men or rather as much as the advantages of Christianity out-went those of Philosophy For this man is not only improved by humane discourse but raised by divine revelation and governed by the wisedom of God is not under the faint and fluctuating hopes which reason can suggest but under the assurances of faith is not only eminent for some one or more vertues but being inflamed by the love of God and the prospect of Heaven he breaths nothing but greatness and glory wherever he goes God is in his heart Heaven is in his eye joy in his countenance and he spreads the sweet odours of piety and casts a lustre upon Religion FOR in the first place he is sanctified throughout the image of God is restored upon him and Christ Jesus formed in him All the maims of his fall are cured the confusion of his powers rectified the tyranny of custom vanquished his Conscience is inlightned his reason raised his passions subdued his will set right and all the inferiour powers obedient Vertue is made natural easy and delightfull to him and it is his meat and drink to doe the will of his Heavenly Father FURTHERMORE to assure his station he is confirmed by the grace of God and upheld by divine power he is the peculiar care of God's providence the special charge of the holy Angels and the Temple of the blessed Spirit all God's dispensations provide for his safety consider his strength and work for his good The Devil is so restrained that he shall not tempt him above what he shall be able to bear and hath not so little wit with his great malice to attempt where he is sure to be foiled Persecutions may assault him and flatteries may undermine him prosperity may indeavour to blow him up or adversity to crush him down raillery may goe about to shame him out of his course or buffonry to laugh him out of it but his race is as certain as that of the Sun or the Stars in the Firmament and his foundation sure as the Mountains for he knows whom he hath believed AGAIN he is adopted a Son of God and sealed by the Holy Ghost to the day of redemption he feels himself quickned by his vital presence warmed with his motions and assured by his testimony This erects the hands that would hang down and strengthens the feeble knees this lifts up his head with joy because he knows his redemption draweth nigh Every day he walks he finds himself a days journey nearer Heaven therefore he sets his face thitherwards he puts on the habit the mein the joy the very heart of Heaven he goes up by contemplation and views it he ravishes his heart with the sight of it he falls into a trance with admiration and when he comes to himself again cries out Come Lord Jesus come quickly He needs nothing he fears nothing he despises the world life is tedious death is welcome to be dissolved and to be with Christ is best of all WHAT can trouble him that hath peace in his Conscience what can disturb him that hath Heaven before him what can dismay him that is secure of immortality what can affright him whom death cannot hurt and what can deject him that is sure of a crown of glory AND lastly no wonder if after all this such a man be active and vigorous for God if he be used by God and become his Embassadour beseeching men in Christ's stead to be reconciled to God For all those comforts and incouragements afore mentioned inlarge his Soul like an Angel put wings upon him like a Cherub and set him on fire like one of the Seraphim with holy zeal of God's glory and the good of men Therefore with David he tells the unbelieving world what God hath done for his Soul and with his Lord and Master Christ Jesus he goes about doing good and in this flame of holy love is contented to offer up himself a sacrifice of a sweet smell to God HERE is adulta virtus Religion and Piety at their highest pitch and fullest maturity that is attainable in this world the next step is Heaven one degree more commences Glory Let the envious world now if they dare reproach Religion as hypocrisy or as meer pretences and great words when they observe that this glorious state is the design and the attainment of it whenever it is wisely and worthily prosecuted or let them say all this is impossible who as Tully well expresses it Ex sua ignavia inertia non ex ipsa virtute de virtutis robore existimant These things are no Romances nor have I dressed up any Legendary Hero the things are true and real Thus shall it be done to the man whom God delights to honour All this hath been attained and might be attained again would men but cease to take up an opinion of their own goodness from the extream badness of others and take their measures rather from the rules and motives and assistances of the Gospel then from the examples and customs of the world then without doubt others besides St. Paul might be able to say I have fought the good fight I have finished my course I have kept the faith from henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness which the Lord the righteous Judge shall give me at that day and not to me only but to all them also that love his appearing 2 Tim. 4. 7 8. And that brings me to the last instance of the Father's kindness and the top of that glory which God bestows upon truely good men CHAP. V. The splendid Entertainment or the joys of Heaven St. Luk. Chap. 15. Vers 23. And bring hither the fatted Calf and kill it and let us eat and be merry THE CONTENTS § I. The peculiar intendment of this passage of the Parable That by the feast upon the fatted Calf are represented the joys of Heaven § II. The several figurative expressions which the joys of Heaven are set out by in holy Scripture viz. Paradise Rest a City a Kingdom a Feast § III. A more plain and literal account of the felicities of the other world especially in four particulars 1. The resurrection of the Body 2. Provision of objects fit to entertain and satisfy all the powers both of Soul and Body 3. The eternity of that state of life and happiness 4. The blessed presence of God and our Saviour and the happy society of Angels and Saints § I. IT was thought to be a just civility amongst the more soft and voluptuous Nations especially those of the East that those who were to be the Guests at a Feast should be as curious in the preparation of themselves for the solemnity as he that made the entertainment was for their accommodation and for that cause usually a considerable time of notice was given them before-hand that they might be in such circumstances as should both do honour to him that invited them and also render them
intended but as tents or tabernacles for our short and temporary residence thenceforward we shall be in a more settled state of life and happiness And that 's the reason why we groan and desire to die not meerly because we are weary of our station and impatient of this present life but because we have then hope to be forthwith in a far better condition being put into an unalterable estate of life NOTWITHSTANDING the truth of all which it would nevertheless be uncomfortable to good men if they had not a prospect of the union of their Souls again with their Bodies not only because few men are so metaphysical as to have any clear and satisfying notion of this separate state and the most of men having been always used to a Body would be in fear of losing their Being if they were not relieved with the expectation of being united to them again But principally because it is certain that however the Soul can exist and perform some actions of life without the Organs of the Body yet it being created in a middle rank between purely spiritual and meerly corporeal Beings and being apta nata fit and ordained to inform a Body must needs have an inclination thereunto and especially in regard most of its accustomed actions do require the help of the bodily powers for though it may understand without them love God adhere to goodness reflect upon it self and feel the comforts of a good Conscience upon a well-performed life c. yet it is not intelligible how it can see without eyes move locally or apply it self to society without them NOW forasmuch as God intends that the whole man should be happy and compleatly comfortable in the other world therefore he hath resolved with himself and assured us that the Body shall be raised again and therefore the Scripture lays so much stress upon the Resurrection as if men's happiness were adjourned to that great day TO which this is also to be added that the Bodies we then are incouraged to expect will be as the Apostle calls them Spiritual Bodies that is raised and sublimed from this drossy feculency freed from sickness pain weariness hunger heaviness and all the other imperfections of gross matter and so be fit to correspond with the vigour of the Soul and the glories of that blessed state In all which together I place the first instance of the happiness of the other world and whoever well considers will find it to be a very great and glorious one But SECONDLY man shall not only be restored to himself and to all his capacities but in the world to come there shall be the most delightfull objects and entertainments provided for and presented to all his powers so as to employ fill and ravish them We intimated under the former Head that the powers of the Body should be raised and improved the Body being made spiritual and fine by which means also the intellectual powers will be much advanced having then exteriour Organs capable of more generous use and imployment But to have powers inlarged without objects whereupon to imploy and wherein to delight themselves would be a torment instead of an happiness For the very reason of pain and grief lies in nothing else but either that some powers are destitute of their proper objects or that the powers and objects are mis-matched and unproportionate to each other Who will goe about to appease hunger with musick or content any one sense with the objects of another or think to satisfy the desires of a man with the repast of a Beast We see both extream little and excessively great and glorious objects are alike troublesome to the eye and as well excessive joy as grief break and disturb the mind all discontent and uneasiness of men's spirit with their condition is from hence that some power of theirs is either not provided for or less benignly dealt with then it desires So that felicity or misery arise neither from the absolute nature of things but from their relative consideration nor from that meerly unless those things that are relatively good and proper be also proportioned to the capacity of the power that receives and feels them NOW therefore as the wise and good Creatour of all things never brought any Creature into being which he had not fitted with a satisfaction in its kind nor opened any power for which he had not provided proportionable enjoyments because had he done otherwise he had been the authour of evil and misery and could not have looked over his works and pronounced of them that they were good So much less will he permit that in the other world wherein he intends to make the fullest demonstration of his goodness there should be any instance of unhappiness by reason of defect or disproportion or especially that such holy men as he there designs to reward for all their faithfull adherence and service to him should have inlarged powers and scanty satisfactions but the one answerable to the other agreeably to which it is that that state is represented by a Feast as we have observed already where care is always taken that there be nothing offensive to the Guests and that none of the participants may goe away without full measures of what is desirable to them wherewith also accord those other expressions of Holy Scripture which describe God as making preparations from the beginning of the world 1 Cor. 2. 9. Matth. 25. 34. as we have intimated before IN conformity to this notion it must needs be that in the Kingdom of Heaven in the first place the mind of man will be adorned with a greater measure of knowledge and wisedom then is attainable in this life partly as it is exercised about higher and more noble objects then those we converse withall here below partly also as it will have a clearer apprehension and quicker perception then it is capable of whilst it is clouded by the fumes of a gross Body Hence it is that the Apostle tells us 1 Cor. 13. 12. Here we see through a glass darkly but there we shall see clearly as we are seen There we shall contemplate things in themselves and in their causes which here we have but a faint reflection of there we shall understand all the admirable wisedom of divine providence which is here a mystery to us Whilst we were in this world we modestly and humbly believed that all things wrought for good but then we shall clearly understand the manner thereof here we have a narrow sphere but there we move in a clear and free air and have a vast and unbounded prospect before us in which our minds may ravish themselves with admiration and expatiate without bounds or limits There all the secrets of nature the mysteries of grace the knots of Theology and the very areana imperii will be open to us as being now interioris admissionis of the privy Council of Heaven AND this will be as much more pleasant then
THE PENITENT PARDON'D S t. PETER Cor contritum S t. MARY MAGDALENE 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 THE Penitent Pardoned OR A Discourse of the NATURE of SIN AND THE EFFICACY of REPENTANCE Under the PARABLE OF THE PRODIGAL SON By J. GOODMAN D. D. Rectour of Hadham 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 S. Chrysost LONDON Printed by E. Flesher for R. Royston Bookseller to His most Sacred MAJESTY An. Dom. MDCLXXIX Imprimatur hic Liber cui Titulus The Parable of the Prodigal Son Maii 14. 1678. Guil. Sill R. P. D. Henr. Episc Lond. à Sacris Domesticis To the Right Honourable ARTHUR Earl of Essex VICOUNT Malden BARON of Hadham LORD LIEUTENANT of the County of Hartford One of the LORDS of his MAJESTIE's Most Honourable Privy Council c. My Lord I Have so deep a sense of those manifold and great Favours which through the course of many years without interruption it hath pleased your Lordship to confer upon me That though I know it is impossible for me to make any proportionable return yet it is equally impossible for me to omit any opportunity of making my just acknowledgments And forasmuch as my obligations to your Lordship are as well known to the World as great in themselves I think it becomes me and am persuaded all men but your Lord shp expect it from me that I should make some publick expression of my gratitude I will therefore do that right to my self to acknowledge that when I first deliberated about the adventuring these Papers to the Press it was a principal argument to determine me so to do because by the Dedication of this part of my Studies to your Lordship's Name I should have opportunity of performing so just a duty and of doing honour to so great Vertue and Goodness But my Lord I must needs confess that when I came to make reflection upon the Subject and the tenour of the present Discourse I was quickly sensible how great an errour my zeal was likely to betray me into in Intitling a work almost wholly levelled against debauchery to a Personage of so severe Vertue and Sanctity for I considered your Lordship's early as well as eminent and habitual Piety and what need thought I is there of Physick to those that are in perfect health and if as S. Paul asserts The Law is not made for a Righteous man because such are able to be a Law to themselves much less is the Doctrine of Repentance suitably Preached to those that in the words of our Saviour need no Repentance Thus I felt a conflict within my self my discretion opposing the designs of my gratitude and my present reason staggering my former resolution But then my Lord I considered also on the other hand that seeing the Divine Majesty himself is well pleased with those Oblations that are beneficial to the World though they are not usefull to himself nor make any addition to his own glory and happiness I could not doubt but your Lordship who hath so great a zeal to the common good of mankind would permit your Name to be made use of to countenance a design of bringing men home to God to themselves and their own happiness and of recovering the Age from the mischiefs of extravagancy and debauchery which it too lamentably groans under And this my Lord re-fixed my resolutions to Intitle your Lordship to this plain Piece of Practical Divinity and so much the rather because it is reasonable to hope that the directing men's eyes and thoughts to so great and rare an Example of clear and unspotted Vertue amidst all the disturbances of business and the temptations of a plentifull fortune will be able to confute all their objections against the possibility of heroick goodness and may have as much efficacy to convince and shame them out of their follies as the very reason of this Discourse to incourage their amendment And should I now as well in pursuance of the design of my Book as of my gratitude make a draught of your Lordship in your full proportions that is endeavour to represent you as great as your own Vertues added to the Nobility of your Bloud have made you I might if my skill failed me not exhibit to the World a piece of that Masculine perfection wherein the most curious would not know what to desire nor the most envious what to suspect Forasmuch as not only this whole Kingdom and that of Ireland but several of the Neighbour States and Kingdoms also can bear witness to your Lordship's steadiness in the Protestant Religion your Loyalty to your Prince your Piety Humanity Justice Temperance Prudence Courage and all other great and Illustrious Ornaments Nor do I fear by such a Character to derive any envy upon your Lordship since very few of your Lawrels were the meer Favours of Fortune but tht Rewards of Vertue the Acquests of Prudence and Conduct and won by Wise Counsels by Generous Resolutions and Noble Employments and in such a case it is to be hoped that Men will not have the Impudence to Envy the Effects when they have not the Bravery to Imitate the Causes Thus my Lord I could satisfy my own Conscience and do right to the World in setting before them such a Pattern as would at once inflame the Generous and shame the Slothfull and Vicious But I know your Lordship's Temper and the Greatness of your Mind too well to think that hereby I should do an Acceptable Service to your Lordship wherefore I add no more but my Hearty Prayers that it will please Almighty God to Bless your Lordship and your most Noble and Pious Countess with long Life and Prosperity to succeed your Lordship's Studies and Endeavours to the benefit of Religion your Prince and Countrey and to preserve your hopefull Off-spring that they may Uphold your Family Name and HOnour to after Generations This my Lord is the Constant Duty and shall be the Incessant Desire of My Lord Your Lordship 's Most Humble Servant JO. GOODMAN Octob. 1. 1678. The Preface to the Reader IT is not unlikely that these Papers may a little surprize some of those into whose hands they may fall Not so much in regard that this Subject hath been handled by others for I modestly hope that notwithstanding any thing I have seen or heard of from other Pens this Discourse may have its place and use but because I am aware that some of my Friends who have been privy to my Intentions and to the course of my Studies have made me a debtor to the Publick of a Work of a different nature from this which I now present And I am not unwilling so far to own the Obligation as to acknowledge that I have now for a good time applied my thoughts to the Discovery and Explication of the Nature and Reason of Religion in general and I do hope if it please God to continue me life and health that in due time I shall in some good measure acquit the credit of
neglect it These reasons and authorities together will I doubt not justifie a particular application of this Parable Notwithstanding that there may be the fullest security against the mischiefs specified in the entrance of this point I will take care that in the following discourse no doctrine shall be obtruded upon the bare warrant of similitude or figurative resemblance but whatsoever shall be delivered shall be both grounded upon some express and literal Texts of Scripture and attested by the consent of the Ancient Fathers And now these things premised I proceed more closely to pursue my purpose in the particular handling of the Parable CHAP. II. The occasion and exposition of this Parable THE CONTENTS § I. The adversaries of our Saviour's Doctrine contradict each other some accusing it of too great difficulty others as a Doctrine of licentiousness the occasion of this latter misprision of it amongst the Gentiles a fabulous story of Constantine's conversion the occasion of the Jew's misapprehension § II. Three ranks of Jews a maxime of theirs built upon that distinction the crasse sense they had of the Mosaick Covenant which things in special gave rise to their calumnies against his doctrine and practice from which he vindicates himself by this Parable § III. A literal paraphrase upon the Parable § IV. The true interpretation of the Parable who is meant by the elder and who by the younger brother the parts of the Parable and of the ensuing discourse IT is a necessary rule amongst all Expositors to look attentively on the occasion and from the rise to judge of the scope and tendency of the discourse and this is most especially requisite to be done in the interpretation of figurative passages in regard there is nothing so like but it is also unlike nor so resembles any one thing but in some respects it may resemble another and therefore here like those that sail in a narrow channel where the Stars or the Card are too general directors they are forced to sail by coasting as they call it so must we in the explication of a Parable where there is not alwaies to be expected a determinate and necessary sense of every phrase as in more direct discourses govern our selves by the general aim and be sure to set out right at first from the design of it Now in order to the discovery of the true occasion of this Parable it is of use to note That as it was the lot of our Saviour himself when he was arraigned by the Jews to be accused by such as agreed no better amongst themselves then with the truth and whose several testimonies more impeached the credit of each other then pressed him against whom they were suborned so it hath often fared with his Doctrine and Religion to be accused of things inconsistent with each other insomuch that commonly the several imputations mutually confuting each other have jointly vindicated instead of aspersing Christianity The special instance which I am now concerned to assign of this matter is that the same institution hath by different persons been accused of difficulty and facility as an intolerable burthen by some as a doctrine of looseness and licentiousness by others The former of these accusers have commonly been a sort of loose pretenders to Christianity who because the Gospell requires that we love the Lord our God with all our hearts and soul and strength that we live in all good conscience both towards God and man that we restrain not onely the outward acts of sin but subdue the very passion and inclination thereto and upon such like accounts cry out durus sermo that it is a strict and severe Law and if this be Evangelical obedience it is impossible and who then can be saved And to help themselves out of these difficulties they run into wild persuasions that either Christ Jesus himself who delivered this institution must in his own person so perform it instead of all that are to be saved as to excuse them the doing it or else God must be pleased by miracle to overbear them into the performance of it But since these men profess Christianity I leave them to be silenced by the express declaration of our Saviour Matth. 11. 10. My yoke is easie and my burthen is light The contrary sort are those I am more concerned in at present namely such as reproach Christianity as a doctrine of ease and looseness Touching whom it is plain by the former objections that this second sort of men must be absolute strangers to the tenour of the Religion they thus accuse i. e. they must be either Jews or Gentiles For the Pagans they either hearing that Faith was insisted upon as the prime qualification of a Christian looked therefore upon the whole Religion as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a bare credulity a meer facility of mind or a supine abandoning ones self to the dictates and suggestions of others or else considering that this Religion neither required nor practised the troublesome and costly sacrifices then in use amongst other people nor so much as made any account of those nice observances and very austere rites that were in great reputation with all the world besides judged it therefore to be a very cheap and easie thing to be a Christian or lastly observing that many who were conscious of having lived wickedly heretofore betook themselves to and found both cure and comfort in this institution they thereupon concluded it to be an Asylum and Sanctuary to looseness and debauchery Upon some or all of these accounts the Pagans were generally abused into the aforesaid misprision of Christianity touching the third and last of which stumbling blocks I think it will not be unacceptable to the Reader that I rehearse a famous story from the Ecclesiastical Historians to this effect When the great Constantine to his own immortal glory and the great advantage of Christianity espoused that Religion the Pagans to slurr him and Religion together devised this tale of him That he having basely murthered his brother Crispus and others of his near kindred and feeling some remorse in his conscience for so great Barbarities applied himself to Sopater the Philosopher and Successor of Plotinus to be directed by him to some 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or expiation But Sopater tells him that Philosophy afforded no remedy in so desperate a case He then saith the Story goes to the Christian Bishops to get ease to his guilty and affrighted conscience and they readily receiving and incouraging him that a little Baptismal water would wash out all that stain and ease the smart he hereupon finding this a Religion wherein a man might reconcile the gratification of the most exorbitant passions with a quiet mind became a Christian Theodoret who relates this fable thinks as well he might that it concerned his profession of Christianity to shew the falshood of it And therefore after he had first retorted it upon the Pagans themselves shewing that if it had been true
going quite back again and undoing all he hath done besides the agonies of conscience and the strong convulsions which he must suffer that casts off a long settled and habitual course of sin To which adde that whatever diligence or zeal of God's glory a late Convert that comes into the vineyard as it were at the eleventh hour may express at last yet it is certain he hath done God a great dishonour heretofore whereas he we now speak of is one that coming in at the first hour labours all day in God's work and equally carries on the affair of God's glory and his own comfort here and salvation hereafter Now all these things considered if there shall be any man so rash and injudicious as notwithstanding to press all men without distinction in order to their title to the mercies of God and hopes of Heaven to make the same severe reflexions upon themselves or to shew the like sensible and discernible change in their lives let them know by this unskilfulness of theirs they unreasonably minister trouble to the best and happiest of men and have a design quite contrary to that of our Saviour who professed he came not to call the righteous but sinners to repentance And in the seventh verse of this Chapter he speaks of just men which need no repentance that is have no need to make a change of their whole course and begin a new as notorious sinners ought to doe Both which places I take to be clearly interpreted and to the sense we are assigning to them by that other passage of our Saviour Jo. 13. 10. He that is washed needeth not save to wash his feet onely that is he that is already ingaged in a holy course and habituate to the ways of piety hath only need to be duely cleansed from those occasional soils and defilements which the infirmity of humane nature and conversation in the world suffer no man wholly to escape but not to enter upon a new state or begin a whole course of repentance To which effect I understand those words of Origen in his Books against Celsus Christ Jesus saith he was sent indeed a Physician to cure and recover sinners but to improve and instruct those further in the mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven that were already vertuous I 'le conclude and confirm all I have said of this kind with the sense of Manasses which he expresses in his famous penitential prayer Thou O Lord that art the God of the just hast not appointed repentance to the just as to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob c. but thou hast appointed repentance unto me who am a sinner c. This I take to be sufficient for the determination who is meant by the Elder Brother and then we cannot be much to seek who is denoted by the Younger for what we have now said being granted it necessarily follow that by the Younger Son are described all such persons as have run a dangerous risk of sin and impiety that have committed gross and hainous transgressions and continued in a state of disobedience and impenitency after such manner as the Publicans and Sinners in the text are supposed to have done These are said to forsake their Father's house and presence to mispend their portion in riotous living who yet at last being reduced to extremity come to themselves turn serious penitents bewail their folly resolve upon amendment implore pardon double their diligence and care for the time to come and of old sinners become young Saints whereupon they are by a gracious God admitted to pardon and reconciliation and adoption for these the best robe is fetched out the fatted calf slain and upon their conversion as a thing utterly despaired of and unexpected there is joy in Heaven and amongst the holy Angels These were dead in trespasses and sins but are now quickned and revived by the grace of God they were Strangers and Aliens from the covenant of Grace but now become of the houshold of God and heirs of eternal life And now these two points being resolved of we have a key by which we may easily open all the circumstances of the whole Parable so that it will not be necessary that I insist longer upon a general interpretation Neverthelesse lest there should seem one difficulty not sufficiently provided against or any man should yet be at a losse how if the Elder Brother denote sincerely good men it can stand with their character to grumble at the mercifull reception of poor penitents as here he is represented to doe And moreover it may raise another doubt if the Elder Brother be set to describe men of constant and unblemished Sanctity how such a person should be fit to denote the Scribes and Pharisees who were certainly very evil and corrupt men Unlesse a plain account can be given of these it must follow that either we have not hit the occasion of the Parable or the Parable did not answer to the occasion Wherefore to these I answer joyntly That our Saviour the more effectually to convince these Jews that reproached and censured him proceeds with them upon their own Hypothesis namely taking it for granted that they were as eminently good and holy men as they either took themselves or pretended to be and that the Publicans and Sinners were indeed as bad as they esteemed them I mean he doth not intend to signifie that these censorious persons were indeed good men for upon all occasions we see he upbraids their rottennesse and hypocrisie but because they out of opinion of their own sanctity and contempt of others reproached his carriage in this matter therefore the designs to shew them that if that was true which is utterly false and they as good men as they were extremely bad yet upon due consideration they ought not to blame his management of himself and gracious condescension to sinners As if he had said You Scribes and Pharisees wonder that instead of applying my self to your conversation who are men of great note for sanctity and devotion and never blemished with any great disorder I rather chuse to lay out my self upon the recovery of flagitious and desperate sinners now see your own unreasonablenesse in this instance You will allow a Father to be more passionately concerned for and expresse a greater joy upon the recovery of a Lost Son then he usually doth about him that was always with him and out of danger and if that Son who had never departed from his Father and so never given him occasion for those change of passions should expostulate with his Father for his affectionateness in such a case you would in your own thoughts blame him as envious and undutifull Now apply this to your selves and think as well as you can of your selves yet upon the premisses you will see no reason to calumniate my endeavours of reclaiming sinners or my kindnesse and benignity towards them upon their repentance By this time I doubt not but the whole
presence of a grave and vertuous man carries that awe as that the sinner is rendered impotent to his purposes as if he were under a charm the truth of which we see confirmed by frequent experience how much more must needs the thoughts of an omni-present Majesty an all-seeing eye a holy and righteous Judge cool the heats abate the courage and stop the carreer of a sinner To which purpose it is the observation of several Learned men upon that passage of the Psalmist Psal 14. 1. The fool hath said in his heart there is no God They conceive That it might as well and as consistently with the Original be rendered The fool hath said to his heart c. i. e. Wicked men to the intent that they might go on the more comfortably and uncontrolledly in their sins would fain persuade themselves there is no God BUT to speak a little more closely and particularly to this matter forasmuch as I noted even now from S. Jerome that God being an Infinite Majesty we can neither approach him nor depart from him strictly and locally there are therefore these three ways by which according to the language of the Holy Scripture we can come near to God viz. either 1. by acts of immediate worship as prayer and praises and the like or 2. by living under a quick sense of his providence or 3. by yielding obedience to his commands which three things in conjunction make up the whole nature of true Piety and Religion And in respect to these the Holy men of old such as Enoch Noah Abraham c. are said to have walked with God That is they framed themselves to obedience to all his commands they composed themselves to a submission unto and compliance with his providential dispensations and to the intent that they might be assisted and animated in both those they constantly addressed themselves to him by acts of worship for his influence and blessing And again on the other side those evil men who are said to depart from God were such as either cast off the yoke of his obedience or lived without a sense of his superintendence or laid aside the care of his worship And which is further observable these three are hardly to be found separate from one another because of the reciprocal influence they have upon each other FOR as in the former Triad or instances of piety whosoever lives under a sense of a providence will endeavour to propitiate the Divine Majesty to himself by all worshipfull dutifull observance and he that makes Conscience of that cannot ordinarily be so absurd as to hope for the favour of a Wise and Holy Majesty by the meer importunity of his devotions without Conscience of obeying his commands with respect to which it was well said by a pious man in way of advice Leave not off praying to God for either praying will make thee leave sinning or continuing to sin will make thee desist praying Again he that worships and obeys a God most certainly lives under a sense of him for otherwise he could give no account to himself why he should put himself to the trouble of worship and the care of obedience AND then for the other Triad or the three instances of impiety he that lives wickedly will in time lose all sense of a providence and consequently all Conscience of the duties of worship and on the other side he that extinguishes either the belief of a providence or in a fair way to it casts off all care of religious worship will not fail to run riot in his life when he hath rid himself of those awfull principles that did curb and restrain him of the truth of all which we have a memorable example Gen. 4. Cain had betrayed a great remisseness in Religion by the carelesness of his Sacrifice whereas Abel who believed firmly in God thinking nothing too good for his service brought of the fattest and best of his flock to God Cain thought any thing would serve turn and accordingly carried away the tokens of God's displeasure and disdain but vers 8. he invites his Brother Abel into the field where as the Samaritan version intimates some discourse passed between them and the Jerusalem Targum tells us particularly that Cain stiffly denied a providence which Abel as strenuously asserted and this doctrine of Cain was very agreeable to his negligent worship before and his exsecrable practice after for from this denial of a providence he presently proceeds to the murder of his Brother and not long after that vers 16. we read Cain went out from the presence of the Lord he now agreeably to those principles and consequently of such villanous practices cast off renounced and defied Religion And the text further adds he went and sojourned in the Land of Nod which who so listed to interpret allegorically would very agreeably to the series of my present discourse say meant that he vagrant-like wandered on in a course of dissoluteness having now lost all card and compass to direct him BUT what need we farther evidence in so plain a case to which our own experience and the observation of all the world gives testimony for what is it that encourages any man in a generous undertaking where the exercise of vertue is attended with hazzard and difficulty with labour and trouble with patience and self-denyal but the belief of a providence what bears him up that the privacy of the fact abates not his edge nor the tediousness of accomplishment wearies out his endeavours nor the opposition quails his spirit but only this that he sees him that is invisible and having God before him thinks himself upon the most ample Theatre and is sure of success and reward And what is there that keeps alive this sense of God and Providence that neither Atheistical suggestions debauch his Principles nor multitude of ill examples cool his heat and corrupt his resolution but his approaches to God by exercises of devotion whereby he refreshes the worthy notions of his mind and hath them as it were new engraven and made more legible upon the tables of his heart He goes by the duties of Religion like Moses into the Mount of God and returns with the Tables of God's Law written a fresh by the finger of God Such a man is ashamed of sin and disdains every ungenerous action coming newly from the presence of God the approaches of such a glory diffuse some rays upon him and his face shines as the same Moses's did upon the like occasion In short he cannot without great violence to himself condescend to entertain the Devil into his bosome which is yet warm with that divine Guest the Holy Ghost Contrariwise take a man that lives without a sense of God and he hath no care of nor value for himself he hath not a mind large enough for any generous design he is poor spirited hurried by every fear baffled by every danger surprized and carried away by every temptation The vigorous
if we consider that thus to gain a whole world and to lose a man's Soul is the most sad and unfortunate bargain For it is to possess a great deal for the short lease of life and then to be turned out of all to all eternity and whilst he doth possess it it is so far from satisfying his mind or appeasing his conscience as that it cannot allay the Gout asswage the Tooth-ach nor cure any disease of the Body In summe what is that gain which neither makes the wiser nor the better nor the more comfortable man BUT then for glory and fame these are not usually the attendants of sin but of some kind of vertues the portion of sin is shame and infamy forasmuch as it is an irregularity a deformity and in the mildest sense it is a confession of folly weakness and impotency Notwithstanding it is too true some sins carry applause with them but amongst whom competent Judges of honour wise and good men No but the silly Vulgar or at least such as have a feeling in the cause and are partakers in the guilt But let us see the instances Some man glories that in his pot valour he can drink down whom he pleases no man can stand before him and upon this he swaggers as a mighty Champion whereas in truth he is but a great Hogshead or a nasty Sink through which a great deal of good liquor runs and his only ability is that he changes and corrupts it in the passage Another vaunts his courage and daring hee 'l lay down his life upon the least provocation But shall we think that man is conscious to himself of any worth that will stake his life down for every trifle is he worthy of his life that despises it is he either wise or just that will cast that away in a frolick or a rage which is owing to the service of his Prince and Countrey O but the great Heroes of the World that ransack kingdoms and set up the monuments of their victories in every place These are they that fools indeed flatter because they fear them Nevertheless whilst these live in all their greatness they cannot avoid the horrible curses and imprecations of those they have made fatherless or childless and these usually have that effect upon them that they seldom descend without bloud to their Graves Ad generum Cereris sinè caede sanguine pauci Descendunt Reges siccâ morte Tyranni And when they are gone their memory is blasted in the Annals of time and their great atchievements reputed magna latrocinia But take worldly honour at the best that can be made of it it is but a blast a bubble there is nothing of solidity in it nothing that can really satisfy the mind of a man this is the thin and pitifull diet the Devil feeds his slaves with all those therefore that dote upon pleasure or riches or glory feed upon husks with the Prodigal 7. BUT that 's not the worst of his condition yet if the Prodigal could have had husks enough he would have thought his condition not intolerable as the case stood but saith the Text he desired to fill his belly with husks but no man gave unto him And now his condition is sad indeed He that formerly loathed delicates now to come to want necessaries he that surfeited upon viands now to starve for want of husks this breaks his heart And in this the Emblem of a sinner is still carried on all those husks of pleasure and gain and applause are a course fare for a man that hath an immortal Soul But some could so far forget the dignity of their nature and contract themselves that they could be content if they might but have enough of these If I say men could always swim in pleasure flow with riches and mount aloft in glory they would think the wages of sin well paid but the time will come when these will be denied them too As for bodily pleasure that quickly growes out of date and we soon lose the relish of such things as were formerly most gratefull in this kind the most delicious viands are nothing to him that hath no palate and the most ravishing musick to him that hath no ear and what do all the charms of beauty signify to a languid Body and effete Nature The time comes on apace upon every man when he shall say with old Barzillai 2 Sam. 19. 35. Can I tast what I eat or drink or can I hear any more the voice of singing men or singing women Or as Solomon elegantly describes the case Eccles 12. 2 3 4 5. c. When the keepers of the house tremble and the strong men shall bow themselves and the grinders cease because they are few and those that look out at the windows be darkened c. When a man shall have his winding-sheet in his eye and his last knell in his ear when with great difficulty and continual labour at the pump of life he hardly keeps his Leaky Vessel from sinking what then do all the objects of the Senses gratify him when the Senses themselves are now shutting in their windows and bidding everlasting good night Then those entertainments become not only dull and flat but irksome and tormenting and only serve to upbraid his impotency For when a man shall say with Sampson I will rouze my self as at other times alas Dalilah hath shaven his locks betrayed his strength and bound him down to a state of inactivity And which is further considerable the more a man hath indulged himself the full enjoyment of these things in his youth the more he accelerates these infirmities and loathings of age and far the sooner loses all gust of them And then like Tantalus he is tormented with the sight of what he cannot reach for he feels himself sinking and perishing THEN for the Riches and gain of the World though it be commonly observed that men are so ridiculous as to be most earnest in making provision for their voyage when they are almost at their journeys end most carking and reaching after the World when they have least concern in it yet this their way is their folly and in a little time it will be said Thou fool this night shall thy soul be taken from thee His beloved bags must be left behind to he knows not who his possessions have a new owner his beautifull habitation another inhabitant whilst he that gathered all these is close prisoner in the grave and hath not so much as the beholding them with his eyes But besides what do these things advantage him in the mean time can they prolong the term of life or bribe and stave off death can they support his Spirit or comfort his mind nay they are so far from that that it 's well if they call not to his remembrance the unjust ways by which he heaped them together or if that sad circumstance be escaped they are but monuments of his folly that
other things to make men vessels of wrath and to sit them for destruction If therefore we should suppose sin to doe no wrong to God yet it doth wrong to our own nature unfitting us for our ends and making us incapable of our happiness and if a course of vertue be not profitable to God nor can make him any amends yet it amends us both in our faculties and in our capacities For certainly God doth not by a fatal sentence doom men to the pit of Hell nor by his Almighty power precipitate them thither untill their own wickedness had prepared them and disposed them for that state In which sense I see no reason with the pardon of a late Learned Person but to take that passage Acts 1. 25. where it is said of Judas that he went to his own place For Hell is the proper place of sin and sin thrusts a man down thither or the Central powers of those infernal regions as it were draw and suck in the sinner And therefore the very damned can never think hardly of God as if he took pleasure in their misery but must for ever curse their own folly which made it fit and necessary that God should do what he doth THE Apostle tells us Rom. 14. 17. The Kingdom of God is not meat and drink but righteousness peace and joy in the Holy Ghost which saying is indeed to be understood of the state of Christianity notwithstanding if we will consider it will appear to us that Heaven it self as it signifies the state of blessedness in the other world consists not so much in the external glory of a palace or any other circumstances either to accommodate the body or to entertain the imagination as in a state of perfect purity peace and love clear knowledge of the mind just order of all the powers the light of God's countenance ready and chearfull compliance with his will comfortable reflections upon our former carriage blessed society of Saints and Angels and everlasting life for the durable enjoyment of all these unspeakably good things And on the other side Hell is not so dreadfull for the horrid circumstances of the place though that be sad enough as that there a man is banished from God and all his powers in confusion he is filled with rage horribly and perpetually lashed by his own Conscience and scorned and tortured by infernal Furies to whose company he is for ever condemned without hopes of recovery NOW though it cannot be said that every holy and vertuous man must naturally and necessarily be intitled to the happiness of Heaven because the glories of that state are of God's special provision and therefore must be at his disposal and besides there is no man whose vertue hath been such as to render him capable thereof without the interposition of the divine mercy in Jesus Christ Yet it is evident that there is a great suitableness between the temper of a brave man and the state of Heaven a just wise chaste temperate and peaceable person is prepared and disposed as a Candidate for that state and on the contrary a debaucht and vicious man is utterly unfit for it and carries the very ingredients of Hell about him TAKE for example a cruel malicious and mischievous man whose soul is in his spleen and who continually sacrifices to those accursed fiends rancour and revenge let any man be judge whether such a man can be a fit inhabitant of those peacefull regions above and that amicable society of Saints and Angels or what can be more natural to him and proper for him then the company of Devils which he so exactly resembles Or take a turbulent and seditious person a Boutefeau whose only pleasure hath been to disturb the world that never discerned the beauty of order nor tasted the sweets of peace nor framed himself to duty and obedience what should such a man do in Heaven where all is order and harmony he is only fit for the infernal hurry and we may very aptly apply the stately expression of the Prophet to his case Isa 14. 9. Hell from beneath is moved for thee to meet thee at thy coming it stirreth up the dead for thee and art thou become like unto us c. Once more take a man wholly addicted to sensuality and the beastly pleasures of the body to eat and drink and live voluptuously what should this man do in Heaven What is there for him where there is no use of the belly and where the pleasures are sublime and intellectual what delights can the presence of an holy Majesty a blessed Jesus and the harmony of an heavenly Quire minister to him that hath never relished other musick then the wild roarings of a debauch or the soft charms of sensuality He that is capable of that blessed state and of those entertainments must be such an one as hath been habituate to sobriety and chastity that hath learned to deny and castigate the importunities of his Senses that hath laboured to live out of the body whilest he was in it Now this is not to be performed by a sudden pang of devotion nor by a meer resolution or intention of becoming vertuous howsoever serious that may be but by long exercise serious indeavour a habit and a new nature 4. BUT in the fourth and last place if we could suppose that neither the nature and state of the world to come did necessarily require such habitual vertue as we have shewed it doth nor that God had resolved to insist upon the actual performance of our resolutions I say if God would pardon a man upon the meer acknowledgement of his offence and sorrow for it yet would not the penitent pardon himself in this case I mean it would be impossible for him to find any quiet in his bosom till he had in some measure effaced the memory of his former wickedness by a course of generous vertue For when once a man's eyes are open to see his shamefull folly and his heart made so sensible as to relent at his misdoing he will have such an abhorrence of himself for his own unreasonableness that he will be so far from looking up to God with comfort or towards men with confidence that he will not be able to endure his own face untill he have by a singular diligence indeavoured to rescind his own act and in some measure repaired the injuries his lewd extravagancies have made him guilty of Accordingly St. Paul as we have noted before seems to carry about him a bleeding sense of his former miscarriages but 1 Cor. 15. 10. he had this to support him that although he was as one born out of due time coming late into Christ's service yet from that time he laboured more abundantly then those that came earlier into the vineyard IT is a most impertinent inquiry which some melancholy persons have been taught to make have I been humbled enough for sin is the measure of my sorrow sufficient for my guilt have
I lain long enough under the terrours of the Law and the spirit of bondage For God requires not sorrow for it self but for its end and it is no satisfaction to him that his Creatures lie under affrightfull apprehensions besides our own Consciences will tell us we may then dry our eyes and be comfortable when the cause is taken away and not before for then is it Godly sorrow when it bringeth forth repentance not to be repented of 2 Cor. 7. 10. AND herein lies the great uncomfortableness of a death-bed repentance for besides the horrible madness of trusting the issues of eternity upon extempore preparations if it should please God to give a man both the grace and the opportunity then at last seriously to bethink himself to feel remorse for his sins to make resolutions and to renew his baptismal Covenant yet then he can give no proof to himself of his own sincerity because he cannot repair God's honour he can make no conquest over Satan he can leave no example to the world he cannot by habit and exercise make the ways of God become easy and natural to himself he cannot be said to have lived the life of the righteous and therefore cannot comfortably conclude that he shall die the death of such AS for the penitent Thief in the Gospel that accompanied our Saviour in his sufferings upon the Cross to whom our Saviour pronounced that he should that day be with him in Paradise his case was peculiar probably he had lived in great darkness and ignorance and never had the means of grace till now but however it was not unagreeable to the divine wisedom and goodness to do something extraordinary at that great time and to signalize the efficacy of our Saviour's Mediatourship by some remarkable instance at such a time when the dignity and glory of his person was most clouded and obscured and as there never was nor will be such another occasion as this so it is great and desperate folly for any man to trust to such an experiment And whereas in the Parable Matth. 20. vers 12. those Labourers that came into the Vineyard at the eleventh hour are rewarded equally with those that had born the burden and heat of the day It is in the first place to be observed that though they came late yet not so late but that they did really work in the Vineyard and then besides here is nothing contrary to what we are pressing for we are far from intention of discouraging any to return at last or from limiting the mercies of God who is able to foresee what a late Convert would have done if he had opportunity and may accordingly extend mercy to him All therefore which I say is that this is a most uncomfortable state when a man's Conscience cannot give security for him nor is there any thing that affords him positive grounds of hope having not performed the conditions of the New Covenant only he hath a general refuge in the merits of Christ and in God's mercy WHEREFORE there is all the reason and all the wisedom in the world that a man should not trust to prefaces and praeludia beginnings and first eslays of repentance but let it have its perfect work that with the Prodigal Son he not only sit down and bewail his misery or take up resolutions of returning to his Father but that he forthwith set about it and effect it So he arose and came to his Father What entertainment he meets with from his Father upon so doing I am now to shew in the third and last Part of the Parable The father said to the servants bring forth the best robe and put it on him c. S t. LVKE 15. 22. Non patitur contriti cordis holocaustum repulsam Quotiens te in conspectu Domini video suspirantem Spiritum sanctum non dubito aspirantem cum intuâ—or flentem sentio ignoscentem Cypr serm de coena Page 240. 241. THE PARABLE OF THE Prodigal Son PART III. The Prodigal received and reconciled or God's gracious reception of a Penitent Sinner S. Luke 15. Vers 22 23 24. But the Father said to his servants Bring forth the best robe and put it on him and put a ring on his hand and shoes on his feet And bring hither the fatted Calf and kill it and let us eat and be merry For this my Son was dead and is alive again was lost and is found c. CHAP. I. Of Reconciliation or Justification THE CONTENTS § I. The passionate story of Joseph Gen. 37. parallel to this Parable before us § II. God takes notice of the first beginnings of good in men The use of that consideration § III. God's compassion and tenderness to men under agonies of mind yet without the weakness of humane passion § IV. God not only takes delight in beginnings of good but promotes them by his grace The famous story in Eusebius of St. John and a dissolute young man and several usefull observations thereupon § V. The greatness of God's pardoning mercy and the fullness and compleatness thereof upon repentance set out in several great instances full of unspeakable consolation to the Penitent and wherein God's mercies outgo those of mercifull men the greatness of the sin of our first Parents and of the Jews in crucifying our Lord which notwithstanding were both pardoned § VI. Of the Novation Heresy and the mischiefs of it § VII Practical reflections upon Justification § I. IT is a very lively and pathetick story which Moses gives us concerning Jacob and his Sons especially his beloved Son Joseph to this effect The Brethren of Joseph envying him that great share he had in his Father's affections resolve some way or other to dispatch him out of the way but that they might not imbrue their hands in his bloud they conclude to sell him a slave to the Midianites that happened at that time to come in the way and to hide their own fault from their Father they kill a Kid and dip Joseph's Coat in the bloud and telling a demure story to the old man impose upon his belief that some wild Beast had devoured his Son Which when the good man was possest of he most tenderly resents the affliction rends his Cloaths puts Sackcloth upon his Loins and mourned many days Whereupon his Sons and Daughters and even those especially that had raised the tragedy personate so well as to take upon them to be his comforters but the wound was too deep to be easily cured for he refuses consolation No saith he I will go down to the grave to my Son mourning my grief shall only wear away with my life and only the land of oblivion shall make me forget Joseph At last after a long and sad time of lamentation there comes the surprizing news to the good man Joseph thy Son is yet alive and Ruler of all the Land of Aegypt The aged Father faints at the tidings the News was too good to
love so long as they are enemies to the common enemy so it happens here that a Convert zealously combating against some one vice in studious declension of that insensibly slips into some degrees of the other extream and then finds it a fresh difficulty vincere eos per quos vicisti to conquer that other infirmity by which he conquered the former TO which purpose it is remarkable concerning that holy man St. Jerom whilst he lived in the affluence of the City and used a free conversation he felt frequent temptations of the flesh and setting himself with all his might to mortify these and to do it effectually retired into a desart that he might both take away the cause and the occasions of those dangers but whilst in that retirement he exercises himself to great severity and austerity he insensibly grew into a blameable asperity of temper which needed a second labour to subdue I will not say as some do that as God would have some remainders of the seven Nations preserved amongst the Children of Israel in the Land of Canaan to be continually as thorns in their eyes and goads in their sides so he orders it that there should be some remainders of the old Adam in us to keep us always humble and employed for certainly God would have all sin expelled our natures But this I say that as Israel was truely in possession of the Land of Canaan from such time as Joshua had conquered those powers that made head against them and had put the chief Cities and places of strength into their hands notwithstanding that a long time after some of those old inhabitants remained amongst them and were no very good Neighbours so I affirm that so long as there is not only a resolution against all sin but a constant hostile pursuit of it and that a man goes on conquering and to conquer such a man is a true Israelite though he have not perfected his conquest nor can yet say with St. Paul I have fought the good fight I have finished my course I have kept the faith and therefore henceforth is laid up for me the crown of righteousness BUT now forasmuch as God both for his own glory and service the comfort of the Convert's own Soul and his greater capacity of the Kingdom of Heaven designs to bring men to higher degrees of sanctification then what he was pleased to accept of when he first received the Penitent to mercy therefore he afterwards puts upon him the Best Robe 2. IT is to be considered that the beginnings of all things that are any way notable especially are wrought with pain and difficulty insomuch that nemo repente fit turpissimus no man finds it very easy at first to doe any egregious wickedness Men become evil by degrees and there is proficiency even in the Devil's school and therefore much more reasonably may it be expected that those that first enter into a strict course of vertue should be sensible of difficulty in their first undertaking IT was an ingenious answer which Plutarch reports to have been given by a Lacedemonian Turor when he was asked what he pretended to and of what avail his indeavours were I make saith he that to become easy and delightfull which is of it self good and necessary It is true Christ Jesus tells us his yoke is easy and his burden is light and without doubt it is so but it is a yoke and a burden still and no man finds it easy untill he have exercised himself to it rewards and punishments set before us and reason and resolution working thereupon will prevail with men to doe their duty but only practice and assuetude makes it become easy and familiar so to doe especially supposing as we do in the present case a man but lately accustomed to indulge himself in a course of sin let such a man's conversion be never so real and hearty however it cannot be expected that he should presently do Christ's commands and say they are not grievous It is certain such a man if he be what we suppose him that is sincere will resist his inclination and change his course but because it was lately a course there will yet be an inclination towards it and consequently a conflict and difficulty in avoyding it for as we said before it is only one custome can perfectly supplant another and only habit can imitate nature and make easy the cutting off our corrupt members is a hard task till by time and degrees they become mortified and then it is done without any considerable pain or difficulty Whosoever hath any principle of divine life or true sense of God in him will not allow himself in the neglect of God's worship yet he will find it no easy business to hold his heart intent and constant in it till it have become customary and natural to him and then it is so far easy and delightfull to him that he knows not how to live without it Now although that state which tuggs at the Oare and draws on heavily may be sincere because it discharges its duty honestly though with great difficulty and therefore find acceptance with a good God yet forasmuch as his intention is that we should become partakers of the divine nature and that it be our meat and drink to doe his will that the way of his commands be to us as our necessary food that we should do his will with that alacrity on earth with which it is done by the Angels in Heaven that our wills should be perfectly conformed to his and Religion become natural to us partly to the end that we may do him the more honour for there is nothing doth so much reputation to the divine Law and government as the chearfull obedience of his Subjects partly also that we may be the more fit for the Kingdom of Heaven for those most easily fall in with the heavenly Quire who have practised their part beforehand therefore since he desires that we should not only be not evil but generously good nor meerly draw on heavily and uncomfortably but fly as upon the wings of a Cherub in his service it seems good to him when he hath pardoned a penitent to confer upon him greater measures of Sanctification 3. A young Convert though he have all the parts and members of a perfect man in Christ and should also be supposed in great measure to have overcome the difficulties which always attend vertuous beginnings yet he is but a beginner and must needs be conceived weak and feeble in his whole contexture he is not only apt to be abused with Sophistry and carried about with every wind of doctrine but less able to bear the burdens and to resist the temptations he must expect to meet with the traces of his former course are not yet worn out and so he is the apter to return he is not at the top but going up hill and may easily faint or slip he hath not such experience of
that end THEREFORE St. Paul though he was execrated of his own Countrymen because he forsook Moses to follow Christ yet shewed more dexterity in refuting their prejudices and more tenderness to their Souls then any other Apostle and particularly Rom. 9. 1 2 3. he expresses himself thus I say the truth in Christ I lie not my conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Ghost that I have great sorrow and heaviness in my heart For I could wish that my self were accursed from Christ for my Brethren my Kinsmen according to the flesh c. Where whatever he mean by the expression of being accursed from Christ he certainly describes the deepest compassion that a mortal breast is capable of and that he had a sense of this towards his Brethren he confirms by the most solemn Oath that can be made I need not here add because I have touched that before that such persons are also filled usually with the greatest zeal of God's glory whom they have formerly dishonoured and the greatest indignation against sin by which they have been abused and think themselves obliged to a double diligence by the consideration of their former dis-service of all which St. Paul is also an example 1 Cor. 15. 10. I laboured more abundantly then all the rest c. But I observe IN the second place such persons as have been formerly notorious for a course of wickedness and now are become sincerely good and vertuous are a standing reproof of the folly of sin nay I may call them the very credential letters of vertue and convincing arguments of the necessity of conversion such as strangely awaken men to consider their own station IT was a very good plea that the Platonist makes for Vertue in these words 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. That the ways of vertue are more pleasant to a good man then the ways of sin and licentiousness are to an evil and vicious man and therefore more amiable and better in themselves appears saith he by this that several men who have tasted all the pleasures of sin forsake it and come over to vertue but there is scarce an instance to be found of the man that had well experimented the delights of vertue that ever could be drawn off from it or find in his heart to fall back to his former course But to see a man that had ran into all excess of riot to tack about to a quite contrary course from a drunkard to become sober from lascivious to become chaste and modest from a covetous person to become charitable from prophaneness to set himself to reade and study the Scripture and from cursing and blaspheming to bless and pray and this change to be wrought in health and strength without the check of a sick-bed or the dreadfull apprehensions of approaching death I say this spectacle cannot but be a most convincing argument of the necessity of repentance to all such as are yet in the gall of bitterness and under the bonds of iniquity LASTLY to say no more such persons so changed as aforesaid are standing monuments of the divine mercy and of the powers of the Gospel and irrefragable arguments of the possibility of recovering the greatest sinners if they be not wanting to themselves or rather if they do not chuse their own destruction For they proclaim aloud the greatness of the divine goodness the largeness of his heart the openness of his arms and they upbraid the sinner of folly of madness of cruelty to himself if yet he persevere It is said Miltiades Trophies would not suffer Themistocles to sleep and Caesar's thoughts continually upbraided him with the great exploits Alexander had effected in a few years But when a sinner shall observe such a man that was as foolish as himself to become wise and sober one that ran in the same race and was as near the pit of Hell as he escaped and himself still upon the brink of it when I say he shall consider that such a man that had all the temptations pretences excuses examples and every other instance of debauchment that himself hath to find just reason to break through those obstacles and by the mercy of God to be saved and as a fire-brand plucked out of the fire certainly if any thing in the world can move him this must make him look about him IN the 16. Chapter of this Gospel our Saviour introduces a certain rich man in Hell interceding with Abraham that Lazarus might be sent from the dead to preach repentance to his five Brethren supposing that though they would not hearken to Moses and the Prophets yet such a spectacle and so certain intelligence from the infernal regions must needs rouze them Father Abraham denied his request and God doth not use to gratify such curiosity But indeed if a man consider well it is almost the same thing when God affords us an example of a man that was dead in trespasses and sins and under the very torments of Hell in his Conscience but now redeemed and recovered by the grace of God and sends him to preach repentance to us And I think I may say in this case as the afore mentioned Simplicius said of the discourses of Epictetus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i. e. The man that is incorrigible under such a powerfull remedy there is nothing but the very torments of the damned can work upon him And so much also for that point § IV. WE have now seen severally the three Ornaments the Father puts upon his returning Son and the favours God bestows upon a sincere Convert represented by the Best Robe a Ring on his Hand Shoes on his Feet Let us now take a view of them altogether let us I say make a stand a little and see the Son in all his new attire I mean let us suppose all these favours of God bestowed upon some pardoned sinner and then take notice what a brave and excellent person such a man will be IT was a noble character which the Historian gives of Marcus Cato homo virtuti simillimus per omnia diis quà m hominibus propior qui nunquam rectè fecit ut facere videretur sed quia aliter facere non potuit Cato saith he was vertue drawn to the life and the resemblance was so exact that it was hard to say whether vertue animated Cato or Cato gave subsistence and visibility to vertue nay such was the unshaken greatness of his mind and the purity of his life that he seemed more to participate of divine perfection then of humane frailty for he was both so far above all temptations of doing evil and also free from the allay of mean ends and designs in doing good that it seemed a kind of necessity of nature in him to doe well This was bravely said had it not been somewhat too Romantick But the man we are speaking of under the aforesaid qualifications must as much out go Cato as he out-stripped other
the entertainments of sense are to us now as the pleasures of a man are beyond those of a beast or the faculty of reason is above the powers of the Body And although it be too observable that in this world men are commonly more taken with the latter then with the former it is not because this is greater then that or comparable to it but because the generality of men have drowned themselves in the Body and so lost all relish of intellectual pleasures therefore when the Body is refined and reason hath recovered thereby its just pre-eminence and become a true test and citerion of good and evil there will an unspeakable pleasure flow in this way NOR will the delight of the will in the close embraces of true and indubitable goodness be less ravishing then that of the mind in the apprehension of truth forasmuch as the former is as natural to and as peculiarly the entertainment of the one as the latter is of the other faculty and must most certainly afford so much a greater pleasure as he will which hath a kind of infinity in it self must consequently be able to take in more largely of the pleasure of its object And now that the man is delivered from the juggling and sophistry of Sathan and the false light of sense and carnal interest so that he apprehends true good in its native beauty it cannot be but he must be more taken with it then ever he was heretofore with the empty and guilded Pageantry of corporeal delights for it cannot be doubted but God hath taken care to reconcile every man's duty with his happiness and made that best for man which he doth most peculiarly require of him and every man will find it so when once temptation being removed he singly and sincerely applies himself to the experiment AND then for Conscience or the comfortable reflexion upon what hath been done well and vertuously I need say the less of that in regard every man in this life hath experience of the happy effects of it But alas in this world oftentimes melancholy of Body so much abates the comforts of it and either dark thoughts of God or the just sense of our own demerits by many miscarriages in time past do so much either disturb its reasonings or weaken its conclusions that few men know rightly the force of it and fewer live under the constant consolations thereof But when men come to Heaven and see God a God of love and goodness find their sincerity accepted and their sins done away have no cloud of ignorance nor melancholick panick fear upon them then they recount with triumph all the difficulties they have conquered the temptations they have resisted the afflictions they have sustained the self-denial they have used the vertuous choice they have made the manly prosecution they have performed the brave examples they have left behind them and the many evil ones they despised and escaped in short the good they have done and the evil they have eschewed and by all together the demonstration they have given of sincere love and loyalty to God which affords them a continual feast within themselves and then rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory AND then in the last place since as we have shewed the Body it self shall be raised again and glorified the meaning is not surely that it shall only become an accession to the felicity of the Soul or be happy by reflection only but doubtless all such bodily powers as are fit to be restored in this glorified state of a spiritual Body shall be accommodated with their proper and peculiar entertainments that so as that hath been denied and mortified in subserviency to the interest of the Soul in its former state it may now have its amends here And whereas it is certain some of the more gross powers of the Body shall be laid aside in this renovation of things because our Saviour hath told us that in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage but are as the Angels of God Mat. 22. 30. and the Apostle S. Paul expresses himself thus 1 Cor. 6. 13. Meats for the belly and the belly for meats but God shall destroy both it and them It seems therefore not improbable that as some of those offices shall cease so others more generous and excellent shall then be discovered in their stead And for all those that are restored with the Body they shall not be in vain but have their use their objects and their delights The Eyes shall probably please themselves with delightfull prospects the Ears be entertained with harmonies there shall be a kindly and delicious motion of the Spirits the whole Fabrick shall shine with light and beauty and shall have a wonderfull agility and vigorous motion so as to be able to mount the Heavens as we know the Body of our Saviour did after his Resurrection All this and whatsoever else is good or desirable or glorious or possible shall be the portion of good men in the other world TO which add that as that happiness shall be of the whole man and of all his powers and capacities and with the highest gratifications so that it may be meer sincere and perfect happiness indeed there shall be no allay or mixture of any thing that may give the least trouble or disturbance there shall be all the instances of joy all the ingredients of felicity and nothing else to the contrary No sad circumstance to imbitter his delights nothing to divert him or call him off from his enjoyments no weariness to interrupt his prosecutions nor satiety to make the fruition loathsom and tedious no fear or solicitude to abate his delight no temptation to disturb or molest him no danger of excesses to check and restrain him Here the former Prodigal may now swim in the highest and most generous pleasures without riot or intemperance without danger of exhausting either himself or them in a word here there is no fatal interchanges and vicissitudes of good and evil bitter and sweet as is usual in this world but simple unmixt constant joy and happiness IT was a rare and unparalleled happiness of Quintus Metellus of whom it is said that he had such a benign gale of prosperity constantly attended him that in all the tedious and perillous voyage of a very long life he never met with storm nor calm rock nor shelf but arrived at his Port in peace full of days and laden with blessings For saith the Historian he lived in the greatest honour and affluence having had the glory of being Consul the highest Magistracy of being General of a Roman Army the highest trust and of a triumph the greatest honour and felicity He lived to see his three Sons all arrive at the highest dignities and preferments that magnificent State of Rome could yield them his three Daughters all married to the best Families and by all these he had a numerous and hopefull progeny of
Grandchildren descending from himself and trained up under his eye In all his life there was no other news in his Family but of weddings births successes jollities and triumphs no such thing as a funeral mourning or any disaster all his days and all this crowned with an 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a gentle and easy death at last in the presence and imbraces of all his dearest Friends Children and Family BUT this as I said was a rare and extraordinary case not to be matched again in all History the common method of providence in this world is to mingle sweet with bitter grief with joy and so light and darkness day and night prosperity and adversity intercept and succeed each other he that is now miserable may expect to be one day happy and he that is happy now must expect his turn of misery It was therefore worthily esteemed a brave and noble carriage of Paulus Aemilius when he had conquered and taken captive the potent Prince Perseus after he had gently treated and comforted the unfortunate Prince he turns himself to admonish the unexperienced young Men of his Train and Family Exemplum insigne cernitis saith he mutationis rerum humanarum vobis haec praecipue dico Juvenes ideo in secundis rebus nihil in quenquam superbe ac violenter consulere nec praesenti credere fortunae cum quid vesper ferat incertum sit c. You see here before you saith he a remarkable example of the mutability of humane affairs a Prince that was lately a terrour to the Roman name now in chains and at our mercy learn hereby you young men that you neither suffer your selves to be transported with pride nor trust too much to fortune since you see by this spectacle what changes a little time may produce But most memorable of all and most accommodate to my purpose is that carriage of the same Paulus when in the midst of all his glories and successes the news was brought him that his two Sons were dead he recollecteth himself and addresses himself to the people of Rome in this sort Mihi quoque ipsi nimia jam fortuna mea edque suspecta esse coepit postquam omnia secundo cursu fluxissent neque erat quod ultra precarer illud optavi ut cùm ex summo retrò volvi fortuna consuescit mutationem ejus domus mea potiùs quam respublica sentiret c. I was aware saith he that my fortune was too great to hold on at that rate and since I could not but expect an ebbe to succeed such tide I am glad it hath pleased God that the change hath happened in my private family rather then in the publick affairs THIS great man well understood the course of this world in which nothing is so certain as uncertainty it self nothing so sad but hath some qualifications or abatements nothing so perfectly happy but it hath some grievous consequents or appendages But in those happy regions we speak of a constant gale breaths always from the same point a man is evenly carried along his course without interruptions and turnings I say in the world to come only there is pure and unmixed joy and there it is in the truest and fullest measures NOW the result of all these things together must make it a most glorious and comfortable estate when a man shall arrive at the summ of all his wishes when he shall not be put to contentment but receive satisfaction not shrink himself and contract his mind to his condition but his condition be fitted to his mind when there shall not be that thing which is possible and can minister any delight but shall be poured out upon him and that in such full measure as to replenish and overflow all his powers and capacities and where his powers shall be all inlarged and refined to that very end that he may receive in more of happiness and that of the noblest purest kind without mixture or allay O happy and glorious state of things O happy day when these things shall come to pass and most happy they that shall be thought worthy of it Stay my Soul and wonder at thy Father's bounty and goodness ravish thy self with admiration of these glorious preparations for thy entertainment Look up hither and comfort thy self under all the uncertainties disappointments adversities conflicts of this life turn thy eyes this way and loath the husks of sinfull pleasure despise the unsincere the guilded hypocritical treatments of the lower world trample upon all the glories of it and reach after this and hasten hither 3. BUT this is not all yet the joys of Heaven are as lasting as they are great and full When God hath recovered his lost Son as aforesaid he shall never be lost again he shall never be miserable more he now gives him an inheritance by an indefecible title A Crown immortal that fadeth not away a Kingdom that cannot be shaken A house not made with hands but eternal in the Heavens Stronger then the foundations of the Earth or the poles of Heaven for those shall be dissolved and these shall melt away with fervent heat But thy throne O God indureth for ever and ever LET there be never so many and great ingredients of felicity otherwise if this be wanting of the duration of it it answers not the desires of a man and is very short and defective For whenever it shall expire it will be as if it never had been nay if any sense of things remain afterwards it is a great aggravation of unhappiness fuisse foelicem that a man hath out-lived his own comforts and the comparing his present destitution with his former injoyments is really a torment to him Therefore it is observed to be the humour of some of the wisest Nations to bestow as little cost as they possibly can upon feasting and the bodily entertainments of eating and drinking who yet are very sumptuous and magnificent in buildings and such other things as are durable because they consider those former perish in the using And this is the very argument upon which the Holy Scripture slurs all the glories of this world that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Scene changes all is but acting a part for a while and shortly the lights are put out the curtain drawn and sic transit gloria mundi in whatever gallantry a man appeared upon the Stage he must retire and be undrest and be what he was before upon which account he must be a very vain and silly man who so little forethinks what will shortly befall him as to bear himself high upon his present ornaments BUT it was without doubt a cutting saying to the Glutton in the Gospel Son remember thou hast had thy good things and Lazarus evil things now therefore he is comforted and thou art tormented For although as we noted before it be the common fate of this world that good and evil take their turns yet most certainly the
relish and remembrance of good things past makes the succession of evil most pungent and intolerable Nay which is more the very fears and expectation of this vicissitude makes the sense of the greatest present flat and insignificant IT would questionless be a great relief to the Souls in Hell and a remission of their torments if they could conceive any hopes of emerging at last out of that condition and it would be a great abatement of the joys of Heaven if any suspicion should enter there that possibly that felicity might one time or other expire But this is the very Hell of Hell that there is not the least crany through which to spy light beyond those dark regions no hopes but they that come thither are for ever abandoned by God and made the triumphs of his vengeance And it is the glory of coelestial glory the crown of the Heavenly Kingdom that it is eternal that the river of life is inexhaustible that the glorious enjoyments of that blessed state never fail and that men shall ever live to enjoy them O Eternal eternal that word speaks Seas of comfort and a boundless glory it fills us with wonder and astonishment it is that which we cannot comprehend and therefore fit to be the supream happiness Eternal life is all the world and more then ten thousand worlds in one word It is higher then the Heavens greater then the Universe it is all things It is the flower of joy the quintessence of comfort the pinnacle of glory the crown of blessedness the very soul and spirit of Heaven It is all miracle all ecstasy all that we can wish all that we can receive all that God can give nay all that he himself can enjoy BUT the wonder rises higher yet if we consider who it is that is made the subject of this blessed eternity If it had been some glorious Angelical Being who was by nature removed from all matter out of the reach of bodily contagion or infirmity a pure bright shining intellect or if it had been man that had never faln from Paradise that had contracted no sickliness and infirmity no disorder of passions nor violence of humours nor other presage of mortality or especially if it had been a man that never had voluntarily sinned against his Maker but such an one as by prudent management and subjugation of his Body under all the difficulties he is thereby exposed to had merited some extraordinary favour at God's hand if I say any of these had been the case eternal life had been less admirable BUT that man cloathed with a Body clogged with flesh that faln and degenerate man nay sickly infirm man a meer bundle of a thousand diseases the triumph of death and the prisoner of the grave that he should become the subject of eternity and be placed in a condition out of the reach of fate beyond the sphere of chance and contingency above mortality where no time shall wear him away no violence shall touch him no strife of principles shall gradually work his destruction WHEN the everlasting Springs are dried up that he should have life in himself when the Mountains shall be removed the Earth abolished and the Heavens pass away as a smoak that he should survive all this and be fresh and vigorous to a thousand Ages and feel a perpetual motion a constant circulation of the principles of life and joy in himself this is the wonder of all wonders and here we may cry out 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 O the height and depth and breadth of the power and goodness of God NOTWITHSTANDING all these multitudes of wonders this shall be done for besides that the Divine Majesty made the Soul of an immortal nature from the beginning that it cannot perish but by an act of his Omnipotency he will be so far from destroying it violently that he will everlastingly irradiate it by his own vital Spirit and thereby perpetually improve that energy he first gave it and then for the Body that shall be sublimed to such a purity and perfection that it shall admit of no corruptive fermentation nothing shall weaken weary or disorder it but it shall be plainly indissoluble as the Soul it self This is the third step of Heavens glory but there is a fourth yet behind which must not be forgotten And that is 4. THE consideration of the incomparably sweet and blessed society there to be enjoyed When God had first made man and placed him in the terrestrial Paradise where to the perfection of his nature he had furnished him also with all things of necessary use or delightfull entertainment he considered yet that it was not good for man to be alone and therefore provided a companion for him for in the midst of all affluence of other things solitude is most uncomfortable to humane nature insomuch that it is not to be doubted but that any man in his right wits would rather chuse very mean and hard circumstances in society then the most plentifull and commodious with seclusion from the conversation of men like himself For society not only relieves men's impotency and secures them against danger but fortifies the spirits and raises the parts of men as we see by daily experience and above all it eases the burdens and multiplies the joys of humane life and touching this last as the Earth is not so much warmed and inriched by the direct as by the reflected beams of the Sun so we find by experience that there is no happy accident or success equally refreshes us in its direct contingency as when we perceive it in the rebound or sally and find other men especially our Friends take notice of it and reflect it upon us And for this reason it is that though the world be full enough of men yet men not content with that common alliance enter besides into more strict confederations which we call Friendships which are therefore not unfitly called by some body sal societatis infirmitatis praesidium vitae humanae portus as if life was not only an unsafe but an insipid and flat thing without Friendship AND this is not only so amongst men but something of it is discoverable even amongst those higher and more noble Beings the Angels themselves touching whom though some have been too phantastical and boldly intruded into things they understand not peremptorily defining their distinct Orders and Colledges yet it 's plain enough that God placed not them in solitude but made several Orders and Societies of them and accordingly they find delight in one another not only in the mutual assistance they give each other in the discharge of their Ministeries here below but in joyning together in blessed Quires above to admire and praise their ever glorious Creatour And perhaps it is not impertinent to add this also that even the Divine Majesty it self who by reason of his infinite perfections is seipso contentus and can have no need of any thing without or besides himself
yet when we say and that truely of him that he made all things for himself and his own glory the meaning is that he takes delight in the reflection of his own image and feels his own perfections reverberated upon him from his Creatures BUT there is no necessity we should goe so far since all I am concerned in at present is sufficiently manifest namely that the happiness of men in the Kingdom of Heaven could not be compleat and full without the advantage of that blessed society which there they shall enjoy and that added to the forementioned ingredients raises it to the highest pitch of felicity that we can apprehend or imagine FOR in the first place there we shall enjoy the glorious presence of the Divine Majesty without consternation or affrightment whilst men are in this world it is not only impossible for weak eyes to behold so bright a glory but every approach of him strikes them with terrour When God had appeared to Jacob in a vision only it filled him with great apprehensions of so august a Majesty and he breaks out Gen. 28. 17. How dreadfull is this place c. And the Prophet I saiah when he saw a stately scene of the Divine Glory cries out Woe is me I am undone for mine eyes have seen the King the Lord of Hosts Isa 6. 5. For besides that the very glory of such displays of the Divinity were wont to be very wonderfull and surprizing the consideration also of what men had deserved at God's hands and the reflection upon their own miscarriages made all such appearances very formidable and suspicious to them But now in Heaven we shall see him and live he will not oppress us with his Majesty nor confound us with his Glory there shall be no guilt to affright us nor object to amaze us he will either fortify and sharpen our sight or submit himself to our capacity and shine out in all sweetness delight and complacency towards us NOW this must needs afford unspeakable felicity for in enjoying him we enjoy all things forasmuch as all that is any where good and delectable did flow from him and is to be found in him as in its source and original All that can charess our powers that can ravish our hearts all that is good all that is lovely and desirable are here in their greatest perfection and compendiously to be enjoyed So the Psalmist Psal 16. 11. In thy presence there is fullness of joy and at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore AGAIN we shall there also enjoy the society of the blessed Jesus we shall see him as he is and behold his glory and be with him for ever What a ravishment was it to the Disciples and what an ecstasy did it put them into when he appeared again to them after his Resurrection he had promised them he would do so and they had reason to believe him having seen the miracles he had wrought already and the wonderfull attestations to his divine power notwithstanding when they saw with what malice the Jews persecuted him and with what success that they stigmatized his reputation insulted over his person derided his doctrine and put him to death which he had now for some time lien under the power of their hearts mis-gave them and they began now to mistrust they should never see him again who they had hoped should have redeemed Israel However they resolve to see what is become of him and between hopes and fears they come to his Sepulchre on the third day but with more of the latter then the former as appears by the spices they brought with them to imbalm him as if they resolved his memorial should be precious with them though they never saw him more Thither being come they find the Watch dismayed and fled the Sepulchre open the Grave-cloaths laid in order all which somewhat revived them and besides they see an Angel standing at the door telling them that he was indeed risen from the dead this more incourages them but when himself appears to them as they were going pensive into Galilee and convinces them that it was indeed he by entertaining them with the same discourses he used to have with them by eating with them and by shewing to Thomas especially his Hands and his Feet and all the Characters of the same person THEN what joy were they in Lord how were they transported how do they wonder at their own stupidity and incredulity hitherto and admire their own felicity now But when at the last day after many hundred years interruption of his bodily appearance nay when those good men that have not seen but have believed that have lived to him denied themselves been persecuted have died for him shall see him in glory shall behold that image of perfect goodness and loveliness shall injoy him that died for them that purchased them by his bloud that opened Heaven to them shall hear him say Come ye blessed of my Father receive a Kingdom prepared for you c. You who have imitated me in holiness and followed me in my sufferings you who have not been discouraged by the meanness of my first appearance nor the long expectation of my second coming whose love and resolution for me was not baffled by the contempt of the world debauched by the examples of men nor abated by the pretended difficulty of my institutions you shall now see my glory be like me rejoice with me live with me and never be separated from me more It is in vain for me to goe about to express the transcendency of this joy which no tongue can utter nor any pen can describe we can think a great deal more then we can speak but we shall then feel what we cannot now conceive when every face shall shine with chearfullness every eye sparkle with joy every heart overflow with gladness and every mouth be filled with Allelujah and the whole Quire sing together the new song the song of Moses and of the Lamb. BUT this is not all yet for in Heaven holy men shall not only enjoy the presence of their Lord but the comfortable society of all his train the glorious host of Angels these as they have condescended to minister to men in this world and diligently to imploy themselves for the protection of good men and for the recovering of evil men to God and for the raising them from the dead and presenting them before God in Heaven so having now successfully finished all that ministry shall now wellcome them to glory rejoice with them and entertain them in friendly and familiar conversation those great and wise and holy Spirits shall recount to them all the wonders of divine providence past which they have been imployed in discover to them all the secrets of the other world and as Praecentors goe before and guide them in all the joys and triumphs of that blessed Kingdom AND lastly holy men shall rejoice in the happy society of one
such persons were in and partly the honour and happiness of such an entertainment would compell them to come in Upon this account God propounds not only pardon of sin but all the forementioned inestimable benefits to repenting sinners as well as to those just men that need no repentance AND although it be certain that God hath neither such need of men's service as to oblige him to resort to these great inducements and it be also very true that there are but a small number of those that make up the Quire in glory who upon such motives were converted from extream debauchery yet such is the graciousness of the good Shepherd that he carries the lost Sheep home on his Shoulders rejoicing and such is the goodness of God that he sticks not at this price for the redemption of any one Soul Besides it is to be considered that as we noted from the Historian formerly Difficile est in tot humanis erroribus solâ innocentiâ vivere that though no good Subject will voluntarily transgress the laws of his Country and fall into the displeasure of the Prince yet the most wary and inoffensive person that is most secure of his own integrity would desire to live under such a government where there was room for mercy and pardon if he should offend and the best of men are so sensible of the power of temptation and the slipperiness of their station as well as conscious of their own sincerity that they are marvellously comforted and incouraged by this admirable grace and goodness of God to sinners AND whereas the fear of Hell may be thought sufficient both to reclaim sinners from their evil ways and to preserve good men from apostasy we shall find upon due consideration that fear let it be of what object it will is neither so lasting a principle nor so potent and effective a motive as hope for this last raises generosity inflames the mind spirits all the powers despises or glories in difficulty and therefore all wise men imploy this Engine especially in all great enterprizes and indeavour to make men's hopes greater then their fears and so order the matter that those they employ may have a prospect of so great a good by success in their attempts as shall outweigh all their apprehensions of difficulty or danger in the atchievement And this will be the more remarkable if we observe in that famous encounter of David with Goliah the Giant of Gath that although there was doubtless some extraordinary impulse upon David's heart to undertake that business yet the holy Text intimates that he listned to the discourses of the people and was inflamed by the general assurance was given him of a mighty and glorious reward to him that should effect it Since therefore the proposition of great and glorious hopes is so necessary not only to draw men off from the present allurements of sin and to dissolve the charms of sense which habituate sinners are bound in but also to comfort and incourage even good men themselves and to ingage both the one and the other in a generous course of vertue the Divine Majesty considering he hath to do with men and resolving to deal with them agreeably to their natures thinks it as well becoming his wisedom as his goodness not only to proclaim impunity to his rebels upon their submission but to assure them of the highest favours and preferments in the Court of Heaven 2. SECONDLY the extream difficulty and consequently the wonderfull rarity of examples of great sinners recovered to sincere piety makes such happy accidents deserve to be solemnized with the greater joy and triumph St. Gregory Nazianzen making an oration in commemoration of St. Cyprian as well reports his flagitious life before his conversion to Christianity as his admirable vertues and piety afterwards and makes the former a shadow to heighten and set off the latter For saith he 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 It is nothing so great a matter to maintain the Character of a good man when a man hath once attained to it as to begin a whole new course of piety for now the one is but to be like a man's self and to pursue a custom or habit but the other requires a vertuous choice and a manly resolution able to bear down former habits and therefore there are but few examples of the one but many of the other INDEED it is an unspeakable advantage to be early ingaged in the ways of vertue for then by reason of the easiness of doing good which is consequent of custom a man seems to be under 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a divine fate a peculiar predestination to happiness and therefore if it be well considered there is nothing in all a man's whole life that he hath greater reason to thank God for then that good providence of his which takes hold of our tender years and forms them to a sense of Religion for hereby sin is made dreadfull to our Consciences and upon the matter vertue is as easy as vice and the narrow way to Heaven as ready to our feet as the broad way of destruction But on the other side Revocare gradus hic labor hoc opus to reduce an old dislocation is very painfull to put off the old man to change customs to cast out Satan out of his old possession must be very difficult and require a very brave and generous resolution AND although to omnipotent power all things are alike easy yet forasmuch as God not only speaks after the manner of men but also proceeds ordinarily by the course of natural causes and doth not supersede their activity but assist them proportionably to their natures it must needs notwithstanding the divine grace be a very difficult thing to recover an old and deplored sinner in whom all the powers of the mind are enfeebled the sense of Conscience stupified and the very Synteresis and natural notions of the Soul are corrupted and consequently a through reformation of such a person is like to life from the grave and must needs draw after it not only the eyes and admiration of men but also the vexation of Hell and make the Devil rage as disappointed of the prey he thought himself sure of but especially must produce joy in Heaven and amongst the holy Angels IT can indeed be no surprizal to Almighty God who foreknows all things from the beginning and is as far from admiration as from mutability of passions both which proceed from shortness of understanding nor to our Lord Jesus Christ now in glory for we see that whilst he was upon earth he knew when vertue-proceeded from him to cure the woman of her inveterate distemper But whereas men are wont to make some passionate expressions of their resentment of every new and admirable event God thinks fit also in such an extraordinary recovery as this we are speaking of to set up a monument crowning him that overcomes the aforesaid difficulties with immortal glory