blame men for so doing seeing blood defileth a land Acts. 28.3 and bringeth a curse upon the earth The poor barbarous Islanders of Melita who had nothing to guid them but the light of nature 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 were perswaded that vengeance pursued Murderers both by sea and land And now lest any should think God favours those Murderers who by flight escape the hand of the Magistrate and keep from the axe and the halter let them but seriously reflect upon Cain's case and then they will be brought to understand that the Lord can sufficiently punish a murderer though he suffers him long to live upon earth and exempts him form a bloody death That God who afterward so solemenly said Gen. 9.6 Who so sheddeth man's blood by man shall his blood be shed and commanded that no satisfaction should be taken by the Magistrate Num. 35.31 for the life of a Murderer That God I say did let Cain live after his murther for the which may be given these two reasons First For the paucity of Mankind Had Cain died for his fact by the hand of men Adam must have been his Executioner But though the Devill sets one brother to kill another yet God doth not set the father to kill the sonne much less the sonne to kill the father the servant to kill the Master or the subject to kil the King Though it pleased the Devill that wicked Cain should kill righteous Abell yet it pleased not God that father Adam should kill wicked Cain secondly Therefore is Cain delivered from exemplary death because he is marked out and designed for eternall vengeance So farre is his security from safety and his reprieve from mercy that it is a dreadfull judgment and a sore severity And it had been well for some murderers that they had not escaped so well in this world as they have done It had doubtless been much better for their famillies and posterity in this world and it might have been better with themselves in the next Deliver us from blood-guiltyness O God and let the blood of thy Sonne Jesus Christ appear for us in thy sight And hear thou that speaking better things than that of Abell Tumultuous Resolutions tend not to Edification Gen. 11. WItness the story of the Bable-Builders who pretending to be wiser than their forefathers devised a way how to be above all mischances By building a City and a Tower whose top should reach to Heaven This was a conceit above the Moon though the work came farre short of it Oh how people please themselves with a strong conceit of going to Heaven a new way which none ever went before them A fool's paradise is his own invention But the multitude go the wrong way It must be a prodigious unlucky Building where every one is a master-workman and the defign to top God in his throne He that sits in Heaven laughs such projectors to scorn and hath such politicians in derision Go to said they let us found and build up Go to said God let us go down and confound The people were all then of one mind and God scatter'd them by making them of many Languages God then made the people of many Languages to hinder the building of Babel But now the Devil hath made the people of as many or more opinions to help Babel forward And as they of old misunderstanding one another brought brick for mortar a hammer in stead of a trowell and fire in stead of water so men now mistake rudeness for Religion Religion for superstition madness for Christian zeal prophaneness for wit and ruine for reformation Pretending to sink Babylon to the pit of hell they have cryed up Babel to the Heavens by setting their mouths wide open against the Church of God saying Down with it down with it even to the groud Church-Men Church-habits THe words of the Lord to Moses for this putpose are these Exod. 28.2 And thou shalt make holy garments for Aaron thy brother for glory and for Beauty Moses as Prince by God's appointment was to put Aaron and his sons and the Levites into their distinct Canonicall habits according to the respective dignity of their Persons and places Which ornaments and Vestments they were enjoyned upon pain of Death to have upon them when they came in unto the Tabernacle of the Congregation or ministred in the holy place As appear's in the last verse of that Chapter I know not how it came to pass but so it was that a Priestly Habit in Divine Worship and Sacred Administrations hath been had in as much Disgrace amongst Christians as ever it was had in Reverence amongst the Jews God made it as much as their lives were worth for the Priests in the Law to minister without their peculiar Habit And Men made it as much as their lives were worth for the Priests to minister in their Ecclesiasticall Habits in the time of the Gospell Yea there have been some who pretended that the Clericall Vestments debilitated the Pastours parts srustrated the graces of the Spirit and hazarded the soules of the flock And whereas God enjoyned his Priests of old to have robes for Glory and for Beauty they would not allow his houshold-servants the use of those garments which God's vicegerents had enjoyned them for uniformity and for deceney They put scorn contempt and opprobious terms both upon the things and Persons according to the foolish invention of their giddy brains An Episcocall Habit was they said the Livery of Antichrist and the Surplice the Smock of of the whore of Babylon Surely these people had forgotten that God was the instituter of the first Mitre and the Linnen Ephod They considered not how in respect of their use though not for their first Principles whereof they are made even garments appropriate unto Persons in Holy Orders are called Holy and that by God's example It is too gross too carnall and too rude for men and women who pretend to more than an ordinary illumination to pick a hole in the Priest's Coat about the externall form and figure to think that a Hood makes a Monk or a Mitre an Antichrist or that the Mysticall Whore of Babylon is circumscribed within a materiall small Linnen Ephod I would not have the female Sex such as are called Holy Sisters of all things quarrell with clean Linnen lest they bring themselves whthin the compass of the Cotholick Inquisition for sluttery Let them hate the garments spotted with the flesh As for Surplices howsoever they have been contrived and used by them since their dear sacreligious brethren stole them from the Church and brought them to their hands they were never formerly the Smock of a Whore It is possible since they converted them to their own use they may properly so be called For Thieves and Harlots go hand in hand together in the World as Publcans and Sinners go in the Gospell It is a pitifull thing I mean quarrell when people fall out with their Ministers
and the Church which oppositions at the first were but the results of spleenfull animosities taken up against the miscarriages of some particular persons in place and office Sìc nimiùm altercando veritas amittitur Thus by too much strife truth is lost And now whereas Forreigners were wont to accuse English men of being too phlegmatick it must henceforth be acknowledged that they are too cholerick And which is worse their anger is like a torch kindling soon and burning long And very deplorable it is that neither the reflection upon the water of our own Baptisme nor the dews and showers of God's refreshing mercy after the parching heat of our late affliction nor yet the prayers and tears of the Church can quench this civil fire And although most of them who first did blow the coales and many who brought fuell to the pile are long since turned to dust and ashes yet too many there are who thrust their fingers to rake in the embers Suscitare hesternos ignes to renew our late mischiefes and to revive our common miseries Surely the wrath of man can never work the righteousness of God He that saith He maketh his ministers a flaming fire Psal 104.4 intended thereby the spiritual edification of men and not their bodily destruction And he who sirnamed two of his Apostles the sons of thunder did not approve their sudden flash and hasty bolt Luk. 9.54 when they moved for fire to come down from heaven to consume the Samaritans The Tyrants of Sicily invented no greater torment for others than their own corroding envy was to themselves And as ambition is both the delight and the rack of the ambitious so a person overcome with choler is punishment and misery enough to himself here although he should meet with none hereafter His flesh only wanting a good cause is broyled like St Lawrence on a gridiron his bones are stewed in his wasting marrow and his heart is boyled in his own blood And now as the Lord said to the Prophet Jonah doth any man think that he doth well to be angry that he doth well to be angry against others unto death then let him think upon him who is ready to judge both the quick and dead who for our sins is justly displeased and in whose sight without his mercy no man living shall be justified And who may stand in his sight when he is angry Let the thought of that great day which shall be revealed by fire cool and quench the rage of every man's choler lest he be consumed in the flames wherein he hath delighted Melancholly ANd hast thou found me O mine enemy this needs must I say of thee as Aristippus did of a wife thou art parvum pulchrum magnum malum thou art to my doting fancy in thy Visits the fairest and the blackest the sweetest and the bitterest of my friends of my foes and of my intimate acquaintance I cannot but admire thee as St. Bernard did Ambition and say Lib. 3. de Consid Quemodò omnes torquens omnibus places How doest thou please all those whom thou tormentest And oh that I might ever have such a stock of charity for all my visible Enemies among the children of men as I have for thee I know thou hurrest mee and yet I freely forgive thee I hugg I embrace I cherish thee and the world can never cause me to forsake thee And yet to give this humour it 's due it is never so great an enemy but it may be as great a friend What some have affirmed of Geniusses how every man from his birth hath two waiting upon him one for his good the other for his harm may be expounded of Melancholly doing both offices which is a weapon both for offence and defence as it is used On the one side it is a check to pride and self-love a barre against presumption a threshold to humility a door to patience wings to divine meditation and an handmaid unto devotion And whereas the jolly world count such a mans life to be madness the truth is as Cotys King of Thrace said of his severity this madness keep 's men in their right wits On the other side when it is exorbitant and indisposed Melancholly is a traytor to the Master a foe to humanity an Antagonist to reason the Cut-throat to hope and joy a black cataract upon the eyes of the mind preventing divine illumination and finally a desperate sollicitour unto perdition Sìc fit Melancholicus aùt Deus aùt Daemon Thus a Melancholly person is either a God or a Devil And what shall I say of this humour It is a kind of ubiquitary When I take the wings of the morning and mount upon my prime meditations towards heaven then melancholly is there And when in heavyness of spirit I go down towards hell it is there also The light of the day cannot expell it and the night feed's it I cannot flee from this haunting ghost nor can I go from it's presence Though I change places places change not me I am like the young man who admiring why he was never the better for travell was told by Socrates that the reason was Laert. because in all his travels he still carried himself about him So carry I my mortality my misery my imperfections and therewithall my melancholly It is true I bless God for it I look towards heaven but it is at a great distance and through many clouds both of affliction and of ignorance I am no more satisfied nor can be with all that I have heard or with all that the world can tell me in this land of my pilgrimage concerning the joyes above and the glory of that eternall kingdome 1 King 10. than the Queen of Sheba was with the report which she heard in her own country concerning Solomon's Court. Untill her eyes saw she was rather afflicted than affected rather tormented than contented She did not hear the one half nor do I one thing of a thousand Eye hath not seen ear hath not heard 1 Cor. 2.9 nor hath it entred into the heart of man When I awake up at the last day I trust in God I shall be satisfied But how long Lord most holy and true How long O when shall I come to appear before the presence of God Alas when I think to come nearest heaven in my soliloquies and private solaces then this my bosome-companion crosseth my purpose and bring 's me down to the pits brink My own heart condemnes my heart of foolish presumption for my hasty desire to be made 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 like to the Angels of God in heaven who am become through sin even as a beast before God and may be compared unto the brute creatures that perish When I hear the holy man David putting the question Psal 24. Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord and who shall rise up in his holy place and then finde him answering himself Even he
as the sons of Jacob did with their brother Joseph who hated him for the singular love their father bare him Gen. 37.3 4 and for the peculiar Coat he put upon him And therefore could not speak peaceably unto him This is a strain beyond the malice and spite of Presbiterian Corah or Independent Dathan and Abiram though tending to the like effect through the garments to wound the function and together with Aaron's Mitre to throw down Moses Scepter Good Saints surely they are that deal with the Priests of the Lord as the Thieves dealt with the Traveller between Jerusalem and Jericho who stripped him of his raiment Lu. 10.30 and wounded him and left him half dead And if the injury done to the Ministers of Christ and their contempt and scorn be done to Christ himself Lu 10.16 Act. 9.5 as all who have the faith of Christ must believe than as the Church once in the Person of Christ spake concerning those barbarous souldiers so Christ again in the person of his Church may say of souldiers as bad They parted my garments amongst them and for Vesture they cast lots And God deliver us from unreasonable men in whose eyes our very Coats though honourable make us criminall It is a sad time when violence is preferred before science when passion overrules reason and the sword strikes against the Gown Even common reason and generall civil practise will afford distinct professiions their respective differentiall Habits And shall not the Church have leave to rule her children in their garbs and services Did Christ promise to send his Holy Spirit upon his Church Jo. 14.26 and to lead Her into all necessary truth and knowledge And hath he not allowed her so much discretion as to clad her children To appoint her inward Attendants their Habits and Liveries both for working dayes and Holy dayes We see when any fault is espyed in a Minister he is presently checked by his Coat that a Man in his Coat should do so And indeed God Almighty did upbraid Eli for his indulgence to his sons in their sins by the Linnen Ephod 1. Sam. 2.28 If then the sin of the Priest be aggravated by his Priestly garments then the garment serves to put the Priest in mind that he ought to be clothed with righteousness Again if the sin of the Priest is the greater for his Coat then their sin must be the greater allo who do wrong to him that wear's that holy garment And so much is to be gathered from the black deed of Doeg the Edomite which is heightened by this circumstance that he slew fourscore and five persons 1 Sam. 22.18 that did wear a Linnen Ephod The white and outward garment I hope I may say without offence is Angelicall Mark 9.3 Jo. 20.12 Revel 1.13 it is coelestiall So Christ appeared at his transfiguration So the Angels appeared at Christ's resurrection And Christ appeared unto St John in a Priestly habit Seeing God and Angels honour this Priestly habit how can wretched man despite it Seeing they are pleased to appear thus to men why should the Ministers of God disdain to appear in like habit in the presence of God and in the face of his Congregation The Ministers of God in a qualified sence are Angels that is the Messengers of the Lord. And wee all hope to be as Angels of God in heaven Why then should we be afraid to be like them in this also here upon earth Rev. 19.8 Clean Linnen is in a mysticall sense the righteousness of the Saints then let no man wickedly stain it neither let any man maliciously strain it to make it otherwise And if any would know how to reconcile black and white in the ministeriall habit let them take it thus The black becomes us as Mourners whose Lord and Master is for a while gone from us and as more than ordinary Mourners who besides our own sins and miseries have the sins and miseries of the World to lament and bewail The black shew's what our present condition here is in re indeed and at hand The which shew's what we are in spe in hope and what we shall be hereafter In this World we must have our black and white and most commonly black untill we shall be clothed upon with immortality In the mean time our tribulation worketh patience our patience hope our hope perseverance and that will bring the Crown Contraria juxtase posita magìs elucescunt Thus black and white are reconciled Thus contrary things do set off and beautifie one another Thus all things work together for good to them that fear God It hath been the the constant practise of the Church of God in all ages to have peculiar habits wherein to officiate in holy things Euseb l. 3. cap. 28. And it hath ever been accounted scandalous for Persons in holy orders to transgress this practise St John did wear the Priestly Habit called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Policrates Bishop of Ephesus in his Epistle to Victor Bishop of Rome doth witness And Eustathius Bishop of Sebastia in Armenia was condemned and deposed by the Councell at Gangra for casting off his proper habit and putting himself into the garb of the philosophers for putting his follwers likewise into a new habit Socr. scho lib. 2. cap. 33. for countenancing and encouraging Conventicles and for taking servants from the command of their Mastrs under the colour of Religion As also for crossing the Church inobservation of times abolishing the fasts of the Church and prescribing to his followers to fast on Sundays By whichit appearts the unlucky man was unlike his Name for that carried constancy and stability in it But he had nothing less in himself And it would be noted that when Men begin to waver and vary from the Church but in some outward things they do not stay there but fall into pernicious Principles and practises God grant there may not now be found in the Church of God Bishops of Eustathius his temper to the Countenancing of Separatists to the disquiet of the Church and to the hinderance of piety and of Churstian amity For as Plato told his young man though it be no great fault to play yet it is a great fault much to use it So A custome in disagreement though but in small matters will in the end prove no small matter Gehazi's Leprosie worse than Naamans 2 Kings 5. NAaman the famous Generall of the King of Syria's Army had an inbred Enemy which he could neither flee nor chase and that was his Leprosie For which he is advised by his captive Maid to repair to the prophet Elisha He is forthwith sent with the Letters Commendatory or rather Mandatory of the King of Syria to the King of Israel And he comes as though he had come to Court to trade with some Malefactors near the King some Merchants of the Church and State to buy places For he brings ten Talents of