spirit c. Blessed are they that mourn c. Blessed are the meek c. Blessed are they which hunger and thirst c. Blessed are the merciful c. Math. 5. 1 2 3 4 1. THe Holy Jesus being entred upon his Prophetical Office in the first solemn Sermon gave testimony that he was not only an Interpreter of Laws then in being but also a Law-giver and an Angel of the new and everlasting Covenant which because God meant to establish with mankind by the mediation of his Son by his Son also he now began to publish the conditions of it and that the publication of the Christian Law might retain some proportion at least and analogy of circumstance with the promulgation of the Law of Moses Christ went up into a Mountain and from thence gave the Oracle And here he taught all the Disciples for what he was now to speak was to become a Law a part of the condition on which he established the Covenant and founded our hopes of Heaven Our excellent and gracious Law-giver knowing that the great argument in all practical disciplines is the proposal of the end which is their crown and their reward begins his Sermon as David began his most divine collection of Hymns with Blessedness And having enumerated Eight Duties which are the rule of the spirits of Christians he begins every Duty with a Beatitude and concludes it with a Reward to manifest the reasonableness and to invite and determine our choice to such Graces which are circumscribed with Felicities which have blessedness in present possession and glory in the consequence which in the midst of the most passive and afflictive of them tells us that we are blessed which is indeed a felicity as a hope is good or as a rich heir is rich who in the midst of his Discipline and the severity of Tutors and Governours knows he is designed to and certain of a great inheritance 2. The Eight Beatitudes which are the duty of a Christian and the rule of our spirit and the special discipline of Christ seem like so many paradoxes and impossibilities reduced to Reason and are indeed Vertues made excellent by rewards by the sublimity of Grace and the mercies of God hallowing and crowning those habits which are despised by the world and are esteemed the conditions of lower and less considerable people But God sees not as man sees and his rules of estimate and judgment are not borrowed from the exteriour splendour which is apt to seduce children and cousen fools and please the appetites of sense and abused fancy but they are such as he makes himself excellencies which by abstractions and separations from things below land us upon 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And they are states of suffering rather than states of life for the great imployment of a Christian being to bear the Cross Christ laid the Pedestal so low that the rewards were like rich mines interred in the deeps and inaccessible retirements and did chuse to build our 〈◊〉 upon the torrents and violences of affliction and sorrow Without these Graces we 〈◊〉 get Heaven and without sorrow and sad accidents we cannot exercise these Graces Such are 3. First Blessed are the Poor in spirit for theirs is the Kingdome of Heaven Poverty of spirit is in respect of secular affluence and abundance or in respect of great opinion and high thoughts either of which have divers acts and offices That the first is one of the meanings of this Text is certain because S. Luke repeating this Beatitude delivers it plainly Blessed are the poor and to it he opposes riches And our Blessed Saviour speaks so suspiciously of riches and rich men that he represents the condition to be full of danger and temptation and S. James calls it full of sin describing rich men to be oppressors litigious proud spightful and contentious which sayings like all others of that nature are to be understood in common and most frequent accidents not regularly but very improbable to be otherwise For if we consider our Vocation S. Paul informs us That not many mighty not many noble are called but God hath chosen the poor of this world rich in faith And how hard it is for a rich man to enter into Heaven our great Master hath taught us by saying it is more easie for a Camel to pass through a needle's eye And the reason is because of the infinite temptation which Riches minister to our spirits it being such an opportunity of vices that nothing remains to countermand the act but a strong resolute unaltered and habitual purpose and pure love of 〈◊〉 Riches in the mean time offering to us occasions of Lust fuel for Revenge instruments of Pride entertainment of our desires engaging them in low worldly and sottish appetites inviting us to shew our power in oppression our greatness in vanities our wealth in prodigal expences and to answer the importunity of our Lusts not by a denial but by a correspondence and satisfaction till they become our mistresses imperious arrogant tyrannical and vain But Poverty is the sister of a good mind it ministers aid to wisdome industry to our spirit severity to our thoughts soberness to counsels modesty to our desires it restrains extravagancy and dissolution of appetites the next thing above our present condition which is commonly the object of our wishes being temperate and little proportionable enough to nature not wandring beyond the limits of necessity or a moderate conveniency or at 〈◊〉 but to a free 〈◊〉 and recreation And the 〈◊〉 of Poverty are single and mean rather a sit imploiment to correct our levities than a business to impede our better thoughts since a little thing supplies the needs of nature and the earth and the fountain with little trouble minister food to us and God's common providence and daily dispensation cases the cares and makes them portable But the cares and businesses of rich men are violences to our whole man they are loads of memory business for the understanding work for two or three arts and sciences imployment for many servants to assist in increase the appetite and heighten the thirst and by making their dropsie bigger and their capacities large they destroy all those opportunities and possibilities of Charity in which only Riches can be useful 4. But it is not a 〈◊〉 poverty of possession which intitles us to the blessing but a poverty of spirit that is a contentedness in every state an aptness to renounce all when we are obliged in duty a refusing to continue a possession when we for it must quit a vertue or a noble action a divorce of our affections from those gilded vanities a generous contempt of the world and at no hand heaping riches either with injustice or with avarice either with wrong or impotency of action or affection Not like Laberius described by the Poet who thought nothing so criminal as Poverty and every spending of
not be eaten not only for the former reason but because God had designed it for particular purposes to be the great Instrument of Expiation and an eminent type of the Blood of the Son of God who was to dye as the great expiatory Sacrifice for the World Nay it was re-established by the Apostles in the infancy of Christianity and observed by the Primitive Christians for several Ages as we have elsewhere observed 5. THE other Precept was concerning Circumcision given to Abraham at the time of God's entring into Covenant with him God said unto Abraham Thou shalt keep my Covenant c. This is my Covenant which ye shall keep between me and you and thy Seed after thee every Man-child among you shall be circumcised and ye shall circumcise the flesh of your fore-skin and it shall be a token of the Covenant betwixt me and you God had now made a Covenant with Abraham to take his Posterity for his peculiar People and that out of them should arise the promised Messiah and as all foederal compacts have some solemn and external rites of ratification so God was pleased to add Circumcision as the sign and seal of this Covenant partly as it had a peculiar fitness in it to denote the promised Seed partly that it might be a discriminating badge of Abraham's Children that part whom God had especially chosen out of the rest of Mankind from all other People On Abraham's part it was a sufficient argument of his hearty compliance with the terms of this Covenant that he would so chearfully submit to so unpleasing and 〈◊〉 a sign as was imposed upon him For Circumcision could not but be both painful and dangerous in one of his Years as it was afterwards to be to all new-born Infants whence 〈◊〉 complained of Moses commanding her to circumcise her Son that he was 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 an husband of bloods a cruel and inhumane Husband And this the Jewes tell us was the reason why circumcision was omitted during their Fourty Years Journy in the Wilderness it was 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by reason of the trouble and inconvenience of the way God mercifully dispensing with the want of it 〈◊〉 it should hinder their travelling the soarness and weakness of the circumcised Person not comporting with hard and continual Journies It was to be administred the eighth day not sooner the tenderness of the Infant not well till then complying with it besides that the Mother of a Male-child was reckoned legally impure till the seventh Day not later probably because the longer it was deferred the more unwilling would Parents be to put their Children to pain of which they would every Day become more sensible not to say the satisfaction it would be to them to see their Children solemnly entred into Covenant Circumcision was afterwards incorporated into the Body of the Jewish Law and entertained with a mighty Veneration as their great and standing Priviledge relied on as the main Basis and Foundation of their 〈◊〉 and hopes of acceptance with Heaven and accounted in a manner equivalent to all the other Rites of the Mosaic Law 6. BUT besides these two we find other positive Precepts which though not so clearly expressed are yet sufficiently intimated to us Thus there seems to have been a Law that none of the Holy Line none of the Posterity of Seth should marry with Infidels or those corrupt and idolatrous Nations which God had rejected as appears in that it 's charged as a great part of the sin of the old World that the Sons of God matched with the Daughters of Men as also from the great care which Abraham took that his Son Isaac should not take a Wife of the Daughters of the Canaanites among whom he dwelt There was also 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Jus Levirationis whereby the next Brother to him who died without Issue was obliged to marry the Widow of the deceased and to raise up seed unto his Brother the contempt whereof cost Onan his Life together with many more particular Laws which the story of those Times might suggest to us But what is of most use and importance to us is to observe what Laws God gave for the administration of his Worship which will be best known by considering what worship generally prevailed in those early Times wherein we shall especially remarque the nature of their publick Worship the Places where the Times when and the Persons by whom it was administred 7. IT cannot be doubted but that the Holy Patriarchs of those days were careful to instruct their Children and all that were under their charge their Families being then very vast and numerous in the Duties of Religion to explain and improve the natural Laws written upon their minds and acquaint them with those Divine Traditions and positive Revelations which they themselves had received from God this being part of that great character which God gave of Abraham I know him that he will command his Children and his Houshold after him and they shall keep the way of the Lord to do justice and judgment To this they joyned Prayer and Invocation than which no duty is more natural and necessary more natural because it fitly expresses that great reverence and veneration which we have for the Divine Majesty and that propensity that is in Mankind to make known their wants none more necessary because our whole dependance being upon the continuance and constant returns of the Divine power and goodness 't is most reasonable that we should make our Daily addresses to him in whom we live move and have our being Nor were they wanting in returns of praise and solemn celebrations of the goodness of Heaven both by entertaining high and venerable thoughts of God and by actions suitable to those honourable sentiments which they had of him In these acts of worship they were careful to use gestures of the greatest reverence and submission which commonly was prostration Abraham bowed himself towards the ground and when God sent the Israelites the happy news of their deliverance out of Egypt they bowed their Heads and worshipped A posture which hath ever been the usual mode of adoration in those Eastern Countries unto this day But the greatest instance of the Publick Worship of those times was Sacrifices a very early piece of Devotion in all probability taking its rise from Adam's fall They were either Eucharistical expressions of thankfulness for blessings received or expiatory offered for the remission of sin Whether these Sacrifices were first taken up at Mens arbitrary pleasure or positively instituted and commanded by God might admit of a very large enquiry But to me the case seems plainly this that as to Eucharistical 〈◊〉 such as first-fruits and the like oblations Mens own reason might suggest and perswade them that it was fit to present them as the most natural significations of a thankful mind And thus far there might be Sacrifices in the
his people and free liberty to go serve and worship the God of their Fathers And that he might not seem a mere pretender to Divine revelation but that he really had an immediate commission from Heaven God was pleased to furnish him with extraordinary Credentials and to seal his Commission with a power of working Miracles beyond all the Arts of Magick and those tricks for which the Egyptian Sorcerers were so famous in the World But Pharaoh unwilling to part with such useful Vassals and having oppressed them beyond possibility of reconcilement would not hearken to the proposal but sometimes downright rejected it otherwhiles sought by subtil and plausible pretences to evade and shift it off till by many astonishing Miracles and severe Judgments God extorted at length a grant from him Under the conduct of Moses they set forwards after at least two hundred years servitude under the Egyptian yoke and though 〈◊〉 sensible of his error with a great Army pursued them either to cut them off or bring them back God made way for them through the midst of the Sea the waters becoming like a wall of Brass on each side of them till being all passed to the other 〈◊〉 those invisible cords which had hitherto tied up that liquid Element bursting in sunder the waters returned and overwhelmed their enemies that pursued them Thus God by the same stroke can protect his friends and punish his enemies Nor did the Divine Providence here take its leave of them but became their constant guard and defence in all their journeys waiting upon them through their several stations in the wilderness the most memorable whereof was that at Mount Sinai in Arabia The place where God delivered them the pattern in the Mount according to which the form both of their Church and State was to be framed and modelled In order hereunto Moses is called up into the Mount where by Fasting and Prayer he conversed with Heaven and received the body of their Laws Three days the people were by a pious and devout care to sanctifie and prepare themselves for the promulgation of the Law they might not come near their Wives were commanded to wash their clothes as an embleme and representation of that cleansing of the heart and that inward purity of mind where with they were to entertain the Divine will On the third day in the morning God descended from Heaven with great appearances of Majesty and terror with thunders and lightnings with black clouds and tempests with shouts and the loud noise of a trumpet which trumpet say the Jews was made of the horn of that Ram that was offered in the room of Isaac with fire and smoke on the top of the Mount ascending up like the smoke of a Furnace the Mountain it self greatly quaking the people trembling nay so terrible was the sight that Moses who had so frequently so familiarly conversed with God said I exceedingly fear and quake All which pompous trains of terror and magnificence God made use of at this time to excite the more solemn attention to his Laws and to beget a greater reverence and veneration for them in the minds of the people and to let them see how able he was to call them to account and by the severest penalties to vindicate the violation of his Law 4. THE Code and Digest of those Laws which God now gave to the Jews as the terms of that National Covenant that he made with them consisted of three sorts of Precepts Moral Ecelesiastical and Political which the Jews will have intimated by those three words that so frequently occur in the writings of Moses Laws Statutes and Judgments By 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Laws they understand the Moral Law the notices of good and evil naturally implanted in mens minds By 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Statutes Ceremonial Precepts instituted by God with peculiar reference to his Church By 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Judgments Political Laws concerning Justice and Equity the order of humane society and the prudent and peaceable managery of the Commonwealth The Moral Laws inserted into this Code are those contained in the Decalogue 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as they are called the ten words that were written upon two Tables of Stone These were nothing else but a summary Comprehension of the great Laws of Nature engraven at first upon the minds of all men in the World the most material part whereof was now consigned to writing and incorporated into the body of the Jewish Law I know the Decalogue is generally taken to be a complete System of all natural Laws But whoever impartially considers the matter will find that there are many instances of duty so far from being commanded in it that they are not reducible to any part of it unless hook'd in by subtilties of wit and drawn thither by forc'd and unnatural inferences What provision except in one case or two do any of those Commandments make against neglects of duty Where do they obligue us to do good to others to love assist relieve our enemies Gratitude and thankfulness to benefactors is one of the prime and essential Laws of Nature and yet no where that I know of unless we will have it implied in the Preface to the Law commanded or intimated in the Decalogue With many other cases which 'tis naturally evident are our duty whereof no footsteps are to be seen in this Compendium unless hunted out by nice and sagacious reasonings and made out by a long train of consequences never originally intended in the Commandment and which not one in a thousand are capable of deducing from it It is probable therefore that God reduc'd only so many of the Laws of Nature into writing as were proper to the present state and capacities of that people to whom they were given superadding some and explaining others by the Preaching and Ministery of the Prophets who in their several Ages endeavoured to bring men out of the Shades and Thickets into clear light and Noon-day by clearing up mens obligations to those natural and essential duties in the practice whereof humane nature was to be advanced unto its just accomplishment and perfection Hence it was that our Lord who came not to destroy the Law but to fulfil and perfect it has explained the obligations of the natural Law more fully and clearly more plainly and intelligibly rendred our duty more fixed and certain and extended many instances of obedience to higher measures to a greater exactness and perfection than ever they were understood to have before Thus he commands a free and universal charity not only that we love our friends and relations but that we love our enemies bless them that curse us do good to them that hate us and pray for them that despitefully use and persecute us He hath forbidden malice and revenge with more plainness and smartness obliged us not only to live according to the measures of sobriety but extended it to self-denial and taking
servants some were Covetous and would usurp that which by an earlier distinction had passed into private possession and then they made new principles and new discourses such which were reasonable in order to their private indirect ends but not to the publick benefit and therefore would prove unreasonable and mischievous to themselves at last 20. And when once they broke the order of creation it is easie to understand by what necessities of consequence they ran into many sins and irrational proceedings AElian tells of a Nation who had a Law binding them to beat their Parents to death with clubs when they lived to a decrepit and unprofitable age The Persian Magi mingled with their Mothers and all their nearest relatives And by a Law of the Venetians says Bodinus a Son in banishment was redeemed from the sentence if he killed his banished Father And in Homer's time there were a sort of Pirats who professed Robbing and did account it honourable But the great prevarications of the Laws of Nature were in the first Commandment when the tradition concerning God was derived by a long line and there were no visible remonstrances of an extraordinary power they were quickly brought to believe that he whom they saw not was not at all especially being prompted to it by Pride Tyranny and a loose imperious spirit Others 〈◊〉 to low opinions concerning God and made such as they list of their own and they were like to be strange Gods which were of Man's making When Man either maliciously or carelesly became unreasonable in the things that concerned God God was pleased to give him over to a reprobate mind that is an unreasonable understanding and false principles concerning himself and his Neighbour that his sin against the natural Law might become its own punishment by discomposing his natural happiness Atheism and Idolatry brought in all unnatural Lusts and many unreasonable Injustices And this we learn from S. Paul As they did not like to retain God in their knowledge God gave them over to a reprobate mind to do those things which are not convenient that is incongruities towards the end of their creation and so they became full of unrighteousness lust covetousness malice envy strise and murther disobedient to parents breakers of Covenants unnatural in their affections and in their passions and all this was the consequent of breaking the first natural Law They changed the truth of God into a lie For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections 21. Now God who takes more care for the good of man than man does 〈◊〉 his own did not only imprint these Laws in the hearts and understandings of man but did also take care to make this light shine clear enough to walk by by adopting some instances of the natural Laws into Religion Thus the Law against Murther became a part of Religion in the time of Noah and some other things were then added concerning worshipping God against Idolatry and against unnatural and impure Mixtures Sometimes God superadded Judgments as to the 23000. Assyrians for Fornication For although these punishments were not threatned to the crime in the sanction and expression of any definite Law and it could not naturally arrive to it by its inordination yet it was as agreeable to the Divine Justice to inflict it as to inflict the pains of Hell upon evil livers who yet had not any revelation of such intolerable danger for it was sufficient that God had made such crimes to be against their very Nature and they who will do violence to their Nature to do themselves hurt and to displease God deserve to lose the title to all those good things which God was pleased to design for man's final condition And because it grew habitual customary and of innocent reputation it pleased God to call this precept out of the darkness whither their evil customs and false discourses had put it and by such an extraregular but very signal punishment to re-mind them that the natural permissions of Concubinate were only confined to the ends of mankind and were hallowed only by the Faith and the design of Marriage And this was signified by S. Paul in these words They that sin without the Law shall also perish without the Law that is by such Judgments which God hath inflicted on evil livers in several periods of the world irregularly indeed not signified in kind but yet sent into the world with designs of a great mercy that the ignorances and prevarications and partial abolitions of the natural Law might be cured and restored and by the dispersion of prejudices the state of natural Reason be redintegrate 22. Whatsoever was besides this was accidental and emergent Such as were the Discourses of wise men which God raised up in several Countreys and Ages as Job and Eliphaz and Bildad and those of the families of the Patriarchs dispersed into several countreys and constant Tradition in some noble and more eminent descents And yet all this was so little and imperfect not in it self but in respect of the thick cloud man had drawn before his Understanding that darkness covered the face of the earth in a great proportion Almost all the World were Idolaters and when they had broken the first of the natural Laws the breach of the other was not only naturally consequent but also by Divine judgment it descended infallibly And yet God pitying mankind did not only still continue the former remedies and added blessings giving them 〈◊〉 seasons and filling their hearts with food and gladness so leaving the Nations without excuse but also made a very noble change in the world For having chosen an excellent Family the Fathers of which lived exactly according to the natural Law and with observation of those few superadded Precepts in which God did specificate their prime Duty having swelled that Family to a great Nation and given them possession of an excellent Land which God took from seven Nations because they were egregious violators of the natural Law he was pleased to make a very great restitution and declaration of the natural Law in many instances of Religion and Justice which he framed into positive Precepts and adopted them into the family of the first original instances making them as necessary in the particulars as they were in the primary obligation but the instances were such whereof some did relate only to the present constitution of the Commonwealth others to such universal Contracts which obliged all the World by reason of the equal necessity of all mankind to admit them And these himself writ on Tables of stone and dressed up their Nation into a body politick by an excellent System of politick Laws and adorned it with a rare Religion and left this Nation as a piece of leven in a mass of dow not only to do honour to God and happiness to themselves by those instruments which he had now very much explicated but also to transmit
Kir-haraseth and went to their own Countrey The same and much more was God's design who took not his enemie's but his own Son his only begotten Son and God himself and offered him up in Sacrifice to make us leave our perpetual fightings against Heaven and if we still persist we are hardned beyond the wildnesses of the Arabs and Edomites and neither are receptive of the impresses of Pity nor Humanity who neither have compassion to the Suffering of Jesus nor compliance with the designs of God nor conformity to the Holiness and Obedience of our Guide In a dark night if an Ignis Fatuus do but precede us the glaring of its lesser flames do so amuse our eyes that we follow it into Rivers and Precipices as if the ray of that false light were designed on purpose to be our path to tread in And therefore not to follow the glories of the Sun of Righteousness who indeed leads us over rocks and difficult places but secures us against the danger and guides us into safety is the greatest both undecency and unthankfulness in the world 5. In the great Council of Eternity when God set down the Laws and knit fast the eternal bands of Predestination he made it one of his great purposes to make his Son like us that we also might be like his Holy Son he by taking our Nature we by imitating his Holiness God hath predestinated us to be conformable to the image of his Son saith the Apostle For the first in every kind is in nature propounded as the Pattern of the rest And as the Sun the Prince of all the Bodies of Light and the Fire of all warm substances is the principal the Rule and the Copy which they in their proportions imitate and transcribe so is the Word incarnate the great Example of all the Predestinate for he is the first-born among many brethren And therefore it was a precept of the Apostle and by his doctrine we understand its meaning Put you on the Lord Jesus Christ. The similitude declares the duty As a garment is composed and made of the same fashion with the body and is applied to each part in its true figure and commensuration so should we put on Christ and imitate the whole body of his Sanctity conforming to every integral part and express him in our lives that God seeing our impresses may know whose image and superscription we bear and we may be acknowledged for Sons when we have the air and features and resemblances of our elder Brother 6. In the practice of this duty we may be helped by certain considerations which are like the proportion of so many rewards For this according to the nature of all holy Exercises stays not for pay till its work be quite finished but like Musick in Churches is Pleasure and Piety and Salary besides So is every work of Grace full of pleasure in the execution and is abundantly rewarded besides the stipend of a glorious Eternity 7. First I consider that nothing is more honourable than to be like God and the Heathens worshippers of false Deities grew vicious upon that stock and we who have fondnesses of imitation counting a Deformity full of honour if by it we may be like our Prince for pleasures were in their height in Capreae because Tiberius there wallowed in them and a wry neck in Nero's Court was the Mode of Gallantry might do well to make our imitations prudent and glorious and by propounding excellent Examples heighten our faculties to the capacities of an evenness with the best of Precedents He that strives to imitate another admires him and confesses his own imperfections and therefore that our admirations be not flattering nor our consessions phantastick and impertinent it were but reasonable to admire Him from whom really all Perfections do derive and before whose Glories all our imperfections must confess their shame and needs of reformation God by a voice from Heaven and by sixteen generations of Miracles and Grace hath attested the Holy Jesus to be the fountain of Sanctity and the wonderful Counsellor and the Captain of our sufferings and the guide of our manners by being his beloved Son in whom he took pleasure and complacency to the height of satisfaction And if any thing in the world be motive of our affections or satisfactory to our understandings what is there in Heaven or Earth we can desire or imagine beyond a likeness to God and participation of the Divine Nature and Perfections And therefore as when the Sun arises every man goes to his work and warms himself with his heat and is refreshed with his influences and measures his labour with his course So should we frame all the actions of our life by His Light who hath shined by an excellent Righteousness that we no more walk in Darkness or sleep in Lethargies or run a-gazing after the lesser and imperfect beauties of the Night It is the weakness of the Organ that makes us hold our hand between the Sun and us and yet stand staring upon a Meteor or an inflamed jelly And our judgments are as mistaken and our appetites are as sottish if we propound to our selves in the courses and designs of Perfections any copy but of Him or something like Him who is the most perfect And lest we think his Glories too great to behold 8. Secondly I consider that the imitation of the Life of Jesus is a duty of that excellency and perfection that we are helped in it not only by the assistance of a good and a great Example which possibly might be too great and scare our endeavours and attempts but also by its easiness compliance and proportion to us For Jesus in his whole life conversed with men with a modest Vertue which like a well-kindled fire fitted with just materials casts a constant heat not like an inflamed heap of stubble glaring with great emissions and suddenly stooping into the thickness of 〈◊〉 His Piety was even constant unblameable complying with civil society without affrightment of precedent or prodigious instances of actions greater than the imitation of men For if we observe our Blessed Saviour in the whole story of his Life although he was without Sin yet the instances of his Piety were the actions of a very holy but of an ordinary life and we may observe this difference in the Story of Jesus from Ecclesiastical Writings of certain beatified persons whose life is told rather to amaze us and to create scruples than to lead us in the evenness and serenity of a holy Conscience Such are the prodigious Penances of Simeon Stylites the Abstinence of the Religious retired into the mountain Nitria but especially the stories of later Saints in the midst of a declining Piety and aged Christendom where persons are represented Holy by way of Idea and fancy if not to promote the interests of a Family and Institution But our Blessed Saviour though his eternal Union
untie the girdle of Discipline with the loose hands of dispensation and excuse than to strain her too hard by the strictures and bindings of severity but the errour were the surer on this side 3. The Blessed Jesus refused not the signature of this bloudy Covenant though it were the Character of a Sinner and did Sacramentally rescind the impure reliques of Adam and the contractions of evil customes which was the greatest descent of Humility that is imaginable that he should put himself to pain to be reckoned amongst sinners and to have their Sacraments and their Protestations though his Innocence was purer than the flames of Cherubim But we use arts to seem more righteous than we are desiring rather to be accounted holy than to be so as thinking the vanity of Reputation more useful to us than the happiness of a remote and far distant Eternity But if as it is said Circumcision was ordained besides the signing of the Covenant to abolish the guilt of Original sin we are willing to confess that it being no act of humiliation to confess a crime that all the world is equally guilty of that could not be avoided by our timeliest industry and that serves us for so many ends in the excuse and minoration of our actual impieties so that as Diogenes trampled upon Plato's pride with a greater fastuousness and humorous ostentation so we do with Original sin declaim against it bitterly to save the others harmless and are free in the publication of this that we may be instructed how to conceal the actual The Blessed Jesus had in him no principle of Sin original nor actual and therefore this designation of his in submitting himself to the bloudy Covenant of Circumcision which was a just express and Sacramental abscission of it was an act of glorious Humility yet our charging of our selves so promptly with Adam's fault what-ever truth it may have in the strictness of Theology hath forsitan but an ill end in Morality and so I now consider it without any reflexion upon the precise Question 4. For though the Fall of Adam lost to him all those supernatural assistences which God put into our Nature by way of Grace yet it is by accident that we are more prone to many sins than we are to Vertue Adam's sin did discompose his Understanding and Affections and every sin we do does still make us more unreasonable more violent more sensual more apt still to the multiplication of the same or the like actions the first rebellion of the inferiour Faculties against the Will and Understanding and every victory the Flesh gets over the Spirit makes the inferiour insolent strong tumultuous domineering and triumphant upon the proportionable ruines of the spirit blinding our Reason and binding our Will and all these violations of our Powers are increased by the perpetual ill customes and false principles and ridiculous guises of the World which makes the later Ages to be worse than the former unless some other accident do intervene to stop the ruine and declension of Vertue such as are God's Judgments the sending of Prophets new imposition of Laws messages from Heaven diviner Institutions such as in particular was the great Discipline of Christianity And even in this sense here is origination enough for sin and impairing of the reasonable Faculties of humane Souls without charging our faults upon Adam 5. But besides this God who hath propounded to Man glorious conditions and design'd him to an excellent state of Immortality hath required of him such a duty as shall put man to labour and present to God a service of a free and difficult obedience For therefore God hath given us Laws which come cross and are restraints to our natural inclinations that we may part with something in the service of God which we value For although this is nothing in respect of God yet to Man it is the greatest he can do What thanks were it to man to obey God in such things which he would do though he were not commanded But to leave all our own desires and to take up objects of God's propounding contrary to our own and desires against our Nature this is that which GOD design'd as a sacrifice of our selves to him And therefore God hath made many of his Laws to be prohibitions in the matter of natural pleasure and restraints of our sensitive appetite Now this being become the matter of Divine Laws that we should in many parts and degrees abstain from what pleases our senses by this supervening accident it happens that we are very hardly weaned from sin but most easily tempted to a Vice And then we think we have reason to lay the fault upon Original sin and natural aversation from goodness when this inclination to Vice is but accidental and occasional upon the matter and sanction of the Laws Our Nature is not contrary to Vertue for the Laws of Nature and right Reason do not only oblige us but incline us to it but the instances of some Vertues are made to come cross to our Nature that is to our natural appetites by reason of which it comes to pass that as S. Paul says we are by nature the children of wrath meaning that by our natural inclinations we are disposed to contradict those Laws which lay fetters upon them we are apt to satisfie the Lusts of the Flesh for in these he there instances 6. But in things intellectual and spiritual where neither the one nor the other 〈◊〉 the sensual part we are indifferent to Vertue or to Vice and when we do amiss it is wholly and in all degrees inexcusably our own fault In the Old Law when it was a duty to swear by the God of Israel in solemn causes men were apt enough to swear by him only and that sometimes the Israelites did swear by the Queen of Heaven it was by the ill example and desires to comply with the neighbour Nations whose Daughters they sometime married or whose armes they feared or whose friendship they desired or with whom they did negotiate It is indifferent to us to love our Fathers and to love strangers according as we are determined by custom or education Nay for so much of it as is natural and original we are more inclined to love them than to disrepute them and if we disobey them it is when any injunction of theirs comes cross to our natural desires and purposes But if from our infancy we be told concerning a stranger that he is our Father we frame our affections to nature and our nature to custome and education and are as apt to love him who is not and yet is said to be as him who is said not to be and yet indeed is our natural Father 7. And in sensual things if GOD had commanded Polygamy or promiscuous Concubinate or unlimited Eatings and Drinkings it is not to be supposed but that we should have been ready enough to have obeyed God in all such impositions
affections and with the pleasures and entertainments of desires is the way of the more passionate and imperfect not in a man's power to chuse or to procure but comes by a thousand chances meeting with a soft nature credulous or weak easie or ignorant softned with fears or invited by forward desires 9. Those that did live amidst the fervours of the primitive Charity and were warmed by their fires grew inflamed by contact and vicinity to such burning and shining lights And they therefore grew to high degrees of Piety because then every man made judgment of his own actions by the proportions which he saw before him and believed all descents from those greater examples to be so many degrees from the Rule And he that lives in a College of devout persons will compare his own actions with the Devotion and customes of that Society and not with the remisness of persons he hears of in story but what he sees and lives with But if we live in an Age of Indevotion we think our selves well assoiled if we be warmer than their Ice every thing which is above our example being eminent and conspicuous though it be but like the light of a Gloworm or the sparkling of a Diamond yet if it be in the midst of darkness it is a goodly beauty This I call the way of serving God by desires and affections and this is altered by example by publick manners by external works by the assignment of 〈◊〉 by designation of conventions for prayer by periods and revolutions of times of duty by hours and solemnities so that a man shall owe his Piety to these chances which although they are graces of God and instruments of Devotion yet they are not always in our power and therefore they are but accidental ministeries of a good life and the 〈◊〉 constant or durable But when the principle of our Piety is a conformity of our Understanding to God's Laws when we are instructed what to do and therefore do it because we are satisfied it is most excellent to obey God this will support our Piety against objections lead it on in despight of disadvantages this chuses God with Reason and is not determined from without and as it is in some degree necessary for all times so it is the greatest security against the change of Laws and Princes and Religions and Ages when all the incentives of affection and exteriour determinations of our Piety shall cease and perhaps all external offices and the daily sacrifice and Piety it self shall fail from the face of the Land then the obedience founded in the Understanding is the only lasting strength is left us to make retreat to and to secure our conditions Thus from the composition of the Will and Affections with our exteriour acts of obedience to God our Obedience is made willing swift and chearful but from the composition of the Understanding our Obedience becomes strong sincere and persevering and this is that which S. Paul calls our reasonable service 10. Fourthly To which if we add that our Obedience be universal we have all the qualifications which make the duty to be pious and prudent The meaning is that we obey God in all his Sanctions though the matter be in common account small and inconsiderable and give no indulgence to our selves to recede from the Rule in any matter whatsoever For the veriest minute of Obedience is worth our attention as being by God esteemed the trial of our Obedience in a greater affair He that is unjust in a little will be unjust in a greater said our Blessed Saviour And since to God all matter is alike and no more accrues to him in an Hecatomb than in a piece of gumm in an Ascetick severity than in a secular life God regards not the matter of a precept but the Obedience which in all instances is the same and he that will prevaricate when the matter is 〈◊〉 and by consequence the temptations to it weak and impotent and soon confuted will think he may better be excused when the temptations are violent and importunate as it commonly happens in affairs of greater importance He that will lie to save sixpence will not stick at it when a thousand pound is the purchase and possibly there is more contempt and despite done to the Divine authority when we disobey it in such particulars wherein the Obedience is most easie and the temptations less troublesome I do not say there is more injustice or more malice in a small Disobedience than in a greater but there is either more contempt or more negligence and dissolution of discipline than in the other 11. And it is no small temptation of the Devil soliciting of us not to be curious of scruples and grains nor to disturb our peace for lighter Disobediences persuading us that something must be indulged to publick manners something to the civilities of society something to nature and to the approaches of our passions and the motions of our first desires but that we be not over-righteous And true it is that sometimes such surreptions and smaller undecencies are therefore pardoned and lessened almost to a nullity because they dwell in the confines of things lawful and honest and are not so notorious as to be separated from permissions by any publick certain and universal cognisance and therefore may pass upon a good man sometimes without observation But it is a temptation when we think of neglecting them by a predetermined incuriousness upon pretence they are small But this must be reduced to more regular Conclusions 12. First Although smaller Disobediences expressed in slight mis-becoming actions when they come by surprise and sudden invasion are through the mercies of God dashed in the very approach their bills of accusation are thrown out and they are not esteemed as competent instruments of separation from God's love yet when a smaller sin comes by design and is acted with knowledge and deliberation for then it is properly an act of Disobedience Malitia supplet defectum aetatis The malice of the agent heightens the smalness of the act and makes up the iniquity To drink liberally once and something more freely than the strict rules of Christian sobriety and temperance permit is pardoned the easier when without deliberation and by surprise the person was abused who intended not to transgress a minute but by little and little was mistaken in his proportions but if a man by design shall estimate his draughts and his good fellowship and shall resolve upon a little intemperance thinking because it is not very much it is therefore none at all that man hath mistaken himself into a crime and although a little wound upon the finger is very curable yet the smallest prick upon the heart is mortal So is a design and purpose of the smallest Disobedience in its formality as malicious and destructive as in its matter it was pardonable and excusable 13. Secondly Although every lesser Disobedience when it comes singly
the subject matter such are Blasphemy Perjury and the contempt of Authority To blaspheme God for the loss of an Asper or a peny to be forsworn in judgment for the rescuing of a few Maravides or a fivegroats fine is a worse crime than to be perjur'd for the saving ten thousand pounds and to despise Authority when the obedience is so easie as the wearing of a garment or doing of a posture is a greater and more impudent contempt than to despise Authority imposing a great burthen of a more considerable pressure where humane infirmity may tempt to a disobedience and lessen the crime And let this caution also be inserted that we do not at all neglect small Impositions if there be direct and signal injunction in the particular instance For as a great Body of Light transmitting his rays through a narrow hollowness does by that small Pyramis represent all the parts of its magnitude and glory so it may happen that a publick Interest and the concernments of Authority and the peace of a Church and the integral obedience of the Subjects and the conservation of a Community may be transferred to us by an instance in its own nature inconsiderable such as are wearing of a Cognizance remembring of a Word carrying a Branch in time of War and things of the same nature And therefore when the hand of Authority is stretced out and held forth upon a Precept and designs the duty upon particular reason or with actual intuition there is not the same facility of being dispensed with as in the neglected and unconsidered instances of other duties This onely I desire to be observed That if death or any violent accident imprisonment loss of livelihood or intolerable inconveniences be made accidentally consequent to the observing of a Law merely humane the Law binds not in the particular instance No man is bound to be a Martyr for a Ceremony or to die rather than break a Canon or to suffer Confiscation of goods for the pertinacious keeping of a civil Constitution And it is not to be supposed that a Law-giver would have decreed a Rite and bound the Lives of the subjects to it which are of a far greater value than a Rite not only because it were tyrannical and unreasonable but because the evil of the Law were greater than the good of it it were against the reason of all Laws and destroys the privileges of Nature and it puts a man into a condition as bad as the want of all Laws for nothing is civilly or naturally worse than Death to which the other evils arrive in their proportion This is to be understood in particular and positive Precepts introduced for reasons particular that is less than those are which combine all Societies and which are the cement of all Bodies political I mean Laws ritual in the Church and accidental and emergent in the State And that which is the best sign to distinguish these Laws from others is also the reason of the assertion Laws decreed with a Penalty to the transgressours cannot bind to an evil greater than that Penalty If it be appointed that we use a certain form of Liturgy under the forseiture of five pound for every omission I am bound in Conscience to obey it where I can but I am supposed legally to be disabled if any Tyrant-power shall threaten to kill me if I do or make me pay an hundred pound or any thing greater than the forfeiture of the Law For all the civil and natural power of the Law is by its coercion and the appendent punishment The Law operates by rewards and punishments by hope and fear and it is unimaginable that the Law under a less penalty can oblige us in any case or accident to suffer a greater For the compulsion of the Tyrant is greater than the coercion of the Law-giver and the Prince thinking the penalty annexed to be band sufficient intended no greater evil to the transgressour than the expressed penalty and therefore much less would he have them that obey the Law by any necessity be forced to a greater evil for then Disobedience should escape better than 〈◊〉 True it is every disobeying person that pays the penalty is not quite discharged from all his Obligation but it is then when his disobeying is criminal upon some other stock besides the mere breach of the Law as Contempt Scandal or the like for the Law binds the Conscience indirectly and by consequence that is in plain language God commands us to obey humane Laws the penalty will not pay for the contempt because that 's a sin against God it pays for the violation of the Law because that was all the direct transgression against Man And then who shall make him recompence for suffering more than the Law requires of him Not the Prince for it is certain the greatest value he set upon the Law was no bigger than the Penalty and the Common-wealth is supposed to be sufficiently secured in her interest by the Penalty or else the Law was weak impotent and unreasonable Not God for it is not an act of obedience to him for he binds us no farther to obey humane Laws than the Law-giver himself intends or declares who cannot reasonably be supposed so over-careful as to bind Hay with cords of Silk and Gold or sumptuary Laws with the threads of Life nor a Father commanding his Child to wait on him every Meal be thought to intend his Obligation even though the House be ready to fall on his head or when he is to pass a sudden or unfoordable floud before he can get to him And that it may appear Man ought not it is certain God himself doth not oblige us in all cases and in all circumstances to observe every of his positive Precepts For assembling together is a duty of God's commanding which we are not to neglect but if Death waits at the door of these Assemblies we have the practice of the Primitive and best Christians to warrant us to serve God in Retirements and Cells and Wildernesses and leave the assembling together till better opportunities If I receive more benefit or the Common-wealth or the Church and Religion any greater advantage by my particular obedience in these circumstances which cannot easily be supposed will be it is a great act of charity to do it and then to suffer for it But if it be no more that is if it be not expresly commanded to be done though with loss of life or confiscation it is a good charity to save my own life or my own estate And though the other may be better yet I am not in all cases obliged to do that which is simply the best It is a tolerable in 〈◊〉 and allowed amongst the very 〈◊〉 permissions of Nature that I may preserve my Life unless it be in a very few cases which are therefore clearly to be expressed or else the contrary is to be presumed as being a case most
favourable And it is considerable that nothing is worse than Death but Damnation or something that partakes of that in some of its worst ingredients such as is a lasting Torment or a daily great misery in some other kind And therefore since no humane Law can bind a man to a worse thing than Death if Obedience brings me to death I cannot be worse when I disobey it and I am not so bad if the penalty of death be not expressed And so for other penalties in their own proportions This Discourse is also to be understood concerning the Laws of Peace not of War not onely because every disobedience in War may be punished with death according as the reason may chance but also because little things may be of great and dangerous consequence But in Peace it is observable that there is no humane positive superinduced Law but by the practice of all the world which because the 〈◊〉 of the Prince is certainly included in it is the surest interpretation it is dispensed withall by ordinary necessities by reason of lesser inconveniences and common accidents thus the not saying of our Office daily is excused by the study of Divinity the publishing the banns of Matrimony by an ordinary incommodity the Fasting-days of the Church by a little sickness or a journey and therefore much rather if my Estate and most of all if my Life be in danger with it and to say that in these cases there is no interpretative permission to omit the particular action is to accuse the Laws and the Law-giver the one of unreasonableness the other of uncharitableness 22. Fourthly These Considerations are upon the execution of the duty but even towards Man our obedience must have a mixture of the Will and choice like as our injunction of obedience to the Divine Command With good will doing service saith the Apostle for it is impossible to secure the duty of inferiours but by conscience and good will unless provision could be made against all their secret arts and concealments and escapings which as no providence can foresee so no diligence can cure It is but an eye-service whatsoever is compelled and involuntary nothing rules a man in private but God and his own desires and they give Laws in a Wilderness and accuse in a Cloister and do execution in a Closet if there be any prevarication 23. Fifthly But obedience to humane Laws goes no farther we are not bound to obey with a direct and particular act of Understanding as in all Divine Sanctions for so long as our Superiours are fallible though it be highly necessary we conform our wills to their innocent Laws yet it is not a duty we should think the Laws most prudent or convenient because all Laws are not so but it may concern the interest of humility and self-denial to 〈◊〉 subject to an inconvenient so it be not a sinful Command for so we must chuse an affliction when God offers it and give God thanks for it and yet we may cry under the smart of it and call to God for ease and remedy And yet it were well if inferiours would not be too busie in disputing the prudence of their Governours and the convenience of their Constitutions Whether they be sins or no in the execution and to our particulars we are concern'd to look to I say as to our particulars for an action may be a sin in the Prince commanding it and yet innocent in the person executing as in the case of unjust Wars in which the Subject who cannot ought not to be a Judge yet must be a Minister and it is notorious in the case of executing an unjust sentence in which not the Executioner but the Judge is only the unjust person and he that serves his Prince in an unjust War is but the executioner of an unjust sentence But what-ever goes farther does but undervalue the person slight the Government and unloose the golden cords of Discipline For we are not intrusted in providing for degrees so we secure the kind and condition of our actions And since God having derived rays and beams of Majesty and transmitted it in parts upon several states of men hath fixed humane authority and dominion in the golden candlestick of Understanding he that shall question the prudence of his Governour or the wisdom of his Sanction does unclasp the golden rings that tie the purple upon the Prince's shoulder he tempts himself with a reason to disobey and extinguish the light of Majesty by overturning the candlestick and hiding the opinion of his wisdom and understanding And let me say this He that is confident of his own understanding and reasonable powers and who is more than he that thinks himself wiser than the Laws needs no other Devil in the neighbourhood no tempter but himself to pride and vanity which are the natural parents of Disobedience 24. But a man's Disobedience never seems so reasonable as when the Subject is forbidden to do an act of Piety commanded indeed in the general but uncommanded in certain circumstances And forward Piety and assiduous Devotion a great and undiscreet Mortifier is often tempted to think no Authority can restrain the fervours and distempers of zeal in such holy Exercises and yet it is very often as necessary to restrain the indiscretions of a forward person as to excite the remissness of the cold and frozen Such persons were the Sarabaites spoken of by 〈◊〉 who were greater labourers and stricter mortifiers than the Religious in Families and Colledges and yet they endured no Superiour nor Laws But such customs as these are Humiliation without Humility humbling the body and exalting the spirit or indeed Sacrifices and no Obedience It was an argument of the great wisdom of the Fathers of the 〈◊〉 when they heard of the prodigious Severities exercised by 〈◊〉 Stylites upon himself they sent one of the Religious to him with power to enquire what was his manner of living and what warrant he had for such a rigorous undertaking giving in charge to command him to give it over and to live in a community with them and according to the common institution of those Religious families The Messenger did so and immediately 〈◊〉 removed his foot from his Pillar with a purpose to descend but the other according to his Commission called to him to stay telling him his station and severity was from God And he that in so great a Piety was humble and obedient did not undertake that Strictness out of singularity nor did it transport him to vanity for that he had received from the Fathers to make judgment of the man and of his institution whereas if upon pretence of the great Holiness of that course he had refused the command the spirit of the person was to be declared caitive and imprudent and the man 〈◊〉 from his troublesom and ostentous vanity 25. Our Fasts our Prayers our Watchings our Intentions of duty our frequent Communions and
all exteriour acts of Religion are to be guided by our Superiour if he sees cause to restrain or asswage any 〈◊〉 For a wound may heal too fast and then the tumour of the flesh is proud not healthful and so may the indiscretions of Religion swell to vanity when we think they grow towards perfection but when we can indure the causticks and correctives of our Spiritual Guides in those things in which we are most apt to please our selves then our Obedience is regular and humble and in other things there is less of danger There is a story told of a very Religious person whose spirit in the ecstasie of Devotion was transported to the clarity of a Vision and he seemed to converse personally with the Holy Jesus feeling from such entercourse great spiritual delights and huge satisfactions in the midst of these joys the Bell call'd to Prayers and he used to the strictness and well instructed in the necessities of Obedience went to the Church and having finished his Devotions returned and found the Vision in the same posture of glories and entertainment which also said to him Because thou hast left me thou hast found me for if thou 〈◊〉 not left me I had presently left thee What-ever the story be I am sure it is a 〈◊〉 Parable for the way to increase spiritual comforts is to be strict in the offices of humble Obedience and we never lose any thing of our joy by laying it aside to attend a Duty and Plutarch reports more honour of Agesilaus's prudence and modesty than of his gallantry and military fortune for he was more honourable by obeying the Decree of the Spartan Senate recalling him from the midst of his Triumphs than he could have been by finishing the War with prosperous success and disobedience 26. Our Obedience being guided by these Rules is urged to us by the consignation of Divine Precepts and the loud voice of thunder even seal'd by a signet of God's right hand the signature of greatest Judgments For God did with greater severity punish the Rebellion of Korah and his company than the express Murmurs against himself nay than the high crime of Idolatry for this Crime God visited them with a sword but for Disobedience and Mutiny against their Superiours God made the Earth to swallow some of them and fire from Heaven to consume the rest to shew that Rebellion is to be punished by the conspiration of Heaven and Earth as it is hateful and contradictory both to God and Man And it is not amiss to observe that obedience to Man being it is for God's sake and yet to a person clothed with the circumstances and the same infirmities with our selves is a greater instance of Humility than to obey God immediately whose Authority is Divine whose Presence is terrible whose Power is infinite and not at all depressed by exterior disadvantages or lessening appearances just as it is both greater Faith and greater Charity to relieve a poor Saint for Jesus sake than to give any thing to Christ himself if he should appear in all the robes of Glory and immediate address For it is to God and to Christ and wholly for their sakes and to them that the Obedience is done or the Charity expressed but themselves are persons whose awfulness majesty and veneration would rather force than invite Obedience or Alms. But when God and his Holy Son stand behind the cloud and send their Servants to take the Homage or the Charity it is the same as if it were done to them but receives the advantage of acceptation by the accidental adherencies of Faith and Humility to the several actions respectively When a King comes to Rebels in person it strikes terrour and veneration into them who are too apt to neglect and despise the person of his Ministers whom they look upon as their fellow-subjects and consider not in the exaltation of a deputed Majesty Charles the Fifth found a happy experience of it at Gaunt in Flanders whose Rebellion he appeased by his presence which he could hardly have done by his Army But if the King's Authority be as much rever'd in his Deputy as it is sacred in his own Person it is the greater Humility and more confident Obedience And as it is certain that he is the most humble that submits to his inferiours so in the same proportion the lower and meaner the instrument upon which God's authority is born the higher is the Grace that teaches us to stoop so low I do not say that a sin against humane Laws is greater than a prevarication against a Divine Commandment as the instances may be the distance is next to infinite and to touch the earth with our foot within the Octaves of Easter or to tast flesh upon days of Abstinence even in those places and to those persons where they did or do oblige have no consideration if they be laid in balance against the crimes of Adultery or Blasphemy or Oppression because these Crimes cannot stand with the reputation and sacredness of Divine Authority but those others may in most instances very well consist with the ends of Government which are severally provided for in the diversity of Sanctions respectively But if we make our instances to other purposes we find that to mutiny in an Army or to keep private Assemblies in a Monarchy are worse than a single thought or morose delectation in a fancy of impurity because those others destroy Government more than these destroy Charity of God or Obedience But then though the instances may vary the Conclusion yet the formal reason is alike and Disobedience to Man is a disobedience against God for God's Authority and not Man's is imprinted upon the Superiour and it is like sacred fire in an earthen Censer as holy as if it were kindled with the fanning of a Cherub's wing or placed just under the Propitiatory upon a golden Altar and it is but a gross conceit which cannot distinguish Religion from its Porter 〈◊〉 from the Beast that carried it so that in all Disobedience to Men in proportion to the greatness of the matter or the malice of the person or his contradiction to the ends of Government and combinations of Society we may use the words by which the Prophet upbraided Israel 〈◊〉 it not enough that you are grievous unto men but will you grieve my God also It is a contempt of the Divinity and the affront is transmitted to God himself when we despise the Power which God hath ordained and all power of every lawful Superiour is such the Spirit of God being witness in the highest measure Rebellion is as the sin of 〈◊〉 and stubbornness as Idolatry It is spoken of Rebellion against God and all Rebellion is so for He that despiscth you despiseth me saith the Blessed Jesus that 's menace enough in the instance of Spiritual regiment And You are gathered together against the Lord saith Moses to the rebellious
it is nice to judge the condition of the effect and therefore it is prudent to ascertain our condition by improving our care and our Religion and in all accidents to make no judgment concerning God's Favour by what we feel but by what we do 6. When the Holy Virgin with much Religion and sadness had sought her joy at last she found him disputing among the Doctors hearing them and asking them questions and besides that he now first opened a fontinel and there sprang out an excellent rivulet from his abyss of Wisdom he consigned this Truth to his Disciples That they who mean to be Doctors and teach others must in their first accesses and degrees of discipline learn of those whom God and publick Order hath set over us in the Mysteries of Religion The PRAYER BLessed and most Holy Jesus Fountain of Grace and comfort Treasure of Wisdom and spiritual emanations be pleased to abide with me for ever by the inhabitation of thy interiour assistances and refreshments and give me a corresponding love acceptable and unstained purity care and watchfulness over my ways that I may never by provoking thee to anger cause thee to remove thy dwelling or draw a cloud before thy holy face but if thou art pleased upon a design of charity or trial to cover my eyes that I may not behold the bright rays of thy Favour nor be refreshed with spiritual comforts let thy Love support my spirit by ways insensible and in all my needs give me such a portion as may be instrumental and incentive to performance of my duty and in all accidents let me continue to seek thee by Prayers and Humiliation and frequent desires and the strictness of a Holy life that I may follow thy example pursue thy foot-steps be supported by thy strength guided by thy hand enlightned by thy favour and may at last after a persevering holiness and an unwearied industry dwell with thee in the Regions of Light and eternal glory where there shall be no fears of parting from the habitations of Felicity and the union and fruition of thy Presence O Blessed and most Holy Jesus Amen SECT VIII Of the Preaching of John the Baptist preparative to the Manifestation of JESVS ELIAS Luke 1 17. And he shall goe before him in the spirit and power of Elias S t IOHN the Baptist Luk 1 15 And as the people were in expectation ve 16 Iohn answered saying unto them all I indeed baptize you with water but one mightier then I cometh y e latchet of whose shooes I am not worthy to unloose he shall baptize you with y e Holy Ghost and with fire WHen Herod had drunk so great a draught of bloud at Bethlehem and sought for more from the Hill-country Elizabeth carried her Son into the Wilderness there in the desert places and recesses to hide him from the fury of that Beast where she attended him with as much care and tenderness as the affections and fears of a Mother could express in the permission of those fruitless Solitudes The Child was about eighteen months old when he first sled to Sanctuary but after forty days his Mother died and his Father Zachary at the time of his ministration which happened about this time was killed in the Court of the Temple so that the Child was exposed to all the dangers and infelicities of an Orphan in a place of solitariness and discomfort in a time when a bloudy King endeavoured his destruction But when his Father and Mother were taken from him the Lord took him up For according to the tradition of the Greeks God deputed an Angel to be his nourisher and Guardian as he had formerly done to Ishmael who dwelt in the Wilderness and to Elias when he fled from the rage of Ahab so to this Child who came in the spirit of Elias to make demonstration that there can be no want where God undertakes the care and provision 2. The entertainment that S. John's Proveditóre the Angel gave him was such as the Wilderness did afford and such as might dispose him to a life of Austerity for there he continued spending his time in Meditations Contemplation Prayer Affections and Colloquies with God eating Flies and wild Honey not clothed in soft but a hairy garment and a leathern girdle till he was thirty years of age And then being the fifteenth year of Tiberius Pontius Pilate being Governour of Judaea the Word of God came unto John in the Wilderness And he came into all the countrey about Jordan preaching and baptizing 3. This John according to the Prophecies of him and designation of his person by the Holy Ghost was the fore-runner of Christ sent to dispose the people for his entertainment and prepare his ways and therefore it was necessary his person should be so extraordinary and full of Sanctity and so clarified by great concurrences and wonder in the circumstances of his life as might gain credit and reputation to the testimony he was to give concerning his LORD the Saviour of the World And so it happened 4. For as the Baptist while he was in the Wilderness became the pattern of solitary and contemplative life a School of Vertue and Example of Sanctity and singular Austerity so at his emigration from the places of his Retirement he seemed what indeed he was a rare and excellent Personage and the Wonders which were great at his Birth the prediction of his Conception by an Angel which never had before happened but in the persons of Isaac and Sampson the contempt of the world which he bore about him his mortified countenance and deportment his austere and eremitical life his vehement spirit and excellent zeal in Preaching created so great opinions of him among the people that all held him for a Prophet in his Office for a heavenly person in his own particular and a rare example of Sanctity and holy life to all others and all this being made solemn and ceremonious by his Baptism he prevailed so that he made excellent and apt preparations for the LORD 's appearing for there went out to him Jerusalem and all Judaea and all the regions round about Jordan and were baptized of him confessing their sins 5. The Baptist having by so heavenly means won upon the affections of all men his Sermons and his testimony concerning Christ were the more likely to be prevalent and accepted and the summ of them was Repentance and dereliction of sins and bringing forth the fruits of good life in the promoting of which Doctrine he was a severe reprehender of the Pharisees and Sadducees he exhorted the people to works of mercy the Publicans to do justice and to decline oppression the Souldiers to abstain from plundering and doing violence or rapine and publishing that he was not the CHRIST that he only baptized with water but the Messias should baptize with the holy Ghost and with fire he finally denounced judgment and great severities to all the World
Resurrection of his body after three days death but he expressed it in the metaphor of the Temple Destroy this Temple and I will build it again in three days He spake of the Temple of his Body and they understood him of the Temple at Jerusalem and it was never rightly construed till it was accomplished 2. At this publick Convention of the Jewish Nation Jesus did many Miracles published himself to be the Messias and perswaded many Disciples amongst whom was Nicodemus a Doctor of the Law and a Ruler of the Nation he came by night to Jesus and affirmed himself to be convinced by the Miracles which he had seen for no man could do those miracles except God be with him When Jesus perceived his understanding to be so far disposed he began to instruct him in the great secret and mysteriousness of Regeneration telling him that every production is of the same nature and condition with its parent from flesh comes flesh and corruption from the Spirit comes spirit and life and immortality and nothing from a principle of nature could arrive to a supernatural end and therefore the only door to enter into the Kingdom of God was Water by the manuduction of the Spirit and by this Regeneration we are put into a new capacity of living a spiritual life in order to a spiritual and supernatural end 3. This was strange Philosophy to Nicodemus but Jesus bad him not to wonder for this is not a work of humanity but a fruit of God's Spirit and an issue of Predestination For the Spirit bloweth where it listeth and is as the wind certain and notorious in the effects but secret in the principle and in the manner of production And therefore this Doctrine was not to be estimated by any proportions to natural principles or experiments of sense but to the secrets of a new Metaphysick and abstracted separate Speculations Then Christ proceeds in his Sermon telling him there are yet higher things for him to apprehend and believe for this in respect of some other mysteriousness of his Gospel was but as Earth in comparison of Heaven Then he tells of his own descent from Heaven foretells his Death and Ascension and the blessing of Redemption which he came to work for mankind he preaches of the Love of the Father the Mission of the Son the rewards of Faith and the glories of Eternity he upbraids the unbelieving and impenitent and declares the differences of a holy and a corrupt Conscience the shame and fears of the one the confidence and serenity of the other And this is the summ of his Sermon to Nicodemus which was the fullest of mystery and speculation and abstracted sences of any that he ever made except that which he made immediately before his Passion all his other Sermons being more practical 4. From Jerusalem Jesus goeth into the Country of Judaea attended by divers Disciples whose understandings were brought into subjection and obedience to Christ upon confidence of the divinity of his Miracles There his Disciples did receive all comers and baptized them as John at the same time did and by that Ceremony admitted them to the Discipline and Institution according to the custom of the Doctors and great Prophets among the Jews whose Baptizing their Scholars was the ceremony of their Admission As soon as John heard it he acquitted himself in publick by renewing his former testimony concerning Jesus affirming him to be the Messias and now the time was come that Christ must increase and the Baptist suffer diminution for Christ came from above was above all and the summ of his Doctrine was that which he had heard and seen from the Father whom God sent to that purpose to whom God had set his seal that he was true who spake the words of God whom the Father loved to whō he gave the Spirit without measure and into whose hands God had delivered all things this was he whose testimony the world received not And that they might know not only what person they sleighted but how great Salvation also they neglected he summs up all his Sermons and finishes his Mission with this saying He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life and he that believeth not on the Son shall not see life but the wrath of God abideth on him 5. For now that the Baptist had fulfilled his Office of bearing witness unto Jesus God was pleased to give him his writ of ease and bring him to his reward upon this occasion John who had so learned to despise the world and all its exteriour vanities and impertinent relations did his duty justly and so without respect of persons that as he reproved the people for their prevarications so he spared not Herod for his but abstaining from all expresses of the spirit of scorn and asperity mingling no discontents interests nor mutinous intimations with his Sermons he told Herod it was not lawful for him to have his Brother's wife For which Sermon he felt the furies and malice of a woman's spleen was cast into prison and about a year after was sacrificed to the scorn and pride of a lustful woman and her immodest daughter being at the end of the second year of Christ's Preaching beheaded by Herod's command who would not retract his promise because of his honour and a rash vow he made in the gayety of his Lust and complacencies of his riotous dancings His head was brought up in a dish and made a Festival-present to the young girl who gave it to her mother a Cruelty that was not known among the Barbarisms of the worst of people to mingle banquetings with bloud and sights of death an insolency and inhumanity for which the 〈◊〉 Orators accused Q. Flaminius of Treason because to satisfie the wanton cruelty of Placentia he caused a condemned slave to be killed at supper and which had no precedent but in the furies of Marius who caused the head of the Consul Antonius to be brought up to him in his Feasts which he handled with much pleasure and insolency 6. But God's Judgments which sleep not long found out Herod and marked him for a Curse For the Wise of Herod who was the Daughter of Aretas a King of Arabia Petraea being repudiated by paction with Herodias provoked her Father to commence a War with Herod who prevailed against Herod in a great Battel defeating his whole Army and forcing him to an inglorious flight which the Jews generally expounded to be a Judgment on him for the unworthy and barbarous execution and murther of John the Baptist God in his wisdom and severity making one sin to be the punishment of another and neither of them both to pass without the signature of a Curse And Nicephorus reports that the dancing daughter of Herodias passing over a frozen lake the ice brake and she fell up to the neck in water and her head was parted from her body by the violence of the fragments shaked by the water and
its own fall and so perished God having fitted a Judgment to the Analogy and representment of her Sin Herodias her self with her adulterous Paramour Herod were banished to Lions in France by decree of the Roman Senate where they lived ingloriously and died miserably so paying dearly for her triumphal scorn superadded to her crime of murther for when she saw the Head of the Baptist which her Daughter Salome had presented to her in a charger she thrust the tongue through with a needle as Fulvia had formerly done to Cicero But her self paid the charges of her triumph Ad SECT XI Considerations upon the first Journey of the Holy Jesus to Jerusalem when he whipt the Merchants out of the Temple 1. WHen the Feast came and Jesus was ascended up to Jerusalem the first place we find him in is the Temple where not only was the Area and Court of Religion but by occasion of publick Conventions the most opportune scene for transaction of his Commission and his Father's business And those Christians who have been religious and affectionate even in the circumstances of Piety have taken this for precedent and accounted it a good express of the regularity of their Devotion and order of Piety at their first arrival to a City to pay their first visits to God the next to his servant the President of Religious Rites first they went into the Church and worshipp'd then to the Angel of the Church to the Bishop and begg'd his blessing and having thus commenced with the auspiciousness of Religion they had better hopes their just affairs would succeed prosperously which after the rites of Christian Countries had thus been begun with Devotion and religious order 2. When the Holy Jesus entred the Temple and espied a Mart kept in the Holy Sept a Fair upon Holy ground he who suffered no transportations of Anger in matters and accidents temporal was born high with an ecstasie of Zeal and according to the custom of the Zelots of the Nation took upon him the office of a private insliction of punishment in the cause of God which ought to be dearer to every single person than their own interest and reputation What the exterminating Angel did to 〈◊〉 who came into the Temple upon design of Sacriledge that the meekest Jesus did to them who came with acts of Profanation he whipt them forth and as usually good Laws spring from ill Manners and excellent Sermons are occasioned by mens 〈◊〉 now also our great Master upon this accident asserted the Sacredness of Holy places in the words of a Prophet which now he made a Lesson Evangelical My House shall be called a house of Prayer to all Nations 3. The Beasts and Birds there sold were brought for Sacrifice and the Banks of money were for the advantage of the people that came from far that their returns might be safe and easie when they came to Jerusalem upon the employments of Religion But they were not yet fit for the Temple they who brought them thither purposed their own gain and meant to pass them through an unholy usage before they could be made Anathemata Vows to God and when Religion is but the purpose at the second hand it cannot hallow a Lay-design and make it fit to become a Religious ministery much less sanctifie an unlawful action When Rachel stole her Father's gods though possibly she might do it in zeal against her Father's Superstition yet it was occasion of a sad accident to her self For the Jews say that Rachel died in Child-birth of her second Son because of that imprecation of Jacob With whomsoever thou findest thy gods let him not live Saul pretended Sacrifice when he spared the fat cattel of Amalek and Micah was zealous when he made him an Ephod and a Teraphim and meant to make himself an Image for Religion when he stole his mother's money but these are colours of Religion in which not only the world but our selves also are deceived by a latent purpose which we are willing to cover with a remote design of Religion lest it should appear unhandsome in its own dressing Thus some believe a Covetousness allowable it they greedily heap treasure with a purpose to build Hospitals or Colledges and sinister acts of acquiring Church-livings are not so soon condemned if the design be to prefer an able person and actions of Revenge come near to Piety if it be to the ruine of an 〈◊〉 man and indirect proceedings are made sacred if they be for the good of the Holy Cause This is profaning the Temple with Beasts brought for Sacrifices and dishonours God by making himself accessary to his own dishonour as far as lies in them for it disserves him with a pretence of Religion and but that our hearts are deceitful we should easily perceive that the greatest business of the Letter is written in Postscript the great pretence is the least purpose and the latent Covetousness or Revenge or the secular appendix is the main engine to which the end of Religion is made but instrumental and pretended But men when they sell a Mule use to speak of the Horse that begat him not of the Ass that bore him 4. The Holy Jesus made a whip of cords to represent and to chastise the implications and enfoldings of sin and the cords of vanity 1. There are some sins that of themselves are a whip of cords those are the crying sins that by their degree and malignity speak loud for vengeance or such as have great disreputation and are accounted the basest issues of a caitive disposition or such which are unnatural and unusual or which by publick observation are marked with the signature of Divine Judgments Such are Murther Oppression of widows and orphans detaining the Labourer's hire Lusts against nature Parricide Treason Betraying a just trust in great instances and base manners Lying to a King Perjury in a Priest these carry Cain's mark upon them or Judas's sting or Manasses's sorrow unless they be made impudent by the spirit of Obduration 2. But there are some sins that bear shame upon them and are used as correctives of pride and vanity and if they do their cure they are converted into instruments of good by the great power of the Divine grace but if the spirit of the man grows impudent and hardned against the shame that which commonly follows is the worst string of the whip a direct consignation to a reprobate spirit 3. Other sins there are for the chastising of which Christ takes the whip into his own hand and there is much need when sins are the Customs of a Nation and marked with no exteriour disadvantage or have such circumstances of encouragement that they are unapt to disquiet a Conscience or make our beds uneasie till the pillows be softned with penitential showers In both these cases the condition of a sinner is sad and miserable For it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God his
intanglings of ten thousand thoughts and the impertinences of a disturbed fancy and the great hindrances of a sick body and a sad and weary spirit All these represent a Death-bed to be but an ill station for a Penitent If the person be suddenly snatched away he is not left so much as to dispute if he be permitted to languish in his sickness he is either stupid and apprehends nothing or else miserable and hath reason to apprehend too much However all these difficulties are to be passed and overcome before the man be put into a saveable condition From this consideration though perhaps it may infer more yet we cannot but conclude this difficulty to be as great as the former danger that is vast and ponderous and insupportable 45. Thirdly Suppose the Clinick or death-bed Penitent to be as forward in these employments and as successfull in the mastering many of the Objections as reasonably can be thought yet it is considerable that there is a Repentance which is to be repented of and that is a Repentance which is not productive of fruits of amendment of life that there is a period set down by God in his Judgment and that many who have been profane as Esau was are reduced into the condition of Esau and there is no place left for their Repentance though they seek it carefully with tears that they who have long refused to hear God calling them to Repentance God will refuse to hear them calling for grace and mercy that he will laugh at some men when their calamity comes that the five foolish Virgins addressed themselves at the noise of the Bridegroom 's coming and begg'd oil and went out to buy oil and yet for want of some more time and an early diligence came too late and were shut out for ever that it is no-where revealed that such late endeavours and imperfect practices shall be accepted that God hath made but one Covenant with us in Jesus Christ which is Faith and Repentance consigned in 〈◊〉 and the signification of them and the purpose of Christ is that we should henceforth no more serve sin but mortifie and kill him perpetually and destroy his kingdom and extinguish as much as in us lies his very title that we should live holily justly and soberly in this present world in all holy conversation and godliness and that either we must be continued or reduced to this state of holy living and habitual sanctity or we have no title to the Promises that every degree of recession from the state Christ first put us in is a recession from our hopes and an insecuring our condition and we add to our 〈◊〉 only as our Obedience is restored All this is but a sad story to a dying person who sold himself to work wickedness in an habitual iniquity and aversation from the conditions of the holy Covenant in which he was sanctified 46. And certainly it is unreasonable to plant all our hopes of Heaven upon a Doctrine that is destructive of all Piety which supposes us in such a condition that God hath been offended at us all our life long and yet that we can never return our duties to him unless he will unravel the purposes of his Predestination or call back time again and begin a new computation of years for us and if he did it would be still as uncertain For what hope is there to that man who hath fulfilled all iniquity and hath not fulfilled righteousness Can a man live to the Devil and die to God sow to the flesh and reap to the Spirit hope God will in mercy reward him who hath served his enemy Sure it is the Doctrine of the avail of a death-bed Repentance cannot easily be reconciled with God's purposes and intentions to have us live a good life for it would reconcile us to the hopes of Heaven for a few thoughts or words or single actions when our life is done it takes away the benefit of many Graces and the use of more and the necessity of all 47. For let it be seriously weighed To what purpose is the variety of God's Grace what use is there of preventing restraining concomitant subsequent and persevering Grace unless it be in order to a religious conversation And by deferring Repentance to the last we despoil our Souls and rob the Holy Ghost of the glory of many rays and holy influences with which the Church is watered and refreshed that it may grow from grace to grace till it be consummate in glory It takes away the very being of Chastity and Temperance no such Vertues according to this Doctrine need to be named among Christians For the dying person is not in capacity to exercise these and then either they are troublesome without which we may do well enough or else the condition of the unchaste and intemperate Clinick is sad and deplorable For how can he eject those Devils of Lust and Drunkenness and Gluttony from whom the disease hath taken all powers of election and variety of choice unless it be possible to root out long-contracted habits in a moment or acquire the habits of Chastity Sobriety and Temperance those self-denying and laborious Graces without doing a single act of the respective vertues in order to obtaining of habits unless it be so that God will infuse habits into us more immediately than he creates our reasonable Souls in an instant and without the cooperation of the suscipient without the working out our Salvation with fear and without giving all diligence and running with patience and resisting unto bloud and striving to the last and enduring unto the end in a long fight and a long race If God infuses such habits why have we laws given us and are commanded to work and to do our duty with such a succession and lasting diligence as if the habits were to be acquired to which indeed God promises and ministers his aids still leaving us the persons obliged to the law and the labour as we are capable of the reward I need not instance any more But this doctrine of a death-bed Repentance is inconsistent with the duties of Mortification with all the vindictive and punitive parts of Repentance in exteriour instances with the precepts of waiting and watchfulness and preparation and standing in a readiness against the coming of the Bridegroom with the patience of well-doing with exemplary living with the imitation of the Life of Christ and conformities to his Passion with the kingdom and dominion and growth of Grace And lastly it goes about to defeat one of God's great purposes for Cod therefore concealed the time of our death that we might always stand upon our guard the Holy Jesus told us so Watch for ye know not what hour the Lord will come but this makes men seem more crafty in their late-begun Piety than God was provident and mysterious in concealing the time of our dissolution 48. And now if
fall into hypocrisie or deceit or if a Christian Asseveration were not of value equal with an Oath And therefore Christ forbidding promissory Oaths and commanding so great simplicity of spirit and honesty did consonantly to the design and perfection of his Institution intending to make us so just and sincere that our Religion being infinite obligation to us our own Promises should pass for bond enough to others the Religion receive great honour by being esteemed a sufficient security and instrument of publick entercourse And this was intimated by our Lord himself in that reason he is pleased to give of the prohibition of swearing Let your communication be Yea yea Nay nay for whatsoever is more cometh of evil that is As good Laws come from ill manners the modesty of cloathing from the shame of sin Antidotes and Physick by occasion of poisons and diseases so is Swearing an effect of distrust and want of faith or honesty on one or both sides Men dare not trust the word of a Christian or a Christian is not just and punctual to his Promises and this calls for confirmation by an Oath So that Oaths suppose a fault though they are not faults always themselves whatsoever is more than Yea or Nay is not always evil but it always cometh of evil And therefore the Essenes esteemed every man that was put to his Oath no better than an infamous person a perjurer or at least suspected not esteemed a just man and the Heathens would not suffer the Priest of Jupiter to swear because all men had great opinion of his sanctity and authority and the Scythians derided Alexander's caution and timorous provision when he required an Oath of them Nos religionem in ipsa side novimus Our faith is our bond and they who are willing to deceive men will not stick to deceive God when they have called God to witness But I have a caution to insert for each which I propound as an humble advice to persons eminent and publickly interested 22. First That Princes and such as have power of decreeing the injunction of promissory Oaths be very curious and reserved not lightly enjoyning such Promises neither in respect of the matter trivial nor yet frequently nor without great reason enforcing The matter of such Promises must be only what is already matter of Duty or Religion for else the matter is not grave enough sor the calling of God to testimony but when it is a matter of Duty then the Oath is no other than a Vow or Promise made to God in the presence of men And because Christians are otherwise very much obliged to do all which is their duty in matters both civil and religious of Obedience and Piety therefore it must be an instant necessity and a great cause to superinduce such a confirmation as derives from the so sacredly invocating the Name of God it must be when there is great necessity that the duty be actually performed and when the Supreme power either hath not power sufficient to punish the delinquent or may miss to have notice of the delict For in these cases it is reasonable to bind the faith of the obliged persons by the fear of God after a more special manner but else there is no reason sufficient to demand of the subject any farther security than their own faith and contract The reason of this advice relies upon the strictness of the words of this Precept against promissory Oaths and the reverence we owe to the name of God Oaths of Allegiance are fit to be imposed in a troubled State or to a mutinous People But it is not so fit to tie the People by Oath to abstain from transportations of Metal or Grain or Leather from which by Penalties they are with as much security and less suspicion of iniquity restrained 23. Secondly Concerning assertory Oaths and Depositions in Judgment although a greater liberty may be taken in the subject matter of the Oath and we may being required to it swear in Judgment though the cause be a question of money or our interest or the rights of a Society and S. Athanasius purged himself by Oath before the Emperour Constantius yet it were a great pursuance and security of this part of Christian Religion if in no case contrary Oaths might be admitted in which it is certain one part is perjured to the ruine of their Souls to the intricating of the Judgment to the dishonour of Religion but that such rules of prudence and reasonable presumption be established that upon the Oath of that party which the Law shall chuse and upon probable grounds shall presume for the sentence may be established For by a small probability there may a surer Judgment be given than upon the confidence of contradictory Oaths and after the sin the Judge is left to the uncertainty of conjectures as much as if but one part had sworn and to much more because such an Oath is by the consent of all men accepted as a rule to determine in Judgment By these discourses we understand the intention of our Blessed Master in this Precept and I wish by this or any thing else men would be restrained 〈◊〉 that low cheap unreasonable and unexcusable vice of customary Swearing to which we have nothing to invite us that may lessen the iniquity for which we cannot pretend temptation nor alledge infirmity but it begins by wretchlesness and a malicious carelesness and is continued by the strength of habit and the greatest immensity of folly And I consider that Christian Religion being so holy an Institution to which we are invited by so great promises in which we are instructed by so clear revelations and to the performance of our duties compelled by the threatnings of a sad and insupportable eternity should more than sufficiently endear the performance of this Duty to us The name of a Christian is a high and potent antidote against all sin if we consider aright the honour of the name the undertaking of our Covenant and the reward of our duty The Jews eat no Swines flesh because they are of Moses and the Turks drink no Wine because they are Mahumetans and yet we swear for all we are Christians than which there is not in the world a greater conviction of our baseness and irreligion Is the authority of the Holy Jesus so despicable are his Laws so unreasonable his rewards so little his threatnings so small that we must needs in contempt of all this profane the great Name of God and trample under foot the Laws of Jesus and cast away the hopes of Heaven and enter into security to be possessed by Hell-torments for Swearing that is for speaking like a fool without reason without pleasure without reputation much to our disesteem much to the trouble of civil and wise persons with whom we joyn in society and entercourse Certainly Hell will be heat seven times hotter for a customary Swearer and every degree of
and miserable to all eternity It was a sad calamity that fell upon the Man of Judah that returned to eat bread into the Prophet's house contrary to the word of the Lord He was abused into the act by a Prophet and a pretence of a command from God and whether he did violence to his own understanding and believed the man because he was willing or did it in sincerity or in what degree of sin or excuse the action might consist no man there knew and yet a Lion slew him and the lying Prophet that abused him escaped and went to his grave in peace Some persons joyned in society or interest with criminals have perished in the same Judgments and yet it would be hard to call them equally guilty who in the accident were equally miserable and involved And they who are not strangers in the affairs of the world cannot but have heard or seen some persons who have lived well and moderately though not like the 〈◊〉 of the Holocaust yet like the ashes of Incense sending up good perfumes and keeping a constant and slow fire of Piety and Justice yet have been surprised in the midst of some unusual unaccustomed irregularity and died in that sin A sudden gayety of fortune a great joy a violent change a friend is come or a marriage-day hath transported some persons to indiscretions and too bold a licence and the indiscretion hath betrayed them to idle company and the company to drink and drink to a fall and that hath hurri'd them to their grave And it were a sad sentence to think God would not repute the untimely death for a punishment great enough to that deflexion from duty and judge the man according to the constant tenor of his former life unless such an act was of malice great enough to outweigh the former habits and interrupt the whole state of acceptation and grace Something like this was the case of 〈◊〉 who espying the tottering Ark went to support it with an unhallowed hand God smote him and he died immediately It were too severe to say his zeal and indiscretion carried him beyond a temporal death to the ruines of Eternity Origen and many others have made themselves Eunuchs for the Kingdome of Heaven and did well after it but those that did so and died of the wound were smitten of God and died in their folly and yet it is rather to be called a sad consequence of their indiscretion than the express of a final anger from God Almighty For as God takes off our sins and punishments by parts remitting to some persons the sentence of death and inflicting the fine of a temporal loss or the gentle scourge of a lesser sickness so also he lays it on by parts and according to the proper proportions of the man and of the crime and every transgression and lesser deviation from our duty does not drag the Soul to death eternal but God suffers our Repentance though imperfect to have an imperfect effect knocking off the fetters by degrees and leading us in some cases to a Council in some to Judgment and in some to Hell-fire but it is not always certain that he who is led to the prison-doors shall there lie entombed and a Man may by a Judgment be brought to the gates of Hell and yet those gates shall not prevail against him This discourse concerns persons whose life is habitually fair and just but are surprised in some unhandsome but less criminal action and 〈◊〉 or suffer some great Calamity as the instrument of its expiation or amendment 3. Secondly But if the person upon whom the Judgment falls be habitually vicious or the crime of a clamorous nature or deeper tincture if the man sin a sin unto death and either meets it or some other remarkable calamity not so feared as death provided we pass no farther than the sentence we see then executed it is not against Charity or prudence to say this calamity in its own formality and by the intention of God is a Punishment and Judgment In the favourable cases of honest and just persons our sentence and opinions ought also to be favourable and in such questions to encline ever to the side of charitable construction and read other ends of God in the accidents of our neighbour than Revenge or express Wrath. But when the impiety of a person is scandalous and notorious when it is clamorous and violent when it is habitual and yet corrigible if we find a sadness and calamity dwelling with such a sinner especially if tho punishment be spiritual we read the sentence of God written with his own hand and it is not 〈◊〉 of opinion or a pressing into the secrets of Providence to say the same thing which God hath published to all the world in the 〈◊〉 of his Spirit In such cases we are to observe the severity of God on them that fall severity and to use those Judgments as instruments of the fear of God arguments to hate sin which we could not well do but that we must look on them as verifications of God's threatning against great and impenitent sinners But then if we descend to particulars we may easily be deceived 4. For some men are diligent to observe the accidents and chances of Providence upon those especially who differ from them in Opinion and whatever ends God can have or whatever sins man can have yet we lay that in fault which we therefore hate because it is most against our interest the contrary Opinion is our enemy and we also think God hates it But such fancies do seldom serve either the ends of Truth or Charity Pierre Calceon died under the Barber's hand there wanted not some who said it was a Judgement upon him for condemning to the fire the famous Pucelle of France who prophesied the expulsion of the English out of the Kingdom They that thought this believed her to be a Prophetess but others that thought her a Witch were willing to 〈◊〉 out another conjecture for the sudden death of the Gentleman Garnier Earl of Gretz kept the Patriarch of Jerusalem from his right in David's Tower and the City and died within three days and by Dabert the Patriarch it was called a Judgment upon him for his Sacrilege But the uncertainty of that censure appeared to them who considered that Baldwin who gave commission to Garnier to withstand the Patriarch did not die but Godsrey of 〈◊〉 did die immediately after he had passed the right of the Patriarch and yet when Baldwin was beaten at Rhamula some bold People pronounced that then God punished him upon the Patriarch's score and thought his Sacrilege to be the secret cause of his overthrow and yet his own Pride and Rashness was the more visible and the Judgment was but a cloud and passed away quickly into a succeeding Victory But I instance in a trisle Certain it is that God removed the Candlestick from the Levantine Churches because he had
a quarrel unto them for that punishment is never sent upon pure designs of emendation or for direct and immediate purposes of the Divine glory but ever makes reflexion upon the past sin but when we descend to a judgment of the particulars God walks so in the dark to us that it is not discerned upon what ground he smote them Some say it was because they dishonoured the eternal Jesus in denying the procession of the Holy Ghost from the Son And in this some thought themselves sufficiently assured by a sign from Heaven because the Greeks lost Constantinople upon Whitsunday the day of the Festival of the Holy Spirit The Church of Rome calls the Churches of the Greek Communion Schismatical and thinks God righted the Roman quarrel when he revenged his own Some think they were cut off for being Breakers of Images others think that their zeal against Images was a means they were cut off no sooner and yet he that shall observe what innumerable Sects Heresies and Factions were commenced amongst them and how they were wanton with Religion making it serve ambitious and unworthy ends will see that besides the ordinary conjectures of interested persons they had such causes of their ruine which we also now feel heavily incumbent upon our selves To see God adding eighteen years to the life of Hezekiah upon his Prayer and yet cutting off the young Son of David begotten in adulterous embraces to see him rejecting Adonijah and receiving Solomon to the Kingdom begotten of the same Mother whose Son God in anger formerly slew to observe his mercies to Manasses in accepting him to favour and continuing the Kingdom to him and his severity to Zedekiah in causing his eyes to be put out to see him rewarding Nebuchadnezzar with the spoils of Egypt for destroying Tyre and executing God's severe anger against it and yet punishing others for being executioners of his wrath upon Jerusalem even then when he purposed to chastise it to see 〈◊〉 raised from a Peasant to a Throne and Pompey from a great Prince reduced to that condition that a Pupil and an Eunuch passed sentence of death upon him to see great fortunes fall into the hand of a Fool and Honourable old persons and Learned men descend to unequal Beggery to see him strike a stroke with his own hand in the Conversion of Saul and another quite contrary in the cutting off of Judas must needs be some restraint to our judgments concerning the general state of those men who lie under the rod but it proclaims an infinite uncertainty in the particulars since we see contrary accidents happening to persons guilty of the same crime or put in the same indispositions God hath marked all great sins with some signal and express Judgments and hath transmitted the records of them or represented them before our eyes that is hath done so in our Age or it hath been noted to have been done before and that being sufficient to affright us from those crimes God hath not thought it expedient to do the same things to all persons in the same cases having to all persons produced instances and examples of fear by fewer accidents sufficient to restrain us but not enough to pass sentence upon the changes of Divine Providence 5. But sometimes God speaks plainer and gives us notice what crimes he punishes in others that we may the rather decline such rocks of offence If the Crime and the Punishment be symbolical and have proportion and correspondence of parts the hand of God strikes the Man but holds up one finger to point at the Sin The death of the child of Bathsheba was a plain declaration that the anger of God was upon David for the Adulterous mixture That Blasphemer whose Tongue was presently struck with an ulcerous tumour with his tongue declared the glories of God and his own shame And it was not doubted but God when he smote the Lady of Dominicus Silvius the Duke of Venice with a loathsome and unsavory disease did intend to chastise a remarkable vanity of hers in various and costly Perfumes which she affected in an unreasonable manner and to very evil purposes And that famous person and of excellent learning Giacchettus of Geneva being by his Wife found dead in the unlawful embraces of a stranger woman who also died at the same instant left an excellent example of God's anger upon the crime and an evidence that he was then judged for his intemperate Lust. Such are all those punishments which are natural consequents to a Crime as Dropsies Redness of eyes Dissolution of nerves Apoplexies to continual Drunkenness to intemperate Eating Short lives and Sudden deaths to Lust a Caitive slavish disposition and a Foul diseased body Fire and Sword and Depopulation of Towns and Villages the consequents of Ambition and unjust Wars Poverty to Prodigality and all those Judgments which happen upon Cursings and horrid Imprecations when God is under a Curse called to attest a Lie and to connive at impudence or when the Oppressed persons in the bitterness of their souls wish evil and pray for vengeance on their Oppressors or that the Church upon just cause inflicts Spiritual censures and delivers unto Satan or curses and declares the Divine sentence against sinners as S. Peter against Ananias and Sapphira and S. Paul against Elymas and of old Moses against Pharaoh and his Egypt of this nature also was the plague of a withered hand inflicted upon 〈◊〉 for stretching forth his hand to strike the Prophet In these and all such instances the off-spring is so like the parent that it cannot easily be concealed Sometime the crime is of that nature that it cries aloud for vengeance or is threatned with a special kind of punishment which by the observation and experience of the World hath regularly happened to a certain sort of persons such as are dissolutions of Estates the punishment of Sacrilege a descending curse upon posterity for four generations specially threatned to the crime of Idolatry any plague whatsoever to Oppression untimely death to Murther an unthriving estate to the detention of Tithes or whatsoever is God's portion allotted for the services of Religion untimely and strange deaths to the Persecutors of Christian Religion Nero killed himself Domitian was killed by his servants Maximinus and Decius were murthered together with their children Valerianus imprisoned flay'd and slain with tortures by Sapor King of Persia Diocletian perished by his own hand and his House was burnt with the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah with fire from above Antiochus the President under Aurelian while Agapetus was in his agony and sufferance of Martyrdom cried out of a flame within him and died Flaccus vomited out his entrails presently after he had caused Gregory Bishop of Spoleto to be slain and Dioscorus the father of S. Barbara accused and betrayed his Daughter to the Hangman's cruelty for being a Christian and he died by the hand of God by fire from Heaven These
are God's tokens marks upon the body of insected persons and declare the malignity of the disease and bid us all beware of those determined crimes 6. Thirdly But then in these and all other accidents we must first observe from the cause to the effect and then judge from the effect concerning the nature and the degree of the cause We cannot conclude This family is lessened beggered or extinct therefore they are guilty of Sacrilege but thus They are Sacrilegious and God hath blotted out their name from among the posterities therefore this Judgment was an express of God's anger against Sacrilege the Judgment will not conclude a Sin but when a Sin infers the Judgment with a legible character and a prompt signification not to understand God's choice is next to stupidity or carelesness Arius was known to be a seditious heretical and dissembling person and his entrails descended on the earth when he went to cover his feet it was very suspicious that this was the punishment of those sins which were the worst in him But he that shall conclude Arius was an Heretick or Seditious upon no other ground but because his bowels gushed out begins imprudently and proceeds uncharitably But it is considerable that men do not arise to great crimes on the sudden but by degrees of carelesness to lesser impieties and then to clamorous sins And God is therefore said to punish great crimes or actions of highest malignity because they are commonly productions from the spirit of Reprobation they are the highest ascents and suppose a Body of sin And therefore although the Judgment may be intended to punish all our sins yet it is like the Syrian Army it kills all that are its enemies but it hath a special commission to fight against none but the King of Israel because his death would be the dissolution of the Body And if God humbles a man for his great sin that is for those acts which combine and consummate all the rest possibly the Body of sin may separate and be apt to be scattered and subdued by single acts and instruments of mortification and therefore it is but reasonable in our making use of God's Judgments upon others to think that God will rather strike at the greatest crimes not only because they are in themselves of greatest malice and iniquity but because they are the summe total of the rest and by being great progressions in the state of sin suppose all the rest included and we by proportioning and observing the Judgment to the highest acknowledge the whole body of sin to lie under the curse though the greatest only was named and called upon with the voice of thunder And yet because it sometimes happens that upon the violence of a great and new occasion some persons leap into such a sin which in the ordinary course of sinners uses to be the effect of an habitual and growing state then if a Judgment happens it is clearly appropriate to that one great crime which as of it self it is equivalent to a vicious habit and interrupts the acceptation of all its former contraries so it meets with a curse such as usually God chuses for the punishment of a whole body and state of sin However in making observation upon the expresses of God's anger we must be careful that we reflect not with any bitterness or scorn upon the person of our calamitous Brother left we make that to be an evil to him which God intends for his benefit if the Judgment was medicinal or that we increase the load already great enough to sink him beneath his grave if the Judgment was intended for a final abscission 7. Fourthly But if the Judgments descend upon our selves we are to take another course not to enquire into particulars to find out the proportions for that can only be a design to part with just so much as we must needs but to mend all that is amiss for then only we can be secure to remove the Achan when we keep nothing within us or about us that may provoke God to jealousie or wrath And that is the proper product of holy fear which God intended should be the first effect of all his Judgments and of this God is so careful and yet so kind and provident that fear might not be produced always at the expence of a great suffering that God hath provided for us certain prologues of Judgment and keeps us waking with alarms that so he might reconcile his mercies with our duties Of this nature are Epidemical diseases not yet arrived at us prodigious Tempests Thunder and loud noises from Heaven and he that will not fear when God speaks so loud is not yet made soft with the impresses and perpetual droppings of Religion Venerable Bede reports of S. Chad that if a great gust of Wind suddenly arose he presently made some holy ejaculation to beg favour of God for all mankind who might possibly be concerned in the effects of that Wind but if a Storm succeeded he fell prostrate to the earth and grew as violent in Prayer as the Storm was 〈◊〉 at Land or Sea But if God added Thunder and Lightning he went to the Church and there spent all his time during the Tempest in reciting Litanies Psalms and other holy Prayers till it pleased God to restore his favour and to seem to forget his anger And the good Bishop added this reason Because these are the extensions and stretchings forth of God's hand and yet he did not strike but he that trembles not when he sees God's arm held forth to strike us understands neither God's mercies nor his own danger he neither knows what those horrours were which the People saw from mount Sinai nor what the glories and amazements shall be at the great day of Judgment And if this Religious man had seen Tullus Hostilius the Roman King and Anastasius a Christian Emperor but a reputed Heretick struck dead with Thunderbolts and their own houses made their urns to keep their ashes in there could have been no posture humble enough no Prayers devout enough no place holy enough nothing sufficiently expressive of his fear and his humility and his adoration and Religion to the almighty and infinite power and glorious mercy of God sending out his Emissaries to denounce war with designs of peace A great Italian General seeing the sudden death of Alfonsus Duke of Ferrara kneeled down instantly saying And shall not this sight make me religious Three and twenty thousand fell in one night in the Assyrian Camp who were all slain for Fornication And this so prodigious a Judgement was recorded in Scripture for our example and affrightment that we should not with such freedom entertain a crime which destroyed so numerous a body of men in the darkness of one evening Fear and Modesty and universal Reformation are the purposes of God's Judgments upon us or in our neighbourhood 8. Fifthly Concerning Judgments happening to a Nation or a Church the
the griefs of a Christian whether they be instances of Repentance or parts of Persecution or exercises of Patience end in joy and endless comfort Thus Jesus like a Rainbow half made of the glories of light and half of the moisture of a cloud half triumph and half sorrow entred into that Town where he had done much good to others and to himself received nothing but affronts yet his tenderness encreased upon him and that very journey which was Christ's last solemn visit for their recovery he doubled all the instruments of his Mercy and their Conversion He rode in triumph the 〈◊〉 sang Hosannah to him he cured many diseased persons he wept for them and pitied them and sighed out the intimations of a Prayer and did penance for their ingratitude and stayed all day there looking about him towards evening and no man would invite him home but he was forced to go to Bethany where he was sure of an hospitable entertainment I think no Christian that reads this but will be full of indignation at the whole City who for malice or for fear would not or durst not receive their Saviour into their houses and yet we do worse for now that he is become our Lord with mightier demonstrations of his eternal power we suffer him to look round about upon us for months and years together and possibly never entertain him till our house is ready to rush upon our heads and we are going to unusual and stranger habitations And yet in the midst of a populous and mutinous City this great King had some good subjects persons that threw away their own garments and laid them at the feet of our Lord that being devested of their own they might be re-invested with a robe of his Righteousness wearing that till it were changed into a stole of glory the very ceremony of their reception of the Lord became symbolical to them and expressive of all our duties 7. But I consider that the Blessed Jesus had affections not less than infinite towards all mankind and he who wept upon Jerusalem who had done so great despight to him and within five days were to fill up the measure of their iniquities and do an act which all Ages of the world could never repeat in the same instance did also in the number of his tears reckon our sins as sad considerations and incentives of his sorrow And it would well become us to consider what great evil we do when our actions are such as for which our Blessed Lord did weep He who was seated in the bosom of Felicity yet he moistened his 〈◊〉 Lawrels upon the day of his Triumph with tears of love and bitter allay His day of Triumph was a day of Sorrow and if we would weep for our sins that instance of sorrow would be a day of triumph and 〈◊〉 8. From hence the Holy Jesus went to Pethany where he had another manner of reception than at the Holy City There he supped for his goodly day of Triumph had been with him a fasting-day And Mary Magdalen who had spent one box of Nard pistick upon our Lord's feet as a sacrifice of Eucharist for her Conversion now bestowed another in thankfulness for the restitution of her Brother Lazarus to life and consigned her Lord unto his Burial And here she met with an evil interpreter 〈◊〉 an Apostle one of the Lord 's own Family pretended it had been a better Religion to have given it to the poor but it was Malice and the spirit either of Envy or Avarice in him that passed that sentence for he that sees a pious action well done and seeks to undervalue it by telling how it might have been better reproves nothing but his own spirit For a man may do very well and God would accept it though to say he might have done better is to say only that action was not the most perfect and absolute in its kind but to be angry at a religious person and without any other pretence but that he might have done better is spiritual Envy for a pious person would have nourished up that infant action by love and praise till it had grown to the most perfect and intelligent Piety But the event of that man gave the interpretation of his present purpose and at the best it could be no other than a rash judgment of the action and intention of a religious thankful and holy person But she found her Lord who was her 〈◊〉 in this become her Patron and her Advocate And hereafter when we shall find the Devil the great Accuser of God's Saints object against the Piety and Religion of holy persons a cup of cold water shall be accepted unto reward and a good intention heightned to the value of an exteriour expression and a piece of gum to the equality of a 〈◊〉 and an action done with great zeal and an intense love be acquitted from all its adherent imperfections Christ receiving them into himself and being like the Altar of incense hallowing the very smoak and raising it into a flame and entertaining it into the embraces of the firmament and the bosom of Heaven Christ himself who is the Judge of our actions is also the entertainer and object of our Charity and Duty and the Advocate of our persons 9. Judas who declaimed against the woman made tacite reflexions upon his Lord for suffering it and indeed every obloquy against any of Christ's servants is looked on as an arrow shot into the heart of Christ himself And now a Persecution being begun against the Lord within his own Family another was raised against him from without For the chief Priests took crafty counsel against Jesus and called a Consistory to contrive how they might destroy him and here was the greatest representment of the goodness of God and the ingratitude of man that could be practised or understood How often had Jesus poured forth tears for them how many sleepless nights had he awaked to do them advantage how many days had he spent in Homilies and admirable visitations of Mercy and Charity in casting out Devils in curing their sick in correcting their delinquencies in reducing them to the ways of security and peace and that we may use the greatest expression in the world that is his own in gathering them as a Hen gathereth her Chickens under her wings to give them strength and warmth and life and ghostly nourishment And the chief Priests together with their faction use all arts and watch all opportunities to get Christ not that they might possess him but to destroy him little considering that they extinguish their own eyes and destroy that spring of life which was intended to them for a blissful immortality 10. And here it was that the Devil shewed his promptness to furnish every evil-intended person with apt instruments to act the very worst of his intentions the Devil knew their purposes and the aptness and proclivity of Judas and by bringing these together he
had been the excellency and exemplar Piety and prudence of the life of Jesus that if they pretended against him questions of their Law they were not capital in a Roman Court if they affirmed that he had moved the people to sedition and affected the Kingdom they saw that all the world would convince them of 〈◊〉 testimony At last after many attempts they accused him for a figurative speech a trope which they could not understand which if it had been spoken in a literal sence and had been acted too according to the letter had been so far from a fault that it would have been a prodigy of power and it had been easier to raise the Temple of Jerusalem than to raise the temple of his Body In the mean time the Lamb of God left his cause to defend it self under the protection of his heavenly Father not only because himself was determined to die but because if he had not those premisses could never have inferred it But this Silence of the Holy Jesus fulfilled a Prophecy it made his enemies full of murmur and amazement it made them to see that he despised the accusations as certain and apparent calumnies but that himself was fearless of the issue and in the sence of morality and mysteries taught us not to be too apt to excuse our selves when the semblance of a fault lies upon us unless by some other duty we are obliged to our defences since he who was most innocent was most silent and it was expedient that as the first Adam increased his sin by a vain apology the silence and sufferance of the second Adam should expiate and reconcile it 3. But Caiaphas had a reserve which he knew should do the business in that assembly he adjured him by God to tell him if he were the CHRIST The Holy Jesus being adjured by so sacred a Name would not now refuse an answer lest it might not consist with that honour which is due to it and which he always payed and that he might neither despise the authority of the High Priest nor upon so solemn occasion be wanting to that great truth which he came down to earth to perswade to the world And when three such circumstances concur it is enough to open our mouths though we let in death And so did our Lord confessed himself to be the CHRIST the Son of the living God And this the High Priest was pleased as the design was laid to call Blasphemy and there they voted him to die Then it was the High Priest rent his cloaths the veil of the Temple was rent when the Passion was finished the cloaths of the Priests at the beginning of it and as that signified the departing of the Synagogue and laying Religion open so did the rending the garments of Caiaphas prophetically signifie that the Priesthood should be rent from him and from the Nation And thus the personated and theatrical admiration at Jesus became the type of his own punishment and consigned the Nation to delition and usually God so dispenses his Judgments that when men personate the tragedies of others they really act their own 4. Whilest these things were acting concerning the Lord a sad accident happened to his servant Peter for being engaged in strange and evil company in the midst of danger surprised with a question without time to deliberate an answer to find subterfuges or to fortifie himself he denied his Lord shamefully with some boldness at first and this grew to a licencious confidence and then to impudence and denying with perjury that he knew not his Lord who yet was known to him as his own heart and was dearer than his eyes and for whom he professed but a little before he would die but did not do so till many years after But thus he became to us a sad example of humane infirmity and if the Prince of the Apostles fell so 〈◊〉 it is full of pity but not to be upbraided if we see the fall of lesser stars And yet that we may prevent so great a ruine we must not mingle with such company who will provoke or scorn us into sin and if we do yet we must stand upon our guard that a sudden motion do not surprise us or if we be arrested yet let us not enter farther into our sin like wild beasts intricating themselves by their impatience For there are some who being ashamed and impatient to have been engaged take sanctuary in boldness and a shameless abetting it so running into the darkness of Hell to hide their nakedness But he also by returning and rising instantly became to us a rare example of Penitence and his not lying long in the crime did facilitate this restitution For the spirit of God being extinguished by our works of darkness is like a taper which if as soon as the 〈◊〉 is blown out it be brought to the fire it sucks light and without trouble is re-enkindled but if it cools into death and stiffness it requires a longer stay and trouble The Holy Jesus in the midst of his own sufferings forgat not his servant's danger but was pleased to look upon him when the Cock crew and the Cock was the Preacher and the Look of Jesus was the Grace that made the Sermon effectual and because he was but newly fallen and his habitual love of his Master though interrupted yet had suffered no natural abatement he returned with the swiftness of an Eagle to the embraces and primitive affections of his Lord. 5. By this time suppose Sentence given Caiaphas prejudging all the Sanhedrim for he first declared Jesus to have spoken Blasphemy and the fact to be notorious and then asked their votes which whoso then should have denied must have contested the judgment of the High Priest who by the favour of the Romans was advanced Valerius Gratus who was President of Judaea having been his Patron and his Faction potent and his malice great and his heart set upon this business all which inconveniences none of them durst have suffered unless he had had the confidence greater than of an Apostle at that time But this Sentence was but like strong dispositions to an enraged fever he was only declared apt and worthy for death they had no power at that time to inflict it but yet they let loose all the fury of mad-men and insolency of wounded smarting souldiers and although from the time of his being in the house of Annas till the Council met they had used him with studied indignities yet now they renewed and doubled the unmercifulness and their injustice to so great a height that their injuries must needs have been greater than his Patience if his Patience had been less than infinite For thus Man's Redemption grows up as the load swells which the Holy Jesus bare for us for these were our portion and we having turned the flowers of Paradise into thistles should for ever have felt their infelicity had not Jesus paid the debt But
to be contracted into the span of Humanity and dwell forty days in his body upon earth But that he should return from Paradise that is from the common receptacle of departed Spirits who died in the love of God to earth again had in it no lessening of his condition since himself in mercy called back Lazarus from thence and some others also returned to live a life of grace which in all senses is less than the least of glories Sufficient it is to us that all holy Souls departing go into the hands that is into the custody of our Lord that they rest from their labours that their works shall follow them and overtake them too at the day of Judgment that they are happy presently that they are visited by Angels that God sends as he pleases excellent irradiations and types of glory to entertain them in their mansions that their condition is secured but the crown of 〈◊〉 is laid up against the great day of Judgment and then to be produced and given to S. Paul and to all that love the coming of our Lord that is to all who either here in duty or in their receptacles with joy and certain hope long for the revelation of that day At the day of Judgment Christ will send the Angels and they shall gather together the elect from the four winds and all the refuse of men evil persons they shall throw into everlasting burning Then our Blessed Lord shall call to the elect to enter into the Kingdom and reject the cursed into the portion of Devils for whom the fire is but now prepared in the intervall For we must all appear before the Judgment-seat of Christ saith S. Paul that every man may receive in his body according as he hath done whether it be good or evil Out of the body the reception of the reward is not And therefore S. Peter affirms that God hath delivered the evil Angels into chains of darkness to be reserved unto Judgment And S. Jude saith that the Angels which kept not their first faith but left their first habitation he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the Judgment of the great day And therefore the Devils expostulated with our Blessed Saviour Art thou come to torment us before the time And the same also he does to evil men reserving the unjust unto the day of Judgment to be punished For since the actions which are to be judg'd are the actions of the whole man so also must be the Judicature And our Blessed Saviour intimated this to his Apostles In my Father's house are many mansions but I go to prepare a place for you And if I go away I will come again and take you unto me that where I am there ye may be also At Christ's Second coming this is to be performed Many Outer courts many different places or different states there may be and yet there is a place whither holy Souls shall arrive at last which was not then ready for us and was not to be entred into until the entrance of our Lord had made the preparation and that is certainly the highest Heaven called by S. Paul the third Heaven because the other receptacles were ready and full of holy Souls Patriarchs and Prophets and holy men of God concerning whom S. Paul affirms expresly that the Fathers received not the Promises God having provided some better thing for us that they without us should not be made perfect Therefore certain it is that their condition was a state of imperfection and yet they were placed in Paradise in Abraham's bosom and thither Christ went and the blessed Thief attended him And then it was that Christ made their condition better for though still it be a place of relation in order to something beyond it yet the term and object of their hope is changed they sate in the regions of darkness expecting that great Promise made to Adam and the Patriarchs the Promise of the Messias but when he that was promised came he preached to the spirits in Prison he communicated to them the Mysteries of the Gospel the Secrets of the Kingdom the things hidden from eternal Ages and taught them to look up to the glories purchased by his Passion and made the term of their expectation be his Second coming and the objects of their hope the glories of the beatifick vision And although the state of Separation is sometimes in Scripture called 〈◊〉 and sometimes 〈◊〉 for these words in Scripture are of large significations yet it is never called the third 〈◊〉 nor the Hell of the damned for although concerning it nothing is clearly revealed or what is their portion till the day of Judgment yet it is intimated in a Parable that between good and evil spirits even in the state of Separation there is distance of place certain it is there is great distance of condition and as the holy Souls in their regions of light are full of love joy hope and longing for the coming of the great Day so the accursed do expect it with an insupportable amazement and are presently tormented with apprehensions of the future Happy are they that through Paradise pass into the Kingdom who from their highest hope pass to the 〈◊〉 Charity from the state of a blessed Separation to the Mercies and gentle Sentence of the day of Judgment which S. Paul prayed to God to grant 〈◊〉 and more explicitely for the Thessalonians that their whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus And I pray God to grant the same to me and all faithful people whatsoever 2. As soon as the Lord had given up his spirit into the hands of God the veil of the Temple was rent the Angels Guardians of the place deserted it the Rites of Moses were laid open and the inclosures of the Tabernacle were dispark'd the earth trembled the graves were opened and all the old world and the old Religion were so shaken towards their first Chaos that if God had not supported the one and reserved the other for an honourable burial the earth had left to support her children and the Synagogue had been thrown out to an inglorious exposition and contempt But yet in these symbols these were changed from their first condition and passed into a new dominion all old things passed away and all things became new the Earth and the Heavens were reckoned as a new creation they passed into another kingdom under Christ their Lord and as before the creatures were servants of humane necessities they now become servants of election and in order to the ends of Grace as before of Nature Christ having now the power to dispose of them in order to his Kingdom and by the administration of his own Wisdom And at the instant of these accidents God so determined the perswasions of men that they referred these Prodigies of the honour to
parent of as great Religion as the good women make their fancy their softness and their passion 12. Our Blessed Lord appeared next to Simon and though he and John ran forthtogether and S. John outran Simon although Simon Peter had denied and forsworn his Lord and S. John never did and followed him to his Passion and his death yet Peter had the savour of seeing Jesus first Which some Spiritual persons understand as a testimony that penitent 〈◊〉 have accidental eminences and priviledges sometimes 〈◊〉 to them beyond the temporal graces of the just and innocent as being such who not only 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 against the remanent and inherent evils even of repented sins and their aptnesses to relapse but also because those who are true Penitents who understand the infiniteness of the Divine mercy and that for a sinner to pass from death to 〈◊〉 from the state of sin into pardon and the state of Grace is a greater gift and a more excellent and improbable mutation than for a just man to be taken into glory out of gratitude to God and indearment 〈◊〉 so great a change added to a fear of returning to such danger and misery will re-enforce all their industry and double their study and 〈◊〉 more diligently and watch more carefully and redeem the 〈◊〉 and make amends for their omissions and oppose a good to the former evils beside the duties of the 〈◊〉 imployment and then commonly the life of a holy Penitent is more holy active zealous and impatient of Vice and more rapacious of Vertue and holy actions and arises to greater 〈◊〉 of Sanctity than the even and moderate affections of just persons who as our Blessed Saviour's expression is 〈◊〉 no Repentance that is no change of state nothing but a perseverance and an improvement of degrees There is more joy in heaven before the Angels of God over 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that 〈◊〉 than 〈◊〉 ninety nine just persons that need it not for where sin hath abounded there doth grace super abound and that makes joy in Heaven 13. The Holy Jesus having received the affections of his most passionate Disciples the women and S. 〈◊〉 puts himself upon the way into the company of two good men going to Emmaus with troubled spirits and a reeling faith shaking all its upper building but leaving some of its foundation firm To them the Lord discourses of the necessity of the Death and Resurrection of the 〈◊〉 and taught them not to take estimate of the counsels of God by the designs and proportions of man for God by ways contrary to humane judgment brings to pass the purposes of his eternal Providence The glories of Christ were not made pompous by humane circumstances his Kingdom was spiritual he was to enter into Felicities through the gates of Death he refused to do Miracles before 〈◊〉 and yet did them before the people he confuted his accusers by silence and did not descend from the Cross when they offered to believe in him if he would but 〈◊〉 them to be perswaded by greater arguments of his power the miraculous circumstances of his Death and the glories of his Resurrection and by walking in the secret paths of Divine election hath commanded us to adore his footsteps to admire and revere his Wisdom to be satisfied with all the events of Providence and to rejoyce in him if by Afflictions he makes us holy if by Persecutions he supports and enlarges his Church if by Death he brings us to life so we arrive at the communion of his Felicities we must let him chuse the way it being sufficient that he is our guide and our support and our exceeding great reward For therefore Christ preached to the two Disciples going to 〈◊〉 the way of the Cross and the necessity of that passage that the wisdom of God might be glorified and the conjectures of man ashamed But whilest his discourse lasted they knew him not but in the breaking of bread he discovered himself For he turned their meal into a Sacrament and their darkness to light and having to his Sermon added the Sacrament opened all their discerning faculties the eyes of their body and their understanding too to represent to us that when we are blessed with the opportunities of both those instruments we want no exteriour assistence to guide us in the way to the knowing and enjoying of our Lord. 14. But the Apparitions which Jesus made were all upon the design of laying the foundation of all Christian Graces for the begetting and establishing Faith and an active Confidence in their persons and building them up on the great fundamentals of the Religion And therefore he appointed a general meeting upon a mountain in Galilee that the number of witnesses might not only disseminate the same but establish the Article of the Resurrection for upon that are built all the hopes of a Christian and if the dead rise not then are we of all men most miserable in quitting the present possessions and entertaining injuries and affronts without hopes of reparation But we lay two gages in several repositories the Body in the bosome of the earth the Soul in the 〈◊〉 of God and as we here live by Faith and lay them down with hope so the 〈◊〉 is a restitution of them both and a state of re-union And therefore although the glory of our spirits without the body were joy great enough to make compensation for mere than the troubles of all the world yet because one shall not be glorified without the other they being of themselves incomplete substances and God having revealed nothing clearly concerning actual and complete felicities till the day of Judgment when it is promised our bodies shall rise therefore it is that the Resurrection is the great Article upon which we rely and which Christ took so much care to prove and ascertain to so many persons because if that should be disbelieved with which all our felicities are to be received we have nothing to establish our Faith or entertain our Hope or satisfie our desires or make retribution for that state of secular inconveniences in which by the necessities of our nature and the humility and patience of our Religion we are engaged 15. But I consider that holy Scripture onely instructs us concerning the life of this world and the life of the Resurrection the life of Grace and the life of Glory both in the body that is a life of the whole man and whatsoever is spoken of the Soul considers it as an essential part of man relating to his whole constitution not as it is of it self an intellectual and separate substance for all its actions which are separate and removed from the body are relative and incomplete Now because the Soul is an incomplete substance and created in relation to the Body and is but a part of the whole man if the Body were as eternal and incorruptible as the Soul yet the separation of the one from the other would be
theirs earnestly pressing and perswading the Pastors and Governours of it To feed the flock of God To take upon them the Rule and Inspection of it freely and willingly not out of a sinister end merely of gaining advantages to themselves but out of a sincere design of doing good to Souls that they would treat them mildly and gently and be themselves examples of Piety and Religion to them as the best way to make their Ministery successful and effectual And because he could not be always present to teach and warn men he ceased not by Letters to stir up their minds to the remembrance and practice of what they had been taught A course he tells them which he was resolved to hold as long as he lived as thinking it meet while he was in this Tabernacle to stir them up by putting them in mind of these things that so they might be able after his decease to have them always in remembrance And this may lead us to the consideration of those Writings which he left behind him for the benefit of the Church 5. NOW the Writings that entitle themselves to this Apostle were either genuine or supposititious The genuine Writings are his two Epistles which make up part of the Sacred Canon For the first of them no certain account can be had when it was written Though Baronius and most Writers commonly assign it to the year of Christ Forty Four But this cannot be Peter not being at Rome from whence it is supposed to have been written at that time as we shall see anon He wrote it to the Jewish Converts dispersed through Pontus Galatia and the Countries thereabouts chiefly upon the occasion of that persecution which had been raised at Jerusalem And accordingly the main design of it is to confirm and comfort them under their present sufferings and persecutions and to direct and instruct them how to carry themselves in the several states and relations both of the Civil and the Christian life For the place whence it was written 't is expresly dated from Babylon But what or where this Babylon is is not so easie to determine Some think it was Babylon in Egypt and probably 〈◊〉 and that there Peter preached the Gospel Others will have it to have been Babylon the Ancient Metropolis of Assyria and where great numbers of Jews dwelt ever since the times of their Captivities But we need not send Peter on so long an Errand if we embrace the Notion of a Learned man who by Babylon will figuratively understand Jerusalem no longer now the holy City but a kind of spiritual Babylon in which the Church of God did at this time groan under great servitude and captivity And this Notion of the Word he endeavours to make good by calling in to his assistance two of the Ancient Fathers who so understand that of the Prophet We have healed Babylon but she was not healed Where the Prophet say they by Babylon means Jerusalem as differing nothing from the wickedness of the Nations nor conforming it self to the Law of God But generally the Writers of the Romish Church and the more moderate of the Reformed party acquiescing herein in the Judgment of Antiquity by Babylon understand Rome And so 't is plain S. John calls it in his Revelation either from its conformity in power and greatness to that ancient City or from that great Idolatry which at this time reign'd in Rome And so we may suppose S. Peter to have written it from Rome not long after his coming thither though the precise time be not exactly known 6. AS for the Second Epistle it was not accounted of old of equal value and authority with the First and therefore for some Ages not taken into the Sacred Canon as is expresly affirmed by 〈◊〉 and many of the Ancients before him The Ancient Syriack Church did not receive it and accordingly it is not to be found in their ancient Copies of the New Testament Yea those of that Church at this day do not own it as Canonical but only read it privately as we do the Apocryphal Books The greatest exception that I can find against it was the difference of its style from the other Epistle and therefore it was presumed that they were not both written by the same hand But S. 〈◊〉 who tells us the objection does elsewhere himself return the answer That the difference in the style and manner of writing might very well arise from hence that S. Peter according to his different circumstances and the necessity of affairs was forced to use several Amanuenses and Interpreters sometimes S. Mark and after his departure some other person which might justly occasion a difference in the style and character of these 〈◊〉 Not to say that the same person may vastly alter and vary his style according to the times when or the persons to whom or the subjects about which he writes or the temper and disposition he is in at the time of writing or the care that is used in doing it Who sees not the vast difference of Jeremie's writing in his Prophecy and in his Book of Lamentations between S. John's in his Gospel his 〈◊〉 and Apocalypse How oft does S. Paul alter his style in several of his Epistles in some more lofty and elegant in others more rough and harsh Besides hundreds of instances that might be given both in Ecclesiastical and Foreign Writers too obvious to need insisting on in this place The Learned Grotius will have this Epistle to have been written by Symeon S. James his immediate Successor in the Bishoprick of Jerusalem and that the word Peter was inserted into the Title by another hand But as a Judicious person of our own observes these were but his Posthume Annotations published by others and no doubt never intended as the deliberate result of that great man's Judgment especially since he himself tacitly acknowledges that all Copies extant at this day read the Title and Inscription as it is in our Books And indeed there is a concurrence of circumstances to prove S. Peter to be the Author of it It bears his name in the Front and Title yea somewhat more expresly than the former which has only one this both his Names There 's a passage in it that cannot well relate to any but him When he tells us that he was present with Christ in the holy Mount When he received from God the Father honour and glory Where he heard the voice which came from Heaven from the excellent glory This is my Beloved Son in whom I am well pleased This evidently refers to Christs Tranfiguration where none were present but Peter and the two Sons of Zebedee neither of which were ever thought of to be the Author of this Epistle Besides that there is an admirable consent and agreement in many passages between these two Epistles as it were easie to show in particular instances Add to this that
all measures and under the patronage of his name began to set up for a party he severely rebuked them told them that it was Christ not he that was crucified for them that they had not been baptized into his name which he was so far from that he did not remember that he had baptized 〈◊〉 three or four of them and was heartily glad he had baptized no more 〈◊〉 a foundation might have been laid for that suspicion that this Paul whom they so much extolled was no more than a minister of Christ whom our Lord had appointed to plant and build up his Church 4. GREAT was his temperance and sobriety so far from going beyond the bounds of regularity that he abridged himself of the conveniencies of lawful and necessary accommodations frequent his hungrings and thirstings not constrained only but voluntary it 's probably thought that he very rarely drank any Wine certain that by abstinence and mortification he kept under and subdued his body reducing the extravagancy of the sensual appetites to a perfect subjection to the laws of Reason By this means he easily got above the World and its charms and frowns had his mind continually conversant in Heaven his thoughts were fixed there his desires always ascending thither what he taught others he practised himself his conversation was in Heaven and his desires were to depart and to be with Christ this World did neither arrest his affections nor disturb his fears he was not taken with its applause nor frighted with its threatnings he studied not to please men nor valued the censures and judgments which they passed upon him he was not greedy of a great estate or titles of honour or rich presents from men not seeking theirs but them food and raiment was his bill of fare and more than this he never cared for accounting that the less he was clogged with these things the lighter he should march to Heaven especially travelling through a World over-run with troubles and persecutions Upon this account it 's probable he kept himself always within a single life though there want not some of the Ancients who expresly reckon him in the number of the married Apostles as Clemens Alexandrinus Ignatius and some others 'T is true that passage is not to be found in the genuine Epistle of Ignatius but yet is extant in all those that are owned and published by the Church of Rome though they have not been wanting to banish it out of the World having expunged S. Paul's name out of some ancient Manuscripts as the learned Bishop Usher has to their shame sufficiently discovered to the World But for the main of the question we can readily grant it the Scripture seeming most to favour it that though he asserted his power and liberty to marry as well as the rest yet that he lived always a single life 5. HIS kindness and charity was truly admirable he had a compassionate tenderness for the poor and a quick sense of the wants of others To what Church soever he came it was one of his first cares to make provision for the poor and to stir up the bounty of the rich and the wealthy nay himself worked often with his own hands not only to maintain himself but to help and relieve them But infinitely greater was his charity to the Souls of men fearing no dangers refusing no labours going through good and evil report that he might gain men over to the knowledge of the truth reduce them out of the crooked paths of vice and idolatry and set them in the right way to eternal life Nay so insatiable his thirst after the good of Souls that he affirms that rather than his Country-men the Jews should miscarry by not believing and entertaining the Gospel he could be content nay wished that himself might be accursed from Christ for their sake i. e. that he might be anathematized and cut off from the Church of Christ and not only lose the honour of the Apostolate but be reckoned in the number of the abject and execrable persons such as those are who are separated from the communion of the Church An instance of so large and passionate a charity that lest it might not find room in mens belief he ushered it in with this solemn appeal and attestation that he said the truth in Christ and lied not his conscience bearing him witness in the Holy Ghost And as he was infinitely solicitous to gain men over to the best Religion in the World so was he not less careful to keep them from being seduced from it ready to suspect every thing that might corrupt their minds from the simplicity that is in Christ. I am jealous over you with a godly jealousie as he told the Church of Corinth An affection of all others the most active and vigilant and which is wont to inspire men with the most passionate care and concernment for the good of those for whom we have the highest measures of love and kindness Nor was his charity to men greater than his zeal for God endeavouring with all his might to promote the honour of his Master Indeed zeal seems to have had a deep foundation in the natural forwardness of his temper How exceedingly zealous was he while in the Jews Religion of the Traditions of his Fathers how earnest to vindicate and assert the Divinity of the Mosaick dispensation and to persecute all of a contrary way even to rage and madness And when afterwards turned into a right 〈◊〉 it ran with as swift a current carrying him out against all opposition to ruine the kingdom and the powers of darkness to beat down idolatry and to plant the World with right apprehensions of God and the true notions of Religion When at Athens he saw them so much overgrown with the grossest superstition and idolatry giving the honour that was alone due to God to Statues and Images his zeal began to ferment and to boil up into 〈◊〉 of indignation and he could not but let them know the resentments of his mind and how much herein they dishonoured God the great Parent and Maker of the World 6. THIS zeal must needs put him upon a mighty diligence and industry in the execution of his office warning reproving intreating perswading preaching in season and out of season by night and by day by Sea and Land no pains too much to be taken no dangers too great to be overcome For five and thirty years after his Conversion he 〈◊〉 staid long in one place from Jerusalem through Arabia 〈◊〉 Greece round about to Illyricum to Rome and even to the utmost bounds of the Western-world fully preaching the Gospel of Christ Running says S. Hierom from Ocean to Ocean like the Sun in the Heavens of which 't is said His going forth is from the end of the Heaven and his circuit unto the ends of it sooner wanting ground to tread on than a desire to propagate the Faith of Christ.