was come and gone for so much as belonged to the accomplishing of the types of the old law then Christ came againe to us by water and bloud in that wound which he received upon his side from which there flowed out miraculously true water true bloud This wound Saint Augustine calls Ianuam utriusque Sacramenti the doore of both sacraments where we see he acknowledges but two and both presented in this water and bloud and so certainely doe most of the fathers make this wound if not the foundation yet at least a sacrament of both the sacraments And to this water and bloud doth the Apostle here without doubt aime principally which he onely of all the Evangelists hath recorded and with so great asseveration and assurednesse in the recording thereof He that saw it bare record and his record is true and he knoweth that he saith truth that yee might beleeve it Here then is the matter which these six witnesses must be beleeved in here is Integritas Iesu quae non solvenda the intirenesse of Christ Jesus which must not be broken That a Saviour which is Iesus appointed to that office that is Christ figured in the law by ablutions of water and sacrifices of bloud is come and hath perfected all those figures in water and bloud too and then that he remaines still with us in water and bloud by meanes instituted in his Church to wash away our uncleannesses and to purge away our iniquities and to apply his worke unto our Soules this is Integritas Iesu Iesus the sonne of God in heaven Jesus the Redeemer of man upon earth Jesus the head of a Church to apply that to the end this is Integritas Iesu all that is to be beleeved of him Take thus much more that when thou comest to hearken what these witnesses shall say to this purpose thou must finde something in their testimony to prove him to be come not onely into the world but into thee He is a mighty prince and hath a great traine millions of ministring spirits attend him and the whole army of Martyrs follow the Lambe wheresoever he goes Though the whole world be his Court thy soule is his bedchamber there thou maist contract him there thou maist lodge and entertaine Integrum Iesum thy whole Saviour And never trouble thy selfe how another shall have him if thou have him all leave him and his Church to that make thou sure thine owne salvation When he comes to thee he comes by water and by bloud If thy heart and bowels have not yet melted in compassion of his passion for thy soule if thine eyes have not yet melted in tears of repentancâ— and contrition he is not yet come by water into thee If thou have suffered nothing for sinne nor found in thy selfe a chearfull disposition to suffer if thou have found no wresting in thy selfe no resistance of Concupiscences he that comes not to set peace but to kindle this war is not yet come into thee by bloud Christ can come by land by purchases by Revenues by temporall blessings for so he did still convey himselfe to the Jewes by the blessing of the land of promise but here he comes by water by his owne passion by his sacraments by thy tears Christ can come in a mariage and in Musique for so he delivers himselfe to the spouse in the Canticles but here he comes in bloud which comming in water and bloud that is in meanes for the salvation of our soules here in the militant Church is the comming that he stands upon and which includes all the Christian Religion and therefore he proves that comming to them by these three great witnesses in heaven and three in earth For there are three which beare record in heaven The Father the word and the holy Ghost and these three are one And there are three which bear record in the earth The spirit and the water and the bloud and these three agree in one By the mouth of two or three witnesses every word shall be confirmed says Christ out of the law That 's as much as can be required in any Civill or Criminall businesse and yet Christ gives more testimony of himselfe for here he produces not Duos testes but Duas Classes two rankes of witnesses and the fullest number of each not two but three in heaven and three in earth And such witnesses upon earth as are omni exceptione majores without all exception It is not the testimony of earthly men for when Saint Paul produces them in abundance The Patriarch the Iudges the Prophets the elders of the old times of whom he exhibits an exact Catalogue yet he calls all them but Nubes testium cloudes of witnesses for though they be cloudes in Saint Chrysostomes sense that they invest us and enwrap us and so defend us from all diffidence in God we have their witnesse what God did for them why should we doubt of the like though they be cloudes in Athanasius sense they being in heaven showre downe by their prayers the dew of Gods grace upon the Church Though they be cloudes they are but cloudes some darkenesse mingled in them some controversies arising from them but his witnesses here are Lux inaccessibilis that light that no eye can attaine to and Pater Luminum the father of lights from whom all these testimonies are derived When God imployed a man to be the witnesse of Christ because men might doubt of his testimony God was content to assigne him his Compurgators when Iohn Baptist must preach that the kingdome of God was at hand God fortifies the testimony of his witnesse then Hic enim est for this is he of whom that is spoken by the prophet Esay and lest one were not enough he multiplies them as it is written in the prophets Iohn Baptist might be thought to testifie as a man and therefore men must testifie for him but these witnesses are of a higher nature these of heaven are the Trinity and those of earth are the sacraments and seales of the Church The prophets were full of favor with God Abraham full of faith Stephen full of the Holy Ghost many full of grace and Iohn Baptist a prophet and more then a prophet yet never any prophet never any man how much soever interessed in the favor of Almighty God was such an instrument of grace as a sacrament or as Gods seales and institutions in his Church and the least of these six witnesses is of that nature and therefore might be beleeved without more witnesses To speake then first of the three first the Father the Word and the Holy Ghost it was but a poore plot of the devill to goe about to rob us of their testimony for as long as we have the three last the spirit the water and bloud we have testimony enough of Christ because God is involved in his ordinance and though he be not tyed to the worke of the
over the pursuite of it till you overtake it Persquere follow it but first Inquire says David seek after it find where it is for here is not your rest Vnaquâ—que res in sua patria fortior If a Starre were upon the Earth it would give no light If a tree were in the Sea it would give no fruit every tree is fastest rooted and produces the best fruit in the soile that is proper for it Now here we have no continuing City but we seek one when we finde that we shall finde rest Here how shall we hope for it for our selves Intus pugnae foris timores we feel a warre of concupiscencies within aand we feare a battery of tentations without Si dissentiunt in domo uxor maritus periculâ—sa molestia says Saint Augustine If the Husband and wife agree not at home it is a troublesome danger and that 's every mans case for Care conjux our flesh is the wife and the spirit is the husband and they two will never agree But si dominetur uxor perversa pax says he and that 's a more ordinary case then we are aware of that the wife hath got the Mastery that the weaker vessell the flesh hath got the victory and then there is a show of peace but it is a stupidity a security it is not peace Let us depart out of our selves and looke upon that in which most ordinarily we place an opinion of rest upon worldly riches They that will be rich fall into tentations and snares and into many foolish and noysome lusts which drowne Men in perdition and in destruction for the desire of money is the root of evill Not the having of Money but the desire of it for it is Theophylacts observation that the Apostle does not say this of them that are rich but of them that will be made rich that set their heart upon the desire of riches and will be rich what way soever As the Partridge gathereth the young which she hath not brought forth so he that gathereth riches and not by right shall leave them in the midst of his dayes and at his end shall be a foole he shall not make a wise will But shall his folly end at his end or the punishment of his folly We see what a restlesse fool he is all the way first because he wants roome he says he will pull downe his barnes and build new thus farre there 's no rest in the Diruit and adificat in pulling downe and building up Then he says to his soule live at ease he says it but he gives no ease he says it as he shall say to the Hills fall downe and cover usâ— but they shall stand still and his soule shall heare God say whilest he promises himselfe this case O foole this night they shall fetch away thy soule God does not onely not tell him who shall have his riches but he does not tell him who shall have his soule He leaves him no affurance no ease no peace no rest Here. This rest is not then in these things not in their use for they are got with labor and held with feare and these labour and feare admit no rest not in their nature for they are fluid and transitory and moveable and these are not attributes of rest If that word doe not reach to Land the land is not movable yet it reaches to thee when thou makest thine Inventory put thy selfe amongst the moveables for thou must remove from it though it remove not from thee So that what rest foever may be imagined in these things it is not your rest for howsoever the things may seem to rest yet you doe not It is not here at all not in that Here which is intimated in this Text not in the falling that is Here for sinne is a stupidity it is not a rest not in the rising that is Here for this remorse this repentance is but as a surveying of a convenient ground or an emptying of an inconvenient ground to erect a building upon not in the departing that is here for in that is intimated a building of new habits upon the ground so prepared and so a continuall and laborious travaile no rest falling and rising and departing and surveying and building are no words of rest for give these words their spirituall sense that this sense of our fall which is remorse after sinne this rising from it which is repentance after sinne this departing into a safer station which is the building of habits contrary to the former doe bring an ease to the conscience as it doth that powerfully and plentifully yet as when we journey by Coach we have an ease in the way but yet our rest is at home so in the ways of a regenerate Man there is an unexpressible ease and consolation here but yet even this is not your rest for as the Apostle says If I be not an Apostle unto others yet doubtlesse I am unto you so what rest soever others may propose unto themseleves for you whose conver sation is in heaven for this world to the righteous is Atrium templi and heaven is that Temple it selfe the Militant Church is the porch the Triumphant is the Sanctum Sanctorum this Church and that Church are all under one roofe Christ Jesus for you who appertaine to this Church your rests is in heaven And that consideration brings us to the last of the three interpretations of these words The first was a Commination a departing without any Rest propos'd to the Jewes The second was a Commonition a departing into the way towards Rest proposed to repentant sinners And this third is a Consolation a departing into Rest it selfe propos'd to us that beleeve a Resurrection It is a consolation and yet it is a funerall for to present this eternall Rest we must a little invert the words to the departing out of this world by death and so to arise to Judgement Depart and arise for c. This departing then is our last Exodus our last passeover our last transmigration our departing out of this life And then the Consolation is placed in this that we are willing and ready for this departing Qua gratia breve nobis tempus praescripsit Deus How mercifully hath God proceeded with Man in making his life short for by that means he murmurs the lesse at the miseries of this life and he is the lesse transported upon the pleasures of this life because the end of both is short It is a weaknesse sayes Saint Ambrose to complain De immaturitate mortis of dying before our time for we were ripe for death at our birth we were born mellow Secundum aliquem modum immortalis dici posset homo si esset tempus intra quod mori non posset is excellently said by the same Father If there were any one minute in a mans life in which he were safe
gate into Heaven in thy selfe If thou beest not sensible of others mens poverties and distresses yet Miserere animae tuae have mercy on thine own soule thou hast a poor guest an Inmate a sojourner within these mudwals this corrupt body of thine be mercifull and compassionate to that Soule cloath that Soul which is stripp'd and left naked of all her originall righteousnesse feed that Soule which thou hast starv'd purge that Soule which thou hast infected warm and thaw that Soul which thou hast frozen with indevotion coole and quench that Soul which thou hast inflamed with licentiousness Miserere animae tuae begin with thine own Soule be charitable to thy self first and thou wilt remember that God hath made of one bloud all Mankind and thou wilt find out thy selfe in every other poor Man and thou wilt find Christ Jesus himselfe in them all Now of those divers gates which God opens in this life those divers exercises of charity the particular which we are occasion'd to speak of here is not the cloathing nor feeding of Christ but the housing of him The providing Christ a house a dwelling whether this were the very place where Solomons Temple was after built is perplexedly and perchance impertinently controverted by many but howsoever here was the house of God and here was the gate of Heaven It is true God may be devoutly worshipped any where In omni loco dominationis ejus benedic anima mea Domino In all places of his dominion my Soule shall praise the Lord sayes David It is not only a concurring of men a meeting of so many bodies that makes a Church If thy soule and body be met together an humble preparation of the mind and a reverent disposition of the body if thy knees be bent to the earth thy hands and eyes lifted up to heaven if thy tongue pray and praise and thine ears hearken to his answer if all thy senses and powers and faculties be met with one unanime purpose to worship thy God thou art to this intendment a Church thou art a Congregation here are two or three met together in his name and he is in the midst of them though thou be alone in thy chamber The Church of God should be built upon a Rock and yet Iob had his Church upon a Dunghill The bed is a scene and an embleme of wantonnesse and yet Hezekiah had his Church in his Bed The Church is to be placed upon the top of a Hill and yet the Prophet Ieremy had his Church in Luto in a miry Dungeon Constancy and setlednesse belongs to the Church and yet Ionah had his Church in the Whales belly The Lyon that roares and seeks whom he may devour is an enemy to this Church and yet Daniel had his Church in the Lions den Aquae quietudinum the waters of rest in the Psalme were a figure of the Church and yet the three children had their Church in the fiery furnace Liberty life appertaine to the Church and yet Peter Paul had their Church in prison and the thiefe had his Church upon the Crosse. Every particular man is himselfe Templum Spiritus sancti a Temple of the holy Ghost yea Solvite templum hoc destroy this body by death and corruption in the grave yet there shall be Festum encaeniorum a renuing a reedifying of all those Temples in the generall Resurrection when we shall rise againe not onely as so many Christians but as so many Christian Churches to glorifie the Apostle and High-priest of our profession Christ Jesus in that eternall Sabbath In omni loco domiâ—ationis ejus Every person every place is fit to glorifie God in God is not tyed to any place not by essence Implet continendo implet God fills every place and fills it by containing that place in himselfe but he is tyed by his promise to a manifestation of himselfe by working in some certain places Though God were long before he required or admitted a sumptuous Temple for Solomons Temple was not built in almost five hundred years after their returne out of Egypt though God were content to accept their worship and their sacrifices at the Tabernacle which was a transitory and moveable Temple yet at last he was so carefull of his house as that himselfe gave the modell and platforme of it and when it was built and after repaired again he was so jealous of appropriating and confining all his solemne worship to that particular place as that he permitted that long schisme and dissention between the Samaritans and the Iews onely about the place of the worship of God They differed not in other things but whether in Mount Sion or in Mount Garizim And the feast of the dedication of this Temple which was yearly celebrated received so much honor as that Christ himselfe vouchsafed to be personally present at that solemnity though it were a feast of the institution of the Church and not of God immediatly as their other festivalls were yet Christ forbore not to observe it upon that pretence that it was but the Church that had appointed it to be observed So that as in all times God had manifested and exhibited himselfe in some particular places more then other in the Pillar in the wildernesse and in the Tabernacle and in the poole which the Angell troubled so did Christ himselfe by his owne presence ceremoniously justifie and authorise this dedication of places consecrated to Gods outward worship not onely once but anniversarily by a yearly celebration thereof To descend from this great Temple at Jerusalem to which God had annexed his solemne and publique worship the lesser Synagogues and Chappell 's of the Iews in other places were ever esteemed great testimonies of the sanctity and piety of the founders for Christ accepts of that reason which was presented to him in the behalfe of the Centurion He is worthy that thou shouldst do this for him for he loveth our Nation And how hath he testified it He hath built us a Synagogue He was but a stranger to them and yet he furthered and advanced the service of God amongst them of whose body he was no member This was that Centurions commendation Et quanto commedatior qui adificat Ecclesiam How much more commendation deserve they that build a Church for Christian service And therefore the first Christians made so much haste to the expressing of their devotion that even in the Apostles time for all their poverty and persecution they were come to have Churches as most of the Fathers and some of our later Expositors understand these words Have ye not houses to eate and drinke or doe ye despise the Church of God to be spoken not of the Church as it is a Congregation but of the Church as it is a Material building Yea if we may beleeve some authors that are pretended to be very ancient there was one Church dedicated to the memory
will confesse many fleshly infirmities and then it is the sounder for that though not for the infirmity yet for the confession of the infirmity Neither let that hand that reaches out to this body in a guiltinesse of pollution and uncleannesse or in a guiltinesse of extortion or undeserved see ever hope to signe a conveyance that shall fasten his inheritance upon his children to the third generation ever hope to assigne a will that shall be observed after his death ever hope to lift up it selfe for mercy to God at his death but his case shall be like the case of Iudas if the devill have put in his heart to betray Christ to make the body and bloud of Christ Jesus false witnesses to the congregation of his hypocriticall sanctity Satan shall enter into him with this sop and seale his condemnation Beloved in the bowels of that Jesus who is coming into you even in spirituall riches it is an unthrifty thing to anticipate your monies to receive your rents before they are due and this treasure of the soule the body and bloud of your Saviour is not due to you yet if you have not yet passed a mature and a severe examination of your conscience It were better that your particular friends or that the congregation should observe in you an abstinence and forbearing to day and make what interpretation they would of that forbearing then that the holy Ghost should deprehend you in an unworthy receiving lest as the Master of the feast said to him that came without his wedding garment then when he was set Amice quomodo intrâsti friend how came you in so Christ should say to thee then when thou art upon thy knees and hast taken him into thy hands Amice quomodo intrabo friend how can I enter into thee who hast not swept thy house who hast made no preparation for me But to those that have he knocks and he enters and he â—ups with them and he is a supper to them And so this consideration of making Churches of our houses and of our hearts leads us to a third part the particular circumstances in Iacobs action In which there is such a change such a dependence whether we consider the Metall or the fashion the severall doctrines or the sweetnesse and easinesse of raising them as scarce in any other place a fuller harmony The first linke is the Tunc Iacob then Iacob which is a Tunc consequentiae rather then a Tunc temporis It is not so much at what time Iacob did or said this as upon what occasion The second linke is Quid operatum what this wrought upon Iacob It awaked him out of his sleep A third is Quid ille what he did and that was Et dixit he came to an open profession of that which he conceived he said and a fourth is Quid dixit what this profession was And in that which is a branch with much fruit a pregnant part a part containing many parts thus much is considerable that he presently acknowledged and assented to their light which was given him the Lord is in this place And he acknowledged his owne darknesse till that light came upon him Et ego nesciebam I knew it not And then upon this light received he admitted no scruple no hesitation but came presently to a confident assurance Verè Dominus surely of a certainty the Lord is in this place And then another doctrine is Et timuit he was afraid for all his confidence he had a reverentiall feare not a distrust but a reverent respect to that great Majesty and upon this feare there is a second Et dixit he spoke againe this feare did not stupifie him he recovers againe and discerned the manifestation of God in that particular place Quam terribilis how fearfull is this place And then the last linke of this chaine is Quid inde what was the effect of all this and that is that he might erect a Monument and marke for the worship of God in this place Quia non nisi domus because this is none other then the house of God and the gate of heaven Now I have no purpose to make you afraid of enlarging all these points I shall onely passe through some of them paraphrastically and trust them with the rest for they insinuate one another and trust your christianly meditation with them all The first linke then is the Tunc Iacob the occasion then Iocob did this which was that God had revealed to Iocob that vision of the ladder whose foot stood upon earth and whose top reached to heaven upon which ladder God stood and Angels went up and down Now this ladder is for the most part understood to be Christ himselfe whose foot that touched the earth is his humanity and his top that reached to heaven his Divinity The ladder is Christ and upon him the Angels his Ministers labour for the edifying of the Church And in this labour upon this ladder God stands above it governing and ordering all things according to his providence in his Church Now when this was revealed to Iacob now when this is revealed to you that God hath let fall a ladder a bridge between heaven and earth that Christ whose divinity departed not from heaven came downe to us into this world that God the father stands upon this ladder as the Originall hath it Nitzab that he leanes upon this ladder as the vulgar hath it Innixus scalae that he rests upon it as the holy Ghost did upon the â—ame ladder that is upon Christ in his baptisme that upon this ladder which stretches so farre and is provided so well the Angels labour the Ministers of God doe their offices when this was when this is manifested then it became Iacob and now it becomes every Christian to doe something for the advancing of the outward glory and worship of God in his Church when Christ is content to be this ladder when God is content to govern this ladder when the Angels are content to labour upon this ladder which ladder is Christ and the Christian Church shall any Christian Man forbeare his help to the necessary building and to the sober and modest adorning of the materiall Church of God God studies the good of the Church Angels labour for it and shall Man who is to receive all the profit of this doe nothing This is the Tunc Iacob when there is a free preaching of the Gospell there should be a free and liberall disposition to advance his house Well to make haste the second linke is Quid operatum what this wrought upon Iacob and it is Iacob awoke out of his sleep Now in this place the holy Ghost imputes no sinfull sleep to Iacob but it is a naturall sleep of lassitude and wearinesse after his travell there is an ill sleep an indifferent and a good sleep which is that heavenly sleep that tranquillity which that soul which is at peace with
covered himself with a cloud so that prayer could not passe thorough That was the misery of Ierusalem But in the acts and habits of sin we cover our selves with a roof with an arch which nothing can shake nor remove but Thunder and Earthquakes that is the execution of Gods fiercest judgments And whether in that fall of the roof that is in the weight of Gods judgments upon us the stones shall not brain us overwhelm and smother and bury us God only knows How his Thunders and his Earthquakes when we put him to that will work upon us he onely knows whether to our amendment or to our destruction But whil'st we are in the consideration of this arch this roof of separation between God and us by sin there may be use in imparting to you an observation a passage of mine own Lying at Aiâ— at Aquisgrane a well known Town in Germany and fixing there some time for the benefit of those Baths I found my self in a house which was divided into many families indeed so large as it might have been a little Parish or at least a great lim of a great one But it was of no Parish for when I ask'd who lay over my head they told me a family of Anabaptists And who over theirs Another family of Anabaptists and another family of Anabaptists over theirs and the whole house was a nest of these boxes severall artificers all Anabaptists I ask'd in what room they met for the exercise of their Religion I was told they never met for though they were all Anabaptists yet for some collaterall differences they detested one another and though many of them were near in bloud alliance to one another yet the son would excommunicate the father in the room above him and the Nephew the Uncle As S. Iohn is said to have quitted that Bath into which Cerinthus the Heretique came so did I this house I remembred that Hezekiah in his sicknesse turn'd himself in his bed to pray towards that wall that look'd to Ierusalem And that Daniel in Babylon when he pray'd in his chamber opened those windows that look'd towards Ierusalem for in the first dedication of the Temple at Ierusalem there is a promise annext to the prayers made towards the Temple And I began to think how many roofs how many floores of separation were made between God and my prayers in that house And such is this multiplicity of sins which we consider to be got over us as a roof as an arch many arches many roofs for though these habituall sins be so of kin as that they grow from one another and yet for all this kindred excommunicate one another for covetousnesse will not be in the same roome with prodigality yet it is but going up another stair and there 's the tother Anabaptist it is but living a few years and then the prodigall becomes covetous All the way they separate us from God as a roof as an arch then an arch will bear any weight An habituall sin got over our head as an arch will stand under any sicknesse any dishonour any judgement of God and never sink towards any humiliation They are above our heads sicus tectum as a roofe as an arch and they are so toe sicut clamor as a voice ascending not stopping till they come to God O my God I am confounded and ashamed to lift up mine eyes to ther O my God why not thine eyes there is a cloud a clamour in the way for as it follows Our iniquities are encreased over our heads and our trespasse is grown up to the heaven I think to retain a learned man of my counsell and one that is sute to be heard in the Court and when I come to instruct him I finde mine adversaries name in his book before and he is all ready for the other party I think to finde an Advocate in heaven when I will and my sin is in heaven before mee The voice of Abels bloud and so of Cains sin was there The voice of Sodomes transgression was there Bring down that sin again from heaven to earth Bring that voice that cries in heaven to speake to Christ here in his Church upon earth by way of confession bring that clamorous sin to his bloud to be washed in the Sacrament for as long as thy sin cries in heaven thy prayers cannot be heard there Bring thy sinne under Christs feet there when hee walks amongst the Candlesticks in the light and power of his Ordinances in the Church and then thine absolution will be upon thy head in those seals which he hath instituted and ordained there and thy cry will be silenced Till then supergrâ—sse caput thine iniquities will be over thy head as a roof as a cry and in the next place sicut aqua as the overflowing of waters We consider this plurality this multiplicity of habituall sinnes to bee got over our heads as waters especially in this that they have stupefied us and taken from us all sense of reparation of our sinfull condition The Organ that God hath given the naturall man is the eye he sees God in the creature The Organ that God hath given the Christian is the ear he hears God in his Word But when we are under water both senses both Organs are vitiated and depraved if not defeaâ—ed The habituall and manifold sinner sees nothing aright Hee sees a judgement and cals it an accident He hears nothing aright He hears the Ordinance of Preaching for salvation in the next world and he cals it an invention of the State for subjection in this world And as under water every thing seems distorted and crooked to man so does man himself to God who sees not his own Image in that man in that form as he made it When man hath drunk iniquity like water then The flouds of wickadnesse shall make him afraid The water that he hath swum in the sin that he hath delighted in shall appear with horrour unto him As God threatens the pride of Tyrus I shall bring the deep upon thee and great waters shall cover thee That God will execute upon this sinner And then upon every drop of that water upon every affliction every tribulation he shall come to that fearfulnesse Waters flowed over my head then said I I am câ—â— off Either he shall see nothing or see no remedy no deliverance from desperation Keep low these waters as waters signifie sin and God shall keep them low as they signifie punishments And his Dove shall return to the Ark with an Olive leaf to shew thee that the waters are abated he shall give thee a testimony of the return of his love in his Oyle and Wine and Milk and Honey in the temporall abundances of this life And si impleat Hydrias aqua if he doe fill all your vessels with water with water of bitternesse that is fill and exercise all your patience and
Fifty SERMONS PREACHED BY THAT LEARNED AND REVEREND DIVINE JOHN DONNE D r IN DIVINITY Late Deane of the Cathedrall Church of S. PAULS London The Second Volume LONDON Printed by Ia. Flesher for M. F. I. Marriot and R. Royston MDCXLIX TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE BASIL EARLE OF DENBY My very good Lord and Patron My Lord IN a season so tempestuous it is a great encouragement to see your Lordship called to the Helme who in your publique negociations having spent so many yeares in that so famed Common-wealth of Venice must of necessity have brought home such excellent Principles of Government that if our Fate doe not withstand your Directions we may reasonably at last expect to see our new Brittish Lady excell that ancient Adriatique Queene Neither can I offend much against the State in begging your Patronage and perusall of this Book knowing that your Lordship first mastered all the Learning of Padoa before you did adventure upon that wise Senate who amongst all her other greatnesses has ever had a principall care that Learning might not be diminished When these Sermons were preached they were terminated within the compasse of an houre but your acceptance may make them outlive the very Churches that they were preached in and give them such a perpetuity that Nec Jovis Ira nec Amor edacior multò poterit abolere For though a fiery zeale in succeeding ages hath often both ruined the Temples and casheired the gods that were worshipped in them Yet such sacrifices as these have beemy laies kept unburnt and we are suffered to know those religions that we are not allowed to practice Nor can I expect any greater advantage for the paines I have taken in publishing this Book then that posterity may know I did it when I had the favor and protection of your Lordship and was allowed to stile my selfe Your Lordships most humble Servant JO. DONNE FOR THE RIGHT HONOURABLE BOLSTRED WHITLOCK RICHARD KEEBLE 〈◊〉 JOHN LEILE Lords Commissioners of the Great Seale THe reward that many yeares since was proposed for the publishing these Sermons having been lately conferred upon me under the authority of the Great Seale I thought my selfe in gratitude bound to deliver them to the world under your Lordships protection both to show how carefull you are in dispensing that part of the Churches treasure that is committed to your disposing and to encourage all men to proceed in their industry when they are sure to find so just and equall Patrons whose fame and memory must certainely last longer then Bookes can find so noble Readers and whose present favors doe not onely keep the Living alive but the Dead from dying Your Lordships most humble Servant JO. DONNE A Table directing to the severall Texts of SCRIPTURE handled in this Book Sermons preached at Mariages Sermon I. Preached at the Earl of Bridgwaters house in London on MATTH 22. 30. For in the Resurrection they neither mary nor are given in Mariage but are as the Angels of God in heaven p. 1. Serm ' II. GEN. 2. 18. And the Lord God said It is not good that the man should be alone I will make him a Help meet for him p. 9. Serm. III. HOSEA 2. 19. And I will mary thee unto me for ever p. 15 Sermons preached at Christnings Serm. IV. REVEL 7. 17. For the Lamb which is in the midst of the Throne shall governe them and shall leade them unto the lively fountaines of waters and God shall wipe away all teares from their eyes p. 23 Serm. V. EPHES. 5. 25 26 27. Husbands love your wives even at Christ loved the Church and gave himselfe for it that he might sanctifie it and cleanse it by the washing of water through the Word That he might make it unto himselfe a glorious Church not having spot or wrinckle or any such thing but that it should be holy and without blame p. 31 Serm. VI. 1 JOH 5. 7 8. For there are three which beare record in Heaven the Father the Word and the Holy Ghost and these three are one And there are three which beare record in the Earth The Spirit and the water and the blood and these three agree in one p. 39 Serm. VII GAL. 3. 27. For all yee that are baptized into Christ have put on Christ. p. 50. Sermons preached at Churchings Serm. VIII CANT 5. 3. I have washed my feet how shall I defile them p. 59. Serm. IX MICAH 2. 10. Arise and depart for this is not your rest p. 67. Serm. X. A second Serm. on the same Text. p. 74. Sermons preached at Lincolns-Inne Serm. XI GEN. 28. 16 17. Then Iacob awoke out of his sleep and said Surely the Lord is in this place and I was not aware And he was afraid and said How fearefull is this place This is none other but the House of God and this is the gate of Heaven p. 83 Serm. XII JOH 5. 22. The Father judgeth no man but hath committed all judgement to the Sonne p. 94. Serm. XIII JOH 8. 15. I judge no man p. 101. Serm. XIIII JOB 19. 26. And though after my skin wormes destroy this body yet in my flesh shall I see God p. 106. Serm. XV. 1 COR. 15. 50. Now this I say Brethren that flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdome of God p. 118. Serm. XVI COLOS. 1. 24. Who now rejoyce in my sufferings for you and fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh for his bodies sake which is the Church p. 128. Serm. XVII MAT. 18. 7. Wo unto the world because of offences p. 136. Serm. XVIII A second Serm. on the same Text. p. 142 Serm. XIX PSAL. 38. 2. For thine arrowes stick fast in me and thy hand presseth me sore p. 158. Serm. XX. PSA 38. 3. There is no soundnesse in my flesh because of thine anger neither is there any rest in my bones because of my sinne p. 162. Serm. XXI PSAL. 38. 4. For mine iniquities are gone over my head as a heavy burden they are too heavy for me p. 174. Serm. XXII A second Serm. on the same Text. p. 186. Serm. XXIII A third Serm. on the same Text. p. 192. Sermons preached at White-Hall Serm. XXIV EZEK 34. 19. And as for my flocke they eate that which ye have trodden with your feet and they drink that which yee have fouled with your feet 199. Serm. XXV A second Serm. on the same Text. p. 208. Serm. XXVI ESAI 65. 20. For the childe shall die a hundred yeers old but the sinner being a hundred yeers old shall be accursed p. 218 Serm. XXVII MARK 4. 24. Take heed what you hear p. 228 Serm. XXVIII GEN. 1. 26. And God said Let us make man in our own Image after our likenesse p. 239. Serm. XXIX A second Serm. on the same Text. p. 250 Sermons preached to the Nobility Serm. XXX JOB 13. 15. Loe though he slay me yet will I trust in him p. 262. Serm. XXXI JOB 36.
25. Every man may see it man may behold it afar off p. 271. Serm. XXXII APOC. 7 9. After this I beheld and loe a great multitude which no man could number of all nations and kindreds and people and tongues stood before the throne and before the Lambe clothed with white robes and Palmes in their hands p. 279. Serm. XXXIII CANT 3. 11. Go forth ye daughters of Sion and behold King Solomon with the Crown wherewith his mother crowned him in the day of his espousals and in the day of the gladnesse of his heart p. 288. Serm. XXXIIII LUKE 23. 34. Father forgive them for they know not what they doe p. 304. Serm. XXXV MAT. 21. 44. Whosoever shall fall on this stone shall be broken but on whosoever it shall fall it will grinde him to powder p. 311. Sermons preached at S. Pauls Sermon XXXVI JOH 1. 8. He was not that Light but was sent to beare witnesse of that Light p. 320. Serm. XXXVII A second Serm. on the same Text. p. 334. Serm. XXXVIII A third Ser. on the the same Text. p. 343. Serm. XXXIX PHIL. 3. 2. Beware of the Concision p. 356. Serm. XL. 2 COR. 5. 20. We pray yee in Christs stead Be ye reconciled to God p. 364. XLI HOSEA 3. 4. For the Children of Israel shall abide many dayes without a King and without a Prince and without a Sacrifice and without an Image and without an Ephod and without Teraphim p. 375. Serm. XLII PROV 14. 31. He that oppresseth the poor reprocheth his Maker but he that honoureth him hath mercy on the 〈◊〉 p. 385. Serm. XLIII LAMENT 4. 20. The breath of our nostrils the Anointed of the Lord was taken in their pits p. 396. Serm. XLIV MAT. 11. 6. And blessed is he whosoever shall not be offended in me p. 411. Sermons preached at S. Dunstans Serm. XLV DEUT. 25. 5. If brethren dwell together and one of them dye and have no childe the Wife of the dead shall not marry without unto a stranger her husbands brother shall goe in unto her and take her to him to wife and performe the duty of an husbands brother unto her p. 422. Serm. XLVI PSAL. 34. 11. Come ye children Hearken unto me I will teach you the feare of the Lord. p. 430. Ser. XLVII GEN. 3. 24. And dust shalt thou eate all the dayes of thy life p. 439. Ser. XLVIII LAMENT 3. 1. I am the man that hath seen affliction by the rod of his wrath p. 445. Serm. XLIX GEN. 7. 24. Abraham himself was ninety nine yeeres old when the foreskin of his flesh was Circumcised p. 456. Serm. L. 1 THES 5. 16. Rejoyce evermore p. 466. A SERMON PREACHED At the Earl of Bridgewaters house in London at the mariage of his daughter the Lady Mary to the eldest sonne of the L. Herbert of Castle-iland Novemb. 19. 1627. The Prayer before the Sermon O Eternall and most gracious God who hast promised to hearken to the prayers of thy people when they pray towards thy house though they be absent from it worke more effectually upon us who are personally met in this thy house in this place consecrated to thy worship Enable us O Lord so to see thee in all thy Glasses in all thy representations of thy selfe to us here as that hereafter we may see thee face to face and as thou art in thy self in thy kingdome of glory Of which Glasses wherein we may see thee Thee in thine Unity as thou art One God Thee in thy Plurality as thou art More Persons we receive this thy Institution of Mariage to be one In thy first work the Creation the last seale of thy whole work was a Mariage In thy Sonnes great work the Redemption the first seale of that whole work was a miracle at a Mariage In the work of thy blessed Spirit our Sanctification he refreshes to us that promise in one Prophet That thou wilt mary thy selfe to us for ever and more in another That thou hast maryed thy selfe unto us from the beginning Thou hast maryed Mercy and Iustice in thy selfe maryed God and Man in thy Sonne maryed Increpation and Consolation in the Holy Ghost mary in us also O Lord a Love and a Fear of thee And as thou hast maryed in us two natures mortall and immortall mary in us also the knowledge and the practise of all duties belonging to both conditions that so this world may be our Gallery to the next And mary in us the Spirit of Thankfulnesse for all thy benefits already bestowed upon us and the Spirit of prayer for the continuance and enlargement of them Continue and enlarge them O'God upon thine universall Church c. SERM. I. MATTH 22. 30. For in the Resurrection they neither mary nor are given in Mariage but are as the Angels of God in heaven OF all Commentaries upon the Scriptures Good Examples are the best and the livelyest and of all Examples those that are nearest and most present and most familiar unto us and our most familiar Examples are those of our owne families and in families the Masters of families the fathers of families are most conspicuous most appliable most considerable Now in exercises upon such occasions as this ordinarily the instruction is to bee directed especially upon those persons who especially give the occasion of the exercise that is upon the persons to bee united in holy wedlock for as that 's a difference betweene Sermons and Lectures that a Sermon intends Exhortation principally and Edification and a holy stirring of religious affections and then matters of Doctrine and points of Divinity occasionally secondarily as the words of the text may invite them But Lectures intend principally Doctrinall points and matter of Divinity and matter of Exhortation but occasionally and as in a second place so that 's a difference between Christening sermons and Mariage sermons that the first at Christnings are especially directed upon the Congregation and not upon the persons who are to be christened and these at mariages especially upon the parties that are to be united and upon the congregation but by reflexion When therefore to these persons of noble extraction I am to say something of the Duties and something of the Blessing of Mariage what God Commands and what God promises in that state in his Scriptures I lay open to them the best exposition the best Commentaries upon those Scriptures that is Example and the neerest example that is example in their own family when with the Prophet Esay I direct them To look upon the Rock from whence they are hewen to propose to themselves their own parents and to consider there the performance of the duties of mariage imposed by God in S. Paul and the blessings proposed by God in David Thy Wife shall be a fruitfull Vine by the sides of thy House The children like olive plants round about the table For to this purpose of edifying children by example such as are truly religious fathers
of this life Call it Nuptias and that is derived à Nube a vaile a covering and that is an estranging a withdrawing her self from all such conversation as may violate his peace or her honour Call it Matrimonium and that is derived from a Mother and that implies a religious education of her children De latere sumpta nor-discedat à latere says Aâ—g Since she was taken out of his side let her not depart from his side but shew her self so much as she was made for Adjutorium a Helper But she must be no more If she think her self more then a Helper she is not so much He is a miserable creature whose Creator is his Wife God did not stay to joyn her in Commission with Adam so far as to give names to the creatures much lesse to give essence essence to the man essence to her husband When the wife thinks her husband owes her all his fortune all his discretion all his reputation God help that man himself for he hath given him no helper yet I know there are some glasses stronger then some earthen vessels and some earthen vessels stronger then some wooden dishes some of the weaker sexe stronger in fortune and in counsell too then they to whom God hath given them but yet let them not impute that in the eye nor eare of the world nor repeat it to their own hearts with such a dignifying of themselves as exceeds the quality of a Helper S. Hierome shall be her Remembrancer She was not taken out of the foâ—t to be troden upon nor out of the head to be an overseer of him but out of his side where she weakens him enough and therefore should do all she can to be a Helper To be so so much and no more she must be as God made Eve fimilis ei meet and fit for her husband She is fit for any if she have those vertues which always make the person that hath them good as chastity sobriety taciturnity verity and such for for such vertues as may be had and yet the possessor not the better for them as wit learning eloquence musick memory cunning and such these make her never the fitter There is a Harmony of dispositions and that requires particular consideration upon emergent occasions but the fitnesse that goes through all is a sober continency for without that Matrimonium jurata fornicatio Mariage is but a continuall fornication sealed with an oath And mariage was not instituted to prostitute the chastity of the woman to one man but to preserve her chastity from the tentations of more men Bathsheba was a little too fit for David when he had tried her so far before for there is no fitnesse where there is not continency To end all there is a Morall fitnesse consisting in those morall vertues of which we have spoke enough And there is a Civill fitnesse consisting in Discretion and accommodating her self to him And there is a Spirituall fitnesse in the unanimity of Religion that they be not of repugnant professions that way Of which since we are well assured in both these who are to be joyned now I am not sorry if either the houre or the present occasion call me from speaking any thing at all because it is a subject too mis-interpretable and unseasonable to admit an enlarging in at this time At this time therefore this be enough for the explication and application of these words SERMON III. Preached at a Mariage HOSEA 2. 19. And I will mary thee unto me for ever THE word which is the hinge upon which all this Text turns is Erash and Erash signifies not onely a betrothing as our later Translation hath it but a mariage And so it is used by David Deliver me my wife Michal whom I maried and so our former Translation had it and so we accept it and so shall handle it I will mary thee unto me for ever The first mariage that was made God made and he made it in Paradise And of that mariage I have had the like occasion as this to speak before in the presence of many honourable persons in this company The last mariage which shall be made God shall make too and in Paradise too in the Kingdome of heaven and at that mariage I hope in him that shall make it to meet not some but all this company The mariage in this Text hath relation to both those mariages It is it self the spirituall and mysticall mariage of Christ Jesus to the Church and to every mariageable soule in the Church And it hath a retrospect it looks back to the first mariage for to that the first word carries us because from thence God takes his metaphor and comparison sponsabo I will mary And then it hath a prospect to the last mariage for to that we are carried in the last word in aeternum I will mary thee unto me for ever Be pleased therefore to give me leave in this exercise to shift the scene thrice and to present to your religious considerations three objects three subjects first a secular mariage in Paradise secondly a spirituall mariage in the Church and thirdly an eternall mariage in heaven And in each of these three we shall present three circumstances first the Persons Me and Tibi I will mary thee And then the Action Sponsabo I will mary thee And lastly the Term In aeternam I will mary thee to mee for ever In the first acceptation then in the first the secular mariage in Paradise the persons were Adam and Eve Ever since they are he and she man and woman At first by reason of necessity without any such limitation as now And now without any other limitation then such as are expressed in the Law of God As the Apostles say in the first generall Councell We lay nothing upon you but things necessary so we call nothing necessary but that which is commanded by God If in heaven I may have the place of a man that hath performed the Commandements of God I will not change with him that thinks he hath done more then the Commandements of God enjoyned him The rule of marriage for degrees and distance in blood is the Law of God but for conditions of men there is no Rule given at all When God had made Adam and Eve in Paradise God did not place Adam in a Monastery on one side and Eve in a Nunnery on the other and so a River between them They that built wals and cloysters to frustrate Gods institution of mariage advance the Doctrine of Devils in forbidding mariage The Devil hath advantages enow against us in bringing men and women together It was a strange and super-devilish invention to give him a new advantage against us by keeping men and women asunder by forbidding mariage Between the heresie of the Nicolaitans that induced a community of women any might take any and the heresie of the Tatians that forbad all none might take any was
and I who have opened my mouth and poured out imprecations and curses upon men and execrations and blasphemies against God upon every occasion That Lamb who was slain from the beginning and was slain by him who was a murderer from the beginning That Lamb which took away the sins of the world and I who brought more sins into the world then any sacrifice but the blood of this Lamb could take away This Lamb and I these are the Persons shall meet and mary there is the Action This is not a clandestine mariage not the private seal of Christ in the obsignation of his Spirit and yet such a clandestine mariage is a good mariage Nor it is not such a Parish mariage as when Christ maried me to himself at my Baptisme in a Church here â— and yet that mariage of a Christian soul to Christ in that Sacrament is a blessed mariage But this is a mariage in that great and glorious Congregation where all my fins shall be laid open to the eys of all the world where all the blessed Virgins shall see all my uncleannesse and all the Martyrs see all my tergiversations and all the Consessors see all my double dealings in Gods cause where Abraham shall see my faithlesnesse in Gods promises and Iob my impatience in Gods corrections and Lazarus my hardness of heart in distributing Gods blessings to the poore and those Virgins and Martyrs and Confessors and Abraham and Iob and Lazarus and all that Congregation shall look upon the Lamb and upon me and upon one another as though they would all forbid those banes and say to one another Will this Lamb have any thing to doe with this soule and yet there and then this Lamb shall mary me In aeternum for ever which is our last circumstance It is not well done to call it a circumstance for the eternity is a great part of the essence of that mariage Consider then how poore and needy a thing all the riches of this world how flat and tastlesse a thing all the pleasures of this world how pallid and faint and dilute a thing all the honours of this world are when the very Treasure and Joy and glory of heaven it self were unperfect if it were not eternall and my mariage shall be too In aeternum for ever The Angels were not maried so they incurr'd an irreparable Divorce from God and are separated for ever and I shall be maried to him in aeternum for ever The Angels fell in love when there was no object presented before any thing was created when there was nothing but God and themselves they fell in love with themselves and neglected God and so fell in aeternum for ever I shall see all the beauty and all the glory of all the Saints of God and love them all and know that the Lamb loves them too without jealousie on his part or theirs or mine and so be maried in aeternum for ever without interruption or diminution or change of affections I shall see the Sunne black as sackcloth of hair and the Moon become as blood and the Starres fall as a Figge-tree casts her untimely Figges and the heavens roll'd up together as a Scroll I shall see a divorce between Princes and their Prerogatives between nature and all her elements between the spheres and all their intelligences between matter it self and all her forms and my mariage shall be in aeternum for ever I shall see an end of faith nothing to be beleeved that I doe not know and an end of hope nothing to be wisht that I doe not enjoy but no end of that love in which I am maried to the Lamb for ever Yea I shall see an end of some of the offices of the Lamb himself Christ himself shall be no longer a Mediator an Intercessor an Advocate and yet shall continue a Husband to my soul for ever Where I shall be rich enough without Joynture for my Husband cannot die and wise enough without experience for no new thing can happen there and healthy enough without Physick for no sicknesse can enter and which is by much the highest of all safe enough without grace for no tentation that need particular grace can attempt me There where the Angels which cannot die could not live this very body which cannot choose but die shall live and live as long as that God of life that made it Lighten our darkness we beseech thee ô Lord that in thy light we may see light Illustrate our understandings kindle our affections pour oyle to our zeale that we may come to the mariage of this Lamb and that this Lamb may come quickly to this mariage And in the mean time bless these thy servants with making this secular mariage a type of the spirituall and the spirituall an earnest of that eternall which they and we by thy mercy shall have in the Kingdome which thy Son our Saviour hath purchased with the inestimable price of his incorruptible blood To whom c. SERMON IV. Preached at a Christning REVEL 7. 17. For the Lamb which is in the midst of the Throns shalâ— gâ—vern them and shall leade them unto the lively furnteins of maters and God shall wipe away all teares from their eyes IF our conversation be in heaven as the Apostle says his was and if that conversation be as Testullian reads that place Municipatus noster our City our dwelling the place from whence onely we receive our Laws to which onely we direct our services in which onely we are capable of honours and offices where even the office of a doore-keeper was the subject of a great Kings ambition if our conversation be there even there there cannot be better company met then we may see and converse withall in this Chapter Upon those words doth the Eagle mount up at the Cominandement or make his nest on high S. Gregory says Videamus aquilam nidum sibi in arduis construentem Then we say an Eagle make his nest on high when we heard S. Petter say so Our conversation is in heaven and then doth an Eagle mount up at our commandement when our soul our devotion by such a conversation in heaven associates itself with all this blessed company that are met in this Chapter that our fellow ship may be with the Father and with his Son Iesus Christ and with all the Court and Quire of the Triumphant Church If you go to feasts if you goe to Comedies fometimes onely to meet company nay if you come to Church sometimes onely upon that errand to meet company as though the House of God were but as the presence of an earthly Prince which upon solemne Festivall days must be fill'd and furnished though they that come come to doe no service there command year Eagle to mount up and to build his nest on high command your souls to have their conversation in heaven by meditation of this Scripture and you shall meet
Christ which is Baptistrisum the font the Sea into which God flings all their sinnes who rightly and effectually receive that Sacrament These fountaines of waters then in the text are the waters of baptisime and if we should take them also in that sense that waters signifie tribulations and afflictions it is true too that in baptisme that is in the profession of Christ we are delivered over to many tribulations The rule is generall Castigat omnes he chastiseth all The example the precedent is peremptory Opertuit pati Christ ought to suffer and so enter into glory but howsoever waters be affictions they are waters of life too says the text Though baptisme imprint a crosse upon us that we should not be ashamed of Christ crosse that we should not be afraid of our owne crosses yet by all these waters by all these Crosse ways we goe directly to the eternall life the kingdome of heaven for they are lively fountaines fountaines of life And this is intended and promised in the last words Absterget omnem Lachrymam God shall wipe all teares from our eyes God shall give us a joyfull apprehension of heaven here in his Church in this life But is this a way to wipe teares from the childes face to sprinkle water upon it Is this a wiping away to powre more on It is the powerfull and wonderfull way of his working for as his red bloud makes our red soules white that his rednesse gives our rednesse a candor so his water his baptisime and the powerfull effect thereof shall dry up and wipe away Omnem â—achrymam all teares from our Eyes howsoever occasioned This water shall dry them up Christ had many occassion of teares we have more some of our owne which he had not we must weep because we are not so good as we should be we cannot performe the law We must weepe because we are not so good as we could be our free will is lost but yet every Man findes he might be better if he would but the sharpest and saltest and smartest occasion of our teares is from this that we must not be so good as we would be that the prosanenesse of the Libertine the reproachfull slanders the contumelious scandalls the seornfull names that the wicked lay upon those who in their measure desire to expresse their zeale to Gods glory makes us afraid to professe our selves so religious as we could find in our hearts to be and could truly be if we might Christ went often in contemplation of others foreseeing the calamities of Ierualem he wept over the City comming to the grave of Lazarus he wept with them but in his owne Agony in the garden it is not said that he weps If we could stop the stood of teares in our afflictions yet there belongs an excessive griefe to this that the ungodly disposion of other Men is slacking of our godlinesse of our sanctification too Christ Jesus for the joy that was set before him endured the Crosse we for the joy of this promise that God will wipe all teares from our eyes must suffer all this whether they be teares of Compunction or teares of Compassion teares for our selves or teares for others whether they be Magdalens teares or Peters teares teares for sinnes of infirmity of the flesh or teares for weaknesse of our faith whether they be teares for thy parents because they are improvident towards thee or teares for thy children because they are disobedient to thee whether they be teares for Church because our Sermons or our Censures pinch you or teares for the State that penall laws pecuniary or bloudy lie heavy upon you Deus absterget omneni lachryman here 's your comfort that as he hath promised inestimable blessings to them that are sealed and washed in him so he hath given you security that these blessings belong to you for if you find that he hath govened you bred you in his visible Church and led you to his fountaine of the water of lifein baptisme you may be sure that he will in his due time wipe all teares from your eyes establish the kingdome of heaven upon you in this life in a holy and modest infallibility SERMON V. Preached at a Christning EPHES. 5. 25 26 27. Husbands love your wives even as Christ loved the Church and gave himselfe for it that he might sanctisie it and cleanse it by the washing of water through the Word That he might make it unto himselfe a glorious Church not having spot or wrinkle on any such thing but that it should be holy and without blame ALmighty God ever loved unity but he never loved singularity God was always alone in heaven there were no other Gods but he but he was never singular there was never any time when there were not three persons in heaven Pater ego unum summi The father and I are one says Christ one in Esseuct and one in Consent our substance is the same and our will is the same but yet Tecum fui ab initio says Christ in the person of Wisdome I was with thee disposing all things at the Creation As then God seemes to have been eternally delighted with this eternall generation with persons that had ever a relation to one another Father and Sonne so when he came to the Creation of this lower world he came presently to those three relations of which the whole frame of this world consists of which because the principall foundation and preservation of all States that are to continue is power the first relation was between Prince and Subject when God said to Man Subjecite dominamini subdue and govern all Creatures The second relation was between husband and wife when Adam said This now is house of my bone and flesh of my flesh And the third relation was between parents and children when Eve said that she had obtained a Man by the Lord that by the plentifull favour of God she had conceived and borne a sonne from that time to the dissolution of that frame from that beginning to the end of the world these three relations of Master and Servant Mans and Wife Father and Children have been and ever shall be the materialls and the elements of all society of families and of Cities and of Kingdomes And therefore it is a large and a subtill philosophy which S. Paul professes in this place to shew all the qualities and properties of these several Elements that is all the duties of these severall callings but in this text he handles onely the mutuall duties of the second couple Man and Wife and in that consideration shall we determine this exercise because a great part of that concernes the education of Children which especially occasions our meeting now The generall duty that goes through all these three relations is expressed Subditi estate invicevs Submit your selves to one another in the feare of God for God hath given no Master such imperiousnesse
doth nothing so like a subject as when he puts himselfe to the pain to consider the profit and the safety of his Subjects and such a subjection is that of a Husband who is bound to study his wife and rectify all her infirmites Her infirmities he must bear but not her sins if he bear them they become his own The pattern the example goes not so far Christ maried himself to our Nature and he bare all our infirmities hunger and wearinesse and sadnesse and death actually in his own person but so he contracted no sin in himselfe nor encouraged us to proceed in sin Christ was Salvator corporis A Saviour of his body of the Church to which he maried himselfe but it is a tyranny and a devastation of the body to whom we mary our selves if we love them so much as that we love their Sin too suffer them to goe on in that or if we love them so little as to make their sin our way to profit or preferment by prostituting them and abandoning them to the solicitation of others still we must love them so as that this love be a subjection not a neglecting to let them doe what they will nor a tyrannizing to make them doe what we will You must love them then first Quia vestrae because they are yours As we said at first God loves Couples He suffers not our body to be alone nor our soule alone but he maries them together when that 's done to remedy the vae soli left this Man should be alone he maries him to a help meet for himâ— and to avoid fornication that is if fornication cannot be avoided otherwise Every Man is to have his wife and every woman her own husband When the love comes to exceed these bounds that it departs à vestris from a Man 's own wife and settles upon another though he may think he discharges himselfe of some of his subjection which he was in before yet he becomes much more subject subject to houshold and forain Iealousies subject to ill grounded quarrels subject to blasphemous protestations to treacherous misuse of a confident friend to ignoble an unworthy disguises to base satisfactions subject lastly either to a clamorous Conscience or that which is worse slavery to a sear'd and obdurate and stupefied Conscience and to that Curse which is the heavier because it hath a kind of scorn in it Be not deceived as though we were coâ—sened of our souls Be not deceived for no adulterer shal enter into the kingdom of heaven All other things that are ours we may be the better for leaving Vade vende which Christ said to the yong Man that seemed to desire perfection reached to all his goods Goe and sell them sayes Christ and thou shalt follow me the better But there is no selling nor giving nor lending nor borrowing of wives we must love them Quia nostrae because they are ours and if that be not a ty and obligation strong enough that they are Nostrae ours we must love them Quia nos because they are our selves for no man yet ever hated his own flesh We must love them then Quia nostrae because they are ours those whom God hath given us and Quia uxores because they are our wives Saint Paul does not bid us love them here Quanquam uxores but Quia not though they be but because they are our wives Saint Paul never thought of that indisposition of that disaffection of that impotency that a Man should come to hate her whom he could love well enough but that she is his wife Were it not a strange distemper if upon consideration of my soule finding it to have some seeds of good dispositions in it some compassion of the miseries of others some inclination of the glory of God some possibility some interest in the kingdome of heaven I should say of this soule that I would fast and pray and give and suffer any thing for the salvation of this Soule if it were not mine own soule if it were any bodies else and now abandon it to eternall destruction because it is mine own If no Man have felt this barbarous inhumanity towards his owne soul I pray God no man have felt it towards his own wife neither That he loves her the lesse for being his own wife For we must love them not Quanquam says Saint Paul though she be so That was a Caution which the Apostle never thought he needed but Quia because in the sight of God and all the Triumphant Church we have bound our selves that we would do so Here Mariages are sometimes clandestine and witnesses dye and in that case no Man can bind me to love herâ— Quia uxâ—r because she is my wife because it lyes not in proofe that she is so Here sometimes things come to light which were concealed before and a Mariage proves no Mariage Decepta est Ecclesia The Church was deceived and the poor woman loses her plea Quia uxâ—r because she is his wife for it fals out that she is not so but if thou have maried her in the presence of God and all the Court and Quire of heaven what wilt thou doe to make away all these witnesses who shall be of thy Councell to assign an Error in Gods judgement whom wilt thoubribe to embezill the Records of heaven It is much that thou are able to doe in heaven Thou art able by thy sins to blot thy name out of the book of life but thou are not able to blot thy wifes name out of the Records of heaven but there remains still the Quia uxâ—r because she is thy wife And this Quia uxâ—r is Quaâ—diu uxâ—r since thou art bound to love her because she is thy wife it must be as long as she is so You may have heard of that quinquâ—nnium Neronis The worst tyran that ever was was the best Emperour that ever was for five years the most corrupt husbands may have been good at first but that love may have been for other respects satisfaction of parents establishing of hopes and sometimes Ignorance of evill that ill company had not taught them ill conditions it comes not to be Quia uxor because she is thy wife to be the love which is commanded in this text till it bring some subjection some burthen Till we love her then when we would not love her except she were our wife we are not sure that we love her Quia uxor that is for that and for no other respect How long that is how long she is thy wife never ask wrangling Controverters that make Gypsie-knots of Mariages ask thy Conscience and that will tell thee that thou wast maried till death should depart you If thy mariage were made by the Dâ—vill upon dishonest Conditions the Devill may break it by sin if it were made by God Gods way of breaking of Mariages is onely by death It is then a Subjection and it is
compelled to come as it is expressed in the Gospell when the Master of the feast sends into the streets and to the hedges to compell blind and lame to come in to his feast A fountaine breaks out in the wildernesse but that fountaine cares not whether any Man come to fetch water or no A fresh and fit gale blowes upon the Sea but it cares not whether the Mariners hoise saile or no A rose blowes in your garden but it calls you not to smell to it Christ Jesus hath done all this abundantly he hath bought an Hospitall he hath stored it with the true balme of Palestine with his bloud which he shed there and he calls upon you all to come for it Hoe every one that thirsteth you that have no money come buy Wine and Milke without money eate that which is good and let your soules delight in fatnesse and I will make an everlasting Covenant with you even the sure mercies of David This Hospitall this way and meanes to cure spirituall diseases was all that Christ had for himselfe but he improved it he makes it a Church and a glorious Church which is our last consideration Quis sinis to what end he bestowed all this cost His end was that he might make it to himselfe a glorious Church not having spot or wrinkle but that end must be in the end of all here it cannot be Cum tot a dicat ecclesia quamdiu hîc est Dimitte debita nostra non utique hîc est sine macula et ruga Since as yet the whole Church says forgive us our Trespasses the Church as yet is not without spots or wrinkles The wrinkles are the Testimonies of our age that is our sinne derived from Adam and the spots are the sinnes which we contract our selves and of these spots and wrinkles we cannot be delivered in this world And therefore the Apostle says here that Christ hath bestowed all this cost on this purchase ut sisteret sibi Ecclesiam that he might setle such a glorious and pure Church to himselfe first ut sisteret that he might setle it which can onely be done in heaven for here in Earth the Church will always have earthquakes Opartet haereses esse stormes and schismes must necessarily be the Church is in a warfare the Church is in a pilgrimage and therefore here is no setling And then he doth it ut sisteret sibi to setle it to himselfe for in the tyranny of Rome the Church was in some sort setled things were carried quietly enough for no Man durst complaine but the Church was setled all upon the Vicar and none upon the Parson the glory of the Bishop of Rome had eclipsed and extinguished the glory of Christ Iesus In other places we have seen the Church setled so as that no man hath done or spoken any thing against the government thereof but this may have been a setling by strong hand by severed discipline and heavy Lawes we see where Princes have changed the Religion the Church may be setled upon the Prince or setled upon the Prelates that is be serviceable to them and be ready to promote and further any purpose of theirs and all this while not be setled upon Christ this purpose ut sisteret sibi to setle such a glorious Church without spot or wrinkle holy to himselfe is reserved for the Triumphant time when she shall be in possession of that beauty which Christ foresaw in her long before when he said Thou art all faire my love and there is no spot in thee and when we that shall be the Children of the Mariage Chamber◠shall be glad and rejoice and give glory to him because the Mariage of the Lambe is come and his wife hath made her selfe ready that is we that are of that Church shall be so clothed as that our own clothes shall not defile us againe as Io◠complaines that they doe as long as we are in this world for though I make me never so cleane yet mine own clothes defile me againe as it is in that place But yet Beloved Christ hath not made so improvident a bargaine as to give so great a rate himselfe for a Church so farre in reversion as till the day of Judgement That he should enter into bonds for this payment from all eternity even in the eternall decree between the Father and him that he should really pay this price his precious bloud for this Church one thousand six hundred years agoe and he should receive no glory by this Church till the next world◠Here was a long lease here were many lives the lives of all the men in the world to be served before him But it is not altogether so for he gave himselfe that he might settle such a Church then a glorious and a pure Church but all this while the Church is building in heaven by continuall accesse of holy Soules which come thither and all the way he workes to that end He sanctifies it and cleanses it by the washing of water through the word as we find in our Text. He therefore stays not so long for our Sanctification but that we have meanes of being sanctified here Christ stays not so long for his glory but that he hath here a glorious Gospell his Word and mysterious Sacraments here Here then is the writing and the Seale the Word and the Sacrament and he hath given power and commandement to his Ministers to deliver both writing and Seale the Word and Baptisme to his children This Sacrament of Baptisme is the first It is the Sacrament of inchoation of Initiation The Sacrament of the Supper is not given but to them who are instructed and presum'd to understand all Christian duties and therefore the Word if we understand the Word for the Preaching of the Word may seeme more necessary at the administration of this Sacrament then at the other Some such thing seems to be intimated in the institution of the Sacraments In the institution of the Supper it is onely said Take and eate and drinke and doe that in remembrance of me and it is onely said that they sand a Pslame and s◠departed In the institution of Baptisme there is more solemnity more circumstance for first it was instituted after Christs Resurrection and then Christ proceeds to it with that majesticall preamble All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth◠and therefore upon that title he gives power to his Apostles to joine heaven and earth by preaching and by baptisme but here is more then singing of a Psalme for Christ commands them first to teach and then to baptize and then after the commandement of Baptisme he refreshes that commandement againe of teaching them whom they baptized to observe all things that he had commanded them I speake not this as though Baptisme were uneffectuall without a Sermon S. Angustines words Accedat yerbum fiat Sacramentum when the Word is
joyned to the element or to the Action then there is a true Sacrament are ill understood by two sorts of Menâ— first by them that say that it is not verbum Deprecatorium nor verbum Conciâ—natâ—riuâ— not the word of Prayer nor the word of preaching but verbum Consecratorium and verbum Sacramentale that very phrase and forme of words by which the water is sanctified and enabled of it selfe to cleanse our Soules and secondly these words are ill understood by them who had rather their children dyed unbaptized then have them baptized without a Sermon whereas the use of preaching at baptisme is to raise the whole Congregation to a consideration what they promised by others in their baptisme and to raise the Father and the Sureties to a consideration what they undertake for the childe whom they present then to be baptized for therefore says Saint Augustine Acoedaâ— verbum there is a necessity of the word Non quâ—a dicitur sed quia creditur not because the word is prâ—ached but because it is beleeved and That Beleese faith belongs not at all to the incapacity of the child but to the disposition of the rest A Sermon is usefull for the congregation not necessary for the child and the accomplishment of the Sacrament From hence then arises a convenience little lesse then necessary in a kind that this administration of the Sacrament be accompanied with preaching but yet they that would evict an absolute necessity of it out of these words force them too much for here the direct meaning of the Apostle is That the Church is cleansed by water through the word when the promises of God expressed in his word are sealed to us by this Sacrament of Baptisme for so Saint Augustine answers himselfe in that objection which he makes to himselfe Cum per Baptisâ—â—â— fundati sint quare sermoni tribuit radicem He answers In Sermone intelligendus Baptismusâ— Quia sine Sermone non perficitur It is rooted it is grounded in the word and therefore true Baptisme though it be administred without the word that is without the word preached yet it is never without the word because the whole Sacrament and the power thereof is rooted in the word in the Gospell And therefore since this Sacrament belongs to the Church as it is said here that Christ doth cleanse his Church by Baptisme as it is argued with a strong probability That because the Apostles did baptize whole families therefore they did baptize some children so we argue with an invincible certainty that because this Sacrament belongs generally to the Church as the initiatory Sacrament it belongs to children who are a part and for the most part the most innocent part of the Church To conclude As all those Virgins which were beautifull were brought into Susan Ad domum mulierum to be anointed and persumed and prepared there for Assuerus delight and pleasure though Assuerus tooke not delight and pleasure in them all so we admit all those children which are within the Covenant made by God to the elect and their seed In domum Sanctorum into the houshold of the faithfull into the communion of Saints whom he chooseth for his Mariage day that is for that Church which he will settle upon himselfe in heaven we know not but we know that he hath not promised to take any into that glory but those upon whom he hath first shed these fainter beames of glory and sanctification exhibited in this Sacrament Neither hath he threatned to exclude any but for sinne after And therefore when this blessed child derived from faithfull parents and presented by sureties within the obedience of the Church shall have been so cleansed by the washing of water through the word it is presently sealed to the possession of that part of Christs purchase for which he gave himselfe which are the meanes of preparing his Church in this life with a faithfull assurance I may say of it and to it Iam mundus es Now you are cleanâ— through the word which Christ hath spoken unto you The Seale of the promises of his Gospell hath sanctified and cleansed you but yet Mandatus mundandus says Saint Augustine upon that place It is so sanctified by the Sacrament here that it may be farther sanctified by the growth of his graces and be at last a member of that glorious Church which he shall settle upon himselfe without spot or wrinkle which was the principall and final purpose of that great love of his whereby he gave himselfe for us and made that love first a patterne of Mens loves to their wives here and then a meanes to bring Man and wife and child to the kingdome of heaven Amen SERMON VI. Preached at a Christning 1 JOHN 5. 7 8. For there are three which beare record in heaven The Father the Word and the Holy Ghost and these three are one And there are three which beare record in the Earth The Spirit and the water and the bloud and these three agree in one IN great and enormous offences we find that the law in a well governed State expressed the punishment upon such a delinquent in that form in that curse Igni aqua interdicitor let him have no use of fire and water that is no use of any thing necessary for the sustentation of life Beloved such is the miserable condition of wretched Man as that we come all into the world under the burden of that curse Aqua igni interdicimâ—r we have nothing to doe naturally with the spirituall water of life with the fiery beames of the holy Ghost till he that hath wrought our restitution from this banishment restore us to this water by powring out his owne bloud and to this lively fire by laying himselfe a cold and bloudlesse carcasse in the bowels of the Earth till he who haptized none with waâ—er direct his Church to doe that office towards us and he without whom none was baptized with fire perfect that Ministeriall worke of his Church with the effectuall seales of his grace for this is his testimony the witnesse of his love Yea that law in cases of such great offences expressed it selfe in another Malediction upon such offenders appliable also to us Intestabiles sunte let them be Intestable Now this was a sentence a Condemnation so pregnant so full of so many heavy afflictions as that he who by the law was made intestable was all these ways intestable First he was able to make no Testament of his owne he had lost all his interest in his owne estate and in his owne will Secondly he could receive no profit by any testament of any other Man he had lost all the effects of the love and good disposition of other Men to him Thirdly he was Intestable so as that he could not testifie he should not be beleeved in the behalfe of another and lastly the testimony of another could doe him no good no Man could be admitted to
Sacrament yet he is always present in it Yet this plot the devill had upon the Church And whereas this first Epistle of Saint Iohn was never doubted to be Canonicall whereas both the other have been called into some question yet in this first Epistle the first verse of this text was for a long time removed or expung'd whether by malice of Heretiques or negligence of transcribers The first Translation of the new testament which was into Syriaque hath not this verse That which was first called Vulgata editio had it not neither hath Luther it in his Germane translation very many of the Latine Fathers have it not and some very ancient Greeke Fathers want it though more ancient then they have it for Athanasius in the Councell of Nice cites it and makes use of it and Cyprian beheaded before that Councell hath it too But now he that is one of the witnesses himselfe the Holy Ghost hath assured the Church that this verse belongs to the Scripture and therefore it becomes us to consider thankfully and reverently this first ranke of witnesses the Father the Word and the Holy Ghost The Father then hath testified De integritate Christi of this intirenesse that Christ should be all this and doe all this which we have spoken of abundantly he begunne before Christ was borne in giving his name Thou shalt call his name Iesus for he shall save his people from sin Well how shall this person be capable to doe this office of saving his people from sinne Why in him say God the father in the representation of an Angell shall be fulfilled that prophecy A virgin shall beare a Sonne and they shall call his name Emanuel which is by interpretation God with us This seemes somewhat an incertaine testimony of a Man with an Alià s dictus with two names God says he shall be called Iesus that the prophecy may be fulfilled which says he shall be called Emanuel but therein consists Integritas Christi this intirenesse he could not be Jesus not a Saviour except he were Emanuel God with us God in our nature Here then is Jesus a Saviour a Saviour that is God and Man but where is the Testimony De Christo that he was anointed and prepared for this sacrifice that this worke of his was contracted between the Father and him and acceptable to him It is twice testified by the Father both in Christs act of humiliation when he would be Baptized by Iohn when he would accept an ablution who had no uncleannesse then God says This is my beloved Sonne in whom I am well pleased he was well pleased in his person and he was well pleased in his act in his office And he testifies it againe in his first act of glory in his transfiguration where the Father repeates the same words with an addition Heare him God is pleased in him and would have Men pleased in him too He testified first onely for Iosephs sak that had entertained and lodged some scrupulous suspition against his wife the Blessed Virgine His second testimony at the baptisme had a farther extent for that was for the confirmation of Iohn Baptist of the preacher himselfe who was to convey his doctrine to many others His third testimony in the transfiguration was larger then the Baptisme for that satisfied three and three such as were to carry it farre Peter and Iames and Iohn All which no doubt made the same use of his testimony as we see Peter did who preached out of the strength of his manifestation we followed not deceivable fables but with our owne eyes we saw his Majesty for he received of God the Father honor and glory when there came such a voice to him from the Excellent glory This is my beloved Sonne in whom I am well pleased But yet the Father gave a more free a more liberall testimony of him then this at his Conception or Baptisme or Transfiguration when upon Christs prayer Father glorifie thy Name there came a voice from heaven I have both glorified it and will glorifie it againe For this all the people apprehended some imputed it to Thunder some to an Angel but all heard it and all heard Christs comment upon it That that voice came not for him but for their sakes so that when the Father had testified of a Iesus a Saviour and a Christ a Saviour sent to that purpose and a Sonne in whom he is pleased and whom we must heare when it is said of him moreover Gratificavit â—â—s in Dilectâ— he hath made us accepted in his beloved this is his way of comming in water and bloud that is in the sacraments of the Church by which we have assurance of being accepted by him and this is this Integritas Christi the intirenesse of Christ testified by our first witnesse that bears record in heaven The father The second witnesse in heaven is verâ—um The Word and that is a welcome message for it is Christ himselfe It is not so when the Lord sends a word The Lord sent a word unto Iacob and it lighted upon Israelâ— there the word is a judgement and an execution of the Judgement for that word that signifies 2 word there in the same letters exactly signifies a pestilence a Calamity It is a word and a blow but the word here is verbum cara that Word which for our sakes was made our selves The word then in this place is the second person in the Trinity Christ Iesus who in this Court of heaven where there is no corruption no falsification no passion but fair and just proceeding is admitted to be a witnesse in his owne cause It is Iesus that testifies for Iesus now when he was upon earth and said If I should beare witnesse of my selfe my witnesse were not true whether we take those words to be spoken per Coâ—nlventiam by an allowance and concession It is not true that is I am content that you should not beleeve my witnesse of my selfe to be true as Saint Cyrill understand them or whether we take them Humana mare that Christ as a man acknowledged truely and as he thought that inlegall proceeding a mans owne testimony ought not to be beleeved in his owne behalfe as Athanâ—â—ius and Saint Ambrose understand them yet Christ might safely say as he did Though I beare a record of my selfe yet my record is true why because I know whence I come and whither I goe Christ could not be Singularis â—â—stis a single witnesseâ— He was alwayes more then one witnesse because he had alwayes more then 〈◊〉 God and man and therefore Christ instructing Nicodemus speakes plurally we speake that 〈◊〉 know we testifie that we have seene and you receive not Testimoniâ—â— nâ—strum our witnesseâ— he does not say my witnesse but ours because although a singular yet he was a plurall person too His testimony then was credible but how did he testifie Integritatem this intirenesse
all that belonged to our faithâ— All consists in this that he was Iesus capable in his nature to be a Saviour that he was Christus ordained and sent for that office and then Quod venit that be was come and come in aqus sanguine in water and bloud in sacraments which might apply him to us That he was Iesus a person capable his miracles testified aloud and frequently that he was Christ anointed and sent for that his reference of all his actions to his Father testified both these were enwrapped in that that he was the Sonne of God and that he professed himselfe upon the earth to be so for so it appeares plainely that he had plainely done We have a law say the Jews to Pilate and by our law he ought to die because he made himselfe the Sonne of God And for the last part that he came In aqua sanguine in water and bloud in such meanes as were to continue in the Church for our spirituall reparation and sustentation he testified that in preaching so piercing Sermons in instituting so powerfull Sacraments in assuring us that the love of God expressed to mankind in him extended to all persons and all times God so loved the world that he gave his onely begotten Sonne that whoseever beleeveth in him should not perish but have life everlasting And so the words beare record De Integritate of this Intirenesse of the whole worke of our Redemption and therefore Christ is not onely truely called a Martyr in that sense as Martyr signifies a witnesse but he is truly called a Martyr in that sense as we use the word ordinarily for he testified this truth and suffered for the testimony of it and therefore he is called Jesus Christ Martyr a faithfull witnesse And there is Martyrium a Martyrdome attributed to him where it is said Jesus Christ under Pontius Pilate witnessed a good confession so he was a speaking and a doing and a suffering witnesse Now for the third witnesse in heaven which is the holy Ghost we may contract our selves in that for the whole work was his Before Ioseph and Mary came together she was found with Child of the holy Ghost which if we take it as Saint Basil and divers others of the Fathers doe that Ioseph found it by the holy Ghost that is the holy Ghost informed him of it then here the holy Ghost was a witnesse to Ioseph of this Conception but we rather take it as it is most ordinarily taken that the Angell intimated this to Ioseph That that which was conceived in her was of the holy Ghost and then the holy Ghost did so primarily testifie this decree of God to send a Iesus and a Christ for our Redemption that himselfe was a blessed and bountifull actor in that Conception he was conceived by him by his overshadowing So that the holy Ghost did not onely testifie his comming but he brought him And then for his comming in Aqua sanguine in water and bloud that is in Sacraments in meanes by which he might be able to make his comming usefull and appliable to us first the holy Ghost was a pregnant witnesse of that at his Baptisme for the holy Ghost had told Iohn Baptist before-hand That upon whomsoever he should descend and tarry still that should be he that should baptize with the holy Ghost and then according to those Markes he did descend and tarry still upon Christ Iesus in his baptisme And after this falling upon him and tarrying upon him which testified his power in all his life expressed in his doctrine and in his Sermons after his death and Resurrection and Ascension the holy Ghost gave a new testimony when he fell upon the Apostles in Cloventongues and made them spirituall channells in which this water and bloud the meanes of applying Christ to us should be convey'd to all Nations and thus also the third witnesse in heaven testified De integritate of this intirenesse of Iesus Of these three witnesses then which are of heaven we shall need to adde no more but that which the text addes that is That these three are one that is not onely one in Consent they all testifie of one point they all speake to one Intergatory Ad integritatem Christi to prove this intirenesse of Christ but they are Vnum Essentia The Father the Sonne and the holy Ghost are all one Godhead and so meant and intended to be in this place And therefore as Saint Hierome complained when some Copies were without this seventh verse that thereby we had lost a good argument for the unity of the three Persons because this verse said plainely that the three witnesses were all one so I am sorry when I see any of our later expositors deny that in this place there is any proofe of such an unity but that this Vnum sunt They are one is onely an unity of consent and not of essence It is an unthrifty prodigality howsoever we be abundantly provided with arguments from other places of Scriptures to prove this Vnity in Trinity to cast away so strong an argument against Iew and Turke as is in these words for that and for the consubstantiality of Christ which was the Tempest and the Earthquake of the Primitive Church raised by Arius and his followers then and God knowes not extinguished yet Thus much I adde of these three witnesses that though they be in heaven their testimony is upon the earth for they need not to testifie to one another this matter of Jesus The Father heares of it every day by the continuall intercession of Christ Jesus The Sonne feeles it every day in his new crucifying by our sinnes and in the perfecution of his Mysticall body here The holy Ghost hath a bitter sense of it in our sinnes against the holy Ghost and he hath a loving sense of it in those abundant seas of graces which flow continually from him upon us They need no witnesses in heaven but these three witnesses testifie all this to our Consciences And therefore the first author that is observed to have read and made use of this seventh verse which was one of the first Bishops of Rome he reads the words thus Tres in nobis there are three in us which beare witnesse in heaven they testifie for our sakes and to establish our assurance De Integritate Iesu that Jesus is come and come with meanes to save the world and to save us And therefore upon these words Saint Bernard collects thus much more that there are other witnesses in heaven which restifie this worke of our Redemption Angels and Saints all the Court all the Quire of heaven testifie it but catera nobis occults says he what all they doe we know not but according to the best dispositions here in this world we acquaint our selves and we choose to keep company with the best and so not onely the poore Church s the earth
of Saint Iohn and another by Saint Marke to the memory of Saint Peter whilest yet both Saint John and Saint Peter were alive Howsoever it is certaine that the purest and most innocent times even the infancy of the Primitive Church found this double way of expressing their devotion in this particular of building Churches first that they built them onely to the honour and glory of God without giving him any partner and then they built them for the conserving of the memory of those blessed servants of God who had sealed their profession with their bloud and at whose Tombs God had done such Miracles as these times needed for the propagation of his Church They built their Churches principally for the glory of God but yet they added the names of some of his blessed servants and Martyrs for so says he who as he was Peters successor so he is the most sensible feeler and most earnest and powerfull promover and expresser of the dignities of Saint Peter of all the Fathers speaking of Saint Peters Church Beato Petri Basilica quae uni Deo vero vivo dicata est Saint Peters Church is dedicated to the onely living God They are things compatible enough to beare the name of a Saint and yet to be dedicated to God There the bodies of the blessed Martyrs did peacefully attend their glorification There the Histories of the Martyrs were recited and proposed to the Congregation for their example and imitation There the names of the Martyrs were inserted into the publique prayers and liturgies by way of presenting the thanks of the Congregation to God for having raised so profitable men in the Church and there the Church did present their prayers to God for those Martyrs that God would hasten their glory and finall consummation in reuniting their bodies and soules in a joyfull resurrection But yet though this divers mention were made of the Saints of God in the house of God Non Martyres ipsi sed Deus â—orum nobis est Deus onely God and not those Martyrs is our God we and they serve all one Master we dwell all in one house in which God hath appointed us severall services Those who have done their days work God hath given them their wages and hath given them leave to goe to bed they have laid down their bodies in peace to sleep there till the Sunne rise againe till the Sunne of grace and glory Christ Iesus appeare in judgment we that are yet left to work and to watch we must goe forward in the services of God in his house with that moderation and that equality as that we worship onely our Master but yet despise not our fellow servants that are gone before us That we give to no person the glory of God but that we give God the more glory for having raised such servants That we acknowledge the Church to be the house onely of God and that we admit no Saint no Martyr to be a lointenant with him but yet that their memory may be an encouragement yea and a seale to us that that peace and glory which they possesse belongs also unto us in reversion and that therefore we may cheerfully gratulate their present happinesse by a devout commemoration of them with such a temper and evennesse as that we neither dishonor God by attributing to them that which is inseparably his nor dishonor them in taking away that which is theirs in removing their Names out of the Collects and prayers of the Church or their Monuments and memorialls out of the body of the Church for those respects to them the first Christian founders of Churches did admit in those pure times when Illa obsequia ornamenta memoriarum nâ—n sacrificia mortuorum when those devotions in their names were onely commemorations of the dead not sacrifices to the dead as they are made now in the Romane Church when Bellarmine will needs falsifie Chrysostome to read Adoramus monumenta in stead of Adornamus and to make that which was but an Adorning an adoring of the Tombes of the Martyrs This then was in all times a religious work an acceptable testimony of devotion to build God a house to contribute something to his outward glory The goodnesse and greatnesse of which work appears evidently and shines gloriously even in those severall names by which the Church was called and styled in the writings and monuments of the Ancient Fathers and the Ecclesiastique story It may serve to our edification at least and to the axalting of our devotion to consider some few of them First then the Church was called Ecclesia that is a company a Congregation That whereas from the time of Iohn Baptist the kingdome of heaven suffers violence and every violent Man that is every earnest and zealous and spiritually valiant Man may take hold of it we may be much more sure of doing so in the Congregation Quando agâ—â—ine factâ— Deum obsidemus when in the whole body we Muster our forces and besiege God For here in the congregation not onely the kingdome of heaven is fallen into our hands The kingdome of heaven is amongst you as Christ says but the King of heaven is fallen into our hands When two or three are gathered together in my Name I will be in the midst of you not onely in the midst of us to encourage us but in the midst of us to be taken by us to be bound by us by those hands those covenants those contracts those rich and sweet promises which he hath made and ratified unto us in his Gospell A second name of the Church 〈◊〉 in use was Dominicum The Lords possession It is absolutely it is intirely his And therefore as to shorten and contract the possession and inheritance of God the Church so much as to confine the Church onely within the obedience of Rome as the Donatists imprisoned it in Afrique or to change the Landmarks of Gods possession and inheritance which is the Church either to set up new works of outward prosperity or of personall and Locall succession of Bishops or to remove the old and true marks which are the Word and Sacraments as this is Injuria Dominico mystico a wrong to the mysticall body of Christ the Church so is it Injuria Dominico materiali an injury to the Materiall body of Christ sacrilegiously to dilapidate to despoile or to demolish the possession of the Church and so farre to remove the marks of Gods inheritance as to mingle that amongst your temporall revenues that God may never have nor ever distinguish his owne part againe And then to passe faster over these names It is called Domus Dei Gods dwelling house Now his most glorious Creatures are but vehicula Dei they are but chariots which convey God and bring him to our sight The Tabernacle it selfe was but Mobilis domus and Ecclesia portatilis a house without a foundation a running a progresse house but
God and divided from the storms and distractions of this world enjoys in it selfe That peace which made the blessed Martyrs of Christ Jesus sleep upon the rack upon the burning coales upon the points of swords when the persecutors were more troubled to invent torments then the Christians to suffer That sleep from which ambition not danger no nor when their own house is on fire that is their own concupiscences cannot awaken them not so awaken them that it can put them out of their own constancy and peacefull confidence in God That sleep which is the sleep of the spouse Ego dormio sed cor meum vigilâ—t I sleep but my heart is awake It was no dead sleep when shee was able to speak advisedly in it and say she was asleep and what sleep it was It was no stupid sleep when her heart was awake This is the sleep of the Saints of God which Saint Gregory describes Sancti non tâ—rpore sed virtue sâ—piuntur It is not sluggishnesse but innocence and a good conscience that casts them asleep Laboriosiâ—s dormium they are busier in their sleep nay Vigitaâ—â—ius dorâ—â—iunt they are more awake in their sleep then the watchfull men of this world for when they close their eyes in meditation of God even their dreames are services to him Sâ—mniant se dicere Psalmos says Saint Ambrose they dream that they sing psalmes and they doe more then dream it they do sing But yet even from this holy and religious sleep which is a departing from the allurements of the world and a retiring to the onely contemplation of heaven and heavenly things Iacob may be conceived to have awaked and we must awake It is note enough to shut our selves in a cloister in a Monastery to sleep out the tentations of the world but since the ladder is placed the Church established since God and the Angels are awake in this businesse in advancing the Church we also must labour in our severall vocations and not content our selves with our own spirituall sleep the peace of conscience in our selves for we cannot have that long if we doe not some good to others When the storm had almost drown'd the ship Christ was at his ease in that storm asleep upon a pillow Now Christ was in no danger himself All the water of Noahs flood multiplyed over again by every drop could not have drown'd him All the swords of an Army could not have killed him till the houre was come when hee was pleased to lay down his soul. But though he were safe yet they awaked him and said Master car'st thou not though we perish So though a man may be in a good state in a good peace of conscience and sleep confidently in it yet other mens necessities must awaken him and though perchance he might passe more safely if he might live a retired life yet upon this ladder some Angels ascended some descended but none stood still but God himself Till we come to him to sleep an eternall Sabbath in heaven though this religious sleep of enjoying or retiring and contemplation of God be a heavenly thing yet we must awake even out of this sleep and contribute our paines to the building or furnishing or serving of God in his Church Out of a sleep conceive it what sleep soever Iacob awaked and then Quid ille what did he Dixit he spoke he entred presently into an open profession of his thoughts he smother'd nothing he disguised nothing God is light and loves cleernesse thunder and wind and tempests and chariots and roaring of Lyons and falling of waters are the ordinary emblems of his messages and his messengers in the Scriptures Christ who is Sapientia Dei the wisdome of God is Verbâ—â— Sermâ— Dei the word of God he is the wisdome and the uttering of the wisdome of God as Christ is express'd to be the word so a Christians duty is to speak dearly and professe his religion With how much scorn and reproach Saint Cyprian fastens the name of Libellatices upon them who in time of persecution durst not say they were Christians but under-hand compounded with the State that they might live unquestioned undiscovered for though they kept their religion in their heart yet Christ was defrauded of his honour And such a reproach and scorn belongs to them who for fear of losing wordly preferments and titles and dignities and rooms at great Tables dare not say of what religion they are Beloved it is not enough to awake out of an ill sleep of sinne or of ignorance or out of a good sleep out of a retirednesse and take some profession if you winke or hide your selves when you are awake you shall not see the Ladder not discern Christ nor the working of his Angels that is the Ministery of the Church and the comforts therein you shall not hear that Harmony of the quire of heaven if you will bear no part in it an inward acknowledgment of Christ is not enough if you forbear to professe him where your testimony might glorify him Si sufficeret fides cordis non creasset tibi Deus â—s If the heart were enough God would never have made a mouth And to that we may adde Si sufficeret os non creasset manus if the mouth were enough God would never have made hands for as the same Father says Omni tuba clarior est per opera 〈◊〉 no voice more audible none more credible then when thy hands speak as well as thy heart or thy tongue Thou art then perfectly awaked out of thy sleep when thy words and works declare and manifest it The next is Quid dixit be spake but what said he â— first he assented to that light which was given him The Lord is in his place He resisted not this light he went not about to blow it out by admitting reason or disputation against it He imputed it not to witchcraft to illusion of the Devill but Dominus est in loco isto The Lord is in this place O how many heavy sinnes how many condemnations might we avoid if wee would but take knowledge of this Dominus in loco isto That the Lord is present and sees us now and shall judge hereafter all that we doe or think It keeps a man sometimes from corrupting or solliciting a woman to say Peter Maritus in loco the Father or the Husband is present it keeps a man from an usurious contract to say Lex in loco the Law will take knowledge of it it keeps a man from slandering or calummating another to say Testis in loco here is a witnesse by but this is Catholica Medicina and Omni morbia an universall medicine for all to say Dominus in loco The Lord is in this place and sees and heaâ—es and therefore I will say and think and do as if I were now summon'd by the lastâ— Trumpet to give an account of my thoughts and words and
that thou hast not received he asks that question of a man that which is received is received as man For as Bellarmine in a place where he disposes himself to quarrell at some few words of Calvins though he confesse the matter to be true and as he cals it there Catholique says Essentiam genitam negamus we confesse that Christ hath not his essence from his Father by generation the relation the filiation he hath from his Father he hath the name of Son but he hath not this execution of this judgement by that relation by that filiation still as the Son of God he hath the capacity as the Sonne of man he hath the execution And therefore Prosper that follows S. Augustine limits perchance too narrowly to the very flesh to the humanity Ipsa not Ipsae â—rit Iudex quae sub Iudice stetit and ipsa judicabit quae judicatae est where he places not this Judgement upon the mixt person which is the safest way of God and man but upon man alone God hath appointed a day in which he will judge the world in righteousnesse But by whom By that man whom he hath ordained God will judge still but still in Christ and therefore says S. Augustine upon those words Arise O Lord and judge the earth Cui Deo dicitur surge nisi ei qui dormivit What God doth David call upon to arise but that God who lay down to sleep in the grave as though he should say says August Dormivisti judicatus à terra surge judâ—ca terram So that to collect all though judgement be such a character of God as he cannot devest yet the Father hath committed such a Judgement to the Sonne as none but he can execute And what is that Omne judicium all judgement that is omne imperium omnem potestatem It is presented in the name of Judgement but it involves all It is literally and particularly Judgement in S. Iohn The Father hath given him authority to execute judgement It is extended unto power in Saint Matthew All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth And it is enlarg'd as far farther as can be expressed or conceived in another place of Saint Matthew All things are deliver'd to me of my Father Now all things our Saviour Christ Jesus exercises either per carnem or at least in carne whatsoever the Father does the Sonne does too In carne because now there is an unseparable union betwixt God and the humane nature The Father creates new souls every day in the inanimation of Children and the Sonne creates them with him The Father concurs with all second causes as the first moving cause of all naturall things and all this the Sonne does too but all this in carne Though he be in our humane flesh he is not the lesse able to doe the acts belonging to the Godhead but per carnem by the flesh instrumentally visibly he executes judgement because he is the Son of man God hath been so indulgent to man as that there should be no judgement given upon man but man should give it Christ then having all Judgment we refresh to your memory those three Judgements which we toucht upon before first the Judgement of our Election severing of vessels of honour and dishonor next the Judgement of our Justification here severing of friends from enemies and then the Judgment of our Glorification severing sheep from goats and for the first of our Election As if I were under the condemnation of the Law for some capitall offence and going to execution and the Kings mercy expressed in a sealed pardon were presented me I should not stand to enquire what mov'd the King to doe it what hee said to any body else what any body else said to him what hee saw in mee or what hee look't for at my hands but embrace that mercy cheerfully and thankfully and attribute it onely to his abundant goodnesse So when I consider my selfe to have been let fall into this world in massa Damnata under the generall condemnation of mankind and yet by the working of Gods Spirit I find at first a desire and after a modest assurance that I am delivered from that condemnation I enquire not what God did in his bed-chamber in his cabinet counsell in his eternall decree I know that hee hath made Iudicium electionis in Christ Jesus And therefore that I may know whether I doe not deceive my selfe in presuming my self to be of that number I come down and examine my selfe whether I can truly tell my conscience that Christ Jesus dyed for mee which I cannot doe if I have not a desire and an endevour to conform my self to him And if I do that there I finde my Predestination I am a Christian and I will not offer to goe before my Master Christ Jesus I cannot be sav'd before there was a Saviour In Christ Jesus is Omne judicium all judgement and therefore the judgment of Election the first separation of vessels of honour and dishonour in Election and Reprobation was in Christ Jesus Much more evidently is the second judgement of our Justification by means ordain'd in the Christian Church the Judgement of Christ it is the Gospel of Christ which is preacht to you there There is no name given under heaven whereby you should be saved there are no other means wherby salvation should be applyed in his name given but those which he hath instituted in his Church So that when I come to the second â—udgement to try whether I stand justifyed in the sight of Christ or no I come for that Judgement to Christ in his Church Doe I remember what I contracted with Christ Jesus when I took the name of a Christian at my entrance into his Church by Baptism Doe I find I have endevoured to perform those Conditions Doe I find a remorse when I have not performed them Doe I feele the remission of those sinnes applyed to me when I hear the gracious promises of the Gospel shed upon repentant sinners by the mouth of his Minister Have I a true and solid consolation without shift or disguise or flattering of my conscience when I receive the seal of his pardon in the Sacrament Beloved not in any morall integrity not in keeping the conscience of an honest man in generall but in using well the meanes ordain'd by Christ in the Christian Church am I justified And therefore this Judgement of Justification is his too And then the third and last judgement which is the judgment of Glorification that 's easily agreed by all to appertain unto Christ Idem Iesus The same Iesus that ascended shall come to judgement Videbunt quem pupugerant Every eye shall see him and they also which pierc't him Then the Son of man shall come in glory and he as man shall give the judgement for things done or omitted towards him as man for not feeding for not clothing for
one person in him My flesh shall no more be none of mine then Christ shall not be man as well as God SERMON XV. Preached at Lincolns Inne 1 COR. 15. 50. Now this I say Brethren that flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdome of God SAint Gregory hath delivered this story That Eutychius who was Bishop of Constantinople having written a book of the Resurrection and therein maintained that errour That the body of Christ had not that our bodies in the Resurrection should not have any of the qualities of a naturall body but that those bodies were in subtilitatem redacta so rarifyed so refined so attenâ—ated and reduced to a thinnesse and subtlenesse that they were aery bodies and not bodies of flesh and blood This error made a great noise and raised a great dust till the Emperour to avoid scandall which for the most part arises out of publick conferences was pleased to hear Eutychius and Gregory dispute this point privately before himself and a small company And that upon conference the Emperour was so well satisfyed that hee commanded Eutychius his books to bee burnt That after this both Gregory and Eutychius fell sicke but Eutychius dyed and dyed with this protestation In hâc carne in this flesh taking up the flesh of his hand in the presence of them that were there in this flesh I acknowledge that I and all men shall arise at the day of Judgement Now the principall place of Scripture which in his book and in that conference Eutychius stood upon was this Text these words of Saint Paul This I say brethren that flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdome of God And the directest answer that Gregory gave to it was Caro secundum culpam non regnabit sed Caro secundum naturam sinfull flesh shall not but naturall flesh that is flesh indued with all qualities of flesh all such qualities as imply no defect no corruption for there was flesh before there was sin such flesh and such blood shall inherit the Kingdome of God As there have been more Heresies about the Humanity of Christ then about his Divinity so there have been more heresies about the Resurrection of his body and consequently of ours then about any other particular article that concerns his Humiliation or Exaltation Simon Magus strook deepest at first to the root That there was no Resurrection at all The Gnosticks who took their name from knowledge as though they knew all and no body else any thing which is a pride transferr'd through all Heretickes for as that sect in the Roman Church which call themselves Ignorantes and seem to pretend to no knowledge doe yet believe that they know a better way to heaven then all other men doe so that sect amongst them which called themselves Nullanos Nothings thought themselves greater in the Kingdome of God then either of the other two sects of diminution the Minorits or the Minims did These Gnosticks acknowledged a Resurrection but they said it was of the soul onely and not of the body for they thought that the soul lay dead at least in a dead sleep till the Resurrection Those Heretickes that are called the Arabians did as the Gnosticks did affirm a temporary death of the soul as well as of the body but then they allowed a Resurrection to both soul and body after that death which the Gnostickes did not but to the soul onely Hymeneus and Philetus of whom Saint Paul speakes they restrained the Resurrection to the soule but then they restrained this Resurrection of the soule to this life and that in those who were baptized the Resurrection was accomplished already Eutychius whom wee mentioned before enlarged the Resurrection to the body as well as to the soul but enlarged the qualities of the body so far as that it was scarce a body The Armenian hereticks said that it was not onely Corpus humâ—num but Corpus masculinum That all should rise in the perfecter sex and none as women Origen allowed a Resurrection and allowed the Body to be a naturall body but the contracted the time he said that when we rose we should enjoy the benefits of the resurrection even in bodily pleasures for a thousand years and then be annihilated or absorpted and swallowed up into the nature and essence of God himselfe for it will be hard to state Origens opinion in this point Origen was not herein well understood in his owne time not doe we understand him now for the most part but by his accusers and those that have written against him Divers of these Heretiques for the maintenance of their severall heresies perverted this Scripture Flesh and bloud cannot inherit the kingdome of God and that occasioned those Fathers who opposed those heresies so diverse from one another to interpret these words diversly according to the heresie they opposed All agree that they are an argument for the resurrection though they seem at first to oppose it For this Chapter hath three generall parts first Resurrectionem esse that there shall be a Resurrection which the Apostle proves by many and various arguments to the thirty fifth verse And then Quati corpore the body shall rise but some will say How are the dead raised and with what body doe they come in that thirty fifth verse And lastly Quid de superstitibus what shall become of them who shall be found alive at the day We shall all be changed verse fifty one Now this text is the knot and corollary or all the second part concerning the qualities of the bodies in the resurrection Now says the Apostle now that I have said enough to prove that a resurrection there is now now that I have said enough what kind of bodies shall arise now I show you as much in the Negative as I have done in the Affirmative now I teach you what to avoid as well as I have done what to affect now this I say brethren that flesh and bloud cannot inherit the kingdome of God Now though those words be primarily principally intended of the last Resurrection yet in a secondary respect they are appliable in themselves and very often applied by the ancients to the first Resurrection our resurrection in this life Tertullian hath intimated and presented both together elegantly when he says of God Nobis arrhabonem spiritus reliquit arrhabonem à nobis accepit God hath given us his earnest and a pawn from him upon earth in giving us the holy Ghost and he hath received our earnest and a pawn from us into heaven by receiving our nature in the body of Christ Jesus there Flesh and bloud when it is conformed to the flesh and bloud of Christ now glorified and made like his by our resurrectien may inherite the kingdome of God in heaven Yea flesh and bloud being conformed to Christ by the sanctification of the holy Ghost here in this world may inherit the kingdome of God here upon earth for God hath a
when Epaphras had declrared unto him their love and when upon so good testimony of their disposition he had a desire that they might be fulfilled with knowledge of Gods will in all wisdome and spirituall understanding as he says verse 9. when he knew how farre they had proceeded in mysteries of the Christian Religion and that they had a spirituall hunger of more then it was seasonable to present to them this great point that Christ had suffered throughly sufficiently aboundantly for the reconciliation of the whole world and yet that there remained some sufferings and those of Christ too to be fulfilled by us That all was done and yet there remained more to be done that after Christs consummatum est which was all the text there should be an Adimplendum est interlined that after Christ had fulfilled the Law and the Prophets by his sufferings Saint Paul must fulfill the residue of Christs sufferings was a doctrin unseasonably taught till they had learnt much and shewed a desire to learn more In the Primitive Church men of ripe understandings were content to think two or three yeares well spent in learning of Catechisms and rudiments of Christian Religion and the greatest Bishops were content to think that they discharged their duties well if they caâ—echized ignorant men in such rudiments for we know from Gennaâ—dius an Ecclesiasticall author that the Bishops of Greece and of the Eastern Church did use to con S. Cyrils sermons made at Easter and some other Festivals without book and preached over those Sermons of his making to Congregations of strong understanding and so had more time for their Caâ—echizing of others Optatus thinks that when Saint Paul says Ego plantavi Apollos rigavit I planted the faith and Apollos watered he intended in those words Ego de pagano feci catechumenum ille de catechumeno Christianum That Saint Paul took ignorant persons into his charge to catechize them at first and when they were instructed by him Apollos watered them with the water of Baptism Tertullian thought hee did young beginners in Christianity no wrong when he called them catulos infantiae reâ—entis nec perfectis luminibus reptantes Young whelps which are not yet come to a perfect use of their eyes in the mysteries of Religion Now God hath delivered us in a great measure from this weaknesse in seeing because we are catechized from our craâ—â—â—s and from this penury in preaching we need not preach others Sermons nor feed upon cold meat in Homilies but wee are fallen upon such times too as that men doe not thinke themselves Christians except they can tell what God meant to doe with them before he meant they should bee Christians for we can be intended to be Christians but from Christ and wee must needs seek a Predestination without any relation to Christ a decree in God for salvation and damnation before any decree for the reparation of mankind by Christ every Common-placer will adventure to â—each and every artificer will pretend to understand the purpose yea and the order too and method of Gods eternall and unrevealed decree Saint Paul required a great deal more knowledge then these men use to bring before he presented to them a great deal a lesse point of Doctrin then these men use to aske This was then the Nunc illis their season when they had humbly received so much of the knowledge of the fundamentall points of Religion Saint Paul was willing to communicate more and more stronger and stronger meat unto them That which he presents here is that which may seem least to appertain to a Christian that is loy because a Christian is a person that hath surrendred himself over to a sad and serious and a severe examination of all his actions that all bee done to the glory of God but for all this this joy true joy is truly properly onely belonging to a Christian because this joy is the Testimony of a good conscience that wee have received God so as God hath manifested himself in Christ and worshipt God so God hath ordained In a true Church there are many tesserae externae outward badges and marks by which others may judge and pronounce mee to bee a true Christian But the tessera internaâ— the inward badge and marke by which I know this in my selfe is joy The blessednesse of heaven it selfe Salvation and the fruits of Paradise that Paradise which cannot be expressed cannot be comprehended have yet got no other name in the subtilty of the Schools nor in the fulnesse of the Scriptures but to be called the joys of heaven Essentiall blessednesse is called so Enter into thy Masters joy that is into the Kingdome of heaven and accidentall happinesse added to that essentiall happinesse is called so too There is joy in heaven at the conversion of a sinner and so in the Revelaâ—ion Rejoyce ye heavens and yee that dwell in them for the aâ—câ—ser of our brethren is cast downâ— There is now joy even in heaven which was not there before Certainly as that man shall never see the Father of Lights after this to whom the day never breaks in this life As that man must never look to walk with the Lamb wheresoever he goes in heaven that ranne away from the Lamb whensoever he came towards him in this life so he shall never possesse the joyes of heaven hereafter that feels no joy here There must be joy here which Tanquam Cellulae mellis as Saint Bernard says in his mellifluous language as the honey-comb walles in and prepares and preserves the honey and is as a shell to that kernell so there must bee a joy here which must prepare and preserve the joys of heaven it self and be as a shell of those joys For heaven and salvation is not a Creation but a Multiplication it begins not when wee dye but it increases and dilates it self infinitely then Christ himself when he was pleased to feed all that people in the wildernesse he asks first Quot panes habetis how many loafes have you and then multiplyed them abundantly as conduced most to his glory but some there was before When thou goest to eat that bread of which whosoever eates shall never dye the bread of life in the Land of life Christ shall consider what joy thou broughtest with thee out of this world and he shall extend and multiply that joy unexpressibly but if thou carry none from hence thou shalt find none there Hee that were to travell into a far country would study before somewhat the map and the manners and the language of the Country Hee that looks for the fulnesse of the joyes of heaven hereafter will have a taste an insight in them before he goe And as it is not enough for him that would travail to study any language indifferently were it not an impertinent thing for him that went to lye in France to study Dutch So if wee pretend to make the joys
imploys the hand of sicknesse the hand of poverty the hand of justice the hand of malice still it is his hand that breakes the vessell and this vessell which is his own for can any such vessell have a propriety in it selfe or bee any other bodies primarily then his from whom it hath the beeing To recollect these if I will have joy in suffering it must be mine mine and not borrowed out of an imaginary treasure of the Church from the works of others Supererogation mine and not stollen or enforced by exasperating the Magistrate to a persecution mine by good title and not by suffering for breach of the Law mine in particular and not a generall persecution upon the Church by my occasion And mine by a stranger title then all this mine by resignation mine by disavowing it mine by confessing that it is none of mine Till I acknowledge that all my sufferings are even for Gods glory are his works and none of mine they are none of mine and by that humility they become mine and then I may rejoyce in my sufferings Through all our sufferings then there must passe an acknowledgement that we are unprofitable servants towards God utterly unprofitable So unprofitable to our selves as that we can merit nothing by our sufferings but still we may and must have a purpose to profit others by our constancy it is Pro vobis that Saint Paul says hee suffers for them for their souls I will most gladly bestow and be bestowed for your soules says he But Numquid Paulus crucifixus pro vobis was Paul crucified for you is his own question as he suffered for them here so we may be bold to say he was crucified for them that is that by his crucifying and suffering the benefit of Christs sufferings and crucifying might be the more cheerfully embraced by them and the more effectually applyed to them Pro vobis is Pro vestro commodo for your advantage and to make you the more active in making sure your own salvation We are afflicted says he for your consolation that 's first that you might take comfort and spirituall courage by our example that God will no more forsake you then he hath done us and then hee addes salvation too for your consolation and salvation for our sufferings beget this consolation and then this consolation facilitates your salvation and then when Saint Paul had that testimony in his own conscience that his purpose in his sufferings was Pro illis to advantage Gods children and then saw in his experience so good effect of it as that it wrought and begot faith in them then the more his sufferings encreast the more his joys encreast Though says he I be offered up upon the service and sacrifice of your faith I am glad and rejoyce with you all And therefore hee calls the Philippians who were converted by him Gaudium Coronam his Joy and his Crown not onely a Crown in that sense as an auditory a congregation that compasses the Preacher was ordinarily called a Crown Corâ—na In which sense that Martyr Cornelius answered the Judge when he was charged to have held intelligence and to have received Letters from Saint Cyprian against the State Ego de Corona Domini says he from Gods Church 't is true I have but Contra Rempublicam against the State I have received no Letters But not onely in this sense Saint Paul calls those whom he had converted his Crown his Crown that is his Church but he cals them his Crown in heaven What is our hope our joy our Crown of rejoycing are not even you it and where even in the presence of our Lord Iesus Christ at his coming says the Apostle And therefore not to stand upon that contemplation of Saint Gregories that at the Resurrection Peter shall lead up his converted Jewes and Paul his converted Nations and every Apostle his own Church Since you to whom God sends us doe as well make up our Crown as we doe yours since your being wrought upon and our working upon you conduce to both our Crowns call you the labour and diligence of your Pastors for that 's all the suffering they are called to till our sins together call in a persecution call you their painfulnesse your Crown and we shall call your applyablenesse to the Gospel which we preach our Crown for both conduce to both but especially childrens children are the Crown of the Elders says Solomon If when we have begot you in Christ by our preaching you also beget others by your holy life and conversation you have added another generation unto us and you have preached over our Sermons again as fruitfully as we our selves you shall be our Crown and they shall be your Crowns and Christ Jesus a Crown of everlasting glory to us all Amen SERMON XVII Preached at Lincolns Inne MATTH 18. 7. We unto the world because of offences THe Man Moses was very meeke above all the men which were upon the face of the Earth The man Moses was so but the Child Iesus was meeker then he Compare Moses with men and Moses will scarce be parallel'd Compare him with him who being so much more then man as that he was God too was made so much lesse then man as that he was a worme and no man and Moses will not be admitted If you consider Moses his highest expression what he would have parted with for his brethren in his Dele me Pardon them or blot my name out of thy book yet Saint Pauls zeale will enter into the balance and come into comparison with Moses in his Anathema pro fratribus in that he wished himselfe to be separated from Christ rather then his brethren should be But what comparison hath a sodaine a passionate and indigested vehemence of love expressed in a phrase that tasts of zeale but is not done Moses was not blotted out of the book of life nor Saint Paul was not separated from Christ for his brethren what comparison hath such a love that was but said and perchance should not have been said for we can scarce excuse Moses or Saint Paul of all excesse and inordinatenesse in that that they said with a deliberate and an eternall purpose in Christ Jesus conceived as soon as we can conceive God to have knowen that Adam would fall to come into this world dye for man and then actually and really in the fulnesse of time to do so he did come and he did dye The man Moses was very meeke the child Jesus meeker then hee Moses his meeknesse had a determination at least an interruption a discontinuance when hee revenged the wrong of another upon that Egyptian whom he slew But a bruised reed might have stood unbroken and smoking flax might have lien unquenched for ever for all Christ. And therefore though Christ send his Disciples to School to the Scribes and Pharisees because they sate in Moses seat for other lessons yet for
to interpret it so for can a mans own hand or foot or eye be said to injure him And yet in this place they are often said to scandalize him to offend him The interpretation that Maldonat departs from himselfe acknowledges to be the interpretation of Saint Chrysostome of Euthymius of Theophylact of others of the Fathers and by the councell of Trent he is bound to interpret Scriptures according to the Fathers and he is angry with us if at any time we doe not so and here he departs from them where not onely his reverence to them but the frame and the evidence of the place should have kept them to him for here Christ utters his vae as it is vae Dolentis as he laments their miseries and as it is vae Minantis as he threatens his judgements not onely upon them that offend and scandalize others but upon them also that are easily scandalized by others and put from their religion and Christian constancy with every rumour Parâ—m distat scandalizare scandalizari It is almost as great a sin to be shaked by a scandall given as to give it Christ intends both in this Text the Active and the Passive scandall but the latter meliùs quadrat says a later Divine worthy to be compared to the Ancients for the exposition of Scriptures it fits the scope and purpose of Christ best to accept and interpret this vae Woe be unto the world of the Pasâ—ive scandall the scandall taken In that we consider the working of this Vae three ways first vae quia illusiones fortes woe unto the world because these scandals and offences tentations and tribulations are so strong in their nature and then vae quia infirmi vas woe because you are so weak in your nature and again vae quia Pravaricatores woe because wee prevaricate in our own case and make our selves weaker then we are and are scandalized with things which are not in their nature scandalous nor were scandalously intended The two first are woe because we shall be scandalized for scandals are truly strong and you are truly weak The other is woe because ye will bee scandalized when and where you might easily unentangle the snare and devest the â—scruple First for the vehemence the violence the unavoydablenesse and impetuousnesse of these scandals tentations and tribulations under which wee all suffer in this world it may bee enough to consider that one saying of our Saviours They shall seduce Si possibile even the elect where by the way it is not meerly not altogether as we have translated it If it were possible for that sounds as if Christ had positively and dogmatically determined that it is not possible for the elect to be seduced but Christ says onely Si possibile if it be possible as being willing to leave it in doubt and in suspense how farre in so great scandals so very great tentations even the elect might bee seduced Ista Dominici sermonis dubitatto trepidationem mentis in electis relinquit this doubtfulnesse in Christs speech makes the very elect stand in fear of falling in the midst of such tentations for howsoever the elect shall rise again the elect may fall by these scandals and though they may be reduced they may be seduced We are to consider men as they are delivered in the approbation and testimony of the Church that judges sâ—cundum allegata probata according to the evidence that she sees and heares and not as they are wrapped up in the infallible knowledge of God and so our election admits an outward tryall that is Sanctification so S. Peter writes to the strangers elect through sanctification They were strangers strangers to the Covenant and yet Elect for as all of the houshold all within the Covenant all children of the faithfull are not elect for to be born of Christian parents within the Covenant gives us a title to the Sacrament of Baptism so as that we may claim it and the Church cannot deny it us but this birth doth not give us that title to heaven which Baptisin it self does so all strangers all that are without the Covenant are not excluded in the election S. Peter admits stragers to election but yet no otherwise then through sanctification when we are come to that hill to sanctification we have a fair prospect to see our election in so God hath elected you to salvation says S. Paul to the Thes. but how To salvation through sanctification that 's your hill there opens your prospect Agreeably to these two great Astles says the beloved Apostle the Elder unto the elect Lady and her children but still how elect as he tels you elect if she walk in the Commandements of God elect if she lose not her former good works that she may receive a full reward elect if she abide in the doctrine of Christ. Always from that mount of sanctification arises our prospect to election and sanctification were glorification if it were impossible to fall from it If a tentation of mony made Iudas an Apostle fall from his Master how easily will such a tentation make men fall with their Master that is run into dangerous and ruinous actions with them How easily will our children our servants our tenants fall form the truth of God if they have both the example of their superiors to countenance them and their purse to reward them for it That scandal that tentation is a Giant and an armed Gyant a Goliah and a Goliah with a speare like a weavers beame that marches upon those two leggs Example to doe it and Preferment for doing it This is the vae in the consideration of the passive scandal as it arises out of the vehemence of the scandal and tentation Quia illusiones fortes because they are so strong in themselves It arises also out of our weaknesse Quia infirmi nos because we are so weak even the strongest of us And for this it may also be enough to consider those words of our Saviour That a man may receive the word and receive it with joy and yet Temporalis est says Christ it may bee but for a while hee may be but a time-server for assoon as persecution comes Illico continuò scandalizatur by and by instantly forthwith hee is scandalized and shaked Hee stays not to give God his leasure whether God will succour his cause to morrow though not to day Hee stays not to give men their Law to give Princes and States time to consider whether it may not be fit for them to come to leagues and alliances and declarations for the assistance of the Cause of Religion next year though not this But continuò scandalizatur as soon as a Catholique army hath given a blow and got a victory of any of our forces or friends or as soon as a crafty Iesuit hath forged a Relation that that Army hath given such a blow or that such
not that the just shall feel no worldly misery but that that misery shall not make them miserable how evill so ever it be in it self it shall not be evill to them but Omnia in bonum All things work together for good to them that love God Who is he that will harme you if you be followers of God says Saint Peter The wicked will not follow you in that strange Country their conversation is not in heaven if yours be they will not follow you thither They will doe as he whose instruments they are do the Devill and Resist the Devill and he will flee from you A religious constancy blunts the edge of any sword dampes the spirits of any counsel benums the strength of any arme opens the corners of any Labyrinth and brings the subtilest plots against God and his servants not onely to an invalidnesse an ineffectualnesse but to a derision not onely to a Dimicatum de coelis that the world shall see that the Lord fights for his servants from heaven but to an Irridebit in coelis that he that sits in heaven shall laugh them to scorn he shall ruine them and ruine them in contempt That prayer that David makes Libera me Domine ab homine malo deliver me O Lord from the evill man is a large an extensive an indefinite prayer for there is an evill man occasion of tentation in every man in every woman in every action there is Coluber in via a snake in every path danger in every calling But Saint Augustine contracts that prayer and fixes it Liberet te Deus à temes noli tibi esse malius God blesse me from my selfe that I be not that evill man to my selfe that I lead not my selfe into tentation and nothing shall scandalize me To which purpose it concerns us to devest that naturall but corrupt easinesse of uncharitable mis-construing that which other men doe especially those whom God hath placed in his own place for government over us that we doe not come to think that there is nothing done if all bee not done that no abuses are corrected if all be not removed that there 's an end of all Protestants if any Papists bee left in the world Upon those words of our Saviour speaking of the last day of Judgement The son of man shall send forth his Angels and they shall gather out of his Kingdome Omnia scandala All things that might offend Calvin says learnedly and wisely Qui ad extirpandum quicquid displicet praepostere festinant They that make too much haste to mend all at once antevertunt Christi judicium ereptum Angelis officium sibi temereusurpant They prevent Christs judgment and rashly and sacrilegiously they usurp the Angels office Christ hath reserved the cleansing and removing of all scandals all offences to the last day the Angels of the Church the Minister the Angels of the State the Magistrate cannot doe it not the Angels of heaven themselves till the day of judgement All scandals cannot be removed in this life but a great many more might be then are if men were not so apt to suspect and mis-constru and imprint the name of scandall upon every action of which they see not the end nor the way for from this jealousie and suspicion and misconstruction of the Angels of Church and State our Superiours in those sphears wee shall become jealous and suspicious of God himselfe that he hath neglected us abandoned us if he do not deliver us and establish us at those times and by those means which we prescribe him we shall come to argue thus against God himselfe Surely if God meant any good to us he would not put us into their hands who doe us no good Reduce all to the precious mediocrity To be unsensible of any declination of any diminution of the glory of God or his true worship and religion is an irreligious stupidity But to bee so ombragious so startling so apprehensive so suspicious as to think every thing that is done is done to that end this is a seditious jealousie a Satyr in the heart and an unwritten Libell and God hath a Star-chamber to punish unwritten Libels before they are published Libels against that Law Curse not or speak not ill of the King no not in thy thought Not to mourn under the sense of evils that may fall upon us is a stony disposition Nay the hardest stone marble will weep towards foul weather But to make all Possible things Necessary this may fall upon us therefore it must fall upon us and to make contingent and accidentall things to be the effects of counsels this is fallen upon us therefore it is fallen by their practise that have the government in their hands this is a vexation of spirit in our selves and a defacing a casting of durt in the face of Gods image of that representation and resemblance of God which he hath imprinted in them of whom hee hath sayd They are Gods In divine matters there is principally exercise of our faith That which we understand not we beleeve In civill affairs that are above us matters of State there is exercise of our Hope Those ways which we see not wee hope are directed to good ends In Civill actions amongst our selves there is exercise of our Charity Those hearts which we see not let us charitably beleeve to bee disposed to Gods service That when as Christ hath shut up his wâ—e onely in those two Va quia fâ—rtes illusiones Wâ—e because scandals and offences are so strong in their nature and Va quia infirmivos wâ—e because you are so weak in yours we doe not create a third Woe Va quia praevaricatores in an uncharitable jealousie and mis-interpretation of him that we are not in his care nor of his Ministers that they doe not execute his purposes nor of one another that when as God hath placed us in a Land where there are no wâ—lfes we doe not think Hominem homini Lupum imagine every man to be a wolf to us or to intend our destruction But as in the Arke there were Lions but the Lion shut his mouth and clincht his paw the Lion hurt nothing in the Arke and in the Arke there were Vipers and Scorpions but the Viper shewed no teeth nor the Scorpion no taile the Viper bit none the Scorpion stung none in the Arke for if they had occasioned any disorder there their escape could have been but into the Sea into irreparable ruine so in every State though that State be an Arke of peace and preservation there will be some kind of oppression in some Lions some that will abuse their power but Vae si scandalizemur woe unto us if we be scandalized with that and seditiously lay aspersions upon the State and Government because there are some such in every Church though that Church bee an Arke for integrity and sincerity there will bee some Vipers Vipers that will gnaw at their Mothers
serve God at home to Church they must come and there all their grasse was troden and all their water troubled What should they doe God never brings us to a perplexity so as that we must necessarily do one sinne to avoyd another Neverâ— It seemes that the Apostles had been traduced and insimulated of teaching this Doctrine That in some cases evill might be done that good might follow and therefore doth S. Paul with so much diligence discharge himself of it And yet long after this when those men who attempted the Reformation whom they called Pauperes de Lugduno taught that Doctrine That no lesse sinne might he done to escape a greater this was imputed to them then by the Roman Church for an Heresie That that was Orthodox in Saint Paul was Heresie in them that â—studyed a Reformation But the Doctrine stands like a rocke against all waves That nothing that is naturally ill intrinsecally sinne may upon any pretence be done not though our lifes nor the lifes of all the Princes in the world though the frame and beeing of the whole world though the salvation of our souls lay upon it no sinne naturally intrinsecally sinne might be done for any respect Christus peccatum factus est sed non fesit peccatum Though Christ pursued our redemption with hunger and thirst yet he would have left us unredeemed rather then have committed any sinne Of this kinde therefore naturally intrinsecally sinne and so known to be to them that did it certainely our Fathers coming to the superstitious service in the Church of Rome was not for had it been naturally sinne and so known to them when they did it they could not have been saved otherwise then by repentance after which we cannot presume in their behalfe for there are not testimonies of it If any of them had invested at any time a scruple a doubt whether they did well or no alasse how should they devest and overcome that scruple To whom durst they communicate that doubt They were under an invincible ignorance and sometimes under an indevestible scruple They had heard that Christ commanded to beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadduces and so of the Herodians that is of the doctrines of those particular sects of affirming Fate and Destiny and Stoicall necessity with the Pharisees of denying Spirits and Resurrection with the Sadduces of mis-applying the prophesies concerning the Messias to the person of Herod or any earthly King But yet after all this he commands them to observe and performe the doctrine of the Pharisees because they sate in Moses chaire Though with much vehemence and bitternesse he call them Hypocrites though with many ingeminations upon every occasion he reiterate that name though he aggravate that name with other names of equall reproach Fools blinde guides painted tombes and the like yet he commands to obey them and which is most remarkable this is sayd not onely to the common sort but even to his own disciples too Christ had begunne his work of establishing a Church which should empty their Synagogues but because that worke was not yet perfected he would not withdraw the people from their Synagogues for there wrought Gods Ordinance though corrupted by the workmen which Ordinance was that the law should be publiquely expounded to the people and so it was there There God was present And though the Devill by their corruption were there too yet the Devill came in at the window God at the dore the Devill by stealth God by his declared Ordinance and Covenant And this was the case of our Fathers in the Roman Church They must know that all that hath passed between God and man hath passed Ex pacto by way of contact and covenant The best works of the best man have no proportion with the kingdome of heaven for I give God but his own But I have it Ex pacto God hath covenanted so Fac hoc vives Doe this and thou shalt live and at the last judgement Christ shall ground his Venite benedicti Come ye blessed and his Ite maledicti Goe ye accursed upon the Quia and upon the Quia non Because you have and Because you have not done this and this Faith that is of infinite value above works hath yet no proportion to the kingdome of heaven Faith saves mee as my hand feeds mee It reaches the food but it is not the food but faith saves Ex pacto by vertue of that Covenant which Christ hath made Tantummodo crede Onely beleeve To carry it to the highest the merit of Christ Iesus himselfe though it bee infinite so as that it might have redeemed infinite worlds yet the working thereof is safeliest considered in the School to be Ex pacto by vertue of that contract which had passed between the Father and him that all things should thus and thus be transacted by Christ and so man should be saved for if we shall place it meerely onely in the infinitenesse of the merit Christs death would not have needed for his first drops of bloud in his Circumcision nay his very Incarnation that God was made man and every act of his humiliation after being taken singly yet in that person God and man were of infinite merit and also if it wrought meerly by the infinitnesse of the merit it must have wrought not onely upon all men but to the salvation of the Devill for certainely there is more merit in Christ then there is sinne in the Devill But the proceeding was Ex pacto according to the contract made and to the conditions given Ipse conteret caput tuum That the Messias should bruise the Serpents head for us included our redemption That the Serpents head should be bruised excluded the Serpent himselfe This contract then between God and man as it was able to put the nature of a great fault in a small offence if we consider onely the eating of an apple and so to make even a Trespass High-Treason because it was so contracted so does this contract the Ordinance of God infuse a great vertue efficacie in the instruments of our reconciliation how mean in gifts or how corrupt in manners soever they be Circumcision in it self a low thing yea obscene subject to mis-interpretation yet by reason of the covenant He that is not circumcised that person shall be cut off from my people So also Baptism considered in it selfe a vulgar and a familiar thing yet except a man be born of water and of the Spirit he cannot enter into the Kingdome of heaven The Sacrament of the body and blood of Christ a domestique a dayly thing if we consider onely the breaking of the bread and participation of the Cup but if we ascend up to the contract in the institution it is to every worthy receiver the seale and the Conduit of all the merits of Christ to his soule God threw down the walls of Jericho with
thee a recovery from sicknesse that doth not make thee Immortall God gives thee a good interpretation of thine actions from a gracious Prince this doth not make thee impeccable in thy self God gives thee titles of Honour upon thy self this doth not alwayes give thee honour and respect from others For as it is God that Raiseth up the poore out of the dust and lifteth the needy out of the dunghill that he may set him with Princes so it is God that Cuts off the spirit of Princes and is terrible to the Kings of the Earth It is God that maketh the devices of the People of none effect and it is God that destroyes the Counsels of Egypt It is God that maketh their Nobles like Oreb and like Zeb and like them that perisht at Endor and became as dung for the Earth that is profitable onely in their ruine and conculcation And so with the same unwillingnesse that God comes to the execution we come to the denunciation of this malediction They They these inveterate incorrigible sinners Quamvis centum annorum though God have spared them so long yet Quia centum annorum because they have imployed all that time in sinne They shall be accursed Accursing is malediction malediction is literally but maledicence and that is but evill speaking Now all kinds of evill speaking do not inwrap a man within the curse of this Text For though it be a shrewd degree of this curse of God to be generally ill spoken of by sad sober and discreet and dis-passioned and dis-interessed Men yet we are fallen into times when men will speak ill of men in things which they do not know nor should not know and out of credulity and easie beleeving of men whom they should not beleeve men distempered and transported with passion So men speak evill out of passion and out of compassion out of humour and out of rumour But malediction in our Text is an Imprecation of evil by such men as would justly inflict it if they could and because they cannot they pray to God that he would and he doth When God seconds the Imprecations of good men that is this curse The Person that is curst here is Peccator centum annorum an habituall an incorrigible sinner If you put me to assigne in what rank of men Magistrates or Subjects rich or poore Judges or prisoners All. If you put me to assigne for what sinnes sins of complexion and constitution sinnes of societie and conversation sinnes of our profession and calling sinnes of the particular place or of the whole times that we live in sins of profit or sins of pleasure or sins of glory for we all do some sins which are sins merely of glory sins that we make no profit by nor take much pleasure in but do them onely out of a mis-imagined necessity left we should go too much lesse and sink in the estimation of the World if we did them not if I must say which of these sinnes put us under this curse All If he be centum annorum Inveterate Incorrigible He is accursed But then who curses him God put an extraordinary spirit and produc'd extraordinary effects from curses in the mouths of his Prophets which have been since the World began So Elizeus curses and two Bears destroy fourty two persons These curses are deposited by God in the Scriptures and then inflicted by the Church in her ordinary jurisdiction by excommunications and other censures But this may be but matter of form in the Church or matter of indignation in the Prophet Not so but as God saith That the rod in Ashurs hand is his rod and the sword in Babylons hand his sword so the curse deposited in the Scripture and denounced by the Church is his curse For as the Prophet saith Non est malum all the evill that is all the penall ill all plagues all warre all famine that is done in the World God doth so all the evill that is spoken all the curses deposited in the Scriptures and denounced by the Church God speaks But be all this so there is a curse deposited denounced seconded by God yet all this is but malediction but a speaking here is no execution spoken of yes there is for as the sight of God is Heaven and to be banisht from the sight of God is Hell in the World to come so the blessing of God is Heaven and the curse of God is Hell and damnation even in this Life The Hieroglyphique of silence is the hand upon the mouth If the hand of God be gone from the mouth it is gone to strike If it be come to an Os Domini locutum that the mouth of the Lord have spoken it it will come presently to an Immittam manum That God will lay his hand upon us in which one Phrase all the plagues of Egypt are denounced Solomon puts both hand and tongue together In manibus linguae saith he Death and Life are in the hand of the tongue Gods Tongue hath a hand where his Sentence goeth before the execution followeth Nay in the execution of the last sentence we shall feel the Hand before we heare the Tongue the execution is before the sentence It is Ite maledicti go ye accursed First you must Go go out of the presence of God and by that being gone you shall know that you are accursed Whereas in other proceedings the sentence denounces nounces the execution here the execution denounces the sentence But be all this allowed to be thus There is a malediction deposited in the Scriptures denounced by the Church ratified by God brought into execution yet it may be born men doe bear it How men do bear it we know not what passes between God and those men upon whom the curse of God lieth in their dark horrours at midnight they would not have us know because it is part of their curse to envy God that glory But we may consider in some part the insupportablenesse of that weight if we proceed but so farre as to accommodate to God that which is ordinarily said of naturall things Corruptio optimi pessima when the best things change their nature they become worst When God who is all sweetnesse shall have learned frowardnesse from us as David speaks and being all rectitude shall have learned perversenesse and crookednesse from us as Moses speaks and being all providence shall have learned negligence from us when God who is all Blessing hath learned to curse of us and being of himself spread as an universall Hony-combe over All takes in an impression a tincture an infusion of gall from us what extraction of Wormwood can be so bitter what exaltation of fire can be so raging what multiplying of talents can be so heavy what stifnesse of destiny can be so inevitable what confection of gnawing worms of gnashing teeth of howling cries of scalding brimstone of palpable darknesse can be so so
another that plotted to betray thee And therefore if you can heare a good Organ at Church and have the musique of a domestique peace at home peace in thy walls peace in thy bosome never hearken after the musique of sphears never hunt after the knowledge of higher secrets then appertaine to thee But since Christ hath made you Regale Sacerdotium Kings and Priests in your proportion Take heed what you hear in derogation of either the State or the Church In declaring ill affections towards others the Holy Ghost hath imprinted these steps First he begins at home in Nature He that curseth Father or Mother shall surely be put to death and then as families grow out into Cities the Holy Ghost goes out of the house into the consideration of the State and says Thou shalt not curse the Ruler of the people no Magistrate And from thence he comes to the highest upon earth for in Samuel it comes to a cursing of the Lords Anointed and from thence to the highest in heaven Whosoever curseth his God shall bear his sinne and as though both those grew out of one another The cursing of the King and the cursing of God the Prophet Esai hath joyned them together They shall be hungry says he indigent poor penurious and they shall fret be transported with ungodly passion and they shall curse their King and their God If they doe one they will doe the other The Devil remembers from what height he is fallen and therefore still clambers upward and still directs all our sinnes in his end upon God Our end in a sin may be pleasure or profit or satisfaction of affections or passions but the Devils end in all is that God may be violated and dishonoured in that sinne And therefore by casting in ill conceptions and distasts first against Parents and Masters at home and then against subordinate Magistrates abroad and so against the Supreme upon earth He brings us to ill conceptions and distasts against God himself first to thinke it liberty to bee under no Governour and then liberty to be under no God when as onely those two services of a gracious God and of a good King are perfect freedome Therefore the wise King Solomon meets with this distemper in the root at first ebullition in the heart Curse not the King no not in thy thought for that Thought hath a tongue and hath spoken and sayd Amen in the eares of God That which thy heart hath said though the Law have not though the Jury have not though the Peers have not God hath heard thee say The word which Solomon uses there is Iadung and that our Translators have in the margin called Conscience Curse not the King no not in thy conscience Doe not thou pronounce that whatsoever thou dislikest cannot consist with a good conscience never make thy private conscience the rule of publique actions for to constitute a Rectitude or an Obliquity in any publique action there enter more circumstances then can have fallen in thy knowledge But the word that Selomon takes there Iadâ—ng signifies properly all waies of acquiring knowledge and Hearing is one of them and therefore Take heed what you heare Come not so neare evill speaking as to delight to heare them that delight to speake evill of Superiours A man may have a good breath in himself and yet be deadly infected if he stand in an ill ayre a man may stand in a cloud in a mist in a fogge of blasphemers till in the sight of God himself shall be dissolved into a blasphemous wretch and in that cloud in that mist God shall not know him that endured the hearing from him that adventured the speaking of those blasphemies The ear in such cases is as the clift in the wall that receives the voice and then the Echo is below in the heart for the most part the heart affords a returne and an inclination to those things that are willingly received at the ear The Echo returnes the last syllables The heart concludes with his conclusions whom we have been willing to hearken unto We make Satyrs and we looke that the world should call that wit when God knowes that that is in a great part self-guiltinesse and we doe but reprehend those things which we our selves have done we cry out upon the illnesse of the times and we make the times ill so the calumniator whispers those things which are true no where but in himselfe But thy greater danger is that mischievous purpose which we spake of before to endanger thee by hearing and to entangle thee in that Dilemma of which an ingenuous man abhors one part as much as a conscientious man does the other That thou must be a Delinquent or an Accuser a Traitour or an Informour God hath imprinted in thee characters of a better office and of more dignity of a Royall Priesthood as you have sparks of Royaltie in your soules Take heed what you hear of State-government as you have sparks of holy fire and Priesthood in your soules Take heed what you heare of Church-government which is the other consideration The Church is the spouse of Christ Noble husbands do not easily admit defamations of their wives Very religious Kings may have had wives that may have retained some tincture some impressions of errour which they may have sucked in their infancy from another Church and yet would be loth those wives should be publikely traduced to be Heretiques or passionately proclaimed to be Idolaters for all that A Church may lacke something of exact perfection and yet that Church should not be said to be a supporter of Antichrist or a limme of the beast or a thirster after the cup of Babylon for all that From extream to extream from east to west the Angels themselves cannot come but by passing the middle way between from that extream impurity in which Antichrist had damped the Church of God to that intemerate purity in which Christ had constituted his Church the most Angelicall Reformers cannot come but by touching yea and stepping upon some things in the way He that is come to any end remembers when he was not at the middle way he was not there as soon as he set out It is the posture reserved for heaven to sit down at the right hand of God Here our consolation is that God reaches out his hand to the receiving of those who come towards him And nearer to him and to the institutions of his Christ can no Church no not of the Reformation be said to have come then ours does It is an ill nature in any man to be rather apt to conceive jealousies and to suspect his Mothers honour or his sisters chastity then a strange womans It is an irreverent unthankfulnesse to think worse of that Church which hath bred us and fed us and led us thus far towards God then of a forein Church though Reformed too and in a good degree How often
is but a Conscience a guiltinesse of needing a continuall supply and succession of more and more grace And we are all red red so even from the beginning and in our best state Adam had the Angells had thus much of this infirmity that though they had a great measure of grace they needed more The prodigall child grew poore enough after he had received his portion and he may be wicked enough that trusts upon former or present grace and seeks not more This rednesse a blushing that is an acknowledgement that we could not subsist with any measure of faith except we pray for more faith nor of grace except we seek more grace we have from the hand of God And another rednesse from his hand too the bloud of his Sonne so that bloud was effused by Christ in the value of the ransome for All and accepted by God in the value thereof for All and this redness is in the nature thereof as extensive as the redness derived from Adam is Both reach to all So we were red earth in the hands of God as redness denotes our generall infirmities and as redness denotes the bloud of his Sonne our Saviour all have both But that redness which we have contracted from bloud shed by our selves the bloud of our own soules by sinne was not upon us when we were in the hands of God That redness is not his tincture not his complexion No decree of his is writ in any such red inke Our sinnes are our owne and our destruction is from ourselves We are not as accessaries and God as principall in this soule-murder God forbid we are not as executioners of Gods sentence and God the Malefactor in this soule-damnation God forbid Cain came not red in his brothers bloud out of Gods hands nor David red with Vriahs bloud nor Achitophel with his own nor Iudas with Christs or his owne That that Pilat did illusorily God can doe truely wash his hands from the bloud of any of these men It were a weake Plea to say I killed not that man but 't is true I commanded one who was under my command to kill him It is rather a prevarication then a justification of God to say God is not the author of sinne in any man but t is true God makes that man sinne that sinne God is Innocency and the beames that flow from him are of the same nature and colour Christ when he appeared in heaven was not red but white His head and haires were white as white wooll and as snow not head onely but haires too He and that that growes from him he and we as we come from his hands are white too His Angels that provoke us to the Imitation of that pattern are so in white Two men two Angels stood by the Apostles in white apparell The imitation is laid upon us by precept too At all times let thy garments be white Those actions in which thou appearest to the world innocent It is true that Christ is both My beloved is white and ruddy says the Spouse But the white was his owne his rednesse is from us That which Zipporah said to her husband Moses in anger the Church may say to Christ in thankfulnesse Verè sponsus Sanguinum thou art truly a bloudy husband to me Damim sanguinum of blouds blouds in the plurall for all our blouds are upon him This was a mercy to the Militant Church that even the Triumphant Church wondred at it They knew not Christ when he came up to heaven in red Who is this that commeth in red garments Wherefore is thy apparell red like him that treadeth in the winepresse They knew he went down in white in intire innocency and they wondred to see him returne in red But he satisfies them Calcavi you thinke I have troden the winepresse and you mistake it not I have troden the winepresse and Calcavi solus I have troden it alone all the redness all the bloud of the whole world is upon me And as he adds Non vir de gentibus of all people there was none with me with me so as to have any part in the Merit So of all people there was none without me without me so as to be excluded by me without their own fault from the benefit of my merit This redness he carried up to heaven for by the bloud of his Crosse came peace both to the things in earth and the things in heaven For that peccability that possibility of sinning which is in the Nature of the Angels of heaven would breake out into sinne but for that confirmation which those Angels have received in the bloud of Christ. This rednesse he carried to heaven and this rednesse he hath left upon earth that all we miserable clods of earth might be tempered with his bloud that in his bloud exhibited in his holy and blessed Sacrament our long robes might be made white in the bloud of the Lambe that though our sinnes be robes habits of sinne though long robes habits of long continuance in sinne yet through that rednesse which our sinnes have cast upon him we might come to participate of that whitenesse that righteousnesse which is his owne We that is all we for as to take us in who are of low condition and obscure station a cloud is made white by his sitting upon it He sate upon a great white cloud so to let the highest see that they have no whitenesse but from him he makes the Throne white by sitting upon it He sate upon a great white Throne It had not been great if it had not been white White is the colour of dilatation goodnesse onely enlarges the Throne It had not been white if he had not sate upon it That goodness onley which consists in glorifying God and God in Christ and Christ in the sincerity of his truth is true whitenesse God hath no rednesse in himselfe no anger towards us till he considers us as sinners God cast no rednesse upon us inflicts no necessity no constraint of sinning upon us We have dyed ourselves in sinnes as red as Scarlet we have drowned our selves in such a red Sea But as a garment that were washed in the red Sea would come out white so wonderfull works hath God done at the red Sea says David so doth his whitenesse worke through our red and makes this Adam this red earth Calculum candidum that white stone that receives a new name not Ish not Enosh not Gheber no name that tasts of misery or of vanity but that name renewed and manifested which was imprinted upon us in our elections the Sonnes of God the irremoveable the undisinheritable Sonnes of God Be pleased to receive this note at parting that there is Macula Alba a spot and yet white as well as a red spot a whitenesse that is an indication of a Leprosie as well as a rednesse Whole-pelagianisme to thinke nature alone sufficient
And whereas the humiliation of my Saviour is in all things to be imitated by me yet herein I am bound to depart from his humiliation that whereas he being in the forme of God tooke the forme of a servant I being in the forme of a servant may nay must take upon me the forme of God in being Deiformis homo a man made in Christ the Image of God So have I the Image of God intirely in his unity because I professe that faith which is but one faith and under the seale of the Baptisme which is but one Baptisme And then as of this one God so I have also the Image of the severall persons of the Trinity in this capacity as I am a Christian more then in my naturall faculties The Attributes of the first Person the Father is Power and none but a Christian hath power over those great Tyrants of the world Sinne Satan Death and Hell For thus my Power accrues and growes unto me First Possum Iudicare I have a Power to Judge a judiciary a discretive power a power to discerne between a naturall accident and a Judgement of God and will never call a Judgement an accident and between an ordinary occasion of conversation and atentation of Satan Possum judicare and then Possum resistere which is another act of power When I finde it to be a tentation I am able to resist it and Possum stare which is another I am able not onley to withstand but to stand out this battell of tentations to the end And then Possum capere that which Christ proposes for a tryall of his Disciples Let him that is able to receive it receive it I shall have power to receive the gift of continency against all tentations of that kinde Bring it to the highest act of power that with which Christ tryed his strongest Apostles Possum bibere calicem I shall be able to drinke of Christs Cup even to drinke his bloud and be the more innocent for that and to powre out my bloud and be the stronger for that In Christo omnia possum there 's the fulnesse of Power in Christ I can doe all things I can want or I can abound I can live or I can die And yet there is an extension of Power beyond all this in this Non possum peccare being borne of God in Christ I cannot sinne This that seemes to have a name of impotence Non possum I cannot is the fullest omnipotence of all I cannot sinne not sinne to death not sinne with a desire to sinne not sinne with a delight in sinne but that tentation that overthrowes another I can resist or that sinne which being done casts another into desperation I can repent And so I have the Image of the first Person the Father in Power The Image of the second Person whose Attribute is Wisdome I have in this that Wisdome being the knowledge of this world and the next I embrace nothing in this world but as it leads me to the next For thus my wisdome my knowledge growes First Scio cui credidi I know whom I have beleeved in I have not mislaid my foundation my foundation is Christ and then Scio non moriturum my foundation cannot sinke I know that Christ being raised from the dead dies no more againe Scio quod desideret Spiritus I know what my spirit enlightned by the Spirit of God desires I I am not transported with illusions and singularities of private spirits And as in the Attribute of Power we found an omnipotence in a Christian so in this there is an omniscience Scimus quia omnem Scientiam habemus there 's all together we know that we have all knowledge for all Saint Pauls universall knowledge was but this Iesum Crucifixum I determine not to know any thing save Jesus Christ and him Crucified and then the way by which he would proceed and take degrees in this Wisdome was Sultitia praedicandi the way that God had ordained when the world by Wisedome knew not God it pleased God by the foolishnesse of preaching to save them that beleeve These then are the steps of Christian Wisedome my foundation is Christ of Christ I enquire no more but fundamentall doctrines him Crucified and this I apply to my selfe by his ordinace of Preaching And in this wisdome I have the Image of the second Person And then of the third also in this that his Attribute beeing Goodnesse I as a true Christian call nothing good that conduces not to the glory of God in Christ Jesus nor any thing ill that drawes me not from him Thus I have an expresse Image of his Goodnesse that Omnia cooperantur in bonum all things worke together for my good if I love God I shall thanke my fever blesse my poverty praise my oppressor nay thanke and blesse and praise even some sinne of mine which by the consequences of that sinne which may be shame or losse or weaknesse may bring me to a happy sense of all my former sinnes and shall finde it to have been a good fever a good poverty a good oppression yea a good sinne Vertit in bonum says Ioseph to his brethren you thought evill but God meant it unto good and I shall have the benefit of my sinne according to his transmutation that is though I meant ill in that sinne I shall have the good that God meant in it There is no evill in the City but the Lord does it But if the Lord doe it it cannot be evill to me I beleeve that I shall see Bona Dei the goodnesse of the Lord in the land of the living that 's in heaven but David speakes also of Signum in bonum shew me a token of good and God will shew me a present token of future good an inward infallibility that this very calamity shall be beneficiall and advantageous unto me And so as in Nature I have the Image of God in my whole soule and of all the three Persons in the three faculties thereof the Understanding the Will and the Memory so in Grace in the Christian Church I have the same Images of the Power of the Father of the Wisedome of the Sonne of the Goodnesse of the holy Ghost in my Christian profession And all this we shall have in a better place then Paradise where we considered it in nature and a better place then the Church as it is Militant where we considered it in grace that is in the kingdome of heaven where we consider this Image in glory which is our last word There we shall have this Image of God in perfection for if Origen could lodge such a conceit that in heaven at last all things should ebbe backe into God as all things flowed from him at first and so there should be no other Essence but God all should be God even the Devill himselfe
of nature to behold him so as to fixe upon him in meditation God benights us or eclipses us or casts a cloud of medicinall afflictions and wholsome corrections upon us Naturally we dwell longer upon the consideration of God when we see the Sun eclipsed then when we see it rise we passe by that as an ordinary thing and so in our afflictions we stand and looke upon God and we behold him A man may see God and forget that ever he saw him When saw we thee hungry or naked or sick or in prison say those mercilesse men they forgot but Christ remembers that they did see him but not behold him see him and looke off see him so as aggravated their sin more then if they had never seene him But that man who through his owne red glasse can see Christ in that colour too through his own miseries can see Christ Jesus in his blood that through the calumnies that have been put upon himselfe can see the revilings that were multiplyed upon Christ that in his own imprisonment can see Christ in the grave and in his owne enlargement Christ in his resurrection this man this Enosh beholds God and he beholds him é longinquo which is another step in this branch he sees him afar off Now this seeing afar off is not a phrase of diminution a circumstance of extenuation as though it were lesse to see God afar off and more to see him neerer This far off is far from that it is a power of seeing him so as wheresoever I am or wheresoever God is I can see him at any distance Being established in my foundation upon God being built up by faith in that notion of God in which he hath manifested himselfe to me in his Sonne being mounted and raised by dwelling in his Church being made like unto him in suffering as he suffered I can see round about me even to the Horizon and beyond it I can see both Hemispheres at once God in this and God in the next world too I can see him in the Zenith in the highest point and see how he works upon Pharaoh on the Throne and I can see him in the Nadir in the lowest dejection and see how he workes upon Ioseph in the prison I can see him in the East see how mercifully he brought the Christian Religion amongst us and see him in the West see how justly he might remove that againe and leave us to our own inventions I can see him in the South in a warme and in the North in a frosty fortune I can see him in all angles in all postures Abraham saw God coming to him as he fate at the doore of his Tent and though as the Text sayes there God stood by him yet sayes the Text too Abraham ran to meet God I can see God in the visitation of his Spirit come to me and when he is so he is already in me but I must run out to meet him that is labour to hold him there and to advance that manifestation of himselfe in me Abraham saw God comming Moses saw God going his glory passing by he saw posteriora his hinder parts so I can see God in the memory of his blessings formerly conferred upon me And Moses saw him too in a burning bush in thornes and fire And had I no other light but the fire of a pile of faggots in that light I could see his light I could see himselfe Let me be the man of this Text this Enosh to say with Ieremy I am the man that hath seene affliction by the rod of his wrath Let me have had this third concoction that as I am Adam a man of earth wrought upon that wheele and as I am a Christian a vessell in his house a member of his Church wrought upon that wheele so let me be vir dolorum a man of affliction a vessell baked in that furnace fitted by Gods proportion and dosis of his corrections to make a right use of his corrections and I can see God E longinquo afar off I can see him writing downe my name in the booke of life before I was borne and I can see him giving his Angels The Angell of the great Counsell Christ Jesus himselfe and his spirit charge of my preservation all the way and of my transmigration upon my death-bed and that is E longinquo from before I was to after I shall be no more There remaines a word more 'T is scarce well said for there remaines not a word more There is not another word and yet there is another branch in the Text. This man not every man as before this Enosh not every Adam as before he sees not onely as before but he beholds afarre off and so farre we are gone but what beholds he afarre off That the Text tels us not Before there was an illud Every man may see that aske what is that and I can tell you I have told you out of the coherence of the Text It is Gods workes manifesting himselfe even to the naturall man But this man this Enosh raised by his dejection rectified by humiliation may behold what here is no illud no such word as that no object limited and therefore it is that which no eye hath seene nor eare heard nor heart of man conceived it is God in the glory and assembly of his immortall Saints in heaven How many times go we to Comedies to Masques to places of great and noble resort nay even to Church onely to see the company If I had no other errand to heaven but the communion of Saints the fellowship of the faithfull Lo see that flock of Lambs Innocent unbaptized children recompensed with the twice-baptized Martyrs baptized in water and baptized in their owne blood and that middle sort the children baptized in blood and not in the water that rescued Christ Jesus by their death under Herod to see the Prophets and the Evangelists and not know one from the other by their writings for they all write the same things for prophecy is but antidated Gospell and Gospell but postdated prophecy to see holy Matrons saved by the bearing and bringing up of children and holy Virgins saved by restoring their bodies in the integrity that they received them sit all upon one seate to see Princes and Subjects crowned all with one crowne and rich and poore inherit one portion to see this scene this Court this Church this Catholique Church not onely Easterne and Westerne but Militant and Triumphant Church all in one roome together to see this Communion of Saints this fellowship of the faithfull is worth all the paynes that that sight costs us in this world But then to see the head of this Church the Sunne that shed all these beames the God of glory face to face to see him sicuti est as he is to know him at cognitus as I am knowne what darke and inglorious fortune would I not passe thorow
staid with it then as closely as when he wrought his greatest miracles Beyond all this God having thus maried soule and body in one man and man and God in one Christ he maries this Christ to the Church Now consider this Church in the Type and figure of the Church the Arke in the Arke there were more of every sort of cleane Creatures reserved then of the uncleane seven of those for two of these why should we feare but that in the Church there are more reserved for salvation then for destruction And into that room which was not a Type of the Church but the very Church it selfe in which they all met upon whitsunday the holy Ghost came so as that they were enabled by the gift of tongues to convay and propagate and derive God as they did to every nation under heaven so much does God delight in man so much does God desire to unite and associate man unto him and then what shall disappoint or frustrate Gods desires and intentions so farre as that they should come to him but singly one by one whom he cals and wooes and drawes by thousands and by whole Congregations Be pleased to carry your considerations upon another testimony of Gods love to the society of man which is his dispatch in making this match his speed in gathering and establishing this Church for forwardnesse is the best argument of love and dilatory interruptions by the way argue no great desire to the end disguises before are shrewd prophecies of jealousies after But God made hast to the consummation of this Marriage between Christ and the Church Such words as those to the Colosrians and such words that is words to such purpose there are divers The Gospell is come unto you as it is into all the world And againe It bringeth forth fruit as it doth in you also And so likewise The Gospell which is preached to every creature which is under heaven such words I say a very great part of the Antients have taken so literally as thereupon to conclude That in the life of the Apostles themselves the Gospell was preached and the Church established over all the world Now will you consider also who did this what persons cunning and crafty persons are not the best instruments in great businesses if those businesses be good as well as great Here God imployed such persons as would not have perswaded a man that grasse was green that blood was red if it had been denyed unto them Persons that could not have bound up your understanding with a Syllogisme nor have entendred or mollified it with a verse Persons that had nothing but that which God himselfe calls the foolishnesse of preaching to bring Philosophers that argued Heretiques that wrangled Lucians and Iulians men that whet their tongues and men that whet their swords against God to God Unbend not this bowe blacken not these holy thoughts till you have considered as well as how soone and by what persons so to what Doctrine God brought them Wee aske but St. Augustins question Quis tantam multitudinem ad legem carni sanguini centrariam induceret nisi Deus Who but God himselfe would have drawn the world to a Religion so contrary to flesh and blood Take but one piece of the Christian Religion but one article of our faith in the same Fathers mouth Res incredibilis resurrectio That this body should be eaten by fishes in the sea and then those fishes eaten by other men or that one man should be eaten by another man and so become both one man and then that for all this assimilation and union there should arise two men at the resurrection Res incredibilis sayes he this resurrection is an incredible thing Sed magis incredibile totum mundum credidisse rem tam incredibilem That all the world should so soone believe a thing so incredible is more incredible then the thing it selfe That any should believe any is strange but more that all such believe all that appertains to Christianity The Valentinians and the Marcionites pestilent Heretiques grew to a great number Sed vix duo vel tres de iisdem eadem docebant says Irenaeus scarce any two or three amongst them were of one opinion The Acatians the Eunomians and the Macedonians omnes Arium parentem agnoscunt sayes the same Father they all call themselves Arians but they had as many opinions not onely as names but as persons And that one Sect of Mahomet was quickly divided and sub-divided into 70 sects But so God loved the world the society and company of good soules ut quasi una Domus Mundus the whole world was as one well governed house similiter credunt quasi una anima all beleeved the same things as though they had all but one soule Constanter praedicabant quasi unum os At the same houre there was a Sermon at Ierusalem and a Sermon at Rome and both so like for fundamentall things as if they had been preached out of one mouth And as this Doctrine so incredible in reason was thus soone and by these persons thus uniformely preached over all the world so shall it as it doth continue to the worlds end which is another argument of Gods love to our company and of his loathnesse to lose us All Heresies and the very names of the Heretiques are so utterly perished in the world as that if their memories were not preserved in those Fathers which have written against them we could finde their names no where Irenaeus about one hundred and eighty yeers after Christ may reckon about twenty heresies Tertullian twenty or thirty yeares after him perchance twenty seven and Epiphanius some a hundred and fifty after him sixty and fifty yeare after that St. Augustine some ninety yet after all these and but a very few yeares after Augustine Theodoret sayes that in his time there was no one man alive that held any of those heresies That all those heresies should rot being upheld by the sword and that onely the Christian Religion should grow up being mowed down by the sword That one graine of Corne should be cast away and many eares grow out of that as Leo makes the comparison That one man should be executed because he was a Christian and all that saw him executed and the Executioner himself should thereupon become Christians a case that fell out more then once in the primitive Church That as the flood threw down the Courts of Princes and lifted up the Arke of God so the effusion of Christian blood should destroy heresies and advance Christianity it self this is argument abundantly enough that God had a love to man and a desire to draw man to his society and in great numbers to bring them to salvation I will not dismisse you from this consideration till you have brought it thus much nearer as to remember a later testimony of Gods love to our
Other sheep have I which are not of this fold says Christ them also I must bring in I must it is expressed not onely as an act of his good will but of that eternall decree to which he had at the making thereof submitted himself I must bring them who are they Many shall come from the east and from the west and shall sit downe with Abraham Isacc and Iacob in the kingdom of heaven from the Eastern Church and from the WesterN Church too from the Greek Church and from the Latine too and by Gods grace from them that pray not in Latine too from every Church so it be truly and fundamentally a Church Many shall come How many a multitude that no man can number For the new Ierusalem in the Revelation which is heaven hath twelve gates three to every corner of the world so that no place can be a stranger or lacke accesse to it Nay it hath says that Text twelve foundations Other foundation can no man lay then that which is layd Christ Iesus But that first foundation-stone being kept though it be not hewed nor layd alike in every place though Christ be not preached nor presented in the same manner for outward Ceremonies or for problematicall opinions yet the foundation may remaine one though it be in such a sort varied and men may come in at any of the twelve gates and rest upon any of the twelve foundations for they are all gates and foundations of one and the same Ierusalem and they that enter are a multitude that no man can number If then there be this sociable this applyable nature in God this large and open entrance for man why does Christ call it a straite gate and a narrow way Not that it is strait in it self but that we think it so and indeed we make it so Christ is the gate and every wound of his admits the whole world The Church is the gate And in omnem terram says David she hath opened her mouth and her voice is gone over all the world His word is the gate And thy Commandement is exceeding broad says David too His word and his light reaches to all cases and all distresses Lata porta Diabolus saith Saint Chrysostome The Devill is a broad gate but he tells us how he came to be so Mon magnitudine potestatis extensus sed superbiae licentia dilatatus not that God put such a power into his hands at first as that we might not have resisted him but that he hath usurp'd upon us and we have given way to his usurpations so says that Father Angusta porta Christus Christ is a narrow gate but he tels us also wherein and in what respect Non parvitate potestatis exiguus sed humilitatis ratione collectus Christ is not a narrow gate so as that the greatest man may not come in but called narrow because he fits himselfe to the least child to the simplest soule that will come in not so strait as that all may not enter but so strait as that there can come in but one at once for he that will not forsake Father and Mother and wife and children for him cannot enter in Therefore we call the Devils way broad because men walke in that with all their equipage all their sumpters all their state all their sinnes and therefore we call Christs way strait because a man must strippe himselfe of all inordinate affections of all desires of ill getting and of all possessions that are ill gotten In a word it is not strait to a mans selfe but if a man will carry his sinfull company his sinfull affections with him and his sinfull possessions it is strait for then he hath made himselfe a Camel and to a Camel Heaven gate is as a needles eye But it is better comming into heaven with one eye then into hell with two Better comming into heaven without Master or Mistresse then into hell for over-humouring of either There The gates are not shut all day says the Prophet and there is no night there And here if we shut the doore yet Christ stands at the doore and knocks Be but content to open thy doore be but content to let him open it and he will enter and be but thou content to enter into his content to be led in by his preaching content to be drawn in by his benefits content to be forced in by his corrections and he will open his since thy God would have dyed for thee if there had been no man born but thou never imagine that he who lets in multitudes which no man can number of all Nations c. would ever shut out thee but labour to enter there ubi non intrat inimicus ubi non exit amicus where never any that hates thee shall get to thee nor any that loves thee part from thee We have but ended our first part The assurance which we have from Gods manner of proceeding that Religion is not a sullen but a cheerfull Philosophy and salvation not cast into a corner but displayed as the Sunne over all That which we called at first our second part must not be a Part admit it for a Conclusion It is that and beyond that It is beyond our Conclusion for it is our everlasting endowment in heaven and if I had kept minutes enough for it who should have given me words for it I will but paraphrase the words of the Text and so leave you in that which I hope is your gallery to heaven your own meditations The words are You shall stand before the Throne and before the Lamb clothed with white Fobes and palms in their hands First stabitis you shall stand which is not that you shall not sit for the Saints shall sit judg the world they shall sit at the right hand of Godâ— It is not that you shall not sit nor that you shall not lie for you shall lye in Abraham bosom But yet you shal stand that is you shall stand sure you shall never fall you shall stand but yet you shall but stand that is remaine in a continuall disposition and readinesse to serve God and to minister to him And therefore account no abundance no height no birth no place here to exempt you from standing and labouring in the service of God since even your glorious state in heaven is but a station but a standing in readinesse to doe his will and not a posture of idlenesse you shall stand that is stand sure but you shall but stand that is still be bound to the service of God Stabitis ante Thronum you shall stand and stand before the Throne Here in the militant Church you stand but you stand in the porch there in the triumphant you shall stand in Sancto sanctorum in the Quire and the Altar Here you stand but you stand upon Ice perchance in high and therefore in slippery places
And at the judgement you shall stand but stand at the barre But when you stand before the Throne you stand as it is also added in this place before the Lamb who having not opened his mouth to save his owne fleece when he was in the shearers hand nor to save his own life when he was in the slaughterers hand will much lesse open his mouth to any repentant sinners condemnation or upbrayd you with your former crucifyings of him in this world after he hath nailed those sinnes to that crosse to which those sinnes nayled him You shall stand amicti stolis for so it follows covered with Robes that is covered all over not with Adams fragmentary raggs of fig-leafes nor with the halfe-garments of Davids servants Though you have often offered God halfe-confessions and halfe-repentances yet if you come at last to stand before the Lambe his fleece covers all hee shall not cover the sinnes of your youth and leave the sinnes of your age open to his justice nor cover your sinfull actions and leave your sinfull words and thoughts open to justice nor cover your own personall sinnes and leave the sinnes of your Fathers before you or the sinnes of others whose sins your tentations produced and begot open to justice but as he hath enwrapped the whole world in one garment the firmament so cloathed that part of the earth which is under our feet as gloriously as this which we live and build upon so those sinnes which we have hidden from the world and from our own consciences and utterly forgotten either his grace shall enable us to recollect and to repent in particular or we having used that holy diligence to examine our consciences so he shall wrap up even those sinnes which we have forgot and cover all with that garment of his own righteousnesse which leaves no foulnesse no nakednesse open You shall be covered with Robes All over and with white Robes That as the Angels wondred at Christ coming into heaven in his Ascension Wherefore art thou red in thine Apparell and thy garments like him that treadeth the wine fat They wondred how innocence it selfe should become red so shall those Angels wonder at thy coming thither and say Wherefore art thou white in thine apparell they shall wonder how sinne it selfe shall be clothed in innocence And in thy hand shall be a palm which is the last of the endowments specifyed here After the waters of bitternesse they came to seventy to innumerable palmes even the bitter waters were sweetned with another wood cast in The wood of the Crosse of Christ Jesus refreshes all teares and sweetnes all bitternesse even in this life but after these bitter waters which God shall wipe from all our eies we come to the seventy to the seventy thousand palms infinite seales infinite testimonies infinite extensions infinite durations of infinite glory Go in beloved and raise your own contemplations to a height worthy of this glory and chide me for so lame an expressing of so perfect a state and when the abundant spirit of God hath given you some measure of conceiving that glory here Almighty God give you and me and all a reall expressing of it by making us actuall possessors of that Kingdome which his Sonne our Saviour Christ Jesus hath purchased for us with the inestimable price of his incorruptible blood Amen SERMON XXXIII Preached at Denmark house some few days before the body of King Iames was removed from thence to his buriall Apr. 26. 1625. CANT 3. 11. Goe forth ye Daughters of Sion and behold King Solomon with the Crown wherewith his mother crowned him in the day of his espousals and in the day of the gladnesse of his heart IN the Creation of man in that one word Faciamus let Vs make man God gave such an intimation of the Trinity as that we may well enlarge and spread and paraphrase that one word so farre as to heare therein a councell of all the three Persons agreeing in this gracious designe upon Man faciamus let us make him make and him mend him and make him sure I the Father will make him by my power if he should fall Thou the Sonne shalt repayr him re-edify him redeem him if he should distrust that this Redemption belonged not to him Thou the Holy Ghost shalt apply to his particular soule and conscience this mercy of mine and this merit of the Sonnes and so let us make him In our Text there is an intimation of another Trinity The words are spoken but by one but the persons in the text are Three For first The speaker the Director of all is the Church the spouse of Christ she says Goe forth ye daughters of Sion And then the persons that are called up are as you see The Daughters of Sion the obedient children of the Church that hearken to her voice And then lastly the persons upon whom they are directed is Solomon crowned That is Christ invested with the royall dignity of being Head of the Church And in this especially is this applyable to the occasion of our present meeting All our meetings now are to confesse to the glory of God and the rectifying of our own consciences and manners the uncertainty of the prosperity and the assurednesse of the adversity of this world That this Crown of Solomons in the text will appear to be Christs crown of Thornes his Humiliation his Passion and so these words will dismisse us in this blessed consolation That then we are nearest to our crown of Glory when we are in tribulation in this world and then enter into full possession of it when we come to our dissolution and transmigration out of this world And these three persons The Church that calls The children that hearken and Christ in his Humiliation to whom they are sent will be the three parts in which we shall determine this Exercise First then the person that directs us is The Church no man hath seen God and lives but no man lives till he have heard God for God spake to him in his Baptisme and called him by his name then Now as it were a contempt in the Kings house for any servant to refuse any thing except he might heare the King in person command it when the King hath already so established the government of his house as that his commandements are to be signifyed by his great Officers so neither are we to look that God should speak to us mouth to mouth spirit to spirit by Inspiration by Revelation for it is a large mercy that he hath constituted an Office and established a Church in which we should heare him When Christ was baptized by Iohn it is sayd by all those three Evangelists that report that story in particular circumstances that there was a voice heard from heaven saying This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased and it is not added in any of those three
wardrobe not to make an Inventory of it but to finde in it something fit for thy wearing Iohn Baptist was not the light he was not Christ but he bore witnesse of him The light of faith in the highest exaltation that can be had in the Elect here is not that very beatificall vision which we shall have in heaven but it beares witnesse of that light The light of nature in the highest exaltation is not faith but it beares witnesse of it The lights of faith and of nature are subordinate Iohn Baptists faith beares me witnesse that I have Christ and the light of nature that is the exalting of my naturall faculties towards religious uses beares me witnesse that I have faith Onely that man whose conscience testifies to himself and whose actions testifie to the world that he does what he can can beleeve himself or be beleeved by others that he hath the true light of faith And therefore as the Apostle saith Quench not the Spirit I say too Quench not the light of Nature suffer not that light to goe out study your naturall faculties husband and improve them and love the outward acts of Religion though an Hypocrite and though a naturall man may doe them Certainly he that loves not the Militant Church hath but a faint faith in his interest in the Triumphant He that cares not though the materiall Church fall I am afraid is falling from the spirituall For can a man be sure to have his money or his plate if his house be burnt or to preserve his faith if the outward exercises of Religion faile He that undervalues outward things in the religious service of God though he begin at ceremoniall and rituall things will come quickly to call Sacraments but outward things and Sermons and publique prayers but outward things in contempt As some Platonique Philosophers did so over-refine Religion and devotion as to say that nothing but the first thoughts and ebullitions of a devout heart were fit to serve God in If it came to any outward action of the body kneeling or lifting up of hands if it came to be but invested in our words and so made a Prayer nay if it passed but a revolving a turning in our inward thoughts and thereby were mingled with our affections though pious affections yet say they it is not pure enough for a service to God nothing but the first motions of the heart is for him Beloved outward things apparell God and since God was content to take a body let not us leave him naked nor ragged but as you will bestow not onely some cost but some thoughts some study how you will clothe your children and how you will clothe your servants so bestow both cost and thoughts thinke seriously execute cheerfully in outward declarations that which becomes the dignity of him who evacuated himselfe for you The zeale of his house needs not eat you up no nor eat you out of house and home God asks not that at your hands But if you eat one dish the lesse at your feasts for his house sake if you spare somewhat for his reliefe and his glory you will not be the leaner nor the weaker for that abstinence Iohn Baptist bore witnesse of the light outward things beare witnesse of your faith the exalting of our naturall faculties beare witnesse of the supernaturall We do not compare the master and the servant and yet we thank that servant that brings us to his master We make a great difference between the treasure in the chest and the key that opens it yet we are glad to have that key in our hands The bell that cals me to Church does not catechise me nor preach to me yet I observe the sound of that bell because it brings me to him that does those offices to me The light of nature is far from being enough but as a candle may kindle a torch so into the faculties of nature well imployed God infuses faith And this is our second couple of lights the subordination of the light of nature and the light of faith And a third payre of lights of attestation that beare witnesse to the light of our Text is Lux aeternorum Corporum that light which the Sunne and Moone and those glorious bodies give from heaven and lux incensionum that light which those things that are naturally combustible and apt to take fire doe give upon earth both these beare witnesse of this light that is admit an application to it For in the first of these the glorious lights of heaven we must take nothing for stars that are not stars nor make Astrological and fixed conclusions out of meteors that are but transitory they may be Comets and blazing starres and so portend much mischiefe but they are none of those aeterna corpora they are not fixed stars not stars of heaven So is it also in the Christian Church which is the proper spheare in which the light of our text That light the essentiall light Christ Jesus moves by that supernaturall light of faith and grace which is truly the Intelligence of that spheare the Christian Chruch As in the heavens the stars were created at once with one Fiat and then being so made stars doe not beget new stars so the Christian doctrine necessary to salvation was delivered at once that is intirely in one spheare in the body of the Scriptures And then as stars doe not beget stars Articles of faith doe not beget Articles of faith so as that the Councell of Trent should be brought to bed of a new Creed not conceived before by the holy Ghost in the Scriptures and which is a monstrous birth the child greater then the Father as soon as it is borne the new Creed of the Councell of Trent to containe more Articles then the old Creed of the Apostles did Saint Iude writing of the common salvation as he calls it for Saint Iude it seems knew no such particular salvation as that it was impossible for any man to have salvation is common salvation exhorts them to contend earnestly for that faith which was once delivered unto the Saints Semel once that is at once semel simul once altogether For this is also Tertullians note that the rule of faith is that it be una immobilis irreformabilis it must not be deformed it cannot be Reformed it must not be mard it cannot be mended whatsoever needs mending and reformation cannot be the rule of faith says Tertullian Other foundation can no man lay then Christ not onely no better but no other what other things soever are added by men enter not into the nature and condition of a foundation The additions and traditions and superedifications of the Roman Church they are not lux aeternorum corporum they are not fixed bodies they are not stars to direct us they may be meteors and so exercise our discourse and Argumentation they may raise controversies And they may be Comets and so
in their beginning and then done in season the Dove must lay the egge and hatch the bird the holy Ghost must infuse the purpose and sit upon it and overshadow it and mature and ripen it if it shall be precious in Gods eye The reformation of abuses in State or Church is a holy purpose there is that drop of the dew of heaven in it but if it be unseasonably attempted and have not a farther concoction then the first motions of our owne zeale it becomes ineffectuall Stones precious in the estimation of men begin with the dew of Heaven and proceed with the sunne of Heaven Actions precious in the acceptation of God are purposes conceived by his Spirit and executed in his time to his Glory not conceived out of Ambition nor executed out of sedition And this is the application of this Lux depuratarum mixtionum of precious stones out of their making we proposed another out of their valuation which is this That whereas a Pearle or Diamond of such a bignesse of so many Carats is so much worth one that is twice as big is ten times as much worth So though God vouchsafe to value every good work thou dost yet as they grow greater he shall multiply his estimation of them infinitely When he hath prized at a high rate the chastitie and continency of thy youth if thou adde to this a moderation in thy middle age from Ambition and in thy latter age from covetousnesse and indevotion there shall be no price in Gods treasure not the last drop of the blood of his Sonne too deare for thee no roome no state in his Kingdome not a Iointenancie with his onely Sonne too glorious for thee This is one light in this Couple The lustre of precious stones the other the last is Lux Repercussionum The light of Repercussion of Reflexion This is when Gods light cast upon us reflecteth upon other men too from us when God doth not onely accept our works for our selves but imployes those works of ours upon other men And here is a true and a Divine Supererogation which the Devill as he doth all Gods Actions which fall into his compasse did mischievously counterfeit in the Romane Church when he induced their Doctrine of Supererogation that a man might do so much more then he was bound to do for God as that that superplusage might save whom he would and that if he did not direct them in his intention upon any particular person the Bishop of Rome was generall Administrator to all men and might bestow them where he would But here is a true supererogation not from Man or his Merit but from God when our good works shall not onely profit us that do them but others that see them done and when we by this light of Repercussion of Reflexion shall be made specula divinae gloriae quae accipiunt reddunt such looking glasses as receive Gods face upon our selves and cast it upon others by a holy life and exemplary conversation To end all we have no warmth in our selves it is true but Christ came even in the winter we have no light in our selves it is true but he came even in the night And now I appeall to your own Consciences and I aske you all not as a Iudge but as an Assistant to your Consciences and Amicus Curiae whether any man have made a good use of this light as he might have done Is there any man that in the compassing of his sinne hath not met this light by the way Thou shouldest not do this Any man that hath not onely as Balaam did met this light as an Angell that is met Heavenly inspirations to avert him but that hath not heard as Balaam did his own Asse that is those reasons that use to carry him or those very worldly respects that use to carry him dispute against that sinne and tell him not onely that there is more soule and more heaven and more salvation but more body and more health more honour and more reputation more cost and more money more labour and more danger spent upon such a sinne then would have carried him the right way They that sleep sleep in the night and they that are drunke are drunke in the night But to you the Day starre the Sunne of Righteousnesse the Sonne of God is risen this day The day is but a little longer now then at shortest but a little it is Be a little better now then when you came and mend a little at every coming and in lesse then seaven yeares appâ—entissage which your occupations cost you you shall learn not the Mysteries of your twelve companies but the Mysteries of the twelve Tribes of the twelve Apostles of their twelve Articles whatsoever belongeth to the promise to the performance to the Imitation of Christ Jesus He who is Luâ— una light and light alone and Lux tota light and all light shall also by that light which he sheddeth from himselfe upon all his the light of Grace give you all these Attestations all these witnesses of that his light he shall give you Lucem essentiae really and essentially to be incorporated into him to be made partakers of the Divine Nature and the same Spirit with the Lord by a Conversation in Heaven here and lucem gloriae a gladnesse to give him glory in a donudation of your souls and your sinnes by humble confession to him and a gladnesse to receive a denudation and manifestation of your selves to your selves by his messenger in his medicinall and musicall increpations and a gladnesse to receive an inchoation of future glory in the remission of those sinnes He shall give you lucem fidei faithfull and unremovable possession of future things in the present and make your hereafter now in the fruition of God And Lucem naturae a love of the outward beauty of his house and outward testimonies of this love in inclining your naturall faculties to religious duties He shall give you Lucem aeternorum Corporum a love to walk in the light of the stars of heaven that never change a love so perfect in the fundamentall articles of Religion without impertinent additions And Lucem incensionum an aptnesse to take holy fire by what hand or tongue or pen soever it be presented unto you according to Gods Ordinance though that light have formerly been suffered to go out in you He shall give you Lucem depuratarum Mixtionum the lustre of precious stones made of the dew of heaven and by the heat of heaven that is actions intended at first and produced at last for his glory and every day multiply their value in the sight of God because thou shalt every day grow up from grace to grace And Lucem Repercussionum he shall make you able to reflect and cast this light upon others to his glory and their establishment
Naphtali that hee should bee a well-spoken and a perswasive man For so Moses after God had farther inabled him saith Give eare O yee Heavens and I will speake Heare O Earth the words of my mouth My mouth saith Moses The Minister of God that cometh with convenient gifts and due preparation may speak such things as Earth and Heaven it selfe may be content to heare For when Saint Paul saith That to the Principalities and Powers in Heavenly places the manifold wisdome of God is made known by the Church that is by the Ministery and Service of the Church and by that which is done here wee may congruously and piously beleeve that even those Principalities and Powers in Heavenly places The Angels of Heaven doe heare our Sermons and hearken how the glory of God is communicated and accepted and propagated through the Congregation and as they rejoyce at the conversion of a Sinner so rejoyce also at the means of their Conversion the powerfull and the congruous preaching of the Word of God And therefore let no man though an Angell of the Church though an Archangell of the Church Bishop or Archbishop refuse to heare a man of imeriour place or inferiour parts to himself neither let any man be discouraged by the fewnesse or meannesse of his Hearers For as the Apostle saith with relation to Abraham Entertain strangers for thereby some have entertained Angels unawares so preach to all and that seat that thou thinkest empty may have Angels in it To them is the manifold Wisedome of God made knowne by the Church and Angels are here here for the augmentation of their owne Ioy in their fresh knowledge of the propagation of the Kingdome of God in this Congregation and they are here for their Accusation that are not here but frivolously and causelessely absent or negligently absently present if they be here Therefore Moses might say Give eare O yee Heavens though it bee but I that speake And hee might add as he doth there My Doctrine shall droppe as the rain and my speech shall distll as the dew And why Because I will publish the Name of the Lord saith Moses there because I will deliver the Messages of my God to his People What though you doe must this be ascribed unto you no Moses claimeth not that for when hee had said Give eare O yee Heavens let no man thinke himselfe too high or too wise to heare me and called it his Doctrine and his speech because he published the Name of the Lord yet he transferreth all upon God himselfe He establisheth their attentions with that Ascribe yee Greatnesse unto our God It becommeth me to make my selfe as acceptable a messenger as I can and to infuse the Word of God into you as powerfully as I can but all that I can doe is but a small matter the greatnesse of the worke lieth in your Application and that must proceed from the Word of God it selfe quickned by his Spirit and therefore Ascribe all Greatnesse unto our God for that is the Hony whatsoever or whosoever be the Hony-combe Truely when I reade a Sermon of Chrysostome or of Chrysologus or of Ambrose Men who carry in the very signification of their Names and in their Histories the attributes of Hony mouthed and Golden-mouthed Men I finde my selfe oftentimes more affected with the very Citation and Application of some sentence of Scripture in the middest or end of one of their Sermons then with any witty or forcible passage of their owne And that is it which Saint Hierome doth especially magnifie in Saint Paul After he had said Quotiescunque lego non verba mihi videor sed tonitrua audire wheresoever I open Saint Pauls Epistles it is not a word or a sentence but a clappe of Thunder that flieth out he addeth moreover Legatis doe but use your selves to the reading of Saint Pauls Epistles Videbitis in testimoniis quae sumit ex veteri Testamento quà m Artifex sit quà m prudens you will easily see how artificially how dexterously how cunningly and how discreetly he makes his use of those places which he citeth out of the Old Testament Videntur verba Innocontis rusticani you would take them saith hee sometimes for words of some plain Country-man as some of the Prophets were no other But before Saint Paul have done with those words Fulmina sunt capiunt omne quod tangunt hee maketh you see that they are flashes of lightning and that they possesse and melt affect and dissolve every soul they touch And hence it is Beloved that I return so often at home in my private Meditations that I present so often to Gods People in these Exercises this Consideration That there are not so exquisite so elegant Bookes in the World as the Scriptures neither is any one place a more pregnant example thereof for the purity and elegancy for the force and power for the largenesse and extention of the words then these which the Holy Ghost hath taken in this Text Hee that oppresseth the poore reproaches his Master c. And so we passe from this first Consideration The power and Elegancy of the whole word of God in generall to the same consideration in these particular words The Matter which in the generall is but this That the poor must bee relieved being a Doctrine obvious to all The Manner wil rather be our object at this time How the Holy Ghost by Solomons hand hath enwrapped this Doctrine in these words How the Omission of this Duty is aggravated how the performance thereof is celebrated in this Text and in the force and elegancies thereof Mans perversenesse hath changed Gods method God made man good but in a possibility of being ill Now God findes man ill but in a possibility of being good When man was good and enabled to continue so God began with him with affirmative Commandements Commandements that implied liberty and Soveraignty such as that Subjicite Dominamini Subdue the Creature and rule over the Creature and he comes not till after to Negative to Prohibitive Commandments Commandments that imply infirmity and servility such as this Of this Tree thou shalt not eate upon thy life this life and the next thou shalt not But now because God findes man ill and prone to bee worse God is faine to change his method and to begin and stop him at first with negative and prohibitive Commandments So he does in the thirty fourth Psalm ver 14. which is also again repeated first Depart from evill and then Doe good For man brings with him something into the world now to forget and to unlearn before he can take out any new lesson Man is so farre from being good of himselfe as that he must forget himselfe devest himselfe forsake himselfe before he can be capable of any good And such is the method of our Text Because God sees a naturall declination in man to abuse his power to the
delivers himselfe to us here in the administration of his Sacraments he seals ratifies confirmes all unto us And to rest in these his seals and means of reconciliation to him this is not to be scandalised not to be offended in him and not to be offended in him not to suspect him or these meanes which he hath ordained this is our viatory our preparatory our initiatory and inchoative Blessednesse beyond which nothing can be proposed in this life And therefore as the Needle of a Sea-compasse though it shake long yet will rest at last and though it do not look directly exactly to the North Pole but have some variation yet for all that variation will rest so though thy heart have some variations some deviations some aberrations from that direct point upon which it should be bent which is an absolute conformity of thy will to the will of God yet though thou lack something of that afford thy soule rest settle thy soule in such an infallibility as this present condition can admit and beleeve that God receives glory as well in thy Repentance as in thine Innocence and that the mercy of God in Christ is as good a pillow to rest thy soule upon after a sinne as the grace of God in Christ is a shield and protection for thy soule before In a word this is our viatory our preparatory our initiatory and inchoative blessedness beyond which there can bee no blessedness proposed here first to receive a satisfaction an acquiescence that there are certaine and constant meanes ordained by Christ for our reconciliation to God in him in all cases in which a Christian soule can bee distressed that such a treasure there is deposited by him in the Church And then the testimony of a rectified Conscience that thou hast sincerely applied those generall helpes to thy particular soule Come so farre and then as the Suburbs touch the City and the Porch the Church and deliver thee into it so shall this Viatory this preparatory this initiatory and inchoative blessednesse deliver thee over to the everlasting blessednesse of the Kingdome of heaven Of which everlasting blessednesse I would ask leave not so much of you yet of you too for with you I would not be over-bold but I would aske leave of the Angels of heaven leave of the holy Ghost himself to venture to say a little of this everlasting blessednesse The tongues of Angels cannot the tongues of the holy Ghost the Authors of the books of Scripture have not told us what this blessednesse is And what then shall we say but this Blessednesse it self is God himselfe our blessednesse is our possession our union with God In what consists this A great limbe of the Schoole with their Thomas place this blessednesse this union with God In visione in this That in heaven I shall see God see God essentially God face to face God as he is We do not see one another so in this world In this world we see but outsides In heaven I shall see God and God essentially But then another great branch of the Schoole with their Scotus place this blessednesse this union with God in Amore in this that in heaven I shall love God Now love presumes knowledge for Amari nisi nota new possunt we can love nothing but that which we do or think we do understand There in heaven I shall know God so as that I shall be admitted not onely to an Adoration of God to an admiration of God to a prosternation and reverence before God but to an affection to an office of more familiarity towards God of more equality with God I shall love God But even love it selfe as noble a passion as it is is but a paine except we enjoy that we love and therefore another branch of the Schoole with their Aureolus place this blessednesse this union of our souls with God in Gaudio in our joy that is in our enjoying of God In this world we enjoy nothing enjoying presumes perpetuity and here all things are fluid transitory There I shall enjoy and possesse for ever God himself But yet every one of these to see God or to love God or to enjoy God have seemed to some too narrow to comprehend this blessednesse beyond which nothing can be proposed and therefore another limbe of the Schoole with their Bonaventure place this blessednesse in all these together And truly if any of those did exclude any of these so as that I might see God and not love him or love God and not enjoy him it could not well be called blessednesse but he that hath any one of these hath every one all And therefore the greatest part concurre and safely In visione That vision is beatification to see God as he is is that blessednesse There then in heaven I shall have continuitatem Intuendi It is not onely vision but Intuition not onely a seeing but a beholding a contemplating of God and that in Continuitate I shall have an un-interrupted an un-intermitted an un-discontinued sight of God I shall looke and never looke off not looke and looke againe as here but looke and looke still for that is Continuitas intuendi There my soule shall have Inconcussam quâ—etem we need owe Plato nothing but we may thank Plato for this expression if he meant so much by this Inconcussa quies That in heaven my soule shall sleep not onely without trouble and startling but without rocking without any other help then that peace which is in it selfe My soule shall be thoroughly awake and thoroughly asleep too still busie active diligent and yet still at rest But the Apostle will exceed the Philosopher St. Paul will exceed Plato as he does when he sayes I shall be unus spiritus cum Deo I shall be still but the servant of my God and yet I shall be the same spirit with that God When Dies quem tanquam supremum reformidas aterni natalis est sayes the Morall mans Oracle Seneca Our last day is our first day our Saturday is our Sunday our Eve is our Holyday our sun-setting is our morning the day of our death is the first day of our eternall life The next day after that which is the day of judgement Veniet dies quae me mihi revelabit comes that day that shall show me to my selfe here I never saw my selfe but in disguises There Then I shall see my selfe and see God too Totam lucem Totus lux aspiciam I shall see the whole light Here I see some parts of the ayre enlightned by the Sunne but I do not see the whole light of the Sunne There I shal see God intirely all God totam lutem and totus lax I my self shal be al light to see that light by Here I have one faculty enlightned and another left in darknesse mine uuderstanding sometimes cleared my will at the same time perverted There I shall be all light no shadow upon me my soule
invested in the light of joy and my body in the light of glory How glorious is God as he looks down upon us through the Sunne How glorious in that glasse of his How glorious is God as he looks out amongst us through the king How glorious in that Image of his How glorious is God as he calls up our eyes to him in the beauty and splendor and service of the Church How glorious in that spoufe of his But how glorious shall I conceive this light to be cum sub loco viderim when I shall see it in his owne place In that Spheare which though a Spheare is a Center too In that place which though a place is all and every where I shall see it in the face of that God who is all face all manifestration all all Innotescence to me for facies Deiest qua Deus nobis innotescit that 's Gods face to us by which God manifests himselfe to us I shall see this light in his face who is all face and yet all hand all application and communication and delivery of all himselfe to all his Saints This is Beatitudo in Auge blessednesse in the Meridionall height blessednesse in the South point in a perpetuall Sommer solstice beyond which nothing can be proposed to see God so Then There And yet the farmers of heaven and hell the merchants of soules the Romane Church make this blessednesse but an under degree but a kinde of apprentiship after they have beatified declared a man to be blessed in the fruition of God in heaven if that man in that inferiour state doe good service to that Church that they see much profit will rise by the devotion and concurrence of men to the worship of that person then they will proceed to a Canonization and so he that in his Novitiat and years of probation was but blessed Ignatius and blessed Xavier is lately become Saint Xavier aud Saint Ignatius And so they pervert the right order and method which is first to come to Sanctification and then to Beatification first to holinesse and then to blessednesse And in this method our blessed God bee pleased to proceed with us by the operation of his holy Spirit to bring us to Sanctification here and by the merits and intercession of his glorious Sonne to Beatification hereafter That so not being offended in him but resting in those meanes and seales of reconciliation which thou hast instituted in thy Church wee may have life and life more abundantly life of grace here and life of glory there in that kingdome which thy Sonne our Saviour Christ Jesus hath purchased for us with the inestimable price of his incorruptible bloud Amen SERMON XLV Preached at Saint Dunstans Aprill 11. 1624. The first sermon in that Church as Vicar thereof DEUT. 25. 5. If brethren dwell together and one of them die and have no Childe the Wife of the dead shall not mary without unto a stranger her husbands brother shall goe in unto her and take her to him to wife and performe the duty of an husbands brother unto her FRom the beginning God intimated a detestation a dislike of singularity of beeing Alone The first time that God himselfe is named in the Bible in the first verse of Genesis hee is named plurally Creavit Dit Gods Gods in the plurall Created Heaven and Earth God which is but one would not appeare nor bee presented so alone but that hee would also manifest more persons As the Creator was not Singular so neither were the creatures First he created heaven and earth both together which were to be the generall parents and out of which were to bee produced all other creatures and then he made all those other creatures plurally too Male and female created hee them And when he came to make him for whose sake next to his own glory he made the whole world Adam he left not Adam alone but joyned an Eve to him Now when they were maried we know but wee know not when they were divorced we heare when Eve was made but not when shee dyed The husbands death is recorded at last the wives is not at all So much detestation hath God himselfe and so little memory would hee have kept of any singularity of being alone The union of Christ to the whole Church is not expressed by any metaphore by any figure so oft in the Scripture as by this of Mariageâ— and there is in that union with Christ to the whole Church neither husband nor wife can ever die Christ is immortall as hee is himselfe and immortall as hee is the head of the Church the Husband of that wife for that wife the Church is immortall too for as a Prince is the same Prince when he fights a battaile and when hee triumphs after the victory so the militant and the triumphant Church is the same Church There can bee no widower There can bee no Dowager in that case Hee cannot shee cannot die But then this Metaphore this spirituall Mariage holds not onely betweene Christ and the whole Church in which case thee can be no Widow but in the union between Christs particular Ministers and particular Churches and there in that case the husband of that wife may die The present Minister may die and so that Church be a Widow And in that case and for provision of such Widows wee consider the accommodation of this Law If brethren dwell together and one of them die and have no childe the wife of the dead shall not mary without unto a stranger c. This law was but a permissive law rather a dispensation then a law as the permitting of usury to bee taken of strangers and the permitting of divorces in so many cases were At most it was but a Iudiciall law and therefore layes no obligation upon any other nation then them to whom it was given the Iews And therefore wee enquire not the reasons of that law the reasons were determined in that people wee examine not the conveniences of the law the conveniences were determined in those times wee lay hold onely upon the Typique signification and appliablenesse of the law as that secular Mariage there spoken of may be appliable to this spirituall Mariage the Mariage of the Minister to the Church If brethren dwell together c. From these words then wee shall make our approaches and application to the present occasion by these steps First there is a mariage in the case The taking and leaving of a Church is not an indifferent an arbitrary thing It is a Mariage and Mariage implies Honour It is an honourable estate and that implies charge it is a burdensome state There is Honos and Onus Honour and labour in Mariage You must bee content to afford the honour wee must bee content to endure the labour And so in that point as our Incumbencie upon a Church is our Mariage to that Church wee shall as farre as the occasion admits see
what mariage includes and what it excludes what it requires what it forbids It is a mariage and a mariage after the death of another If one dye sayes the Text Howsoever the Romane Church in the exercise of their Tyranny have forbidden Church-men to mary then when they have orders and forbidden orders to bee given to any who have formerly beene maried if they maried Widowes God is pleased here to afford us some intimation some adumbration a Typicall and exemplar knowledge of the lawfulnesse of such mariages hee maries after the death of a former husband and then farther a brother maries the wife of his deceased brother Now into the reasons of the law literally given and literally accepted wee looke not It is enough that God hath a care of the preservation of names and families and inheritances in those distinctions and in those Tribes where hee layd them then but for the accommodation of the law to our present application it must bee a brother a spirituall brother a professor of the same faith that succeeds in this mariage in this possession and this government of that widow Church It must be a brother and Frater câ—habitans says our Text a brother that dwelt together with the former husband he must be of the same houshold of the faithfull as well as professe the same faith he must dwell in the house of God not separate himselfe or encourage others to doe so for matter of Ceremonies and discipline Idolaters must not Separaists must not be admitted to these mariages to these widow churches And then it is a surrendring to a brother dead without children In this spirituall procreation of children we all dye without children of our own Though by our labours when God blesses them you become children yet you are Gods children not ours we nurse you by his word but his Spirit begets you by the same word we must not challenge to us that which God onely can doe And then being thus maried to this widow taking the charge of this Church he must says our text performe the duty of a husbands brother He must it is a personall service not to be done always by Proxy and Delegates He must and he must performe not begin well and not persist commence and not consummate but performe the worke and performe the worke as it is a duty It is a meer mercy in God to send us to you but it is a duty in us to doe that which we are sent for by his Word and his Sacraments to establish you in his holy obedience and his rich and honourable service And then our duty consists in both these that we behave our selves as your husband which implies a power an authority but a power and authority rooted in love and exercised with love and then that we doe all as brothers to the former husband that as one intentation of this law was that inheritances and temporall proprieties might be preserved so our care might be through predecessor and successor and all that all rights might be preserved to all men that nothing not due or due onely in rigor be extorted from the people nothing that is in truth or in equity due be with-held from the Minister but that the true right of people and Pastor and Patron be preserved to the preservation of love and peace and good opinion of one another First then that which we take upon us is a Mariage Amongst the Iews it was almost an ignominious an infamous thing to die unmaried at least to die without children being maried Amongst the gentiles it was so too all well governed States ever enlarged themselves in giving places of command and profit to maried men Indeed such men are most properly said to keep this world in reparations that provide a succession of children and for the next world though all that are borne into this world doe not enter into the number of Gods Saints in heaven yet the Saints of heaven can be made out of no other materialls but men borne into this world Every stone in the quarry is not sure to be imployed in the building of the church but the Church must be built out of those stones and therefore they keep this world they keep heaven it selfe in reparation that mary in the feare of God and in the same feare bring up the children of such a mariage But I presse not this too literally nor over perswasively that every man is bound to Mary God is no accepter of persons nor of conditions But being to use these words in their figurative application I say every man is bound to marry himselfe to a profession to a calling God hath brought him from being nothing by creating him but he resolves himselfe into nothing againe if he take no calling upon him In our Baptisme we make our contract with God that we will believe all those Articles there recited there 's our contract with hiâ— and then pursuing this contract in the other Sacrament when we take his body and his blood we are maried to him So at the same time at our Baptisme we make a contract in the presence of God and his congregation with the world that we wil forsake the covetous desires of the world that is the covetous proprieting of all things to our selves the covetous living onely for our selves there 's our contract with the world that we will mutually assist and serve our brethren in the world and then when we take particular callings by which we are enabled to perform that former contract then we are maried to the world so every man is duly contracted to the world in Baptisme and lawfully maried to the world in accepting a profession And so this service of ours to the Church is our mariage Now in a Matrioniall state there is onus and Honos a burden to be born an Honour to be received The burden of the sinnes of the whole world was a burden onely for Christs shoulders but the sinnes of this Parish willly upon my shoulders if I be silent or if I be indulgent and denounce not Gods Judgement upon those sinnes It will be a burden to us if we doe not and God knowes it is a burden to us when be do denounce those Judgements Esay felt and groned under this burden when he cried Onus Babylonis Onus Moab and Onus Damasci O the burden of Babylon and the burden of Damscus and so the other Prophets grone often under this burden in contemplation of other places It burdened it troubled it grieved the holy Prophets of God that they must denounce Gods judgements though upon Gods enemies We reade of a compassionate Generall that looking upon his great Army from a hill fell into a bitter weeping upon this consideration that in fiftie or sixtie years hence there will not be a man of these that fight now alive upon the earth What Sea could furnish mine eyes with teares enough to poure out if I should
think that of all this Congregation which lookes me in the face now I should not meet one at the Resurrection at the right hand of God! And for so much as concerns me it is all one if none of you be saved as if none of you be saved by my help my means my assistance my preaching If I put you upon miraculous wayes to be saved without hearing or upon extraordinary wayes to be saved by hearing others this shall aggravate my condemnation though you be saved How much more heavy must my burden be if by my negligence both I and you perish too So then this calling this marriage is a burden every way When at any midnight I heare a bell toll from this steeple must not I say to my selfe what have I done at any time for the instructing or rectifying of that mans Conscience who lieth there now ready to deliver up his own account and my account to Almighty God If he be not able to make a good account he and I are in danger because I have not enabled him and though he be for himself able that delivers not me if I have been no instrument for the doing of it Many many burdens lie upon this calling upon this marriage but our recompense is that marriage is as well an honourable as a painefull calling If be a Father where is mine Honour faith God If you can answer God why you have it in your Prophets They have it that satisfieth him that dischargeth you For he that receiveth them receiveth him But if Christ who repeats that complaint in every one of us That a Prophet hath no honour in his own Countrie that a Pastor is least respected of his own stock you have not your Quctus est for the honour due to God God never discharges the honour due to him if it be not paid into their hands whom he sendeth for it to them upon whom he hath directed it Would the King believe that man to honour him that violateth his Image or that calumniateth his Ambassadour Every man is the Image of God every Creature is the Ambassadour of God The Heavens and as well as the Heavens the Earth declare the glory of God but the Civill Magistrate and the Spirituall Paster who have married the two Daughters of God The state and the Church are the Images and Ambassadours of God in a higher and more peculiar sense and for that marriage are to be honoured And then Honour implieth that by which Honour subsisteth maintenance and they which withdraw that injuriously or with-hold that contentiously dishonour God in the dishonour of his servants and so make this marriage this calling onely burdensome and not honourable So then the interest of your particular Minister and the particular Church being such as between Man and Wife a marriage we consider the uses of marriage in Gods first intention and apply them to this marriage Gods first intentions in marriage were two In adjutorium for mutuall helpers and in prolem for procreation and education of Children For both these are we made Husbands of Churches in prolem to assist in the regeneration of Children for the inheritance of Heaven and in adjutorium to be helpers to one another And therefore if the husband the Pastor put the wife his flock in a circumcision to pare themselves to the quick to take from their necessary means to sustain their families to satisfie him the wife will say as Zipporah said to Moses sponâ— sus sanguinum a bloudy husband art thou that exactest and extortest more then is due In that case the Husband is no helper But if we be alwayes ready to help your children over the threshold as Saint Augustine calls Baptisme Limen Ecclesiae alwayes ready to Baptize the Children if we be alwayes ready to help you in all your spirituall diseases to that Cordiall that Balsamum the body and bloud of Christ Iesus If we be alwayes ready to help you in all your bodily distresses ready even at your last gasp to open your eyes then when your best friends are ready to close them ready to deliver your souls into the hands of God when all the rest about you are ready to receive into their hands that which you leave behinde you and then ready to lay up the garments of your soules your bodies in the wardrobe the grave till you call for them and put them on again in the resurrection then are we truely helpers true husbands and then if the Wife will say as Iobs wife to the husband Curse God and die be sorry that thou hast taken this Profession upon thee and live in penury and die in povertie In a word if he presse too much if she withdraw too much this frustrates Gods purpose in making that a marriage they are not mutuall helpers to one another These were Gods two principall intentions in marriage in adjutorium in prolem But then mans fall induced a third in remedium That for a remedy against burning and to avoid fornication every man should have his own wife every woman her own husband And so in remedium for a remedy against spirituall fornication of running after other men in other places out of disaffection to their own Pastor or over affecting another God hath given every wife her own husband Every Church her own Pastor And to all these purposes our function is a marriage It is a marriage it deserves the honour it undertakes the burden of that state and then it is a marriage of a widow of a Church left in widow-hood by the death of her former husband In the Law literally God forbad the High Priest to marry a widdow The Romane Church continues that literally and more they extend it that which was in figure enjoined to the High Priest onely they in fact extend to all Priests no man that ever married a widow may be a priest though she be dead when he desires orders There is no question but there is a more exemplary sanctity required in the Priest then in other persons and more in those who are in high places in the Church then in those of inferiour Jurisdictions and the name and title of Virginity hath ever been exhibited as an Embleme as a Type of especiall Sanctity And as such the Apostle uses it when he saith That he would present the Church of Corinth as a chaste Virgine to Christ That is as chaste as a Virgin though married for so he saith in the words immediately before That he had espoused them to a husband As marriage is an honourable state though in poverty so is the bed undefiled with strange lust a chaste bed even in marriage And in the accommodation of the Figure to the present occasion our marriage to severall Churches If we might marry no widowes no Churches which had been wives to former husbands we should finde few Virgins that is Churches newly erected for us But when the wife of a former husband is left
bowells When Christ is disseised and dispossest his truth profligated and thrown out of a nation that professed it before when Christ is wounded by the blasphemies of others and crucified by thee in thy relapses to repented sinnes wilt thou not say to Them to Thy selfe in the behalfe of Christ why persecute yee me Wilt thou not make Christs case thine as hee made thine his Art not thou the bowells of Christ If not and thou art not if thou have not this sense of his suffering thou hast no interest in his death by thy Baptisme nor in his Resurrection by thy feeble halfe repentances But in the duty of a child as thou art a servant in the simplicity of a child as thou hast sucked from him in the interest and inheritance of a child as thou art the Son of his bowells in all these capacities and with all these we have done God calls thee come ye children and that is our next step the Action Come Passing thus from the Persons to the action Venite Come we must aske first what this comming is The whole mystery of our redemption is expressed by the Apostle in this word venit that Christ Iesus is come into the world All that thou hast to do is to come to and to meet him Where is he At home in his own house in the Church Which is his house which is his Church That to thee in which he hath given thee thy Baptisme if that do still afford thee as much as is necessary for thy salvation Come thither to the participation of his ordinances to the exercises of Religion there The gates of heaven shall be opened to you at last in that word Venite benedicti come ye blessed the way to those gates is opened to you now in the same word Venite filii come ye children come Christ can come and does often into thy bed-chamber in the visitation of his private Spirit but here he calls thee out into the congregation into the communion of Saints And then the Church celebrates Christs coming in the flesh a moneth before he comes in four Sundays of Advent before Christmas When thou comest to meet him in the Congregation come not occasionally come not casually not indifferently not collaterally come not as to an entertainment a show a spectacle or company come solemly with preparation with meditation He shall have the lesse profit by the prayer of the Congregation that hath not been at his private prayer before he came Much of the mystery of our Religion lay in the venturus that Christ was to come all that the law and Prophets undertooke for was that venturus that Christ was to come but the consummation of all the end of the law and the Prophets is in the venit he is come Do not clogge thy coming with future conditions and contingencies thou wilt come if thou canst wake if thou canst rise if thou canst be ready if thou like the company the weather the man We finde one man who was brought in his bed to Christ but it was but one Come come actually come earnestly come early come often and come to meet him Christ Jesus and no body else Christ is come into the world and therefore thou needest not goe out of the world to meet him He doth not call thee from thy Calling but in thy Calling The Dove went up and down from the Arke and to the Arke and yet was not disappointed of her Oliveleafe Thou maiest come to this place at due times and maiest doe the businesses of the world in other places too and still keep thy Olive thy peace of Conscience If no Hereticall recusancy thou dost like the Doctrine no schismaticall recusancy thou dost like the Discipline no lasie recusancy thou forbearest not because thou canst not sit at thine ease no proud recusancie that the company is not good enough for thee if none of these detain thee thou maist be here even when thou art not here God may accept thy desire as in many cases thou maist be away when thou art here as in particular thou art if being here thou do not hearken to that which is said here for that is added to the coming and follows in a third consideration after the capacity Children and the Action Come The disposition Hearken Come ye children hearken Upon those words of David Conturbata sunt ossa mea St. Basil faith well Habet anima ossa sua The soul hath bones as well as the body And in this Anatomy and dissection of the soul as the bones of the soul are the constant and strong resolutions thereof and as the seeing of the soul is understanding The eyes of your understanding being opened so the Hearing of the soul is hearkning in these religious exercises we doe not htar except we hearken for hearkning is the hearing of the soul. Some men draw some reasons out of some stories of some credit to imprint a belief of extasie and raptures That the body remaining upon the floore or in the bed the soul may be gone out to the contemplation of heavenly things But it were a strange and a perverse extasie that the body being here at a religious exercise and in a religious posture the soul should be gone out to the contemplation and pursuit of the pleasures or profits of this world You come hither but to your own funeralls if you bring nothing hither but your bodies you come but to be enterred to be laid in the earth if the ends of your comming be earthly respects prayse and opinion and observation of men you come to be Canonized to grow Saints if your souls be here and by grace here alwayes diffused grow up to a sanctification Bonus es Domine animae quaerenti te Thou art good O Lord to that soul that seeks thee It is St. Augustines note that it is put in the singular Animae to that soul Though many come few come to him A man may thread Sermons by half dozens a day and place his merit in the nūber a man may have been all day in the perfume and incense of preaching and yet have receivd none of the savor of life unto life Some things an Ape can do as wel as a Man some things an Hypocrite as wel as a Saint We cannot see now whether thy soul be here now or no but to morrow hereafter in the course of thy life they which are near thee know whether thy former faults be mended or no know whether thy soul use to be at Sermons as well as thy body uses to go to Sermons Faith comes by hearing saith the Apostle but it is by that hearing of the soul Hearkning Considering And then as the soul is infused by God but diffused over the whole body so there is a Man so Faith is infused from God but diffused into our works and so there is a Saint Practise is the Incarnation of Faith Faith
tentations to sin He shall eat up my dust so as that it shall fly into mine eys that is so work upon my carnall affections as that they shall not make me blinde nor unable to discern that it is he that works It is said of one kinde of Serpent that because they know by an instinct they have that their skin is good for the use of man for the falling sickness out of Envy they hide their skin when they cast it The Serpent is loth we should have any benefit by him but we have even his tentations arm us and the very falling exalts us when after a sin of infirmity we come to a true and scrutiny of our conscience So he hath nothing to eat but our dust and he eats up our dust so as that he contributes to our glory by his malice The Whale was Ionas Pilot The Crows were Elias caters The Lions were Daniels sentinels The Viper was Pauls advocate it pleaded for him brought the beholders in an instant from extreme to extreme from crying out that Paul was a murderer to cry that he was a god Though at any time the Serpent having brought me to a sin cry out Thou art a murderer that is bring me to a desperate sense of having murdred mine own soul yet in that darkness I shal see light by a present repentance effectual application of the merits of my Savior I shall make the Serpent see I am a God thus far a God that by my adhering to Christ I am made partaker of the Divine Nature For that which S. Chrysost. says of Baptism is true too in the second Baptism Repentance Deposui terram coelum indui then I may say to the Serpent Your meat is dust and I was dust but Deposui terram I have shak'd off my dust by true repentance for I have shak'd off my self and am a new creature and am not now meat for your Table Iam terra non sum sed sal says the same Father I am not now unsavoury dust but I am salt And Sal ex aqua vento says he Salt is made of water and winde I am made up of the water of Baptism of the water of Repentance of the water that accompanies the blood of Christ Jesus and of that winde that blows where it list and hath been pleased to blow upon me the Spirit of God the Holy Ghost and I am no longer meat for the Serpent for Dust must he eat all the days of his life I am a branch of that Vine Christ is the Vine and we are the branches I am a leafe of that Rose of Sharon and of that Lilly of the valleys I am a plant in the Orchard of Pomegranats and that Orchard of Pomegranats is the Church I am a drop of that dew that dew that lay upon the head of Christ. And this Vine and this Rose and Lilly and Pomegranats of Paradise and this Dew of heaven are not Dust And dust must thou eate all the dayes of thy life So then the Prophecy of Esay fulfils it self That when Christ shall reign powerfully over us The wolf and the lamb shall feed together Saul and Ananias shall meet in a house as S. Hierome expounds that and Ananias not be afraid of a Persecutor The Lion shall eate straw like the Bullock says that Prophet in that place Tradent se rusticitati Scripturarum says the same Father The strongest understandings shall content themselves with the homelinesse of the Scriptures and feed upon plain places and not study new dishes by subtilties and perplexities and then Dust shall be the Serpents meat says the Prophet there The power of Satan shall reach but to the body and touch a soul wrapt up in Christ. But then it is Totâ vitâ all his life His diet is impaired but it is not taken away He eats but dust but he shall not lack that as long as hee lives And how long lives the Serpent this Serpent The life of this Serpent is to seduce man to practise upon man to prevaile upon man as farre and as long as man is dust And therefore wee are not onely his dust whilst wee live all which time we serve in our carnall affections for him to feed upon but when we are dead we are his dust still Man was made in that state as that he should not resolve to dust but should have passed from this world to the next without corruption or resolution of the body That which God said to Adam Dust thou art belonged to all from the beginning he and all we were to be of dust in his best integrity but that which God adds there in terram revertêris dust thou art and to it thou shalt returne that the Serpent brought in that was induced upon man by him and his tentation So that when we are living dust here he eats us and when we are dead dust too in the grave he feeds upon us because it proceeds from him both that we die and that we are detained in the state of exinanition and ingloriousnesse in the dust of the earth and not translated immediately to the joyes of heaven as but for him we should have been But as though he do feed upon our living dust that is induce sicknesses and hunger and labour and cold and paine upon our bodies here God raises even that dust out of his hands and redeemes it from his jaws in affording us a deliverance or a â—â—â—â—itution from those bodily calamities here as he did abundantly to his servant and our example Iob so though he feed upon our dead dust and detain our bodies in the disconsolate state of the grave yet as the Godhead the divine nature did not depart from the body of Christ when it lay dead in the grave so neither doth the love and power of God depart from the body of a Christian though resolved to dust in the grave but in his due time shall recollect that dust and recompact that body and reunite that soul in everlasting joy and glory And till then the Serpent lives till the Judgement Satan hath power upon that part of man and that 's the Serpents life first to practise our death and then to hold us in the state of the dead Till then we attend with hope and with prayers Gods holy pleasure upon us and then begins the unchangeable state in our life in body and soul together then we beginne to live and then ends the Serpents life that is his earnest practise upon us in our life and his faint triumph in continuing over our dust That time the time of the generall Resurrection being not yet come the devills thought themselves wronged and complained that Christ came before the time to torment them and therefore Christ yeelded so much to their importunity as to give them leave to enter into the swine And therefore let not us murmur
nor Land is our surety but our surety is one who is already crown'd with that Resurrection Num in hominibus terrae legeneraâ— quae omnia regenerat sayes Saint Ambrose will the earth that gives a new life to all Creatures faile in us and hold us in an everlasting winter without a spring and a Resurrection Certainly no but if we be content so to depart into the wombe of the Earth our grave as that we know that to be but the Entry into glory as we depart contentedly so we shall arise gloriously to that place where our eternall Rest shall be though here there be not our Rest for he that shoots an arrow at a mark yet means to put that arrow into his Quiver again and God that glorifies himselfe in laying down our bodies in the grave means also to glorifie them in reaffirming them to himselfe at the last day SERMON XI Preached at Lincolns Inne preparing them to build their Chappell Gâ—N 28. 16 17. Then Iacob awâ—ke out of his sleep and said Surely the Lord is in this place and I was not aware And he was afraid and said Now fearfull us this place This is none other but the House of God and this is the gate of Heaven IN these verses Iacob is a Surveyor he considers a fit place for the house of God and in the very next verse he is a Builder he erects Bethel the house of God it selfe All was but a drowsinesse but a sleep till he came to this Consideration as soon as he awoke he took knowledge of a fit place as soon as he found the place he went about the work But to that we shall not come yet But this Text being a preparation for the building of a house to God though such a house as Iacob built then require no contribution yet because such Churches as we build now doe we shall first say a little of that great vertue of Charity and then somewhat of that vertue as it is exercis'd by advancing the house of God and his outward worship And thirdly we shall consider Iacob's steps and proceedings in this action of his This vertue then Charity is it that conducts its in this life and accompanies us in the next In heaven where we shall know God there may be no use of faith In heaven where we shall see God there may be no use of hope but in heaven where God the Father and the Son love one another in the Holy Ghost the bond of charity shall everlastingly unite us together But Charitas in patria and Charitas in via differ m this That there we shall love one another because we shall not need one another for we shall all be fullâ— Here the exercise of our charity is because we doe stand in need of one another Dives pauper duo sunt sibi contraria sed iterum duo sunt sibi necessaria Rich and poor are contrary to one another but yet both necessary to one another They are both necessary to one another but the poor man is the more necessary because though one man might be rich though no man were poor yet he could have no exercise of his charity he could send none of his riches to heaven to help him there except there were some poor here He that is too fat would fain devest some of that though he could give that to no other man that lack'd it And shall not he that is wantonly pampered nay who is heavily laden and encombred with temporall abundances be content to discharge himself of some of that wherewith he is over-straighted upon those poor souls whom God hath not made poor for any sin of theirs or of their fathers but onely to present rich men exercise of their charity and occasions of testifying their love to Christ who having given himselfe to convey salvation upon thee if that conveyance may be sealed to thee by giving a little of thine own is it not an easie purchase When a poore wretch beggs of thee and thou givest thou dost but justice it is his But when he begs of God for thee and God gives thee this is mercy this was none of thine When we shall come to our Redde rationem villicationis to give an accompt of our Stewardship when we shall not measure our inheritance by Acres but all heaven shall be ours and we shall follow the Lamb wheresoever he goes when our estate and term shall not be limited by years and lives but as we shall be in the presence of the Ancient of dayes so our dayes shall be so far equall to his as that they shall be without end Then will our great Merchants great practisers great purchasers great Contracters find another language another style then they have been accustom'd to here There no man shall be call'd a prodigall but onely the Covetous man Onely he that hath been too diligent a keeper shall appear to have been an unthrift and to have wasted his best treasure the price of the bloud of Christ Iesue his own soule There no man shall be call'd good security but he that hath made sure his salvation No man shall be call'd a Subsidy man but he that hath relieved Christ Jesus in his sick and hungry Members No man shall be call'd a wise Steward but he that hath made friends of the wicked Mammon Nor provident Merchant but he that sold all to buy the pearle Nor a great officer but he that desires to be a dore-keeper in the kingdome of Heaven Now every man hath a key to this dore of heaven Every man hath some means to open it every man hath an oyle to anoint this key and make it turn easily he may goe with more case to Heaven then he doth to Hell Every man hath some means to pour this oile of gladnesse and comfort into anothers heart No man can say Quid retribuam tibi Domine Lord what have I to give thee for every man hath something to give God Money or labor or counsail or prayers Every man can give and he gives to God who gives to them that need it for his sake Come not to that expostulation When did we see thee hungry or sick or imprisoned and did not minister Nor to that Quid retribuam What can I give that lack my selfe lest God come also to that silence and wearinesse of asking at thy hands to say as he sayes in the Psalme If I be hungry I will not tell thee That though he have given thee abundance though he lack himselfe in his children yet he will not tell thee he will not ask at thy hands he will not enlighten thine understanding he will not awaken thy charity he will not give thee any occasion of doing good with that which he hath given thee But God hath given thee a key yea as he sayes to the Church of Philadelphia Behold I set before thee an open dore and no man can shut it Thou hast a
and our North and South at another tyde and another gale First then we looke towards our East the fountaine of light and of life There this world beganne the Creation was in the east And there our next world beganne too There the gates of heaven opened to us and opened to us in the gates of death for our heaven is the death of our Saviour and there he lived and dyed there and there he looked into our west from the east from his Terasse from his Pinacle from his exaltation as himselfe calls it the Crosse. The light which arises to us in this east the knowledge which we receive in this first word of our text Faciamus Let us where God speaking of himselfe speakes in the Plurall is the manifestation of the Trinity the Trinity which is the first letter in his Alphabet that ever thinks to read his name in the book of life The first note in his Gammut that ever thinks to sing his part in the Quire of the Triumphant Church Let him him have done as much as all the Worthies and suffered as much as all Natures Martyrs the penurious Philosophers let him have known as much as they that pretend to know Omne scibile all that can be known nay and in-intelligibilia In-investigabilia as Turtullian speakes un-understandable things unrevealed decrees of God Let him have writ as much as Aristotle writ or as is written upon Aristotle which is multiplication enough yet he hath not learnt to spel that hath not learnt the Trinity not learnt to pronounce the first word that cannot bring three Persons into one God The subject of naturall philosophy are the foure elements which God made the Subject of supernaturall philosophy Divinity are the three elements which God is and if we may so speake which make God that is constitute God notifie God to us Father Sonne and holy Ghost The naturall man that hearkens to his owne heart and the law written there may produce Actions that are good good in the nature and matter and substance of the worke He may relieve the poore he may defend the oppressed But yet he is but as an open field and though he be not absolutely barren he bears but grasse The godly man he that hath taken in the knowledge of a great and a powerfull God and enclosed and hedged in himselfe with the feare of God may produce actions better then the meere naturall man because he referres his actions to the glory of his imagined God But yet this man though he be more fruitfull then the former more then a grassy field yet he is but a ploughed field and he bears but corne and corne God knowes choaked with weeds But that man who hath taken hold of God by those handles by which God hath delivered and manifested himselfe in the notions of Father Sonne and holy Ghost he is no field but a garden a Garden of Gods planting a Paradise in which grow all things good to eate and good to see spirituall resection and spirituall recreation too and all things good to cure He hath his beeing and his diet and his physique there in the knowledge of the Trinity his beeing in the mercy of the Father his physique in the merits of the Sonne his diet his daily bread in the daily visitations of the holy Ghost God is not pleased not satisfied with our bare knowledge that there is a God For it is impossible to please God without faith and there is no such exercise of faith in the knowledge of a God but that reason and nature will bring a man to it When we professe God in the Creed by way of beleefe Credo in Deum I beleeve in God in the same article we professe him to be a Father too I beleeve in God the father Almighty And that notion the Father necessarily implies a second Person a Sonne And then we professe him to be maker of heaven and earth And in the Creation the holy Ghost the Spirit of God is expresly named So that we doe but exercise reason and nature in directing our selves upon God We exercise not faith and without faith it is impossible to please God till we come to that which is above nature till we apprehend a Trinity We know God we beleeve in the Trinity The Gentiles multiplyed Gods There were almost as many Gods as men that beleeved in them And I am got out of that thrust and out of that noise when I am come into the knowledge of one God But I am got above staires got in the Bedchamber when I am come to see the Trinity and to apprehend not onely that I am in the care of a great and a powerfull God but that there is a Father that made me a Sonne that Redeemed me a holy Ghost that applies this good purpose of the Father and Sonne upon me to me The root of all is God But it is not the way to receive fruits to dig to the root but to reach to the boughs I reach for my Creation to the Father for my Redemption to the Sonne for my sanctification to the holy Ghost and so I make the knowledge of God a Tree of life unto me and not otherwise Truly it is a sad Contemplation to see Christians scratch and wound teare one another with the ignominious invectives and uncharitable names of of Heretique and Schismatique about Ceremoniall and Problematicall and indeed but Criticall verball controversies and in the meane time the foundation of all the Trinity undermined by those numerous those multitudinous Anthills of Socinians that overflow some parts of the Christian world and multiply every where And therefore the Adversaries of the Reformation were wise in their generation when to supplant the credit of both those great assistants of the Reformation Luther and Calvin they impute to Calvin fundamentall error in the Divinity of the second Person of the Trinity the Sonne And they impute to Luther a detestation of the very word Trinity and an expunction thereof in all places of the Liturgy where the Church had received that word They knew well if that slander could prevaile against those persons nothing that they could say could prevaile upon any good Christians But though in our doctrine we keep up the Trinity aright yet God knowes in our practice we doe not I hope it cannot be said of any of us that he beleeves not the Trinity but who amongst us thinkes of the Trinity considers the Trinity Father and Sonne doe naturally imply and induce one another and therefore they fall oftner into our consideration But for the holy Ghost who feels him when he feels him Who takes knowledge of his working when he works Indeed our Fathers provided not well enough for the worship of the whole Trinity nor of the holy Ghost in particular in the endowments of the Church and Consecrations of Churches and possessions in their names What a spirituall dominion in the prayers and worship of
the people what a temporall dominion in the possessions of the world had the Virgin Mary Queen of heaven and Queen of earth too She was made joint purchaser of the Church with her Sonne and had as much of the worship thereof as he though she paid her fine in milke and he in bloud And till a new Sect came in her Sonnes name and in his name the name of Jesus tooke the regency so farre out of that Queen Mothers hands and sued out her Sonnes Livery so farre as that though her name be used the Virgin Mary is but a feoffee in trust for them all was hers And if God oppose not these new usurpers of the world posterity will soon see Saint Ignatius worth all the Trinity in possessions and endowments as that sumptuous and splendid foundation of his first Temple at Rome may well create a conjecture and suspicion Travaile no farther Survay but this City And of their not one hundred Churches the Virgin Mary hath a dozen The Trinity hath but one Christ hath but one The holy Ghost hath none But not to goe into the City nor out of our selves which of us doth truly and considerately ascribe the comforts that he receives in dangers or in distresses to that God of all comfort the comforter the holy Ghost We know who procured us our Presentation and our dispensation you know who procured you your offices and your honours Shall I ever forget who gave me my comfort in sicknesse Who gave me my comfort in the troubles and perplexities and diffidencies of my conscience The holy Ghost brought you hither The holy Ghost opens your eares and your hearts here Till in all your distresses you can say Veni Creator Spiritus come holy Ghost and that you feel a comfort in his comming you can never say Veni Domine Iesu come Lord Jesus come to Judgement Never to consider the day of Judgement is a fearfull thing But to consider the day of Judgement without the comfort of the holy Ghost is a thousand times more fearfull This Seale then this impression this notion of the Trinity being set upon us in the first Creation in this first plurall word of our text Faciamus Let us for Father Sonne and holy Ghost made man and this seale being re-imprinted upon us in our second Creation our Regeneration in Baptisme Man is Baptized In the name of the Father of the Sonne and of the holy Ghost This notion of the Trinity being our distinctive Character from Iew and Gentile This being our specifique forme why does not this our forme this soule of our Religion denominate us why are we not called Trinitarians a name that would embrace the profession of all the Persons but onely Christians which limits and determines us upon one The first Christians amongst whose manifold Persecutions scorne and contempt was not the least in contempt and scorne were called Nazarai Nazarites in the mouth of the Vulgar and Galilâ—i Galilaeans in the mouth of Iulian and Iudaei Iews in the mouth of Nero when he imputed the burning of Rome his owne act to them and Christiani as Tertullian says that they could accuse Christians of nothing but the name of Christians and yet they could not call them by their right name but Chrestians which was gentle quiet easie patient men made to be troden upon They gave them divers names in scorne yet never called them Trinitarians Christians themselves amongst themselves were called by divers names in the Primitive Church for distinction Fideles the faithfull and Fratres the Brethren and Discipuli Disciples And after by common custome at Antioch Christians And after that they say by a councell which the Apostles held at the same city at Antioch there passed an expresse Canon of the Church that they should be called so Christians And before they had this name at Antioch first by common usage after by a determinate Canon to be called Christians from Christ at Alexandria they were called most likely from the name of Jesus Iesseans And so Philo Iudaeus in that book which he writes De Iessenis intends by his Iessenis Christians and in divers parts of the world into which Christians travell now they find some elements some fragments some reliques of the Christian Religion in the practice of some religious Men whom those Countreys call Iesseans doubtlesly derived and continued from the name of Jesus So that the Christians took many names to themselves for distinction Brethren Disciples faithfull And they had many names put upon them in scorne Nazarites Galilaeans Iews Chrestians and yet they were never never by Custome amongst themselves never by commandement from the Church never in contempt from others called Trinitarians the profession of the Trinity being their specifique forme and distinctive Character why so Beloved the name of Christ involv'd all not onely because it is a name that hath a dignity in it more then the rest for Christ is an anointed person a King a Messiah and so the profession of that Name conferrs an Unction a regall and a holy Unction upon us for we are thereby a royall Priesthood but because in the profession of Christ the whole Trinity is professed How often doth the Sonne say that the Father sent him And how often that the Father will and that he will send the Holy Ghost This is life eternall says he to know thee the onely true God and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent And sent with all power in heaven and in earth This must be professed Father and Sonne And then no man can professe this no man can call Jesus the Lord but by the holy Ghost So that as in the persecutions in the primitive Church the Martyrs which were hurried to tumultuary executions and could not be heard for noise in excusing themselves of Treason and sedition and crimes imputed to them to make their cause odious did use in the sight of the people who might see a gesture though they could not heare a protestation to signe themselves with the signe of the Crosse to let them know for what profession they died so that the signe of the Crosse in that use thereof in that time was an abridgement and a Catechisme of the whole Christian Religion so is the professing of the name of Christ the professing of the whole Trinity As he that confesses one God is got beyond the meer naturall man And he that confesses a Sonne of God beyond him So is neither got to the full truth till he confesse the holy Ghost too The foole sayes in his heart there is no God The foole says David The emphaticall foole in the highest degree of folly But though he get beyond that folly he is a foole still if he say there is no Christ For Christ is the wisdome of the Father And a foole still if he deny the holy Ghost for who shall apply Christ to him but the holy Ghost Etiam Christiani Nomen superficies est