Reformation when in no long time the number of them that had forsaken Rome was as great as of them that staid with her Now to give way to this ascent of this Angel in thy selfe make the way smooth and make thy soule souple finde thou a growth of the Gospel in thy faith and let us finde it in thy life It is not in thy power to say to this Angel as Ioshua said to the Sun Siste Iosh 10.12 stand still It will not stand still If thou finde it not ascending it descends If thy comforts in the Gospel of Christ Jesus grow not they decay If thou profit not by the Gospel thou losest by it If thou live not by it nothing can redeeme thee thou dyest by it Wee speake of going up and downe a staire it is all one staire of going to and from the City it is all one way of comming in and going out of a house it is all one doore So is there a savour of life unto life and a savour of death unto death in the Gospel but it is all one Gospel If this Angel of the East have appeared unto thee the light of the Gospel have shined upon thee and it have not ascended in thee if it have not made thee wiser and wiser and better and better too thou hast stopped that light vexed grieved quenched that Spirit for the naturall progresse of this Angel of the East is to ascend the naturall motion and working of the Gospel is to make thee more and more confident in Gods deliverance lesse and lesse subject to rely upon the weake helps and miserable comforts of this world To this purpose this Angel ascends that is proceeds in the manifestation of his Power and of his readinesse to succour us Of his Power in this That he hath the seales of the living God I saw an Angel ascending from the East which had the seale of the living God which is our next Consideration Of the living God The gods of the Nations are all dead gods Sigillum Dei viventis either such Gods as never had life stones and gold and silver or such gods at best as were never gods till they were dead for men that had benefited the world in any publique and generall invention or otherwise were made gods after their deaths which was a miserable deification a miserable godhead that grew out of corruption a miserable eternity that begun at all but especially that begun in death and they were not gods till they dyed But our Angel had the Seale of the living God that is Power to give life to others Now if we seeke for this seale in the naturall Angels they have it not for this Seale is some visible thing whereby we are assisted to salvation and the Angels have no such They are made keepers of this seale sometimes but permanently they have it not This Seale of comfort was put into an Angels hand Ezek. 9.4 when he was to set a marke upon the foreheads of all them that mourned He had a visible thing Inke to marke them withall But it was not said to him Vade signa omnes Creaturas Go and set this marke upon every Creature as it was to the Minister of the Gospel Go and preach to every Creature Marke 16.15 If wee seeke this seale in the great Angel the Angel of the Covenant Christ Jesus It is true he hath it for Omnis potestas dâ—ta All power is given unto me in Heaven and in earth and Omne judicium Mat. 28.18 Iohn 5.22 The Father hath committed all judgement to the Son Christ as the Son of man executes a Judgement and hath a Power which he hath not but by gift by Commission by vertue of this Seale from his Father But because it is not onely so in him That he hath the Seale of the living God but He is this Seale himselfe Colos 1.15 Heb. 1.3 Iohn 6.27 Hee is the Image of the invisible God He is the brightnesse of his glory and the expresse Image of his Person It is not onely his Commission that is sealed but his Nature He himselfe is sealed Him hath God the Father sealed since I say naturall Angels though they have sometimes this seale they have it not alwaies they have not a Commission from God to apply his mercies to man by any ordinary and visible meanes since the Angel of the Covenant Christ Jesus hath it but hath it so as that he is it too the third sort of Angels the Church-Angels the Ministers of the Gospell are they who most properly can be said to have this Seale by a fixed and permanent possession and a power to apply it to particular men in all emergent necessities according to the institution of that living God whose seale it is Now the great power which is given by God in giving this seale to these Angels hath a lively representation such as a shadow can give in the history of Ioseph Pharaoh sayes to him Thou shalt be over my house and over all the land of Egypt Gen. 41.40 steward of the Kings house and steward of the Kingdome And at thy word shall all my people be armed Constable and Marshall too and to invest him in all these and more Pharaoh gave him his ring his seale not his seale onely to those severall patents to himselfe but the keeping of that seale for the good of others This temporall seale of Pharoh was a representation of the seale of the living God But there is a more expresse type of it in Exodus Thou shalt grave sayes God to Moses upon a plate of pure gold Lxod. 28.36 as Signets are graved Holinesse to the Lord and it shall be upon the forehead of Aaron What to do That the people may be accepted of him There must be a holinesse to the Lord and that presented by Aaron the Priest to God that the people may be acceptable to the Lord So that this seale of the living God in these Angels of our text is The Sacraments of the New Testament and the Absolution of sinnes by which when Gods people come to a Holinesse to the Lord in a true repentance and that that holinesse that is that repentance is made knowne to Aaron to the Priest and he presents it to the Lord that Priest his Minister seals to them in those his Ordinances Gods acceptation of this degree of holinesse he seals this Reconciliation between God and his people And a contract of future concurrence with his subsequent grace This is the power given by God to this ascending Angel and we extend that no farther but hasten to his haste his readinesse to succour us in which we proposed for the first consideration That this Angel of light manifested and discovered to us who our enemies were He cryed out to them who were ready to do mischiefe with a loud voyce so that we might heare him and know them Though in all Court-cases it be
to a not being that which it was before onely the name of God is I am In which name God gave Moses and does give us who are also his Embassadors so much knowledge of himselfe as that we may tell you though not what God is yet that God is God in the notification of this name sends us sufficiently instructed to establish you in the assurance of an everlasting and an ever-ready God but not to scatter you with unnecessary speculations and impertinencies concerning this God He is no fit messenger between God and his Church that knowes not Gods name that is how God hath notified and manifested himselfe to man God hath manifested himselfe to man in Christ and manifested Christ in the Scriptures and manifested the Scriptures in the Church the name of God is the notification of God how God will be called by man and that is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ and how God will be called upon by man that is that all our prayers to God be directed in and through and by and for Christ Jesus If we know the name of God Qui sum I am that is beleeve Christ Jesus whom we worship to have been from all eternity to be God and then for more particular points beleeve those Doctrines quae sunt which are that is Quae sunt ubique semper as Lyrinensis sayes which have been alwayes beleeved and alwayes beleeved to have been necessary to be beleeved as articles of Faith through the whole Catholique Church if we know the name of God thus we have our Commission and our qualification in that Gospell Goe and teach all Nations Mat. 28.19 and baptize in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the holy Ghost that is the name of God to a Christian the Trinity And least that Commission so delivered in the generall and fundamentall manner professing the Trinity should not seem enough it is repeated and paraphrased in the verse following Teach them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you First there is a Teaching good life it self is but a commentary an exposition upon our preaching that which is first laid upon us is preaching and then teach them to observe that is to practise breed them not in an opinion that such a faith as is without workes is enough and teach them to observe All For for matter of practice He that breakes one Law is guilty of all and he that thinkes to serve God by way of compensation that is to recompense God by doing one duty for the omission of another sins even in that in which he thinkes he serves God and for matter of beleefe he that beleeves not all solvit Iesum as S. Iohn speakes he takes Jesus in peeces and after the Jews have crucified him he dissects him and makes him an Anatomy We must therefore teach all but then it is but all which Christ hath commanded us additionall and traditionall doctrines of the Papist speculative and dazling riddling and entangling perplexities of the Schoole passionate and uncharitable wranglings of Controverters these fall not in Moses Commission nor ours who participate of his we are to deliver to you by the Ordinance of God Preaching The name of God that is how God hath manifested himself to man and how God will be called upon by man That God is your God in Christ if you receive Christ in the Scriptures applyed in the Church And farther we carry not our consideration upon this second excuse of Moses in which as in the former he considered his insufficiency in the generall he considers it in this that he had not studied he had not acquired he had not sought the knowledge of those Mysteries which appertained to that calling implyed in that that he did not know Gods name His third excuse which induces a great discouragement Non eloquens arises out of a defect in nature whereas the former is rather of art and study and consideration and to be naturally defective in those faculties which are essentiall and necessary to that work which is under our hand is a great discouragement Lamenesse is not alwayes an insupportable calamity but for Mephibosheth to have been hindred by lamenesse then when he should have received favour from the King and setled his inheritance this was a heavy affliction Lownesse of stature is no insupportable thing but when Zacheus came with such a desire to see Christ then to be disappointed by reason of his lownesse this might affect him It is not alwayes insupportable to lack the assistance of a servant or a friend But when the Angel hath troubled the water and made it medicinall for him that is first put in and no more then to have lyen many yeares in expectation and still to lack a servant or a friend to do that office this is a misery And this was Moses case God will send him upon a service that consisted much in perswasion and good speech and he sayes O my Lord I am not eloquent neither heretofore nor since thou hast spoken to thy servant Ver. 10. Where we see there is some degree of eloquence required in the delivery of Gods Messages There are not so eloquent Bookes in the world as the Scriptures neither should a man come to any kinde of handling of them with uncircumcised lips as Moses speaks or with an extemporall and irreverent or over-homely and vulgar language Prov. 16.1 The preparation of the heart is of the Lord sayes Solomon but it is not only that The preparation of the heart and the answer of the tongue is of the Lord. To conceive good things for the glory of God and to expresse them to the edification of Gods people is a double blessing of God Therefore does Hester form and institute her prayer to God so Ester 14.12 Give me boldnesse O Lord of all power but she extends her prayer farther And give me eloquent speech in my mouth And the want of this in a naturall defect and unreadinesse of speech discouraged Moses And when God recompenses and supplyes this defect in Moses he does it but thus I will be with thy mouth and I will teach thee what thou shalt say Still it is Moses that must say it still Moses mouth that must utter it Beloved it is the generall Ordinance of God of whom as we have received mercy we have received the Ministery and it is the particular grace of God that inanimates our labours and makes them effectuall upon you All that is not of our planting nor watring but of God that gives the increase But yet we must labour to get and labour to improve such learning and such language and such other abilities as may best become that service for the naturall want of one of these retarded Moses from a present acceptation of Gods imployment And so truly should put any man that puts himself or puts his son upon this profession upon that consideration whether he
no evill done in the City but I doe it we may be bold to say there is no good done in the world but hee does it The very calamities are from him the deliverance from those calamities much more All comes from Gods hand and from his hand by way of hand-writing by way of letter and instruction to us And therefore to ascribe things wholy to nature to fortune to power to second causes this is to mistake the hand not to know Gods hand But to acknowledge it to be Gods hand and not to read it to say that it is Gods doing and not to consider what God intends in it is as much a slighting of God as the other Now in every such letter in every judgement God writes to the King but it becomes not me to open the Kings letter nor to prescribe the King his interpretation of that judgement In every such letter in every judgement God writes to the State but I will not open their letter nor prescribe them their interpretation of that judgement God who of his goodnesse hath vouchsafed to write unto them in these letters of his abundant goodnesse interprets himselfe to their religious hearts But then in every such letter in every judgement God writes to me too and that letter I will open and read that letter I will take knowledge that it is Gods hand to me and I will study the will of God to me in that letter and I will write back again to my God and return him an answer in the amendment of my life and give him my reformation for his information Else I am fallen lower then under the Prophets increpation non credidi I have not beleeved comminations of future judgements under Christs increpation too non credidi I doe not beleeve judgements to be judgements or which is as dangerous an ignorance not to be instructive judgements medicinall and catechisticall judgements to me And this may well be the explication at least the application and accommodation of these words Lord who hath beleeved our report in those places the Prophet Esay and the Euangelist S. Iohn There remaines only the third place where we have these words in the Apostle S. Paul and in them there doe not consider a prophecy of a future Christ Rom. 10.16 as in Esay nor a history of a present Christ as in S. Iohn but we consider an application of all prophecy and history all that was foretold of Christ all that was done and suffered by Christ in this that there is a Church instituted by Christ endowed with meanes of reconciling us to God what judgements soever our sins have drawen God to threaten against us or to inflict upon us and yet for all these offers of all these helps the Minister is put to this sad expostulation Domine quis credidit Lord who hath beleeved our report Here then the Apostles expostulation with God and increpation upon the people may usefully be conceived to be thus carried from the light and notification of God 3. Part. which we have in nature to a clearer light which we have in the Law and Prophets and then a clearer then that in the Gospell and a clearer at least a nearer then that in the Church First then even the naturall man is inexcusable sayes this Apostle if he doe not see the invisible God in the visible creature inexcusable if he doe not reade the law written in his own heart But then Quis credidit auditui suo who hath beleeved his own report who does reade the Law written in his own heart who does come home to Church to himself or hearken to the motions of his own spirit what he should doe or what will become of him if he doe still as he hath done or who reades the history of his own conscience what he hath done and the judgements that belong to those former actions Therefore we have a clearer light then this Firmiorem propheticum sermonem sayes S. Peter We have a more sure word of the Prophets that is 2 Pet. 1.19 as S. Augustine reades that place clariorem a more manifest a more evident declaration in the Prophets then in nature of the will of God towards man and his rewarding the obedient and rejecting the disobedient to that will But then Quis credidit auditui prophetico who hath beleeved the report of the Prophet so far as to be so moved and affected with a prophecy as to suspect himselfe and apply that prophecy to himselfe and to say this judgement of his belongs to this sin of mine Therefore we have a clearer light then this God Heb. 1.1 who at sundry times and in divers manners spake to the Fathers by the Prophets hath in these last dayes spoke to us by his Son sayes the Apostle He spake personally and he spake aloud in the declaration of Miracles But Quis credidit auditui filii who beleeved even his report did they not call his preaching sedition and call his Miracles conjuring Therefore we have a clearer that is a nearer light then the written Gospell that is the Church For the principall intention in Christs Miracles even in the purpose of God was but thereby to create and constitute and establish an assurance that he that did those Miracles was the right man the true Messias that Son of God who was made man for the redemption and ransome of the whole world But then that which was to give them their best assistance that that was to supply all by that way to apply this generall redemption to every particular soule that was the establishing of a Church of a visible and constant and permanent meanes of salvation by his Ordinances there usque ad consummationem till the end of the world And this is done sayes this Apostle here Christ is come and gone and come again Born and dead and risen again Ascended and sate at the right hand of his Father in our nature and descended again in his Spirit the Holy Ghost that Holy Ghost hath sent us us the Apostles we have made Bishops they have made Priests and Deacons and so that body that family that houshold of the faithfull Ver. 14. by their Ministery is made up 'T is true sayes the Apostle here Men cannot be saved without calling upon God nor call upon him acceptably without Faith nor beleeve truly without Hearing nor heare profitably without Preaching nor preach avowably and with a blessing without sending All this is true sayes our Apostle in this place but all this is done such a sending such a preaching such a hearing is established For Ver. 19. I ask but this sayes he Have they not heard Yes verily their sound went into all the earth and their words unto the end of the world And for my selfe sayes he I have strived to preach the Gospell Rom. 15.20 where Christ was not named that is to carry the Church farther then the rest had carried it and now all
Judge too I shall not be tried by an arbitrary Court where it may be wisdome enough to follow a wise leader and think as he thinks I shall not be tried by a Jury that had rather I suffered then they fasted rather I lost my life then they lost a meale Nor tryed by Peeres where Honour shall be the Bible But I shall be tryed by the King himselfe then which no man can propose a Nobler tryall and that King shall be the King of Kings too for He V. 5. who in the first of the Revelation is called The faithfull Witnesse is in the same place called The Prince of the Kings of the earth and as he is there produced as a Witnesse so Acts 10 42. Iohn 5.22 He is ordained to be the Iudge of the quick and the dedd and so All Iudgement is committed to him He that is my Witnesse is my Judge and the same person is my Jesus my Saviour my Redeemer He that hath taken my nature He that hath given me his blood So that he is my Witnesse in his owne cause and my Judge but of his owne Title and will in me preserve himselfe He will not let that nature that he hath invested perish nor that treasure which he hath poured out for me his blood be ineffectuall My Witnesse is in Heaven my Judge is in Heaven my Redeemer is in Heaven and in them who are but One I have not onely a constant hope that I shall be there too but an evident assurance that I am there already in his Person Go then in this peace That you alwaies study to preserve this testification of the Spirit of God by outward evidences of Sanctification You are naturally composed of foure Elements and three of those foure are evident and unquestioned The fourth Element the element of Fire is a more litigious element more problematicall more disputable Every good man every true Christian in his Metaphysicks for in a regenerate man all is Metaphysicall supernaturall hath foure Elements also and three of those foure are declared in this text First a good Name the good opinion of good men for honest dealing in the world and religious discharge of duties towards God That there be no injustice in our hands Also that our prayer be pure A second Element is a good conscience in my selfe That either a holy warinesse before or a holy repentance after settle me so in God as that I care not though all the world knew all my faults And a third element is my Hope in God that my Witnesse which is in Heaven will testifie for me as a witnesse in my behalfe here or acquit me as a mercifull Judge hereafter Now there may be a fourth Element an Infallibility of finall perseverance grounded upon the eternall knowledge of God but this is as the Element of fire which may be but is not at least is not so discernable so demonstrable as the rest And therefore as men argue of the Element of fire that whereas the other elements produce creatures in such abundance The Earth such heards of Cattell the Waters such shoales of Fish the Aire such flocks of Birds it is no unreasonable thing to stop upon this consideration whether there should be an element of fire more spacious and comprehensive then all the rest and yet produce no Creatures so if thy pretended Element of Infallibility produce no creatures no good works no holy actions thou maist justly doubt there is no such element in thee In all doubts that arise in thee still it will be a good rule to choose that now which thou wouldst choose upon thy death-bed If a tentation to Beauty to Riches to Honour be proposed to thee upon such and such conditions consider whether thou wouldst accept that upon those conditions upon thy death-bed when thou must part with them in a few minutes So when thou doubtest in what thou shouldst place thy assurance in God thinke seriously whether thou shalt not have more comfort then upon thy death-bed in being able to say I have finished my course I have fought a good fight I have fulfilled the sufferings of Christ in my flesh I have cloathed him when he was naked and fed him when he was poore then in any other thing that thou maiest conceive God to have done for thee And doe all the way as thou wouldst do then prove thy element of fire by the creatures it produces prove thine election by thy sanctification for that is the right method and shall deliver thee over infallibly to everlasting glory at last Amen SERMON XIV Preached at VVhite-hall March 3. 1619. AMOS 5.18 Woe unto you that desire the day of the Lord what have yee to doe with it the day of the Lord is darknesse and not light FOr the presenting of the woes and judgements of God denounced by the Prophets against Judah and Israel and the extending and applying them to others involved in the same sins as Judah and Israel were Solomon seemes to have given us somewhat a cleare direction Prov. 9.8 Reprove not a scorner lest he hate thee Rebuke a wise man and he will love thee But how if the wiseman and this scorner bee all in one man all one person If the wiseman of this world bee come to take S. Paul so literally at his word as to thinke scornefully that preaching is indeed but the foolishnesse of preaching and that as the Church is within the State so preaching is a part of State government flexible to the present occasions of time appliable to the present dispositions of men This fell upon this Prophet in this prophecie Amos 7.10 Amasias the Priest of Bethel informed the King that Amos medled with matters of State and that the Land was not able to beare his words and to Amos himselfe he saies Eate thy bread in someother place but prophecy here no more for this is the Kings Chappell Amos 23. and the Kings Court Amos replies I was no Prophet nor the son of a Prophet but in an other course and the Lord tooke me and said unto me Goe and Prophecie to my People Though we finde no Amasiah no mis-interpreting Priest here wee are farre from that because we are far from having a Ieroboam to our King as he had easie to give eare easie to give credit to false informations yet every man that comes with Gods Message hither brings a little Amasiah of his owne in his owne bosome a little wisperer in his owne heart that tels him This is the Kings Chappell and it is the Kings Court and these woes and judgements and the denouncers and proclaimers of them are not so acceptable here But we must have our owne Amos aswell as our Amasias this answer to this suggestion I was no Prophet and the Lord tooke me and bad me prophecy What shall I doe And besides since the woe in this Text is not S. Iohns wo his iterated his multiplied wo Vae vae
Terafim Desideramus We would fain see such a time we would fain see such a God as were so much too hard for us They had seen such a God before they had known that that God had formerly brought all the people upon the face of the earth so neare to an annihilation so neare to a new creation as to be but eight persons in the generall flood they had seen that God to have brought their own numerous and multitudinous Nation their 600000. men that came out of Aegypt to that paucity as that but two of them are recorded to enter into the land of promise And could they doubt what that God could do or would do upon them Or as Ieremy saith Jer. 12. Could they belie the Lord and say it is not he neither shall evill come upon us or shall we see sword and famine God expressed his anger thrice upon this people in their State in their form of government First he exprest it in giving them a King for though that be the best form of government in it self yet for that people at that time God saw it not to be the fittest and so it was extorted from him and he gave them their King in anger Secondly he expressed his anger in giving them two Kings in the desection of the ten Tribes and division of the two Kingdomes Thirdly he exprest his anger in leaving them without any King after this Captivity which was prophesied here Now of those 6000. yeares which are vulgarly esteemed to be the age and terme of this world 3000. were past before the division of the Kingdome and presently upon the division they argued à divisibili ad corruptibile whatsoever may be broken and divided may come to nothing It is the devils way to come to destruction by breaking of unions There was a contract between God and Iob because Iob loved and feared him and there the devill attempts to draw away the head from the union God from Iob with that suggestion Doth Iob serve thee for nothing Doest thou get any thing by this union or doth not Iob serve himself upon thee There was a naturall an essentiall an eternall union between the Father and the Son in the Trinity and the devill sought to break that If he could break the union in the Godhead he saw not why he might not destroy the Godhead The devill was Logician good enough Omne divisibile corruptibile whatsoever may be broken may be annihilated And the devill was Papist good enough Schisma aequipollet haeresi Whosoever is a Schismatick departed from the obedience of the Romane Church is easily brought within compasse of heresie too because it is a matter of faith to affirm a necessity of such an obedience And therefore the devil attempts to make that Schisme in the Trinity with that Si filius Deies Make these stones bread If thou beest the Son of God cast thy self down from this Pinnacle that is do something of thy self exceed thy commission and never attend so punctually all thy directions from thy Father In Iobs case he would draw the head from the union In Christs case he would alienate the Son from the Father because division is the fore runner and alas but a little way the fore-runner of destruction And therefore assoon as that Kingdome was come to a division between ten and two Tribes between a King of Judah and a King of Israel presently upon it and in the compasse of a very short time arose all those Prophets that prophesied of a destruction assoon as they saw a division they foresaw a destruction And therefore when God had shewed before what he could doe and declared by his Prophets then what he would doe Vae desiderantibus Woe unto them that say Esay 5.18 Let him make speed and hasten his work that we may see it That is that are yet confident that no such thing shall fall upon us and confident with a scorn 2 Pet. 3.4 and fulfill that which the Apostle saith There shall come in the latter daies scoffers saying Where is the promise of his comming for since the fathers fell asleep all things continue as they were from the beginning at the Creation But God shall answer their scorn with scorn as in Ezekiel Son of man Ezek. 12.22 What is that Proverb which you have in the Land of Israel saying The dayes are prolonged and every vision failes That is the Prophets talk of great calamities but we are safe enough Tell them sayes the Lord I will make their proverb to cease I will speak and it shall come to passe in your dayes O rebellious house will I say the word and per-form it And therefore ut quid vobis what should you pretend to desire that day what can ye get by that day Because you have made a covenant with death and are at an agreement with hell when that Invadens flagellum as the Prophet with an elegant horror if they can consist expresses it when that over-flowing scourge shall passe through shall it not come to you Why Esay 20.15 who are you have you thought of it before hand considered it digested it and resolved that in the worst that can fall your vocall constancy and your humane valour shall sustaine you from all dejection of spirit what judgement of God soever shall fall upon you whensoever this dies Domini shall break out upon you you have light in your selves and by that light you shall see light and passe through all incommodities Be not deceived this day of the Lord is darknesse and not light the first blast the first breath of his indignation blowes out thy candle extinguishes all thy Wisedome all thy Counsells all thy Philosophicall sentences disorders thy Seneca thy Plutarch thy Tacitus and all thy premeditations for the sword of the Lord is a two-edged sword it cuts bodily and it cuts ghostly it cuts temporally and it cuts spiritually it cuts off all worldly reliefe from others and it cuts off all Christian patience and good interpretation of Gods correction in thine owne heart Vt quid vobis what can you get by that day can you imagine that though you have beene benighted under your owne obduration and security before yet when this day of the Lord the day of affliction shall come afflictio dabit intellectum the day will bring light of it selfe the affliction will give understanding and it will be time enough to see the danger and the remedy both at once and to turne to God by that light which that affliction shall give Be not deceived dies Domini tenebrae this day of the Lord will be darknesse and not light God hath made two great lights for man the Sun and the Moone God doth manifest himselfe two waies to man by prosperity and adversity but if there were no Sun there would be no light in the Moone neither If there be no sense of God in thy greatnesse in thy abundance it is a dark
the consideration of that place where our soules should be for ever and we could consider God then but then wee could not see God in his Essence As it may be fairely argued that Christ suffered not the very torments of very hell because it is essentiall to the torments of hell to be eternall They were not torments of hell if they received an end So is it fairely argued too That neither Adam in his extasie in Paradise nor Moses in his conversation in the Mount nor the other Apostles in the Transfiguration of Christ nor S. Paul in his rapture to the third heavens saw the Essence of God because he that is admitted to that sight of God can never look off nor lose that sight againe Only in heaven shall God proceed to this patefaction this manifestation this revelation of himself And that by the light of glory The light of glory is such a light as that our School-men dare not say confidently Lux Cloris That every beam of it is not all of it When some of them say That some soules see some things in God and others others because all have not the same measure of the light of glory the rest cry down that opinion and say that as the Essence of God is indivisible and he that sees any of it sees all of it so is the light of glory communicated intirely to every blessed soul God made light first and three dayes after that light became a Sun a more glorious Light God gave me the light of Nature when I quickned in my mothers wombe by receiving a reasonable soule and God gave me the light of faith when I quickned in my second mothers womb the Church by receiving my baptisme but in my third day when my mortality shall put on immortality he shall give me the light of glory by which I shall see himself To this light of glory the light of honour is but a glow-worm and majesty it self but a twilight The Cherubims and Seraphims are but Candles and that Gospel it self which the Apostle calls the glorious Gospel but a Star of the least magnitude And if I cannot tell what to call this light by which I shall see it what shall I call that which I shall see by it The Essence of God himself and yet there is something else then this sight of God intended in that which remaines I shall not only see God face to face but I shall know him which as you have seen all the way is above sight and know him even as also I am knowne In this Consideration God alone is all in all the former there was a place Deus omnia solus and a meanes and a light here for this perfect knowledge of God God is all those Then sales the Apostle God shall be all in all Hic agit omnia in omnibus sayes S. Hierome 1 Cor. 15.28 Here God does all in all but here he does all by Instruments even in the infusing of faith he works by the Ministery of the Gospel But there he shall be all in all doe all in all immediately by himself for Christ shall deliver up the Kingdome to God even the Father Ver. 24. His Kingdome is the administration of his Church by his Ordinances in the Church At the resurrection there shall be an end of that Kingdome no more Church no more working upon men by preaching but God himself shall be all in all Ministri quasi larvae Dei saies Luther It may be somewhat too familiarly too vulgarly said but usefully The ministery of the Gospell is but as Gods Vizar for by such a liberty the Apostle here calls it aenigma a riddle or as Luther sayes too Gods picture but in the Resurrection God shall put of that Vizar and turne away that picture and shew his own face Therefore is it said That in heaven there is no Temple but God himselfe is the Temple God is Service Apoc. 21.22 August and Musique and Psalme and Sermon and Sacrament and all Erit vita de verbo sine verbo We shall live upon the word and heare never a word live upon him who being the word was made flesh the eternall Son of God Hîc nonest omnia in omnibus Hieron sed pars in singulis Here God is not all in all where he is at all in any man that man is well In Solomone sapientia saies that Father It was well with Solomon because God was wisdome with him and patience in Iob and faith in Peter and zeale in Paul but there was something in all these which God was not But in heaven he shall be so all in all Idem Vt singuli sanctorum omnes virtutes habeant that every soule shall have every perfection in it self and the perfection of these perfections shall be that their sight shall be face to face and their knowledge as they are known Since S. Augustine calls it a debt a double debt a debt because she asked it Facie ad faciem a debt because he promised it to give even a woman Paulina satisfaction in that high point and mystery how we should see God face to face in heaven it cannot be unfit in this congregation to aske and answer some short questions concerning that Is it alwaies a declaration of favour when God shewes his face No. I will set my face against that soule Levit. 17.10 that eateth blood and cut him off But when there is light joyned with it it is a declaration of favour This was the blessing that God taught Moses for Aaron to blesse the people with The Lord make his face to shine upon thee and be gracious to thee Numb 6.25 And there we shall see him face to face by the light of his countenance which is the light of glory What shall we see by seeing him so face to face not to inlarge our selves into Gregories wild speculation Qui videt videntem omnia oninia videt because we shall see him that sees all things we shall see all things in him for then we should see the thoughts of men rest we in the testimony of a safer witnesse a Councell Senon In speculo Divinit at is quicquid eorum intersit illucescet In that glasse we shall see whatsoever we can be the better for seeing First all things that they beleeved here they shall see there and therefore Discamus in terris Hicron quorum scicntia nobiscum perseveret in Caelis let us meditate upon no other things on earth then we would be glad to think on in heaven and this consideration would put many frivolous and many fond thoughts out of our minde if men and women would love another but so as that love might last in heaven This then we shall get concerning our selves by seeing God face to face but what concerning God nothing but the sight of the humanity of Christ which only is visible to the eye So Theodoret so some
Congregation will I blesse the Lord But yet I finde the highest exaltations and the noblest elevations of my devotion Psal 35.18 when I give thanks in the great Congregation and praise him among much people for so me thinks I come nearer and nearer to the Communion of Saints in Heaven Apoc. 21.22 Where it is therefore said that there is no Temple I saw no Temple in Heaven because all Heaven is a Temple And because the Lord God Almighty and the Lambe who fill all Heaven are Obviam Domino as S. Iohn sayes there the Temple thereof So far towards that as into the Ayre this text carries us Obviam Domino To meet the Lord. The Lord requires no more not so much at our hands as he does for us When he is come from the right hand of his Father in heaven into the ayre to meet us he is come farther then we are to go from the grave to meet him But we have met the Lord in many a lower place in many unclean actions have we met the Lord in our owne hearts and said to our selves Surely the Lord is here and sees us Gen. â—9 9 and with Ioseph How then can I doe this great wickednesse and sin against my God and yet have proceeded gone forward in the accomplishment of that sin But there it was Obviam Iesu Obviam Christo We met a Iesus We met a Christ a God of mercy who forgave us those sins Here in our text it is Obviam Domino We must meet the Lord He invests here no other name but that He hath laid aside his Christ and his Iesus names of Mercy and Redemption and Salvation and comes only in the name of power The Lord The Judge of quick and dead In which Judgement he shews no mercy All his mercy is exercised in this life and he that hath not received his portion of that mercy before his death shall never receive any There he judges only by our workes Whom hast thou fed whom hast thou clothed Then in judgement we meet the Lord the Lord of power and the last time that ever we shall meet a Iesus a Christ a God of mercy is upon our death-bed but there we shall meet him so as that when we meet him in another name The Lord in the ayre yet by the benefit of the former mercy received from Iesus We shall be with the Lord for ever First Erimus We shall Bee we shall have a Beeing Erimus There is nothing more contrary to God and his proceedings then annihilation to Bee nothing Do nothing Think nothing It is not so high a step to raise the poore out of the dust Psal 113.7 and to lift the needy from the dunghill and set him with Princes To make a King of a Beggar is not so much as to make a Worm of nothing Whatsoever God hath made thee since yet his greatest work upon thee was that he made thee and howsoever he extend his bounty in preferring thee yet his greatest largenesse is in preserving thee in thy Beeing And therefore his own name of Majesty is Jehovah which denotes his Essence his Beeing And it is usefully moved and safely resolved in the School that the devill himself cannot deliberately wish himselfe nothing Suddenly a man may wish himself nothing because that seemes to deliver him from the sense of his present misery but deliberately he cannot because whatsoever a man wishes must be something better then he hath yet and whatsoever is better is not nothing Nihil contrarium Deo August There is nothing truly contrary to God To do nothing is contrary to his working but contrary to his nature contrary to his Essence there is nothing For whatsoever is any thing even in that Beeing and therefore because it is hath a conformity to God and an affinity with God who is Beeing Essence it self In him we have our Beeing sayes the Apostle Act. 17.28 But here it is more then so not only In illo but Cum illo not only In him but With him not only in his Providence but in his Presence The Hypocrite hath a Beeing and in God but it is not with God Cum illc Esay 29.13 Qua cor longe With his lips he honours God but removes his heart far from him And God sends him after his heart that he may keep him at that distance as S. Gregory reads and interprets that place of Esay Redite praevaricatores ad cor Return O sinners follow your own heart Esay 46.8 and then I am sure you and I shall never meet Our Saviour Christ delivers this distance plainly Discedite à me Depart from me ye cursed into everlasting fire Mat. 25.42 Where the first part of the sentence is incomparably the heaviest the departing worse then the fire the intensnesse of that fire the ayre of that brimstone the anguish of that worm the discord of that howling and gnashing of teeth is no comparable no considerable part of the torment in respect of the privation of the sight of God the banishment from the presence of God an absolute hopelesnesse an utter impossibility of ever comming to that which sustaines the miserable in this world that though I see no Sun here I shall see the Son of God there The Hypocrite shall not do so we shall Bee and Bee with him and Bee with him for ever which is the last thing that doth fall under ours or can fall under any consideration Of S. Hierome S. Augustine sayes Quae Hicronymus neseivit Semper nullus hominum unquam seivit That that S. Hierome knew not no man ever knew And S. Cyril to whom S. Augustine said that said also to S. Augustine in magnifying of S. Hierome That when a Catholique Priest disputed with an Heretique and cited a passage of S. Hierome and the Heretique said Hierome lyed instantly he was struck dumb yet of this last and everlasting joy and glory of heaven in the fruition of God S. Hierome would adventure to say nothing no not then when he was devested of his mortall body dead for as soon as he dyed at Bethlem he came instantly to Hippo S. Augustines Bishoprick and though he told him Hieronymi anima sum I am the soule of that Hierome to whom thou art now writing about the joyes and glory of heaven yet he said no more of that but this Quid quaeris brevi immittere vasculo totum mare Canst thou hope to poure the whole Sea into a thimble or to take the whole world into thy hand And yet that is easier then to comprehend the joy and the glory of heaven in this life Nor is there any thing that makes this more incomprehensible then this Semper in our text the Eternity thereof That we shall be with him for ever For this Eternity this Everlastingnesse is not only incomprehensible to us in this life but even in heaven we can never know it experimentally and
dignity First The Father shall send you another Comforter Another then my selfe For Ver. 16. howsoever Christ were the Fountain of comfort yet there were many drammes many ounces many talents of discomfort mingled in that their Comforter was first to depart from them by death and being restored to them again by a Resurrection was to depart againe by another Transmigration by an Ascension And therefore the second mark by which Christ dignifies this Comforter is That he shall abide with us for ever And in the performance of that promise he is here with you now And therefore as we begun with those words of Esay which our Saviour applyed to himselfe The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he hath anointed me Esay 61.1 to binde up the broken hearted and to comfort all them that mourne So the Spirit of the Lord is upon all us of his Ministery in that Commandement of his in the same Prophet Consolamini Esay 40.1 consolamini Comfort ye comfort yee my people and speak comfortably unto Ierusalem Receive the Holy Ghost all ye that are the Israel of the Lord in that Doctrine of comfort that God is so farre from having hated any of you before he made you as that he hates none of you now not for the sins of your Parents not for the sins of your persons not for the sins of your youth not for your yester-dayes not for your yester-nights sins not for that highest provocation of all your unworthy receiving his Son this day Onely consider that Comfort presumes Sadnesse Sin does not make you incapable of comfort but insensiblenesse of sin does In great buildings the Turrets are high in the Aire but the Foundations are deep in the Earth The Comforts of the Holy Ghost work so as that only that soule is exalted which was dejected As in this place where you stand there bodies lie in the earth whose soules are in heaven so from this place you carry away so much of the true comfort of the Holy Ghost as you have true sorrow and sadnesse for your sins here Almighty God erect this building upon this Foundation Such a Comfort as may not be Presumption upon such a Sorrow as may not be Diffidence in him And to him alone but in three Persons Father Son and Holy Ghost be ascribed all Honour c. SERMON XXIX Preached at S. Pauls upon Whitsunday 1628. JOHN 14.26 But the Comforter which is the Holy Ghost whom the Father will send in my Name Hee shall teach you all things and bring all things to your remembrance whatsoever I have said unto you WE Eipasse from the Person to his working we come from his comming to his operation from his Mission and Commission to his Executing thereof from the Consideration who he is to what he does His Specification his Character his Title Paracletus The Comforter passes through all Therefore our first comfort is Docebimur we shall be Taught He shall teach you As we consider our selves The Disciples of the Holy Ghost so it is a meere teaching for we in our selves are meerly ignorant But wen we consider the things we are to bee taught so it is but a remembring a refreshing of those things which Christ in the time of his conversation in this world had taught before He shall bring all things to your remembrance whatsoever I have said unto you These two then The comfort in the Action we shall be Taught and the comfort in the Way and Manner we shall not be subject to new Doctrines but taught by remembring by establishing us in things formerly Fundamentally laid will be our two parts at this time And in each of these these our steps First in the first we shall consider the persons that is the Disciples who were to learne not onely they who were so when Christ spoke the words but we All who to the end of the world shall seek and receive knowledge from him Vos ye first Vos ignorantes you who are naturally ignorant and know nothing so as you should know it of your selves which is one Discomfort And yet Vos ye Vos appetentes you that by nature have a desire to know which is another Discomfort To have a desire and no meanes to performe it Vos docebimini ye ye that are ignorant and know nothing ye ye that are hungry of knowledge and have nothing to satisfie that hunger ye shall be fed ye shall be taught which is one comfort And then Ille docebit He shall teach you He who cannot onely infuse true and full knowledge in every capacity that he findes but dilate that capacity where he findes it yea create it where he findes none The Holy Ghost who is not onely A Comforter but The Comforter and not onely so but Comfort it selfe He shall teach you And in these we shall determine our first Part. In our second Part The Way and Manner of this Teaching By bringing to our remembrance all things whatsoever Christ had said unto us there is a great largenesse but yet there is a limitation of those things which we are to learne of the Holy Ghost for they are Omnia All things whatsoever Christ hath taught before But then Sola ea Only those things which Christ had taught before and not new Additaments in the name of the Holy Ghost Now this largenesse extending it self to the whole body of the Christian Religion for Christ taught all that all that being not reducible to that part of an houre which will be left for this exercise as fittest for the celebration of the day in which we arenow we shall binde our selves to that particular consideration what the Holy Ghost being come from the Father in Christs Name that is Pursuing Christs Doctrine hath taught us of Himselfe concerning Himselfe That so ye may first see some insolencies and injuries offered to the Holy Ghost by some ancient Heretiques and some of later times by the Church of Rome For truly it is hard to name or to imagine any one sin nearer to that emphaticall sin that superlative sin The sin against the Holy Ghost then some offers of Doctrines concerning the Holy Ghost that have been obtruded though not established and some that have beene absolutely established in that Church And when we shall have delivered the Holy Ghost out of their hands we shall also deliver him into yours so as that you may feele him to shed himselfe upon you all here and to accompany you all home with a holy peace and in a blessed calme in testifying to your soules that He that Comforter who is the holy Ghost whom the Father hath sent in his Sons name hath taught you all things that is awakened your memories to the consideration of all that is necessary to your present establishment And to these divers particulars which thus constitute our two generall parts in their order thus proposed we shall now proceed As when our Saviour Christ received that confession of
Father in the Son by the Holy Ghost The verdict is That we are the children of God The Spirit beareth c. First then 1 Part. a slacknesse a supinenesse in consideration of the divers significations of this word Spirit hath occasioned divers errours when the word hath been intended in one sense and taken in another All the significations will fall into these foure for these foure are very large It is spoken of God or of Angels or of men or of inferiour creatures And first of God it is spoken sometimes Essentially sometimes Personally God is a Spirit Iohn 4.24 Esay 31.3 and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and truth So also The Aegyptians are men and not God and their horses flesh and not spirit For if they were God they were Spirit So God altogether and considered in his Essence is a Spirit but when the word Spir it is spoken not essentially of all but personally of one then that word designeth Spiritum sonctum The holy Ghost Goe and baptize Mar. 28.19 In the name of the Father and Sonne Spiritus sancti and the holy Ghost And as of God so of Angels also it is spoken in two respects of good Angels Sent farth to minister for them Heb. 1.14 1 King 22.22 Hosea 4.12 Esay 19.3 that shall be heires of salvation And evill Angels The lying Spirit that would deceive the King by the Prophet The Spirit of Whoredome spirituall whoredome when the people ask counsell of their stocks And Spiritus vertiginis The spirit of giddinesse of perversities as we translate it which the Lord doth mingle amongst the people in his judgement Of man also is this word Spirit spoken two wayes The Spirit is sometimes the soule Psal 31.5 Into thy hands I commend my Spirit sometimes it signifies those animall spirits which conserve us in strength and vigour The poyson of Gods arrowes drinketh up my spirit And also Job 6.4 Luke 1.47 the superiour faculties of the soule in a regenerate man as there My soule doth magnifie the Lord and my spirit rejoyceth in God my Saviour And then lastly of inferiour creatures it is taken two wayes too of living creatures The God of the spirits of all flesh Numb 16.22 Ezek. 1.21 and of creatures without life other then a metaphoricall life as of the winde often and of Ezckiels wheeles The Spirit of life was in the wheeles Now in this first Branch of this first Part of our Text it is not of Angels nor of men nor of other creatures but of God and not of God Essentially but Personally that is of the Holy Ghost Origen sayes Antecessores nostri The Ancients before him had made this note That where we finde the word Spirit without any addition it is alwayes intended of the Holy Ghost Before him and after him they stuck much to that note for S. Hierome makes it too and produces many examples thereof but yet it will not hold in all Didymus of Alexandria though borne blinde in this light saw light and writ so of the Holy Ghost as S. Hierome thought that work worthy of his Translation And hee gives this note That wheresoever the Apostles intend the Holy Ghost they adde to the word Spirit Sanctus Holy Spirit or at least the Article The The Spirit And this note hath good use too but yet it is not universally true If we supply these notes with this That whensoever any such thing is said of the Spirit as cannot consist with the Divine nature there it is not meant of the Holy Ghost but of his gifts or of his working as when it is said The Holy Ghost was not yet for his person was alwayes And where it is said Iohn 7.39 1 The fl 5.19 Quench not the Holy Ghost for the Holy Ghost himselfe cannot be quenched we have enough for our present purpose Here it is Spirit without any addition and therefore fittest to bee taken for the Holy Ghost And it is Spirit with that emphaticall article The The Spirit and in that respect also fittest to be so taken And though it be fittest to understand the Holy Ghost here not of his person but his operation yet it gives just occasion to looke piously and to consider modestly who and what this person is that doth thus worke upon us And to that purpose we shall touch upon foure things First His Universality He is All He is God Secondly His Singularity He is One One Person Thirdly His roote from whence he proceeded Father and Son And fourthly His growth his emanation his manner of proceeding for our order proposed at first leading us now to speak of this third person of the Trinity it will be almost necessary to stop a little upon each of these First then the Spirit mentioned here the Holy Ghost is God and if so Deus equall to Father and Son and all that is God He is God because the Essentiall name of God is attributed to him He is called Jehovah Iebovah sayes to Esay Goe and tell this people Esay 6.9 Acts 28.29 c. And S. Paul making use of these words in the Acts he sayes Well spake the Holy Ghost by the Prophet Esay The Essentiall name of God is attributed to him and the Essentiall Attributes of God He is Eternall so is none but God where we heare of the making of every thing else in the generall Creation we heare that the Spirit of God moved Gen. 1.2 but never that the Spirit was made He is every where so is none but God Psal 139.7 1 Cor. 2.10 whither shall Igoe from thy Spirit He knowes all things so doth none but God The Spirit searcheth all things yca the deep things of God He hath the name of God the Attributes of God and he does the works of God Is our Creator our Maker God Iob 33.4 The Spirit of God hath mademe Is he that can change the whole Creation and frame of nature in doing miracles God The Spirit lead the Israelites miraculously through the wildernesse Esay 63.14 Esay 48.16 Will the calling and the sending of the Prophets shew him to be God The Lord God and his Spirit hath sent me Is it argument enough for his God-head Esay 61.1 Luke 4.18 that he sent Christ himselfe Christ himselfe applies to himselfe that The Spirit of the Lord is upon me and hath anointed me to preach Acts 1.16 Iohn 16.13 He foretold future things The Holy Ghost by the mouth of David spoke before sayes S. Peter He establishes present things The Spirit of truth guides into all truth And he does this by wayes proper onely to God for our illumination is his He shall receive of me Ver. 14. 1 Cor. 6.11 Iohn 3.5 Iohn 16.8 sayes Christ and shew it you Our Justification is his Ye are justified in the name of the Lord Iesus by the Spirit of God Our regeneration is his There is a
is that he hath infused and imprinted in all their hearts whom hee hath called effectually to the participation of the meanes of salvation in the true Church a constant and infallible assurance that all the world that is all the rest of the world which hath not imbraced those helps lies unrecoverably by any other meanes then these which we have imbraced under sin under the waight the condemnation of sin So that the comfort of this reproofe as all the reproofes of the holy Ghost in this Text are given by him in that quality as he is The Comforter is not directly and simply and presently upon all the world indeed but upon those whom the holy Ghost hath taken out of this world to his world in this world that is to the Christian Church them he Reproves that is Convinces them establishes delivers them from all scruples that they have taken the right way that they and onely they are delivered and all the world beside are still under sin When the Holy Ghost hath brought us into the Ark from whence we may see all the world without sprawling and gasping in the flood the flood of sinfull courses in the world and of the anger of God when we can see this violent flood the anger of God break in at windowes and there devoure the licentious man in his sinfull embracements and make his bed of wantonnesse his death-bed when we can see this flood the anger of God swell as fast as the ambitious man swels and pursue him through all his titles and and at last suddenly and violently wash him away in his owne blood not alwayes in a vulgar but sometimes in an ignominious death when we shall see this flood the flood of the anger of God over-flow the valley of the voluptuous mans gardens and orchards and follow him into his Arbours and Mounts and Terasses and carry him from thence into a bottomlesse Sea which no Plummet can sound no heavy sadnesse relieve him no anchor take hold of no repentance stay his tempested and weather-beaten conscience when wee finde our selves in this Ark where we have first taken in the fresh water of Baptisme and then the Bread and Wine and Flesh of the Body and Blood of Christ Jesus Then are we reproved forbidden all scruple then are we convinced That as the twelve Apostles shall sit upon twelve seats and judge the twelve Tribes at the last day So doth the Holy Ghost make us Judges of all the world now and inables us to pronounce that sentence That all but they who have sincerely accepted the Christian Religion are still sub peccato under sin and without remedy For we must not waigh God with leaden or iron or stone waights how much land or metall or riches he gives one man more then another but how much grace in the use of these or how much patience in the want or in the losse of these we have above others When we come to say Hi in curribus Hi in equis Psal 20.7 nos autem in nomine Domini Dei nostri invocabimus Some trust in chariots and some in horses Ver. 8. but we will remember the name of the Lord our God Ipsi obligati sunt ceciderunt nos autem surreximus erecti sumus They are brought downe and fallen but we are risen and stand upright Obligati sunt ceciderunt They are pinion'd and falleâ— fettered and manacled and so fallen fallen and there must lie Nos autem erecti Wee are risen and enabled to stand now we are up When we need not feare the mighty nor envy the rich Quia signatum super nos lumen vultus tui Domine Because the light of thy countenance O Lord Ver. 7. is not onely shed but lifted up upon us Quia dedisti laetitiam in corde nostro Because thou hast put gladnesse in our heart more then in the time that their corne and their wine increased when we can thus compare the Christian Church with other States and spirituall blessings with temporall then hath the Holy Ghost throughly reproved us that is absolutely convinced us that there is no other foundation but Christ no other name for salvation but Jesus and that all the world but the true professors of that name are still under sin under the guiltinesse of sin And these be the three acceptations of this word Arguet He shall carry the Gospel to all before the end Arguit Hee does worke upon the faculties of the naturall man every minute and Arguit againe Hee hath manifested to us that that they who goe not the same way perish And so wee passe to the second Reproofe and Conviction He shall reprove the world De Iustitia Of Rightcousnesse This word 2 Part. Dejustitia Iustificare To justifie may be well considered three wayes First as it is verbum vulgare as it hath an ordinary and common use And then as it is verbum forense as it hath a civill and a legall use And lastly as it is verbum Ecclesiasticum as it hath a Church use as it hath been used amongst Divines The first way To justifie is to averre and maintaine any thing to be true as wee ordinarily say to that purpose I will justifie it Psal 19.9 and in that sense the Psalmist sayes Iustificata judicia Domini in semetipso The judgements of the Lord justifie themselves prove themselves to be just And in this sense men are said to justifie God Luke 7.29 The Pharisees and Lawyers rejected the counsell of God but all the people and the Publicans justified God that is testified for him In the second way as it is a judiciall word To justifie is only a verdict of Not guilty and a Judgement entred upon that That there is not evidence enough against him and therefore he is justified that is Prov. 17.14 acquited In this sense is the word in the Proverbs He that justifieth the wicked and he that condemneth the just even they both are an abomination to the Lord. Now neither of these two wayes are we justified we cannot be averred to be just God himselfe cannot say so of us Exod. 23.7 of us as we are we Non justificabo impium I will not justifie the wicked God will not say it God cannot doe it A wicked man cannot be he cannot by God be said to be just they are incompatible contradictory things Nor the second way neither consider us standing in judgement before God no man can be acquited for want of evidence Psal 143.2 Enter not into Iudgement with thy servant for in thy sight shall none that liveth be justified For if we had another soule to give the Devill to bribe him to give no evidence against this if we had another iron to seare up our consciences against giving of evidence against our selves then yet who can take out of Gods hands those examinations and those evidences which he hath registred exactly as often as we have
conclude this part O holy blessed and glorious Trinity three Persons and one God have mercy upon us miserable sinners We are descended now to our second part 2 Part. Expostulatio Iob 31.13 what past between God and Abraham after he had thus manifested himselfe unto him Where we noted first That God admits even expostulation from his servants almost rebukes and chidings from his servants We need not wonder at Iobs humility that he did not despise his man nor his mayd when they contended with him for God does not despise that in us God would have gone from Iacob when he wrestled Gen. 32.26 and Iacob would not let him go and that prevailed with God If we have an apprehension when we beginne to pray that God doth not heare us not regard us God is content that in the fervor of that prayer we say with David Evigila Domine and Surge Domine Awake O Lord and Arise O Lord God is content to be told that he was in bed and asleepe when he should heare us If we have not a present deliverance from our enemies God is content that we proceed with David Eripe manum de sinu Pluck out thy hand out of thy bosome God is content to be told that he is slack and dilatory when he should deliver us If we have not the same estimation in the world that the children of this world have God is content that we say with Amos Pauperem pro calceamentis Amos 2.6 that we are sold for a paire of shooes And with S. Paul that we are the off-scouring of the world God is content to be told that he is unthrifty and prodigall of his servants lives and honours and fortunes Now Offer this to one of your Princes says the Prophet and see whether he will take it Bring a petition to any earthly Prince and say to him Evigila and Surge would your Majesty would awake and reade this petition and so insimulate him of a former drowsinesse in his government say unto him Eripe manum pull thy hand out of thy bosome and execute Justice and so insimulate him of a former manacling and slumbring of the Lawes say unto him we are become as old shooes and as off-scourings and so insimulate him of a diminution and dis-estimation faln upon the Nation by him what Prince would not and justly conceive an indignation against such a petitioner which of us that heard him would not pronounce him to be mad to ease him of a heavier imputation And yet our long-suffering and our patient God must we say our humble and obedient God endures all this He endures more for when Abraham came to this expostulation Shall not the Iudge of all the earth do right God had said never a word of any purpose to destroy Sodom but he said only He would go see whether they had done altogether according to that cry which was come up against them and Abraham comes presently to this vehemency And might not the Supreme Ordinary God himselfe goe this visitation might not the supreme Judge God himselfe go this Circuit But as long as Abraham kept himselfe upon this foundation It is impossible that the Iudge of all the earth should not do right God mis-interpreted nothing at Abrahams hand but received even his Expostulations heard him out to the sixt petition Almost such an Expostulation as this Moses uses towards God He asks God a reason of his anger Iudex Exod. 32.11 Lord why doth thy wrath waxe hot against thy people He tels him a reason why he should not doe so For thou hast brought them forth with a great power and with a mighty hand And he tels him the inconveniences that might follow The Egyptians will say He brought them out for mischiefe to slay them in the mountaine He imputes even perjury to God himselfe and breach of Covenant to Abraham Isaac and Iacob which were Feffees in trust betweene God and his people and he sayes Thou sware'st to them by thine owne selfe that thou wouldst not deale thus with them And therefore he concludes all with that vehemence Turne from thy fierce wrath and repent this evill purpose against them But we finde a prayer or expostulation of much more exorbitant vehemence in the stories of the Roman Church towards the blessed Virgin towards whom they use to bee more mannerly and respective then towards her Son or his Father when at a siege of Constantinople they came to her statue with this protestation Looke you to the drowning of our Enemies ships or we will drowne you Si vis ut imaginem tuam non mergamus in mari merge illos The farthest that Abraham goes in this place is That God is a Iudge and therefore must doe right Iob 32.10 for Far be wickednesse from God and iniquity from the Almighty surely God will not do wickedly neither will the Almighty pervert judgement An Usurer an Extortioner an Oppressor a Libeller a Thiefe and Adulterer yea a Traytor makes shift to finde some excuse some flattery to his Conscience they say to themselves the Law is open and if any be grieved they may take their remedy and I must endure it and there is an end But since nothing holds of this oppressor and manifold malefactor but the sentence of the Judge shall not the Judge doe right how must this necessarily shake the frame of all An Arbitrator or a Chancellor that judges by submission of parties or according to the Dictates of his owne understanding may have some excuse He did as his Conscience led him But shall not a Iudge that hath a certaine Law to judge by do right Especially if he be such a Judge as is Iudge of the whole earth which is the next step in Abrahams expostulation Now as long as there lies a Certiorari from a higher Court Omnem terram or an Appeale to a higher Court the case is not so desperate if the Judge doe not right for there is a future remedy to be hoped If the whole State be incensed against me yet I can finde an escape to another Country If all the World persecute me yet if I be an honest man I have a supreame Court in my selfe and I am at peace in being acquitted in mine owne Conscience But God is the Judge of all the earth of this which I tread and this earth which I carry about me and when he judges me my Conscience turnes on his side and confesses his judgement to be right And therefore S. Pauls argument seconds and ratifies Abrahams expostulation Is God unrighteous God forbid for then sayes the Apostle Rom. 3.6 how shall God judge the World The Pope may erre but then a Councell may rectifie him The King may erre but then God in whose hands the Kings heart is can rectifie him But if God that judges all the earth judge thee there is no error to be assigned in his judgement no appeale from God not throughly
owne will thou hadst quenched hell If thou couldst be content willing to be in hell hell were not hell So if God save a man against his will heaven is not heaven If he be loath to come thither sorry that he shall be there he hath not the joy of heaven and then heaven is not heaven Put not God to save thee by miracle God can save an Image by miracle by miracle he can make an Image a man If man can make God of bread certainly God can make a man of an Image and so save him but God hath made thee his own Image and afforded thee meanes of salvation Use them God compels no man Luke 14.23 The Master of the feast invited many solemnly before hand they came not He sent his servants to call in the poore upon the sudden and they came so he receives late commers And there is a Compelle intrare He sends a servant to compell some to come in But that was but a servants work The Master onely invited he compelled none We the servants of God have certaine compulsories to bring men hither The denouncing of Gods Judgements the censures of the Church Excommunications and the rest are compulsories The State hath compulsories too in the penall Laws But all this is but to bring them into the house to Church Compelle intrare We can compell them to come to the first seale to Baptisme we can compell men to bring their children to that Sacrament But to salvation onely the Master brings and in that Parable the Master does onely invite he compells none Though his corrections may seeme to be compulsories yet even his corrections are sweet invitations His corrections are so farre from compelling men to come to heaven as that they put many men farther out of their way and worke an obduration rather then an obsequiousnesse With those therefore that neglect the meanes that he hath brought them to in sealing them in the fore-head this Angel hath no more to doe but gives them over to the power of the foure destroying Angels With those that attend those meanns he proceeds and in their behalfe his Donec Spare them till I have sealed them becomes the blessed Virgins Donec Mat. 1.25 Psal 110.1 she was a Virgin till she had her Child and a Virgin after too And it becomes our blessed Saviours Donec He sits at his Fathers right hand till his enemies bee made his foot-stoole and after too So these destroying Angels that had no power over them till they were sealed shall have no power over them after they are sealed but they shall passe from seale to seale after that seale on the fore-head Ne erubeseant Euangelium Rom. 1.16 We signe him with the signe of the Crosse in token that hereafter he shall not be ashamed to confesse the faith of Christ Crucified He shall come also to those seales which our Saviour recommends to his Spouse Cant. 8.6 Set me as a seale on thy heart and as a seale on thine arme S. Ambrose collects them and connects them together Signaculum Christi in corde ut diligamus in fronte ut confiteamur in brachio ut operemur God seales us in the heart that we might love him and in the fore-head that we might professe it and in the hand that we might declare and practise it and then the whole purpose of this blessed Angel in our Text is perfected in us and we our selves are made partakers of the solemnity of this day which we celebrate for we our selves enter in the Communion of Saints by these three seales Of Beliefe Of Profession Of Works and Practise SERMONS Preached upon THE CONVERSION OF S. PAVL SERM. XLVI Preached at S. Pauls The Sunday after the Conversion of S. PAUL 1624. ACTS 9.4 And he fell to the earth and heard a voyce saying Saul Saul why persecutest thou me LEt us now praise famous Men and our Fathers that begat us Ecclus. 44.1 saies the Wiseman that is that assisted our second generation our spirituall Regeneration Let us praise them commemorate them The Lord hath wrought great glory by them Ver. 2. through his power from the beginning saies he there that is It hath alwaies beene the Lords way to glorifie himselfe in the conversion of Men by the ministery of Men. For he adds Ver. 4. They were leaders of the people by their counsaile and by their knowledge and learning meet for the people wise and eloquent men in their instructions and that is That God who gives these gifts for this purpose looks for the employment of these gifts to the edification of others to his glory There be of them that have left a name behinde them Ver. 8. as it is also added in that place that is That though God can amply reward his servants in the next world yet he does it sometimes in this world and though not with temporall happinesses in their life yet with honor and commemorations and celebrations of them after they are gone out of this life they leave a name behind them And amongst them in a high place shines our blessed and glorious Apostle S. Paul whose Conversion the Church celebrates now and for the celebration thereof hath appointed this part of Scripture from whence this text arises to be the Epistle of the Day And he fell to the earth and heard a voyce saying Saul Saul why persccutest thou me There are words in the text that will reach to all the Story of S. Pauls Conversion Divisio embrace all involve and enwrap all we must contract them into lesse then three parts we cannot well those will be these first The Person Saul He He fell to the earth and then his humiliation his exinanition of himselfe his devesting putting off of himselfe He fell to the earth and lastly his investing of Christ his putting on of Christ his rising againe by the power of a new inanimation a new soule breathed into him from Christ He heard a voyce saying Saul Saul why persecutest thou me Now a re-distribution a sub-division of these parts into their branches we shall present to you anon more opportunely as we shall come in due order to the handling of the parts themselves In the first the branches will be but these Sauls indisposition when Christ tooke him in hand and Christs worke upon him what he found him what he left him will determine our first part The person First then what he was at that time 1. Part. Quid ante the Holy Ghost gives evidence enough against him and he gives enough against himselfe Of that which the Holy Ghost gives you may see a great many heavy pieces a great many appliable circumstances if at any time at home you do but paraphrase and spread to your selves the former part of this Chapter to this text Take a little preparation from me Adhuc spirans saies the first verse Saul yet breathing threatnings and slaughter Then when he was
fefellit All the world never joyned to deceive one man nor was ever any one man able to deceive all the world Contemptu famae contemnuntur virtutes was so well said by Tacitus as it is pity S. Augustine said it not They that neglect the good opinion of others neglect those vertues that should produce that good opinion Therefore S. Hierom protests to abhor that Paratum de trivio as he cals it that vulgar that street that dunghill language Satis mihi as long as mine owne conscience reproaches me of nothing I care not what all the world sayes We must care what the world sayes and study that they may say well of us But when they doe though this be a faire stone in the wall it is no foundation to build upon for They change their minds Who do Populus our text does not tell us who The story does not tell us of what quality and condition these men of Malta were who are here said to have changed their minds Likeliest they are to have beene of the vulgar the ordinary the inferiour sort of people because they are likeliest to have flocked and gathered together upon this occasion of Pauls shipwrack upon that Iland And that kinde of people are alwaies justly thought to be most subject to this levity To change their minds The greatest Poet layes the greatest levity and change that can be laid to this kinde of people that is In contraria That they change even from one extreame to another Scinditur incertum studia in contraria vulgus Where that Poet does not onely meane that the people will be of divers opinions from one another for for the most part they are not so for the most part they think and wish and love and hate together and they doe all by example as others doe and upon no other reason but therefore because others doe Neither was that Poet ever bound up by his words that hee should say In contraria because a milder or more modified word would not stand in his verse but hee said it because it is really true The people will change into contrary opinions And whereas an Angel it selfe cannot passe from East to West from extreame to extreame without touching upon the way betweene the people will passe from extreame to extreame without any middle opinion last minutes murderer is this minutes God and in an instant Paul whom they sent to be judged in hell Prov. 14.28 is made a judge in heaven The people will change In the multitude of people is the Kings honour 2 Sam. 24.3 And therefore Ioab made that prayer in the behalfe of David The Lord thy God adde unto thy people how many soever they be a hundred fold But when David came to number his people with a confidence in their number God tooke away the ground of that confidence and lessened their number seventy thousand in three dayes Therefore as David could say Psal 3.6 I will not be afraid of ten thousand men so he should say I will not confide in ten thousand men though multiplied by millions for they will change and at such an ebbe the popular man will lye as a Whale upon the sands deserted by the tide We finde in the Roman story many examples particularly in Commodus his time upon Cleander principall Gentleman of his Chamber of severe executions upon men that have courted the people though in a way of charity and giving them corne in a time of dearth or upon like occasions There is danger in getting them occasioned by jealousie of others there is difficulty in holding them by occasion of levity in themselves Therefore we must say with the Prophet Ier. 17.5 Cursed be the man that trusteth in man and maketh flesh his arme and whose heart departeth from the Lord. For They the people will change their minds But yet there is nothing in our text Principes that binds us to fixe this levity upon the people onely The text does not say That there was none of the Princes of the People no Commanders no Magistrates present at this accident and partners in this levity Neither is it likely but that in such a place as Malta an Iland some persons of quality and command resided about the coast to receive and to give intelligence and directions upon all emergent occasions of danger and that some such were present at this accident and gave their voyce both wayes in the exclamation and in the acclamation That hee was a murderer and that he was a God For They will change their minds All High as well as low will change A good Statesman Polybius sayes That the people are naturally as the Sea naturally smooth and calme and still and even but then naturally apt to be moved by influences of Superiour bodies and so the people apt to change by them who have a power over their affections or a power over their wils So sayes he the Sea is apt to be moved by stormes and tempests and so the people apt to change with rumors and windy reports So the Sea is moved So the people are changed sayes Polybius But Polybius might have carried his politique consideration higher then the Sea to the Aire too and applied it higher then to the people to greater persons for the Aire is shaked and transported with vapours and exhalations as much as the sea with winds and stormes and great men as much changed with ambitions in themselves and flatteries from others as inferiour people with influences and impressions from them All change their minds Mal. 3.6 High as well as low will change But I am the Lord I change not I and onely I have that immunity Immutability And therefore sayes God there ye sons of Iacob are not consumed Therefore because I I who cannot change have loved you for they who depend upon their love who can change are in a wofull condition And that involves all all can all will all do change high and low Therefore It is better to trust in the Lord then to put confidence in man What man Psal 118.8 Ver. 9. Psal 146.3 Any man It is better to trust in the Lord then to put confidence in Princes Which David thought worth the repeating for he sayes it againe Put not your trust in Princes Not that you may not trust their royall words and gracious promises to you not that you may not trust their Counsailes and executions of those Counsailes and the distribution of your contributions for those executions not that you may not trust the managing of affaires of State in their hands without jealous inquifitions or suspitious mis-interpretations of their actions In these you must trust Princes and those great persons whom Princes trust But when these great persons are in the balance with God there they weigh as little as lesse men Nay as David hath ranked and disposed them lesse for thus he conveyes that consideration Surely men of low degree
and is all the first part of Davids prayer and all his prayer which falls into our Text is but Deprecatory he does but pray that God would forbeare him He pretends no error he enterprises no Reversing of Judgement no at first he dares not sue for pardon he onely desires a Reprieve a respit of execution and that not absolutely neither but he would not be executed in hot blood Ne in ira ne in furore not in Gods anger not in his hot displeasure First then Deprecation Deprecari is not Refragari to Deprecate is not to Contend against a Judge nor to defend ones selfe against an Officer but it is onely in the quality and in the humility of a Petitioner and Suppliant to begge a forbearance The Martyrs in the Primitive Church would not doe that Nihil de causa sua deprecatur qui nihil de conditione sua miratur sayes Tertullian and in that he describes a patience of Steele and an invincible temper He meanes that the Christians in those times of Persecution did never intreat the Judge for favour because it was not strange to them to see themselves whose conversation was in heaven despised and contemned and condemned upon earth Nihil mirantur de conditione They wondred not at their misery they thought it a part of their Profession a part of the Christian Religion to suffer and therefore Nihil deprecati de causa They never solicited the Judge for favour They had learnt by experience of daily tribulation the Apostles Lesson Think it not strange when tentations and tribulations fall That is make that your daily bread and you shall never sterve use your selves to suffering at least to the expectation the contemplation of suffering acquaint your selves with that accustome your selves to that before it come and it will not be a stranger to you when it comes Tertullians Method may be right and it may work that effect in very great afflictions a man may be so used to them as that he will not descend to any low deprecation or sute to be delivered of them But Davids affliction was spirituall and howsoever as a naturall man nay as a devout and religious man for even in rectified men there are affections of a middle nature that participate of nature and of grace too and in which the Spirit of God moves and naturall affections move too for nature and grace doe not so destroy one another as that we should conclude Hee hath strong naturall affections therefore he hath no grace David I say that might justly wonder at his own condition and think it strange that he that put his trust so intirely in God should so intirely be delivered over to such afflictions might also justly deprecate and boldly say Ne facias O Lord deale not thus with thy servant Our Saviour Christs Transeat calix Let this cup passe from me was a deprecation in his owne behalfe And his Pater dimitte illis Father forgivethem they know not what they doe was a deprecation in the behalfe of his enemies And so was Stephens Ne statuas illis O Lord lay not this sin to their charge A deprecation in the behalfe of his Executioners And these Deprecations for others for our selves are proposed for our imitation But for Moses his Dele me Pardon this people or blot my name out of thy Booke and for S. Pauls Anathema rather then his brethren should not be saved let himselfe be condemned for such Deprecations for others as were upon the matter Imprecations upon themselves those may not well be drawne into consequence or practise for in Moses and S. Paul themselves there was if not an irregularity and an inordinatenesse at least an inconsideration not to be imitated by us now not to be excused in them then but for the Prayer that is meerly deprecatory though some have thought it lesse lawfull then the postulatory prayer because when God is come to the act of afflicting us he hath then revealed and declared and manifested his will to be such and against the revealed and manifested will of God we may not pray yet because his afflictions are not peremptory but we have ever day to shew cause why that affliction should be taken off and because all his judgements are conditionall and the condition of every particular judgement is not alwaies revealed to us and this is alwaies revealed to us Miserationes ejus super omnia opera ejus That his mercy is above all his judgements therefore we may come to that Deprecation that God will make his hand lighter upon us and his corrections easier unto us As the Saints in heaven have their Vsqucquo How long Lord holy and true before thou begin to execute judgement So the Saints on earth have their Vsquequo How long Lord before thou take off the execution of this judgement upon us For our Deprecatory prayers are not Mandatory they are not Directory they appoint not God his waies nor his times but as our Postulatory prayers are they also are submitted to the will of God and have all in them that ingredient that herb of grace which Christ put into his owne prayer that Veruntamen Yet not my will but thy will be fulfilled And they have that ingredient which Christ put into our prayer Fiat volunt as Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven In heaven there is no resisting of his will yet in heaven there is asoliciting a hastning an accelerating of the judgement and the glory of the Resurrection So though we resist not his corrections here upon earth we may humbly present to God the sense which we have of his displeasure for this sense and apprehension of his corrections is one of the principall reasons why he sends them he corrects us therefore that we might be sensible of his corrections that when we being humbled under his hand have said with his Prophet I will beare the wrath of the Lord Micah 7.9 because I have sinned against him He may be pleased to say to his Correcting Angell as he did to his Destroying Angell This is enough and so burne his rod now as he put up his sword then For though David doe well for himselfe and well for our example deprecate the anger of God exprest in those Judgements yet we see he spends but one verse of the Psalme in that Deprecation In all the rest he leaves God wholly to his pleasure how farre he will extend or aggravate that Judgement and he turns wholly upon the Postulatory part That God would have mercy upon him and save him and deliver his soule And in that one verse hee does not deprecate all afflictions all corrections David knowes what moves God to correct us It is not onely our ilnesse that moves him for he corrects us when we are not ill in his sight but made good by his pardon But his goodnesse as well as our ilnesse moves him to correct us If he were not good not only good
in himselfe but good to us he would let us alone and never correct us But Wisd 12.1 Ideo cos qui errant corripis quia bonus suavis es Domine as the Vulgate reades that place The Lord corrects us not onely as he is good but as he is gentle he were more cruell more unmercifull if he did alwayes shew mercy That David intends when he sayes Propitius fuisti Thou wast a Mercifull God because thou didst punish all their inventions So then our first worke is to consider that that in the Prophet is a promise Ier. 30.11 and hath the nature of a mercy I will correct thee in measure where the promise does not fall only upon the measure but upon the correction it selfe and then since this is a promise a mercy a part of our daily bread we may pray as the same Prophet directs us Psal 10.24 O Lord correct me but with judgement not in thine anger Where also the petition seems to fall not onely upon the measure but upon the correction it selfe and then when I have found some correction fit to be prayed for and afforded me by God upon my praier if that correction at any time grow heavy or wearisome unto me I must relieve my self upon that consideration Whether God have smitten me as he smote them that smote me Esay 27.7 Whether it be not another manner of execution which God hath laid upon mine enemies then that which he hath laid upon me in having suffered them to be smitten with the spirit of sinfull glory and triumph in their sin and my misery and with excecation and obduratenesse with impenitence and insensiblenesse of their owne case Or at least let me consider as it is in the same place Whether I be slain according to the slaughter of them that were slaine by me That is whether my oppression my extortion my prevarication have not brought other men to more misery then God hath yet brought me unto And if we consider this as no doubt David did and finde that correction is one loafe of our daily bread and finde in our heaviest corrections that God hath been heavier upon our enemies then upon us and we heavier upon others then God upon us too we shall be content with any Rebuke and any Chastisement so it be not in anger and in hot displeasure which are the words that remaine to be considered Now these two phrases Argui in furore and Corripi in ira which we translate To rebuke inanger and to chasten in hot displeasure are by some thought to signifie one and the same thing that David intends the same thing and though in divers words yet words of one and the same signification But with reverence to those men for some of them are men to whom much reverence is due they doe not well agree with one another nor very constantly with themselves S. Ierome sayes Furor ira maxime unum sunt That this anger and hot displeasure are meerly absolutely intirely one and the same thing and yet he sayes that this Anger is executed in this world and this hot Displeasure reserved for the world to come And this makes a great difference no waight of Gods whole hand here can be so heavy as any finger of his in hell the highest exaltation of Gods anger in this world can have no proportion to the least spark of that in hell nor a furnace seaven times heat here to the embers there So also S. Augustine thinks that these two words to Rebuke and to Chasten doe not differ at all or if they doe that the latter is the lesser But this is not likely to be Davids method first to make a praier for the greater and that being granted to make a second praier for the lesser included in that which was askt Ayguanus and granted before A later man in the Roman Church allowes the words to differ and the later to be the heavier but then he refers both to the next life that to Rebuke in anger should be intended of Purgatorie and of a short continuance there and to be Chastened in hot displeasure should be intended of hell and of everlasting condemnation there And so David must make his first petition Rebuke me not in thine anger to this purpose Let me passe at my death immediately to Heaven without touching at any fire and his second petition Chasten me not in thy hot displeasure to this purpose If I must touch at any fire let it be but Purgatory and not Hell But by the nature and propriety and the use of all these words in the Scriptures it appeares that the words are of a different signification which S. Ierome it seemes did not thinke and that the last is the heaviest which S. Augustine it seemes did not thinke and then that they are to be referred to this life which Ayguanus did not think For the words themselves all our three Translations retaine the two first words to Rebuke and to Chasten neither that which we call the Bishops Bible nor that which we call the Geneva Bible and that which wee may call the Kings depart from those two first words But then for the other two Anger and Hot displeasure in them all three Translations differ The first cals them Indignation and Displeasure the second Anger and Wrath and the last Anger and Hot displeasure To begin with the first Rebuke to be Rebuked was but to be chidden but to be Chastened was to be beaten and yet David was heartily afraid of the first of the least of them when it was to be done in anger This word that is here to Rebuke Iacach is for the most part to Reprove Esay 1.18 to Convince by way of argument and disputation So it is in Esay Come now and let us reason together saies God The naturall man is confident in his Reason in his Philosophy and yet God is content to joyne in that issue If he doe not make it appeare even to your reason that he is God Chuse whom ye will serve as Ioshuah speakes If he doe not make it appeare that he is a good God change him for any other God that your reason can present to be better Micah 6.2 In Micah the word hath somewhat more vehemence The Lord hath a quarrell against his people and he will plead with Israel This is more then a Disputation it is a Suite God can maintaine his possession other waies without Suite but he will recover us by matter of Record openly and in the face of the County he will put us to a shame and to an acknowledgement of having disloially devested our Allegeance Yea the word hath sometimes somewhat more sharpnesse then this for in the book of Proverbs it comes to Correction The Lord correcteth him whom he loveth even as the father doth the child in whom he delighteth Though it be a fatherly correction yet it is a correction and that is more then
to stand in these tentations and tribulations Deliver thou my soule Lord thou hast delivered me againe and againe and againe and againe I fall back to my former danger and therefore O Lord save me place me where I may be safe safe in a constant hope that the Saviour of the World intended that salvation to me And these three Petitions constitute our first part in Davids postulatory Prayer And then the second part which is also within the words of this text and consists of those reasons by which David inclines God to grant his three Petitions which are two first Propter misericordiam tuam Do this O Lord for thine own mercy sake And then Quia non in morte Doe it O Lord for thine owne honours sake Because in death there is no remembrance of thee that second part will be the subject of another exercise for that which belongs to the three Petitions will imploy the time allowed for this First then the first step in this Prayer Revertere O Lord return implies first a former presence Revertere and then a present absence and also a confidence for the future Whosoever saies O Lord returne sayes all this Lord thou wast here Lord thou art departed hence but yet Lord thou maiest returne hither againe God was with us all before we were any thing at all And ever since our making hath beene with us in his generall providence And so we cannot say O Lord Returne because so he was never gone from us But as God made the earth and the fruits thereof before he made the Sun whose force was to work upon that earth and upon the naturall fruits of that earth but before he made Paradise which was to have the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge he made the Sun to doe those offices of shining upon it and returning daily to it So God makes this earth of ours that is our selves by naturall wayes and sustaines us by generall providence before any Son of particular grace be seene to shine upon us But before man can be a Paradise possest of the Tree of life and of Knowledge this Sun is made and produced the particular graces of God rise to him and worke upon him and awaken and solicite and exalt those naturall faculties which were in him This Son fils him and fits him compasses him and disposes him and does all the offices of the Sun seasonably opportunely maturely for the nourishing of his soule according to the severall necessities thereof And this is Gods returning to us in a generall apprehension After he hath made us and blest us in our nature and by his naturall meanes he returnes to make us againe to make us better first by his first preventing grace and then by a succession of his particular graces And therefore we must returne to this Returning in some more particular considerations There are beside others three significations in the Scripture of this word Shubah which is here translated to Returne appliable to our present purpose The first is the naturall and native the primary and radicall signification of the word And so Shubah To Returne is Redire ad locum suum To returne to that place to which a thing is naturally affected So heavy things returne to the Center and light things returne to the Expansion So Mans breath departeth Psal 146.4 sayes David Et redit in terr am suam He returnes into his Earth That earth which is so much his as that it is he himselfe Of earth he was and therefore to earth he returnes But can God returne in such a sense as this Can we finde an Vbi for God A place that is his place Yes And an Earth which is his earth Surely the vineyard of the Lord of Hosts Esay 5. is the house of Israel and the men of Iudah are his pleasant plant So the Church which is his Vineyard is his Vbi his place his Center to which he is naturally affected And when he calls us hither and meets us here upon his Sabbaths and sheds the promises of his Gospel upon the Congregation in his Ordinance he returnes to us here as in his Vbi as in his own place And as he hath a place of his owne here so he hath an Earth of his owne in this place Our flesh is Earth and God hath invested our flesh and in that flesh of ours which suffered death for us he returnes to us in this place as often as he maketh us partakers of his flesh and his bloud in the blessed Sacrament So then though in my dayes of sinne God have absented himselfe from me for God is absent when I doe not discerne his presence yet if to day I can heare his voyce as God is returned to day to this place as to his Vbi as to his own place so in his entring into me in his flesh and bloud he returnes to me as to his Earth that Earth which he hath made his by assuming my nature I am become his Vbi his place Delitiae ejus His delight is to be with the sonnes of men and so with me and so in the Church in the Sermon in the Sacrament he returnes to us in the first signification of this word Shubah as to that place to which he is naturally affected and disposed In a second signification this word is referred not to the place of God not to the person of God but if we may so speake to the Passion of God to the Anger of God And so the Returning of God that is of Gods Anger is the allaying the becalming the departing of his Anger and so when God returnes God stayes his Anger is returned from us Esay 5.25 but God is still with us The wrath of the Lord was kindled sayes the Prophet Esay and He smote his people so that the mountaines trembled and their carkasses were torne in the midst of the streets Here is the tempest here is the visitation here is Gods comming to them He comes but in anger and we heare of no returne nay we heare the contrary Et non redibat furor For all this his wrath his fury did not returne that is did not depart from them for as God never comes in this manner till our multiplied sinnes call him and importune him so God never returnes in this sense in withdrawing his anger and judgements from us till both our words and our works our prayers and our amendment of life joyne in a Revertere Domine O Lord Returne withdraw this judgement from us for it hath effected thy purpose upon us And so the Originall which expresses neither signification of the word for it is neither Returne to me nor Returne from me but plainely and onely Returne leaves the sense indifferent Lord thou hast withdrawne thy selfe from me therefore in mercy returne to me or else Lord thy Judgements are heavy upon me and therefore returne withdraw these Judgements from me which shewes the ductilenesse the
appliablenesse of Gods mercy that yeelds almost to any forme of words any words seeme to fit it But then the comfort of Gods returning to us comes nearest us in the third signification of this word Shubah not so much in Gods returning to us nor in his anger returning from us Psal 80.3 as in our returning to him Turne us againe O Lord sayes David Et salvi erimus and we shall be saved There goes no more to salvation but such a Turning So that this Returning of the Lord is an Operative an Effectuall returning that turnes our hearts and eyes and hands and feet to the wayes of God and produces in us Repentance and Obedience For these be the two legges which our conversion to God stands upon Deut. 32.2 For so Moses uses this very word Returne unto the Lord and heare his voyce There is no returning without hearing nor hearing without beleeving nor beleeving to be beleeved Mat. 11.21 without doing Returning is all these Therefore where Christ saies That if those works had been done in Tyre and Sidon Tyre and Sidon would have repented in sackcloth and ashes In the Syriack Translation of S. Matthew we have this very word Shubah They would have Returned in sack-cloth and ashes So that the word which David receives from the Holy Ghost in this Text being onely Returned and no more applies it selfe to all three senses Returne thy selfe that is Bring backe thy Mercy Returne thy Wrath that is Call backe thy Judgements or Returne us to thee that is make thy meanes and offers of grace in thine Ordinance powerfull and effectuall upon us Now when the Lord comes to us by any way though he come in corrections in chastisements not to turne to him is an irreverent and unrespective negligence If a Pursevant if a Serjeant come to thee from the King in any Court of Justice though hee come to put thee in trouble to call thee to an account yet thou receivest him thou entertainest him thou paiest him fees If any Messenger of the Lord come to attach thee whether sicknesse in thy body by thine own disorder decay in thy estate by the oppression of others or terrour in thy Conscience by the preaching of his Ministers turne thou to the Lord in the last sense of the word and his mercy shall returne to thee and his anger shall returne from thee and thou shalt have fulnesse of Consolation in all the three significations of the word If a Worme be trodden upon it turnes againe We may thinke that is done in anger and to revenge But we know not The Worme hath no sting and it may seeme as well to embrace and licke his foote that treads upon him When God treads upon thee in any calamity spirituall or temporall if thou turne with murmuring this is the turning of a Serpent to sting God to blaspheme him This is a turning upon him not a turning to him But if thou turne like a Worme then thou turnest humbly to kisse the rod to licke and embrace his foot that treads upon thee that is to love his Ministers which denounce his judgements upon thy sinnes yea to love them from whom thou receivest defamation in thy credit or detriment in thy state We see how it was imputed to Asa when God trod upon him that is 2 Chro. 16.12 diseased him in his feete and exalted his disease into extremity Yet in his disease he sought not to the Lord but to the Physitians He turned a by-way at least though a right way too soone to the Physitian before the Lord. This is that that exasperated God so vehemently Esay 9.13 Because the people turneth not to him that smiteth them neither do they seeke the Lord of Hosts when the Lord of Hosts lies with a heavy Army upon them Therefore sayes the Prophet there The Lord will cut off from Israel head and tayle branch and rush in one day God is not so vehement when they neglected him in their prosperity as when though he afflicted them yet they turned not to him Measure God by earthly Princes for we may measure the world by a Barly corne If the King come to thy house thou wilt professe to take it for an honour and thou wilt entertaine him and yet his comming cannot be without removes and troubles and charges to thee So when God comes to thee in his word or in his actions in a Sermon or in a sicknesse though his comming dislodge thee remove thee put thee to some inconvenience in leaving thy bed of sinne where thou didst sleepe securely before yet here is the progresse of the Holy Ghost intended to thy soule that first he comes thus to thee and then if thou turne to him he returnes to thee and settles himselfe and dwels in thee This is too lovely a Prospect to depart so soone from therefore looke we by S. Augustines glasse upon Gods comming and returning to man God hath imprinted his Image in our soules and God comes sayes that Father Vt videat imaginem Where I have given my Picture I would see how it is respected God comes to see in what case his Image is in us If we shut doores if we draw Curtaines between him and his Image that is cover our soules and disguise and palliate our sinnes he goes away and returnes in none of those former senses But if we lay them open by our free confessions he returnes againe that so in how ill case soever he finde his Image he may wash it over with our teares and renew it with his own bloud and Vt resculpat imaginem that he may refresh and re-engrave his Image in us againe and put it in a richer and safer Tablet And as the Angel which came to Abraham at the promise and conception of Isaac Gen. 18.10 gave Abraham a farther assurance of his Returne at Isaaes birth I will certainly returne unto thee and thy wife shall have a Sonne So the Lord which was with thee in the first conception of any good purpose Returnes to thee againe to give thee a quickning of that blessed childe of his and againe and againe to bring it forth and to bring it up to accomplish and perfect those good intentions which his Spirit by over-shadowing thy soule hath formerly begotten in it So then he comes in Nature and he returnes in Grace He comes in preventing and returnes in subsequent graces He comes in thine understanding and returnes in thy will He comes in rectifying thine actions and returns in establishing habits He comes to thee in zeale and returnes in discretion He comes to thee in fervour and returnes in perseverance He comes to thee in thy peregrination all the way and he returns in thy transmigration at thy last gaspe So God comes and so God returnes Yet I am loath to depart my selfe loath to dismisse you from this ayre of Paradise of Gods comming and returning to us Therefore we consider againe that as God
of presumptuous sins and a Saviour in the vallies in the dejection of inordinate melancholy too A Saviour of the East of rising and growing men and a Saviour of the West of withering declining languishing fortunes too A Saviour in the state of nature by having infused the knowledge of himselfe into some men then before the light and help of the Law was afforded to the world A Saviour in the state of the Law by having made to some men then even Types Accomplishments and Prophesies Histories And as himself Cals things that are not as though they were So he made those men see things that were not as though they were for so Abraham saw his day and rejoyced A Saviour in the state of the Gospel and so as that he saves some there for the fundamentall Gospels sake that is for standing fast in the fundamentall Articles thereof though they may have been darkned with some ignorances or may have strayed into some errors in some Circumstantiall points A Saviour of all the world of all the conditions in the world of all times through the world of all places of the world such a Saviour is no man called but Christ Jesus only For when it is said that Pharaoh called Ioseph Salvatorem mundi A Saviour of the world besides Gen. 41.45 that if it were so that which is called all the world can be referred but to that part of the world which was then under Pharaoh as when it is said that Augustus taxed the world that is intended De orbe Romano so much of the world as was under the Romanes there is a manifest error in that Translation which cals Ioseph so for that name which was given to Ioseph there in that language in which it was given doth truly signifie Revelatorem Secretorum and no more a Revealer a Discoverer a Decypherer of secret and mysterious things according to the occasion upon which that name was then given which was the Decyphering the Interpreting of Pharaohs Dreame Be this then thus establisht that David for our example considers and referres all salvation Psal 98.2 to salvation in Christ As he does also where he sayes after Notum fecit salutare tuum The Lord hath made known his salvation Quid est salutare tuum saies S. Basil Luke 2. What is the Lords salvation And he makes a safe answer out Simeons mouth Mine eyes have seene thy salvation when he had seen Christ Iesus This then is he which is not only Satvator populi sui The Saviour of his people the Jews to whom he hath betrothed himselfe In Pacto salis A Covenant of salt an everlasting Covenant Nor onely Salvator corporis sui The Saviour of his own body as the Apostle calls him of that body which he hath gathered from the Gentiles in the Christian Church Nor only Salvator mundi A Saviour of the world so as that which he did and suffered was sufficient in it selfe and was accepted by the Father for the salvation of the world but as Tertullian for the most part reads the word he was Salutificator not only a Saviour because God made him an instrument of salvation as though he had no interest in our salvation till in his flesh he died for us but he is Salutificator so the Author of this salvation as that from all eternity he was at the making of the Decree as well as in the fulnesse of time he was at the executing thereof In the work of our salvation if we consider the merit Christ was sole and alone no Father no Holy Ghost trod the Wine-presse with him And if in the work of our salvation we consider the mercy there though Christ were not sole and alone for that mercy in the Decree was the joynt-act of the whole Trinity yet even in that Christ was equall to the Father and the Holy Ghost So he is Salutificator the very Author of this salvation as that when it came to the act he and not they died for us and when it was in Councell he as well as they and as soone as they decreed it for us As therefore the Church of God scarce presents any petition any prayer to God but it is subscribed by Christ the Name of Christ is for the most part the end and the seale of all our Collects all our prayers in the Liturgy though they be but for temporall things for Plenty or Peace or Faire-weather are shut up so Grant this O Lord for our Lord and Saviour Christ Iesus sake So David for our example drives all his petitions in this Text to this Conclusion Salvum me fac O Lord save me that is apply that salvation Christ Jesus to me Now beloved you may know that your selves have a part in those means which God uses to that purpose your selves are instruments though not causes of your own salvation Salvus factus es pro nihilo non de nihilo tamen Bernard Thou bringest nothing for thy salvation yet something to thy salvation nothing worth it but yet somthing with it Thy new Creation by which thou art a new creature that is thy Regeneration is wrought as the first Creation was wrought God made heaven and earth of nothing but hee produced the other creatures out of that matter which he had made Thou hadst nothing to doe in the first work of thy Regeneration Thou couldst not so much as wish it But in all the rest thou art a fellow-worker with God because before that there are seeds of former grace shed in thee And therefore when thou commest to this last Petition Salvum me fac O Lord save me remember still that thou hast something to doe as well as to say that so thou maist have a comfortable answer in thy soule to the whole prayer Returne O Lord Deliver my soule and Save me And so we have done with our first Part which was the Prayer it selfe and the second which is the Reasons of the Prayer we must reserve for a second exercise SERM. LIII Preached upon the Penitentiall Psalmes PSAL. 6.4 5. Returne O Lord Deliver my soule O Lord save me for thy mercie sake For in Death there is no Remembrance of thee and in the Grave who shall give thee thanks WEE come now to the Reasons of these Petitions in Davids Prayer For as every Prayer must bee made with faith I must beleeve that God will grant my Prayer if it conduce to his glory and my good to doe so that is the limit of my faith so I must have reason to ground a likelyhood and a faire probability that that particular which I pray for doth conduce to his glory and my good and that therefore God is likely to grant it Davids first Reason here is grounded on God himselfe Propter misericordiam Doe it for thy mercy sake and in his second Reason though David himselfe and all men with him seeme to have a part yet at last we shall see the Reason it selfe to
fainting with that After his weeping and dissolving with that After his consuming and withering with that foresees no rescue no escape Inveteravit he waxes old amongst his enemies Who were his enemies and what was this age that he speaks of It is of best use to pursue the spirituall sense of this Psalme and so his enemies were his sins And David found that he had not got the victory over any one enemy any one sin Anothers bloud did not extinguish the lustfull heat of his owne nor the murther of the husband the adultery with the wife Change of sin is not an overcomming of sin He that passes from sin to sin without repentance which was Davids case for a time still leaves an enemy behind him and though he have no present assault from his former enemie no tentation to any act of his former sin yet he is still in the midst of his enemies under condemnation of his past as well as of his present sins as unworthy a receiver of the Sacrament for the sins of his youth done forty yeares agoe if those sins were never repented though so long discontinued as for his ambition or covetousnesse or indevotion of this present day These are his enemies and then this is the age that growes upon him the age that David complaines of I am waxenold that is growne into habits of these sins There is an old age of our naturall condition We shall waxe old as doth a garment Psal 102.26 David would not complaine of that which all men desire To wish to be old and then grudge to be old when we are come to it cannot consist with morall constancy There is an old age expressed in that phrase The old man which the Apostle speaks of which is that naturall corruption and disposition to sin cast upon us by Adam Rom. 6.6 But that old man was crucified in Christ sayes the Apostle and was not so onely from that time when Christ was actually crucified one thousand six hundred yeares agoe but from that time that a second Adam was promised to the first in Paradise And so that Lambe slaine from the beginning of the world from the beginning delivered all them to whom the means ordained by God as Circumcision to them Baptisme to us were afforded and in that respect David was not under that old age but was become a new creature Nor as the Law was called the old Law which is another age also for to them who understood that Law aright the New Law the Gospel was enwrapped in the Old And so David as well as we might be said to serve God in the newnesse of spirit and not in the oldnesse of the Letter Rom. 7.6 so that this was not the age that opprest him The Age that oppresses the sinner is that when he is growne old in sin he is growne weak in strength and become lesse able to overcome that sin then then he was at beginning Blindnesse contracted by Age doth not deliver him from objects of tentations He sees them though he be blind Deafnesse doth not deliver him from discourses of tentation he heares them though he be deafe Nor lamenesse doth not deliver him from pursuit of tentation for in his owne memory he sees and heares and pursues all his former sinfull pleasures and every night every houre sins over all the sins of many yeares that are passed That which waxeth old is ready to vanish sayes the Apostle Heb. 8.13 If we would let them goe they would goe and whether we will or no they leave us for the ability of practise But Thesaurizamus we treasure them up in our memories Rom. 2.5 and we treasure up the wrath of God with them against the day of wrath And whereas one calling of our sins to our memories by way of confession would doe us good and serve our turnes this often calling them in a sinfull delight in the memory of them exceeds the sin it selfe when it was committed because it is more unnaturall now Ezek. 23.19 then it was then and frustrates the pardon of that sin when it was repented To end this branch and this part So humble was this holy Prophet and so apprehensive of his own debility and so far from an imaginary infallibility of falling no more as that after all his agonies and exercises and mortifications and prayer and sighs and weeping still he finds himselfe in the midst of enemies and of his old enemies for not onely tentations to new sins but even the memory of old though formerly repented arise against us arise in us and ruine us And so we passe from these pieces which constitute our first Part Quid factum what David upon the sense of his case did to the other Quid faciendum what by his example we are to doe and what is required of us after we have repented and God hath remitted the sin Out of this passage here in this Psalme and out of that history 2 Part. where Nathan sayes to David The Lord hath put away thy sin and yet sayes after 2. Sam. 12.13 The child that is borne to thee shall surely dye and out of that story where David repents earnestly his sin committed in the numbring of his people and sayes Now now that I have repented 2 Sam. 24.10 Now I beseech thee O Lord take away the iniquity of thy servant for I have done very foolishly yet David was to indure one of those three Calamities of Famine Warre or Pestilence And out of some other such places as these some men have imagined a Doctrine that after our repentance and after God hath thereupon pardoned our sin yet he leaves the punishment belonging to that sin unpardoned though not all the punishment not the eternall yet say they there belongs a temporary punishment too and that God does not pardon but exacts and exacts in the nature of a punishment and more by way of satisfaction to his Justice Now Stipendium peccati mors est There is the punishment for sin The reward of sin is death If there remaine no death there remaines no punishment For the reward of sin is death And death complicated in it selfe death wrapped in death and what is so intricate so intangling as death Who ever got out of a winding sheet It is death aggravated by it selfe death waighed downe by death And what is so heavy as death Who ever threw off his grave stone It is death multiplied by it selfe And what is so infinite as death Who ever told over the dayes of death It is Morte morieris A Double death Eternall and Temporary Temporall and Spirituall death Now the Temporary the Naturall death God never takes away from us he never pardons that punishment because he never takes away that sin that occasioned it which is Originall sin To what Sanctification soever a man comes Originall sin lives to his last breath And therefore Heb 9.27 Statutum est That Decree stands
the principall arguments against Confessions by Letter which some went about to set up in the Romane Church that that took away one of the greatest evidences and testimonies of their repentance which is this Erubescence this blushing this shame after sin if they should not be put to speak it face to face but to write it that would remove the shame which is a part of the repentance But that soule that goes not to confession to it selfe that hath not an internall blushing after a sin committed is a pale soule even in the palenesse of death and senslesnesse and a red soule red in the defiance of God And that whitenesse to avoid approaches to sin and that rednesse to blush upon a sin which does attempt us is the complexion of the soule which God loves and which the Holy Ghost testifies when he sayes Cant. 5.12 My Beloved is white and ruddy And when these men that David speaks of here had lost that whitenesse their innocency for David to wish that they might come to a rednesse a shame a blushing a remorse a sense of sin may have been no such great malediction or imprecation in the mouth of David but that a man may wish it to his best friend which should be his own soule and say Erubescam not let mine enemies but let me be ashamed with such a shame In the second word Conturbentur Let them be sore vexed he wishes his enemies no worse then himselfe had been For he had used the same word of himselfe before Ossa turbata My bones are vexed Ver. 2. 3. and Anima turbata My soule is vexed and considering that David had found this vexation to be his way to God it was no malicious imprecation to wish that enemy the same Physick that he had taken who was more sick of the same disease then he was For this is like a troubled Sea after a tempest the danger is past but yet the billow is great still The danger was in the calme in the security or in the tempest by mis-interpreting Gods corrections to our obduration and to a remorselesse stupefaction but when a man is come to this holy vexation to be troubled to be shaken with a sense of the indignation of God the storme is past and the indignation of God is blowne over That soule is in a faire and neare way of being restored to a calmnesse and to reposed security of conscience that is come to this holy vexation In a flat Map there goes no more to make West East though they be distant in an extremity but to paste that flat Map upon a round body and then West and East are all one In a flat soule in a dejected conscience in a troubled spirit there goes no more to the making of that trouble peace then to apply that trouble to the body of the Merits to the body of the Gospel of Christ Jesus and conforme thee to him and thy West is East Zoch 6.12 thy Trouble of spirit is Tranquillity of spirit The name of Christ is Oriens The East Esay 14.12 And yet Lucifer himselfe is called Filius Orientis The Son of the East If thou beest fallen by Lucifer fallen to Lucifer and not fallen as Lucifer to a senslesnesse of thy fall and an impenitiblenesse therein but to a troubled spirit still thy Prospect is the East still thy Climate is heaven still thy Haven is Jerusalem for in our lowest dejection of all even in the dust of the grave we are so composed so layed down as that we look to the East If I could beleeve that Trajan or Tecla could look East-ward that is towards Christ in hell I could beleeve with them of Rome that Trajan and Tecla were redeemed by prayer out of hell God had accepted sacrifices before but no sacrifice is call Odor quiet is Gen. 8.21 It is not said That God smelt a savor of rest in any sacrifice but that which Noah offered after hee had beene variously tossed and tumbled in the long hulling of the Arke upon the waters A troublesome spirit and a quiet spirit are farre asunder But a troubled spirit and a quiet spirit are neare neighbours And therefore David meanes them no great harme when hee sayes Let them be troubled For Let the winde be as high as it will so I sayle before the winde Let the trouble of my soule be as great as it will so it direct me upon God and I have calme enough And this peace Convertantur this calme is implyed in the next word Convertantur which is not Let them be overthrowne but Let them returne let them be forced to returne he prayes that God would do something to crosse their purposes because as they are against God so they are against their owne soules In that way where they are he sees there is no remedy and therefore he desires that they might be Turned into another way What is that way This. Turne us O Lord and we shall be turned That is turned the right way Towards God And as there was a promise from God to heare his people not onely when they came to him in the Temple but when they turned towards that Temple in what distance soever they were so it is alwaies accompanied with a blessing occasionally to turne towards God But this prayer Turne us that we may be turned is that we may be that is remaine turned that we may continue fixed in that posture Lots Wife turned her selfe and remained an everlasting monument of Gods anger God so turne us alwaies into right wayes as that we be not able to turne our selves out of them For God hath Viam rectam bonam as himselfe speakes in the Prophet A right way and then a good way which yet is not the right way that is not the way which God of himselfe would go For his right way is that we should still keepe in his way His good way is to beat us into his right way againe by his medicinall corrections when we put our selves out of his right way And that and that onely David wishes and we wish That you may Turne and Be turned stand in that holy posture all the yeare all the yeares of your lives That your Christmas may be as holy as your Easter even your Recreations as innocent as your Devotions and every roome in the house as free free from prophanenesse as the Sanctuary And this he ends as he begun with another Erubescant Let them be ashamed and that Valde volociter Suddenly for David saw that if a sinner came not to a shame of sin quickly he would quickly come to a shamelesnesse to an impudence to a searednesse to an obduration in it Now beloved this is the worst curse that comes out of a holy mans mouth even towards his enemie that God would correct him to his amendment And this is the worst harme that we meane to you when we denounce the judgements of
thereof A Psalme of David giving Instruction And having given his Instruction the first way by Rule in the two former verses That Blessednesse consisted in the Remission of sinnes but that this Remission of sinnes was imparted to none Cui dolus in spiritu In whose spirit there was any deceit he proceeds in this Text to the other fundamentall and constitutive element of Instruction Example And by Example he shews how far they are from that Blessednesse that consists in the Remission of sinnes that proceed with any deceit in their spirit And that way of Instruction by Example shall be our first Consideration And our second That he proposes himselfe for the Example I kept silence sayes he and so My Bones waxed old c. And then in a third part we shall see how far this holy Ingenuity goes what he confesses of himselfe And that third part will subdivide it selfe and flow out into many branches First That it was he himselfe that was In doloso spiritu In whose spirit there was deceit Quia tacuit because he held his tongue because he disguised his sinnes because he did not confesse them And yet in the midst of this silence of his God brought him Ad rugitum to voyces of Roaring of Exclamation to a sense of paine and a sense of shame so far he had a voyce but still he was in silence for any matter of repentance Secondly he confesses the effect of this his silence and this his Roaring Inveteraverunt Ossa My Bones waxed old and my moisture is turned into the drought of Summer And then thirdly he confesses the reason from whence this inveteration in his bones and this incineration in his body proceeded Quia aggravata manus because the hand of God lay heavy upon him heavy in the present waight and heavy in the long continuation thereof day and night And lastly all this he seals with that Selah which you finde at the end of the verse which is a kinde of Affidavit of earnest asseveration and re-affirming the same thing a kinde of Amen and ratification to that which was said Selah truly verily thus it was with me when I kept silence and deceitfully smothered my sinnes the hand of God lay heavy upon me and as truly as verily it will be no better with any man that suffers himselfe to continue in that case First then 1 Part. Exemplum for the assistance and the power that example hath in Instruction we see Christs Method Quid ab initio how was it from the beginning Doe as hath been done before We see Gods method to Moses for the Tabernacle Looke that thou make every thing Exod. 24.40 after thy patterne which was shewed thee in the Mount And for the Creation it selfe we know Gods method too for though there were no world that was elder brother to this world before yet God in his owne minde and purpose had produced and lodged certaine Idea's and formes and patterns of every piece of this world and made them according to those pre-conceived formes and Idea's When we consider the wayes of Instruction as they are best pursued in the Scriptures so are there no Books in the world that doe so abound with this comparative and exemplary way of teaching as the Scriptures doe No Books in which that word of Reference to other things that Sicut is so often repeated Doe this and doe that Sicut so as you see such and such things in Nature doe And Sicut so as you finde such and such men in story to have done So David deals with God himselfe he proposes him an Example I aske no more favour at thy hands for thy Church now then thou hast afforded them heretofore Doe but unto these men now Psal 83.3 Sicut Midianitis as unto the Midianites Sicut Siserae as unto Sisera as unto Iabin Make their Nobles Sicut Oreb like Oreb and like Zeb and all their Princes Sicut Zeba as Zeba and as Zalmana For these had been Examples of Gods justice And to be made Examples of Gods anger Num. 5.26 is the same thing as to be a Malediction a Curse For in that law of Jealousie that bitter potion which the suspected woman was to take was accompanied with this imprecation The Lord make thee a Curse among the people So we reade it But S. Hierome In Exemplum The Lord make thee an Example among the people that is deale with thee so as posterity may be afraid when it shall be said of any of them Lord deale with this woman so as thou didst with that Adulteresse And so the prayer of the people is upon Booz Ruth 4.11 Vt sit in Exemplum as S. Hierom also reads that place The Lord make thee an Example of vertue in Ephrata and in Bethlem that is that Gods people might propose him to themselves conforme themselves to him and walke as he did As on the other side the anger of God is threatned so Ezek. 5.15 Jer. 48.39 God shall make thee Exemplum stuporem An Example and a Consternation And Exemplum derisum An example and a scorne That posterity whensoever they should be threatned with Gods Judgements they might presently returne to such Examples and conclude if our sins be to their Example our Judgements will follow their Example too a judgement accompanied with a consternation a consternation aggravated with a scorne we shall be a prey to our enemies an astonishment to our selves a contempt to all the world We doe according to their Example and according to their Example we shall suffer is not a Conclusion of any Sorbon nor a decision of any Rota but the Logique of the universall Universitie Heaven it selfe Zech. 13.5 And so when the Prophet would be excused from undertaking the office of a Prophet he sayes Adam exemplum meum ab adolescentia Adam hath been the example that I have proposed to my selfe from my youth As Adam did so in the sweat of my browes I also have eat my bread I have kept Cattle I have followed a Country life and not made my selfe fit for the office and function of a Prophet Adam hath been my Example from my youth And when Solomon did not propose a Man he proposed something els for his Example an example he would have Pro. 24.32 He looked upon the ill husbands land and he saw it over-growne Et exemplo didici disciplinam By that example I learnt to be wiser Enter into the Armory search the body and bowells of Story for an answer to the question in Iob Quis periit Who ever perished being Innocent Job 4.7 or where were the righteous cut off There is not one example no where never Answer but that out of Records Quis restitit Job 9.4 Job 11.10 Who hath hardned himselfe against the Lord and prospered Or that Quis contradicet If he cut off who can hinder him There is no Example No man by no meanes So if
care is of the man and the soule is the man first a hedge about him and then about his house and about all that he had on every side Job 1.10 So day after day we shall finde arguments to establish our hearts in hope that the Lord hath compassed us and nothing shall breake in so as to take us from him but God shall say to us as to his former people Leva in circuitu oculos tuos Lift up thine eyes round about Esay 49.18 and behold which is one great comfort that he enables us to see and to know our enemies to discerne a tentation to be a tentation Omnes isti congregati sunt All these gather themselves together and come to thee which is another assistance that when we see our enemies multiply and that there is none that fighteth for us but onely thou O God we make a more present recourse to him But Vivo ego dicit Dominus As I live saith the Lord Velut ornamento vestieris thou shalt surely cloathe thee with them all as with an ornament and binde them on thee as a Bride doth which is the fulnesse of the mercy That as in another place he promises his children Panis vester sunt your enemies shall be your Bread Numb 14.9 you shall feed upon your enemies So here hee makes our enemies even our spirituall enemies our Cloathes and more then that our Jewels our Ornaments wee shall bee the stronger the warmer the richer by tribulations and tentations having overcome them as we shall if the Lord compasse us if he continue his watchfulnesse over us And that David sayes here first in the Churches behalfe God from the beginning carried a wall about his Church in that assurance Primitiva Mat. 16.18 Portae inferi The gates of hell shall not prevaile against it The Gentiles the Philosophers that were without the Church found a party Traitors Conspirators within The Heretiques and all these led and maintained by potent Princes that persecuted the Church The gates of hell were all opened and issued all her forces but Non praevaluerunt they never prevailed The Arians were sometimes more then the true Christians in all the world The Martyrians a sect that affected the name of Martyrdome could name more Martyrs then the true Church could but Evanuerunt yet they vanished The Emperours of Rome persecuted the Bishops of Rome to death yet when we looke upon the reckoning the Emperors died faster then Bishops Thou hast compassed me sayes the Primitive Church and so sayes the Reformed too Princes that hated one another have joyned in leagues against the Religion Reformata Princes that needed their Subjects have spent their Subjects by thousands in Massacres to extinguish the Religion Personall Assasinates Clandestine plots by poyson by fire by water have been multiplied against Princes that favour the Religion Inquisitions Confiscations Banishments Dishonours have overflowne them that professe the true Religion and yet the Lord compassing his Church she enjoyes a holy certainty arising out of these testimonies of his care that she shall never be forsaken And this may every good soule have too God comes to us without any purpose of departing from us againe Anima For the Spirit of life that God breated into man that departs from man in death but when God had assumed the nature of man the God-head never parted from that nature no not in death When Christ lay dead in the grave the God-head remained united to that body and that soule which were dis-united in themselves God was so united to man as that he was with man when man was not man in the state of death So when the Spirit of God hath invested compassed thy soule and made it his by those testimonies that Spirit establishes it in a kinde of assurance that he will never leave it Old Rome had as every City amongst the Heathen had certaine gods which they called their Tutelar gods gods that were affected to the preservation of that place But they durst never call upon those gods by their proper names for feare of losing them lest if their names should bee knowne by their enemies their enemies should winne away their gods from them by bestowing more cost or more devotion towards them then they themselves used So also is it said of them that when they had brought to Rome a forraigne god which they had taken in a conquered place Victory they cut the wings of their new god Victory lest he should flie from them againe This was a misery that they were not sure of their gods when they had them We are If he once come to us he never goes from us out of any variablenesse in himselfe but in us onely That promise reaches to the whole Church Esay 30.20 and to every particular soule Thy Teachers shall not bee removed into a corner any more but thine eye shall see thy Teachers which in the Originall as is appliably to our present purpose noted by Rabbi Moses is Non erunt Doctores tui alati Thy Teachers shall have no wings They shall never flie from thee and so the great Translation reads it Non avolabunt As their great god Victory could not flie from Rome so after this victory which God hath given his Church in the Reformation none of her Teachers should flie to or towards Rome Every way that God comes to us he comes with a purpose to stay and would imprint in us an assurance that he doth so and that Impression is this Compassing of thy soule with songs of deliverance in the signification and use of which word we shall in one word conclude all God hath given us this certitude Songs this faire assurance of his perpetuall residence with us in a word of a double signification The word is Ranan which signifies Joy exultation singing Lament 2.14 Psal 17.1 But it hath another sense too Arise Cry out in the night And Attend unto my cry which are voyces far from singing This God meanes therein That though he give us that comfort to sit and sing of our Deliverance yet hee would not have us fall asleepe with that musique but as when we contemplate his everlasting goodnesse wee celebrate that with a constant Joy so when we looke upon our owne weaknesse and unworthinesse we cry out Wretched men that wee are who shall deliver us from this body of death For though we have the Spirit of life in us we have a body of death upon us How loving soever my soule be it will not stay in a diseased body How loving soever the Spirit of life be it will not stay in a diseased soule My soule is loath to goe from my body but sicknesse and paine will drive it out so will sinne the Spirit of life from my soule God compasses us with Songs of Deliverance we are sure he would not leave us But he compasses us with Cries too we are afraid we are sure that we
that he would make thee understand Not that the matter or subject in this Part is the greater for the former had relation to faith and this but to good works but that it intimates a more frequent recourse to us and a more studious care of us and a more provident vigilancy over us and a more familiar conversation with us that God accompanies us in all our way and directs us in all our particular actions then that by understanding he hath brought us to beleeve He that horses a man well for a journey or he that rewards a man well for a journey does a greater work then he that goes along with him as a guide but yet there is aliquid magis in the guide there is a more continuall a more incessant courtesie in him We see in the Romane Church they are not in their Beads without Credoes they beleeve enough and lest that should not be enough they have made a new Creed of more Articles then that in the Councell of Trent and to testifie a strong faith therein they must sweare they beleeve it And then they have to every Creed more Pater nosters they petition enough aske enough at Gods hands They have Credoes enow Pater nosters enow and Ave Maries more then enow But when we consider them in the Commandements what we are to doe as great Workers as they pretend to be though they inlarge their Credoes and multiply their Pater nosters they contract the Commandements and put two into one for feare of meeting one against Images This then expresses Gods daily care of us that he teaches us the way But then even that implies that we are all out of our way still all bends all conduces to that An humble acknowledgement of our own weaknesse a present recourse to the love and power of God The first thing I look for in the Exposition of any Scripture and the nearest way to the literall sense thereof is what may most deject and vilifie man what may most exalt and glorifie God We are all all out of our way but God deales not alike with all Psal 35.6 Esay 26.7 for for the wicked Their way is dark and slippery And then The Angel of the Lord persecutes them But for those whom he loves He will waigh the paths of the just sayes our later Translation And He will make the paths of the righteous equall and eaven sayes our former It shall be a path often beaten by him for it is not righteousnesse to be righteous once a yeare at Easter nor once a week upon Sunday An Anniversary righteousnesse an Hebdomadary righteousnesse a Sabbatarian righteousnesse is no righteousnesse But it is a path and so made eaven without occasions of stumbling that is he shall be able to walk in any profession and to make good any station and not be diverted by the power of any tentations incident to that calling The Angel of the Lord The evill Angel distrust and diffidence shall persecute the wicked in his darke and slippery way this is no teaching but because the godly have a teaching even their direction hath a correction too God beats his Scholars into their way too The difference is expressed in the Prophet Esay 30.21 When the Lord hath given you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction for in Gods Schoole that is Scholars fare yet sayes God Thy Teachers shall not be removed from thee into a corner Still in thine affliction thou shalt have a Teacher or even the affliction it selfe shall be Gods Usher and thou shalt have evidence of it Thy Teacher shall not be removed into a corner thou shalt see it and as it follows there Thine eares shall heare a voyce behinde thee that is a voyce arising even from that affliction that thou hast suffered and that voyce shall say This is the way walk ye in it As dark as affliction is it shall shew thee the way Haec est via This is the way as much as affliction enfeebles thee yet it shall enable thee to walk in it Ambulate in ea God is a Schoole-master not as the Law was to teach with a sword in his hand but yet he teaches with a rod in his hand though not with a sword Now in teaching us the way he instructs us De via and In via which is the way De via Psal 119.168 and what is to be done in it He sees all our wayes All my wayes are before thee sayes David And he sees them not so as though they belonged not to him for he considers them Does not he behold all my wayes and tell all my steps He sees them Job 31.4 Esay 24.17 and sees our irremediable danger in them Formido fovea laqueus Feare and a pit and snares are upon thee Upon whom There we see the generality of this single word Thee that it is all for so it followes there Vpon thee O Inhabitant of the earth The danger then is generall and the Lord knowes it Who then can teach us a better way but he But how doth he teach us this way When God had promised Moses to send an Angel to shew the people their way I will send an Angel before thee Moses sayes to God See Exod. 33.2 12. thou sayest Lead this people forth and thou hast not shewed me whom thou wilt send with me so those Translators thought good to render it God had told him of an Angel but that satisfied not Moses He must have something shewed to him he must see his guide Ver. 15. If thy presence goe not with me carry me not from hence sayes he to God For wherein shall it be known that I and thy people have found favour in thy sight shall it not be when thou goest up with us And therefore God satisfies him My presence shall goe with thee Goe but how sayes Moses Wilt thou bee pleased to shew mee thy glory Ver. 18. Shall we see any thing They did see that Pillar in which God was and that presence that Pillar shewed the way To us the Church is that Pillar in that God shewes us our way For strength it is a Pillar and a Pillar for firmnesse and fixation But yet the Church is neither an equall Pillar alwaies fire but sometimes cloud too The Church is more and lesse visible sometimes in splendor sometimes in an eclipse neither is it so a fixt Pillar as that it is not in divers places The Church is not so fixed to Rome as that it is not communicated to other Nations nor so limited in it selfe as that it may not admit changes in those things that appertain to Order and Discipline Our way that God teaches us is the Church That is a Pillar Fixed for Fundamentall things but yet a moveable Pillar for things indifferent and arbitrary Thus he teaches Quid via which is the way It is the Church the Pillar of Truth In via He teaches
it as upon a duty in this way humbly and patiently and laboriously to walke towards him without stopping upon any thing in this world either preferments on the right or disgraces on the left hand for a Cart may stop us as well as a Coach low things as well as high with as much trouble and more anoyance Which is more especially intended in the last words of the Text Firmabo super te oculos meos I will settle my providence fixe mine eye upon thee I will guide thee with mine eye Thus farre hath our blessed Lord assured us That he will make us understand 3 Part. which is his Instruction de credendis what to Beleeve And that he will teach us to walke in his way which is his Instruction de agendis what to Doe how to avoide tentations This last is That hee will guide us with his eye which is his Instruction de sperandis what wee are to Hope for at his hand if in this way we doe stumble or fall into some sinnes of infirmities But it is but de sperandis not de praesumendis when by infirmity thou art fallen thy Hope must begin then but if the Hope begun before so as thou fellest upon hope that God would raise thee then it was presumption and there the Lords eye shuts in and guides thee no longer Otherwise he directs thee with his eye that is with his gracious and powerfull looking upon thee to the meanes of thy recovery Wee heare of no blowes wee heare of no chiding from him towards Peter but all that is said is Luke 22.65 The Lord turned back and looked upon Peter and then he remembred his case The eye of the Lord lightned his darknesse The eye of the Lord thawed those three crusts of Ice which were growne over his heart in his three denials of his Master A Candle wakes some men as well as a noyse The eye of the Lord works upon a good soule as much as his hand and hee is as much affected with this consideration The Lord sees me as with this The Lord strikes me Wee reade in Naturall story of some creatures Qui solo oculorum aspectu fovent ova Plin. l. 10. c. 9. which hatch their egges onely by looking upon them What cannot the eye of God produce and hatch in us Plus est quod probatur aspectu quà m quod sermone Ambrose A man may seeme to commend in words and yet his countenance shall dispraise His word infuses good purposes into us but if God continue his eye upon us it is a farther approbation for He is a God of pure eyes and will not looke upon the wicked Deut. 11.12 This land doth the Lord thy God care for and the eyes of the Lord are alwayes upon it from the beginning of the yeare even to the end thereof What a cheerefull spring what a fruitfull Autumne hath that soule that hath the eye of the Lord alwayes upon her The eye of the Lord upon mee makes midnight noone and S. Lucies day S. Barnabies It makes Capricorne Cancer and the Winters the Summers Solstice The eye of the Lord sanctifies nay more then sanctifies glorifies all the Eclipses of dishonour makes Melancholy cheerefulnesse diffidence assurance and turnes the jealousie of the sad soule into infallibility Upon his people his eye shined in the wildernesse his eye singled them in Egypt and in Babylon they were sustained by his eye They were and we are Ezra 5.5 Psal 33.18 The eye of their God was upon the Elders of Israel And Behold the eye of the Lord is upon all them that feare him The Proverb is not onely as old as Aristotle Oculus domini and Pes domini The eye of the Master fattens the horse and the foot of the Master marles the ground but it is as old as the Creation God saw all that he had made and so it was very good It was visio approbationis Hieron and his approbation was the exaltation thereof This guiding then with the eye we consider to be his particular care and his personall providence upon us in his Church For a man may be in the Kings presence and yet not in his eye and so he may in Gods Gods whole Ordinance in his Church is Gods face For that is the face of God by which God is manifested to us But then August that eye in that face by which he promises to guide us in this Text is that blessed Spirit of his by whose operation he makes that grace which does evermore accompany his Ordinances effectuall upon us The whole Congregation sees God face to face in the Service in the Sermon in the Sacrament but there is an eye in that face an eye in that Service an eye in that Sermon an eye in that Sacrament a piercing and an operating Spirit that lookes upon that soule and foments and cherishes that soule who by a good use of Gods former grace is become fitter for his present And this guiding us with his eye manifests it selfe in these two great effects Convertit conversion to him and union with him First his eye works upon ours His eye turnes ours to looke upon him Still it is so expressed with an Ecce Behold Psal 33.18 the eye of the Lord is upon all them that feare him His eye cals ours to behold that And then our eye cals upon his to observe our cheerefull readinesse Behold Psal 123.2 as the eye of a servant lookes to the hand of his Master so our eyes waite upon the Lord our God till he have mercy upon us Where the Donec Vntill is an everlasting Donec as the blessed Virgins was A Virgin Donec till she brought forth her first Son and a Virgin ever after So our eyes waite upon God till hee have mercy that is while he hath it and that he may continue his mercy for it was his mercifull eye that turned ours to him and it is the same mercy that we waite upon him And then when as a well made Picture doth alwaies looke upon him that lookes upon it this Image of God in our soule is turned to him by his turning to it it is impossible we should doe any foule any uncomely thing in his presence Will any man solicite a Wife or a Daughter and call the Father or Husband to looke on Will any man breake open thy house in the night and first wake thee and call thee up Can any man give his body to uncleannesse his tongue to prophanenesse his heart to covetousnesse and at the same time consider that his pure and his holy and his bountifull God hath his eye upon him Can he looke upon God in that line in that Angle upon God looking upon him and dishonour him Psal 25.15 August Upon those words of David Mine eyes are ever towards the Lord Quasi diceretur quid agitur depedibus as though it were objected Is all thy care of thine
in thine honor wounds in thy conscience yet we may heare David reply Josh 24.16 Tu Domine As the people said to Ioshuah God forbid we should forsake the Lord we will serve the Lord And when Ioshuah said You cannot serve the Lord for he is a jealous God and if yee turne from him he will turne and doe you hurt and consame you after he hath done you good The people replyed Nay but we will serve the Lord so whatsoever God threatens David of afflictions and tribulations and purgings in fire we may heare David reply Nay but Lord doe Thou doe it do it how Thou wilt but doe Thou do it Thy corrosives are better then others somentations Thy bitternesses sweeter then others honey Thy fires are but lukewarme fires nay they have nothing of fire in them but light to direct me in my way And thy very frowns are but as trenches cut out as lanes that leade me to thy grave or Rivers or Channels that lead me to the sea of thy bloud Let me go upon Crouches so I go to Heaven Lay what waight thou wilt even upon my foule that that be heavy and heavy unto death so I may have a cheerfull transmigration then Domine Tu Lord doe thou doe it and I shall not wish it mended And then when we heare David say Domine Me Lord purge Me wash Me and returne foure times in this short Text to that personall appropriation of Gods worke upon himselfe Purge Me that I may be cleane wash Me that I may be whiter then snow if we heare God say as the language of his mercy is for the most part generall As the Sea is above the Earth so is the blood of my Son above all sin Congregations of three thousand and of five thousand were purged and washed converted and baptized at particular Sermons of S. Peter whole legions of Souldiers that consisted of thousands were purged in their owne blood and became Martyrs in one day There is enough done to worke upon all Examples enow given to guide all we may heare David reply Domine Me Nay but Lord I doe not heare Peter preach I live not in a time or in a place where Crownes of Martyrdome are distributed nor am I sure my Constancy would make me capable of it if I did Lord I know that a thousand of these worlds were not worth one drop of thy blood and yet I know that if there had been but one some distressed and that soule distressed but with one sin thou wouldest have spent the last drop of that blood for that soule Blessed be thy Name for having wrapped me up in thy generall Covenants and made me partaker of thy generall Ordinances but yet Lord looke more particularly upon me and appropriate thy selfe to me to me not onely as thy Creature as a man as a Christian but as I am I as I am this sinner that confesses now and as I am this penitent that begs thy mercy now And now Beloved we have said so much towards enough of the persons God and David The accesse of David to God and the appropriation of God to David as that we may well passe to our other generall part the petitions which David in his own and our behalfe makes to God Purge me with Hyssop and I shall be cleane wash me and I shall be whiter then snow In this 2 Part. Purgabis the first is a great worke That which we translate Purge me And yet how soone David is come to it It is his first period The passage of a Spirit is very quick but it is not immediate Not from extreame to extreame but by passing the way between The Evill spirit passes not so no good soule was ever made very ill in an instant no nor so soone as some ill have been made good No man can give me Examples of men so soone perverted as I can of men converted It is not in the power of the Devill to doe so much harme as God can doe good Nay we may be bold to say it is not in the will not in the desire of the Devill to doe so much harme as God would doe good for illnesse is not in the nature of the Devill The Devill was naturally good made created good His first illnesse was but a defection from that goodnesse and his present illnesse is but a punishment for that defection but God is good goodnesse in his nature essentially eternally good and therefore the good motions of the Spirit of God worke otherwise upon us then the tentations of the evill Spirit doe How soone and to what a height came David here He makes his Petition his first Petition with that confidence as that it hath scarce the nature of a Petition for it is in the Originall Thou wilt purge me Thou wilt wash me Thou hadst a gracious will and purpose to doe it before thou didst infuse the will and the desire in me to petition it Nay this word may well be translated not onely Thou wilt but by the other denotation of the future Thou shalt Thou shalt purge me Thou shalt wash me Lord I doe but remember thee of thy debt of that which thy gracious promise hath made thy debt to shew mercy to every penitent sinner And then as the word implies confidence and acceleration infallibility and expedition too That as soone as I can aske I am sure to be heard so does it imply a totality an intirenesse a fulnesse in the worke for the roote of the word is Peccare to sin for purging is a purging of peccant humors but in this Conjugation in that language it hath a privative signification and literally signifies Expeccabis and if in our language that were a word in use it might be translated Thou shalt un-sin me that is look upon me as a man that had never sinned as a man invested in the innocency of thy Sonne who knew no sin David gives no man rule nor example of other assurance in God then in the remission of sins Not that any precontract or Election makes our sins no sins or makes our sins no hindrances in our way to salvation or that we are in Gods favour at that time when we sin nor returned to his favour before we repent our sin It is onely this expeccation this unsinning this taking away of sins formerly committed that restores me And that is not done with nothing David assignes proposes a meanes by which he looks for it Hyssop Thou shalt purge me with Hyssop The Fathers taking the words as they found them and fastning with a spirituall delight Hyssopo as their devout custome was their Meditations upon the figurative and Metaphoricall phrase of purging by Hyssop have found purgative vertues in that plant and made usefull and spirituall applications thereof for the purging of our soules from sin In this doe S. Ambrose and Augustine and Hierome agree that Hyssop hath vertue in it proper for the lungs in
a right value upon Holinesse and to give a due respect to holy men For so where we read Psal 78.63 Their Maidens were not given in Marriage we finde this word of our Text Their Maidens were not praised that is there was not a due respect held of them nor a just value set upon them So that this retribution intended for the upright in heart as in the growth and extension of the word it reaches to Joy and Glory and Eminency and Respect so in the roote it signifies Praise And it is given them by God as a Reward That they shall be Praised now Praise sayes the Philosopher is Sermo elucidans magnitudinem virtutis It is the good word of good men a good testimony given by good men of good actions And this difference we use to assigne betweene Praise and Honour Laus est in ordine ad finem Honor eorum qui jam in fine Praise is an encouragement to them that are in the way and so far a Reward a Reward of good beginnings Honour is reserved to the end to crowne their constancy and perseverance And therefore where men are rewarded with great honours at the beginning in hope they will deserve it they are paid beforehand Thanks and Grace and good countenance and Praise are interlocutory encouragements Honours are finall Rewards But since Praise is a part of Gods retribution a part of his promise in our text They shall be praised we are thereby not onely allowed but bound to seeke this praise from good men and to give this praise to good men for in this Coine God hath promised that the upright in heart shall be paid They shall be praised To seeke praise from good men by good meanes Laus à bonis quaerenda Prov. 22.1 Bernar. is but the same thing which is recommended to us by Solomon A good name is rather to be chosen then great riches and loving favour then silver and Gold For Habent mores colores suos habent odores Our good works have a colour and they have a savor we see their Candor their sincerity in our owne consciences there is their colour for in our owne consciences our works appeare in their true colours no man can be an hypocrite to himselfe nor seriously deliberately deceive himselfe And when others give allowance of our works and are edified by them there is their savour their odor their perfume their fragrancy And therefore S. Hierom and S. Augustin differ little in their manner of expressing this Hieron Non paratum habeas illud è trivio Serve not thy selfe with that triviall and vulgar saying As long as my conscience testifies well to me I care not what men say of me August And so sayes that other Father They that rest in the testimony of their owne consciences and contemne the opinion of other men Imprudenter agunt crudeliter They deale weakly and improvidently for themselves in that they assist not their consciences with more witnesses And they deale cruelly towards others in that they provide not for their edification by the knowledge and manifestation of their good works For as he adds well there Qui à criminibus vitam custodit bene facit He that is innocent in his owne heart does well for himselfe but Qui famam custodit in alios misericors est He that is known to live well he that hath the praise of good men to bee a good man is mercifull in an exemplary life to others and promoves their salvation For when that Father gives a measure how much praise a man may receive and a rule how he may receive it when he hath first said Nec totum nec nihil accipiatur Receive not all but yet refuse not all praise he adds this That that which is to be received is not to be received for our owne sakes sed propter illos quibus consulere non potest si nimia dejectione vilescat but for their sakes who would undervalue goodnesse it selfe if good men did too much undervalue themselves or thought themselves never the better for their goodnesse And therefore S. Bernard applies that in the Proverbs to this case Prov. 25.16 Hast thou found Honey eate that which is sufficient Mellis nomine favor humanae laudis sayes he By Honey favour and praise and thankfulnesse is meant Meritóque non ab omni sed ab immoderato edulio prohibemur We are not forbid to taste nor to eate but to surfet of this Honey of this praise of men S. Augustine found this love of praise in himselfe and could forbid it no man Laudari à bene viventibus si dicam nolo mentior If I should say that I desired not the praise of good men I should belie my selfe He carries it higher then thus He does not doubt but that the Apostles themselves had a holy joy and complacency when their Preaching was acceptable and thereby effectuall upon the Congregation Such a love of praise is rooted in Nature and Grace destroyes not Nature Grace extinguishes not but moderates this love of praise in us nor takes away the matter but onely exhibits the measure Certainly he that hath not some desire of praise will bee negligent in doing praise-worthy things and negligent in another duty intended here too that is To praise good men which is also another particular branch in this Part. The hundred forty fift Psalme is Laus danda aliis in the Title thereof called A Psalme of Praise And the Rabbins call him Filium futuri Seculi A child of the next World that sayes that Psalme thrice a day We will interpret it by way of Accommodation thus that he is a child of the next World that directs his Praise every day upon three objects upon God upon himselfe upon other men Of God there can be no question And for our selves it is truly the most proper and most literall signification of this word in our Text Iithhalelu That they shall praise themselves that is They shall have the testimony of a rectified conscience that they have deserved the praise of good men in having done laudible service to God And then for others That which God promises to Israel in their restauration Zephan 3.19 belongs to all the Israel of the Lord to all the faithfull I will get thee praise and fame in every land and I will make thee a name and a praise amongst all the people of the earth This God will doe procure them a name a glory By whom When God bindes himselfe he takes us into the band with him and when God makes himselfe the debtor he makes us stewards when he promises them praise he meanes that we should give them that praise Be all waies of flatterings and humourings of great persons precluded with a Protestation with a detestation Be Philo Iudaeus his comparison received His Coquus and his Medicus One provides sweetnesse for the present taste but he is but a
our prayers In a Sermon God speaks to the Congregation but he answers onely that soule that hath been with him at Prayers before A man may pray in the street in the fields in a fayre but it is a more acceptable and more effectuall prayer when we shut our doores and observe our stationary houses for private prayer in our Chamber and in our Chamber when we pray upon our knees then in our beds But the greatest power of all is in the publique prayer of the Congregation It is a good remembrance that Damascene gives Non quia gentes quaedam faciunt Damase à nobis linquenda We must not forbeare things onely therefore because the Gentiles or the Jewes used them The Gentiles particularly the Romans before they were Christians had a set Service a prescribed forme of Common prayer in their Temples and they had a particular Officer in that State who was Conditor precum that made their Collects and Prayers upon emergent occasions And Omni lustro every five yeares there was a review and an alteration in their Prayers and the state of things was presumed to have received so much change in that time as that it was fit to change some of their Prayers and Collects It must not therefore seeme strange that at the first there were certaine Collects appointed in our Church nor that others upon just occasion be added Gods blessing here in the Christian Church for to that we limit this consideration is that here He will answer us Therefore here we must ask Here our asking is our communion at Prayer And therefore they that undervalue or neglect the prayers of the Church have not that title to the benefit of the Sermon for though God doe speake in the Sermon yet hee answers that is applies himselfe by his Spirit onely to them who have prayed to him before If they have joyned in prayer they have their interest and shall feele their Consolation in all the promises of the Gospel shed upon the Congregation in the Sermon Have you asked by prayer Is there no Balme in Gilead He answers you by me Yes there is Blame Esay 53.5 Hee was wounded for your transgressions and with his stripes you are healed His Blood is your Balme his Sacrament is your Gilead Have you asked by prayer Is there no Smith in Israel 1 Sam. 13.18 No meanes to discharge my selfe of my fetters and chaines of my temporall and spirituall Encumbrances God answers thee Yes there is He bids you but looke about and you shall finde your selfe in Peter case The Angel of the Lord present A light shining Act. 12.7 and his chaines falling off All your manacles locked upon the hands All your chaines loaded upon the legges All your stripes numbred upon the back of Christ Jesus You have said in your prayers here Lord from whom all good counsails doe proceed And God answers you from hence The Angel of the great Counsell shall dwell with you and direct you You have said in your prayers Lighten our darknesse and God answers you by mee Esay 60.19 as he did his former people by Esay The Lord shall be unto thee an everlasting light and thy God thy glory Petition God at prayers and God shall answer all your petitions at the Sermon There we begin if wee will make profit of a Sermon at Prayers And thither wee returne againe if we have made profit by a Sermon in due time to prayers For Confes l. 1. c. 1. that is S. Augustines holy Circle in which hee walkes from Prayers to the Sermon and from the Sermon next day to Prayers againe Invocat te fides mea sayes he to God Here I stand or kneele in thy presence and in the power of faith to pray to thee But where had I this faith that makes my prayer acceptable Dedisti mihi per ministerium Praedicatoris I had it at the Sermon I had it saith he by the ministery of the Preacher but I had it therefore because thy Spirit prepared me by prayer before And I have it therefore that is to that end that I might returne faithfully to prayers againe As hee is The God of our salvation that is As he works in the Christian Church he answers us If we aske by prayer he applies the Sermon And He answers by terrible things in righteousnesse These two words Terribilia per Iustitiam By Terrible things in Righteousnesse Terribilia per Iustitiam are ordinarily by our Expositors taken to intimate a confidence that God imprints by the Ordinance of his Church that by this right use of Prayer and Preaching they shall alwayes be delivered from their enemies or from what may bee most terrible unto them In which exposition Righteousnesse signifies faithfulnesse and Terrible things signifie miraculous deliverances from and terrible Judgements upon his and our enemies Therefore is God called Deus fidelis The faithfull God for Deut. 7.9 that faithfulnesse implies a Covenant made before and there entred his Mercy that hee would make that Covenant and it implies also the assurance of the performance thereof for there enters his faithfulnesse So he is called Fidelis Creator We commit our soules to God 1 Pet. 4.19 as to a faithfull Creator He had an eternall gracious purpose upon us to create us and he hath faithfully accomplished it So Fidelis quia vocavit Hee is faithfull in having called us 1 Thes 5.24 That he had decreed and that he hath done So Christ is called Fidelis Pontifex Heb. 2.17 A mercifull and a faithfull high Priest Mercifull in offering himselfe for us faithfull in applying himselfe to us So Gods whole word is called so often so very often Testimonium fidele A faithfull witnesse an evidence that cannot deceive nor mislead us Psal 19.8 Therefore we may be sure that whatsoever God hath promised to his Church And whatsoever God hath done upon the enemies of his Church heretofore those very performances to them are promises to us of the like succours in the like distresses he will performe re-performe multiply performances thereof upon us Esay 25.1 Thy counsails of old are faithfulnesse and truth That is whatsoever thou didst decree was done even then in the infallibility of that Decree And when that Decree came to be executed and actually done in that very execution of that former Decree was enwrapped a new Decree That the same should be done over and over againe for us when soever wee needed it So that then casting up our account from the destruction of Babel by all the plagues of Egypt through the depopulation of Canaan and the massacre in Sennacheribs Army to the swallowing of the Invincible Navy upon our Seas and the bringing to light that Infernall that subterranean Treason in our Land we may argue and assume That the God of our salvation will answer us by terrible things by multiplying of miracles and ministring supplies to the confusion of his and
no inconvenience averts Christ and his Spirit from his sweet and gracious and comfortable visitations But yet this that is called here The Sea of Galile was not properly a Sea but according to the phrase of the Hebrews who call all great meetings of waters by that one name A Sea this which was indeed a lake of fresh water is called a Sea From the roote of Mount Libanus spring two Rivers Jor and Dan and those two meeting together joyning their waters joyne their names too and make that famous river Jordan a name so composed as perchance our River is Thamesis of Thame and Isis And this River Jordan falling into this flat makes this Lake of sixteene miles long and some sixe in breadth Which Lake being famous for fish though of ordinary kinds yet of an extraordinary taste and relish and then of extraordinary kinds too not found in other waters and famous because divers famous Cities did engirt it and become as a garland to it Capernaum and Chorazim and Bethsaida and Tiberias and Magdalo all celebrated in the Scriptures was yet much more famous for the often recourse which our Saviour who was of that Countrey made to it For this was the Sea where he amazed Peter with that great draught of fishes that brought him to say Exi à me Domine Depart from me O Lord for I am a sinfull man Luk. 5.8 This was the Sea where himselfe walked upon the waters Matt. 14.25.8.23 And where he rebuked the tempest And where he manifested his Almighty power many times And by this Lake this Sea dwelt Andrew and Peter and using the commodity of the place lived upon fishing in this Lake and in that act our Saviour found them and called them to his service Why them Why fishers First Christ having a greater a fairer Jerusalem to build then Davids was Cur Piscatores a greater Kingdome to establish then Juda's was a greater Temple to build then Solomons was having a greater work to raise yet he begun upon a lesse ground Hee is come from his twelve Tribes that afforded armies in swarmes to twelve persons twelve Apostles from his Iuda and Levi the foundations of State and Church to an Andrew and a Peter fisher-men sea-men and these men accustomed to that various and tempestuous Element to the Sea lesse capable of Offices of civility and sociablenesse then other men yet must be employed in religious offices to gather all Nations to one houshold of the faithfull and to constitute a Communion of Saints They were Sea-men fisher-men unlearned and indocil Why did Christ take them Not that thereby there was any scandall given or just occasion of that calumny of Iulian the Apostat That Christ found it easie to seduce and draw to his Sect such poore ignorant men as they were for Christ did receive persons eminent in learning Saul was so and of authority in the State Nicodemus was so and of wealth and ability Zacheus was so and so was Ioseph of Arimatliea But first he chose such men that when the world had considered their beginning their insufficiency then and how unproper they were for such an employment and yet seene that great work so farre and so fast advanced by so weake instruments they might ascribe all power to him and ever after come to him cheerfully upon any invitation how weake men soever he should send to them because hee had done so much by so weak instruments before To make his work in all ages after prosper the better he proceeded thus at first And then hee chose such men for another reason too To shew that how insufficient soever he received them yet he received them into such a Schoole such an University as should deliver them back into his Church made fit by him for the service thereof Christ needed not mans sufficiency he took insufficient men Christ excuses no mans insufficiency he made them sufficient His purpose then was that the worke should be ascribed to the Workman Nequid Instrumentis August not to the Instrument To himselfe not to them Nec quaesivit per Oratorem piscatorem He sent not out Orators Rhetoricians strong or faire-spoken men to work upon these fisher-men Sed de piscatore lucratus est Imperatorem By these fisher-men hee hath reduced all those Kings and Emperours and States which have embraced the Christian Religion these thousand and six hundred yeares When Samuel was sent with that generall Commission 1 Sam. 16.6 to anoint a sonne of Ishai King without any more particular instructions when hee came and Eliab was presented unto him Surely sayes Samuel 1 Sam. 30. noting the goodlinesse of his personage this is the Lords Anointed But the Lord said unto Samuel Looke not on his countenance nor the height of his stature for I have refused him for as it followeth there from Gods mouth God seeth not as man setth Man looketh on the outward appearance but the Lord beholdeth the heart And so David in apparance lesse likely was chosen But if the Lords arme be not shortned let no man impute weaknesse to the Instrument For so when David himselfe was appointed by God to pursue the Amalekites the Amalekites that had burnt Ziklag and done such spoile upon Gods people as that the people began to speak of stoning David from whom they looked for defence Ver 6. when David had no kind of intelligence no ground to settle a conjecture upon which way he must pursue the Amalekites and yet pursue them he must in the way he findes a poore young fellow a famished sicke young man derelicted of his Master and left for dead in the march and by the meanes and conduct of this wretch David recovers the enemy recovers the spoile recovers his honour and the love of his people If the Lords arme bee not shortned let no man impute weaknesse to his Instrument But yet God will alwayes have so much weaknesse appeare in the Instrument as that their strength shall not be thought to be their owne When Pete and Iohn preached in the streets Acts 4.13 The people marvelled sayes the Text why for they had understood that they were unlearned But beholding also the man that was healed standing by they had nothing to say sayes that story The insufficiency of the Instrument makes a man wonder naturally but the accomplishing of some great worke brings them to a necessary acknowledgement of a greater power working in that weake Instrument For if those Apostles that preached Acts 8.10 had beene as learned men as Simon Magus as they did in him This man is the great power of God not that he had but that he was the power of God the people would have rested in the admiration of those persons and proceeded no farther It was their working of supernaturall things that convinced the world For all Pauls learning though hee were very learned never brought any of the Conjurers to burne his bookes or to renounce
leave that And these are the pieces that constitute our first part the circumstances that invest these persons Peter and Andrew in their former condition before and when Christ called them SERM. LXXII MAT. 4.18 19 20. And Iesus walking by the Sea of Galile saw two brethren Simon called Peter and Andrew his brother casting a net into the Sea for they were fishers And he saith unto them Follow me and I will make you fishers of men And they straightway left their nets and followed him WE are now in our Order proposed at first come to our second part from the consideration of these persons Peter and Andrew in their former state and condition before and at their calling to their future estate in promise but an infallible promise Christs promise if they followed him Follow me and I will make you fishers of men In which part we shall best come to our end which is your edification by these steps First that there is an Humility enjoyned them in the Sequere follow come after That though they bee brought to a high Calling that doe not make them proud nor tyrannous over mens consciences And then even this Humility is limited Sequere me follow me for there may be a pride even in Humility and a man may follow a dangerous guide Our guide here is Christ Sequere me follow me And then we shall see the promise it selfe the employment the function the preferment In which there is no new state promised them no Innovation They were fishers and they shall be fishers still but there is an emprovement a bettering a reformation They were fisher-men before and now they shall bee fishers of men To which purpose wee shall finde the world to be the Sea and the Gospel their Net And lastly all this is presented to them not as it was expressed in the former part with a For it is not Follow me for I will prefer you he will not have that the reason of their following But yet it is Follow me and I will prefer you It is a subsequent addition of his owne goodnesse but so infallible a one as we may rely upon Whosoever doth follow Christ speeds well And into these considerations will fall all that belongs to this last part Follow me and I will make you fishers of men First then Sequere Humilitas here is an impression of Humility in following in comming after Sequere follow presse not to come before And it had need be first if we consider how early how primarie a sinne Pride is and how soone it possesses us Scarce any man but if he looke back seriously into himselfe and into his former life and revolve his owne history but that the first act which he can remember in himselfe or can be remembred of by others will bee some act of Pride Before Ambition or Covetousnesse or Licentiousnesse is awake in us Pride is working Though but a childish pride yet pride and this Parents rejoyce at in their children and call it spirit and so it is but not the best Wee enlarge not therefore the consideration of this word sequere follow come after so farre as to put our meditation upon the whole body and the severall members of this sinne of pride Nor upon the extent and diffusivenesse of this sinne as it spreads it selfe over every other sinne for every sinne is complicated with pride so as every sinne is a rebellious opposing of the law and will of God Nor to consider the waighty hainousnes of pride how it aggravates every other sin how it makes a musket a Canon bullet and a peble a Milstone but after we have stopped a little upon that usefull consideration That there is not so direct and Diametrall a contrariety between the nature of any sinne and God as between him and pride wee shall passe to that which is our principall observation in this branch How early and primary a sin pride is occasioned by this that the commandement of Humility is first given first enjoyned in our first word Sequere follow But first Nihil tam centrarium Deo wee exalt that consideration That nothing is so contrary to God as Pride with this observation That God in the Scriptures is often by the Holy Ghost invested and represented in the qualities and affections of man and to constitute a commerce and familiarity between God and man God is not onely said to have bodily lineaments eyes and eares and hands and feet and to have some of the naturall affections of man as Joy in particular Deut. 30.9 The Lord will rejoyce over thee for good as he rejoyced over thy Fathers And so pity too Gen. 39.21 The Lord was with Ioseph and extended kindnesse unto him But some of those inordinate and irregular passions and perturbations excesses and defects of man are imputed to God by the Holy Ghost in the Scriptures For so lazinesse drowsinesse is imputed to God Awake Lord why sleepest thou So corruptiblenesse and deterioration Psal 44.23 Psal 18.26 and growing worse by ill company is imputed to God Cum perverso perverteris God is said to grow froward with the froward and that hee learnes to go crookedly with them that go crookedly And prodigality and wastfulnesse is imputed to God Psal 44.12 Thou sellest thy people for naught and doest not increase thy wealth by their price So sudden and hasty choler Kisse the Son lest he be angry and ye perish Inira brevi Psal 2.12 though his wrath be kindled but a little And then illimited and boundlesse anger a vindicative irreconciliablenesse is imputed to God I was but a little displeased Zech. 1.15 but it is otherwise now I am very sore displeased So there is Ira devorans Exod. 15.4 Iob 10.17 Ier. 21.5 Psal 80.4 Wrath that consumes like stubble So there is Ira multiplicata Plagues renewed and indignation increased So God himselfe expresses it I will fight against you in anger and in fury And so for his inexorablenesse his irreconciliablenesse O Lord God of Hosts Quousque how long wilt thou be angry against the prayer of thy people Gods owne people Gods own people praying to their owne God and yet their God irreconciliable to them Scorne and contempt is imputed to God which is one of the most enormious and disproportioned weakenesses in man that a worme that crawles in the dust that a graine of dust that is hurried with every blast of winde should find any thing so much inferiour to it selfe as to scorne it to deride it to contemne it yet scorne and derision and contempt is imputed to God Psal 2.4 Prov. 1.26 He that sitteth in the Heavens shall laugh the Lord shall have them in derision and againe I will laugh at your calamity I will mock you when your feare commeth Nay beloved even inebriation excesse in that kinde Drunkennesse is a Metaphor which the Holy Ghost hath mingled in the expressing of Gods proceedings with man
are the People that be so Yea blessed are the People whose God is the Lord. THe first part of this Text hath relation to temporall blessings Blessed is the people that be so The second part to spirituall Yea blessed is the people whose God is the Lord. His left hand is under my head saith the Spouse Cant. 2.6 That sustaines me from falling into murmuring or diffidence of his Providence because out of his left hand he hath given me a competency of his temporall blessings But his right hand doth embrace mee saith the Spouse there His spirituall blessings fill me possesse me so that no rebellious fire breaks out within me no outward tentation breaks in upon me So also sayes Solomon againe Prov. 3.16 In her left hand is riches and glory temporall blessings and in her right hand length of dayes all that accomplishes and fulfils the eternall joyes of the Saints of heaven The person to whom Solomon attributes this right and left hand is Wisedome And a wise man may reach out his right and left hand to receive the blessings of both sorts And the person whom Solomon represents by Wisedome there is Christ himselfe So that not onely a worldly wiseman but a Christian wiseman may reach out both hands to both kinds of blessings right and left spirituall and temporall And therefore Interrogo vos filios regni coelorum saith S. Augustine Let mee ask you who are sonnes and heires of the Kingdome of Heaven Progeniem Resurrectionis in aeternum You that are the off-spring of the Resurrection of Christ Jesus and have your resurrection in his Membra Christi Templa Spiritus Sancti You that are the very body of Christ you that are the very temples of the Holy Ghost Interrogo vos Let me ask you for all your great reversion hereafter for all that present possession which you have of it in an apprehensive faith and in a holy conversation in this life for all that blessednesse Non est isba saelicitas Is there not a blessednesse in enjoying Gods temporall blessings here too Sit licèt sed sinistra saith that Father It is certainely a blessednesse but a left handed blessednesse a weaker a more imperfect blessednesse then spirituall blessings are As then there is dextra and sinistrabeatitudo a right handed and a left handed blessednesse in the Text so there is dextra and sinistra Interpretatio a right and a left Exposition of the Text. And as both these blessednesses temporall and spirituall are seales and testimonies of Gods love though not both of equall strength and equall evidence so both the Interpretations of these words are usefull for our edification though they bee not both of equall authority That which we call Sinistram Interpreiationem is that sense of these words which arises from the first Translators of the Bible the Septuagint and those Fathers which followed them which though it bee not an ill way is not the best because it is not according to the letter and then that which we call Dextram Interpretationem is that sense which arises pregnantly and evidently liquidly and manifestly out of the Originall Text it selfe The Authors and followers of the first sense reade not these words as we doe Beatus populus That people is blessed but Beatum dixerunt populum That people was esteemed blessed and so they referre this and all the temporall blessings mentioned in the three former Verses to a popular error to a generall mistaking to the opinions and words of wicked and worldly men that onely they desire these temporall things onely they taste a sweetnesse and apprehend a blessednesse in them whereas they who have truely their conversation in heaven are swallowed up with the contemplation of that blessednesse without any reflection upon earth or earthly things But the Author of the second sense which is God himselfe and his direct word presents it thus Beatus populus That people is truely blessed there is a true blessednesse in temporall things but yet this is but sinistra beatitudo a lesse perfect blessednesse For the followers of both Interpretations and all Translators and all Expositors meet in this That the perfect the accomplishing the consummatory blessednesse is onely in this That our God be the Lord. First then Interpretatio to make our best use of the first sense That temporall things conduce not at all to blessednesse S. Cyprians wonder is just Deum nobis solis contentum esse nobis non sufficere Deum That God should think man enough for him and man should not bee satisfied with God That God should be content with Fili da mihi cor My sonne give me thy heart and man should not be content with Pater da mihi Spiritum My God my Father grant me thy Spirit but must have temporall additions too Non est castum cor saith S. Augustine si Deum ad mercedem colit as he saith in another place Non est castauxor quae amat quia dives She is never the honester woman nor the lovinger wife that loves her husband in contemplation of her future joynture or in fruition of her present abundancies so hee sayes here Nonest castum cor That man hath not a chast a sincere heart towards God that loves him by the measure end proportion of his temporall blessings The Devill had so much colour for that argument that in prosperity there can bee no triall whether a man love God or no as that he presses it even to God himselfe in Iobs case Iob 1 Doth Iob serve God for nought hast not thou hedged him in and blessed the works of his hands and encreased his substance How canst thou tell whether he will love thee or feare thee if thou shouldst take away all this from him thou hast had no triall yet And this argument descended from that father to his children from the Devill there to those followers of his whom the Prophet Malachy reprehends for saying It is in vaine to serve God Mal. 3.14 for what profit is it that wee have kept his commandements When men are willing to prefer their friends we heare them often give these testimonies of a man He hath good parts and you need not be ashamed to speake for him hee hath money in his purse and you need not be sorry to speak for him he understands the world he knowes how things passe and he hath a discreet a supple and an appliable disposition and hee may make a fit instrument for all your purposes and you need not be afraid to speake for him But who ever casts into this scale and valuation of a man that waight that he hath a religious heart that hee feares God what profit is there in that if wee consider this world onely But what profits it a man if he get all the world and lose his owne soule And therefore that opinion That there was no profit at all no degree towards blessednesse in those temporall things
the midst of all those Egypts In all Cities disorderly and facinorous men covet to draw themselves into the skirts and suburbs of those Cities that so they may be the nearer the spoyle which they make upon passengers In all Kingdomes that border upon other Kingdomes and in Islands which have no other border but the Sea particular men who by dwelling in those skirts and borders may make their profit of spoile delight in hostility and have an adversenesse and detestation of peace but it is not so within they who till the earth and breed up cattell and imploy their industry upon Gods creatures according to Gods ordinance feele the benefit and apprehend the sweetnesse and pray for the continuance of peace This is the blessing in which God so very very often expresses his gracious purpose upon his people that he would give them peace and peace with plenty Copia O that my people had hearkned unto me sayes God I would soone have humbled their enemies Psal 81.13 ult there is their peace And I would have fed them with the fat of wheat and with the honey out of the Rocke and there is their plenty Persons who are preferred for service in the warre prove often suspicious to the Prince Ioabs confidence in his own merit and service made him insolent towards the King and the King jealous of him But no man was more suddenly nor more safely preferred then Ioseph for his counsell to resist penury and to preserve plenty and abundance within the Land See Basil in an Homily which he made in a time of dearth and drought in which he expresses himselfe with as much elegancy as any where and every where I thinke with as much as any man where he sayes there was in the skie Tristis severitas ipsa puritate molesta That the ayre was the worse for being so good and the fouler for being so faire and where he inverts the words of our Saviour Messis magna operarii pauci sayes Christ Here is a great harvest Luk. 10.2 but few workmen but Operarii multi messis parva sayes Basil Here are workmen enow but no harvest to gather in that Homily He notes a barrennesse in that which used to be fruitfull and a fruitfulnesse in that which used to be barren Terra sterilis aurum foecundum He prophecyed of our times when not onely so many families have left the Country for the City in their persons but have brought their lands into the City they have brought all their Evidences into Scriveners shops and changed all their renewing of leases every seaven yeares into renewing of bonds every six moneths They have taken a way to inflict a barrennesse upon land and to extort a fruitfulnesse from gold by usury Monsters may be got by unnaturall mixtures but there is no race no propagation of monsters money may be raised by this kinde of use but Non haerebit It is the sweat of other men and it will not stick to thine heire Nay commonly it brings not that outward blessing of plenty with it for for the most part we see no men live more penuriously more sordidly then these men doe The third of these temporall blessings is health without which both the other are no more to any man then the Rainbow was to him who was ready to drowne Quid mihi si peream ego sayes he what am I the better that God hath past his word and set to his seale in the heavens that he will drowne the world no more if I be drowned my selfe What is all the peace of the world to me if I have the rebellions and earth-quakes of shaking and burning Feavers in my body What is all the plenty of the world to me if I have a languishing consumption in my blood and in my marrow The Heathens had a goddesse to whom they attributed the care of the body deam Carnam And we that are Christians acknowledge that Gods first care of man was his body he made that first and his last care is reserved for the body too at the Resurrection which is principally for the benefit of the body There is a care belongs to the health and comelinesse of the body When the Romans canonized Pallorem and Febrim Palenesse and Fevers and made them gods they would as faine have made them Devills if they durst they worshipped them onely because they stood in feare of them Sicknesse is a sword of Gods and health is his blessing For when Hezekias had assurance enough that he should recover and live yet he had still a sense of misery in that he should not have a perfect state of health Esay 38.15 What shall I say sayes he I shall walke weakly all my yeares in the bitternesse of my soule All temporall blessings are insipid and tastlesse without health Now the third branch of this part Populus is the other In quibus not the things but the persons in whom these three blessings are here placed And it is Beatus populus when this blessednesse reaches to all dilates it selfe over all When David places blessednesse in one particular man as he does in the beginning of the first Psalme Beatus vir Blessed is that man there he pronounces that man blessed If he neither walke in the counsell of the wicked nor stand in the way of sinners nor sit in the seate of the scornfull If he doe not all walke and stand and sit in the presence and feare of God he is not blessed So if these temporall blessings fall not upon all in their proportions the people is not blessed The City may be blessed in the increase of accesse And the Lawyer may be blessed in the increase of suits and the Merchant may be blessed in the increase of meanes of getting if he be come to get as well by taking as by trading but if all be not blessed the people is not blessed yea if these temporall blessings reach not to the Prince himselfe the people is not blessed For in favorabilibus Princeps è populo is a good rule in the Law in things beneficiall the King is one of the people When God sayes by David Let all the people blesse the Lord God does not exempt Kings from that duty and when God sayes by him too God shall blesse all the people God does not exempt not exclude Kings from that benefit And therfore where such things as conduce to the beeing and the well-beeing to the substance and state to the ceremony and majesty of the Prince be not chearfully supplied and seasonably administred there that blessing is not fully faln upon them Blessed is that people that are so for the people are not so if the Prince be not so Nay the people are not blessed if these blessings be not permanent for it is not onely they that are alive now that are the people but the people is the succession If we could imagine a blessing of health
without permanency we might call an intermitting ague a good day in a fever health If we could imagine a blessing of plenty without permanency we might call a full stomach and a surfet though in a time of dearth plenty If we could imagine a blessing of peace without permanency we might call a nights sleepe though in the midst of an Army peace but it is onely provision for the permanency and continuance that makes these blessings blessings To thinke of to provide against famine and sicknesse and warre that is the blessing of plenty and health and peace One of Christs principall titles was Esay 9. that he was Princeps pacis and yet this Prince of peace sayes Non veni mittere pacem I came not to bring you peace not such a peace as should bring them security against all warre If a Ship take fire though in the midst of the Sea it consumes sooner and more irrecoverably then a thatched house upon Land If God cast a fire-brand of warre upon a State accustomed to peace it burnes the more desperately by their former security But here in our Text we have a religious King David that first prayes for these blessings for the three former Verses are a prayer and then praises God in the acknowledgement of them for this Text is an acclamatory a gratulatory glorifying of God for them And when these two meet in the consideration of temporall blessings a religious care for them a religious confessing of them prayer to God for the getting praise to God for the having Blessed is that people that is Head and members Prince and subjects present and future people that are so So blessed so thankefull for their blessings We come now Ad dextram dextrae to the right blessedness 2 Part. in the right sense and interpretation of these words to spirituall blessedness to the blessedness of the soule Estne Deo cura de bobus is the Apostles question and his answer is pregnantly implied 1 Cor. 9.9 God hath care of beasts But yet God cared more for one soule then for those two thousand hogges which he suffered to perish in the Sea when that man was dispossessed Mar. 5. A dram of spirituall is worth infinite talents of temporall Here then in this spirituall blessedness as we did in the former wee shall looke first Quid beatitudo what it is and then In quibus in what it is placed here Vt Deus eorum sit Dominus That their God bee the Lord And lastly the extent of it That all the people bee made partakers of this spirituall blessedness This blessedness then you see is placed last in the Text Beatitudo not that it cannot be had till our end till the next life In this case the Nemo ante obitum failes for it is in this life that we must find our God to be the Lord or else if we know not that here we shall meet his Nescio vos he will not know us But it is placed last because it is the waightiest and the uttermost degree of blessendness which can be had To have the Lord for our God Consider the making up of a naturall man and you shall see that hee is a convenient Type of a spirituall man too First in a naturall man wee conceive there is a soule of vegetation and of growth and secondly a soule of motion and of sense and then thirdly a soule of reason and understanding an immortall soule And the two first soules of vegetation and of sense wee conceive to arise out of the temperament and good disposition of the substance of which that man is made they arise out of man himselfe But the last soule the perfect and immortall soule that is immediatly infused by God Consider the blessedness of this Text in such degrees in such proportions First God blesses a man with riches there is his soule of vegetation and growth by that hee growes in estimation and in one kinde of true ability to produce good fruits for he hath wherewithall And then God gives this rich man the blessing of understanding his riches how to employ them according to those morall and civill duties which appertaine unto him and there is his soule of sense for many rich men have not this sense many rich men understand their owne riches no more then the Oaks of the Forrest doe their owne Akorns But last of all God gives him the blessing of discerning the mercy and the purpose of God in giving him these temporall blessings and there is his immortall soule Now for the riches themselves which is his first soule he may have them ex traduce by devolution from his parents and the civill wisedome how to governe his riches where to purchase where to sell where to give where to take which is his second soule this he may have by his owne acquisition and experience and conversation But the immortall soule that is the discerning of Gods image in every piece and of the seale of Gods love in every temporall blessing this is infused from God alone and arises neither from Parents nor the wisedome of this world how worldly wise so ever wee bee in the governing of our estate And this the Prophet may very well seeme to have intimated when he saith Psal 112.1 The generation of the righteous shall be blessed Here is a permanent blessedness to the generation Wherein is it expressed thus Riches and treasure shall bee in his house and his righteousnesse endureth for ever Hee doth not say that Simony or Usury or Extortion shall bee in his house for riches got so are not treasure Nor he doth not say that Riches well got and which are truely a blessing shall endure for ever but his righteousnesse shall endure for ever The last soule the immortall soule endures for ever The blessedness of having studied and learnt and practised the knowledge of Gods purpose in temporall blessings this blessedness shall endure for ever When thou shalt turne from the left to the right side upon thy death bed from all the honours and riches of this world to breathe thy soule into his hands that gave it this righteousness this good conscience shall endure then and then accompany thee And when thine eyes are closed and in the twinckling of his eye that closed thine thy soule shall be gone an infinite way from this honour and these riches this righteousness this good conscience shall endure then and meet thee in the gates of heaven And this is so much of that righteousness as is expressed in this Text because this is the root of all That our God be the Lord. In which In quibus first wee must propose a God that there is one and then appropriate this God to our selves that he be our God and lastly be sure that we have the right God that our God be the Lord. For for the first he that enterprises any thing seeks any thing possesses any thing
us nor great persons can advance for us nor any Prince can take from us This is the Lord in this place this is Iehova and Germen Iehovae The Lord Esay 4.2 and the off-spring of the Lord and none is the off-spring of God but God that is the Son and the Holy Ghost So that this perfect blessednesse consists in this the true knowledge and worship of the Trinity And this blessing that is the true Religion and profession of Christ Jesus Populus is to be upon all the people which is our last Confideration Blessed is the Nation whose God is the Lord Psal 33.12 and the people whom he hath chosen for his Inheritance And here againe as in the former Consideration of temporall blessednesse The people includes both Prince and people and then the blessing consists in this that both Prince and people be sincerely affected to the true Religion And then the people includes all the people and so the blessing consists in this that there be an unanimitie a consent in all in matter of Religion And lastly the people includes the future people and there the blessing consists in this that our posterity may enjoy the same purity of Religion that we doe The first tentation that fell amonst the Apostles carried away one of them Iudas was transported with the tentation of money and how much For thirty peeces and in all likelihood he might have made more profit then that out of the privy purse The first tentation carried one but the first persecution carried away nine when Christ was apprehended none was left but two and of one of those two S. Hierom saies Vtinà m fugisset non negasset Christum I would Peter had fled too and not scandalized the cause more by his stay in denying his Master for a man may stay in the outward profession of the true Religion with such purposes and to such ends as he may thereby damnifie the cause more and damnifie his owne soule more then if he went away to that Religion to which his conscience though ill rectified directs him Now though when such tentations and such persecutions doe come the words of our Saviour Christ will alwayes be true Luke 12.32 Feare not little flocke for it is Gods pleasure to give you the Kingdome though God can lay up his seed-corne in any little corner yet the blessing intended here is not in that little seed-corne nor in the corner but in the plenty when all the people are blessed and the blessed Spirit blowes where he will and no doore nor window is shut against him And therefore let all us blesse God for that great blessing to us in giving us such Princes as make it their care Nebona caducasint ne mala recidiva That that blessednesse which we enjoy by them may never depart from us that those miseries which wee felt before them may never returne to us Almighty God make alwaies to us all Prince and people these temporall blessings which we enjoy now Peace and Plenty and Health seales of his spirituall blessings and that spirituall blessednesse which we enjoy now the profession of the onely true Religion a seale of it selfe and a seale of those eternall blessings which the Lord the righteous Judge hath laid up for his in that Kingdome which his Son our Saviour hath purchased for us with the inestimable price of his incorruptible blood In which glorious Son of God c. SERM. LXXV Preached to the King at VVhite-hall April 15. 1628. ESAY 32.8 But the liberall deviseth liberall things and by liberall things he shall stand BY two wayes especially hath the Gospell beene propagated by men of letters by Epistles and by Sermons The Apostles pursued both wayes frequent in Epistles assiduous in Sermons And as they had the name of Apostles from Letters from Epistles from Missives for the Certificates and Testimonials and safe-conducts and letters of Credit which issued from Princes Courts or from Courts that held other Jurisdiction were in the formularies and termes of Law called Apostles before Christs Apostles were called Apostles so they executed the office of their Apostleship so too by Writing by Preaching This succession in the Ministery of the Gospell did so too Chrysost Therefore it is said of S. Chrysostome Vbique praedicavit quia ubique lectus He preached every where because he was read every where And he that is said to have beene S. Pelusiota Chrysostomes disciple Isidore is said to have written ten thousand Epistles and in them to have delivered a just and full Commentary upon all the Scriptures In the first age of all they scarce went any other way for writing but this by Epistles Of Clement of Ignatius of Polycarpus of Martial there is not much offered us with any probability but in the name of Epistles When Christians gathered themselves with more freedome and Churches were established with more liberty Preaching prevailed And there is no exercise that is denoted by so many names as Preaching Origen began for I thinke we have no Sermons till Origens And though hee began early early if wee consider the age of the Church a thousand foure hundred yeares since and early if wee consider his owne age for Origens preached by the commandement and in the presence of Bishops before he was a Churchman yet he suffered no Sermons of his to be copied till he was sixty yeares old Now Origen called his Homilies And the first Gregory of the same time with Origen that was Bishop of Neocesaria hath his called Sermons And so names multiplied Homilies Sermons Conciones Lectures S. Augustins Enarrations Dictiones that is Speeches Damascens and Cyrils Orations nay one excercise of Caesareus conveied in the forme of a Dialogue were all Sermons Add to these Church-exercises Homilies Sermons Lectures Orations Speeches and the rest the Declamations of Civill men in Courts of Justice the Tractates of Morall men written in their Studies nay goe backe to your our owne times when you went to Schoole or to the University and remember but your owne or your fellowes Themes or Problemes or Common-places and in all these you may see evidence of that to which the Holy Ghost himselfe hath set a Seale in this text that is the recommendation of Bountie of Munificence of Liberalitie The Liberall deviseth liberall things and by liberall things hee shall stand That which makes me draw into consideration Divisio the recommendation of this vertue in civill Authors and exercises as well as in Ecclesiasticall is this That our Expositors of all the three ranks and Classes The Fathers and Ancients The later men in the Romane Church and ours of the Reformation are very near equally divided in every of these three rankes whether this Text be intended of a morall and a civill or of a spirituall and Ecclesiasticall liberality whether this prophecy of Esay in this Chapter beginning thus Behold a King shall reigne in righteousnesse Ver. 1. and
never an Author So no man thought his house well furnished if he had not Indulgencies for every season if he bought not all that came to market if he had not Indulgence upon Indulgencies present and successive Indulgences possessory and reversionary Indulgences totall and supernumerary current and concurrent Indulgences to delude the justice of God withall Well to our true Purgatory which we spake of before Those crosses which God is pleased to lay upon us belong true Indulgencies The constant promises of our faithfull God that he will give us the issue with the tentation and that as the Apostle sayes No tentation shall befall us Si non humana but that which appertaines to man 1 Cor. 10.13 Now for this Humana tentatio tentation or affliction that appertaines to man it is not onely affliction that appertaines to man so as that other men doe inflict it when wicked men revile and calumniate and oppresse the godly it is not onely that Chrysost though so S. Chrysostome interprets it Nor is this affliction appertaining to man because man himselfe inflicts it upon himselfe our owne inherent corruption being become Spontaneus Daemon a Devill in our owne bosome it is not onely that though so S. Hierom interpret it Hieron nor is this affliction appertaining to man so called Humana as humanum is opposed Daemoniaco That all torments falling upon the Devill worke in him more and more obduration but the corrections inflicted by God upon man worke a reconciliation it is not onely this though so S. Gregory interpret it But this affliction appertaines so to a Christian man Gregory as the soule it selfe and as reason appertaines to a naturall man He is not a man that is without a reasonable soule he is not a Christian that is without correction It appertaines unto man so as that it is convenient more that it is expedient more then that that it is necessary and more then all that that it is essentiall to a Christian As when the spirit returnes to him that gave it there is a dissolution of the man So when God withdrawes his visitation there is a dissolution of a Christian for so God expresses the spirituall Death and the height of his anger in the Prophet I will make my wrath towards thee to rest Ezek. 15.42 and my jealousie shall depart from thee That is I will looke no more after thee I will study thy recovery and thine amendment no farther Have ye forgot the Consolation sayes the Apostle what is that Consolation Heb. 12.5 6. Is it that you shall have no affliction No This is the Consolation That whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth and he scourgeth every son whom he receiveth It is generall to all sons for If ye be without correction whereof all are partakers then are ye bastards and not sons Ver. 8. And then to shew us how this Purgatory and these Indulgencies accompany on another how Gods crosses and his deliverances doe ever concurre together wee see the Holy Ghost hath so ordered and disposed these two Mercy and Correction in this one verse Ver. 6. as that we cannot say which is first the Correction or the Mercy the Purgatory or the Indulgence For first the Indulgence is before the Purgatory The Mercy before the Correction in one place Whom he loveth he chasteneth first God loves and then he chastneth and then after The Purgatory is before the Indulgence the Correction is before Mercy He scourgeth every son whom he receiveth first he scourges him and then he receives him They are so disposed as that both are made first and both last wee cannot tell whether precede or succeed they are alwayes both together they are alwaies all one As long as his love lasts he corrects us and as long as he corrects us he loves us And so we have a justifiable prayer for the Dead that is for our soules dead in their sins Cor novum O Lord create a new heart in me And wee have a justifiable Purgatory Purgabit aream Luke 4.17 Esay 26.15 If we be Gods floore he hath his fanne in his hand and he will make us cleane And we have justifiable Indulgences Indulsisti genti Domine indulsisti genti Thou hast been indulgent to thy people O Lord thou hast been indulgent to us Wee cannot complaine Ier. 4.10 as they begin rather to murmur then to complaine Ah Lord God surely thou hast deceived thy people saying you shall have peace and the sword pierceth to the heart For when this sword of Gods corrections shall pierce to the heart that very sword shall be but as a Probe to search the wound nay that very wound shall be but as an issue to draine and preserve the whole body in health for his mercies are so above all his works as that the very works of his Justice are mercy And so not the Prayer for the Dead not the Purgatory not the Indulgences of the Roman Church but we who have them truely doe truely receive a benefit from this Text which Text is a proofe of the Resurrection Because wee feele a Resurrection by grace now because we beleeve a Resurrection to glory hereafter therefore we can give an account of this Baptisme for the dead in our Text The particular sense of which words will be the Exercise of another day This day wee end both with our humble thanks for all Indulgences which God hath given us in our Purgatories for former deliverances in former crosses and with humble prayer also that hee ever afford us such a proportion of his medicinall corrections as may ever testifie his presence and providence upon us in the way and bring us in the end to the Kingdome of his Son Christ Jesus Amen SERM. LXXVIII Preached at S. PAULS June 21. 1626. 1 COR. 15.29 Else what shall they doe which are baptized for the dead if the dead rise not at all why are they then baptized for the dead WEE are now come at last Divisio to that which was first in our intention How these words have beene detorted and misapplied by our Adversaries of the Roman Church for the establishing of those heresies which we have formerly opposed And then the divers wayes which sounder and more Orthodoxall Divines have held in the Exposition thereof that so from the first Part wee may learne what to avoid and shun and from the second what to embrace and follow Of all the places of Scripture which Bellarmine brings for the maintenance of Purgatory excepting onely that one place of the Maccabees And of that place we must say as it was said of that jealous husband which set a watch and spie upon his Wife Quis custodit custodes Who shall watch them that watch her So when they prove matters of faith out of the Maccabees we say Quis probat probantem who shall prove that booke to be Scripture by which they prove that doctrine to be true But