glad of and to him as he was God The Lord so nothing could be added If he were glad above his fellows it was in that respect wherein he had fellows and as God as The Lord he had none so that still as he was made Man he became this Christ In which his being made Man if we should not consider the last and principall purpose which was to redeem man if we leave out his part yet it were object inough for our wonder and subject inough for our praise and thankesgiving to consider the dignity that the nature of man received in that union wherin this Lord was thus made this Christ for the Godhead did not swallow up the manhood but man that nature remained still The greater kingdom did not swallow the lesse but the lesse had that great addition which it had not before and retained the dignities and priviledges which it had before too Damasc Christus est nomen personae non naturae The name of Christ denotes one person but not one nature neither is Christ so composed of those two natures as a man is composed of Elements for man is thereby made a third thing and is not now any of those Elements you cannot call mans body fire or ayre or earth or water though all foure be in his composition But Christ is so made of God and Man as that he is Man still for all the glory of the Deity and God still for all the infirmity of the manhood Idem Divinum miraculis lucet humanum contumeliis afficitur In this one Christ both appear The Godhead bursts out as the Sun out of a cloud and shines forth gloriously in miracles even the raysing of the dead and the humane nature is submitted to contempt and to torment even to the admitting of death in his own bosome sed tamen ipsius sunt tum miraculae Idem tum supplicia but still both he that rayses the dead and he that dyes himself is one Christ his is the glory of the Miracles and the contempt and torment is his too This is that mysterious person who is singularis and yet not individuus singularis There never was never shall be any such but we cannot call him Individuall Idem as every other particular man is because Christitatis non est Genus there is no genus nor species of Christs it is not a name which so as the name belongs to our Christ that is by being annointed with the divine nature can be communicated to any other as the name of Man may to every Individuall Man Christ is not that Spectrum that Damascene speaks of nor that Electrum that Tertullian speakes of not Spectrum so as that the two natures should but imaginarily be united and only to amaze and astonish us that we could not tell what to call it what to make of it a spectre an apparition a phantasma for he was a Reall person Neither was he Tertullians Electrum a third metall made of two other metals but a person so made of God and Man as that in that person God and Man are in their natures still distinguished He is Germen Davidis Iere. 23.5 Isa 4.2 in one Prophet The branch the Off-spring of David And he is Germen Iehovae The Branch the Off-spring of God of the Lord in another When this Germen Davidis the Sonne of Man would do miracles then he was Germen Iehovae he reflected to that stock into which the Humanity was engrafted to his Godhead And when this Germen Iehovae the Son of God would indure humane miseries he reflected to that stock to that humanity in which he had invested and incorporated himself This person 1 Cor. 15.3 Tertul. this Christ dyed for our sins says S. Paul but says he He dyed according to the Scriptures Non sine onere pronunciat Christum mortuum The Apostle thought it a hard a heavy an incredible thing to say that this person this Christ this Man and God was dead And therefore Vt duritiam molliret scandalum auditoris everteret That he might mollifie the hardnes of that saying and defend the hearer from being scandalized with that saying Adjecit secundùm scripturas He adds this Christ is dead according to the Scriptures If the Scriptures had not told us that Christ should die and told us againe that Christ did die it were hard to conceive how this person in whom the Godhead dwelt bodily should be submitted to death But therein principally is he Christus as he was capable of dying As he was Verbum naturale and innatum
This is my beloved Son this day have I begotten him And with such Copies it seemes both Iustin Martyr and Irenaeus met for they reade these words so and interpret them accordingly But these words are misplaced and mis-transferred out of the second Psalme where they are And as they change the words and in stead of In quo complacui In whom I am well pleased reade This day have I begotten thee S. Cyprian addes other words to the end of these which are Hunc audite Heare him Which words when these words were repeated at the Transfiguration were spoken but here at the Baptisme they were not what Copy soever misled S. Cyprian or whether it were the failing of his own memory But S. Chrysostome gives an expresse reason why those words were spoken at the Transfiguration and not here Because saies he Here was onely a purpose of a Manifestation of the Trinity so farre as to declare their persons who they were and no more At the Trans-figuration where Moses and Elias appeared with Christ there God had a purpose to preferre the Gospel above the Law and the Prophets and therefore in that place he addes that Hunc audite Heare him who first fulfills all the Law and the Prophets and then preaches the Gospel He was so well pleased in him as that he was content to give all them that received him Eph. 1.6 power to become the Sons of God too as the Apostle sayes By his grace he hath made us accepted in his beloved Beloved That you may be so Come up from your Baptisme as it is said that Christ did Rise and ascend to that growth which your Baptisme prepared you to And the heavens shall open as then even Cataractae coeli All the windowes of heaven shall open and raine downe blessings of all kindes in abundance And the Holy Ghost shall descend upon you as a Dove in his peacefull comming in your simple and sincere receiving him And he shall rest upon you to effect and accomplish his purposes in you If he rebuke you as Christ when he promises the Holy Ghost though he call him a Comforter John 16.7 sayes That he shall rebuke the world of divers things yet he shall dwell upon you as a Dove Quae si mordet osculando mordet sayes S. Augustine If the Dove bite it bites with kissing if the Holy Ghost rebuke he rebukes with comforting And so baptized and so pursuing the contract of your Baptisme and so crowned with the residence of his blessed Spirit in your holy conversation hee shall breathe a soule into your soule by that voyce of eternall life You are my beloved Sonnes in whom I am well pleased SERM. XLIV Preached at S. Dunstanes upon Trinity-Sunday 1627. REV. 4.8 And the foure Beasts had each of them sixe wings about him and they were full of eyes within And they rest not day and night saying Holy Holy Holy Lord God Almighty which was and is and is to come THese words are part of that Scripture which our Church hath appointed to be read for the Epistle of this day This day which besides that it is the Lords day the Sabbath day is also especially consecrated to the memory and honour of the whole Trinity The Feast of the Nativity of Christ Christmas day which S. Chrysostome calls Metropolin omnium festorum The Metropolitane festivall of the Church is intended principally to the honour of the Father who was glorified in that humiliation of that Son that day because in that was laid the foundation and first stone of that house and Kingdome in which God intended to glorifie himselfe in this world that is the Christian Church The Feast of Easter is intended principally to the honour of the Son himselfe who upon that day began to lift up his head above all those waters which had surrounded him and to shake off the chaines of death and the grave and hell in a glorious Reserrection And then the Feast of Pentecost was appropriated to the honour of the Holy Ghost who by a personall falling upon the Apostles that day inabled them to propagate this Glory of the Father and this death and Resurrection of the Son to the ends of the world to the ends in Extention to all places to the ends in Duration to all times Now as S. Augustine sayes Nullus eorum extra quemlibet eorum est Every Person of the Trinity is so in every other person as that you cannot think of a Father as a Father but that there falls a Son into the same thought nor think of a person that proceeds from others but that they from whom he whom ye think of proceeds falls into the same thought as every person is in every person And as these three persons are contracted in their essence into one God-head so the Church hath also contracted the honour belonging to them in this kinde of Worship to one day in which the Father and Son and Holy Ghost as they are severally in those three severall dayes might bee celebrated joyntly and altogether It was long before the Church did institute a particular Festivall to this purpose For before they made account that that verse which was upon so many occasions repeated in the Liturgy and Church Service Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost had a convenient sufficiency in it to keep men in a continuall remembrance of the Trinity But when by that extreame inundation and increase of Arians these notions of distinct Persons in the Trinity came to be obliterated and discontinued the Church began to refresh her selfe in admitting into to the formes of Common Prayer some more particular notifications and remembrances of the Trnity And at last though it were very long first for this Festivall of this Trinity-Sunday was not instituted above foure hundred yeares since they came to ordaine this day Which day our Church according to that peacefull wisedome wherewithall the God of Peace of Unity and Concord had inspired her did in the Reformation retaine and continue out of her generall religious tendernesse and holy loathnesse to innovate any thing in those matters which might bee safely and without superstition continued and entertained For our Church in the Reformation proposed not that for her end how shee might goe from Rome but how she might come to the Truth nor to cast away all such things as Rome had depraved but to purge away those depravations and conserve the things themselves so restored to their first good use For this day then were these words appointed by our Church Divisic And therefore we are sure that in the notion and apprehension and construction of our Church these words appertaine to the Trinity In them therefore we shall consider first what these foure creatures were which are notified and designed to us in the names and figures of foure Beasts And then what these foure creatures did Their Persons and their Action will be our two
and is all the first part of Davids prayer and all his prayer which falls into our Text is but Deprecatory he does but pray that God would forbeare him He pretends no error he enterprises no Reversing of Judgement no at first he dares not sue for pardon he onely desires a Reprieve a respit of execution and that not absolutely neither but he would not be executed in hot blood Ne in ira ne in furore not in Gods anger not in his hot displeasure First then Deprecation Deprecari is not Refragari to Deprecate is not to Contend against a Judge nor to defend ones selfe against an Officer but it is onely in the quality and in the humility of a Petitioner and Suppliant to begge a forbearance The Martyrs in the Primitive Church would not doe that Nihil de causa sua deprecatur qui nihil de conditione sua miratur sayes Tertullian and in that he describes a patience of Steele and an invincible temper He meanes that the Christians in those times of Persecution did never intreat the Judge for favour because it was not strange to them to see themselves whose conversation was in heaven despised and contemned and condemned upon earth Nihil mirantur de conditione They wondred not at their misery they thought it a part of their Profession a part of the Christian Religion to suffer and therefore Nihil deprecati de causa They never solicited the Judge for favour They had learnt by experience of daily tribulation the Apostles Lesson Think it not strange when tentations and tribulations fall That is make that your daily bread and you shall never sterve use your selves to suffering at least to the expectation the contemplation of suffering acquaint your selves with that accustome your selves to that before it come and it will not be a stranger to you when it comes Tertullians Method may be right and it may work that effect in very great afflictions a man may be so used to them as that he will not descend to any low deprecation or sute to be delivered of them But Davids affliction was spirituall and howsoever as a naturall man nay as a devout and religious man for even in rectified men there are affections of a middle nature that participate of nature and of grace too and in which the Spirit of God moves and naturall affections move too for nature and grace doe not so destroy one another as that we should conclude Hee hath strong naturall affections therefore he hath no grace David I say that might justly wonder at his own condition and think it strange that he that put his trust so intirely in God should so intirely be delivered over to such afflictions might also justly deprecate and boldly say Ne facias O Lord deale not thus with thy servant Our Saviour Christs Transeat calix Let this cup passe from me was a deprecation in his owne behalfe And his Pater dimitte illis Father forgivethem they know not what they doe was a deprecation in the behalfe of his enemies And so was Stephens Ne statuas illis O Lord lay not this sin to their charge A deprecation in the behalfe of his Executioners And these Deprecations for others for our selves are proposed for our imitation But for Moses his Dele me Pardon this people or blot my name out of thy Booke and for S. Pauls Anathema rather then his brethren should not be saved let himselfe be condemned for such Deprecations for others as were upon the matter Imprecations upon themselves those may not well be drawne into consequence or practise for in Moses and S. Paul themselves there was if not an irregularity and an inordinatenesse at least an inconsideration not to be imitated by us now not to be excused in them then but for the Prayer that is meerly deprecatory though some have thought it lesse lawfull then the postulatory prayer because when God is come to the act of afflicting us he hath then revealed and declared and manifested his will to be such and against the revealed and manifested will of God we may not pray yet because his afflictions are not peremptory but we have ever day to shew cause why that affliction should be taken off and because all his judgements are conditionall and the condition of every particular judgement is not alwaies revealed to us and this is alwaies revealed to us Miserationes ejus super omnia opera ejus That his mercy is above all his judgements therefore we may come to that Deprecation that God will make his hand lighter upon us and his corrections easier unto us As the Saints in heaven have their Vsqucquo How long Lord holy and true before thou begin to execute judgement So the Saints on earth have their Vsquequo How long Lord before thou take off the execution of this judgement upon us For our Deprecatory prayers are not Mandatory they are not Directory they appoint not God his waies nor his times but as our Postulatory prayers are they also are submitted to the will of God and have all in them that ingredient that herb of grace which Christ put into his owne prayer that Veruntamen Yet not my will but thy will be fulfilled And they have that ingredient which Christ put into our prayer Fiat volunt as Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven In heaven there is no resisting of his will yet in heaven there is asoliciting a hastning an accelerating of the judgement and the glory of the Resurrection So though we resist not his corrections here upon earth we may humbly present to God the sense which we have of his displeasure for this sense and apprehension of his corrections is one of the principall reasons why he sends them he corrects us therefore that we might be sensible of his corrections that when we being humbled under his hand have said with his Prophet I will beare the wrath of the Lord Micah 7.9 because I have sinned against him He may be pleased to say to his Correcting Angell as he did to his Destroying Angell This is enough and so burne his rod now as he put up his sword then For though David doe well for himselfe and well for our example deprecate the anger of God exprest in those Judgements yet we see he spends but one verse of the Psalme in that Deprecation In all the rest he leaves God wholly to his pleasure how farre he will extend or aggravate that Judgement and he turns wholly upon the Postulatory part That God would have mercy upon him and save him and deliver his soule And in that one verse hee does not deprecate all afflictions all corrections David knowes what moves God to correct us It is not onely our ilnesse that moves him for he corrects us when we are not ill in his sight but made good by his pardon But his goodnesse as well as our ilnesse moves him to correct us If he were not good not only good
and that dejection of spirit which the Adversary by temporall afflictions would induce upon me is an act of his Power So this Metaphor The shadow of his wings which in this place expresses no more then consolation and refreshing in misery and not a powerfull deliverance out of it is so often in the Scriptures made a denotation of Power too as that we can doubt of no act of power if we have this shadow of his wings For in this Metaphor of Wings doth the Holy Ghost expresse the Maritime power the power of some Nations at Sea in Navies Woe to the land shadowing with wings that is Esay 18.1 that hovers over the world and intimidates it with her sailes and ships In this Metaphor doth God remember his people of his powerfull deliverance of them Exod. 19.14 You have seene what I did unto the Egyptians and how I bare you on Eagles wings and brought you to my selfe In this Metaphor doth God threaten his and their enemies what hee can doe Ezek. 1.24 The noise of the wings of his Cherubims are as the noise of great waters and of an Army So also what hee will doe Hee shall spread his wings over Bozrah Ier. 49.22 and at that day shall the hearts of the mighty men of Edom be as the heart of a woman in her pangs So that if I have the shadow of his wings I have the earnest of the power of them too If I have refreshing and respiration from them I am able to say as those three Confessors did to Nebuchadnezzar My God is able to deliver me I am sure he hath power And my God will deliver me Dan. 3.17 when it conduces to his glory I know he will But if he doe not bee it knowne unto thee O King we will not servethy Gods Be it knowne unto thee O Satan how long soever God deferre my deliverance I will not seeke false comforts the miserable comforts of this world I will not for I need not for I can subsist under this shadow of these Wings though I have no more The Mercy-seat it selfe was covered with the Cherubims Wings Exod. 25.20 and who would have more then Mercy and a Mercy-seat that is established resident Mercy permanent and perpetuall Mercy present and familiar Mercy a Mercy-seat Our Saviour Christ intends as much as would have served their turne if they had laid hold upon it when hee sayes That hee would have gathered Ierusalem Matt. 23.37 as a henne gathers her chickens under her wings And though the other Prophets doe as ye have heard mingle the signification of Power and actuall deliverance in this Metaphor of Wings yet our Prophet whom wee have now in especiall consideration David never doth so but in every place where hee uses this Metaphor of Wings which are in five or sixe severall Psalmes still hee rests and determines in that sense which is his meaning here That though God doe not actually deliver us nor actually destroy our enemies yet if hee refresh us in the shadow of his Wings if he maintaine our subsistence which is a religious Constancy in him this should not onely establish our patience for that is but halfe the worke but it should also produce a joy and rise to an exultation which is our last circumstance Therefore in the shadow of thy wings I will rejoice I would always raise your hearts and dilate your hearts to a holy Joy Gaudium to a joy in the Holy Ghost There may be a just feare that men doe not grieve enough for their sinnes but there may bee a just jealousie and suspition too that they may fall into inordinate griefe and diffidence of Gods mercy And God hath reserved us to such times as being the later times give us even the dregs and lees of misery to drinke For God hath not onely let loose into the world a new spirituall disease which is an equality and an indifferency which religion our children or our servants or our companions professe I would not keepe company with a man that thought me a knave or a traitor with him that thought I loved not my Prince or were a faithlesse man not to be beleeved I would not associate my selfe And yet I will make him my bosome companion that thinks I doe not love God that thinks I cannot be saved but God hath accompanied and complicated almost all our bodily diseases of these times with an extraordinary sadnesse a predominant melancholy a faintnesse of heart a chearlesnesse a joylesnesse of spirit and therefore I returne often to this endeavor of raising your hearts dilating your hearts with a holy Joy Joy in the holy Ghost for Vnder the shadow of his wings you may you should rejoyce If you looke upon this world in a Map you find two Hemisphears two half worlds If you crush heaven into a Map you may find two Hemisphears too two half heavens Halfe will be Joy and halfe will be Glory for in these two the joy of heaven and the glory of heaven is all heaven often represented unto us And as of those two Hemisphears of the world the first hath been knowne long before but the other that of America which is the richer in treasure God reserved for later Discoveries So though he reserve that Hemisphear of heaven which is the Glory thereof to the Resurrection yet the other Hemisphear the Joy of heaven God opens to our Discovery and delivers for our habitation even whilst we dwell in this world As God hath cast upon the unrepentant sinner two deaths a temporall and a spirituall death so hath he breathed into us two lives Gen. 2.17 for so as the word for death is doubled Morte morieris Thou shalt die the death so is the word for life expressed in the plurall Chaiim vitarum God breathed into his nostrils the breath of lives of divers lives Though our naturall life were no life but rather a continuall dying yet we have two lives besides that an eternall life reserved for heaven but yet a heavenly life too a spirituall life even in this world And as God doth thus inflict two deaths and infuse two lives so doth he also passe two Judgements upon man or rather repeats the same Judgement twice For that which Christ shall say to thy soule then at the last Judgement Matt. 25.23 Enter into thy Masters joy Hee sayes to thy conscience now Enter into thy Masters joy The everlastingnesse of the joy is the blessednesse of the next life but the entring the inchoation is afforded here For that which Christ shall say then to us Verse 24. Venite benedicti Come ye blessed are words intended to persons that are comming that are upon the way though not at home Here in this world he bids us Come Luk. 15.10 there in the next he shall bid us Welcome The Angels of heaven have joy in thy conversion and canst thou bee without that joy in thy selfe
Cooke The other is a Physitian and though by bitter things provides for thy future health And such is the hony of Flatterers and such is the wormewood of better Counsellors I will not shake a Proverbe not the Ad Corvos That wee were better admit the Crowes that picke out our eyes after we are dead then Flatterers that blinde us whilst we live I cast justly upon others I take willingly upon my selfe the name of wicked if I blesse the covetous whom the Lord abhorreth or any other whom he hath declared to be odious to him But making my object goodnesse in that man and taking that goodnesse in that man to be a Candle set up by God in that Candlesticke God having engaged himselfe that that good man shall be praised I will be a Subsidy man so far so far pay Gods debts as to celebrate with condigne praise the goodnesse of that man for in that I doe as I should desire to be done to And in that I pay a debt to that man And in that I succour their weaknesse who as S. Gregory sayes when they heare another praised Gregâ—r Si non amore virtutis at delectatione laudis accenduntur At first for the love of Praise but after for the love of goodnesse it selfe are drawne to bee good Phil. 4.8 For when the Apostle had directed the Philippians upon things that were True and honest and just and purc and lovely and of a good report he ends all thus If there be any vertue and if there be any praise thinke on these things In those two sayes S. Augustine he divides all Vertue and Praise Vertue in our selves that may deserve Praise Praise towards others that may advance and propagate Vertue This is the retribution which God promises to all the upright in heart Gloriabuntur Laudabuntur They shall Glory they shall have they shall give praise And then it is so far from diminishing this Glory as that it infinitely exalts our consolation that God places this Retribution in the future Gloriabuntur If they doe not yet yet certainly they shall glory And if they doe now that glory shall not goe out still they shall they shall for ever glory In the Hebrew there is no Present tense In that language wherein God spake Futurum it could not be said The upright in heart Are praised Many times they are not But God speaks in the future first that he may still keepe his Children in an expectation and dependance upon him you shall be though you be not yet And then to establish them in an infallibility because he hath said it I know you are not yet but comfort your selves I have said it and it shall be As the Hebrew hath no Superlatives because God would keepe his Children within compasse and in moderate desires to content themselves with his measures though they be not great and though they be not heaped so considering what pressures and contempts and terrors the upright in heart are subject to it is a blessed reliefe That they have a future proposed unto them That they shall be praised That they shall be redeemed out of contempt This makes even the Expectation it selfe as sweet to them as the fruition would be This makes them that when David sayes Expecta viriliter Waite upon the Lord with a good courage Waite I say Psal 27.14 upon the Lord they doe not answer with the impatience of the Martyrs under the Altar Vsquequo How long Lord wilt thou defer it Rev. 6.10 Psal 40.1 Psal 52.9 But they answer in Davids owne words Expectans expectavi I have waited long And Expectabo nomen tuum still I will waite upon thy Name I will waite till the Lord come His kingdome come in the mean time His kingdome of Grace and Patience and for his Ease and his Deliverance and his Praise and his Glory to me let that come when he may be most glorified in the comming thereof Nay not onely the Expectation that is that that is expected shall be comfortable because it shall be infallible but that very present state that he is in shall be comfortable according to the first of our three Translations They that are true of heart shall be glad thereof Glad of that Glad that they are true of heart though their future retribution were never so far removed Nay though there were no future retribution in the case yet they shall finde comfort enough in their present Integrity Nay not onely their present state of Integrity but their present state of misery shall be comfortable to them for this very word of our Text Halal that is here translated Ioy and Glory and Praise in divers places of Scripture as Hebrew words have often such a transplantation signifies Ingloriousnesse and contempt and dejection of spirit Psal 75.4 Esa 44.25 Job 12.17 So that Ingloriousnesse and contempt and dejection of spirit may be a part of the retribution God may make Ingloriousnesse and Contempt and Dejection of spirit a greater blessing and benefit then Joy and Glory and Praise would have been and so reserve all this Glory and Praising to that time that David intends Psal 112.6 The righteous shall be in everlasting remembrance Though they live and die contemptibly they shall be in an honorable remembrance even amongst men as long as men last and even when time shall be no more and men no more they shall have it in futuro aeterno where there shall be an everlasting present and an everlasting future there the upright in heart shall be praised and that for ever which is our conclusion of all If this word of our Text Halal shall signifie Ioy as the Service Booke Aeternum and the Geneva translation render it that may be somewhat towards enough which we had occasion to say of the Joyes of heaven in our Exercise upon the precedent Psalme when we say-led thorough that Hemispheare of Heaven by the breath of the Holy Ghost in handling those words Vnder the shadow of thy wings I will rejoyce So that of this signification of the word Gaudebunt in aeterno They shall rejoyce for ever we adde nothing now If the word shall signifie Glory as our last translation renders it consider with me That when that Glory which I shall receive in Heaven shall be of that exaltation as that my body shall invest the glory of a soule my body shall be like a soule like a spirit like an Angel of light in all endowments that glory it selfe can make that body capable of that body remaining still a true body when my body shall be like a soule there will be nothing left for my soule to be like but God himselfe 2 Pet. 1.4 1 Cor. 6.17 I shall be partaker of the Divine nature and the same Spirit with him Since the glory that I shall receive in body and in soule shall be such so exalted what shall that glory of God be which I shall
see by the light of this glory shed upon me there In this place and at this time the glory of God is but we lack that light to see it by When my soule and body are glorified in heaven by that light of glory in me I shall see the glory of God But then what must that glory of the Essence of God be which I shall see thorough the light of Gods own glory I must have the light of glory upon me to see the glory of God and then by his glory I shall see his Essence Rom. 11.33 When S. Paul cryes out upon the bottomlesse depth of the riches of his Attributes O the depth of the riches both of the wisedome and knowledge of God! how glorious how bottomlesse is the riches of his Essence If I cannot look upon him in his glasse 1 Cor. 13.12 1 Joh. 3.2 in the body of the Sunne how shall I looke upon him face to face And if I be dazeled to see him as he works how shall I see him Sicutiest as he is and in his Essence But it may be some ease to our spirits which cannot endure the search of this glory of heaven which shall shew us the very Essence of God to take this word of our Text as our first translation of all tooke it for one beame of this glory that is Praise Consider we therefore this everlasting future onely so How the upright in heart shall be praised in heaven First The Militant Church shall transmit me to the Triumphant with her recommendation That I lived in the obedience of the Church of God That I dyed in the faith of the Sonne of God That I departed and went away from them in the company and conduct of the Spirit of God into whose hands they heard me they saw me recommend my spirit 1 Cor. 6.19 And that I left my body which was the Temple of the Holy Ghost to them and that they have placed it in Gods treasury in his consecrated earth to attend the Resurrection which they shall beseech him to hasten for my sake and to make it joyfull and glorious to me and them when it comes So the Militant Church shall transmit me to the Triumphant with this praise this testimony this recommendation And then if I have done any good to any of Gods servants or to any that hath not been Gods servant for Gods sake If I have but fed a hungry man If I have but clothed a naked childe If I have but comforted a sad soule or instructed an ignorant soule If I have but preached a Sermon and then printed that Sermon that is first preached it and then lived according to it for the subsequent life is the best printing and the most usefull and profitable publishing of a Sermon All those things that I have done for Gods glory shall follow me shall accompany me shall be in heaven before me and meet me with their testimony That as I did not serve God for nothing God gave me his blessings with a large hand and in overflowing measures so I did not nothing for the service of God Though it be as it ought to be nothing in mine own eyes nothing in respect of my duty yet to them who have received any good by it it must not seeme nothing for then they are unthankfull to God who gave it by whose hand soever This shall be my praise to Heaven my recommendation thither And then my praise in Heaven shall be my preferment in Heaven That those blessed Angels that rejoyced at my Conversion before shall praise my perseverance in that profession and admit me to a part in all their Hymns and Hosannaes and Hallelujahs which Hallelujah is a word produced from the very word of this Text Halal My Hallelujah shall be my Halal my praising of God shall be my praise And from this testimony I shall come to the accomplishment of all to receive from my Saviours own mouth that glorious that victorious that harmonious praise that Dissolving and that Recollecting testimony that shall melt my bowels and yet fix me powre me out and yet gather me into his bosome that Euge bone serve Mat. 25.21 Well done good and faithfull servant enter into thy Masters joy And when he hath sealed me with his Euge and accepted my service who shall stamp a Vae quod non upon me who shall say Woe be unto thee that thou didst not preach this or that day in this or that place When he shall have styled me Bone fidelis Good and faithfull servant who shall upbraid me with a late undertaking this Calling or a slack pursuing or a lazy intermitting the function thereof When he shall have entred me into my Masters joy what fortune what sin can cast any Cloud of sadnesse upon me This is that that makes Heaven Heaven That this Retribution which is future now shall be present then and when it is then present it shall be future againe and present and future for ever ever enjoyed and expected ever The upright in heart shall have whatsoever all Translations can enlarge and extend themselves unto They shall Rejoyce they shall Glory they shall Praise and they shall bee praised and all these in an everlasting future for ever Which everlastingnesse is such a Terme as God himselfe cannot enlarge As God cannot make himselfe a better God then he is because hee is infinitely good infinite goodnesse already so God himselfe cannot make our Terme in heaven longer then it is for it is infinite everlastingnesse infinite eternity That that wee are to beg of him is that as that state shall never end so he will be pleased to hasten the beginning thereof that so we may be numbred with his Saints in Glory everlasting Amen SERM. LXVIII The fourth of my Prebend Sermons upon my five Psalmes Preached at S. Pauls 28. Ianuary 1626. PSAL. 65.5 By terrible things in righteousnesse wilt thou answer us O God of our salvation who art the confidence of all the ends of the earth and of them that are a far off upon the Sea GOd makes nothing of nothing now God eased himselfe of that incomprehensible worke and ended it in the first Sabbath But God makes great things of little still And in that kinde hee works most upon the Sabbath 1 Cor. 1.21 when by the foolishnesse of Preaching hee infatuates the wisedome of the world and by the word in the mouth of a weake man he enfeebles the power of sinne and Satan in the world and by but so much breath as blows out an houre-glasse gathers three thousand soules at a Sermon and five thousand soules at a Sermon as upon Peters preaching in the second and in the fourth of the Acts. And this worke of his to make much of little and to doe much by little is most properly a Miracle For the Creation which was a production of all out of nothing was not properly a miracle A miracle is a thing done
in that Church had charged the Jewes That they had rased that clause out of the Hebrew Leo Castr and that it was in the Hebrew at first A learned and a laborious Jesuit for truely Lorinus Schooles may confesse the Jesuits to bee learned for they have assisted there and States and Councell-tables may confesse the Jesuits to be laborious for they have troubled them there hee I say after he hath chidden his fellow for saying That this word had ever been in the Hebrew or was razed out from thence by the Jewes concludes roundly Vndecunque advenerit Howsoever those Additions which are not in the Hebrew came into our Translation Authoritatem habent retineri debent Their very being there gives them Authentikenesse and Authority and there they must be That this in the Title of this Psalme be there wee are content as long as you know that this particular That this Psalme by the Title thereof concerns the Resurrection is not in the Originall but added by some Expositor of the Psalmes you may take knowledge too That that addition hath beene accepted and followed by many and ancient and reverend Expositors almost all of the Easterne and many of the Westerne Church too and therefore for our use and accommodation may well be accepted by us also We consider ordinarily three Resurrections A spirituall Resurrection a Resurrection from sinne by Grace in the Church A temporall Resurrection a Resurrection from trouble and calamity in the world And an eternall Resurrection a Resurrection after which no part of man shall die or suffer againe the Resurrection into Glory Of the first The Resurrection from sinne Esay 60.1 is that intended in Esay Arise and shine for thy light is come and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee Of the later Resurrection is that harmonious straine of all the Apostles in their Creed intended I beleeve the Resurrection of the body And of the third Resurrection from oppressions and calamities which the servants of God suffer in this life Calvin Iob 19.26 Ezek. 37. some of our later men understand that place of Iob I know that my Redeemer liveth and that in my flesh I shall see God And that place of Ezekiel all understand of that Resurrection where God saith to the Prophet Sonne of man can these bones live Can these men thus ruined thus dispersed bee restored againe by a resurrection in this world And to this resurrection from the pressures and tribulations of this life doe those Interpreters who interpret this Psalme of a Resurrection refer this our Text Say unto God How terrible art thou in thy works Through the greatnesse of thy power shall thine enemies submit themselves unto thee Consider how powerfully God hath and you cannot doubt but that God will give them a Resurrection in this world who rely upon him and use his meanes whensoever any calamity hath dejected them ruined them scattered them in the eyes of men Say unto the Lord That he hath done it and the Lord will say unto thee that he will doe it againe and againe for thee We call Noah Divisio Ianus because hee had two faces in this respect That hee looked into the former and into the later world he saw the times before and after the flood David in this Text is a Ianus too He looks two wayes he hath a Prospect and a Retrospect he looks backward and forward what God had done and what God would doe For as we have one great comfort in this That Prophecies are become Histories that whatsoever was said by the mouthes of the Prophets concerning our salvation in Christ is effected so prophecies are made histories so have wee another comfort in this Text That Histories are made Prophecies That whatsoever we reade that God had formerly done in the reliefe of his oppressed servants wee are thereby assured that he can that he will doe them againe and so Histories are made Prophecies And upon these two pillars A thankfull acknowledgement of that which God hath done And a faithfull assurance that God will doe so againe shall this present Exercise of your devotions be raysed And these are our two parts Dicite Deo Say unto God How terrible art thou in thy works that part is Historicall of things past In multitudine virtutis In the greatnesse of thy power shall thine enemies submit themselves unto thee that part is Propheticall of things to come In the History wee are to turne many leafes and many in the Prophecy too to passe many steps to put out many branches in each In the first these Dicite say ye where we consider first The Person that enjoyns this publike acknowledgement and thanksgiving It is David and David as a King for to Him to the King the ordering of publike actions even in the service of God appertains David David the King speaks this by way of counsell and perswasion and concurrence to all the world for so in the beginning and in some other passages of the Psalme it is Omnis terra All yee lands Verse 1. and All the earth Verse 4. David doth what he can that all the world might concurre in one manner of serving God By way of Assistance he extends to all And by way of Injunction and commandement to all his to all that are under his government Dicite say you that is you shall say you shall serve God thus And as he gives counsell to all and gives lawes to all his subjects so he submits himselfe to the same law For as wee shall see in some parts of the Psalme to which the Text refers he professes in his particular that he will say and doe Iosh 24.15 whatsoever hee bids them doe and say My house shall serve the Lord sayes Ioshua But it is Ego domus mea I and my house himselfe would serve God aright too From such a consideration of the persons in the Historicall part wee shall passe to the commandement to the duty it selfe That is first Dicite say It is more then Cogitate to Consider Gods former goodnesse more then Admirari to Admire Gods former goodnesse speculations and extasies are not sufficient services of God Dicite Say unto God Declare manifest publish your zeale is more then Cogitate Consider it thinke of it but it is lesse then Facite To come to action wee must declare our thankfull zeale to Gods cause we must not modifie not disguise that But for the particular wayes of promoving and advancing that cause in matter of action we must refer that to them to whom God hath referred it The Duty is a Commemoration of Benefits Dicite Speake of it ascribe it attribute it to the right Author Who is that That is the next Consideration Dicite Deo Say unto God Non vobis Not to your owne Wisdome or Power Non Sanctis Not to the care and protection of Saints or Angels Sed nomini ejus da gloriam Onely unto his name be
secresie of the Bee that the greatest and most authorized spie see it not to supplant it And the purity of the Bee that never settles upon any foule thing that thou never take a foule way to a faire end and the fruit of thy labour shall bee Hony God shall give thee the sweetnesse of this world honour and ease and plenty and hee shall give thee thy honey-combe with thy honey that which preserves thy honey to thee that is a religious knowledge that all this is but hony And honey in the dew of the flowres Plin. whence it is drawne is but Coeli sudor a sweaty excrement of the heavens and Siderum saliva the spettle the fleame of the starres and Apum vomitus the casting the vomit of the Bee And though honey be the sweetest thing that wee doe take into the body yet there it degenerates into gall and proves the bitterest And all this is honey in the Anti-type in that which it signifies in the temporall things of this world In the temporall things of this world there is a bitternesse in our use of them But in his hand and his purpose that gives them they have impressions of sweetnesse and so Comede Eat thy honey which is also a step farther Here is libery for any man to eat Honey if hee have found it Comede and Ionathan the Kings sonne found honey upon the ground and did but dip his staffe in it 1 Sam. 14 24. and put it to his mouth and hee must die for it Of forbidden honey the least dramme is poyson how sweet soever any collaterall respect make it But Ionathan knew not that it was forbidken by the King Ignorance is no plea in any subject against the Kings lawes and there is a King in breach of whose lawes no King no Kings sonne can excuse themselves by ignorance if they doe but dip their Scepter in forbidden honey in any unlawfull delight in this world For they doe or they may know the unlawfulnesse of it But for the honey which God allowes us whether God give it in that plenty Terram fluentem Exod. 3.8 that the land flow with milke and honey nay Torrentes mellis rivers and streames of honey Iob 20.17 that great fortunes flow into men in this world or whether God put us to suck honey out of the Rock that that which we have we digge and plough and thresh for Deut. 32.13 yet when thou hast found that Comede use it enjoy it eat it Hee that will not work shall not eat 2 Thes 3.10 He that shuts himselfe up in a Cloyster till the honey finde him till meat bee brought to him should not eat Christ himselfe are Honey but after his Resurrection Luk. 24.41 when his body needed not refection when our principall end in worldly things is not for the body nor for the world but that we have had a spirituall resurrection that we can see Gods love in them and shew Gods glory by them then Invenisti thou hast found for Invenire Festus est in rem venire id est in usum to find a thing is to make the right use of it and Invenisti mel thou hast found Honey that which God intends for sweetnesse for necessities conveniences abundances recreations and delights and therefore Comede eat it enjoy it but to thee also belongs that Caveat Comede ad sufficientiam Eat but enough That great Morall man Seneca could see that Nihil agere to passe this life Sufficientiam and intend no Vocation was very ill and that Aliud agere to professe a Vocation and be busier in other mens callings then his owne was worse but the Super-agere to over-doe to doe more then was required at his hands he never brought into comparison hee never suspected and yet that is our most ordinary fault That which hath been ordinarily given by our Physitians by way of counsell That we should rise with an appetite hath been enough followed by worldly men They alwayes lie downe and alwayes rise up with an appetite to more and more in this world An Office is but an Anti-past it gets them an appetite to another Office and a title of Honour but an Anti-past a new stomach to a new Title The danger is that we cannot goe upward directly If wee have a staire to goe any height it must be a winding staire It is a compassing a circumventing to rise A Ladder is a straight Engin of it selfe yet if we will rise by that it must be set a slope Though our meanes be direct in their owne nature yet wee put them upon crooked wayes It is but a poore rising that any man can make in a direct line and yet it is Ad sufficientiam high enough for it is to heaven Have yee seene a glasse blowne to a handsome competency and with one breath more broke I will not ask you whether you haue seene a competent beauty made worse by an artificiall addition because they have not thought it well enough before you see it every day and every where If Paul himselfe were here Act. 14.12 whom for his Eloquence the Lystrians called Mercury hee could not perswade them to leave their Mercury It will not easily be left for how many of them that take it outwardly at first come at last to take it inwardly Since the saying of Solomon Eccles 7.17 Be not over righteous admits many good senses even in Morall vertues and in religious duties too which are naturally good it is much more appliable in temporall things which are naturally indifferent Bee not over faire over witty over sociable over rich over glorious but let the measure be Sufficientia tua So much as is sufficient for thee But where shall a man take measure of himselfe Tuam At what age or in what calling shall he say This is sufficient for me Ieremy sayes Puer sum I am a child and cannot speake at all S. Paul sayes Quando puer When I was a child no bigger I spake like a child this was not sufficientia sua sufficienr for him for since he was to be a man he was to speak like a man The same clothes doe not serve us throughout our lives nay not the same bodies nay not the same vertues so there is no certaine Gomer no fixed Measure for worldly things Clem. Alex. for every one to have As Clemens Alexandrinus saith Eadem Drachma data Nauclero est Naulum The same piece of Money given to a Water-man is his Fare Publicano Vectigal given to a Farmer of Custome it is Impost Mercatori pretium to a Merchant it is the price of his Ware Operario Merces Mendico Eleemosyna To a Labourer it is Wages to a Begger it is Almes So on the other side this which we call sufficiency as it hath relation to divers states hath a different measure I think the rule will not be inconveniently given if we
or departing with some parts of our Religion at such a deare price we may be helped but these are not his helps and this is a prayer of manifestation that all the way to our end hee will bee pleased to let us see that the meanes are from him Satura nos tua Satisfie us with that which is thine and comes from thee and so directs us to thee All this may be done too and yet not that done which we pray for here God may send that which is his and yet without present comfort therein God may multiply corrections and judgements and tribulations upon us and intend to helpe us that way by whipping and beating us into the way and this is his way but this is a Prayer of limitation even upon God himselfe That our way may be his and that his way may be the way of mercy Satisfie us early with thy mercy First then Saturae the first word Satura implies a fulnesse and it implies a satisfaction A quietnesse a contentednesse an acquiescence in that fulnesse Satisfie is let us bee full and let us feele it and rest in that fulnesse These two make up all Heaven all the joy and all the glory of Heaven fulnesse and satisfaction in it And therefore S. Hierom refers this Prayer of our Text to the Resurrection and to that fulnesse and that satisfaction which we shall have then and not till then For though we shall have a fulnesse in Heaven as soone as we come thither yet that is not fully a satisfaction because we shall desire and expect a fuller satisfaction in the reunion of body and soule And when Heaven it selfe cannot give us this full satisfaction till then in what can wee looke for it in this world where there is no true fulnesse nor any satisfaction in that kind of fulnesse which wee seeme to have Pleasure and sensuality and the giving to our selves all that we desire Ezek. 16. cannot give this you heare God reproaches Israel so You have multiplied your fornications yet are not satisfied Labor for profit or for preferment cannot doe it Hagg. 1. you see God reproaches Israel for that too Ye have sowne much and bring in little ye eat but have not enough ye drinke but are not filled ye cloath you but are not warme and he that earneth wages putteth it into a broken bag that is it runs out as fast as it comes in he finds nothing at the yeares end his Midsommer will scarce fetch up Michaelmas and if he have brought about his yeare and made up his Circle yet he hath raised up nothing nothing appeares in his circle If these things could fill us yet they could not satisfie us Iob 20. because they cannot stay with us or not we with them He hath devoured substance and he shall vomit it He devoured it by bribery and he shall vomit it by a fine He devoured it by extortion and he shall vomit it by confiscation He devoured it in other Courts and shall vomit it in a Star-chamber If it stay some time it shall be with an anguish and vexation When he shall be filled with abundance it shall be a paine to him as it is in the same place Still his riches shall have the nature of a vomit hard to get downe and hard to keep in the stomach when it is there hardly got hardly kept when they are got Luke 6. If all these could be overcome yet it is clogged with a heavy curse Wo be unto you that are full for ye shall be hungry Where if the curse were onely from them who are poore by their owne sloth or wastfulnesse who for the most part delight to curse and maligne the rich the curse might be contemned by us and would be throwne back by God into their owne bosomes but Os Domini locutum The mouth of the Lord hath spoken it Christ himselfe hath denounced this curse upon worldly men That they shall be hungry not onely suffer impairement and diminution but be reduced to hunger There is a spirituall fulnesse in this life of which S. Hierom speakes Ebrietas foelix satietas salutaris A happy excesse and a wholesome surfet quae quanto copiosiùs sumitur majorem donat sobrietatem In which the more we eate the more temperate we are and the more we drinke the more sober In which as S. Bernard also expresses it in his mellifluence Mutuâ interminabili inexplicabili generatione By a mutuall and reciprocall by an undeterminable and unexpressible generation of one another Desiderium generat satietatem satietas parit desiderium The desire of spirituall graces begets a satiety if I would be I am full of them And then this satiety begets a farther desire still we have a new appetite to those spirituall graces This is a holy ambition a sacred covetousnesse Deut. 32.23 and a wholsome Dropsie Napthalies blessing O Napthali satisfied with favour and full with the blessing of the Lord S. Stephens blessing Act. 6.5 Full of faith and of the Holy Ghost The blessed Virgins blessing Full of Grace Dorcas blessing Act. 9.37 Full of good works and of Almes-deeds The blessing of him who is blessed above all and who blesseth all Christ Jesus a Luk. 2.4 Full of wisedome b Luk. 4.1 Full of the Holy Ghost c Joh. 1.14 Full of grace and truth But so far are all temporall things from giving this fulnesse or satisfaction as that even in spirituall things there may be there is often an error or mistaking Even in spirituall things there may be a fulnesse and no satisfaction And there may be a satisfaction and no fulnesse I may have as much knowledge as is presently necessary for my salvation and yet have a restlesse and unsatisfied desire to search into unprofitable curiosities unrevealed mysteries and inextricable perplexities And on the other side a man may be satisfied and thinke he knowes all when God knowes he knowes nothing at all for I know nothing if I know not Christ crucified And I know not that if I know not how to apply him to my selfe Nor doe I know that if I embrace him not in those meanes which he hath afforded me in his Church in his Word and Sacraments If I neglect this meanes this place these exercises howsoever I may satisfie my selfe with an over-valuing mine own knowledge at home I am so far from fulnesse as that vanity it selfe is not more empty In the Wildernesse every man had one and the same measure of Manna The same Gomer went through all for Manna was a Meat that would melt in their mouths and of easie digestion But then for their Quailes birds of a higher flight meat of a stronger digestion it is not said that every man had an equall number some might have more some lesse and yet all their fulnesse Catechisticall divinity and instructions in fundamentall things is our Manna Every man is bound to take in
his soule by Preservation and immortall in his body by Reparation in the Resurrection For though they be separated à Thoro Mensa from Bed and Board they are not divorced Though the soule be at the Table of the Lambe in Glory and the body but at the table of the Serpent in dust Though the soule be in lecto florido Cant. 1.16 in that bed which is alwayes green in an everlasting spring in Abrahams Bosome And the body but in that green-bed whose covering is but a yard and a halfe of Turfe and a Rugge of grasse and the sheet but a winding sheet yet they are not divorced they shall returne to one another againe in an inseparable re-union in the Resurrection To establish this assurance of a Resurrection in us God does sometimes in this life that which he hath promised for the next that is he gives a Resurrection to life after a bodily death here God hath made two Testaments two Wills And in both he hath declared his Power and his Will to give this new life after death in this world To the Widows sonne of Zarephtha 1. King 17. he bequeaths new life and to the Shunamites sonne he gives the same legacy 2 King 4. in the Old Testament In the New Testament to the widow of Naims sonne Luk. 7.8 he bequeaths new life And to Iairus daughter he gives the same legacy And out of the surplusage of his inexhaustible estate out of the overflowing of his Power he enables his Executors to doe as he did for Peter gives Dorcas this Resurrection too Act. 9.40 Divers examples hath he given us of the Resurrection of every particular man in particular Resurrections such as we have named And one of the generall Resurrection in the Resurrection of Christ himselfe for in him we all rose for he was All in All Con-vivificavit Ephes 2.5 sayes the Apostle and Considere nos fecit God hath quickned us all us not onely S. Paul and his Ephesians but all and God hath raised us and God hath made us to sit together in heavenly places in Christ Iesus They that are not faln yet by any actuall sinne children newly baptized are risen already in him And they that are not dead yet nay not alive yet not yet borne have a Resurrection in him who was not onely the Lambe slaine from the beginning but from before all beginnings was risen too and all that shall ever have part in the second Resurrection are risen with him from that time Now next to that great Propheticall action that type of the generall Resurrection in the Resurrection of Christ the most illustrious Evidence of the Resurrection of particular men is this Resuscitation of Lazarus whose sister Martha directed by faith and yet transported by passion seeks to entender and mollifie and supple him to impressions of mercy and compassion who was himselfe the Mold in which all mercy was cast nay the substance of which all mercy does consist Christ Jesus with this imperfect piece of Devotion which hath a tincture of Faith but is deeper dyed in Passion Lord if thou hadst been here my brother had not dyed This Text which you Heare Martha's single words Divisio complicated with this Text which you See The dead body of this our Brother makes up between them this body of Instruction for the soule first That there is nothing in this world perfect And then That such as it is there is nothing constant nothing permanent We consider the first That there is nothing perfect in the best things in spirituall things Even Martha's devotion and faith hath imperfections in it And we consider the other That nothing is permanent in temporall things Riches prosperously multiplied Children honorably bestowed Additions of Honor and Titles fairly acquired Places of Command and Government justly received and duly executed All testimonies all evidences of worldly happinesse have a Dissolution a Determination in the death of this and of every such Man There is nothing no spirituall thing perfect in this world Nothing no temporall thing permanent and durable And these two Considerations shall be our two parts And then these the branches from these two roots First in the first we shall see in generall The weaknesse of Mans best actions And secondly more particularly The weaknesses in Martha's Action And yet in a third place the easinesse the propensnesse the largenesse of Gods goodnesse towards us in the acceptation of our imperfect Sacrifices for Christ does not refuse nor discourage Martha though her action have these imperfections And in this largenesse of his Mercy which is the end of all we shall end this part And in our second That as in spirituall things nothing is perfect so in tempoporall things nothing is permanent we shall by the same three steps as in the former looke first upon the generall consideration the fluidnesse the transitorinesse of all such temporall things And then consider it more particularly in Gods Master-piece amongst mortall things the body of man That even that flowes into putrefaction And then lastly returne to that in which we determined the former part The largenesse of Gods goodnesse to us in affording even to mans body so dissolved into putrefaction an incorruptible and a glorious state So have you the frame set up and the roomes divided The two parts and the three branches of each And to the furnishing of them with meditations fit for this Occasion we passe now In entring upon the first branch of our first part 1. Part. In spiritualibus nihil perfectum Scientia That in spirituall things nothing is perfect we may well afford a kinde of spirituall nature to knowledge And how imperfect is all our knowledge What one thing doe we know perfectly Whether wee consider Arts or Sciences the servant knows but according to the proportion of his Masters knowledge in that Art and the Scholar knows but according to the proportion of his Masters knowledge in that Science Young men mend not their sight by using old mens Spectacles and yet we looke upon Nature but with Aristotles Spectacles and upon the body of man but with Galens and upon the frame of the world but with Ptolomies Spectacles Almost all knowledge is rather like a child that is embalmed to make Mummy then that is nursed to make a Man rather conserved in the stature of the first age then growne to be greater And if there be any addition to knowledge it is rather a new knowledge then a greater knowledge rather a singularity in a desire of proposing something that was not knowne at all before then an emproving an advancing a multiplying of former inceptions and by that meanes no knowledge comes to be perfect One Philosopher thinks he is dived to the bottome when he sayes he knows nothing but this That he knows nothing and yet another thinks that he hath expressed more knowledge then he in saying That he knows not so much as
speaks yet so doth the zeale of Gods Saints and their last prayers though we heare them not God continues still and they pray in Heaven as the Martyrs under the Altar even till the Resurrection He is with him now too In funere Here in his Funerals Buriall and Christian Buriall and Solemne Buriall are all evidences and testimonies of Gods presence God forbid we should conclude or argue an absence of God from the want of Solemne Buriall or Christian Buriall or any Buriall But neither must we deny it to be an evidence of his favour and presence where he is pleased to afford these So God makes that the seale of all his blessings to Abraham Gen. 15. Gen. 46. Gen. 50. Esay 11.10 Matt. 26. That he should be buried in a good age God established Iacob with that promise That his Son Ioseph should have care of his Funerals And Ioseph does cause his servants The Physitians to embalme him when he was dead Of Christ it was Prophecied That he should have a glorious Buriall And therefore Christ interprets well that profuse and prodigall piety of the Woman that poured out the Oyntment upon him That she did it to Bury him And so shall Ioseph of Arimathea be ever celebrated for his care in celebrating Christs Funerals If we were to send a Son or a friend to take possession of any place in Court or forraine parts we would send him out in the best equipage Let us not grudge to set downe our friends in the Anti-chamber of Heaven the Grave in as good manner as without vaine-gloriousnesse and wastfulnesse we may And in inclining them to whom that care belongs to expresse that care as they doe this day The Lord is with him even in this Funerall And because The Lord is here our brother is not dead Not dead in the memories and estimation of men And lastly In resurrectione that we may have God present in all his Manifestations Hee that was and is and is to come was with him in his life and death and is with him in this holy Solemnity and shall bee with him againe in the Resurrection Gen. 46.4 God sayes to Iacob I will goe downe with thee into Egypt and I will also surely bring thee up againe God goes downe with a good man into the Grave and will surely bring him up againe When The Angel promised to returne to Abraham and Sarah Gen. 18.10 for the assurance of the birth of Isaac according to the time of life that is in such time as by nature a woman may have a childe God will returne to us in the Grave according to the time of life that is in such time as he by his gracious Decree hath fixed for the Resurrection And in the meane time no more then the God-head departed from the dead body of our Saviour in the grave doth his power and his presence depart from our dead bodies in that darknesse But that which Moses said to the whole Congregation I say to you all both to you that heare me Deut. 4.4 and to him that does not All ye that did cleave unto the Lord your God are alive every one of you this day Even hee whom wee call dead is alive this day In the presence of God we lay him downe In the power of God he shall rise In the person of Christ he is risen already And so into the same hands that have received his soule we commend his body beseeching his blessed Spirit that as our charity enclines us to hope confidently of his good estate our faith may assure us of the same happinesse in our owne behalfe And that for all our sakes but especially for his own glory he will be pleased to hasten the consummation of all in that kingdome which that Son of God hath purchased for us with the inestimable price of his incorruptible blood Amen FINIS ⧠The Table of such places of SCRIPTURE as are illustrated and expounded in this BOOKE GENESIS 1.16 TWo great lights c. 81. A. 2.7 Man was a living soul 71. A. 18.10 According to the time of life 826. D. 26.18 Isaac digged the wells of water which 118. B. 29.12 Iacob kissed Rachel 407. C. 41.45 Pharaoh called Iosephs name 529. A. 51.20 You thought evill against me 171. B. EXODUS 4.22 Israel is his sonne 56. E. 14.14 The Lord shall fight for you 577. D. 23.3 Thou shalt not countenance 782. C. 33.13 Shew me now thy way 66. E. DEUTERONOMY 21.23 He that is hanged is accursed of God 8. A. 30.15 See I have set before thee life and death 70. A. 30.19 I have set before you life and death 148. D. JOSHUAH 10.12 Sunne stand thou still 700. A. JUDGES 2.5 They wept 539. B. RUTH 1.19 Call me not Naomi 479. B. 2 SAMUEL 14.14 We must needs die and are 311. A. 26.12 The sleepe of the Lord was upon him 257. D. 2 KINGS 9.3 None shall say This is Iezebel 148. B. 11.12 They put the crowne 336. D. 20.7 Take a lump of figs 514. E. JOB 4.18 His Angels he charged with folly 9. C. 5.7 Man is borne unto travatle as 538. B. 7.1 Mans life is a warfare 142. A. 603 E. 8.16 Woe unto me poor rush for c. 141. B. 10.20 Lord spare me a while 162. C. 19.25 I know my Redeemer liveth c. 150. A. 19.26 In my flesh c. 122. A. 20.11 My bones are full of the sins 519. B. PSALMES 2.2 They imagine a vaine thing 433. D. 2.8 Aske of me and I will give thee c. 26. E. 462. E. 2. ult Kisse the Son lest he be angry 541. D. 3.7 Thou hast broken the teeth 516. D. 6.5 In death there is no remembrance of thee 533. E. 15.2 Lord who shall ascend to thy Tabernacle 117. E. 19.9 The judgements of the Lord justifie themselves 366. D. 22.6 I am a worme 18. A. 45. C. 65. A. 25.15 Mine eyes are ever towards the Lord 618. A. 37.5 Cōmit thy wayes unto the Lord 686. B. 37.26 The righteous is mercifull 83. E. 45.7 God hath anointed thee with the oyle of gladnesse 396. C. 50.12 If I were hungry 101. B 55.19 Because they have no changes therefore they feare not God 57. D. 65.1 Praise waiteth for thee 64. A. 66.3 Through the greatnesse of thy power shall thine enemies submit 585. A. 72.18 Blessed be the Lord God of Israel which 394. D. 78.63 Their maidens were not given in marriage 679. C. 82.1 God standeth in the 72. D. 90.10 The dayes of our yeares c. 83. B. 101.1 I will sing of thy mercy and 12. A. 101.5 Him that hath a high looke 729. B. 102.5 My bones cleave to my flesh 519. B. 104.29 They die and they returne 255. D. 105.15 Touch not mine anointed 55. B. 106.20 They changed their glory 85. A. 111.10 A good understanding have 612. C. 113.5 He dwels in heaven 134. C. 119.57 The Lord is my portion 14. B.
B. C Expostulation with God how without sin 44. B. We may not excuse the inordinatenesse of all Expostulations of good men in the Scripture 132. C Nor come neere that excesse which we finde in some of them 155. C Of that in the widdow of Zareptha 218. A Against Extortion 94. A Against Extremities in matters of opinion 42. A. B. c. In Religion 326. D F FAith against implicite Faith 178. C. 411. C Faith and Reason how contiguous they are 178. B Faith how it is assisted by Reason 429. A. 612. A Of the imperfection that is in our Faith 818. D Faith and Works 78. E. 368. A. 567. D. E Our Workes more ours than our Faith 79. C. D. E. c. The Faith of others how profitable to us 105. D And how not 106. E Men not to deceive themselves with thinking that if they have Faith once they shall have it ever or have enough 819. B. C Fall sinne is a fall and how 186. D. 187. B. C. 462. D Against impossibility of falling from grace received 240. B. C Of Fame and getting a good name the necessity of it 680. A Fathers of the power of life and death which they had over their owne children 388. A How Jesuites slight the authority of the Fathers of the Church 489. C How they are to be followed 490. C Feare of the Feare of God 386. B The difference between fearefullnesse and Feare 387. B Servile and Filial Feare both good 386. D The Feare of God a blessed disease 466. B It constitutes the best assurance 694. C Not only a Feare but even a terror of God may fall upon the best men 70. A Festivalls the reason of their Institution in the Church 298. B Of applying particular Scriptures to particular Festivalls 423. D Filiation the markes of our spirituall Filiation lesse subject to errour than of our Temporall 338. E Fasting but thrice mentioned by David and he thrice derided for it 535. C The commendation and use of it ibid. D. E Finding of God the severall times of it 597. A Of Finding that which was lost 711. E The passage of the Usher in S. Augustine that found a bag of money and would not take so much as the tithe of it 712. A Fishers of men the Apostles why so called 734. E Flatterers how men may flatter the best men the very Angels yea and God himselfe 332. B Foliantes an Order in the Roman Church who only feed on roots and leaves 731. C Following Christ how we are to Follow in beleeving and in doing 731. E Against Forespeaking the Counsels or Actions of the State 535. E Foretelling of death the passage of the Monks of S. sidorus Monastery about it 473. C Forme of publike Prayer used amongst the very Gentiles 89. A And they had a particular Officer who made Prayers and Collects for them upon emergent occasions ibid. Which were received every five years ibid. Fortune and God how they consist together 711. C Freewill the obliquities of it from whence 283. D The power of it in our conversion 309. A. B Funerals of the duties belonging to them 196. A. 198. B Of the severall manner of them among severall nations 198. D Christian Funerals an evidence of Gods presence 826. B Fulnesse how in Christ and how in others of the Saints 3. C Three Fulnesses in Christ above others 4. A How Full all of us are of originall sin 2. E How Full God is of mercy 12. C Of Fulnesse without satisfaction and of satisfaction without Fulnesse 807. A Abraham why Full of yeares and yet not so old as Methusalem ibid. D Severall Fulnesses ibid. E G GEntiles and their salvation how prone the Fathers were in beleeving of it 261. D. 763. C Of the power of naturall reason in them and what many of the Fathers thought of it 314. C Of their multiplicity of Gods 378. B. 484. D. 502. E They durst not call their Tutelar Gods by their names 608. A Gentlenesse meeknesse and mildenesse the power of it both upon man and God 409. E. 410. A. B Glad God whether he be Glad that he is God 812. B Glorified bodies their Endowments applyed to the soule after her first resurrection 189. A. B. C Gloria Patri after every Psalme how ancient 88. C Glory against our feare of giving God too much Glory 58. E No Glory to God in destroying man only for his pleasure 85. B Glory what it is 88. A The light of Glory in heaven what 231. A All things we doe must be to the Glory of God 636. E Of the disparity and degrees of Glory in the Kingdome of heaven 742. D. 743. A. B. C Gluttony the effects and miseries of it 579. D God not to be loved in consideration of the Temporall Blessings he bestoweth upon us but for himselfe 750. C. D Foure wayes of knowing him 229. B God how present even in hell 226. D. E Seeing of God before us in our actions how necessary 169. E How we see him in a glasse 226. B How we are enemies to God 65. B All his wayes are goodnesse 66. E Severall positions motions and transitions ascribed to him 67. C How omnipresent with the Ubiquetary and the Stancarist 67. E Why he makes some poor others rich 84. E Glories not in destroying man till he finde cause 85. B Proposeth his glory to himselfe as the end of all his works 87. C. D. E All our wealth and honour to be ascribed to him 95. B Whether his Essence shall be seene in heaven 120. D. 230. D No evill from him 168. C Not the Author of sinne 368. E To be reverenced as a Father 388. C Of the reason of many Gods amongst the Gentiles 484. D God hates not any man but as a finner 628. C. D His mercy to all men 679. A. B The numberlesse number of Gods Benefits unto man 765. A Our Goods what care to be taken they be well gotten 83. A. 95. E They are abusively called Goods 168. D Goodnesse speciall in God 167. E. 168. A. B Golden Crowns of the Saints how forged in the Roman Church 743. D Gospell whether yet preached over all the world 363. D Why it is called in Scripture the Kingdome of God 472. A How compared to a net 736. C Grace against irresistible Grace 456. B Grace and Nature how they cooperate 649. D No consummative Grace in this life 735. B Graduall Psalmes which and why they are so called 653. E Great men not alwayes good and why 166. A But when good the more acceptable and their ill the more pardonable ibid. B. C The true end of Greatnesse 321. B. C. D Great men how dangerously obnoxious to their own servants 551 A Gretzer the Jesuite how injurious to the power of Kings in matters of Religion 698. D H AGainst making too much Haste either in Temporall or Spirituall Riches 520. D Hatred how it may consist with Charity 100 A Health Spirituall Health to
to need most Pleni for their wings are limited but their eyes are not Six wings but full of eies sayes our Text. They must have eyes in their tongues They must see that they apply not blindly and inconsiderately Gods gracious promises to the presumptuous nor his heavy judgements to the broken hearted They must have eyes in their eares They must see that they harken neither to a superstitious sense from Rome nor to a seditious sense of Scriptures from the Separation They must have eyes in their hands They must see that they touch not upon any such benefits or rewards as might bind them to any other master then to God himselfe They must have eyes in their eyes spirituall eyes in their bodily eyes They must see that they make a charitable construction of such things as they see other men do and this is that fulnesse of eyes which our Text speaks of But then especially Intus sayes our Text They were full of eyes Within The fulnesse the abundance of eyes that is of providence and discretion in the Ministers of God was intimated before In the 6. verse it was said That they were full of eyes before and behind that is circumspect and provident for all that were about them and committed to them But all is determined and summed up in this that They were full of eyes within For as there is no profit at all none to me none to God if I get all the world and lose mine own soul so there is no profit to me if I win other mens soules to God and lose mine owne All my wings shall doe me no good all mine eyes before and behind shall doe me no good if I have no prospect inward no eyes within no care of my particular and personall safety And so we have done with our first generall part the Persons denoted in these foure creatures and the duties of their ministery in which we have therefore insisted thus long that having so declared and notified to you our duties you also might be the more willing to heare of your owne duties as well as ours and to joyne with us in this Open and Incessant and Totall profession of your Religion which is the celebration of the Trinity in this acclamation Holy holy holy Lord God Almighty which is which was and which is to come To come therefore now to the second Part 2 Part. and taking the foure Euangelists to be principally intended here but secundarily the Preachers of the Gospel too and not onely they but in a faire extension and accommodation the whole Church of God first we noted their Ingenuitie and opennesse in the profession of their Religion they did it Dicentes Saying declaring publishing manifesting their devotion without any disguise any modification In that song of the three Children in the Fornace Dicentes O all ye works of the Lord c. there is nothing presented speechlesse To every thing that is there there is given a tongue Not onely all those creatures which have all a Beeing but even Privations Privations that have no Beeing that are nothing in themselves as the Night and Darknesse are there called upon to blesse the Lord to praise him and magnifie him for ever But towards the end of that song you may see that service drawne into a narrower compasse You may see to whom this speech and declaration doth principally appertaine For after he had called upon Sun and Moone and Earth and Sea and Fowles and Fishes and Plants and Night and Darknesse to praise the Lord to blesse him and magnifie him for ever Then he comes to O ye children of men Primogeniti Dei Gods beloved creatures his eldest sons and first-borne in his intention And then Domus Israel O ye house of Israel you whom God hath not onely made men but Christian men not onely planted in the World but in the Church not onely indued with Reason but inspired with Religion And then again O ye Priests of the Lord O ye Servants of the Lord those of Gods portion not onely in the Church but of the Church and appointed by him to deale between him and other men And then also O ye spirits and soules of the righteous those whom those instruments of God had powerfully and effectually wrought upon upon those especially those men those Christian men those Priests those sanctified men upon those he calls to blesse the Lord to praise him and magnifie him for ever This obligation the holy Ghost laies upon us all that the more God does for us the more we should declare it to other men God would have us tell him our sins God would have us tell other men his mercies It was no excuse for Moses that he was of uncircumcised lips Exod. 5.12 Ier. 1.6 No excuse for Ieremy to say O Lord God behold I cannot speak for I am a child Credidi propterea locutus sum is Davids forme of argument I beleeved and therefore I spake If thou dost not love to speak of God and of his benefits thou dost not beleeve in God nor that those benefits came from him Remember that when thou wast a child and presented to God in Baptisme God gave thee a tongue in other mens mouthes and inabled thee by them to establish a covenant a contract between thy soule and him then And therefore since God spake to thee when thou couldst not heare him in the faith of the Church since God heard thee when thou couldst not speak to him in the mouth of thy sureties Since that God that created thee was Verbum The Word for Dixit facta sunt God spake and all things were made Since that God that redeemed thee was Verbum The Word for The Word was made flesh Since that God that sanctified thee is Verbum The Word for therefore S. Basil calls the holy Ghost Verbum Dei quia interpres Filii He calls the holy Ghost the Word of God because as the Son is the Word because he manifests the Father unto us so the holy Ghost is the Word because he manifests the Son unto us and enables us to apprehend and apply to our selves the promises of God in him since God in all the three Persons is Verbum The Word to thee all of them working upon thee by speaking to thee Be thou Verbum too A Word as God was A Speaking and a Doing Word to his glory and the edification of others If the Lord open thy lips and except the Lord open them it were better they were luted with the clay of the grave let it be to shew forth his praise and not in blasphemous not in scurrile not in prophane language If the Lord open thy hand and if the Lord open it not better it were manacled with thy winding sheet let it be as well to distribute his blessings as to receive them Let thy mouth let thy hand let all the Organs of thy body all the faculties of thy soule concurre
in the performance of this duty intimated here and required of all Gods Saints Vt dicant That they speak utter declare publish the glory of God For this is that Ingenuity that Alacrity which constitutes our first Branch And then the second is the Assiduity the constancy the incessantnesse They rest not day nor night But have the Saints of God no Vacation Assiduitas doe they never cease nay as the word imports Requiem non habent They have no Rest Beloved God himselfe rested not till the seventh day be thou content to stay for thy Sabbath till thou maist have an eternall one If we understand this of rest meerly of bodily rest the Saints of God are least likely to have it in this life For this life is to them especially above others a businesse and a perplext businesse a warfare and a bloody warfare a voyage and a tempestuous voyage If we understand this rest to be Cessation Intermission the Saints in heaven have none of that in this service It is a labour that never wearies to serve God there As the Sun is no wearier now then when he first set out six thousand yeares since As that Angel which God hath given to protect thee is not weary of his office for all thy perversenesses so howsoever God deale with thee be not thou weary of bearing thy part in his Quire here in the Militant Church God will have low voyces as well as high God will be glorified De profundis as well as In excelsis God will have his tribute of praise out of our adversity as well as out of our prosperity And that is it which is intimated and especially intended in the phrase which followes Day and night For it is not onely that those Saints of God who have their Heaven upon earth doe praise him in the night according to that of S. Ierome Sanctis ipse somnus oratio and that of S. Basil Etiam somnia Sanctorum preces sunt That holy men doe praise God and pray to God in their sleep and in their dreames nor only that which David speaks of of rising in the night and fixing stationary houres for prayer But even in the depth of any spirituall night in the shadow of death in the midnight of afflictions and tribulations God brings light out of darknesse and gives his Saints occasion of glorifying him not only in the dark though it be dark but from the dark because it is dark This is a way unconceiveable by any unexpressible to any but those that have felt that manner of Gods proceeding in themselves That be the night what night it will be the oppression of what Extention or of what Duration it can all this retards not their zeal to Gods service Nay they see God better in the dark then they did in the light Their tribulation hath brought them to a nearer distance to God and God to a clearer manifestation to them And so to their Ingenuity that they professe God and their Religion openly is added an Assiduity that they do it incessantly And then also an Integrity a Totality that they doe not depart with nor modifie in any Article of their Religion which is intirely and totally enwrapt in this acclamation of the Trinity which is our third and last Branch in this last Part Holy holy holy Lord God Almighty which was and is and is to come For the Trinity it self Trinitas it is Lux but Lux inaccessibilis It is light for a child at Baptisme professes to see it but then it is so inaccessible a light as that if we will make naturall reason our Medium Psal 18.11 to discerne it by it will fall within that of David Posuit tenebras latibulum suum God hath made darknesse his secret places God as God will be seen in the creature There in the creature he is light light accessible to our reason but God in the Trinity is open to no other light then the light of faith To make representations of men or of other creatures we finde two wayes Statuaries have one way and Painters have another Statuaries doe it by Substraction They take away they pare off some parts of that stone or that timber which they work upon and then that which they leave becomes like that man whom they would represent Painters doe it by Addition Whereas the cloth or table presented nothing before they adde colours and lights and shadowes and so there arises a representation Sometimes we represent God by Substraction by Negation by saying God is that which is not mortall not passible not moveable Sometimes we present him by Addition by adding our bodily lineaments to him and saying that God hath hands and feet and eares and eyes and adding our affections and passions to him and saying that God is glad or sorry angry or reconciled as we are Some such things may be done towards the representing of God as God But towards the expressing of the distinction of the Persons in the Trinity nothing Then when Abraham went up to the great sacrifice of his son he left his servants Gen. 22.5 and his Asse below Though our naturall reason and humane Arts serve to carry us to the hill to the entrance of the mysteries of Religion yet to possesse us of the hill it selfe and to come to such a knowledge of the mysteries of Religion as must save us we must leave our naturall reason and humane Arts at the bottome of the hill and climb up only by the light and strength of faith Dimitte me quia lucescit Gen. 32.26 sayes that Angel that wrastled with Iacob Let me go for it growes light If thou think to see me by day-light sayes that Angel thou wilt be deceived If we think to see this mystery of the Trinity by the light of reason Dimittemus we shall lose that hold which we had before our naturall faculties our reason will be perplext and infeebled and our supernaturall our faith not strengthened that way Those testimonies and proofes of the Trinity which are in the old Testament are many and powerfull in their direct line But they are truly for the most part of that nature as that they are rather Illustrations and Confirmations to him that believed the Trinity before then Arguments of themselves able to convince him that hath no such Preconception We that have been catechized and brought up in the knowledge of the Trinity finde much strength and much comfort in that we finde in the first line of the Bible that Bara Elohim Creavit Dii Gods created heaven and earth In this that there is the name of God in the plurall joyned to a Verb of the singular number we apprehend an intimation of divers persons in one God We that believe the Trinity before finde this in that phrase and form of speech The Jews which believe not the Trinity find no such thing So when we finde that plurall phrase Faciamus hominem That God