one body civill so by participation of the same specificall nature were all men as one man and like as the acts of any part of the body as theft or murder done by the hand doe not ascribe it to that part but as it is moved by that first and universall motive principle the will so is not that first sin layd to us as severall persons but as persons and individuals meeting in the same universall nature totally at once by one man depraved It is not I confesse the nature of positive Lawes to bind where they are not known or publisht so that if Cain had eaten of the forbidden fruit Enoch his son had not therefore been borne a sinner but it pleased God by a peculiar will to wrap up all men in one Adam whose will should be reputed as the will of all to come whose innocencie should be our innocencie whose sin our sin though his repentance not our repentance Let not dust and ashes wrangle and dispute how just this is how much safer is it to rest in his decree at whose right hand with the testimony of the Gentiles we proclaime that justice sits enthroned and in the infancie of time did sit when he examined nature in a true balance and weighed out to all things their being their properties their places their figures with most exact conformitie to their exemplarie cause So then you have seene how many came within the precincts of this prohibition Thou shalt not eat so many are guiltie of the breach of it and so many are sufferers Now I proceed to the sufferings Democritus and the Epicure whether flattering corrupt manners with promise of impunitie or trembling to joyne wrath with omnipotencie gave out that God was not angrie at all but that he sate in Heaven a Dispenser of good things only The Poet sang of an age that knew not whether Iove could thunder or no and wee have heard of an age when God as yet had not entered into judgement with the sons of men when death had no more name than it hath reall nature when mans labour was his pleasure his life contemplation and his dwelling Paradise But oh {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} The very name of Troy is dolefull how much more of Paradise it adds to our misery since we have lost the thing to keep the name which at this day sounds no better than to the Mariner some unhappy place in the sea famous of old for the notorious wrack of some goodly vessell Well wee are now unparadised turned out of our pleasant walks and must fall to our work we must eat our bread in the sweat of our face this is our sentence wherein consider first the act eating of bread secondly the qualification of this act in sweat of thy face Man in his innocencie had not a body intrinsecally immortall but a naturall and elementary body composed of the same principles with ours and using for the reparation of nature food though not using the very same with us hee was to eat though not to eat in sweat And though he was not as Suarez sayes in a literall sense to eat bread by reason of the toyle in tillage in sowing in reaping in grinding yet was hee as the word is meant in my text to eat bread it being taken here for all manner of sustenance and here I cannot passe by that ridiculous conceit of some Rabbins who from this very word bread doe gather that God condemned all men to jog after the plow a thing which could not stand either with the nature of man or with the wisdome of God I declare it thus The light of nature a beame of that intelligible and eternall Son was not set our by the fall of man this lighted men out of caves and rocks into societies oeconomicall and politicall Politicall have for their end {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} selfe-sufficiencie never to bee found if all men were plow-men the multitude of our defects must be supplyed by the multitude and varietie of Arts and Artificials since then God gave man a naturall appetite of a civill and sociable life which appetite being naturall is not in vaine nor yet was lost by sin for Cain an hainous sinner built the first Citie it had not so well suted either with the nature of man or with the wisdome and goodnesse of God to have adjudged all men to that one condition of life besides what had become of Sciences liberall Arts Had not been mechanicall rude and inchoate manners as courtly as old Evander found them among the wild Aborigines the whole world had been benighted darknesse had beene on the face of the earth Aegyptian darknesse and yet not felt and God himselfe had scarce found an unblemishable Levite to serve at his Altar {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} sayes the 7. of the Politicks The Plow-man is no sit Priest Thus much of the act I now come to the qualification of the act In the sweat of the face To sweat is proper to the body yet may be translated to the soule neither is it a bold metaphore Tully hath it de Oratore Commentatio stylus ille tuus multisudoris est so that Archimedes sitting still in his study did sweat as well as Marcellus his Souldiers then in the middest of Athens neither does the word face restraine the sense to bodily exercise since it is so frequent by metaphore to attribute to things incorporeall things proper to corporeall thus does Aristotle call the understanding {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} and David prayes Turne away thy face from my sins O God when as God hath neither figure nor face Thus much de signo the word or the name now de signato or the thing signified Man is a continuall Actour the Sun riseth and sets upon his action waking he moves heares discourses and when his externall senses are lockt up his vegetative facultie is at work and his fansie dreams the whole man here never rests nay let it seeme a paradox I am sure it is true there is no rest in Heaven The grand Stoick denied motion I deny rest But yet take this distinction Rest is either a meere cessation from action a simple not operation or a cessation from some action that wearied the Agent there is a great deale of difference betweene these two In the former sense God rested the seventh day from production of new species In the latter it was not possible for him to rest In the former man in all his faculties all at once is never at rest In the latter hee is in the time of sleep in this sense our God wils neither perpetuall labour nor rest it was his providence that the Heavens should move that divers parts of the earth might be disposed by the influence of divers stars upon this motion followes a necessarie vicissitude of day and night upon that a vicissitude of rest and labour these two God
Two SERMONS BY GEO. HALL Late Fellow of Kings Coledge in Cambridge LONDON Printed by J. O. for Anth. Hall and are to be sold at his shop in St. Dunstans Church-yard 1641. GEN 3.19 In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat thy bread till thou returne to the earth GOD Almightie the great and sole Builder of heaven and earth in those six dayes in which his goodnesse did first reconcile the odds betweene being and not being calling the possible world into act made these and but these two natures the necessarie and the voluntarie to the former as being voyd of reason and therefore not capable of any positive Law he gave no precept hee set Nature to them a rule and furnisht them with faculties determined and if there be no impediment in second causes necessitated to such or such actions tending to such or such ends To the latter as being endowed with freedome and a power indifferent to both extremes to doe or not to doe to doe this or that good or ill He expressely gave in charge what if hee tendered his life hee should not doe and therefore hee had no sooner pronounced him Lord of the whole earth but knowing how proper it is for happinesse to forget her selfe and how safe for Monarchs to remember that they are dependantly and subordinately great in the proper tone of a Law-Giver Legum enim authoritas ratione suasoria vile est tels him flatly Of the fruit of the tree which is in the middest of the garden thou shalt not eat The tree is now forbidden and that by the Lord and Maker of it from henceforth for Adam to taste it shall be disobedience shall bee intemperance shall bee injustice the least of which shall not dwell in Paradise they make too great a stir in the soule and are too turbulent to reside in him whom God created as a Citie at unitie in it selfe there was no insurrection of the sensitive appetite against the will no deformitie betweene the will and reason the intellect directed the will commanded the members executed In a word there was a neat and harmonious consent of all the faculties with reason and of reason with God thus was man at peace with God and with himselfe But like as from the quietnesse of the aire the Philosopher suspects an earth-quake mee thinks the man that had not read this book should have read so much in the book of Nature tane so much from politick rules as to fore-see a declension of things at perfection to fear most a rebellion in a State most composed such was the state of Adam and with such successe in the same day were his affections quiet and tumultuous his will which that day had well given up her name revolted from the regiment of reason judge you how voluntarily fallen in that the left her leader and yet her selfe blind I ask not whence this desertion who permitting who instigating This is enough for me this will bring me to my text if I tell how the evill of sin lets in the evill of paine and that I find in the sacred History that our first parents did eat and this probable in the schoole that they were both created both stood and both fell and both in one day Let both these two great lights on earth answer to those two in heaven and then behold the eclipse that Hesychius Milesius speaks of {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} The Sun was darkened and the Moone withdrew her light but happy you superiour lights whose eclipses are not sins the defects and anomies of humane actions are scann'd at the bar of justice and bearing a guilt upon the offendent will not be expiated but by suffering for let the man but taste of the prohibited fruit and he shall heare a voyce from heaven that voyce which breaketh the Cedars of Libanus thundring out wrath and this sad doom In the sweat of thy face c. The generals in the text are three first the sufferer thou secondly his sufferings to eat his bread in the sweat of his face thirdly the terme of his sufferings till thou returne to the earth Since there is so necessary dependancie of morall acts upon intention it is a good rule which the Philosopher gives in the first of his Rhetorick {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} Not to look so much to the letter of the Law as the mind of the Law-giver The expresse prohibition of eating was to one but intended for all one man our first father did eat and sin the sin ran downe to his sons and to the sons of their sons and to those that did descend from them to all nations sexes conditions times and ages of the world to the man that shall last see the Sun set In the day that thou shalt eat thou shalt dye the death as it sayes more kinds of death than one so more that should dye than one and to dust thou shalt returne was more than a personall sentence for all men were dead in one and were gathered to their fathers as to a living sepulcher larger and more common than that which Abraham bought of Ephron the son of Zoar which was but for him and for his house so that it seemes to have a great deale of mind that which the Jewes so talk of that Abraham Isaac and Jacob were buried in the same cave with Adam Now if posteritie dyed with him then it sinned with him and then shall suffer and labour with him Sane hoc iniquum videtur sayes Bodinus parentum culpam in liberos derivari Does not Sylla heare ill for the sonnes of Proscripts Can a man be guiltie of that which was done before he was Ask the Schoole Is it not the nature of sinne to bee voluntarie Does it not require knowledge counsell consent election If not why then is not the Wolfe called unjust that devoures the Lamb Why is not hee cited to Areopagus as well as Mars Why doe not Princes promulgate their Lawes in the Desarts and compell the affections of the wild Asse to a meane as well as ours But {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} Arist. Moral lib. 3. The Law-giver hath an eye to what is voluntarie and unvoluntarie to the former by the rule of distributive justice hee sets out rewards and punishments to the latter neither reward nor punishment How then does God punish the sin of the first man in his posteritie that personally had done neither good nor ill How could they conceive and bring forth sin who yet themselves were not conceived or call it a sin shall it be a mortall sin {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} Who blames a man for being borne blind That does the Judge of the great Court of heaven and earth and surely the Almightie does not pervert justice it is not with him as with those Romane Praetors Jus dicunt cum iniqua decernunt For like as by a politicall union many families become
hath wisely knit together intending the one for the laxation yet continuance of the other {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} The finall cause of rest is labour Arist. Ethic 10. Now penall labour there is a continuall succession of these two the end of the one is the beginning of the other the one is from justice the other from mercie Now let Anaxagoras look up and see whether heaven be {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} all of stone To be is good but to be doing is the good and end of being wee perfect our selves by action for the defects of nature are supplyed by habits and habits acquired by actions which so long as they are simply voluntarie are pleasant once forced become tedious so much as they have of constraint so much of griefe {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} Rhet. Arist. 1. Violence is beside nature and therefore hath griefe annexed to it These painfull actions which my text cals for are of the same nature with those that Aristotle cals {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} partly voluntary partly violent for as the poore man parts with his purse to a thiefe yet would not doe it but to save his life setting the lesse evill in the place of good so wee spend our spirits in some actions not because they are pleasing to the will but because they are necessarie partly to satisfie the Law partly for the attaining partly for the ornament partly for the maintenance of happinesse supposing then that we efficaciously will this end or happinesse wee necessarily will these penall actions as meanes to the end no other way to be purchased For our condition is not like that of the Lillies which are cloathed and spin not nor that of the little Lambs whom their mothers bring forth in the mountaines wrapt in naturall rags against the injuries of the aire neither is it with us as they say it was with Mercury who was borne in the morning found playing on the lute at noone and driving of oxen at night wee are first infants then boyes then youths how many are the wants of these ages and when wee come to be men wee espy more and are faine to double our paines the more our knowledge is the more intense are our desires and our desires employ our members the vast capacitie of our soules and our large wills adde much to our travaile the appetite of bruits is terminated here below ours ranges about the earth the sea the aire attempts heaven with waxen wings mounts up to Angels to God himselfe and rests not there which very unrestinesse though it be full of anxietie Non enim est absque dolore quòd aliquis perfectionem appetat Aquin. Comment on Ethic. seeme to me wonderfully to exalt man above other creatures that whereas they al disport themselves in some slender rivulets of good onely man looks to that boundlesse and bottomlesse deep the Deitie of his Maker not to be sounded not to be compast You have heard the sentence that God hath past on the sons of men and that an heavie sentence yet me thinks easier than if he had condemned us to doe nothing this {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} this {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} as Aristotle termes it contradicts not only the nature of the soule whose verie being is to be and whose well being is to be well doing but also the whole nature of things Could a man stand in Delph which Cosmographers call Vmbilicum terrae the very navell of the earth and turne his eyes to all positions of place to the right hand to the left behind before above and beneath hee should find them all meet and conspire to smother or expose this spurious or supposititious brat and shall man father it and harbour it in his bosome Goe to the little Bees thou sluggard Pullos vel triduanos ad pensam vocant they set their little ones their task at three dayes old nec insenectute in fucos degenerant neither turne they Drones in their old ages Next turne to the Ant and see her wayes what are those wayes Ask the naturall Historian Etiam per saxa silices vestigia videas semitas Thou mayest find her steps and paths upon the hardest flints So often does that little yet exemplary creature trudge this way and that way backward and forward to store her earthy granarie and keep off a winter famine Now if there be any to whom God hath dealt so liberall a portion of these temporall goods as that they need not labour to prevent either want or cold or famine even to these also do I preach In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eate thy bread they that sit on high so high that the poor below seeme {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} no bigger than Ants sayes Lucian are not alway to sit still qualitie and condition exempt not from labour but from the manner of labour and therefore does Solomon set the Spider that embleme of industrie in that she spins her Web out of her owne bowells to spin even in the Courts of Princes though she has beene often swept out for her labour Why now should the sluggard yet fold his armes why should he for fortie fiftie sixtie yeares rest those bones to whom nature owes so long a rest surely his soule is crept into his bodie to the same end that Epimenides did into his Den to sleepe out sixty yeares he forgets how long a rest he is like to take in the grave hee and all the travellers of the earth let the poore labouring man he that grinds in the Mill the hireling whose paines are trebled by the sins of great ones solace himselfe with this that this day shall end in a night not like the nights of the yeare which after a few houres give place to the day nor like that in Ogyges his time famous for nine monthes but longer and more shadie where Abel has slept almost from the foundation of the world where Israel makes not nor Aegyptian Pharaohs tire the people with building Pyramids where silent Nations sleep in beds of Clay and shall not rise nor wake nor rub their eyes till the Trumpet shall sound in their eares and heaven and earth inflamed shall light them new start up to Christs Tribunall Thus much of our sufferings the terme of suffering followes in these words Till thou returne to the earth where you may take notice of foure things the first implyed our comming from the earth the second exprest our returne to the earth First as the end of evills Secondly as it selfe an evill First of the part implyed our comming from the earth Luc. Iun. Brutus consulting with the Oracle who should be Consull received this answer That he should be Consull that first kissed his mother he by and by fell on his face kissed the earth returned home and was created Consull Romes first Consull beside the faith
benefit is partly his that rules and partly his that is ruled and such a service had hee in the Gospell in whose behalfe the Centurion besought Jesus in this forme {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} Lord my boy lyes at home sick of a palsie And the Originall will beare my child lyes at home sick of a palsie And such a service was that wee read of in Genesis and Isaac blessed Esau that he might serve his brother But now beyond both these there is a relation of Lord and Servant betweene God and Man where the Lord reserves to himselfe onely honour and puts over all the profit to us his servants and yet though our service be not good to him but to our selves it is his pleasure and goodnesse to require it it is he that led the pen of Salomon when he began this Chapter as wee should begin every day of the weeke every day in the yeare Remember now thy Creator in the dayes of thy youth The Creator is the object of our remembrance and that first in this generall notion as the Creator secondly in a speciall as thy Creator First of the generall the poore Philosopher that knew no other no better God than the Sunne when he was asked for what he was borne made answer {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} to looke upon the Sun though his ignorance was too too grosse in that he made a God of a Creature adoring the Sun for him that inflamed the Sunne yet had his ground beene true had that beene a God which he supposed to be a god how worthy had his answer beene to be sent in Letters of gold to posteritie to read and practise bee it what it will 't is writ against us and shall be read against us at the great accounts if knowing the true God we denie him in our lives Of all those Acts by which Almighty God communicates himselfe to the Creature hee is most visible in his act of Creation as for his acts of executive providence though they are equally certaine yet they are not equally seene it was the ignorance of those that puzled the Epicure and drove him to his wits end to finde out why all things come alike to all to him that sacrificeth and to him that sacrificeth not why the thunder-bolt should passe a Taverne and fire a Temple why the Foxes should have holes and the Birds of the aire nests but humility and simplicity not where to lay their head which knot when he had thus tyed but could not untie hee desperately broke it and peremptorily sets downe that there was a God in heaven but he a carelesse and sleepy one wherein in that he took away from him providence hee indeed left him no God not much unlike the Cretians that call their god Iove immortall yet talke of his Tomb with this inscription {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} Here lies Iove the Son of Saturne but his act of Creation he that sees it not must needs be guiltie of damnable ignorance of voluntarie and affected ignorance and seems to have his eye-lids given him for nothing else but to shut out day and therefore this remembrance of God is rather urged from his act of Creation than from his act of Providence There is a second reason which may claime our remembrance of him and that is the extent of his goodnesse in this act of Creation before heaven or earth before day or night had God beene of eternall and infinite continuance he was then alone solitarie yet wanted no company it is not with him as with man whose naturall infirmities breed a naturall and necessary desire of society hence says Solomon two are better than one neither wanted he the earth for a foot-stoole to want a foot-stoole is proper to bodies to elementary and grosse bodies neither wanted hee a house to dwell in for then he should want it now For behold the heaven of heavens containes him not and yet for all this it pleased him to create an heaven and earth the one for thy Footstoole the other for thy Canopy both of them of rare beauty of wonderfull continuance of such perfection that to them as Solomon sayes no man can add and from them can no man diminish unlesse it be some one so wickedly curious as he in Lucian that blamed him first for making a woman secondly for placing the Bulls hornes above his eyes But because no efficient acts at randome but has respect to some end which either it selfe tends to but apprehends not as it is in all things below man or which it selfe both tends to and apprehends as it is in all intellectual agents and chiefely in the first the infinite wise God who therefore in the Theologie of the Gentiles is called the first intelligence take further notice of the end for which hee became a Creator and then unlesse thou be more stupid than Clusius Sabinus that could never hit of Hectors Name or Messala Corvinus that forgot his owne thou canst not but with thanks and amazement call to mind thy God thy Creator and his mercies which have beene of old Look into the upper and nether world both Sunne and Moone give thee to see though they see not themselves and in this lower world whatsoever bleats or lowes or roares upon a thousand hills whatsoever chants in the aire or is silent in the water both are and grow and multiply either for thy pleasure or for thy necessitie descend from the sensitive degree to the vegetative thou shalt find the Laurell in the cold of Winter put off her leaves for Caesars head for him the Pine leaves her native Mountaine for an inhospitall Element and at the Artificers pleasure the Cedar comes downe from Lebanon and puts on the forme of men of beasts of gods If this bee not enough doe but thinke how GOD hath placed the head of trees below the foot of man {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} The head of a tree is the root Arist. de anim Of all these Et Dominiū usus fundatur in humana natura Suar. de oper. 6. dierum Both Dominion and use is founded in the nature of Man Whatsoever hee created in those first sixe dayes of the world hee made in reference to thee to thee I say whosoever thou art hee desires no man to remember him for whom hee did not create these things hee that hath not so much land as hee can cover with his prostrate body for him was the whole earth created whatsoever is now inclosed had not sin entred into the world should have laine common the Civilian had not broacht those termes of division dominion acquisition prescription usucaption occupation it had not beene in controversie whether the Mariner might cast Anchor at this or that shore nor whose was the swarme of Bees that setled in this or that tree there had beene no setling of Land-marks no buying no selling either of hand of Iustice no