and counsell for the power a man hath is founded in the understanding not in the will or force it is not a power of coercion but a power of advice and that government that wise men have over those who are fit to be conducted by them Et vos in manu in tutelâ non in servitio debetis habere eas malle patres vos viros quà m dominos dici said Valerius in Livie Husbands should rather be Fathers then Lords Homer addes more soft appellatives to the character of a husbands duty 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Thou art to be a father and a mother to her and a brother and great reason unlesse the state of marriage should be no better then the condition of an Orphan For she that is bound to leave father and mother and brother for thee either is miserable like a poor fatherlesse childe or else ought to finde all these and more in thee Medea in Euripides had cause to complain when she found it otherwise 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Which St. Ambrose well translates It is sad when virgins are with their own money sold to slavery and that services are in better state then marriages for they receive wages but these buy their setters and pay dear for their losse of liberty and therefore the Romans expressed the mans power over his wife but by a gentle word Nec verò mulieribus praefectus reponatur qui apud Graecos creari solet sed sit censor qui viros doceat moderari uxoribus said Cicero let there be no governour of the women appointed but a censor of manners one to teach the men to moderate their wives that is fairly to induce them to the measures of their own proportions It was rarely observed of Philo 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 when Adam made that fond excuse for his folly in eating the forbidden fruit he said The woman thou gavest to be with me she gave me He saies not the woman which thou gavest to me no such thing she is none of his goods none of his possessions not to be reckoned among his servants God did not give her to him so but the woman thou gavest to be with me that is to be my partner the companion of my joyes and sorrowes thou gavest her for use not for dominion The dominion of a man over his wife is no other then as the soul rules the body for which it takes a mighty care and uses it with a delicate tendernesse and cares for it in all contingencies and watches to keep it from all evils and studies to make for it fair provisions and very often is led by its inclinations and desires and does never contradict its appetites but when they are evill and then also not without some trouble and sorrow and its government comes only to this it furnishes the body with light and understanding and the body furnishes the soul with hands and feet the soul governs because the body cannot else be happy but the government is no other then provision as a nurse governs a childe when she causes him to eat and to be warm and dry and quiet and yet even the very government it self is divided for man and wife in the family are as the Sun and Moon in the sirmament of heaven He rules by day and she by night that is in the lesser and more proper circles of her affairs in the conduct of domestick provisions and necessary offices and shines only by his light and rules by his authority and as the Moon in opposition to the Sun shines brightest that is then when she is in her own circles and separate regions so is the authority of the wife then most conspicuous when she is separate and in her proper sphere in Gynaeceo in the nursery and offices of domestick employment but when she is in conjunction with the Sun her Brother that is in that place and employment in which his care and proper offices are imployed her light is not seen her authority hath no proper businesse but else there is no difference for they were barbarous people among whom wives were in stead of servants said Spartianus in Caracalla and it is a sign of impotency and weaknesse to force the camels to kneel for their load beccuse thou hast not spirit and strength enough to climbe to make the affections and evennesse of a wife bend by the flexures of a servant is a sign the man is not wise enough to govern when another stands by So many differences as can be in the appellatives of Dominus and Domina Governour and Governesse Lord and Lady Master and Mistresse the same difference there is in the authority of man and woman and no more Si tu Caius ego Caia was publickly proclaimed upon the threshold of the young mans house when the bride enter'd into his hands and power and the title of Domina in the sense of the civill Law was among the Romans given to wives Hi Dominam Ditis thalamo diducere adorti said Virgil where though Servius saies it was spoken after the manner of the Greeks who call'd the wife 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Lady or Mistresse yet it was so amongst both the Nations Ac domûs Dominam voca saies Catullus Haerebit Dominae vir comes ipse suae so Martial and therefore although there is a just measure of subjection and obedience due from the wise to the husband as I shall after explain yet nothing of this is expressed in the mans character or in his duty he is not commanded to rule nor instructed how nor bidden to exact obedience or to defend his priviledge all his duty is signified by love by nourishing and cherishing by being joyned to her in all the unions of charity by not being bitter to her by dwelling with her according to knowledge giving honour to her so that it seems to be with husbands as it is with Bishops and Priests to whom much honour is due but yet so that if they stand upon it and challenge it they become lesse honourable and as amongst men and women humility is the way to be prefer'd so it is in husbands they shall prevail by cession by sweetnesse and counsell and charity and compliance So that we cannot discourse of the mans right without describing the measures of his duty that therefore followes next Let him love his wife even as himself that 's his duty and the measure of it too which is so plain that if he understands how he treats himself there needs nothing be added concerning his demeanour towards her save only that we adde the particulars in which holy Scripture instances this generall commandement 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 That 's the first Be not bitter against her and this is the least Index and signification of love a civill man is never bitter against a friend or a stranger much lesse
be cleansed by a timely repentance and cover'd by the Robe of Christ we shall suffer the anger of God the scorn of Saints and Angels and our own shame in the generall assembly of all mankind This argument is most considerable to them who are tender of their precious name and sensible of honour if they rather would chuse death then a disgrace poverty rather then shame let them remember that a sinfull life will bring them to an intolerable shame at that day when all that is excellent in heaven and earth shall be summon'd as witnesses and parties in a fearfull scrutiny The summe is this All that are born of Adam shall appear before God and his Christ and all the innumerable companies of Angels and Devils shall be there and the wicked shall be afrighted with every thing they see and there they shall see those good men that taught them the waies of life and all those evill persons whom themselves have tempted into the waies of death and those who were converted upon easier termes and some of these shall shame the wicked and some shall curse them and some shall upbraid them and all shall amaze them and yet this is but the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the beginning of those evils which shall never end till eternity hath a period but concerning this they must first be judged and that 's the second generall consideration We must appear before the Judgement seat of Christ and that 's a new state of terrors and afrightments Christ who is our Saviour and is our Advocate shall then be our Judge and that will strangely change our confidences and all the face of things 2. That 's then the place and state of our appearance Before the Judgement seat of Christ For Christ shall rise from the right hand of his Father he shall descend towards us and ride upon a cloud and shall make himself illustrious by a glorious Majesty and an innumerable retinue and circumstances of terror and a mighty power and this is that which Origen affirms to be the sign of the Son of Man Remalcus de Vaux in Harpocrate divino affirms that all the Greek and Latine Fathers consentientibus animis asseverant hoc signo Crucem Christi significari do unanimously affirm that the representment of the Crosse is the sign of the Son of Man spoken of Mat. 24. 30. And indeed they affirm it very generally but Origen after his manner is singular hoc signum Crucis erit cum Dominus ad judicandum venerit so the Church used to sing and so it is in the Sibyls verses O lignum felix in quo Deus ipse pependit Nec te terra capit sed coeli tecta videbis Cum renovata Dei facies ignita micabit The sign of the Crosse is that sign of the Son of Man when the Lord shall come to Judgement and from those words of Scripture They shall look on him whom they have pierced it hath been freely entertain'd at the day of Judgement Christ shall signifie his person by something that related to his passion his crosse or his wounds or both I list not to spin this curious cobweb but Origen's opinion seems to me more reasonable and it is more agreeable to the Majesty and Power of Christ to signifie himself with proportions of his glory rather then of his humility with effects of his being exalted into Heaven rather then of his poverty and sorrowes upon Earth and this is countenanced better by some Greek copies 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 so it is commonly read the sign of the Son of man in Heaven that is say they the signe of the Son of man imprinted upon a cloud but it is in others 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the signe of the Son of man who is in the heavens not that the signe shall bee imprinted on a cloud or in any part of the heavens but that hee who is now in the heavens shall when he comes down have a signe and signification of his own that is proper to him who is there glorified and shall return in glory and he disparages the beauty of the Sun who inquires for a Rule to know when the Sun shines or the light breaks forth from its chambers of the East and the Son of man shall need no other signification but his infinite retinue and all the Angels of God worshipping him and sitting upon a cloud and leading the heavenly Host and bringing his Elect with him and being clothed with the robes of Majesty and trampling upon Devils and confounding the wicked and destroying Death but all these great things shall be invested with such strange circumstances and annexes of Mightynesse and Divinity that all the world shall confesse the glories of the Lord and this is sufficiently signified by St. Paul We shall all be set before the throne or place of Christ's judicature For it is written As I live saith the Lord every knee shall bow to me and every tongue shall confesse to God that is at the day of Judgment when wee are placed ready to receive our Sentence all knees shall bow to the holy Jesus and confesse him to be God the Lord meaning that our Lords presence shall be such as to force obeysance from Angels and Men and Devils and his addresse to Judgement shall sufficiently declare his Person and his Office and his proper glories This is the greatest Scene of Majesty that shall be in that day till the Sentence bee pronounced But there goes much before this which prepares all the world to the expectation and consequent reception of this mighty Judge of Men and Angels The Majesty of the Judge and the terrors of the Judgement shall bee spoken aloud by the immediate forerunning accidents which shall bee so great violences to the old constitutions of Nature that it shall break her very bones and disorder her till shee be destroyed St. Hierom relates out of the Jews books that their Doctors use to account 15 days of prodigie immediately before Christ's coming and to every day assigne a wonder any one of which if wee should chance to see in the days of our flesh it would affright us into the like thoughts which the old world had when they saw the countreys round about them cover'd with water and the Divine vengeance or as those poor people neer Adria and the Mediterranean sea when their houses and Cities are entring into graves and the bowells of the earth rent with convulsions and horrid tremblings The sea say they shall rise 15 cubits above the highest Mountaines and thence descend into hollownesse and a prodigious drought and when they are reduc'd again to their usuall proportions then all the beasts and creeping things the monsters and the usuall inhabitants of the sea shall be gathered together and make fearfull noyses to distract Mankind The birds shall mourne and change their song into threnes and sad accents rivers of fire shall rise from East to West and the stars
which is the second death no dying there but a being tormented burning in a lake of fire that is the second death For if life be reckoned a blessing then to be destitute of all blessing is to have no life and therefore to be intolerably miserable is this second death that is death eternall 3. And yet if God should deal with man hereafter more mercifully and proportionably to his weak nature then he does to Angels and as he admits him to repentance here so in hell also to a period of his smart even when he keeps the Angels in pain for ever yet he will never admit him to favour he shall be tormented beyond all the measure of humane ages and be destroyed for ever and ever It concerns us all who hear and beleeve these things to do as our blessed Lord will do before the day of his coming he will call and convert the Jews and strangers Conversion to God is the best preparatory to Dooms-day and it concerns all them who are in the neighbourhood and fringes of the flames of hell that is in the state of sin quickly to arise from the danger and shake the burning coals off our flesh lest it consume the marrow and the bones Exuenda est velociter de incendio sarcina priusquam flammis supervenientibus concremetur Nemo diu tutus est periculo proximus saith S. Cyprian No man is safe long that is so neer to danger for suddenly the change will come in which the Judge shall be called to Judgement and no man to plead for him unlesse a good conscience be his Advocate and the rich shall be naked as a condemned criminall to execution and there shall be no regard of Princes or of Nobles and the differences of mens account shall be forgotten and no distinction remaining but of good or bad sheep and goats blessed and accursed souls Among the wonders of the day of Judgement our blessed Saviour reckons it that men shall be marrying and giving in marriage 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 marrying and crosse marrying that is raising families and lasting greatnesse and huge estates when the world is to end so quickly and the gains of a rich purchase so very a trifle but no trifling danger a thing that can give no security to our souls but much hazards and a great charge More reasonable it is that we despise the world and lay up for heaven that we heap up treasures by giving almes and make friends of unrighteous Mammon but at no hand to enter into a state of life that is all the way a hazard to the main interest and at the best an increase of the particular charge Every degree of riches every degree of greatnesse every ambitious imployment every great fortune every eminency above our brother is a charge to the accounts of the last day He that lives temperately and charitably whose imployment is religion whose affections are fear and love whose desires are after heaven and do not dwell below that man can long and pray for the hastning of the coming of the day of the Lord. He that does not really desire and long for that day either is in a very ill condition or does not understand that he is in a good * I will not be so severe in this meditation as to forbid any man to laugh that beleeves himself shall be called to so severe a Judgement yet S. Hierom said it Coram coelo terrâ rationem reddemus totius nostrae vitae tu rides Heaven and earth shall see all the follies and basenesse of thy life and doest thou laugh That we may but we have not reason to laugh loudly and frequently if we consider things wisely and as we are concerned but if we do yet praesentis temporis ita est agenda laetitia ut sequentis judicii amaritudo nunquam recedat à memoriâ so laugh here that you may not forget your danger lest you weep for ever He that thinks most seriously and most frequently of this fearfull appearance will finde that it is better staying for his joyes till this sentence be past for then he shall perceive whether he hath reason or no. In the mean time wonder not that God who loves mankinde so well should punish him so severely for therefore the evill fall into an accursed portion because they despised that which God most loves his Son and his mercies his graces and his holy Spirit and they that do all this have cause to complain of nothing but their own follies and they shall feel the accursed consequents then when they shall see the Judge sit above them angry and severe inexorable and terrible under them an intolerable hell within them their consciences clamorous and diseased without them all the world on fire on the right hand those men glorified whom they persecuted or despised on the left hand the Devils accusing for this is the day of the Lords terror and who is able to abideat Seu vigilo intentus studiis seu dormio semper Iudicis extremi nostras tuba personet aures SERMON IV. The Returne of PRAYERS Or The Conditions of a PREVAILING PRAYER John 9. 31. Now wee know that God heareth not sinners but if any man be a worshippar of God and doth his will him be heareth IKnow not which is the greater wonder either that prayer which is a duty so easie and facile so ready and apted to the powers and skill and opportunities of every man should have so great effects and be productive of such mighty blessings or that we should be so unwilling to use so easie an instrument of procuring so much good The first declares Gods goodnesse but this publishes mans folly and weaknesse who finds in himself so much difficulty to perform a condition so easie and full of advantage But the order of this infelicity is knotted like the foldings of a Serpent all those parts of easinesse which invite us to doe the duty are become like the joynes of a bulrush not bendings but consolidations and stiffenings the very facility becomes its objection and in every of its stages wee make or finde a huge uneasinesse At first wee doe not know what we ask and when we doe then we finde difficulty to bring our wils to desire it and when that is instructed and kept in awe it mingles interest and confounds the purposes and when it is forc'd to ask honestly and severely then it wills so coldly that God hates the prayer and if it desires fervently it sometimes turns that into passion and that passion breaks into murmurs or unquietnesse or if that be avoyded the indifferency cooles into death or the fire burns violently and is quickly spent our desires are dull as a rock or fugitive as lightening either wee aske ill things earnestly or good things remissely we either court our owne danger or are not zealous for our reall safety or if we be right in our matter or earnest in our affections and lasting in
the person ungracious and despised in the Court of heaven and therefore S. Iames in his accounts concerning an effective prayer not only requires that he be a just man who prayes but his prayer must be fervent 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 an effectuall fervent prayer so our English reads it it must be an intent zealous busie operative prayer for consider what a huge undeceney it is that a man should speak to God for a thing that he values not or that he should not value a thing without which he cannot be happy or that he should spend his religion upon a trifle and if it be not a trifle that he should not spend his affections upon it If our prayers be for temporall things I shall not need to stirre up your affections to be passionate for their purchase we desire them greedily we run after them intemperately we are kept from them with huge impatience we are delayed with infinite regret we preferre them before our duty we aske them unseasonably we receive them with our own prejudice and we care not we choose them to our hurt and hinderance and yet delightin the purchase and when we do pray for them we can hardly bring our selves to it to submit to Gods will but will have them if we can whether he be pleased or no like the Parasite in the Comedy Qui comedit quod fuit quod non fuit he eat all and more then all what was set before him and what was kept from him But then for spirituall things for the interest of our souls and the affairs of the Kingdome we pray to God with just such a zeal as a man begs of the Chirurgeon to cut him of the stone or a condemned man desires his executioner quickly to put him out of his pain by taking away his life when things are come to that passe it must be done but God knows with what little complacency and desire the man makes his request And yet the things of religion and the spirit are the only things that ought to be desired vehemently and pursued passionately because God hath set such a value upon them that they are the effects of his greatest loving kindnesse they are the purchases of Christs bloud and the effect of his continuall intercession the fruits of his bloudy sacrifice and the gifts of his healing and saving mercy the graces of Gods Spirit and the only instruments of felicity and if we can have fondnesses for things indifferent or dangerous our prayers upbraid our spirits when we beg coldly and tamely for those things for which we ought to dye which are more precious then the globes of Kings and weightier then Imperiall Scepters richer then the spoils of the Sea or the treasures of the Indian hils He that is cold and tame in his prayers hath not tasted of the deliciousnesse of Religion and the goodnesse of God he is a stranger to the secrets of the Kingdome and therefore he does not know what it is either to have hunger or satiety and therefore neither are they hungry for God nor satisfied with the world but remain stupid and inapprehensive without resolution and determination never choosing clearly nor pursuing earnestly and therefore never enter into possession but alwaies stand at the gate of wearinesse unnecessary caution and perpetuall irresolution But so it is too often in our prayers we come to God because it is civill so to do and a generall custome but neither drawn thither by love nor pinch'd by spirituall necessities and pungent apprehensions we say so many prayers because we are resolved so to do and we passe through them sometimes with a little attention sometimes with none at all and can we think that the grace of Chastity can be obtain'd at such a purchase that grace that hath cost more labours then all the persecutions of faith and all the disputes of hope and all the expence of charity besides amounts to Can we expect that our sinnes should be waâ—hed by a lazie prayer Can an indifferent prayer quench the flatnes of hell or rescue us from an eternall sorrow Is lust so soon overcome that the very naming it can master it Is the Devill so slight and easie an enemy that he will fly away from us at the first word spoken without power and without vehemence Read and attend to the accents of the prayers of Saints I cryed day and night before thee O Lord my soul refused comfort my throat is dry with calling upon my God my knees are weak through fasting and Let me alone sayes God to Moses and I will not let thee go till thou hast blessed me said Jacob to the Angell And I shall tell you a short character of a fervent prayer out of the practise of S. Hierome in his Epistle to Eustochium de custodiâ virginitatis Being destitute of all help I threw my self down at the feet of Jesus I water'd his feet with tears and wiped them with my hair and mortified the lust of my flesh with the abstinence and hungry diet of many weeks I remember that in my crying to God I did frequently joyn the night and the day and never did intermit to call nor cease from beating my brest till the mercy of the Lord brought to me peace and freedome from temptation After many tears and my eyes fixed in heaven I thought my self sometimes encircled with troops of Angels and then at last I sang to God We will run after thee into the smell and deliciousnesse of thy precious ointments such a prayer as this will never return without its errand But though your person be as gracious as David or Job and your desire as holy as the love of Angels and your necessities great as a new penitent yet it pieâ—ces not the clouds unlesse it be also as loud as thunder passionate as the cries of women and clamorous as necessity And we may guesse at the degrees of importunity by the insinuation of the Apostle Let the marryed abstain for a time ut vacent orationi jejunio that they may attend to Prayer it is a great attendance and a long diligence that is promoted by such a separation and supposes a devotion that spends more then many hours for ordinary prayers and many hours of every day might well enough consist with an ordinary cohabitation but that which requires such a separation cals for a longer time and a greater attendance then we usually consider For every prayer we make is considered by God and recorded in heaven but cold prayers are not put into the account in order to effect and acceptation but are laid aside like the buds of roses which a cold wind hath nip'd into death and the discoloured tawny face of an Indian slave and when in order to your hopes of obtaining a great blessing you reckon up your prayers with which you have solicited your suit in the court of heaven you must reckon not by the number of the collects but
creation if he means to save us he must take our hearts of stone away and give us heart of flesh he must purge the old leaven and make us a new conspersion he must destroy the flesh and must breath into us Spiritum vita the celestiall breath of life without which we can neither live nor move nor have our being No man can come unto mee said Christ unlesse my Father draw him 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The Divine love must come upon us and snatch us from our imperfection enlighten our understanding move and stirre our affections open the gates of heaven turn our nature into grace entirely forgive our former prevarications take us by the hand and lead us all along and we onely contribute our assent unto it just as a childe when he is tempted to learne to goe and called upon and guided and upheld and constrain'd to put his feet to the ground lest he feel the danger by the smart of a fall just so is our nature and our state of flesh God teaches us and invites us he makes us willing and then makes us able he lends us helps and guides our hands and feet and all the way constrains us but yet so as a reasonable creature can be constrained that is made willing with arguments and new inducements by a state of circumstances and conditionall necessities and as this is a great glorification of the free grace of God and declares our manner of cooperation so it represents our nature to be weak as a childe ignorant as infancy helplesse as an orphan averse as an uninstructed person in so geat degrees that God is forced to bring us to a holy life by arts great and many as the power and principles of the Creation with this onely difference that the subject matter and object of this new creation is a free agent in the first it was purely obedientiall and passive and as the passion of the first was an effect of the same power that reduced it to act so the freedome of the second is given us in our nature by him that onely can reduce it to act for it is a freedome that cannot therefore choose because it does not understand nor taste nor perceive the things of God and therefore must by Gods grace be reduced to action as at first the whole matter of the world was by Gods Almightynesse for so God worketh in us to will and to doe of his owne good pleasure 2. But that I may instance in particulars our naturall weaknesse appears best in two things even in the two great instances of temptation pleasure and pain in both which the flesh is destroyed if it be not helped by a mighty grace as certainly as the Canes doe bow their heads before the breath of a mighty wind 1. In pleasure we see it by the publick miseries and follies of the world An old Greek said well 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 There is amongst men nothing perfect because men carry themselves as persons that are lesse then money servants of gain and interest we are like the foolish Poet that Horace tells of Gestit enim nummum in loculos dimittere posthac Securus cadat an recto stet fabula talo Let him but have money for rehearsing his Comedy he cares not whether you like it or no and if a temptation of money comes strong and violent you may as well tye a wilde dog to quietnesse with the guts of a tender Kid as suppose that most men can doe vertuously when they may sin at a great price Men avoyd poverty not onely because it hath some inconveniences for they are few and little but because it is the nurse of vertue they run from it as Children from strict Parents and Tutors from those that would confine them to reason and sober counsels that would make them labour that they may become pale and lean that they may become wise but because Riches is attended by pride and lust tyranny and oppression and hath in its hand all that it hath in its heart and Sin waits upon Wealth ready dress'd and fit for action therefore in some temptations they confesse how little their souls are they cannot stand that assault but because this passion is the daughter of Voluptuousnesse and very often is but a servant sin ministring to sensuall pleasures the great weaknesse of the flesh is more seen in the matter of carnall crimes Lust and Drunkennesse Nemo enim se adsuefacit ad vitandum ex animo evellendum ea quae molesta ei non sunt Men are so in love with pleasure that they cannot think of mortifying or crucifying their lust we doe violence to what we hate not to what we love But the weaknesse of the flesh and the empire of lust is visible in nothing so much as in the captivity and folly of wise men For you shall see some men fit to governe a Province sober in their counsells wise in the conduct of their affaires men of discourse and reason fit to sit with Princes or to treat concerning peace and warre the fate of Empires and the changes of the world yet these men shall fall at the beauty of a woman as a man dies at the blow of an Angell or gives up his breath at the sentence and decree of God Was not Solomon glorious in all things but when he bowed to Pharaoh's daughter and then to Devils and is it not published by the sentence and observation of all the world that the bravest men have been softned into effeminacy by the lisping charms and childish noyses of Women and imperfect persons A faire slave bowed the neck of stout Polydamas which was stiffe and inflexible to the contentions of an enemy and suppose a man set like the brave boy of the King of Nicomedia in the midst of temptation by a witty beauty tyed upon a bed with silk and pretty violences courted with musick and perfumes with promises and easie postures invited by opportunity and importunity by rewards and impunity by privacy and a guard what would his nature doe in this throng of evils and vile circumstances The grace of God secur'd the young Gentleman and the Spirit rode in triumph but what can flesh do in such a day of danger Is it not necessary that we take in auxiliaries from Reason and Religion from heaven and earth from observation and experience from hope and fear and cease to be what we are left we become what we ought not It is certain that in the cases of temptations to voluptuousnesse a man is naturally as the Prophet said of Ephraim like a Pigeon that hath no heart no courage no conduct no resolution no discourse but falls as the water of Nilus when it comes to its cataracts it falls infinitely and without restraint And if we consider how many drunken meetings the Sunne sees every day how many Markets and Faires and Clubs that is so many solemnities of drunkennesse are at this instant
teaches us to pray In a festivall fortune our prudence and our needs inforce us equally For though we feel not a present smart yet we are certain then is our biggest danger and if we observe how the world treats her darlings men of riches and honour of prosperity and great successe we cannot but confesse them to be the most miserable of all men as being in the greatest danger of losing their biggest interest For they are bigger then the iron hand of Law and they cannot be restrain'd with fear the hand grasps a power of doing all that which their evill heart can desire and they cannot be restrained with disability to sin they are flatter'd by all mean and base and indiligent persons which are the greatest part of mankinde but few men dare reprove a potent sinner he shall every day be flattered and seldome counselled and his great reflexions and opinions of his condition makes him impatient of reproof and so he cannot be restrain'd with modesty and therefore as the needs of the poor man his rent day and the cryes of his children and the oppression he groans under and his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 his uneasie ill sleeping care will make him run to his prayers that in heaven a new decree may be passed every day for the provisions of his daily bread so the greater needs of the rich their temptations and their dangers the flattery and the vanity the power and the pride their businesse and evill estate of the whole world upon them cals upon them to be zealous in this instance that they pray often that they pray without ceasing For there is great reason they should do so and great security and advantage if they do For he that prayes well and prayes often must needs be a good and a blessed man and truly he that does not deserves no pity for his misery For when all the troubles and dangers of his condition may turn into his good if he will but desire they should when upon such easie terms he may be happy for there is no more trouble in it then this Aske and ye shall receive that 's all that is required no more turnings and variety in their road when I say at so cheap a rate a poor man may be provided for and a rich man may escape damnation they that refuse to apply themselves to this remedy quickly earnestly zealously and constantly deserves the smart of his poverty and the care of it and the scorne if he be poor and if he be rich it is fit he should because he desires it dye by the evils of his proper danger * It was observed by Cassian orationibus maximè infidiantur Daemones the Devill is more busie to disturb our prayers then to hinder any thing else For else it cannot be imagined why we should be brought to pray so seldome and to be so listlesse to them and so trifling to them No The Devill knowes upon what hard terms he stands with the praying man he also knows that it is a mighty cmanation of Gods infinite goodnesse and a strange desire of saving mankinde that he hath to so easie a duty promised such mighty blessings For God knowing that upon hard terms we would not accept of heaven it self and yet hell was so intolerable a state that God who loved us would affixe heaven to a state of prayer and devotion this because the Devill knowes to be one of the greatest arts of the Divine mercy he labours infinitely to supplant and if he can but make men unwilling to pray or to pray coldly or to pray seldome he secures his interest and destroys the mans and it is infinitely strange that he can and doth prevail so much in this so unreasonable temptation Opposuisti nubem ne transirot oratio the mourning Prophet complained there was a cloud passed between heaven and the prayer of Judah a little thing God knowes it was a wall which might have been blown down with a few hearty sighs and a few penitentiall tears or if the prayers had ascended in a full and numerous body themselves would have broken through that little partition but so the Devill prevails often opponit nubem he claps a cloud between some little objection a stranger is come or my head akes or the Church is too cold or I have letters to write or I am not disposed or it is not yet time or the time is past these and such as these are the clouds the Devill claps between heaven and us but these are such impotent objections that they were as soon confuted as pretended by all men that are not fools or professed enemies of Religion but that they are clouds which sometimes look like Lions and Bears Castles and wals of fire armies and horses and indeed are any thing that a man will fancy and the smallest article of objection managed and conducted by the Devils arts and meeting with a wretchlesse carelesse indevout spirit is a Lion in the way and a deep river it is impassable and it is impregnable 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as the Sophister said in the Greek Comedy Clouds become any thing as they are represented Wolves to Simon Harts to Cleonymus For the Devill fits us with clouds according as we can be abused and if we love affairs of the world he can contrive its circumstances so that they shall crosse our prayers and so it is in every instance and the best way to cure this evill is prayer pray often and pray zealously and the sun of righteousnesse will scatter these clouds and warm our hearts with his holy fires But it is in this as in all acquired habits the habit makes the actions easie and pleasant but this habit cannot be gotten without frequent actions habits are the daughters of action but then they nurse their mother and produce daughters after her image but far more beautifull and prosperous For in frequent prayer there is so much rest and pleasure that as soon as ever it is perceived the contrary temptation appears unreasonable none are so unwilling to pray as they that pray seldome for they that do pray often and with zeal and passion and desire feel no trouble so great as when they are forced to omit their holy offices and hours of prayer It concerns the Devils interest to keep us from all the experience of the rewards of a frequent and holy prayer and so long as you will not try and taste how good and gracious the Lord is to the praying man so long you cannot see the evill of your coldnesse and lukewarm state but if you would but try though it be but for curiosity sake and informe your selves in the vanity of things and the truth of pretences and the certainty of Theologicall propositions you should finde your selves taken in a golden snare which will tye you to nothing but felicity and safety and holinesse and pleasures But then the caution which I intended to insert is this that
burning basons do with intolerable circles of reflected fire Such are the principles of a sinners Philosophy And no wiser are his hopes all his hopes that he hath is that he shall have time to repent of that which he chooses greedily that he whom he every day provokes will save him whether he will or no that he can in an instant or in a day make amends for all the evils of 40 years or else that he shall be saved whether he does or no that heaven is to be had for a sigh or a short prayer and yet hell shall not be consequent to the affections and labours and hellish services of a whole life he goes on and cares not he hopes without a promise and refuses to beleeve all the threatnings of God but beleeves he shall have a mercy for which he never had a revelation If this be knowledge or wisdome then there is no such thing as folly no such disease as madnesse But then consider that there are some sins whose very formality is a lye Superstition could not be in the world if men did beleeve God to be good and wise free and mercifull not a tyrant not an unreasonable exactor no man would dare do in private what he fears to do in publick if he did know that God sees him there and will bring that work of darknesse into light But he is so foolish as to think that if he sees nothing nothing sees him for if men did perceive God to be present and yet do wickedly it is worse with them then I have yet spoke of and they beleeve another lie that to be seen by man will bring more shame then to be discerned by God or that the shame of a few mens talk is more intolerable then to be confounded before Christ and his army of Angels and Saints and all the world * He that excuses a fault by telling a lie beleeves it better to be guilty of two faults then to be thought guilty of one and every hypocrite thinks it not good to be holy but to be accounted so is a fine thing that is that opinion is better then reality and that there is in vertue nothing good but the fame of it * And the man that takes revenge relies upon this foolish proposition that his evill that he hath already suffer'd growes lesse if another suffers the like that his wound cannot smart if by my hand he dies that gave it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the sad accents and dolefull tunes are increased by the number of mourners but the sorrow is not at all lessened I shall not need to thrust into this account the other evils of mankinde that are the events of ignorance but introduc'd by sin such as are our being moved by what we see strongly and weakly by what we understand that men are moved rather by a fable then by a syllogisme by parables then by demonstrations by examples then by precepts by seeming things then by reall by shadowes then by substances that men judge of things by their first events and measure the events by their own short lives or shorter observations that they are credulous to beleeve what they wish and incredulous of what makes against them measuring truth or falshood by measures that cannot fit them as foolishly as if they should judge of a colour by the dimensions of a body or feel musick with the hand they make generall conclusions from particular instances and take account of Gods actions by the measures of a man Men call that justice that is on their side and all their own causes are right and they are so alwayes they are so when they affirm them in their youth and they are so when they deny them in their old age and they are confident in all their changes and their first error which they now see does not make them modest in the proposition which they now maintain for they do not understand that what was may be so again So foolish and ignorant was I said David and as it were a beast before thee Ambition is folly and temerity is ignorance and confidence never goes without it and impudence is worse and zeal or contention is madnesse and prating is want of wisdome and lust destroyes it and makes a man of a weak spirit and a cheap reasoning and there are in the Catalogue of of sins very many which are directly kinds and parts and appendages of ignorance such as are blindnesse of minde affected ignorance and wilfull neglect of hearing the word of God resolved incredulity forgetfulnesse of holy things lying and beleeving a lye this is the fruit of sin this is the knowledge that the Devill promised to our first parents as the rewards of disobedience and although they sinn'd as weakly and fondly 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 upon as slight grounds and trifling a temptation and as easie a deception as many of us since yet the causes of our ignorance are increased by the multiplication of our sins and if it was so bad in the green tree it is much worse in the dry and no man is so very a fool as the sinner and none are wise but the servants of God 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The wise Chaldees and the wiser Hebrewes which worship God chastly and purely they only have a right to be called wise all that do not so are fools and ignorants neither knowing what it is to be happy nor how to purchase it ignorant of the noblest end and of the competent means towards it they neither know God nor themselves and no ignorance is greater then this or more pernicious What man is there in the world that thinks himself covetous or proud and yet millions are who like Harpaste think that the house is dark but not themselves Vertue makes our desires temperate and regular it observes our actions condemns our faults mortifies our lusts watches all our dangers and temptations but sin makes our desires infinite and we would have we cannot tell what we strive that we may forget our faults we labour that we may neither remember nor consider we justifie our errors and call them innocent and that which is our shame we miscall honour and our whole life hath in it so many weak discourses and trifling propositions that the whole world of sinners is like the Hospitall of the insensati madnesse and folly possesses the greater part of mankinde What greater madnesse is there then to spend the price of a whole farm in contention for three sheaves of corn and yet tantum pectora caecae noctis habent this is the wisdome of such as are contentious and love their own will more then their happinesse their humour more then their peace Furor est post omnia perdere naulum Men lose their reason and their religion and themselves at last for want of understanding and all the wit and discourses by which sin creeps in are but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 frauds of the tongue and consultations of
vain and miserable hodiè tam posthume vivere serum est Ille sapit quisquis posthume vixit heri Martial l. 2. ep 90. Well! but what will you have a man do that hath lived wickedly and is now cast upon his death-bed shall this man despair and neglect all the actions of piety and the instruments of restitution in his sicknesse No. God forbid Let him do what he can then It is certain it will be little enough for all those short gleames of piety and flashes of lightning will help towards the alleviating some degrees of misery and if the man recovers they are good beginnings of a renewed piety and Ahabs tears and humiliation though it went no further had a proportion of a reward though nothing to the portions of eternity So that he that sayes it is every day necessary to repent cannot be supposed to discourage the piety of any day a death-bed piety when things are come to that sad condition may have many good purposes therefore even then neglect nothing that can be done Well! But shall such persons despair of salvation To them I shall onely return this That they are to consider the conditions which on one side God requires of us and on the other side whether they have done accordingly Let them consider upon what termes God hath promised salvation and whether they have made themselves capable by performing their part of the obligation If they have not I must tell them that not to hope where God hath made no promise is not the sin of despair but the misery of despair A man hath no ground to hope that ever he shall be made an Angel and yet that not hoping is not to be called despair and no man can hope for heaven without repentance And for such a man to despair is not the sin but the misery If such persons have a promise of heaven let them shew it and hope it and enjoy it if they have no promise they must thank themselves for bringing themselves into a condition without the Covenant without a promise hopelesse and miserable But will not trusting in the merits of Jesus Christ save such a man For that we must be tried by the word of God In which there is no contract at all made with a dying person that hath lived in Name a Christian in practise a Heathen and we shall dishonour the sufferings and redemption of our blessed Saviour if we make them to be a Umbrello to shelter our impious and ungodly living But that no such person may after a wicked life repose himself in his deathbed upon Christs merits observe but these two places of scripture Our Saviour â—esus Christ who gave himself for us what to do that we might live as we list and hope to be saved by his merits No But that he might redeem us from all iniquity and purifie to himself a peculiar people zealous of good works These things speak and exhort saith Saint Paul But more plainly yet in S. Peter Christ bare our sins in his own body on the tree To what end that we being dead unto sin should live unto righteousnesse since therefore our living a holy life is the end of Christs dying that sad and holy death for us he that trusts on it to evil purposes and to excuse his vicious life does as much as lies in him make void the very purpose and designe of Christs passion and dishonours the blood of the everlasting covenant which covenant was confirmed by the blood of Christ but as it brought peace from God so it requires a holy life from us But why may not we be saved as well as the thief upon the crosse even because our case is nothing alike When Christ dies once more for us we may look for such another instance not till then But this thiefe did but then come to Christ he knew him not before and his case was as if a Turk or heathen should be converted to Christianity and be baptized and enter newly into the Covenant upon his deathbed Then God pardons all his sins and so God does to Christians when they are baptized or first give up their names to Christ by a voluntarie confirmation of their baptismal vow but when they have once entred into the Covenant they must performe what they promise and to what they are obliged The thief had made no contract with God in Jesus Christ and therefore failed of none onely the defaillances of the state of ignorance Christ paid for at the thiefes admission But we that have made a covenant with God in baptisme and failed of it all our dayes and then returne at night when we cannot work have nothing to plead for our selves because we have made all that to be uselesse to us which God with so much mercy and miraculous wisdom gave us to secure our interest and hopes of heaven And therefore let no Christian man who hath covenanted with God to give him the service of his life think that God will be answered with the sighs and prayers of a dying man for all that great obligation which lies upon us cannot be transacted in an instant when we have loaded our souls with sin and made them empty of vertue we cannot so soon grow up to a perfect man in Christ Jesus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 you cannot have an apple or a cherry but you must stay its proper periods and let it blossom and knot and grow and ripen and in due season we shall reap if we faint not saith the Apostle far much lesse may we expect that the fruits of repentance and the issues and degrees of holinesse shall be gathered in a few dayes or houres 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 you must not expect such fruits in a little time nor with little labour Suffer therefore not your selves to be deceived by false principles and vain confidences for no man can in a moment root out the long contracted habits of vice nor upon his deathbed make use of all that variety of preventing accompanying and persevering grace which God gave to man in mercy because man would need it all because without it he could not be saved nor upon his death-bed can he exercise the duty of mortification nor cure his drunkennesse then nor his lust by any act of Christian discipline nor run with patience nor resist unto blood nor endure with long sufferance but he can pray and groan and call to God and resolve to live well when he is dying but this is but just as the Nobles of Xerxes when in a storm they were to lighten the ship to preserve their Kings life they did 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 they did their obeysance and leaped into the sea so I fear doe these men pray and mourn and worship and so leap overboard into an ocean of eternal and into lerable calamity From which God deliver us and all faithful people Hunc volo laudari qui sine morte potest Mart. ep
was made prince of the Catholickchurch and as our Head was so must the members be God made the same covenant with us that he did with his most holy Son Christ obtaind no better conditions for us then for himself that was not to be looked for the servant must not be above his master it is well if he be as his Master if the world persecuted him they will also persecute us and from the dayes of John the Baptist the kingdome of Heaven suffers violence and the violent take it by force not the violent doers but the sufferers of violence for though the old law was established in the promises of temporal prosperity yet the gospel is founded in temporal adversity It is directly a covenant of sufferings and sorrows for now the time is come that judgment must begin at the house of God that 's the sence and designe of the text and I intend it as a direct antinomy to the common perswasions of tyrannous carnal and vicious men who reckon nothing good but what is prosperous for though that proposition had many degrees of truth in the beginning of the law yet the case is now altered God hath established its contradictory and now every good man must look for persecution and every good cause must expect to thrive by the sufferings and patience of holy persons and as men do well and suffer evil so they are dear to God and whom he loves most he afflicts most and does this with a designe of the greatest mercy in the world 1. Then the state of the Gospel is a state of sufferings not of temporal prosperities this was foretold by the prophets a fountain shall go out of the house of the Lord irrigabit torrentem spinarum so it is in the vulgar latin and it shall water the torrent of thorns that is the state or time of the gospel which like a torrent shall cary all the world before it and like a torrent shall be fullest in ill weather and by its banks shall grow nothing but thorns and briers sharp afflictions temporal infelicities and persecution This sense of the words is more fully explained in the book of the prophet Isa. upon the ground of my people shall thorns and briers come up how much more in all the houses of the city of rejoycing which prophecy is the same in the stile of the prophets that my text is in the stile of the Apostles the house of God shall be watered with the dew of heaven and there shall spring up briers in it judgement must begin there but how much more in the houses of the city of rejoycing how much more among them that are at ease in Sion that serve their desires that satisfie their appetites that are given over to their own hearts lust that so serves themselves that they never serve God that dwell in the city of rejoycing they are like Dives whose portion was in this life who went in fine linnen and fared deliciously every day they indeed trample upon their briers and thorns and suffer them not to grow in their houses but the roots are in the ground and they are reserved for fuel of wrath in the day of everlasting burning Thus you see it was prophesied now see how it was performed Christ was the captain of our sufferings and he began He entred into the world with all the circumstances of poverty he had a star to illustrate his birth but a stable for his bed chamber and a manger for his cradle the angels sang hymnes when he was born but he was cold and cried uneasy and unprovided he lived long in the trade of a carpenter he by whom God made the world had in his first years the businesse of a mean and an ignoble trade he did good where ever he went and almost where ever he went was abused he deserved heaven for his obedience but found a crosse in his way thither and if ever any man had reason to expect fair usages from God and to be dandled in lap of ease softnes and a prosperous fortune he it was onely that could deserve that or any thing that can be good But after he had chosen to live a life of vertue of poverty and labour he entred into a state of death whose shame and trouble was great enough to pay for the sins of the whole world And I shall choose to expresse this mystery in the vvords of scripture he died not by a single or a sudden death but he was the Lambe slain from the beginning of the world For he was massacred in Abel saith Saint Paulinus he was tossed upon the waves of the Sea in the person of Noah It was he that went out of his Countrey when Abraham was called from Charran and wandred from his native soil He was offered up in Isaac persecuted in Jacob betrayed in Joseph blinded in Sampson affronted in Moses sawed in Esay cast into the dungeon with Jeremy For all these were types of Christ suffering and then his passion continued even after his resurrection for it is he that suffers in all his members it is he that endures the contradiction of all sinners it is he that is the Lord of life and is crucified again and put to open shame in all the sufferings of his servants and sins of rebels and defiances of Apostates and renegados and violence of Tyrants and injustice of usurpers and the persecutions of his Church It is he that is stoned in Saint Stephen flayed in the person of Saint Bartholomew he was rosted upon Saint Laurence his Gridiron exposed to lyons in Saint Ignatius burned in Saint Polycarpe frozen in the lake where stood fourty Martyrs of Cappadocia Unigenitus enim Dei ad peragendum mortis suae sacramentum consummavit omne genus humanarum passionum said Saint Hilary The Sacrament of Christs death is not to be accomplished but by suffering all the sorrows of humanity All that Christ came for was or was mingled with sufferings For all those little joyes which God sent either to recreate his person or to illustrate his office were abated or attended with afflictions God being more carefull to establish in him the Covenant of sufferings then to refresh his sorrows Presently after the Angels had finished their Halleluiahs he was forced to fly to save his life and the air became full of shrikes of the desolate mothers of Bethlehem for their dying Babes God had no sooner made him illustrious with a voyce from heaven and the descent of the Holy Ghost upon him in the waters of Baptisme But he was delivered over to be tempted and assaulted by the Devil in the wildernesse His transfiguration was a bright ray of glory but then also he entred into a cloud and was told a sad story what he was to suffer at Jerusalem And upon Palme-Sunday when he rode triumphantly into Jerusalem and was adorned with the acclamations of a King and a God he wet the Palmes with
the contingencies and variety of mortality yet those wicked persons who fell by the designe of Gods anger were made examples unto others and instances of Gods forbearance to the Nation and yet this forbearance was such that although God preserved the Nation in being and in title to the first promises yet all the particular persons that came from Egypt died in the wildernesse two onely excepted 2. And I desire you to observe this that you may truly estimate the arts of the Divine justice and mercy For all the world being one continuall and intire argument of the Divine mercy we are apt to abuse that mercy to vain confidences and presumption First mistaking the end as if Gods mercy would be indulgent to our sin to which it is the greatest enemy in the world for it is a certain truth that the mercy of God is as great an enemy to sin as his justice is and as Gods justice is made the hand-maid of his mercy to cure sin so it is the servant also and the instrument to avenge our despight and contempt of mercy and in all the way where a difference can be there justice is the lesse principall And it were a great signe of folly and a huge mistake to think our Lord and friends do us offices of kindnesse to make themselves more capable of affronts and that our fathers care over us and provisions for us can tempt us to disobey them The very purpose of all those emanations is that their love may return in duty and their providence be the parent of our prudence and their care be crowned with our piety and then we shall all be crowned and shall return like the yeer the ends into its own circle and the fathers and the children the benefactours and the beneficiary shall knit the wreath and binde each other in the eternall inclosures and circlings of immortality * but besides the men who presume to sin because of Gods mercy do mistake the very end and designe of Gods mercy they also mistake the Oeconomy of it and the manner of its ministration 3 For if God suffers men to go on in sins and punishes them not it is not a mercy it is not a forbearance it is a hardning them a consigning them to ruine and reprobation and themselves give the best argument to prove it for they continue in their sin they multiply their iniquity and every day grow more enemy to God and that is no mercy that increases their hostility and enmity with God A prosperous iniquity is the most unprosperous condition in the whole world when he slew them that sought him and turned them early and enquired after God but as long as they prevailed upon their enemies then they forgat that God was their strength and the high God was their redeemer It was well observed by the Persian Embassadour of old when he was telling the King a sad story of the overthrow of all his army by the Athenians he addes this of his own that the day before the fight the young Persian gallants being confident they should destroy their enemies were drinking drunk and railing at the timerousnesse and fears of religion and against all their Gods saying there were no such things and that all things came by chance industry nothing by the providence of the supreme power But the next day when they had fought unprosperously and flying from their enemies who were eager in their pursuit they came to the river strymon which was so frozen that their boats could not lanch and yet it began to thaw so that they feared the ice would not bear them Then you should see the bold gallants that the day before said there was no God most timorously and superstitiously fall upon their faces and begged of God that the river strymon might bear them over from their enemies What wisdom and Philosophy and perpetual experience and revelation and promises and blessings cannot do a mighty fear can it can allay the confidences of a bold lust and an imperious sin and soften our spirit into the lownesse of a Childe our revenge into the charity of prayers our impudence into the blushings of a chidden girle and therefore God hath taken a course proportionable for he is not so unmercifully merciful as to give milk to an infirm lust and hatch the egge to the bignesse of a cocatrice and therefore observe how it is that Gods mercy prevailes over all his works it is even then when nothing can be discerned but his judgements For as when a famin had been in Israel in the dayes of Ahab for three years and a half when the angry prophet Elijah met the King and presently a great winde arose and the dust blew into the eyes of them that walked abroad and the face of the heavens was black and all tempest yet then the prophet was the most gentle and God began to forgive and the heavens were more beautiful then when the Sun puts on the brightest ornaments of a bridegrome going from his chambers of the east so it is in the Oeconomy of the divine mercy when God makes our faces black and the windes blow so loud till the cordage cracks and our gay fortunes split and our houses are dressed with Cypresse and yew and the mourners go about the streets this is nothing but the pompa misericordiae this is the funeral of our sins dressed indeed with emblems of mourning and proclaimed with sad accents of death but the sight is refreshing as the beauties of the field which God hath blessed and the founds are healthful as the noise of a physitian This is that riddle spoken of in the psalme Calix in manu Dom. vini meri plenus misto the pure impure the mingled unmingled cup for it is a cup in which God hath poured much of his severity and anger and yet it is pure and unmingled for it is all mercy and so the riddle is resolved and our cup is full and made more wholsome lymphatum crescit dulcescit laedere nescit it is some justice and yet it is all mercy the very justice of God being an act of mercy a forbearance of the man or the nation and the punishing the sin Thus it was in the case of the children of Israel when they ran after the bleating of the idolatrous calves Moses prayed passionately and God heard his prayer and forgave their sin upon them And this was Davids observation of the manner of Gods mercy to them Thou wast a God and forgavest them though thou tookest veangeance of their inventions for Gods mercy is given to us by parts and to certain purposes sometimes God onely so forgives us that he does not cut us off in the sin but yet layes on a heavy load of judgements so he did to his people when he sent them to schoole under the discipline of 70 years captivity somtimes he makes a judgement lesse and forgives in respect of the degree of the
instance of providence that by the great religion and piety of the first Professors Christianity might be firmly planted and unshaken by scandall and hardened by persecution and that these first lights might be actuall Precedents for ever and Copies for us to transcribe in all descending ages of Christianity that thither we might run to fetch oil to enkindle our extinguished lamps But then piety was so universall that it might well be enjoyned by Saint Paul that if a brother walked disorderly the Christians should avoid his company He forbad them not to accompany with the Heathens that walked disorderly for then a man must have gone out of the world But they were not to endure so much as to eat with or to salute a disorderly brother an ill living Christian But now if we should observe this canon of Saint Paul and refuse to eat or to converse with a fornicatour or a drunkard or a perjured person or covetous we must also go out of the world for a pious or a holy person is now as rare as a disorderly Christian was at first and as Christianity is multiplied every where in name and title so it is destroyed in life essence and proper operation and we have very great reason to fear that Christs name will serve us to no end but to upbraid our basenesse and his person onely to be our Judge and his lawer as so many bills of accusation and his graces and helps offered us but as aggravations of our unworthinesse and our baptisme but an occasion of vow-breach and the holy Communion but an act of hypocrisie formality or sacrilege and all the promises of the Gospel but as pleasant dreams and the threatnings but as arts of affrightment for Christianity lasted pure and zealous it kept its rules and observed its own lawes for three hundred yeers or thereabouts so long the Church remained a Virgin For so long they were warmed with their first fires and kept under discipline by the rod of persecution but it hath declined almost fourteen hundred yeers together prosperity and pride wantonnesse and great fortunes ambition and interest false doctrine upon mistake and upon designe the malice of the Devil and the arts of all his instruments the want of zeal and a wearinesse of spirit filthy examples and a disreputation of piety and a strict life seldome precedents and infinite discouragements have caused so infinite a declension of piety and holy living that what Papirius Massonius one of their own said of the Popes of Rome In pontificibus nemo hodrè sanctitatem requirit optimi putantur si vel leviter mali sint vel minus boni quam caeteri mortales esse solent No man looks for holines in the Bishops of Rome those are the best Popes who are not extremly wicked the same is too true of the greatest part of Christians Men are excellent persons if they be not traytors or adulterous oppressors or injurious drunkards or scandalous if they be not as this publican as the vilest person with whom they converse Nunc si depositum non inficiatur amicus Si reddat veterem cum totâ aerugine fllem Prodigiosa fides Thuscis digna libellis Quaeque coronatâ lustrari debeat agnâ Juven Sat. 13. He that is better then the dregs of his own age whose religion is something above prophanesse and whose sobriety is a step or two from down right intemperance whose discourse is not swearing nor yet apt to edifie whose charity is set out in pity and a gentle yerning and saying God help whose alms are contemptible and his devotion infrequent yet as things are now he is unus è mitibus one of a thousand and he stands eminent and conspicuous in the valleys and lower grounds of the present piety for a bank is a mountain upon a levell but what is rare and eminent in the manners of men this day would have been scandalous and have deserved the rod of an Apostle if it had been confronted with the fervours and rare devotion and religion of our fathers in the Gospel Men of old looked upon themselves as they stood by the examples and precedents of Martyrs and compared their piety to the life of Saint Paul and estimated their zeal by the flames of the Boanerges Saint James and his brother and the Bishops were thought reproveable as they fell short of the ordinary government of Saint Peter and Saint John and the assemblies of Christians were so holy that every meeting had religion enough to hallow a house and convert it to a Church and every day of feasting was a Communion and every fasting day was a day of repentance and alms and every day of thanksgiving was a day of joy and alms and religion begun all their actions and prayer consecrated them and they ended in charity and were not polluted with designe they despised the world heartily and pursued after heaven greedily they knew no ends but to serve God and to be saved and had no designes upon their neighbours but to lead them to God and to felicity till Satan full of envy to see such excellent dayes mingled covetousnesse and ambition within the throngs and conventions of the Church and a vice crept into an office and then the mutuall confidence grew lesse and so charity was lessened and heresies crept in and then faith began to be sullied and pride crept in and then men snatched at offices not for the work but for the dignity and then they served themselves more then God and the Church till at last it came to the passe where now it is that the Clergy live lives no better then the Laity and the Laity are stooped to imitate the evil customes of strangers and enemies of Christianity so that we should think Religion in a good condition so that men did offer up to God but the actions of an ordinary even and just life without the scandall and allayes of a great impiety But because such is the nature of things that either they grow towards perfection or decline towards dissolution There is no proper way to secure it but by setting its growth forward for religion hath no station or naturall periods if it does not grow better it grows much worse not that it alwayes returns the man into scandalous sins but that it establishes and fixes him in a state of indifferency and lukewarmnesse and he is more averse to a state of improvement and dies in an incurious ignorant and unrelenting condition But grow in grace That 's the remedy and that would make us all wise and happy blessed in this world and sure of heaven Concerning which we are to consider first what the estate of grace is into which every one of us must be entred that we may grow in it secondly the proper parts acts and offices of growing in grace 3. The signes consequences and proper significations by which if we cannot perceive the growing yet afterwards we may perceive that we are
that gets most gets too little to be exchanged for a temporal life And thirdly I shall apply it to your practise and make material considerations 1. First then suppose a man gets all the world what is it that he gets It is a bubble and a Phantasme and hath no reality beyond a present transient use a thing that is impossible to be enjoyed because its fruits and usages are transmitted to us by parts and by succession He that hath all the world if we can suppose such a man cannot have a dish of fresh summer fruits in the midst of winter not so much as a green fig and very much of its possessions is so hid so fugacious and of so uncertain purchase that it is like the riches of the sea to the Lord of the shore all the fish and wealth within all its hollownesses are his but he is never the better for what he cannot get All the shell fishes that produce pearl produce them not for him and the bowels of the earth shall hide her treasures in undiscovered retirements so that it will signifie as much to this great purchaser to be intitled to an inheritance in the upper region of the aire he is so far from possessing all its riches that he does not so much as know of them nor understand the Philosophy of her minerals 2. I consider that he that is the greatest possessor in the world enjoyes its best and most noble parts and those which are of most excellent perfection but in common with the inferiour persons and the most despicable of his kingdom Can the greatest Prince inclose the Sun and set one little star in his cabinet for his own use or secure to himself the gentle and benigne influence of any one constellation Are not his subjects fields bedewed with the same showers that water his gardens of pleasure Nay those things which he esteems his ornament and his singularity of his possessions are they not of more use to others then to himself For suppose his garments splendid and shining like the robe of a cherub or the clothing of the fields all that he that wears them enjoyes is that they keep him warm and clean and modest and all this is done by clean and lesse pompous vestments the beauty of them which distinguishes him from others is made to please the eyes of the beholders and he is like a fair bird or the meretricious painting of a wanton woman made wholly to be looked on that is to be enjoyed by every one but himself and the fairest face and the sparkling eye cannot perceive or enjoy their own beauties but by reflection It is I that am pleased with beholding his gayety and the gay man in his greatest bravery is onely pleased because I am pleased with the sight so borrowing his little and imaginary complacency from the delight that I have not from any inherency of his own possession The poorest Artizan of Rome walking in Caesars gardens had the same pleasures which they ministred to their Lord and although it may be he was put to gather fruits to eat from another place yet his other senses were delighted equally with Caesars the birds made him as good musick the flowers gave him as sweet smells he there sucked as good aire and delighted in the beauty and order of the place for the same reason and upon the same perception as the prince himselfe save onely that Caesar paid for all that pleasure vast summes of money the blood and treasure of a province which the poor man had for nothing 3. Suppose a man Lord of all the world for still we are but in supposition yet since every thing is received not according to its own greatnesse and worth but according to the capacity of the receiver it signifies very little as to our content or to the riches of our possession If any man should give to a Lion a fair meadow full of hay or a thousand quince trees or should give to the goodly Bull the master and the fairest of the whole heard a thousand fair Stags If a man should present to a childe a ship laden with Persian carpets and the ingredients of the rich scarlet all these being either disproportionate to the appetite or to the understanding could adde nothing of content and might declare the freenesse of the presenter but they upbraid the incapacity of the receiver and so it does if God should give the whole world to any man He knows not what to do with it he can use no more but according to the capacities of a man He can use nothing but meat and drink and cloths and infinite riches that can give him changes of raiment every day and a full table do but give him a clean trencher every bit he eats it signifies no more but wantonnesse and variety to the same not to any new purposes He to whom the world can be given to any purpose greater then a private estate can minister must have new capacities created in him He needs the understanding of an Angel to take the accounts of his estate He had need have a stomach like fire or the grave for else he can eat no more then one of his healthful subjects and unlesse he hath an eye like the Sun and a motion like that of a thought and a bulk as big as one of the orbs of heaven the pleasures of his eye can be no greater then to behold the beauty of a little prospect from a hill or to look upon the heap of gold packt up in a little room or to dote upon a cabinet of Jewels better then which there is no man that sees at all but sees every day For not to name the beauties and sparkling diamonds of heaven a mans or a womans or a haukes eye is more beauteous and excellent then al the Jewels of his crown And when we remember that a beast who hath quicker senses then a man yet hath not so great delight in the fruition of any object because he wants understanding and the power to make reflex acts upon his perception it will follow that understanding and knowledge is the greatest instrument of pleasure and he that is most knowing hath a capacity to become happy which a lesse knowing prince or a rich person hath not and in this onely a mans capacity is capable of enlargement but then although they onely have power to relish any pleasure rightly who rightly understand the nature and degrees and essences and ends of things yet they that do so understand also the vanity and the unsatisfyingnesse of the things of this world so that the relish which could not be great but in a great understanding appears contemptible because its vanity appears at the same time the understanding sees all and sees thorow it 4. The greatest vanity of this world is remarkable in this that all its joyes summed up together are not big enough to counterpoise the evil of one sharp disease or
bituminous matter and the Spirit of God knew right well the worst expression was not bad enough 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 so our blessed Saviour calls it the outer darknesse that is not onely an abjection from the beatifick regions where God and his Angels and his Saints dwell for ever but then there is a positive state of misery expressed by darknesses 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as two Apostles Saint Peter and Saint Jude call it The blacknesse of darknesse for ever In which although it is certain that God whose Justice there rules will inflict but just so much as our sins deserve and not superadde degrees of undeserved misery as he does to the Saints of glory for God gives to blessed souls in heaven more infinitely more then all their good works could possibly deserve and therefore their glory is infinitely bigger glory then the pains of hell are great pains yet because Gods Justice in hell rules alone without the allayes and sweeter abatements of mercy they shall have pure and unmingled misery no pleasant thought to refresh their wearinesse no comfort in an other accident to alleviate their pressures no waters to cool their flames but because when there is a great calamity upon a man every such man thinks himself the most miserable and though there are great degrees of pain in hell yet there are none perceived by him that thinks he suffers the greatest It follows that every man that loses his soul in this darknesse is miserable beyond all those expressions which the tortures of this world could furnish to the Writers of holy Scripture But I shall choose to represent this consideration in that expression of our blessed Saviour Mark the 9. the 44. verse which himself took out of the Prophet Esay the 66. verse the 24. Where the worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched this is the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 spoken of by Daniel the Prophet for although this expression was a prediction of that horrid calamity and abscision of the Jewish Nation when God poured out a full vial of his wrath upon the crucifiers of his Son and that this which was the greatest calamity which ever did or ever shall happen to a Nation Christ with great reason took to describe the calamity of accursed souls as being the greatest instance to signifie the greatest torment yet we must observe that the difference of each state makes the same words in the several cases to be of infinite distinction The worm stuck close to the Jewish Nation and the fire of Gods wrath flamed out till they were consumed with a great and unheard of destruction till many millions did die accursedly and the small remnant became vagabonds and were reserved like broken pieces after a storm to shew the greatnesse of the storm and misery of the shipwrack but then this being translated to signifie the state of accursed souls whose dying is a continual perishing who cannot cease to be it must mean an eternity of duration in proper and naturall significations And that we may understand it fully observe the places In the 34. Esa. 8. The Prophet prophecies of the great destruction of Jerusalem for all her great iniquities It is the day of the Lords vengeance and the yeer of recompences for the controversie of Sion and the streams thereof shall be turned into pitch and the dust thereof into brimstone and the land thereof shall become burning pitch It shall not be quenched night nor day the smoak thereof shall go up for ever from generation to generation It shall lie wast none shall passe thorow it for ever and ever This is the final destruction of the Nation but this destruction shall have an end because the Nation shall end and the anger also shall end in its own period even then when God shall call the Jews into the common inheritance with the Gentiles and all the sons of God And this also was the period of their worme as it is of their fire The fire of the Divine vengeance upon the Nation which was not to be extinguished till they were destroyed as we see it come to passe And thus also in Saint Jude the Angels who kept not their first state are said to be reserved by God in everlasting chains under darknesse which word everlasting signifies not absolutely to eternity but to the utmost end of that period for so it follows unto the judgement of the great day that everlasting lasts no longer and in verse the seventh the word eternal is just so used The men of Sodom and Gomorrha are set forth for an example suffering the vengeance of eternal fire that is of a fire which burned till they were quite destroyed and the cities and the countrey with an irreparable ruine never to be rebuilt and reinhabited as long as this world continues The effect of which observations is this That these words for ever everlasting eternal the never-dying worme the fire unquenchable being words borrowed by our blessed Saviour and his Apostles from the stile of the old Testament must have a signification just proportionable to the state in which they signifie so that as this worme when it signifies a temporal infliction meanes a worme that never ceases giving torment till the body is consumed So when it is translated to an immortall state it must signifie as much in that proportion that eternal that everlasting hath no end at all because the soul cannot be killed in the natural sense but is made miserable and perishing for ever that is the worme shall not die so long as the soul shall be unconsumed the fire shall not be quenched till the period of an immortall nature comes and that this shall be absolutely for ever without any restriction appears unanswerably in this because the same for ever that is for the blessed souls the same for ever is for the accursed souls but the blessed souls that die in the Lord henceforth shall die no more death hath no power over them for death is destroyed it is swallowed up in victory saith Saint Paul and there shall be no more death saith Saint John Revel 21. 4. So that because for ever hath no end till the thing or the duration it self have end in the same sense in which the Saints and Angels give glory to God for ever in the same sense the lost souls shall suffer the evils of their sad inheritance and since after this death of nature which is a separation of soul and body there remains no more death but this second death this eternal perishing of miserable accursed souls whose duration must be eternall It follows that the worm of conscience and the unquenchable fire of hell have no period at all but shall last as long as God lasts or the measures of a proper eternity that they who provoke God to wrath by their base unreasonable and sottish practises may know what their portion shall be in the everlasting habitations and yet suppose that Origens
great experience and a strict observation and good company all which being either wholly or in part out of our power may be expected as free gifts but cannot be imposed as commandments To this I answer That Christian prudence is in very many instances a direct duty in some an instance and advice in order to degrees and advantages where it is a duty it is put into every mans power where it is an advice it is onely expected according to what a man hath and not according to what he hath not and even here although the events of prudence are out of our power yet the endeavours and the observation the diligence and caution the moral part of it and the plain conduct of our necessary duty which are portions of this grace are such things which God will demand in proportion to the talent which he hath intrusted into our Banks There are in indeed some Christians very unwary and unwise in the conduct of their religion and they cannot all help it at least not in all degrees but yet they may be taught to do prudent things though not to be prudent persons if they have not the prudence of advice and conduct yet they may have the prudence of obedience and of disciples and the event is this without prudence their vertue is unsafe and their persons defenselesse and their interest is unguarded for prudence is a hand-maid waiting at the production and birth of vertue It is a nurse to it in its infancy its patron an assaults its guide in temptations its security in all portions of chance and contingency And he that is imprudent if he have many accidents and varieties is in great danger of being none at all or if he be at the best he is but a weak and an unprofitable servant uselesse to his neighbour vain in himself and as to God the least in the kingdom his vertue is contingent and by chance not proportioned to the reward of wisdom and the election of a wise religion 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 No purchase no wealth no advantage is great enough to be compared to a wise soul and a prudent spirit and he that wants it hath a lesse vertue and a defenselesse minde and will suffer a mighty hazard in the interest of eternity Its parts and proper acts consist in the following particulars 1. It is the duty of Christian prudence to choose the end of a Christian that which is perfective of a man satisfactory to reason the rest of a Christian and the beatification of his spirit and that is to choose and desire and propound to himself heaven and the fruition of God as the end of all his acts and arts his designes and purposes For in the nature of things that is most eligible and most to be pursued which is most perfective of our nature and is the acquiescence the satisfaction and proper rest of our most reasonable appetites Now the things of this world are difficult and uneasie full of thornes and empty of pleasures they fill a diseased faculty or an abused sense but are an infinite dissatisfaction to reason and the appetites of the soul they are short and transient and they never abide unlesse sorrow like a chain be bound about their leg and then they never stir till the grace of God and religion breaks it or else that the rust of time eats the chain in pieces they are dangerous and doubtfull few and difficult sordid and particular not onely not communicable to a multitude but not diffusive upon the whole man there being no one pleasure or object in this world that delights all the parts of man and after all this they are originally from earth and from the creatures onely that they oftentimes contract alliances with hell and the grave with shame and sorrow and all these put together make no great amability or proportion to a wise mans choice But on the other side the things of God are the noblest satisfactions to those desires which ought to be cherished and swelled up to infinite their deliciousnesse is vast and full of relish and their very appendant thorns are to be chosen for they are gilded they are safe and medicinall they heal the wound they make and bring forth fruit of a blessed and a holy life The things of God and of religion are easie and sweet they bear entertainments in their hand and reward at their back their good is certain and perpetual and they make us cheerfull to day and pleasant to morrow and spiritual songs end not in a sigh and a groan neither like unwholesome physick do they let loose a present humour and introduce an habitual indisposition But they bring us to the felicity of God the same yesterday and to day and for ever they do not give a private and particular delight but their benefit is publike like the incense of the altar it sends up a sweet smell to heaven and makes atonement for the religious man that kindled it and delights all the standers by and makes the very air wholesome there is no blessed soul goes to heaven but he makes a generall joy in all the mansions where the Saints do dwell and in all the chappels where the Angels sing and the joyes of religion are not univocal but productive of rare and accidental and praeternatural pleasures for the musick of holy hymnes delights the ear and refreshes the spirit and makes the very bones of the Saint to rejoyce and charity or the giving alms to the poor does not onely ease the poverty of the receiver but makes the giver rich and heals his sicknesse and delivers from death and temperance though it be in the matter of meat and drink and pleasures yet hath an effect upon the understanding and makes the reason sober and his will orderly and his affections regular and does things beside and beyond their natural and proper efficacy for all the parts of our duty are watered with the showers of blessing and bring forth fruit according to the influence of heaven and beyond the capacities of nature And now let the voluptuous person go and try whether putting his wanton hand to the bosome of his Mistris will get half such honour as Scaevola put upon his head when he put his hand into the fire Let him see whether a drunken meeting will cure a fever or make him wise A hearty and a persevering prayer will Let him tell me if spending great summes of money upon his lusts will make him sleep soundly or be rich Charity will Alms will increase his fortune and a good conscience shall charme all his cares and sorrows into a most delicious slumber well may a full goblet wet the drunkards tongue and then the heat rising from the stomack will dry the spunge and heat it into the scorchings and little images of hell and the follies of a wanton bed will turn the itch into a smart and empty the reins of all their
and ready to forgive plenteous in mercy to all them that call upon thee 3. Gods mercies or the mercies of his giving came first upon us by mending of our nature For the ignorance we fell into is instructed and better learned in spirituall notices then Adams morning knowledge in Paradise our appetites are made subordinate to the spirit and the liberty of our wills is improved having the liberty of the sons of God and Christ hath done us more grace and advantage then we lost in Adam and as man lost Paradise and got Heaven so he lost the integrity of the first and got the perfection of the second Adam his living soul is changed into a quickning spirit our discerning faculties are filled with the spirit of faith and our passions and desires are entertained with hope and our election is sanctified with charity and his first life of a temporall possession is passed into a better a life of spirituall expectations and though our first parent was forbidden it yet we live of the fruits of the tree of life But I instance in two great things in which humane nature is greatly advanced and passed on to greater perfections The first is that besides body and soul which was the summe totall of Adams constitution God hath superadded to us a third principle the beginner of a better life I mean the Spirit so that now man hath a spiritual and celestial nature breathed into him and the old man that is the old constitution is the least part and in its proper operations is dead or dying but the new man is that which gives denomination life motion and proper actions to a Christian and that is renewed in us day by day But secondly Humane nature is so highly exalted and mended by that mercy which God sent immediately upon the fall of Adam the promise of Christ that when he did come and actuate the purposes of this mission and ascended up into heaven he carried humane nature above the seats of Angels to the place whither Lucifer the son of the morning aspird to ascend but in his attempt fell into hell For so said the Prophet the son of the morning said I will ascend into heaven and sit in the sodes of the North that is the throne of Jesus seated in the East called the sides or obliquity of the North and as the seating of his humane nature in that glorious seat brought to him all adoration and the Majesty of God and the greatest of his exaltation So it was so great an advancement to us that all the Angels of heaven take notice of it and feel a change in the appendage of their condition not that they are lessened but that we who in nature are lesse then Angels have a relative dignity greater and an equall honour of being fellow-servants This mystery is plain in Scripture and the reall effect of it we read in both the Testaments When Manoah the father of Sampson saw an Angel he worshipped him and in the old Testament it was esteemed lawfull for they were the lieutenants of God sent with the impresses of his Majesty and took in his Name the homage from us who then were so much their inferiours But when the man Christ Jesus was exalted and made the Lord of all the Angels then they became our fellow servants and might not receive worship from any of the servants of Jesus especially from Prophets and Martyrs and those that are ministers of the testimony of Jesus And therefore when an Angel appeared to Saint John and he according to the Custom of the Jews fell down and worshipped him as not yet knowing or not considering any thing to the contrary the Angell reproved him saying see thou do it not I am thy fellow servant and of thy brethren the prophets and of them which keep the sayings of this book worship God or as Saint Cyprian reads it worship Jesus God and man are now onely capable of worship but no Angel God essentially Man in the person of Christ and in the exaltation of our great Redeemer but Angels not so high and therefore not capable of any religious worship and this dignity of man Saint Gregory explicates fully Quid est quod ante Redemptoris adventum adorantur ab hominibus Angeli tacent postmodum vero adorarirefugiunt why did the Angels of old receive worshippings and were silent but in the new testament decline it and fear to accept it Nisi quod naturam nostram quam prius despexerant postquam hanc super se assumptam aspiciunt prostratam sibi videre pertimescunt nec jam sub se velut insirmam contemnere ausi sunt quam super se viz. in caeli Rege venerantur the reason is because they seeing our nature which they did so lightly value raised up above them they fear to see humbled under them neither do they any more despise the weaknesse which themselves worship in the King of heaven The same also is the sense of the Glosse of Saint Ambrose Ansbertus Haymo Rupertus and others of old and Ribera Salmeron and Lewis of Granada of late which being so plainly consonant to the words of the Angel and consigned by the testimony of such men I the rather note that those who worship Angels and make religious addresses to them may see what priviledge themselves lose and how they part with the honour of Christ who in his nature relative to us is exalted far above all thrones and principalities and dominions I need not adde lustre to this It is like the Sun the biggest body of light and nothing can describe it so well as its own beams and there is not in nature or the advantages of honour any thing greater then that we have the issues of that mercy which makes us fellow servants with Angels too much honoured to pay them a religious worship whose Lord is a man and he that is their King is our Brother 4. To this for the likenesse of the matter I adde that the divine mercy hath so prosecuted us with the enlargement of his favours that we are not onely fellow ministers and servants with the Angels and in our nature in the person of Christ exalted above them but we also shall be their Judges and if this be not an honour above that of Joseph or Mordecai an honour beyond all the measures of a man then there is in honour no degrees no priority or distances or characters of fame and noblenesse Christ is the great Judge of all the world his humane nature shall then triumph over evil men and evil spirits then shall the Devils those Angels that fel from their first originals be brought in their chains from their dark prisons and once be allowed to see the light that light that shall confound them while all that follow the lamb and that are accounted worthy of that resurrection shall be assessors in the judgment Know ye not saith S. Paul that ye shall
meat and the strengthening of his spirit and gives God thanks while his bones and his flesh rejoyce in the provisions of nature and the blessing of God Are not the imperfections of infancy and the decayes of old age the evils of our nature because respectively they want desire and they want gust and relish and reflections upon their acts of sense and when desire failes presently the mourners go about the streets But then that these desires are so provided for by nature and art by ordinary and extraordinary by foresight and contingency according to necessity and up unto conveniency until we arrive at abundance is a chain of mercies larger then the Bowe in the clouds and richer then the trees of Eden which were permitted to feed our miserable father Is not all the earth our orchard and our granary our vineyard and our garden of pleasure and the face of the Sea is our traffique and the bowels of the Sea is our vivarium a place for fish to feed us and to serve some other collaterall appendant needs and all the face of heaven is a repository for influences and breath fruitfull showers and fair refreshments and when God made provisions for his other creatures he gave it of one kinde and with variety no greater then the changes of day and night one devouring the other or sitting down with his draught of blood or walking upon his portion of grasse But man hath all the food of beasts and all the beasts themselves that are fit for food and the food of Angels and the dew of heaven and the fatnesse of the earth and every part of his body hath a provision made for it and the smoothnesse of the olive and the juice of the vine refresh the heart and make the face cheerfull and serve the ends of joy and the festivity of man and are not onely to cure hunger or to allay thirst but to appease a passion and allay a sorrow It is an infinite variety of meat with which God furnishes out the table of mankinde and in the covering our sin and clothing our nakednesse God passed from sig-leaves to the skins of beasts from aprons to long-robes from leather to wool and from thence to the warmth of furres and the coolnesse of silks he hath dressed not onely our needs but hath fitted the severall portions of the year and made us to go dressed like our mother leaving off the winter sables when the florid spring appears and assoon as the Tulip fades we put on the robe of Summer and then shear our sheep for Winter and God uses us as Ioseph did his brother Benjamin we have many changes of raiment and our messe is five times bigger then the provision made for our brothers of the Creation But the providence and mercies of God are to be estimated also according as these provisions are dispensed to every single person For that I may not remark the bounties of God running over the tables of the rich God hath also made provisions for the poorest person so that if they can but rule their desires they shall have their tables furnished and this is secured and provided for by one promise and two duties by our Own labour and our Brothers charity and our faith in this affair is confirmed by all our own and by all the experience of other men Are not all the men and the women of the world provided for and fed and clothed till they die and was it not alwayes so from the first morning of the creatures and that a man is starved to death is a violence and a rare contingency happening almost as seldom as for a man to have but one eye and if our being provided for be as certain as for a man to have two eyes we have reason to adore the wisdom and admire the mercies of our Almighty Father But these things are evident Is it not a great thing that God hath made such strange provisions for our health such infinite differences of Plants and hath discovered the secrets of their nature by meer chance or by inspiration either of which is the miracle of providence secret to us but ordered by certain and regular decrees of heaven It was a huge diligence and care of the divine mercy that discovered to man the secrets of Spagyrick medicines of stones of spirits and the results of 7. or 8. decoctions and the strange effects of accidental mixtures which the art of man could not suspect being bound up in the secret sanctuary of hidden causes and secret natures and being laid open by the concourse of 20. or 30. little accidents all which were ordered by God as certainly as are the first principles of nature or the descent of sons from fathers in the most noble families But that which I shall observe in this whole affair is that there are both for the provision of our tables and the relief of our sicknesses so many miracles of providence that they give plain demonstration what relation we bear to heaven and the poor man need not be troubled that he is to expect his daily portion after the Sun is up for he hath found to this day he was not deceived and then he may rejoyce because he sees by an effective probation that in heaven a decree was made every day to send him provisions of meat and drink and that is a mighty mercy when the circles of heaven are bowed down to wrap us in a bosome of care and nourishment and the wisdom of God is daily busied to serve his mercy as his mercy serves our necessities Does not God plant remedies there where the diseases are most popular and every Countrey is best provided against its own evils Is not the Rhubarb found where the Sun most corrupts the liver and the Scabious by the shore of the Sea that God might cure as soon as he wounds and the inhabitants may see their remedy against the leprosie and the scurvy before they feel their sicknesse And then to this we may adde Natures commons and open fields the shores of rivers and the strand of the Sea the unconfined air the wildernesse that hath no hedge and that in these every man may hunt and fowl and fish respectively and that God sends some miracles and extraordinary blessings so for the publike good that he will not endure they should be inclosed and made severall Thus he is pleased to dispense the Manna of Calabria the medicinall waters of Germany the Musles at Sluce at this day and the Egyptian beans in the marishes of Albania and the salt at Troas of old which God to defeat the covetousnesse of man and to spread his mercy over the face of the indigent as the Sun scatters his beams over the bosome of the whole earth did so order that as long as every man was permitted to partake the bosome of heaven was open but when man gathered them into single handfulls and made them impropriate God gathered his hand
making a noise upon its unequall and neighbour bottom and after all its talking and bragged motion it payed to its common Audit no more then the revenues of a little cloud or a contemptible vessel So have I sometimes compar'd the issues of her religion to the solemnities and fam'd outsides of anothers piety It dwelt upon her spirit and was incorporated with the periodicall work of every day she did not beleeve that religion was intended to minister to fame and reputation but to pardon of sins to the pleasure of God and the salvation of souls For religion is like the breath of Heaven if it goes abroad into the open air it scatters and dissolves like camphyre but if it enters into a secret hollownesse into a close conveyance it is strong and mighty and comes forth with vigour and great effect at the other end at the other side of this life in the dayes of death and judgement 2. The other appendage of her religion which also was a great ornament to all the parts of her life was a rare modesty and humility of spirit a confident despising and undervaluing of her self For though she had the greatest judgement and the greatest experience of things and persons that I ever yet knew in a person of her youth and sex and circumstances yet as if she knew nothing of it she had the meanest opinion of her self and like a fair taper when she shined to all the room yet round about her own station she had cast a shadow and a cloud and she shined to every body but her self But the perfectnesse of her prudence and excellent parts could not be hid and all her humility and arts of concealment made the vertues more amiable and illustrious For as pride sullies the beauty of the fairest vertues and makes our understanding but like the craft and learning of a Devil so humility is the greatest eminency and art of publication in the whole world and she in all her arts of secrecy and hiding her worthy things was but like one that hideth the winde and covers the oyntment of her right hand I know not by what instrument it hapned but when death drew neer befor it made any shew upon her body or revealed it self by a naturall signification it was conveyed to her spirit she had a strange secret perswasion that the bringing this Childe should be her last scene of life and we have known that the soul when she is about to disrobe her self of her upper garment sometimes speaks rarely Magnifica verba mors propè admota excutit sometimes it is prophetical sometimes God by a superinduced perswasion wrought by instruments or accidents of his own serves the ends of his own providence and the salvation of the soul But so it was that the thought of death dwelt long with her and grew from the first steps of faney and fear to a consent from thence to a strange credulity and expectation of it and without the violence of sicknesse she died as if she had done it voluntarily and by designe and for fear her expectation should have been deceived or that she should seem to have had an unreasonable fear or apprehension or rather as one said of Cato sic abiit è vitâ ut causam moriendi nactam se esse gauderet she died as if she had been glad of the opportunity And in this I cannot but adore the providence and admire the wisdom and infinite mercies of God For having a tender and soft a delicate and fine constitution and breeding she was tender to pain and apprehensive of it as a childs shoulder is of a load and burden Grave est tenerae cérvici jugum and in her often discourses of death which she would renew willingly and frequently she would tell that she feared not death but she feared the sharp pains of death Emori nolo me esse mortuam non curo The being dead and being freed from the troubles and dangers of this world she hoped would be for her advantage and therefore that was no part of her fear But she believing the pangs of death were great and the use and aids of reason little had reason to fear left they should do violence to her spirit and the decency of her resolution But God that knew her fears and her jealousie concerning her self fitted her with a death so easie so harmlesse so painlesse that it did not put her patience to a severe trial It was not in all appearance of so much trouble as two fits of a common ague so carefull was God to remonstrate to all that stood in that sad attendance that this soul was dear to him and that since she had done so much of her duty towards it he that began would also finish her redemption by an act of a rare providence and a singular mercy Blessed be that goodnesse of God who does so careful actions of mercy for the ease and security of his servants But this one instance was a great demonstration that the apprchension of death is worse then the pains of death and that God loves to reprove the unreasonablenesse of our fears by the mightiness and by the arts of his mercy She had in her sickness if I may so cal it or rather in the solemnities and graver preparations towards death some curious and well-becoming fears concerning the final state of her soul. But from thence she passed into a deliquium or a kinde of trance and as soon as she came forth of it as if it had been a vision or that she had conversed with an Angel and from his hand had received a label or scroll of the book of life and there seen her name enrolled she cried out aloud Glory be to God on high Now I am sure I shall be saved Concerning which manner of discoursing we are wholy ignorant what judgement can be made but certainly there are strange things in the other world and so there are in all the immediate preparation to it and a little glimps of heaven a minutes conversing with an Angel any ray of God any communication extraordinary from the spirit of comfort which God gives to his servants in strange and unknown manners are infinitely far from illusions and they shall then be understood by us when we feel them and when our new and strange needs shall be refreshed by such unusual visitations But I must be forced to use summaries and arts of abbreviature in the enumerating those things in which this rare Personage was dear to God and to all her Relatives If we consider her Person she was in the flower of her age Jucundum cum aetas florida ver ageret of a temperate plain and natural diet without curiosity or an intemperate palate she spent lesse time in dressing then many servants her recreations were little and seldom her prayers often her reading much she was of a most noble and charitable soul a great lover of honourable actions and as great a
under the eye of heaven that many Nations are marked for intemperance and that it is lesse noted because it is so popular and universall and that even in the midst of the glories of Christianity there are so many persons drunk or too full with meat or greedy of lust even now that the Spirit of God is given to us to make us sober and temperate and chaste we may well imagine since all men have flesh and all men have nor the spirit the flesh is the parent of sin and death and it can be nothing else And it is no otherwise when we are tempted with pain We are so impatient of pain that nothing can reconcile us to it not the laws of God not the necessities of nature not the society of all our kindred and of all the world not the interest of vertue not the hopes of heaven we will submit to pain upon no terms but the basest and most dishonorable for if sin bring us to pain or affront or sicknesse we choose that so it be in the retinue of a lust and a base desire but we accuse Nature and blaspheme God we murmur and are impatient when pain is sent to us from him that ought to send it and intends it as a mercy when it comes But in the matter of afflictions and bodily sicknesse we are so weak and broken so uneasie and unapt to sufferance that this alone is beyond the cure of the old Philosophy Many can endure poverty and many can retire from shame and laugh at home and very many can endure to be slaves but when pain and sharpnesse are to be endured for the interests of vertue we finde but few Martyrs and they that are suffer more within themselves by their fears and their temptations by their uncertain purposes and violences to Nature then by the Hang-mans sword the Martyrdome is within and then he hath won his Crown not when he hath suffered the blow but when he hath overcome his fears and made his spirit conqueror It was a sad instance of our infirmity when of the 40 Martyrs of Cappadocia set in a freezing lake almost consummate and an Angell was reaching the Crowne and placing it upon their brows the flesh fail'd one of them and drew the spirit after it and the man was called off from his Scene of noble contention and dyed in warm water Odi artus fragilémque hunc corporis usum Desertorem animi We carry about us the body of death and we bring evils upon our selves by our follies and then know not how to bear them and the flesh forsakes the spirit And indeed in sicknesse the infirmity is so very great that God in a manner at that time hath reduced all Religion into one vertue Patience with its appendages is the summe totall of almost all our duty that is proper to the days of sorrow and we shall find it enough to entertain all our powers and to imploy all our aids the counsels of wise men and the comforts of our friends the advices of Scripture and the results of experience the graces of God and the strength of our own resolutions are all then full of imployments and find it work enough to secure that one grace For then it is that a could is wrapped about our heads and our reason stoops under sorrow the soul is sad and its instrument is out of tune the auxiliaries are disorder'd and every thought sits heavily then a comfort cannot make the body feel it and the soule is not so abstracted to rejoyce much without its partner so that the proper joyes of the soul such as are hope and wise discourses and satisfactions of reason and the offices of Religion are felt just as we now perceive the joyes of heaven with so little relish that it comes as news of a victory to a man upon the Rack or the birth of an heir to one condemned to dye he hears a story which was made to delight him but it came when he was dead to joy and all its capacities and therefore sicknesse though it be a good Monitor yet it is an ill stage to act some vertues in and a good man cannot then doe much and therefore he that is in the state of flesh and blood can doe nothing at all 4. But in these considerations we find our nature in disadvantages and a strong man may be overcome when a stronger comes to disarme him and pleasure and pain are the violences of choice and chance but it is no better in any thing else for nature is weak in all its strengths and in its fights at home and abroad in its actions and passions we love some things violently and hate others unreasonably any thing can fright us when we should be confident and nothing can scare us when we ought to feare the breaking of a glasse puts us into a supreme anger and we are dull and indifferent as a Stoick when we see God dishonour'd we passionately desire our preservation and yet we violently destroy our selves and will not be hindred we cannot deny a friend when he tempts us to sin and death and yet we daily deny God when he passionately invites us to life and health we are greedy after money and yet spend it vainly upon our lusts we hate to see any man flatter'd but our selves and we can endure folly if it be on our side and a sin for our interest we desire health and yet we exchange it for wine and madnesse we sink when a persecution comes and yet cease not daily to persecute our selves doing mischiefs worse then the sword of Tyrants and great as the malice of a Devill 5. But to summe up all the evills that can be spoken of the infirmities of the flesh the proper nature and habitudes of men are so foolish and impotent so averse and peevish to all good that a mans will is of it self onely free to choose evils Neither is it a contradiction to say liberty and yet suppose it determin'd to one object onely because that one object is the thing we choose For although God hath set life and death before us fire and water good and evill and hath primarily put man into the hands of his owne counsell that he might have chosen good as well as evill yet because he did not but fell into an evill condition and corrupted manners and grew in love with it and infected all his children with vicious examples and all nations of the world have contracted some universall stains and the thoughts of mans hearts are onely evill and that continually and there is not one that doth good no not one that sinneth not since I say all the world have sinned we cannot suppose a liberty of indifferency to good and bad it is impossible in such a liberty that there should be no variety that all should choose the same thing but a liberty of complacency or delight we may suppose that is so that though naturally he might
things of God and all other duties to be the things of the world for it was a Pharisaicall device to cry Corban and to refuse to relieve their aged Parents it is good to give to a Church but it is better to give to the Poor and though they must be both provided for yet in cases of dispute Mercy carries the cause against Religion and the Temple And although Mary was commended for choosing the better part yet Mary had done worse if she had been at the foot of her Master when she should have relieved a perishing brother Martha was troubled with much serving that was more then need and therefore she was to blame and sometimes hearing in some circumstances may be more then needs and some women are troubled with over-much hearing and then they had better have been serving the necessities of their house 4. This rule is not to be extended to the relatives of Religion for although the things of the Spirit are better then the things of the World yet a spirituall man is not in humane regards to be preferred before Princes and noble personages Because a man is called spirituall in severall regards and for various measures and manners of partaking of the Spirit of grace or co-operating toward the works of the Spirit * A King and a Bishop both have callings in order to godlinesse and honesty and spirituall effects towards the advancement of Christs Kingdome whose representatives severally they are * But whether of these two works more immediately or more effectively cannot at all times be known and therefore from hence no argument can be drawn concerning doing them civill regards * and possibly the partaking the Spirit is a neerer relation to him then doing his ministeries and serving his ends upon others * and if relations to God and Gods Spirit could bring an obligation of giving proportionable civill honour every holy man might put in some pretence for dignities above some Kings and some Bishops * But as the things of the Spirit are in order to the affairs of another world so they naturally can inferre onely such a relative dignity as can be expressed in spirituall manners But because such relations are subjected in men of this life and we now converse especially in materiall and secular significations therefore we are to expresse our regards to men of such relations by proportionable expressions but because civill excellencies are the proper ground of receiving and exacting civill honors and spirituall excellencies doe onely claim them accidentally and indirectly therefore in titles of honour and humane regards the civill praeeminence is the appendix of the greatest civill power and imployment and is to descend in proper measures and for a spirituall relation to challenge a temporall dignity is as if the best Musick should challenge the best cloathes or a Lute-string should contend with a Rose for the honour of the greatest sweetnesse * Adde to this that although temporall things are in order to spirituall and therefore are lesse perfect yet this is not so naturally for temporall things are properly in order to the felicity of man in his proper and present constitution and it is by a supernaturall grace that now they are thrust forward to a higher end of grace and glory and therefore temporall things and persons and callings have properly the chiefest temporall regard and Christ took nothing of this away from them but put them higher by sanctifying and ennobling them * But then the higher calling can no more suppose the higher man then the richest trade can suppose the richest man From callings to men the argument is fallacious and a Smith is a more usefull man then he that teaches Logick but not always to be more esteemed and called to stand at the chairs of Princes and Nobles * Holy persons and holy things and all great relations are to be valued by generall proportions to their correlatives but if wee descend to make minute and exact proportions and proportion an inch of temporall to a minute of spirituall we must needs be hugely deceived unlesse we could measure the motion of an Angell by a string or the progressions of the Spirit by weight and measure of the staple * And yet if these measures were taken it would be unreasonable that the lower of the higher kind should be preferr'd before the most perfect and excellent in a lower order of things A man generally is to be esteemed above a woman but not the meanest of her subjects before the most excellent Queen not alwayes this man before this woman Now Kings and Princes are the best in all temporall dignities and therefore if they had in them no spirituall relations and consequent excellencies as they have very many yet are not to be undervalu'd to spirituall relations which in this world are very imperfect weak partiall and must stay till the next world before they are in a state of excellency propriety and perfection and then also all shall have them according to the worth of their persons not of their calling * But lastly what men may not challenge is not their just and proper due but spirituall persons and the neerest relatives to God stand by him but so long at they dwell low and safe in humility and rise high in nothing but in labours and zeal of soules and devotion * In proportion to this rule a Church may be pull'd down to save a Town and the Vessels of the Church may be sold to redeem Captives when there is a great calamity imminent and prepared for reliefe and no other way to succour it But in the whole the duty of zeale requires that we neglect an ordinary visit rather then an ordinary prayer and a great profit rather then omit a required duty No excuse can legitimate a sin and he that goes about to distinguish between his duty and his profit and if he cannot reconcile them will yet tie them together like a Hyaena and a Dog this man pretends to Religion but secures the world and is indifferent and lukewarme towards that so he may be warme and safe in the possession of this 2. To that fervour and zeal that is necessary and a duty it is required that we be constant and persevering Esto fidelis ad mortem said the Spirit of God to the Angel of the Church of Smyrna Be faithfull unto death and I will give thee a crown of life For he that is warm to day and cold to morrow zealous in his resolution and weary in his practises fierce in the beginning and slack and easie in his progresse hath not yet well chosen what side he will be of he sees not reason enough for Religion and he hath not confidence enough for its contrary and therefore he is duplicis animi as St. James calls him of a doubtfull mind For Religion is worth as much to day as it was yesterday and that cannot change though we doe and if we doe we have left God and whither
he can goe that goes from God his owne sorrowes will soon enough instruct him This fire must never goe out but it must be like the fire of heaven it must shine like the starres though sometimes cover'd with a cloud or obscur'd by a greater light yet they dwell for ever in their orbs and walk in their circles and observe their circumstances but goe not out by day nor night and set not when Kings die nor are extinguish'd when Nations change their Government So must the zeal of a Christian be a constant incentive of his duty and though sometimes his hand is drawne back by violence or need and his prayers shortned by the importunity of businesse and some parts omitted by necessities and just complyances yet still the fire is kept alive it burns within when the light breaks not forth and is eternall as the orb of fire or the embers of the Altar of Incense 3. No man is zealous as he ought but he that delights in the service of God without this no man can persevere but must faint under the continuall pressure of an uneasie load If a man goes to his prayers as children goe to schoole or give alms as those that pay contribution and meditate with the same willingnesse with which young men die this man does personam sustinere he acts a part which he cannot long personate but will find so many excuses and silly devices to omit his duty such tricks to run from that which will make him happy he will so watch the eyes of men and be so sure to doe nothing in private he will so often distinguish and mince the duty into minutes and little particles he will so tie himself to the letter of the Law and be so carelesse of the intention and spirituall designe he will be punctuall in the ceremony and trifling in the secret and he will be so well pleased when he is hindred by an accident not of his own procuring and will have so many devices to defeat his duty and to cosuen himselfe that he will certainly manifest that he is afraid of Religion and secretly hates it he counts it a burthen and an objection and then the man is sure to leave it when his circumstances are so fitted But if we delight in it we enter into a portion of the reward as soon as we begin the worke and the very grace shall be stronger then the temptation in its very pretence of pleasure and therefore it must needs be pleasing to God because it confesses God to be the best Master Religion the best work and it serves God with choice and will and reconciles our nature to it and entertaines our appetite and then there is no ansa or handle left whereby we can easily be drawne from duty when all parties are pleased with the imployment But this delight is not to be understood as if it were alwayes required that we should feele an actuall cheerfulnesse and sensible joy such as was that of Jonathan when he had newly tasted honey and the light came into his eyes and he was refreshed and pleasant This happens sometimes when God please to intice or reward a mans spirit with little Antepasts of heaven but such a delight onely is necessary and a duty that we alwayes choose our duty regularly and undervalue the pleasures of temptation and proceed in the work of grace with a firme choice and unabated election our joy must be a joy of hope a joy at least of confident sufferers the joys of faith and expectation rejoycing in hope so the Apostle calls it that is a going forward upon such a perswasion as sees the joyes of God laid up for the Children of men and so the sun may shine under a cloud and a man may rejoyce in persecution and delight in losses that is though his outward man groanes and faints and dies yet his spirit 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the inner man is confident and industrious and hath a hope by which it lives and works unto the end It was the case of our blessed Saviour in his agony his soule was exceeding sorrowfull unto death and the load of his Fathers anger crushed his shoulder and bowed his knees to the ground and yet he chose it and still went forward and resolved to die and did so and what wee choose wee delight in and wee thinke it to be eligible and therefore amiable and fit by its proper excellencies and appendages to be delighted in it is not pleasant to the flesh at all times for its dignity is spirituall and heavenly but therefore it is proportioned to the spirit which is as heavenly as the reward and therefore can feel the joys of it when the body hangs the head and is uneasie and troubled These are the necessary parts of zeale of which if any man failes he is in a state of lukewarmnesse and that is a spirituall death As a banished man or a condemned person is dead civilly he is diminutus capite he is not reckoned in the census nor partakes of the priviledges nor goes for a person but is reckoned among things in the possession of others so is a lukewarm person he is corde diminutus he is spiritually dead his heart is estranged from God his affections are lessened his hope diminished and his title cancell'd and he remains so unlesse 1. he prefers Religion before the world and 2. spiritually rejoyces in doing his duty and 3. doe it constantly and with perseverance These are the heats and warmth of life whatsoever is lesse then this is a disease and leads to the coldnesse and dishonors of the grave SERMON XIV Part III. 3. SO long as our zeal and forwardnesse in Religion hath only these constituent parts it hath no more then can keep the duty alive but beyond this there are many degrees of earnestnesse and vehemence which are progressions towards the state of perfection which every man ought to design and desire to be added to his portion of this sort I reckon frequency in prayer and almes above our estate Concerning which two instances I have these two cautions to insert 1. Concerning frequency in prayer it is an act of zeal so ready and prepared for the spirit of a man so easie and usefull so without objection and so fitted for every mans affairs his necessities and possibilities that he that prayes but seldome cannot in any sense pretend to be a religious person For in Scripture there is no other rule for the frequency of prayer given us but by such words which signifie we should do it alwaies Pray continually and Men ought alwayes to pray and not to faint And then men have so many necessities that if we should esteem our needs to be the circumstances and positive determination of our times of prayer we should be very far from admitting limitation of the former words but they must mean that we ought to pray frequently every day For in danger and trouble naturall Religion