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A20637 LXXX sermons preached by that learned and reverend divine, Iohn Donne, Dr in Divinity, late Deane of the cathedrall church of S. Pauls London Donne, John, 1572-1631.; Donne, John, 1604-1662.; Merian, Matthaeus, 1593-1650, engraver.; Walton, Izaak, 1593-1683. 1640 (1640) STC 7038; ESTC S121697 1,472,759 883

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of all And if there should be no other bodies in heaven then his yet yet now he is Lord of all as he is Head of the Church Aske of me sayes his Father and I will give thee the heathen for thine inheritance Psal 2.8 and the utter most parts of the Earth for thy possession And as it is added ver 6. I have set my King upon my holy hill of Sion So he hath made him Lord Head of the Jews and of the Gentiles too of Sion and of the Nations also Hee hath consecrated his person raised his humane nature to the glorious region of blessed Spirits to Heaven and he hath dignified him with an office made him Lord Head of the Church not only of Jews and Gentiles upon earth but of the Militant and Triumphant Church too Our two generall parts were Scientia 2. Part. modus what we must all know and by what we must know it Our knowledge is this Exaltation of Jesus and our meanes is implied in the first word of the Text Therefore Therefore Therefore because he is raised from the Dead for to that Resurrection expressed in three or foure severall phrases before the Text is this Text and this Exaltation referred Christ was delivered for our sins raised for our justification and upon that depends all Christs descending into hell and his Resurrection in our Creed make but one Article and in our Creed we beleeve them both alike Quis nisi Infidelis negaverit apud inferos fuisse Christum saies S. Augustine Who but an Infidell will deny Christs descending into hell And if he beleeve that to be a limme of the article of the Resurrection His descent into hell must rather be an inchoation of his triumph then a consummation of his Exinanition The first step of his Exaltation there rather then the last step of his Passion upon the Crosse But the Declaration the Manifestation that which admits no disputation was his Resurrection Factus id est declaratus per Resurrectionem saies S. Cyrill He was made Christ and Lord that is declared evidently to be so 1 Cor. 1.20 by his Resurrection As there is the like phrase in S. Paul God hath made the wisdome of this world foolishnesse that is declared it to be so And therefore it is imputed to be a crucifying of the Lord Jesus againe Heb. 6.6 Non credere eum post mortem immortalem Not to beleeve that now after his having overcome death in his Resurrection he is in an immortall and in a glorious state in heaven For when the Apostle argues thus 1 Cor. 15.14 If Christ be not risen then is our preaching in vaine and your faith in vaine he implies the contrary too If you beleeve the Resurrection we have preached to good purpose Mortuum esse Christum August pagani credunt resurrexisse propria fides Christianorum The Heathen confesse Christs death To beleeve his Resurrection is the proper character of a Christian for the first stone of the Christian faith was laid in this article of the Resurrection In the Resurrection onely was the first promise performed Ipse conteret He shall bruise the Serpents head for in this he triumphed over Death and Hell And the last stone of our faith is laid in the same article too that is the day of Judgement of a day of Judgement God hath given an assurance unto all men saies S. Paul at Athens In that he hath raised Christ Iesus from the dead Acts 17.31 In this Christ makes up his circle in this he is truly Alpha and Omega His comming in Paradise in a promise his comming to Judgement in the clouds are tied together in the Resurrection And therefore all the Gospell all our preaching is contracted to that one text To beare witnesse of the Resurrection onely for that Acts 1.22 was there need of a new Apostle There was a necessity of one to be chosen in Iudas roome to be a witnesse of the Resurrection Non ait caeterorum sed tantùm Resurrectionis saies S. Chrysostome He does not say to beare witnesse of the other articles but onely of the Resurrection he charges him with no more instructions he needs no more in his Commission but to preach the Resurrection Athan. for in that Trophaeum de morte excitavit indubitatum reddidit corruptionem deletam Here is a retreat from the whole warfare here is a Trophee erected upon the last enemy The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death and here is the death of that enemy in the Resurrection And therefore to all those who importuned him for a signe Christ still turnes upon the Resurrection Iohn 2.38 Mat. 12.38 The Jewes pressed him in generall Quod signum What signe showest thou unto us and he answers Destroy this Temple this body and in three dayes I will raise it In another place the Scribes and the Pharisees joyne Master we would see a signe from thee and he tels them There shall be no signe but the signe of the Prophet Ionas who was a type of the Resurrection And then the Pharisees and Sadduces joyn now they were bitter enemies to one another but as Tertullian saies Semper inter duos latrones crucifixus Christus It was alwaies Christs case to be crucified betweene two Thieves So these though enemies joyne in this vexation They aske a signe as the rest and as to the rest Christ gives that answer of Ionas So that Christ himselfe determines all summes up all in this one Article the Resurrection Now Nos if the Resurrection of this Jesus have made him not onely Christ Anointed and consecrated in Heaven in his owne person but made him Lord then he hath Subjects upon whom that dominion and that power works and so we have assurance of a resurrection in him too That he is made Lord of us by his Resurrection is rooted in prophecie It pleased the Lord to bruise him saies the Prophet Esay But he shall see his seed Esay 53.10 and he shall prolong his daies that is he shall see those that are regenerate in him live with him forever It is rooted in prophecy and it spreads forth in the Gospell To this end saies the Apostle Christ died and rose that he might be Lord of the dead and of the living Now Rom. 14.9 Gregor what kinde of Lord if he had no subjects Cum videmus caput super aquas when the head is above water will any imagine the body to be drowned What a perverse consideration were it to imagine a live head and dead members Or consider our bodies in our selves and Our bodies are Temples of the Holy Ghost and shall the Temples of the holy Ghost lye for ever for ever buried in their rubbidge They shall not for the day of Judgement is the day of Regeneration as it is called in the Gospell Mat. 19.28 August Quia caro nostra ita generabitur per
dereliction on Gods part he cals not upon him by this name not My Father but My God my God why hast thou forsaken me Mat. 27.37 But when he would incline him to mercy mercy to others mercy to enemies he comes in that name wherein he could be denied nothing Father Father forgive them they know not what they doe He is the Lord of Hosts Luke 23.24 There hee scatters us in thunder transports us in tempests enwraps us in confusion astonishes us with stupefaction and consternation The Lord of Hosts but yet the Father of mercies There he receives us into his own bowels fills our emptinesse with the blood of his own Son and incorporates us in him The Lord of Hosts but the Father of mercy Sometimes our naturall Fathers die before they can gather any state to leave us but he is the immortall Father and all things that are as soone as they were were his Sometimes our naturall Fathers live to waste and dissipate that state which was left them to be left us but this is the Father out of whose hands and possession nothing can be removed and who gives inestimably and yet remaines inexhaustible Sometimes our naturall Fathers live to need us and to live upon us but this is that Father whom we need every minute and requires nothing of us but that poore rent of Benedictus sit Blessed praised glorified be this Father This Father of mercies of mercies in the plurall David calls God Miserationum Psal 59.17 Numb 14.19 Psal 51.1 Misericordiam suam His mercy all at once God is the God of my mercy God is all ours and all mercy Pardon this people sayes Moses Secundùm magnitudinem misericordiae According to the greatnesse of thy mercy Pardon me sayes David Have mercy upon me Secùndum multitudinem misericordiarum According to the multitude of thy mercies His mercy in largenesse in number extends over all It was his mercy that we were made and it is his mercy that we are not consumed David calls his mercy Multiplicatam and Mirificatam Psal 17.7 Psal 31.22 It is manifold and it is marvellous miraculous Shew thy marvellous loving kindnesse and therefore David in severall places carries it Super judicium above his judgements Super Coelos above the heavens Super omnia opera above all his works And for the multitude of his mercies for we are now upon the consideration of the plurality thereof Pater miserationum Father of mercies put together that which David sayes Psal 89.50 Vbi misericordiae tuae antiquae Where are thy ancient mercies His mercy is as Ancient as the Ancient of dayes who is God himselfe And that which another Prophet sayes Omni mane His mercies are new every morning And put betweene these two betweene Gods former and his future mercies his present mercy in bringing thee this minute to the consideration of them and thou hast found Multiplicatam and Mirificatam manifold and wondrous mercy But carry thy thoughts upon these three Branches of his mercy and it will be enough First that upon Adams fall and all ours in him he himselfe would think of such a way of mercy as from Adam to that man whom Christ shall finde alive at the last day no man would ever have thought of that is that to shew mercy to his enemies he would deliver his owne his onely his beloved Son to shame to torments to death That hee would plant Germen Iehovae in semine mulieris The blossome the branch of God in the seed of the woman This mercy in that first promise of that Messias was such a mercy as not onely none could have undertaken but none could have imagined but God himselfe And in this promise we were conceived In visceribus Patris In the bowels of this Father of mercies In these bowels in the womb of this promise we lay foure thousand yeares The blood with which we were fed then was the blood of the Sacrifices and the quickning which we had there was an inanimation by the often refreshing of this promise of that Messias in the Prophets But in the fulnesse of time that infallible promise came to an actuall performance Christ came in the flesh and so Venimus ad partum In his birth we were borne and that was the second mercy in the promise in the performance he is Pater miserationum Father of mercies And then there is a third mercy as great That he having sent his Son and having re-assumed him into heaven againe he hath sent his Holy Spirit to governe his Church and so becomes a Father to us in that Adoption in the application of Christ to us by the Holy Ghost and this as that which is intended in the last word Deus totius Consolationis The God of all Comfort I may know that there is a Messias promised and yet be without comfort Consolatio in a fruitlesse expectation The Jews are so in their dispersion When the Jews will still post-date the commings of Christ when some of them say There was no certaine time of his comming designed by the Prophets And others There was a time but God for their sins prorogued it And others againe God kept his word the Messiah did come when it was promised he should come but for their sins he conceales himselfe from Manifestation when the Jews will postdate his first comming and the Papists will antidate his second comming in a comming that cannot become him That he comes even to his Saints in torment before he comes in glory That when he comes to them at their dissolution at their death he comes not to take them to Heaven but to cast them into one part of hell That the best comfort which a good man can have at his death is but Purgatory Miserable comforters are they all How faire a beame of the joyes of Heaven is true comfort in this life If I know the mercies of God exhibited to others and feele them not in my self I am not of Davids Church Psal 59.1 not of his Quire I cannot sing of the mercies of God I may see them and I may sigh to see the mercies of God determined in others and not extended to me but I cannot sing of the mercies of God if I find no mercy But when I come to that Psal 94.19 Consolationes tuae laetificaverunt In the multitude of my thoughts within me thy comforts delight my soule then the true Comforter is descended upon me and the Holy Ghost hath over-shadowed me Mat. 5.4 and all that shall be borne of me and proceed from me shall be holy Blessed are they that mourne sayes Christ But the blessednesse is not in the mourning but because they shall be comforted Blessed am I in the sense of my sins and in the sorrow for them but blessed therefore because this sorrow leads me to my reconciliation to God and the consolation of his Spirit Whereas if I sinke in this sorrow in this dejection
had been well if Bathsheba had bathed within doores and with more caution but yet these errors alone we should not be apt to condemne in such persons except by Gods permitting greater sins to follow upon these we were taught that even such things as seeme to us in their nature to be indifferent have degrees of naturall and essentiall ill in them which must be avoyded even in the probability nay even in the possibility that they may produce sin And as from this Example we draw that Conclusion That sins which are but the Children of indifferent actions become the Parents of great sins which is the industry of sin to exalt it selfe and as it were ennoble it selfe above the stocke from which it was derived The next sin will needs be a better sin then the last So have we also from David this Conclusion that this generation of sin is infinite infinite in number infinite in duration So infinite both waies as that Luther who seldome checks himselfe in any vehement expression could not forbeare to say Si Nathan non venisset If Nathan had not come to David David had proceeded to the sin against the Holy Ghost O how impossible a thing is it then for us to condition and capitulate with God or with our owne Nature and say to him or to our selves We will sin thus long and no longer Thus far and no farther this sin and no more when not onely the frailty of man but even the justice of God provokes us though not as Author or cause of sin to commit more and more sins after wee have entangled and enwrapped our selves in former Who can doubt but that in this yeares space in which David continued in his sin but that he did ordinarily all the externall acts of the religious Worship of God who can doubt but that he performed all the Legall Sacrifices and all the Ceremoniall Rites Yea we see that when Nathan put Davids case in another name of a rich man that had taken away a poore mans onely sheepe David was not onely just but he was vehement in the execution of Justice Hee was saies the text exceeding wroth and said As the Lord liveth that man shall dye But yet for all this externall Religion for all this Civill justice in matter of government no mention of any repentance in all this time How little a thing then is it nay how great a thing that is how great an aggravating of thy sin if thou thinke to bribe God with a Sabboth or with an almes And as a criminall person would faine come to Sanctuary not because it is a consecrated place but because it rescues him from the Magistrate So thou comest to Chuch not because God is here but that thy being here may redeeme thee from the imputation of prophanenesse At last Nathan came David did not send for him but God sent him But yet David laid hold upon Gods purpose in him And he confesses to God he confesses to the Prophet he confesses to the whole Church for before he pleads for mercy in the body of the Psalme in the title of the Psalme which is as Canonicall Scripture as the Psalme it selfe hee confesses himselfe plainly A Psalme of David when the Prophet Nathan came to him after he had gone in to Bathsheba Audiunt male viventes quaerunt sibi patrocinia peccandi Wee heare of Davids sin August and wee justifie our sins by him Si David cur non ego If David went in to a Bathsheba why may not I That Father tels you why Qui facit quia David fecit id facit quod David non fecit He that does that because David did it does not doe that which David did Quia nullum exemplum proposuit For David did not justifie his sin by any precedent example So that he that sins as David did yet sins worse then David did and hee that continues as unsensible of his sin as David was is more unsensible then David was Quia ad te mittitur ipse David For God sends Nathan to thee August with David in his hand He sends you the Receit his invitations to Repentance in his Scriptures and he sends you a Probatum est a personall testimony how this Physicke hath wrought upon another upon David And so having in this first Part which is the Consideration of the persons in our Text God and David brought them by Nathans mediation together consider wee also for a conclusion of this Part the personall applications that David scatters himselfe upon none but God Tu me and hee repeats it doe Thou purge mee doe Thou wash mee Damascen hath a Sermon of the Assumption of the blessed Virgin which whole Sermon is but a Dialogue in which Eve acts the first part and the blessed Virgin another Tu. It is but a Dialogue yet it is a Sermon If I should insist upon this Dialogue between God and David Tu me Tu me Doe thou worke upon me it would not be the lesse a profitable part of a Sermon for that For first when we heare David in an anhelation and panting after the mercy of God cry out Domine Tu Lord doe thou that that is to be done doe Thou purge doe Thou wash and may have heard God thereby to excite us to the use of his meanes say Purget natura purget lex I have infused into thee a light and a law of nature and exalted that light and that law by a more particular law and a clearer light then that by which thou knowest what is sin and knowest that in a sinfull state thou canst not be acceptable to me Purget natura purget lex let the light of nature or of the law purge thee and rectifie thy selfe by that Doe but as much for thy selfe as some naturall men some Socrates some Plato hath done we may heare David reply Domine Tu Lord put me not over to the catechizing of Nature nor to the Pedagogie of the Law but take me into thine owne hands do Thou Thou that is to be done upon me When we heare God say Purget Ecclesia I have established a Church settled constant Ordinances for the purging and washing of souls there Purget Ecclesia Let the Church purge thee we may heare David reply Domine Tu Alas Lord how many come to that Bath and goe foule out of it how many heare Sermons and receive Sacraments and when they returne returne to their vomit Domine Tu Lord except the power of thy Spirit make thine Ordinance effectuall upon me even this thy Jordan will leave me in my leprosie and exalt my leprosie even this Sermon this Sacrament will aggravate my sin If we heare God say Shall I purge thee Doest thou know what thou askest what my method in purging is That if I purge I shall purge thee with fire with seaven fires with tribulations nay with tentations with temporall nay with spirituall calamities with wounds in thy fortune wounds
torments is the everlasting absence of God and the everlasting impossibility of returning to his presen●● Horrendum est sayes the Apostle It is a fearefull thing to fall into the hands of the living God Heb. 10.31 Yet there was a case in which David found an ease to fall into the hands of God to scape the hands of men Horrendum est when Gods hand is bent to strike it is a fearefull thing to fall into the hands of the living God but to fall out of the hands of the living God is a horror beyond our expression beyond our imagination That God should let my soule fall out of his hand into a bottomlesse pit and roll an unremoveable stone upon it and leave it to that which it finds there and it shall finde that there which it never imagined till it came thither and never thinke more of that soule never have more to doe with it That of that providence of God that studies the life of every weed and worme and ant and spider and toad and viper there should never never any beame flow out upon me that that God who looked upon me when I was nothing and called me when I was not as though I had been out of the womb and depth of darknesse will not looke upon me now when though a miserable and a banished and a damned creature yet I am his creature still and contribute something to his glory even in my damnation that that God who hath often looked upon me in my foulest uncleannesse and when I had shut out the eye of the day the Sunne and the eye of the night the Taper and the eyes of all the world with curtaines and windowes and doores did yet see me and see me in mercy by making me see that he saw me and sometimes brought me to a present remorse and for that time to a forbearing of that sinne should so turne himselfe from me to his glorious Saints and Angels as that no Saint nor Angel nor Christ Jesus himselfe should ever pray him to looke towards me never remember him that such a soule there is that that God who hath so often said to my soule Quare morier is Why wilt thou die and so often sworne to my soule Vivit Dominus As the Lord liveth I would not have thee dye but live will nether let me dye nor let me live but dye an everlasting life and live an everlasting death that that God who when he could not get into me by standing and knocking by his ordinary meanes of entring by his Word his mercies hath applied his judgements and hath shaked the house this body with agues and palsies and set this house on fire with fevers and calentures and frighted the Master of the house my soule with horrors and heavy apprehensions and so made an entrance into me That that God should frustrate all his owne purposes and practises upon me and leave me and cast me away as though I had cost him nothing that this God at last should let this soule goe away as a smoake as a vapour as a bubble and that then this soule cannot be a smoake a vapour nor a bubble but must lie in darknesse as long as the Lord of light is light it selfe and never sparke of that light reach to my soule What Tophet is not Paradise what Brimstone is not Amber what gnashing is not a comfort what gnawing of the worme is not a tickling what torment is not a marriage bed to this damnation to be secluded eternally eternally eternally from the sight of God Especially to us for as the perpetuall losse of that is most heavy with which we have been best acquainted and to which wee have been most accustomed so shall this damnation which consists in the losse of the sight and presence of God be heavier to us then others because God hath so graciously and so evidently and so diversly appeared to us in his pillar of fire in the light of prosperity and in the pillar of the Cloud in hiding himselfe for a while from us we that have seene him in all the parts of this Commission in his Word in his Sacraments and in good example and not beleeved shall be further removed from his sight in the next world then they to whom he never appeared in this But Vincenti credenti to him that beleeves aright and overcomes all tentations to a wrong beliefe God shall give the accomplishment of fulnesse and fulnesse of joy and joy rooted in glory and glory established in eternity and this eternity is God To him that beleeves and overcomes God shall give himselfe in an everlasting presence and fruition Amen SERM. LXXVII Preached at S. PAULS May 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 I Entred into the handling of these words upon Easter day for though the words have received divers Expositions good and pervers yet all agreed that the words were an argument for the Resurrection and that invited me to apply them to that Day At that Day I entred into them with Origens protestation Odit Dominus qui festum ejus unum putat diem God hates that man that thinks any holy-day of his lasts but one day that never thinks of the Resurrection but upon Easter day And therefore I engaged my selfe willingly according to the invitation and almost the necessity of the words which could not conveniently scarce possibly be determined in one day to returne againe and againe to the handling thereof For they are words of a great extent a great compasse The whole Circle of a Christian is designed and accomplished in them for here is first the first point in that Circle our Birth our spirituall birth that is Baptisme Why are these men thus baptized sayes the Text And then here is the point directly and diametrally opposed to that first point our Birth that is Death Why are these men thus baptized for the dead sayes the Text And then the Circle is carried up to the first point againe to our Birth in another Birth in the Resurrection Why are these men thus baptized for the dead if there be no Resurrection So that if we consider the Militant and the Triumphant Church to be as they are all one House and under one roofe here is first Limen Ecclesiae as S. Augustine calls Baptisme The Threshold of the Church we are put over the Threshold into the Body of the Church by Baptisme and here we are remembred of Baptisme Why are these men thus baptized And then here is Chorus Ecclesiae The Quire the Chancell of the Church in which all the service of God is officiated and executed for we are made not onely hearers and spectators but actors in the service of God when we come to beare a part in the Hymnes and Anthems of the Saints by our Death and here we are
speaks yet so doth the zeale of Gods Saints and their last prayers though we heare them not God continues still and they pray in Heaven as the Martyrs under the Altar even till the Resurrection He is with him now too In funere Here in his Funerals Buriall and Christian Buriall and Solemne Buriall are all evidences and testimonies of Gods presence God forbid we should conclude or argue an absence of God from the want of Solemne Buriall or Christian Buriall or any Buriall But neither must we deny it to be an evidence of his favour and presence where he is pleased to afford these So God makes that the seale of all his blessings to Abraham Gen. 15. Gen. 46. Gen. 50. Esay 11.10 Matt. 26. That he should be buried in a good age God established Iacob with that promise That his Son Ioseph should have care of his Funerals And Ioseph does cause his servants The Physitians to embalme him when he was dead Of Christ it was Prophecied That he should have a glorious Buriall And therefore Christ interprets well that profuse and prodigall piety of the Woman that poured out the Oyntment upon him That she did it to Bury him And so shall Ioseph of Arimathea be ever celebrated for his care in celebrating Christs Funerals If we were to send a Son or a friend to take possession of any place in Court or forraine parts we would send him out in the best equipage Let us not grudge to set downe our friends in the Anti-chamber of Heaven the Grave in as good manner as without vaine-gloriousnesse and wastfulnesse we may And in inclining them to whom that care belongs to expresse that care as they doe this day The Lord is with him even in this Funerall And because The Lord is here our brother is not dead Not dead in the memories and estimation of men And lastly In resurrectione that we may have God present in all his Manifestations Hee that was and is and is to come was with him in his life and death and is with him in this holy Solemnity and shall bee with him againe in the Resurrection Gen. 46.4 God sayes to Iacob I will goe downe with thee into Egypt and I will also surely bring thee up againe God goes downe with a good man into the Grave and will surely bring him up againe When The Angel promised to returne to Abraham and Sarah Gen. 18.10 for the assurance of the birth of Isaac according to the time of life that is in such time as by nature a woman may have a childe God will returne to us in the Grave according to the time of life that is in such time as he by his gracious Decree hath fixed for the Resurrection And in the meane time no more then the God-head departed from the dead body of our Saviour in the grave doth his power and his presence depart from our dead bodies in that darknesse But that which Moses said to the whole Congregation I say to you all both to you that heare me Deut. 4.4 and to him that does not All ye that did cleave unto the Lord your God are alive every one of you this day Even hee whom wee call dead is alive this day In the presence of God we lay him downe In the power of God he shall rise In the person of Christ he is risen already And so into the same hands that have received his soule we commend his body beseeching his blessed Spirit that as our charity enclines us to hope confidently of his good estate our faith may assure us of the same happinesse in our owne behalfe And that for all our sakes but especially for his own glory he will be pleased to hasten the consummation of all in that kingdome which that Son of God hath purchased for us with the inestimable price of his incorruptible blood Amen FINIS ❧ The Table of such places of SCRIPTURE as are illustrated and expounded in this BOOKE GENESIS 1.16 TWo great lights c. 81. A. 2.7 Man was a living soul 71. A. 18.10 According to the time of life 826. D. 26.18 Isaac digged the wells of water which 118. B. 29.12 Iacob kissed Rachel 407. C. 41.45 Pharaoh called Iosephs name 529. A. 51.20 You thought evill against me 171. B. EXODUS 4.22 Israel is his sonne 56. E. 14.14 The Lord shall fight for you 577. D. 23.3 Thou shalt not countenance 782. C. 33.13 Shew me now thy way 66. E. DEUTERONOMY 21.23 He that is hanged is accursed of God 8. A. 30.15 See I have set before thee life and death 70. A. 30.19 I have set before you life and death 148. D. JOSHUAH 10.12 Sunne stand thou still 700. A. JUDGES 2.5 They wept 539. B. RUTH 1.19 Call me not Naomi 479. B. 2 SAMUEL 14.14 We must needs die and are 311. A. 26.12 The sleepe of the Lord was upon him 257. D. 2 KINGS 9.3 None shall say This is Iezebel 148. B. 11.12 They put the crowne 336. D. 20.7 Take a lump of figs 514. E. JOB 4.18 His Angels he charged with folly 9. C. 5.7 Man is borne unto travatle as 538. B. 7.1 Mans life is a warfare 142. A. 603 E. 8.16 Woe unto me poor rush for c. 141. B. 10.20 Lord spare me a while 162. C. 19.25 I know my Redeemer liveth c. 150. A. 19.26 In my flesh c. 122. A. 20.11 My bones are full of the sins 519. B. PSALMES 2.2 They imagine a vaine thing 433. D. 2.8 Aske of me and I will give thee c. 26. E. 462. E. 2. ult Kisse the Son lest he be angry 541. D. 3.7 Thou hast broken the teeth 516. D. 6.5 In death there is no remembrance of thee 533. E. 15.2 Lord who shall ascend to thy Tabernacle 117. E. 19.9 The judgements of the Lord justifie themselves 366. D. 22.6 I am a worme 18. A. 45. C. 65. A. 25.15 Mine eyes are ever towards the Lord 618. A. 37.5 Cōmit thy wayes unto the Lord 686. B. 37.26 The righteous is mercifull 83. E. 45.7 God hath anointed thee with the oyle of gladnesse 396. C. 50.12 If I were hungry 101. B 55.19 Because they have no changes therefore they feare not God 57. D. 65.1 Praise waiteth for thee 64. A. 66.3 Through the greatnesse of thy power shall thine enemies submit 585. A. 72.18 Blessed be the Lord God of Israel which 394. D. 78.63 Their maidens were not given in marriage 679. C. 82.1 God standeth in the 72. D. 90.10 The dayes of our yeares c. 83. B. 101.1 I will sing of thy mercy and 12. A. 101.5 Him that hath a high looke 729. B. 102.5 My bones cleave to my flesh 519. B. 104.29 They die and they returne 255. D. 105.15 Touch not mine anointed 55. B. 106.20 They changed their glory 85. A. 111.10 A good understanding have 612. C. 113.5 He dwels in heaven 134. C. 119.57 The Lord is my portion 14. B.
that assurance which his blessed Spirit imprints in me now of the salvation of the one and of the resurrection of the other And for that constant and cheerfull resolution which the same Spirit established in me to live and die in the Religion now professed in the Church of England In expectation of that Resurrection I desire my body may be buried in the most private manner that may be in that place of S. Pauls Church London that the now Residentiaries have at my request assigned for that purpose c. And this my last Will and Testament made in the feare of God whose merit I humbly beg and constantly rely upon in Iesus Christ and in perfect love and charity with all the world whose pardon I aske from the lowest of my servants to the highest of my Superiours Written all with mine owne hand and my name subscribed to every Page being five in number Nor was his charity exprest onely at his death but in his life by a cheerfull and frequent visitation of friends whose minds were dejected or fortunes necessitous And he redeemed many out of Prison that lay for small debts or for their fees He was a continuall giver to poore Scholars both of this and forraigne Nations besides what he gave with his owne hand he usually sent a servant to all the Prisons in London to distribute his charity at all festivall times in the yeare He gave 100. l. at one time to a Gentleman that he had formerly knowne live plentifully and was then decayed in his estate He was a happy Reconciler of of differences in many Families of his friends and kindred who had such faith in his judgement and impartiality that he scarce ever advised them to any thing in vaine He was even to her death a most dutifull son to his Mother carefull to provide for her supportation of which she had been destitute but that God raised him up to prevent her necessities who having suckt in the Religion of the Romane Church with her mothers milk or presently after it spent her estate in forraigne Countries to enjoy a liberty in it and died in his house but three moneths before him And to the end it may appeare how just a Steward he was of his Lord and Masters Revenue I have thought fit to let the Reader know that after his entrance into his Deanry as he numbred his yeares and at the foot of a private account to which God and Angels onely were witnesses with him computed first his Revenue then his expences then what was given to the poore and pious uses lastly what rested for him and for his he blest each yeares poore remainder with a thankfull Prayer which for that they discover a more then common devotion the Reader shall partake some of them in his owne words 1624. So all is that remains of these two years 1625. So all is that remains of these two years Deo Opt. Max. benigno Largitori à me ab iis quibus haec à me reservantur gloria gratia in aeternum Amen 1626. So that this yeare God hath blessed me and mine with Multiplicatae sunt super nos misericordiae tuae Domine Da Domine ut quae ex immensa bonitate tua nobis elargiri dignatus sis in quorumcunque manus devenerint in tuam semper cedant gloriam Amen 1628. In fine horum sex annorum manet 1629. Quid habeo quod non accepi à Domino Largiatur etiam ut quae largitus est sua iterum fiant bono eorum usu ut quemadmodum nec officiis hujus mundi nec loci in quo me posuit dignitati nec servis nec egenis in toto hujus anni curriculo mihi conscius sum me defuisse ita ut libert quibus quae supersunt supersunt grato animo ea accipiant beneficum Authorem recognoscant Amen But I returne from my digression We left the Author sick in Essex where he was forced to spend most of that Winter by reason of his disability to remove from thence And having never during almost twenty yeares omitted his personall attendance on his Majestie in his monthly service Nor being ever left out of the number of Lent Preachers And in January following there being a generall report that he was dead that report occasioned this Letter to a familiar friend SIR THis advantage you and my other friends have by my frequent feavers that I am so much the oftner at the gates of heaven And this advantage by the solitude and close imprisonment that they reduce me to after that I am so much the oftner at my Prayers in which I shall never leave out your happinesse And I doubt not but amongst his other blessings God will adde some one to you for my Prayers A man would be almost content to die if there were no other benefit in death to heare of so much sorrow and so much good testimony from good men as I God be blessed for it did upon the report of my death Yet I perceive it went not through all For one writ to me that some and he said of my friends conceived I was not so ill as I pretended but withdrew my selfe to live at ease discharged of preaching It is an unfriendly and God knowes an ungrounded interpretation for I have alwayes been sorrier when I could not preach then any could be they could not hear me It hath been my desire and God may be pleased to grant it that I might die in the Pulpit If not that yet that I might take my death in the Pulpit that is die the sooner by occasion of those labours Sir I hope to see you presently after Candlemas about which time will fall my Lent Sermon at Court except my Lord Chamberlaine beleeve me to be dead and leave me out For as long as I live and am not speechlesse I would not willingly decline that service I have better leasure to write then you to reade yet I would not willingly oppresse you with too much Letter God blesse you and your son as I wish January 7. 1630. Your poore friend and servant in Christ Jesus Iohn Donne Before that month ended he was appointed to preach upon his old constant day the first Friday in Lent he had notice of it and having in his sicknesse prepared for the employment as he had long thirsted for it So resolving his weaknesse should not hinder his journey he came to London some few dayes before his day appointed Being come many of his friends who with sorrow saw his sicknesse had left him onely so much flesh as did cover his bones doubted his strength to performe that taske And therefore perswaded him from undertaking it assuring him however it was like to shorten his dayes But he passionately denyed their requests saying He would not doubt that God who in many weaknesses had assisted him with an unexpected strength would now withdraw it in his last employment professing a holy ambition to
addition of comelinesse His aspect was cheerfull and such as gave a silent testimony of a cleere knowing soule and of a conscience at peace with it selfe His melting eye shewed he had a soft heart full of noble pity of too brave a spirit to offer injuries and too much a Christian not to pardon them in others His fancie was un-imitable high equalled by his great wit both being made usefull by a commanding judgement His mind was liberall and unwearied in the search of knowledge with which his vigorous soule is now satisfied and employed in a continuall praise of that God that first breathed it into his active body which once was a Temple of the holy Ghost and is now become a small quantity of Christian dust But I shall see it re-inanimated Iz Wa IOHANNES DONNE SAC THEOL PROFESSOR POST VARIA STUDIA QVIBUS AB ANNIS TENERRIMIS FIDELITER NEC INFELICITER INCUBUIT INSTINCTU ET IMPULSU SPIR S ti MONITU ET HORTATU REGIS IACOBI ORDINES SACROS AMPLEXUS Aº SUI JESU 1614. ET SUAE AETATIS 42. DECANATU HUJUS ECCLESIAE INDUTUS XXVII NOVEMBRIS 1621. EXUTUS MORTE ULTIMO DIE MARTII 1631. Hic licet in Occiduo Cinere Aspicit Eum Cujus Nomen est ORIENS A Table directing to the severall Texts of SCRIPTURE handled by the Author in this BOOK SERM. I. COLOS. 1.19 20. For it pleased the Father that in him should all fulnesse dwell And having made peace through the bloud of his Crosse by Him to reconcile all things to himselfe by Him whether they be things in earth or things in heaven page 1 SERM. II. ESAIAH 7.14 Therefore the Lord shall give you a signe Behold a Virgin shall conceive and beare a Son and shall call his name Immanuel pa. 11 SERM. III. GALAT. 4.4 5. But when the fulnesse of time was come God sent forth his Sonne made of a woman made under the Law to redeeme them that were under the Law that we might receive the adoption of Sons pa. 20 SERM. IV. LUKE 2.29 30. Lord now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace according to thy word For mine eyes have seene thy salvation pa. 29. SERM. V. EXOD. 4.13 O my Lord send I pray thee by the hand of him whom thou wilt send pa. 39 SERM. VI. Lord who hath beleeved our report pa. 52 SERM. VII JOHN 10.10 I am come that they might have life and that they might have it more abundantly pa. 62 SERM. VIII MAT. 5.16 Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorifie your Father which is in heaven pa. 77 SERM. IX ROM 13.7 Render therefore to all men their dues pa. 86 SERM. X. ROM 12.20 Therefore if thine enemie hunger feed him if he thirst give him drink for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head pa. 96 SERM. XI MAT. 9.2 And Iesus seeing their faith said unto the sick of the palsie My son be of good chear thy sins be forgiven thee pa. 102 SERM. XII MAT. 5.2 Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God pa. 112 SERM. XIII JOB 16. ver 17 18 19. Not for any injustice in my hands Also my prayer is pure O earth cover thou not my bloud and let my cry have no place Also now behold my Witnesse is in heaven and my Record is on high pa. 127 SERM. XIV AMOS 5.18 Woe unto you that desire the day of the Lord what have ye to doe with it the day of the Lord is darknesse and not light pa. 136 SERM. XV. 1 COR 15.26 The last Enemie that shall be destroyed is Death pa. 144 SERM. XVI JOHN 11.35 Iesus wept pa. 153 SERM. XVII MAT. 19.17 And he said unto him Why callest thou me Good There is none Good but One that is God pa. 163 SERM. XVIII ACTS 2.36 Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly That God hath made that same Iesus whom ye have crucified both Lord and Christ pa. 175 SERM. XIX APOC. 20.6 Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first Resurrection pa. 183 SERM. XX. JOHN 5.28 29. Marvell not at this for the houre is comming in the which all that are in the graves shall heare his voice And shall come forth they that have done good unto the Resurrection of life And they that have done evill unto the Resurrection of damnation pa. 192 SERM. XXI 1 COR. 15.29 Else what shall they do that are baptized for dead If the dead rise not at all why are they then baptized for dead pa. 120 SERM. XXII HEB. 11.35 Women received their dead raised to life againe And others were tortured not accepting a deliverance that they might obtaine a better Resurrection pa. 213 SERM. XXIII 1 COR. 13.12 For now we see through a glasse darkly But then face to face Now I know in part But then I shall know even as also I am knowne pa. 224 SERM. XXIV JOB 4.18 Behold he put no trust in his Servants and his Angels he charged with folly pa. 233 SERM. XXV MAT. 28.6 He is not here for he is risen as he said Come See the place where the Lord lay pa. 242 SERM. XXVI 1 THES 4.17 Then we which are alive and remaine shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the ayre and so shall we be ever with the Lord. pa. 254 SERM. XXVII PSAL. 89.47 What man is he that liveth and shall not see death pa. 267 SERM. XXVIII XXIX JOHN 14.26 But the Comforter which is the holy Ghost whom the Father will send in my Name He shall teach you all things and bring all things to your remembrance whatsoever I have said unto you pa. 277. 286 SERM. XXX JOHN 14.20 At that day shall ye know That I am in my Father and you in me and I in you pa. 294 SERM. XXXI GEN. 1.2 And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters pa. 303 SERM. XXXII 1 COR. 12.3 Also no man can say that Iesus is the Lord but by the holy Ghost p. 312 SERM. XXXIII ACTS 10.44 While Peter yet spake these words the holy Ghost fell on all them which heard the Word pa. 321 SERM. XXXIV ROM 8.16 The Spirit it selfe beareth witnesse with our spirit that we are the children of God pa. 332 SERM. XXXV MAT. 12.31 Wherefore I say unto you All manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men But the Blasphemy against the holy Ghost shall not be forgiven unto men pa. 341 SERM. XXXVI XXXVII JOHN 16.8 9 10 11. And when he is come he will reprove the world of sin and of righteousnesse and of judgement Of sin because ye beleeve not on me Of righteousnesse because I goe to my Father and ye see me no more Of judgement because the Prince of this world is judged pa. 351. 361 SERM. XXXVIII 2 COR. 1.3 Blessed be God even the Father of our Lord Iesus Christ
the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort pa. 375 SERM. XXXIX 1 PET. 1.17 And if ye call on the Father who without respect of persons judgeth according to every mans works passe the time of your sojourning here in feare pa. 384 SERM. XL. 1 COR. 16.22 If any man love not the Lord Iesus Christ let him be Anathema Maranatha pa. 393 SERM. XLI PSAL. 2.12 Kisse the Son lest he be angry pa. 403 SERM. XLII GEN. 18.25 Shall not the Iudge of all the Earth do right pa. 412 SERM. XLIII MAT. 3.17 And lo A voyce came from heaven saying This is my beloved Sonne in whom I am well pleased pa. 423 SERM. XLIV REV. 4.8 And the foure Beasts had each of them six wings about him and they were full of eyes within And they rest not day and night saying Holy Holy Holy Lord God Almighty which was and is and is to come pa. 432 SERM. XLV APOC. 7.2 3. And I saw another Angel ascending from the East which had the seale of the living God and he cryed with a loud voyce to the foure Angels to whom power was given to hurt the Earth and the Sea saying Hurt yee not the Earth neither the Sea neither the Trees till we have sealed the servants of our God in their foreheads pa. 445 SERM. XLVI ACTS 9.4 And he fell to the earth and heard a voyce saying Saul Saul why persecutest thou me pa. 459 SERM. XLVII ACTS 20.25 And now Behold I know that all yee among whom I have gone preaching the kingdome of God shall see my face no more pa. 468 SERM. XLVIII ACTS 28.6 They changed their minds and said That he was a God pa. 476 SERM. XLIX ACTS 23.6 7. But when Paul perceived that one part were Sadduces and the other Pharisees he cryed out in the Councel Men and Brethren I am a Pharisee and the son of a Pharisee Of the hope and resurrection of the dead I am called in question And when he had so said there arose a dissention between the Pharisees and the Sadduces and the multitude was divided pa. 487 SERM. L. PSAL. 6.1 O Lord Rebuke me not in thine anger neither chasten me in thy hot displeasure pa. 499 SERM. LI. PSAL. 6.2 3. Have mercy upon me O Lord for I am weake O Lord heale me for my bones are vexed My soule is also sore vexed But thou O Lord how long pa. 209 SERM. LII LIII PSAL. 6.4 5. Returne O Lord Deliver my soule O Lord save me for thy mercies sake For in death there is no remembrance of thee and in the grave who shall give thee thanks pa. 522. pa. 530 SERM. LIV. PSAL. 6.6 7. I am weary with my groaning All the night make I my bed to swim I water my couch with my teares Mine eye is consumed because of griefe It waxeth old because of all mine enemies pa. 535 SERM. LV. PSAL. 6.8 9 10. Depart from me all yee workers of iniquitie for the Lord hath heard the voyce of my weeping The Lord hath heard my supplication the Lord will receive my prayer Let all mine enemies be ashamed and sore vexed let them returne and be ashamed suddenly pa. 548 SERM. LVI PSAL. 32.1 2. Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven whose sin is covered Blessed is the man unto whom the Lord imputeth not iniquitie and in whose spirit there is no guile pa. 560 SERM. LVII PSAL. 32.3 4. When I kept silence my bones waxed old through my roaring all the day long For day and night thy hand was heavy upon me my moysture is turned into the drought of Summer Selah pa. 571 SERM. LVIII PSAL. 32.5 I acknowledged my sinne unto thee and mine iniquitie have I not hid I said I will confesse my transgressions unto the Lord and thou forgavest the iniquitie of my sin pa. 582 SERM. LIX PSAL. 32.6 For this shall every one that is godly pray unto thee in a time when thou mayest be found surely in the floods of great waters they shall not come nigh unto him pa. 592 SERM. LX. PSAL. 32.7 Thou art my hiding place Thou shalt preserve me from trouble Thou shalt compasse me about with songs of deliverance pa. 601 SERM. LXI PSAL. 32.8 I will instruct thee and teach thee in the way which thou shalt goe I will guide thee with mine eye pa. 609 SERM. LXII PSAL. 32.9 Be not as the Horse or the Mule which have no understanding whose mouth must be held in with bit and bridle lest they come neere unto thee p. 619 SERM. LXIII PSAL. 32.10 11. Many sorrows shall be to the wicked But he that trusteth in the Lord Mercy shall compasse him about Be glad in the Lord and rejoyce ye righteous And shout for joy all ye that are upright in heart pa. 629 SERM. LXIV PSAL. 51.7 Purge me with Hyssope and I shall be cleane wash me and I shall be whiter then snow pa. 639 SERM. LXV PSAL. 62.9 Surely men of low degree are vanitie and men of high degree are a lie To be laid in the balance they are altogether lighter then vanity pa. 643 SERM. LXVI PSAL. 63.7 Because thou hast been my help Therefore in the shadow of thy wings will I rejoyce pa. 663 SERM. LXVII PSAL. 64.10 And all the upright in heart shall glory pa. 673 SERM. LXVIII PSAL. 65.5 By terrible things in righteousnesse wilt thou answer us O God of our salvation who art the confidence of all the ends of the earth and of them that are a far off upon the Sea pa. 683 SERM. LXIX PSAL. 66.3 Say unto God How terrible art thou in thy works Through the greatnesse of thy Power shall thine Enemies submit themselves unto thee pa. 695 SERM. LXX PROV 25.16 Hast thou found Honey eat so much as is sufficient for thee lest thou be filled therewith and vomit it 709 SERM. LXXI 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 pa. 717. 726 SERM. LXXIII JOHN 14.2 In my Fathers house are many Mansions If it were not so I would have told you pa. 737 SERM. LXXIV PSAL. 144.15 Blessed are the people that be so Yea blessed are the people whose God is the Lord. pa. 749 SERM. LXXV ESAY 32.8 But the liberall deviseth liberall things and by liberall things he shall stand pa. 758 SERM. LXXVI MARK 16.16 He that beleeveth not shall be damned pa. 766 SERM. LXXVII LXXVIII 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 pa. 777. 790 SERM. LXXIX PSAL. 90.14 O satisfie us early with thy mercy that we may rejoyce and be glad all our dayes pa. 803 SERM. LXXX
bee new every morning too and all that he did in eighty eight in the last Centutry he shall doe if we need it in twenty eight in this Century And though he may be angry with our prayers as they are but verball prayers and not accompanied with actions of obedience yet he will not be angry with us for ever but re-establish at home zeale to our present Religion and good correspondence and affections of all parts to one another and our power and our honour in forraign Nations Amen SERMON VI. Preached at S. Pauls upon Christmas Day 1628. Lord who hath beleeved our report Domine quis credidit auditui nostro I Have named to you no booke no chapter no verse where these words are written But I forbore not out of forgetfulnesse nor out of singularity but out of perplexity rather because these words are written in more then one in more then two places of the Bible In your ordinary conversation and communication with other men I am sure you have all observed that many men have certaine formes of speech certaine interjections certaine suppletory phrases which fall often upon their tongue and which they repeat almost in every sentence and for the most part impertinently and then when that phrase conduces nothing to that which they would say but rather disorders and discomposes the sentence and confounds or troubles the hearer And this which some doe out of slacknesse and in-observance and infirmity many men God knowes do out of impiety many men have certaine suppletory Oathes with which they fill up their Discourse then when they are not onely not the better beleeved but the worse understood for those blasphemous interjections Now this which you may thus observe in men sometimes out of infirmity sometimes out of impiety out of an accommodation and communicablenesse of himselfe to man out of desire and a study to shed himselfe the more familiarly and to infuse himselfe the more powerfully into man you may observe even in the holy Ghost in himselfe in the Scriptures which are the discourse and communication of God with man There are certaine idioms certaine formes of speech certaine propositions which the holy Ghost repeats severall times upon severall occasions in the Scriptures It is so in the instrumentall Authors of the particular Bookes of the Bible There are certaine formes of speech certaine characters upon which I would pronounce That 's Moses and not David that 's Iob and not Solomon that 's Esay and not Ieremy How often does Moses repeat his Vivit Dominus and Ego vivo As the Lord liveth and As I live saith the Lord How often does Solomon repeat his vanitas vanitatum All is vanity How often does our blessed Saviour repeat his Amen Amen and in another sense then others had used that word before him so often as that you may reckon it thirtie times in one Evangelist so often as that that may not inconveniently be thought some reason why S. Iohn called Christ by that name Amen Rev. 3.14 Thus saith Amen He whose name is Amen How often does S. Paul especiallly in his Epistles to Timothy and to Titus repeat that phrase Fidelis Sermo This is a true and faithfull saying And how often his juratory caution Coram Domino before the Lord As God is my witnesse And as it is thus for particular persons and particular phrases that they are often repeated so are there certaine whole sentences certaine intire propositions which the holy Ghost does often repeat in the Scripture And except we except that proposition of which S. Peick makes his use That God is no accepter of persons Act. 10.34 for that is repeated in very many places that every where upō every occasiō every man might be remembred of that that God is no accepter of persons Take heed how you presume upon your own knowledge or your actions for God is no accepter of persons Take heed how you condemne another man for an Heretique because he beleeves not just as you beleeve or for a Reprobate because he lives not just as you live for God is no accepter of persons Take heed how you relie wholly upon the outward means that you are wrapped in the covenant that you are bred in a reformed Church for God is no accepter of persons except you will except this proposition I scarce remember any other that is so often repeated in the Scriptures as this which is our Text Lord who hath beleeved our report For it is first in the Prophet Esay There the Prophet is in holy throws and pangs Esay 53.1 and agonies till he be delivered of that prophecy the comming of the Messiah the incarnation of Christ Jesus and yet is put to this exclamation Domine quis credidit Lord who hath beleeved our report And then you have these words in the Gospell of S. Iohn John 12.38 where we are not put upon the consideration of a future Christ in prophecy but the Evangelist exhibits Christ in person actually really visibly evidently doing great works executing great judgements multiplying great Miracles and yet put to the application of this exclamation Domine quis credidit Lord who hath beleeved this report And then you have these words also in S. Paul Rom. 10.16 where we doe not consider a prophecy of a future Christ nor a history of a present Christ but an application of that whole Christ to every soule in the fetling of a Church in that concatenation of meanes for the infusion of faith expressed in that Chapter sending and preaching and hearing and yet for all these powerfull and familiar assistances Domine quis crodidit Lord who hath beleeved that report So that now beloved you cannot say that you have a Text without a place for you have three places for this Text you have it in the great Prophet in Esay in the great Evangelist in S. Iohn and in the great Apostle in S. Paul And because in all three places the words minister usefull doctrine of edification we shall by yours and the times leave consider the words in all three places In all three the words are a sad and a serious expostulation of the Minister of God with God himselfe that his Meanes and his Ordinances powerfully committed to him being faithfully transmitted by him to the people were neverthelesse fruitlesse and ineffectuall I doe Lord as thou biddest me sayes the Prophet Esay I prophecy I foretell the comming of the Messiah the incarnation of thy Son for the salvation of the world and I know that none of them that heare me can imagine or conceive any other way for the redemption of the world by fatisfaction to thy Justice but this and yet Domine quis credidit Lord who hath beleeved my report I doe Lord as thou biddest me sayes Christ himselfe in S. Iohn I come in person I glorifie thy name I doe thy will I preach thy Gospell I confirm my doctrine with evident Miracles and I seale
still it was a future thing Christ is often called the Expectation of the world but it was all that while but an Expectation but a reversion of a future thing So God fed that old world with expectation of future things as that that very name by which God notified himself most to that people Exod. 3.14 in his commission by Moses to Pharaoh was a future name howsoever our Translations and Expositions run upon the present as though God had said Qui sum my name is I am yet in truth it is Qui ero my name is I shall be They had evidences enow that God was but God was pleased to establish in them an assurance that he would be so still and not only be so still as he was then but that hee would be so with them hereafter as he was never yet he would be Immanuel God with us so as that God and man should be one person It was then a faire assurance and a blessed comfort which the children of Israel had in that of Zechary Zech. 9.9 Ecce venit rex Rejoyce ye daughters of Sion and shout ye daughters of Ierusalem Behold thy King commeth riding unto thee upon an Asse But yet this assurance though delivered as in the present produced not those acclamations Mat. 21.9 and recognitions and Hosannaes and Hosanna in the highest to the Son of David as his personall and actuall and visible riding into Jerusalem upon Palme-Sunday did Amougst the Jews there was light enough to discern this future blessing this comming of Christ but they durst not open it nor publish it to others We see the Jews would dye in defence of any part of their Law were it but the Ceremoniall were it but for the not eating of Swines flesh what unsufferable torments suffered the seven brothers in the Maccabees for that But yet we never finde that any of them dyed or exposed themselves to the danger or to the dignity of Martyrdome for this Doctrine of the Messias this future comming of Christ Nay we finde that the Septuagint who first translated the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek for King Ptolome disguised divers places thereof and departed from the Originall rather then propose this future comming of the Son of God to the interpretation of the world A little Candle they had for themselves but they durst not light anothers Candle at it So also some of the more speculative Philosophers had got some beames of this light but because they saw it would not be beleeved De verarelg cap. 4. they let it alone they said little of it Hence is it that S. Augustine sayes si Platonici reviviscerent if Plato and his Disciples should rise from the dead and come now into our streets and see those great Congregations which thrust and throng every Sabbath and every day of holy convocation to the worship of our Lord and Saviour Christ Jesus Hoc fortasse dicerent This it is likely they would say sayes he Haec sunt quae populis persuadere non ausi consaetudini cessimus This is that religion which because it consisted so much in future things we durst not propose to the people but were fain to leave them to those present and sensible and visible things to which they had been accustomed before lest when we had shaked them in their old religion we should not be able to settle and establish them in the new And as in civill government a Tyranny is better then an Anarchy a hard King better then none so when we consider religions Idolatry is better then Atheisme and superstition better then profanenesse Not that the Idolater shall any more be saved then the Atheist but that the Idolater having been accustomed to some sense and worship of God of God in his estimation is therefore apter to receive religious impressions then the Atheist is In this then consists this second act of Christs mercy to us in this word veni I am actually really personally presentially come that those types and figures and sacrifices which represented Christ to the old world were not more visible to the eye more palpable to the hand more obvious to the very bodily senses that Christ himself hath been since to us Therefore S. Iohn does not only rest in that That which was from the beginning 1 John 1.1 Christ was alwayes in purpose in prophecy in promise nor in that That which we have heard the world heard of Christ long before they saw him but he proceeds to that That which we have seen and looked upon with our eyes and handled with our hands that declare we unto you So that we are now delivered from that jealousie that possessed those Septuagint those Translators that they durst not speak plain and delivered from that suspition that possessed Plato and his disciples that the people were incapable of that doctrine Wee know that Christ is come and we avow it and we preach it and we affirm that it is not onely as impious and irreligious a thing but as senslesse and as absurd a thing to deny that the Son of God hath redeemed the world as to deny that God hath created the world and that he is as formally and as gloriously a Martyr that dyes for this Article The Son of God is come as he that dyes for this There is a God And these two acts of his mercy enwrapped in this one word veni I came first that he who is alwayes present out of an abundant love to man studied a new way of comming and then that he who was but betrothed to the old world by way of promise is married to us by an actuall comming will be farther explicated to us in that which only remaines and constitutes our third and last part the end and purpose of his comming That they might have life and might have it more abundantly And though this last part put forth many handles wee can but take them by the hand and shake them by the hand that is open them and so leave them First then in this last part we consider the gift it self the treasure Life 3. Part. Vita That they might have life Now life is the character by which Christ specificates and denominates himselfe Life is his very name and that name by which he consummates all his other names I am the Way the Truth and the Life John 14.6 And therefore does Peter justly and bitterly upbraid the Jews with that Ye desired a murderer an enemy to life to be granted unto you and killed the Prince of Life Acts 3.14 It is an honour to any thing that it may be sworn by by vulgar and triviall things men might not sweare Jer. 5.7 How shall I pardon them this sayes God They have sworn by things that are not gods And therefore God who in so many places professes to sweare by himself and of whom the Apostle sayes Heb. 6.13 That because he could sweare by no greater he
swore by himselfe because he could propose no greater thing in himself no clearer notion of himself then life for his life is his eternity and his eternity is himselfe does therefore through all the Law and the Prophets still sweare in that form Vivo ego vivit Dominus As I live saith the Lord and as the Lord liveth still he sweares by his own life As that solemne Oath which is mentioned in Daniel is conceived in that form too He lift up his right hand and his left hand to heaven Dan. 12.7 and swore by him that liveth for ever that is by God and God in that notion as he is life All that the Queen and the Councell could wish and apprecate to the King was but that Life In sempiternum vive vive in aeternum O King live for ever God is life Dan. 5. and would not the death of any We are not sure that stones have not life stones may have life neither to speak humanely is it unreasonably thought by them that thought the whole world to be inanimated by one soule and to be one intire living creature and in that respect does S. Augustine prefer a fly before the Sun 1 Tim. 5.6 because a fly hath life and the Sun hath not This is the worst that the Apostle sayes of the young wanton widow That if she live in pleasure she is dead whilst she lives So is that Magistrate that studies nothing but his own honour and dignity in his place dead in his place And that Priest that studies nothing but his owne ease and profit dead in his living And that Judge that dares not condemne a guilty person And which is the bolder transgression dares condemne the innocent deader upon the Bench then the Prisoner at the Barre God hath included all that is good Dcut. 30.15 in the name of Life and all that is ill in the name of Death when he sayes See I have set before thee Vitam Bonum Life and Good Mortem Malum Death and Evill This is the reward proposed to our faith Hab. 2.4 Iustus fide sua vivit To live by our faith And this is the reward proposed to our works Fac hoc vives to live by our works All is life And this fulnesse this consummation of happinesse Life and the life of life spirituall life and the exaltation of spirituall life eternall life is the end of Christs comming I came that they might have life And first Vt daret ut daret that he might give life bring life into the world that there might be life to be had that the world might be redeemed from that losse which S. Augustine sayes it was falne into Perdidimus possibilitatem boni That we had all lost all possibility of life For the heaven and the earth and all that the Poet would call Chaos was not a deader lump before the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters then Mankind was before the influence of Christs comming wrought upon it But now that God so loved the world as that he gave his Son now that the Son so loved the world as that he gave himselfe Psal 19.6 as David sayes of the Sun of the firmament the father of nature Nihit absconditum there is nothing hid from the heat thereof so we say of this Son of God the Father of the faithfull in a far higher sense then Abraham was called so Nihilabsconditum there is nothing hid from him no place no person excluded from the benefit of his comming The Son hath paid the Father hath received enough for all not in fingle money for the discharge of thy lesser debts thy idle words thy wanton thoughts thy unchast looks but in massie talents to discharge thy crying debts the clamors of those poore whom thou hast oppressed and thy thundring debts those blasphemies by which thou hast torne that Father that made thee that Sonne that redeemed thee that boly Ghost that would comfort thee 1 Reg. 5. There is enough given but then as Hiram sent materials sufficient for the building of the Temple but there was something else to be done for the fitting and placing thereof so there is life enough brought into the world for all the world by the death of Christ but then there is something else to be done for the application of this life to particular persons intended in this word in our Text ut haberent I came that they might have life There is Ayre enough in the world Vt haberent to give breath to every thing though every thing doe not breath If a tree or a stone doe not breathe it is not because it wants ayre but because it wants meanes to receive it or to returne it All egges are not hatched that the hen sits upon Matt. 23.37 neither could Christ himselfe get all the chickens that were hatched to come and to stay under his wings That man that is blinde or that will winke shall see no more sunne upon S. Barnabies day then upon S. Lucies no more in the summer then in the winter solstice Psal 130.7 And therefore as there is copiosa redemptio a plentifull redemption brought into the world by the death of Christ so as S. Paul found it in his particular conversion there is copiosa lux Acts 22.6 a great a powerfull light exhibited to us that we might see and lay hold of this life in the Ordinances of the Church in the Confessions and Absolutions and Services and Sermons and Sacraments of the Church Christ came ut daret that he might bring life into the world by his death and then he instituted his Church ut haberent that by the meanes thereof this life might be infused into us and infused so as the last word of our Text delivers it Abundantiùs I came that they might have life more abundantly Dignaris Domine Abūdantiùs August ut eis quibus debita dimittis te promissionibus tuis debitorem facias This O Lord is thine abundant proceeding First thou forgivest me my debt to thee and then thou makest thy selfe a debter to me by thy large promises and after all performest those promises more largely then thou madest them Indeed God can doe nothing scantly penuriously singly Even his maledictions to which God is ever loth to come his first commination was plurall it was death and death upon death Morte morieris Death may be plurall but this benediction of life cannot admit a singular Chajim which is the word for life hath no singular number This is the difference betweene Gods Mercy and his Judgements that sometimes his Judgements may be plurall complicated enwrapped in one another but his Mercies are alwayes so and cannot be otherwise he gives them abundantiùs more abundantly More abundantly then to whom Illis gentibus The naturall man hath the Image of God imprinted in his soule eternity is God himselfe man hath not
be delivered of a fever in my spirits and to have my spirit troubled with the guiltinesse of an adultery To be delivered of Cramps and Coliques and Convulsions in my joynts and sinewes and suffer in my soule all these from my oppressions and extortions by which I have ground the face of the poore It is but lost labour and cost to give a man a precious cordiall when he hath a thorne in his foote or an arrow in his flesh for as long as the sinne which is the cause of the sicknesse remaines Deterius sequetur A worse thing will follow we may be rid of a Fever and the Pestilence will follow rid of the Cramp and a Gout will follow rid of sicknesse and Death eternall death will follow That which our Saviour prescribes is Noli peccare ampliùs sinne no more first non ampliùs sinne no more sins take heed of gravid sins of pregnant sinnes of sins of concomitance and concatentation that chaine and induce more sins after as Davids idlenesse did adultery and that murder the losse of the Lords Army and Honor in the blaspheming of his name Noli ampliùs sin no more no such sin as induces more And Noli ampliùs sinne no more that is sin thy owne sin thy beloved sin no more times over And still Noli ampliùs sin not that sin which thou hast given over in thy practise in thy memory by a sinfull delight in remembring it And againe Noli ampliùs sin not over thy former sins by holding in thy possession such things as were corruptly gotten by any such former practises for Deterius sequetur a worse thing will follow A Tertian will be a Quartan and a Quartan a Hectique and a Hectique a Consumption and a Consumption without a consummation that shall never consume it selfe nor consume thee to an unsensiblenesse of torment And then after these three lessons in this Catechisme Sanitas spiritualis That God gives before we aske That he gives better then we aske That he informes us in the true cause of sicknesse sinne He involves a tacit nay he expresses an expresse rebuke and increpation and in beginning at the Dimittuntur peccata at the forgivenesse of sinnes tels him in his eare that his spirituall health should have beene prefer'd before his bodily and the cure of his soule before his Palsie that first the Priest should have beene and then the Physitian might bee consulted That which Christ does to his new adopted Sonne here the Wiseman saies to his Son Ecclus. 38.9 My Son in thy sicknesse be not negligent But wherein is his diligence required or to be expressed in that which followes Pray unto the Lord and he will make thee whole But upon what conditions or what preparations Leave off from sin order thy hands aright and cleanse thy heart from all wickednesse Is this all needs there no declaration no testimony of this Yes Give a sweet savour and a memoriall of fine floure and make a fat offering as not beeing that is as though thou wert dead Give and give that which thou givest in thy life time as not beeing And when all this is piously and religiously done thou hast repented restor'd amended and given to pious uses Then saies he there give place to the Physitian for the Lord hath created him For if we proceed otherwise if wee begin with the Physitian Physick is a curse He that sinneth before his Maker V. 15. let him fall into the hands of the Physitian saies the Wiseman there It is not Let him come into the hands of the Physitian as though that were a curse but let him fall let him cast and throw himselfe into his hands and rely upon naturall meanes and leave out all consideration of his other and worse disease and the supernaturall Physick for that 2. Chron. 16. Asa had had a great deliverance from God when the Prophet Hanani asked him Were not the Ethiopians and the Lubins a huge Host but because after this deliverance he relied upon the King of Syria and not upon God the Judgement is From henceforth thou shalt have wars That was a sicknesse upon the State then he fell sick in his own person and in that sicknesse saies that story He sought not to the Lord but to the Physitian and then he dyed To the Lord and then to the Physitian had beene the right way If to the Physitian and then to the Lord though this had beene out of the right way yet hee might have returned to it But it was to the Physitian and not to the Lord and then he died Omnipotenti medico nullus languor insanabilis saies S. Ambrose there is but one Almighty and none but the Almighty can cure all diseases because hee onely can cure diseases in the roote that is in the forgivenesse of sins We are almost at an end when we had thus Catechised his Convertite thus rectified his patient Scribae Pharisci hee turnes upon them who beheld all this and were scandaliz'd with his words the Scribes and Pharisees And because they were scandaliz'd onely in this that he being but man undertooke the office of God to forgive sins he declares himselfe to them to be God Christ would not leave even malice it selfe unsatisfied And therefore do not thou thinke thy selfe Christian enough for having an innocence in thy selfe but be content to descend to the infirmities and to the very malice of other men and to give the world satisfaction Nec paratum habeas illud ètrivio sayes S. Hierome do not arm thy self with that vulgar and triviall saying Sufficit mihi conscientia mea nec curo quid loquantur homines It suffices me that mine own conscience is cleare and I care not what all the world sayes thou must care what the world sayes and thinks Christ himself had that respect even towards the Scribes and Pharisees For first he declared himself to be God in that he took knowledge of their thoughts for they had said nothing and he sayes to them why reason you thus in your hearts and they themselves did not could not deny but that those words of Solomon appertained only to God 2 Chron. 6.30 Thou only knowest the hearts of the children of men And those of Ieremy The heart is deceitfull above all things Jer. 17.9 and desperately wicked who can know it I the Lord search the heart and I try the reines Let the Schoole dispute infinitely for he that will not content himself with means of salvation till all Schoole points be reconciled will come too late let Scotus and his Heard think That Angels and separate soules have a naturall power to understand thoughts though God for his particular glory restraine the exercise of that power in them as in the Romane Church Priests have a power to forgive all sins though the Pope restraine that power in reserved cases And the Cardinals by their Creation have a voice in the
nor reconcile after he shall have made up that account with his Son and told him These be all you dyed for these be all you purchased these be all whom I am bound to save for your sake for the rest their portion is everlasting destruction Under this law under this evidence under this sentence vae desiderantibus woe to them that pretend to desire this day of the Lord as though by their owne outward righteousnesse they could stand upright in this judgement Woe to them that say Let God come when he will it shall goe hard but he shall finde me at Church I heare three or foure Sermons a week he shall finde me in my Discipline and Mortification I fast twice a week he shall finde me in my Stewardship and Dispensation I give tithes of all that I possesse When Ezechias shewed the Ambassadors of Babylon all his Treasure and his Armour the malediction of the Prophet fell upon it that all that Treasure and Armour which he had so gloriously shewed should be transported to them to whom he had shewed it into Babylon He that publishes his good works to the world they are carried into the world and that is his reward Not that there is not a good use of letting our light shine before men too for when S. Paul sayes If I yet please men Gal. 1.10 I should not be the servant of Christ and when he saith I doe please all men in all things S. Austine found no difficulty in reconciling those two Navem quaero sayes he sed patriam When I goe to the Haven to hire a Ship it is for the love I have to my Country When I declare my faith by my works to men it is for the love I beare to the glory of God but if I desire the Lords day upon confidence in these works vae scirpo as Iob expresses it woe unto me poore rush Job 8.16 for sayes he the rush is greene till the Sun come that is sayes Gregory upon that place donec divina districtio in judicio candeat till the fire of the judgement examine our works they may have some verdure some colour but vae desiderantibus wo unto them that put themselves unto that judgement for their works sake For ut quid vobis to what end is it for you If your hypocriticall security could hold out to the last if you could delude the world at the last gasp if those that stand about you then could be brought to say he went away like a Lambe alas the Lambe of God went not away so the Lamb of God had his colluctations disputations expostulations apprehensions of Gods indignation upon him then This security call it by a worse name stupidity is not a lying down like a Lamb but a lying down like Issachers Asse between two burdens for two greater burdens cannot be then sin and the senslesnesse of sin Vt quid vobis what will ye doe at that day which shall be darknesse and not light God dwels in luce inaccessibili 1 Tim. 6.16 in such light as no man by the light of nature can comprehend here but when that light of grace which was shed upon thee here should have brought thee at last to that inaccessible light then thou must be cast in tenebras exteriores Mat. 8.12 into darknesse and darknesse without the Kingdome of heaven And if the darknesse of this world which was but a darknesse of our making could not comprehend the light when Christ in his person brought the light and offered repentance certainly in that outward darknesse of the next world the darknesse which God hath made for punishment they shall see nothing neither intramittendo nor extramittendo neither by receiving offer of grace from heaven nor in the disposition to pray for grace in hell For as at our inanimation in our Mothers womb our immortall soule when it comes swallowes up the other soules of vegetation and of sense which were in us before so at this our regeneration in the next world the light of glory shall swallow up the light of grace To as many as shall be within there will need no grace to supply defects nor eschew dangers because there we shall have neither defects nor dangers There shall be no night no need of candle Apoc. 22.5 nor of Sun for the Lord shall give them light and they shall raigne for ever and ever There shall be no such light of grace as shall work repentance to them that are in the light of glory neither could they that are in outward darknesse comprehend the light of grace if it could flow out upon them First you did the works of darknesse sayes the Apostle Rom. 13.12 and then that custome that practice brought you to love darknesse better then light and then as the Prince of darknesse delights to transforme himselfe into an Angell of light Iohn 3. so by your hypocrisie you pretend a light of grace when you are darknesse it selfe and therefore at quid vobis what will you get by that day which is darknesse and not light Now as this Woe and commination of our Prophet had one aime 3. Part. to beat down their scorne which derided the judgements of God in this world and a second aime to beat downe their confidence that thought themselves of themselves able to stand in Gods judgements in the next world so it hath a third mark better then these two it hath an aime upon them in whom a wearinesse of this life when Gods corrections are upon them or some other mistaking of their owne estate and case works an over-hasty and impatient desire of death and in this sense and acceptation the day of the Lord is the day of our death and transmigration out of this world and the darknesse is still everlasting darknesse Now for this we take our lesson in Iob Iob. 7.1 Vita militia mans life is a warfare man might have lived at peace Greg. he himselfe chose a rebellious warre and now quod volens expetiit nolens portat that warre which he willingly embarked himselfe in at first though it be against his will now he must goe through with In Iob we have our lesson and in S. Paul we have our Law Eph 63. Take ye the whole armour of God that ye may be able having done all to stand that is that having overcome one temptation you may stand in battle against the next for it is not adoloscentia militia but vita that we should think to triumph if we had overcome the heat and intemperance of youth but we must fight it out to our lives end And then we have the reward of this lesson and of this law limited nemo coronatur no man is crowned except he fight according to this law that is 2 Tim. 2.5 he persever to the end And as we have our lesson in Iob our rule and reward in the Apostle who were both great Commanders
And even God himselfe who had that omni-sufficiency in himselfe conceived a conveniency for his glory to draw a Circumference about that Center Creatures about himselfe and to shed forth lines of love upon all them and not to love himselfe alone Selfe-love in man sinks deep but yet you see the Apostle in his order casts the other sin lower that is into a worse place To be without naturall affections S. Augustine extends these naturall affections to Religious affections because they are naturall to a supernaturall man to a regenerate man who naturally loves those that are of the houshold of the faithfull that professe the same truth of Religion and not to be affected with their distresses when Religion it selfe is distressed in them is impietie He extends these affections to Morall affections the love of Eminent and Heroicall vertues in any man we ought to be affected with the fall of such men And he extends them to civill affections the love of friends not to be moved in their behalfe is argument enough that we doe not much love them For our case in the Text These men whom Jesus found weeping and wept with them were none of his kindred They were Neighbours and Christ had had a conversation and contracted a friendship in that Family V. 5. He loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus saies the Storie and he would let the world see that he loved them for so the Jewes argued that saw him weepe V. 36. Behold how he loved them without outward declarations who can conclude an inward love to assure that Iesus wept To an inordinatenesse of affections it never came to a naturall tendernesse it did and so far as to teares Laerymae and then who needs be ashamed of weeping Look away far from me for I will weep bitterly sayes Hierusalem in Esay But look upon me sayes Christ in the Lamentations Behold and see if ever there were any sorrow any teares like mine Not like his in value but in the roote as they proceeded from naturall affection they were teares of imitation and we may we must weepe teares like his teares They scourged him they crowned him they nailed him they pierced him and then blood came but he shed teares voluntarily and without violence The blood came from their ill but the teares from his owne good nature The blood was drawne the teares were given We call it a childish thing to weepe and a womanish and perchance we meane worse in that then in the childish for therein we may meane falshood to be mingled with weaknesse Christ made it an argument of his being man to weepe for though the lineaments of mans bodie eyes and eares hands and feet be ascribed to God in the Scriptures though the affections of mans mind be ascribed to him even sorrow nay Repentance it selfe is attributed to God I doe not remember that ever God is said to have wept It is for man And when God shall come to that last Act in the glorifying of Man when he promises to wipe all teares from his eyes what shall God have to doe with that eye that never wept He wept out of a nuturall tendernesse in generall and he wept now out of a particular occasion What was that Quia mortuus because Lazarus was dead We stride over many steps at once waive many such considerable circumstances as these Lazarus his friend was dead therefore he wept Lazarus the staffe and sustentatio of that family was dead he upon whom his Sisters relied was dead therefore he wept But I stop onely upon this one step Quia mortuus that he was dead Now a good man is not the worse for dying that is true and capable of a good sense because he is established in a better world but yet when he is gone out of this world he is none of us he is no longer a man The stronger opinion in the Schoole is That Christ himselfe when he lay dead in the grave was no man Though the God head never departed from the Carcasse there was no divorce of that Hypostaticall union yet because the Humane soule was departed from it he was no man Hugo de S. Victor who thinks otherwise that Christ was a man then thinkes so upon a weak ground He thinkes that because the soule is the form of man the soul is man and that therefore the soul remaining the man remaines But it is not the soule but the union of the soul that makes the man The Master of the Sentences Peter Lombard that thinks so too that Christ was then a man thinkes so upon as weak a ground He thinkes that it is enough to constitute a man that there be a soul and body though that soul and body be not united but still it is the union that makes the man And therefore when he is disunited dead he is none of us he is no man and therefore we weep how well soever he be Abraham was loath to let go his wife though the King had her A man hath a naturall lothnesse to let go his friend though God take him to him S. Augustine sayes that he knew well enough that his mother was in heaven and S. Ambrose that he knew wel enough that his master Theodosius the emperor was in heaven but because they saw not in what state they were they thought that something might be asked at Gods hands in their behalf and so out of a humane and pious officiousnesse in a devotion perchance indigested uncocted and retaining yet some crudities some irresolutions they strayed into prayers for them after they were dead Lazarus his sisters made no doubt of their brothers salvation they beleeved his soul to be in a good estate And for his body they told Christ Lord we know that he shall rise at the last day And yet they wept Here in this world we who stay lack those who are gone out of it we know they shall never come to us and when we shall go to them whether we shall know them or no we dispute They who think that it conduces to the perfection of happinesse in heaven that we should know one another think piously if they think we shall For as for the maintenance of publique peace States and Churches may think diversly in points of Religion that are not fundamentall and yet both be true and Orthodoxall Churches so for the exaltation of private devotion in points that are not fundamentall divers men may think diversly and both be equally good Christians Whether we shall know them there or no is problematicall and equall that we shall not till then is dogmaticall and certain Therefore we weep I know there are Philosophers that will not let us weep nor lament the death of any And I know that in the Scriptures there are rules and that there are instructions convayed in that example that David left mourning as soon as the childe was dead And I know that there are Authors of a
the devill gives us is affliction upon affliction and to that there belongs a woe Per tenuitatem assimilamur Deo saies the same Author The attenuation the slendernesse the deliverance of the body from the encumbrance of much flesh gives us some assimilation some conformity to God and his Angels The lesse flesh we carry the liker we are to them who have none That is still the lesse flesh of our owne making for for that flesh which God and his instrument Nature hath given us in what measure or proportion soever that does not oppresse us to this purpose neither shall that be laid to our charge but the flesh that we have built up by curious diet by meats of provocation and witty sawces or by a slothfull and drowsie negligence of the works of our calling All flesh is sinfull flesh sinfull so as that it is the mother of sin it occasions sin naturall flesh is so But this artificiall flesh of our owne making is sinfull so as that it is also the daughter of sin It is indeed the punishment of former sins and the occasion of future The soule then requires not so large so vast a house of sinfull flesh to dwell in Macerationes corporis But yet on the other side we may not by inordinate abstinencies by indiscreet fastings by inhumane flagellations by unnaturall macerations and such Disciplines as God doth not command nor authorize so wither and shrinke and contract the body as though the soule were sent into it as into a prison or into fetters and manacles to wring and pinch and torture it Nihil interest saies S. Hierome It is all one whether thou kill thy selfe at one blow or be long in doing it if thou do it All one whether thou fall upon thine own sword or sterve thy selfe with such a fasting as thou discernest to induce that effect for saies he Descendit a dignitate viri not as insaniae incurrit He departs from that dignity which God hath imprinted in man in giving him the use and the dominion over his creatures and he gives the world just occasion to thinke him mad And as Tertullian adds Respuit datorem qui datum deserit He that does not use a benefit reproaches the Benefactor and he is ungratefull to God that does not accept at his hands the use of his blessings Therefore is it accepted as a good interpretation which is made of Christs determining his fast in forty daies Ne sui homicida videretur Lest if he continued it longer he might have seemed to have killed himselfe by being the author of his owne death And so do they interpret aright his Esuriit That then he began to be hungry that he began to languish to faint to finde a detriment in his body for else a fasting when a man is not hungry is no fasting but then he gave over fasting when he found the state of his body empaired by fasting And therefore those mad doctrines so S. Hierom cals them Notas insaniae habent yea those devilish doctrines so S. Paul cals them that forbid certaine meats and that make un-commanded macerations of the body meritorious that upon a supposititious story of an Ermit that lived 22. yeares Abbasll sperg without eating any thing at all And upon an impertinent example of their S. Francis that kept three Lents in the yeare which they extoll and magnifie in S. Francis and S. Hierom condemned and detested in the Montanists who did so too have built up those Carthusian Rules That though it appeare that that and nothing but that would save the patients life yet he may not eat flesh that is a Carthusian And have brought into estimation those Apocryphall and bastardly Canons which they father upon the Apostles That a man must rather sterve then receive food from the hand of a person excommunicate or otherwise detected of any mortall sin And that all that can be done with the almes of such a person is that it be spent in wood and coales and other fuell that so as the subtile philosophy of their Canon is it may be burnt and consumed by fire for to save a mans life it must not be spent upon meat or drink or such sustentation These Doctrines are not the Doctrines of this Resurrection by which man considered in Composito as he consists of soule and body by a sober and temperate life makes his body obsequious and serviceable to his soule but yet leaves his soule a body to worke in and an Organ to praise God upon both in a devout humiliation of his body in Gods service and in a bodily performance of the duties of some calling for this is our first Resurrection A casu separationis from having falne into a separation of body and soule for they must serve God joyntly together because God having joyned them man may not separate them but as God shall re-unite them at the last Resurrection so must we in our Resurrections in this life And farther we extend not this Resurrection from this separation this divorce The second fall of man in naturall death Casus in dissolutionem is Casus in dissolutionem The man being fallen into a divorce of soule and body the body fals by putrefaction into a dissolution of dust and the Resurrection from this fall is a re-efformation when God shall recompact that dust into that body This fall and this resurrection we have in our spirituall death too for we fall into daily customes and continuall habits of those sins and we become not onely as that Lazarus in the parable to have sores upon us but as that Lazarus in the Gospell that was dead Domine jam faetemus quatriduani sumus Lord we stinke in thy nostrils and we have beene buried foure dayes All the foure changes of our life Infancy Youth Middle Age and Old have beene spent and worne out in a continuall and uninterrupted course of sin In which we shall best consider our fall and best prepare our Resurrection by looking from whence we are fallen and by what steps and they are three First Nardus nostra Cant. 1.12 Perdidimus nardum nostrā We have lost the sweet savour of our own Spikenard for so the Spouse saies Nardus mea dedit odorem suum My Spikenard hath given forth her sweet savour There was a time when we had a Spikenard and a sweet savour of our own when our own Naturall faculties in that state as God infused them in Adam had a power to apprehend and lay hold upon the graces of God Man hath a reasonable soule capable of Gods grace so hath no creature but man man hath naturall faculties which may be employed by God in his service so hath no creature but man Onely man was made so as that he might be better whereas all other creatures were but to consist in that degree of goodnesse in which they entred Miserable fall Only man was made to mend and only man does grow
of particular sins Now after all this there is in naturall death a third fall casus in dispersionem In dispersionem the man is fallen in separationem into a divorce of body and soule the body is fallen in dissolutionem to putrifaction and dissolution in dust and then this dust is fallen in dispersionem into a dispersion and scattering over the earth as God threatens Comminuam in pulverem I will break the wicked as small as dust and scatter them with the winde Psal 18. For after such a scattering no power but of God onely can recollect those grains of dust and re-compact them into a body and re-inanimate them into a man And such a state such a dispersion doth the heart and soule of an habituall sinner undergoe For Pro. 17.24 as the eyes of a foole are in the corners of the earth so is the heart and soule of a sinner The wanton and licentious man sighs out his soule weeps out his soule sweares out his soule in every place where his lust or his custome or the glory of victory in overcomming and deluding puts him upon such solicitations In the corrupt taker his soul goes out that it may leave him unsensible of his sin and not trouble him in his corrupt bargaine and in a corrupt giver ambitious of preferment his soule goes out with his money which he loves well but not so well as his preferment This yeare his soule and his money goes out upon one office and next yeare more soul and more money upon another He knowes how his money will come in againe for they will bring it that have need of his corruptnesse in his offices But where will this man finde his soule thus scattered upon every woman corruptly won upon every office corruptly usurped upon every quillet corruptly bought upon every fee corruptly taken Thus it is when a soule is scattered upon the daily practise of any one predominant and habituall sin but when it is indifferently scattered upon all how much more is it so In him that swallowes sins in the world as he would doe meats at a feast passes through every dish and never askes Physitian the nature the quality the danger the offence of any dish That baits at every sin that rises and poures himselfe into every sinfull mold he meets That knowes not when he began to spend his soule nor where nor upon what sin he laid it out no nor whether he have whether ever he had any soule or no but hath lost his soule so long agoe in rusty and in incoherent sins not sins that produced one another as in Davids case and yet that is a fearfull state that concatenation of sins that pedegree of sins but in sins which he embraces meerely out of an easinesse to sin and not out of a love no nor out of a tentation to that sin in particular that in these incoherent sins hath so scattered his soule as that he hath not soule enough left to seek out the rest And therefore David makes it the Title of the whole Psalme Domine ne disperdas O Lord doe not scatter us Psal 58. And he begins to expresse his sense of Gods Judgements in the next Psalme so O Lord thou hast cast us out thou hast scattered us turn again unto us for even from this aversion there may be conversion and from this last and lowest fall a resurrection But how In the generall resurrection upon naturall death God shall work upon this dispersion of our scattered dust as in the first fall which is the Divorce by way of Re-union and in the second which is Putrifaction by way of Re-efformation so in this third which is Dispersion by way of Re-collection where mans buried flesh hath brought forth grasse and that grasse fed beasts and those beasts fed men and those men fed other men God that knowes in which Boxe of his Cabinet all this seed Pearle lies in what corner of the world every atome every graine of every mans dust sleeps shall recollect that dust and then recompact that body and then re-inanimate that man and that is the accomplishment of all In this resurrection from this Dilpersion and scattering in sin the way is by Recollection too That this sinner recollect himselfe and his own history his own annalls his own journalls and call to minde where he lost his way and with what tendernesse of conscience and holy startling he entred into some sins at first in which he is seared up now and whereas his triumph should have been in a victory over the flesh he is come to a triumph in his victory over the spirit of God and glories in having overcome the Holy Ghost and brought his conscience to an unsensiblenesse of sin If hee can recollect himselfe thus and cast up his account so If he can say to God Lord we have sold our selves for nothing he shall heare God say to him as he does there in the Prophet You have sold your selves for nothing Esay 52.3 and you shall be redeemed without money But how is this recollecting wrought God hath intimated the way Ezek. 37. in that vision to the Prophet Ezekiel He brings the Prophet into a field of dead bones and dry bones sicca vehementer as it is said there as dry as this dust which we speak of And he asks him fili hominis thou that art but the son of man and must judge humanely Putasne vivent ossa ista Dost thou think that these bones can live The Prophet answers Domine tu nosti thou Lord who knowest whose names are written in the Book of Life and whose are not whose bones are wrapped up in the Decree of thy Election and whose are not knowest whether these bones can live or no for but in the efficacy and power of that Decree they cannot Yes they shall sayes God Almighty and they shall live by this meanes Dices eis Thou shalt say unto them O ye dry bones heare the word of the Lord As dry as desperate as irremediable as they are in themselves God shall send his servants unto them and they shall heare them And as it is added in that place Prophetante me factus sonitus commotio As I Prophesied there was a noyse and a shaking As whilst Peter spake The Holy Ghost fell upon all them that heard the word So whilst the Messengers of God speak in the presence of such sinners there shall be a noyse and a commotion a horrour of their former sins a wonder how they could provoke so patient and so powerfull a God a sinking down under the waight of Gods Judgements a flying up to the apprehension of his mercies and this noyse and commotion in their soules shall be setled with that Gospell in that Prophet Dabo super vos nervos I will lay sinewes upon you and will bring up flesh upon you and cover you with skin and put breath into you and you shall live and ye
shall know that I am the Lord God shall restore them to life and more to strength and more to beauty and comelinesse acceptable to himselfe in Christ Jesus Your way is Recollecting gather your selves into the Congregation and Communion of Saints in these places gather your sins into your memory and poure them out in humble confessions to that God whom they have wounded Gather the crummes under his Table lay hold upon the gracious promises which by our Ministery he lets fall upon the Congregation now and gather the seales of those promises whensoever in a rectified conscience his Spirit beares witnesse with your spirit that you may be worthy receivers of him in his Sacrament and this recollecting shall be your resurrection Beatus qui habet partem Ap●● 20.6 sayes S. Iohn Blessed is he that hath part in the first Resurrection for on such the second death hath no power He that rises to this Judgement of recollecting and of judging himselfe shall rise with a chearfulnesse and stand with a confidence when Christ Jesus shall come in the second Au● And Quando exacturus est in secundo quod dedit in primo when Christ shall call for an account in that second judgement how he hath husbanded those graces which he gave him for the first he shall make his possession of this first resurrection his title and his evidence to the second When thy body which hath been subject to all kindes of destruction here to the destruction of a Flood in Catarrhs and Rheums and Dropsies and such distillations to the destruction of a fire in Feavers and Frenzies and such conflagrations shall be removed safely and gloriously above all such distempers and malignant impressions and body and soule so united as if both were one spirit in it selfe and God so united to both as that thou shalt be the same spirit with God God began the first World but upon two Adam and Eve The second world after the Flood he began upon a greater stock upon eight reserved in the Arke But when he establishes the last and everlasting world in the last Resurrection he shall admit such a number as that none of us who are here now none that is or hath or shall be upon the face of the earth shall be denied in that Resurrection if he have truly felt this for Grace accepted is the infallible earnest of Glory SERMON XXII Preached at S. Pauls upon Easter-day 1627. HEB. 11.35 Women received their dead raised to life againe And others were tortured not accepting a deliverance that they might obtaine a better Resurrection MErcy is Gods right hand with that God gives all Faith is mans right hand with that man takes all David Psal 136. opens and enlarges this right hand of God in pouring out his blessings plentifully abundantly manifoldly there And in this Chapter the Apostle opens and enlarges this right hand of man by laying hold upon those mercies of God plentifully abundantly manifoldly by faith here There David powres downe the mercies of God in repeating and re-repeating that phrase For his mercy endureth for ever And here S. Paul carries up man to heaven by repeating and re-repeating the blessings which man hath attained by faith By faith Abel sacrificed By faith Enoch walked with God By faith Noah built an Arke c. And as in that Psalme Gods mercies are exprest two waies First in the good that God did for his servants He remembred them in their low estate Ver 23. Ver. 24. for his mercy endureth for ever And then againe He redeemed them from their enemies for his mercy endureth for ever And then also in the evill that he brought upon their enemies He slew famous Kings for his mercy endureth for ever And then He gave their land for an heritage for his mercy endureth for ever So in this Chapter the Apostle declares the benefits of faith two wayes also First how faith enriches us and accommodates us in the wayes of prosperity By faith Abraham went to a place which he received for an inheritance And so By faith Sarah received strength to conceive seed Ver. 8. Ver. 11. Ver. 34. And then how faith sustaines and establishes us in the wayes of adversity By faith they stopt the mouthes of Lions by faith they quencht the violence of fire by faith they escaped the edge of the sword in the verse immediatly before the Text. And in this verse which is our Text the Apostle hath collected both The benefits which they received by faith Women received their dead raised to life againe And then the holy courage which was infused by Faith in their persecutions Others were tortured not accepting deliverance that they might receive a better Resurrection And because both these have relation evidently pregnantly to the Resurrection for their benefit was that the Women received their dead by a Resurrection And their courage in their persecution was That they should receive a better Resurrection therefore the whole meditation is proper to this day in which wee celebrate all Resurrections in the Root in the Resurrection of the First fruits of the dead our Lord and Saviour Christ Iesus Our Parts are two How plentifully God gives to the faithfull Divisio Women receive their dead raised to life againe And how patiently the faithfull suffer Gods corrections Others were tortured not accepting c. Though they be both large considerations Benefits by Faith Patience in the Faithfull yet we shall containe our selves in those particulars which are exprest or necessarily implyed in the Text it selfe And so in the first place we shall see first The extraordinary consolation in Gods extraordinary Mercies in his miraculous Deliverances such as this Women received their dead raised to life again And secondly we shall seethe examples to which the Apostle refers here What women had had their dead restored to life againe And then lastly in that part That this affection of joy in having their dead restored to life againe being put in the weaker sexe in women onely we may argue conveniently from thence That the strength of a true and just joy lies not in that but that our virility our holy manhood our religious strength consists in a faithfull assurance that we have already a blessed communion with these Saints of God though they be dead and we alive And that we shall have hereafter a glorious Association with them in the Resurrection though we never receive our dead raised to life again in this world And in those three considerations we shall determine that first part And then in the other The Patience of the Faithfull Others were tortured c. we shall first look into the examples which the Apostle refers to who they were that were thus tortured And secondly the heighth and exaltation of their patience They would not accept a deliverance And lastly the ground upon which their Anchor was cast what established their patience That they might obtaine a better Resurrection
never spoken of the Resurrection to them they were likely to have heard of it from them to whom Christ had spoken of it It was Cleophas his question to Christ though he knew him not then to be so when they went together to Emaus Art thou onely a stranger in Ierusalem that is hast thou been at Jerusalem and is this Luke 24.16 The death of Christ strange to thee So may we say to any that professes Christianity Art thou in the Christian Church and is this The Resurrection of Christ strange to thee Are there any amongst us that thrust to Fore-noones and After-noones Sermons that pant after high and un-understandable Doctrines of the secret purposes of God and know not this the fundamentall points of Doctrine Even these womens ignorance though they were in the number of the Disciples of Christ makes us affraid that some such there may be and therefore blessed be they that have set on foote that blessed way of Catechizing that after great professions we may not be ignorant of small things These things these women might have learnt of others who were to instruct them Luke 24. ●● But for their better assurance the Angell tells them here that Christ himself had told them of this before Remember sayes he how Christ spoke to you whilst he was with you in Galile We observe that Christ spoke to his Disciples of his Resurrection five times in the Gospell Now these women could not be present at any of the five but one which was the third Mat. 17.22 And before that it is evident that they had applied themselves to Christ and ministred unto him The Angell then remembers them what Christ said to them there Luke 24.6 It was this The Sonne of man must be delivered into the hands of sinfull men and Crucified and the third day rise againe And they remembred his words sayes the Text there Then they remembred them when they heard of them again but not till then Which gives me just occasion to note first the perverse tendernesse and the supercilious and fastidious delicacy of those men that can abide no repetitions nor indure to heare any thing which they have heard before when as even these things which Christ himself had preached to these women in Galile had been lost if this Angel had not preached them over again to them at Jerusalem Remember how he spake to you sayes he to them And why shouldst thou be loath to heare those things which thou hast heard before when till thou heardst them again thou didst not know that is not consider that ever thou hadst heard them So have we here also just occasion to note their impertinent curiosity who though the sense be never so well observed call every thing a salfification if the place be not rightly cyphard or the word exactly cited and magnifie one another for great Text men though they understand no Text because they cite Book and Chapter and Verse and Words aright whereas in this place the Angel referres the women to Christs words and they remember that Christ spake those words and yet if we compare the places Mat. 17.22 Luke 24.6 that where Christ speaks the words and that where the Angell repeats them though the sense be intirely the same yet the words are not altogether so Thus the Angell erects them in the consternation Remember what was promised that in three dayes he would rise The third day is come and he is risen as he said and that your senses may be exercised as well as your faith Come and see the place where the Lord lay Even the Angell calls Christ Lord Dominus Angeli Heb. 1.6 and his Lord for the Lord and the Angell calls him so is Lord of all of men and Angels When God brings his Soninto the world sayes the Apostle he sayes let all the Angels of God worship him And when God caries his Son out of the world by the way of the Crosse they have just cause to worship him too Col●●● 1.20 for By the blood of his Crosse are all things reconciled to God both things in earth and things in heaven Men and Angels Therefore did an Angel minister to Christ before he was Luke 1. Mat. 1. Luke 2. Mat. 4. Luke 22. Acts 1.10 in the Annunciation to his blessed Mother that he should be And an Angel to his imaginary Father Ioseph before he was born And a Quire of Angels to the Shepheards at his birth An Angel after his tentation And in his Agony and Bloody-sweat more Angels Angels at his last step at his Ascension and here at his Resurrection Angels minister unto him The Angels of heaven acknowledged Christ to be their Lord. In the beginning some of the Angels would be Similes Altissimo like to the most High But what a transcendent what a super-diabolicall what a prae-Luciferian pride is his that will be supra Altissimum 2 Thes 2.4 superiour to God That not only exalteth himselfe above all that is called God Kings are called Gods and this Arch-Monarch exalts himselfe above all Kings but above God literally and in that wherein God hath especially manifested himself to be God to us that is in prescribing us a Law how he will be obeyed for in dispensing with this Law and adding to and withdrawing from this law he exalts himself above God as our Law-giver And as it is also said there He exalteth himself and opposeth himselfe against God There is no trusting of such neighbours as are got above us in power This man of sin hath made himselfe superiour to God and then an enemy to God for God is Truth and he opposes him in that for he is heresie and falshood and God is Love and he opposes him in that for he is envy and hatred and malice and sedition and invasion and rebellion The Angell confesses Christ to be The Lord his Lord Dominus mortuus and he confesses him to be so then when he lay dead in the grave Come seethe place where the Lord lay A West Indian King having beene well wrought upon for his Conversion to the Christian Religion and having digested the former Articles when he came to that He was crucified dead and buried had no longer patience but said If your God be dead and buried leave me to my old god the Sunne for the Sunne will not dye But if he would have proceeded to the Article of the Resurrection hee should have seene that even then when hee lay dead hee was GOD still Then when hee was no Man hee was GOD still Nay then when hee was no man hee was God and Man in this true sense That though the body and soule were divorced from one another and that during that divorce he were no man for it is the union of body and soule that makes a man yet the Godhead was not divided from either of these constitutive parts of man body or soule Psal 22.7 1
Cor. 4.13 Ier. 19.8 Even then when a man is no man he may be a Christian when I am a worme and no man when I am the off-scouring of the world when I am the reproach the proverb the hissing of men yet as my Saviour when he lay in the grave was the same Christ so in this grave of oppression and persecution I am the same Christian as in my Baptisme Let nothing therefore that can fall upon thee dispoyle thee of the dignity and constancy of a Christian howsoever thou be severed from those things which thou makest account do make thee up severed from a wife by divorce from a child by death from goods by fire or water from an office by just or by unjust displeasure which is the heavier but the happier case yet never think thy self severed from thy Head Christ Jesus nor from being a lively member of his body Iob 30.29 Though thou be a brother of Dragons and a companion of Owles Though thy Harpe be turned into mourning and thine Organ into the voyce of them that weepe nay Though the Lord kill thee yet trust in him Iob 13.15 Thy Saviour when he lay dead in the grave was still the same Lord Thou when thou art enwrapped and enterred in confusion art still the same Christian To this meditation the Angell carries us in keeping up Christs style at the highest then when he was at the lowest And to some other particulars he carries these Women in that which remaines Come and see the place It is not nothing certainly not meerely nothing Locus Sacer. that God does so often direct us to frequent his Sanctuary and his holy places Not nothing that Solomon into that Instrument which passed betweene God and him for the Consecration of the Temple inserted that Covenant That not onely they which came to that Temple but they 1 King 8. who being necessarily absent prayed towards the Temple might be heard which is not inconveniently assigned for a reason of Ezechias his turning to the wall to pray in his sick bed Esay 38.2 Dan. 6.12 and of Daniels opening of his windows when he prayed in his private chamber because in so doing they looked towards Jerusalem where the Temple was When Naaman being recovered from his bodily leprosie recovered from his spirituall leprosie too and resolved to worship none but the true God he was loath to worship the true God 2 King 5.17 in an unholy place and therefore desired some of that earth to build an Altar upon Pharaoh was come to be content that Moses and his people should sacrifice to their true God Exod. 8.25 so they would sacrifice in Egypt But Moses durst not accept of those conditions Pharaoh grew content that they should go out of Egypt to Sacrifice so they would not go far Ver. 28. but keepe within his limits but Moses durst not accept those conditions nor any conditions lesse then those in which God had determined him which was Exod. 3.18 To go three dayes iourney into the Wildernesse We know that God is alike in all places but he does not worke in all places alike God works otherwise in the Church then in an Army and diversly in his divers Ordinances in the Church God works otherwise in Prayer then in Preaching and otherwise in the Sacraments then in either and otherwise in the later then in the first Sacrament The power is the same and the end is the same but the way is not so Athanasius scarce three hundred yeares after Christ found the Church in possession of that Custome and he takes knowledge of it A hanas 9.37 as of a precept from the Apostles themselves That the Congregation should pray towards the East to testifie saies that Father their desire of returning to the Country which they had lost Paradise Places of prophane and secular use should not be made equall with holy places nor should holy actions and motions and gestures and positions of the body in divine service be submitted to scorne and derision They have their use either in a reall exaltation of Devotion or for a peaceable conservation of uniformity and decency or for a reverentiall obedience to lawfull Authority and any of these is enough to authorize things in their use which in themselves and in their owne nature are indifferent And though the principall purpose of the Angell in shewing these women the place were to assure them that Christ was risen yet may there also be an intimation of the helpe and assistance that we receive from holy places in this their Ecce locus Come and see the place But this is farre Perogrinationes very very far from that superstitious fixing of God to the free-hold which they have induced in the Roman Church and upon which they have super-induced their meritorious Pilgrimages to certaine places Consider a little the Pilgrimage of these Pilgrimages how they have gone on Innocent the third in the Lateran Councell about foure hundred yeares since gave free pardon of all sins to all men that went or contributed to the recovery of the holy land Now these expeditions were not with any hope of recovering that land but principally to carry the powerfullest persons and the activest spirits into those remote parts that so these parts might be left the more open to the Inundation of that Sea of Rome and the invasions of that Bishop After this these Indulgences were enlarged and communicated to all that went to Jerusalem not onely as Soldiers but as Pilgrims And after that by Boniface the eighths liberality the way was shortned and they had as much that came but to Rome as they that went to Jerusalem As a little before by Clement the sixt there was a power given to every man that went such a Pilgrimage to deliver foure soules out of Purgatory which he would and a commandment given to the Angels of Heaven to carry their soules that dyed in that Pilgrimage immediately to Heaven without touching upon Purgatory These abuses made that learned and devout Man Gerson Gerson the Chancelor of Paris in his time as let them deny it with what stifnesse they will nothing is more demonstrable nor more evidently demonstrated Then that in all times some great men amongst themselves have opposed their Superstitions This I say made Gerson say though he durst say no more Abnegare non possumus None of us all can deny but that many things are induced upon colour of Religion quorum sanctior esset omissio which he shall be more holy that forbeares then he that performes them In detestation of this locall and stationary salvation of these meritorious pilgrimages to certaine places some of the blessed Fathers spoke much long before they were come to that enormous abuse in which the later times exceeded S. Hierom had occasion to say much of it by a solicitation from Polinus Epist 13. and he saies this Quanti hodieportant funera
Fundamentall point the Resurrection of the dead and then an instruction for manners arising out of that That they mourn not intemperately for the dead as they do saith he which have no hope of seeing them again who are gone For we know that they which are gone are gone but into another room of the same house this world and the next do but make up God a house they are gone but into another Pue of the same Church the Militant and the Triumphant do but make up God a Church Ver. 14. If we beleeve that Iesus dyed and rose again sayes our Apostle even so them also which sleep in Iesus will God bring with him with him For howsoever they have lien ingloriously in the dust all this while all this while they have been with God and he shall bring them with him But the Thessalonians were not so hard in beleeving the Resurrection 1 Cor. 15.35 as curious in enquiring the order of the Resurrection And as among the Corinthians some inquired de modo How are the dead raised and with what body do they come So among the Thessalonians some inquired de Ordine in what order for precedency shall the last scean of this last act of man be transacted What difference between them that were dead thousands of yeares before and them whom Christ shall finde alive at his second comming Them the Apostle satisfies We that are alive shall not prevent them that are asleep we shall not enter into heaven before them The dead in Christ shall first rise sayes he and then then enters our Text Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meete the Lord in the ayre and so shall be ever with the Lord. Then Divisie When This Then in our text is an apprehensive and a comprehensive word It reaches to and layes hold upon that which the Apostle sayes before the text in the fifteenth and sixteenth verses Then when the dead in Christ are first risen and risen by Christs comming down from heaven in clamore in a shout in the voice of the Archangel and in the Trumpet of God Then when that is done We that are alive and remain shall bee wrought upon and all being joyned in one body They and we together shall be caught up in the clouds to meet the Lord in the ayre and so shall we be ever with the Lord. So that in these words we shall have three things to consider which will constitute three parts in this exercise First the raising of those that were dead before Secondly the changing of them who are alive then And lastly our union in our exaltation and possession of the kingdome of God We together with them shall be caught up Neither of these three parts will be swallowed down in a generality There must passe a Mastication a re-division into more particular branches upon them all For in the first which the first word of our Text Then induces which is the raising of them who were dead before we shall consider first That the dead are not forgotten though they have dwelt long in the house of forgetfulnesse nor lost though they have lyen long in the dust of dispersion nor neglected nor deferred that others might be preferred before them which shall be alive then for sayes the Apostle We shall not prevent them but they shall rise first How shall they rise For that is also a second consideration induced by our first word Then Then when they shal be raised in virtute Christi in the power of Christ for sayes the Text The Lord himself shall descend from heaven to raise them And how shall he exercise how shall he execute and declare his power in their raising It shall be In clamore with a shout and in the voyce of the Arch-angel and the Trumpet of God And in these three Branches That the dead shall rise first That they shall rise in the power of Christ That that power shall be thus expressed In a shout in the voyce of the Arch-angell in the Trumpet of God we shall determine that first Part. When that is done and done so we shall be wrought upon We that are alive and remain then where we shall first see that some shall be alive and remain then when Christ comes And then consider their state and condition how they being then cloathed with bodies of corruption shall be capable of that present entrance into glory and in that disquisition we shall end our second Part. And then in our third and last part The glorious Union of these two Armies Those which were dead and those which are alive we shall consider first That here is no mention at all of any Resurrection of the wicked but onely of them that sleep in Christ They shall rise And then those that are to partake of this glory are thus proceeded with They are caught up Rapiuntur Caught up in the Clouds In Nubibus Exalted into the Ayre In Aera There to meet the Lord Obviam Domino And so to be with the Lord for ever We shall be and be with the Lord and be with the Lord for ever which are blessed and glorious gradations if we may have time to insist upon them which we may best hope for this day of all others for this day we have two dayes in one This day both Gods Sons arose The Sun of his Firmament and the Son of his bosome And if one Sun doe set upon us the other will stay as long as our devotion last God went not from Abraham till Abraham had no more to say Gen. 18. ult No more will Christ from us First then for our first Branch of our first part the rising of the dead 1 Part. the first man that was laid in the dust of the earth Abel loses nothing by lying so long there He loses nothing that men of later ages gain For if we live to the comming of Christ to Judgement we shall not prevent them we shall have no precedency of them that were dead ages before No man is superannuated in the grave that he is too old to enter into heaven where the Master of the house is The ancient of dayes No man is bed-rid with age in the grave that he cannot rise It is not with God as it is with man we doe but God does not forget the dead and as long as God is with them they are with him Psal 56.9 As he puts all thy teares into his bottles so he puts all the graines of thy dust into his Cabinet and the windes that scatter the waters that wash them away carry them not out of his sight He remembers that we are but dust but dust then when we lie in the grave Psal 103.14 and yet he remembers us But his memory goes farther then so He remembers that we were but dust alive at our best They dye sayes David and they returne to their
own dust It is not an entring into a new state when they dye but a returning to their old They return to dust Psal 104.29 And it is not to that dust which is cast upon them in the grave for that may be another mans dust but to that dust which they carried about them in their bodies They returne and to dust and to their own dust Nor is dust so inglorious a thing but that God gives a dignity to dust when he admits it into comparison to expresse the multiplication the accumulation of his blessings upon Abraham I will make thy seed as the dust of the earth not for weaknesse Gen. 13.16 but for infinitenesse And so to the same purpose of expressing greatnesse Balaam uses this Metaphore of dust Who can count the dust of Iacob and the number of the fourth part of Israel Numb 23.10 Neither does Abraham think it any diminution to lie in the dust of the earth when he is dead for he professes that he walks in the dust of the earth in himself whilst he is aliye Gen. 18.27 I have taken upon me to speak to the Lord being but dust And when David seemes to fear the dust of death lighten mine eyes lest they sleep the sleep of death it is not that he suspects any detriment to himself by death that he shall be the worse by dying Psal 13.1 but that God may lose of his glory when as he addes there the enemy shall say we have prevailed against him For as in the Primitive Church those that seeme prayers for the dead at Funeralls are indeed but thanksgivings to God in their behalf that are departed so as often as David expresses himself in that Patheticall manner Awake O Lord why sleepest thou arise Psal 44.23 and cast us not off for ever it is a thanksgiving that he hath not and a prayer that he would not forget them When he sayes Will God be favourable no more he meanes Psal 77.7 I am sure he will Is his mercy cleane gone for ever Doth his promise faile for ever Hath God forgot to be gracious Hath he shut up his mercy in anger All these imply a kinde of confidence that he hath not And as it is in that Resurrection of which David speaks most literally in those places that is The Resurrection from the calamities and oppressions of this world so is it in the Resurrection from the dust of the grave too Psal 22.15 19. Thou hast brought me to the dust of the grave but be not thou farre from me That is when thou shalt bring me to the dust of the grave thou wilt not be farre from me And when he sayes in apparence by way of expostulation Psal 39.10 and jealousie and suspition Will God shew wonders to the dead shall the dead arise and praise him shall his loving kindnesse be declared in the grave or his faishfulnesse in destruction All these passionate interrogatories and vehement expostulations may safely be resolved into these Doctrinall propositions Yes God will shew wonders to the dead The dead shall rise and praise him His loving kindnesse shall be declared in the grave Psal 74.19 and his faithfulnesse in destruction For God will not forget the Congregation of his poore for ever The poore of this world are our poore Gods poore are they that lie in the dust the dust of the grave the dead of whom God hath a greater Congregation under ground then of the living upon the face of the earth And God will not forget the congregation of his poore for ever Finitus est eorum pulvis That which we translate Their Extortioner is at an end Esay 16.4 their Oppressor is at an end is in S. Hierome Their dust is at an end that is there comes a time when the dust of the grave shall oppresse them no longer When Truly that time is virtually and in an infallibility come already as those other words of the same Prophet may admit an accommodation in the person of Christ Esay 26.19 Thy dead men shall live When Together with my dead body they shall rise Consider by occasion of those words a promise long before Christs Resurrection that all they which slept in Christ should rise in him with my dead body they shall rise And then consider the performance of this promise in the Apostle Eph. 2.6 Consurrexerunt together with Christ all that slept in him nay all that fell asleep since he waked all that dyed since he rose did arise Virtually and infallibly they did And for the actuall accomplishment of this Resurrection in every individuall person they that were laid in the grave in the first ages lose no time For there is no time of entring into heaven till the Lord come to fetch us And then they that are dead shall be so farre from being pretermitted as that they shall first be raised before any thing be done upon us But how shall they be raised by what power for that is a second Consideration induced also by this first word of our Text Then when the Lord shall have descended from heaven to raise them Then when they are raised In virtute Christi in the vertue and power of Christ Then In virtute Christi Mat. 13.43 sayes our blessed Saviour speaking of the Resurrection then shall the righteous shine forth as the Sun And wheresoever we are called the Sun compared assimilated to the Sun Christ is our Zodiake In him we move from the beginning to the end of our Circle And therefore as the last point of our Circle our resurrection determines in him in Christ so the first point of our Circle our first adoption began in him in Christ too And if I were adopted in Christ in Christ who is a Redeemer of sinners I was adopted in the condition and in the consideration of a sinner and such a sinner as should as would lay hold upon this Christ this Redeemer Christ is the Resurrection so Christ is the Adoption If there be a Resurrection in him there were some dead before If there bean Adoption in him there are some sinners before The first look that God casts upon us is in Christ and therefore the first consideration that he takes of us is as we are sinners He adopts none but penitent sinners he reproves none but impenitent sinners In him also the dead are raised that is in that power which he was raised by The power of God For still that phrase is ingeminated iterated multiplied Suscitavit Deus Mat. 28.6 suscitatus à Deo God raised Christ from the dead and Christ was raised from the dead by God And when it is said by the Angell to the women Surrexit He is risen risen of himself as the word sounds And when by those two which went with Christ to Emaus Luke 24.34 it is said at their return to Jerusalem to the eleven Apostles surrex it verè Hee
is risen indeed risen of himself as the word sounds yet that phrase and expression He is risen if there were no more in it but that expression and that phrase would not conclude Christs rising to have been in virtute propria in his own power For of Dorcas who was raised from the dead A●● 9 4● 〈◊〉 11. it is said Resedit she sate up and of Lazarus Prodiit he came forth and yet these actions thus ascribed to themselves were done in virtute aliena in the power of another Christs Resurrection was not so In virtute aliena in the power of another if you consider his whole person God and Man but it was aliena à filio Mariae Christ as the Son of Mary rose not by his own power It was by his own but his own because he was God as well as man Nor could all the Magick in the world have raised him sooner then by that his power his as God he that is that person God and man was pleased to rise So sits he now at the right hand of his Father in heaven nor can all the Consecrations of the Romane Priests either remove him from thence or multiply him to a bodily being any where else till his time of comming to Judgment come Then and not till then The Lord himself shall descend from heaven in clamore sayes the Text in a shout with the voyce of the Arch-angell and with the Trumpet of God which circumstances constitute our third and last Branch of this first Part The dead shall rise first They shall rise in the power of Christ therefore Christ is God for Christ himself rose in the power of God and that power shall be thus declared In a shout in the voyce of the Arch-Angell in the Trumpet of God The dead heare not Thunder nor feele they an Earth quake In clamore If the Canon batter that Church walls in which they lye buryed it wakes not them nor does it shake or affect them if that dust which they are be thrown out but yet there is a voyce which the dead shall heare The dead shall heare the voyce of the Son of God Iohn 5.25 sayes the Son of God himself and they that heare shall live And that is the voyce of our Text. It is here called a clamour a vociferation a shout and varied by our Translators and Expositors according to the origination of the word to be clamor hortatorius and suasorius and jussorins A voyce that carries with it a penetration all shall heare it and a perswasion all shall beleeve it and be glad of it and a power a command all shall obey it Since that voyce at the Creation Fiat Let there be a world was never heard such a voyce as this Surgite mortui Arise ye dead That was spoken to that that was meerely nothing and this to them who in themselves shall have no cooperation no concurrence to the hearing or answering this voyce The power of this voyce is exalted in that it is said to be the voyce of the Archangel In voce Archangeli Though legions of Angels millions of Angels shall be employed about the Resurrection to recollect their scattered dust and recompact their ruined bodies yet those bodies so recompact shall not be able to heare a voyce They shall be then but such bodies as they were when they were laid downe in the grave when though they were intire bodies they could not heare the voice of the mourner But this voyce of the Archangel shall enable them to heare The Archangel shall re-infuse the severall soules into their bodies and so they shall heare that voyce Surgite mortui Arise ye that were dead and they shall arise And here we are eased of that disputation whether there be many Archangels or no for if there be but one yet this in our text is he for it is not said In the voyce of An Archangell but of The Archangell if not the Onely yet he who comprehends them all Colos 1.16 and in whom they all consist Christ Jesus And then the power of this voyce is exalted to the highest in the last word that it is Tuba Dei Tuba Dei The Trumpet of God For that is an Hebraisme and in that language it constitutes a superlative to adde the name of God to any thing As in Sauls case when David surprised him in his dead sleepe it is said that Sopor Domini 2 Sam. 26.12 The sleepe of the Lord was upon him that is the heaviest the deadest sleepe that could be imagined so here The Trumpet of God is the loudest voice that we conceive God to speake in All these pieces that it is In clamore In a cry in a shout that it is In the voyce of the Archangell that it is In the Trumpet of God make up this Conclusion That all Resurrections from the dead must be from the voice of God and from his loud voice In clamore It must be so even in thy first Resurrection thy resurrection from sin by grace here here thou needest the voice of God and his loud voyce And therefore though thou thinke thou heare sometimes Gods sibilations as the Prophet Zechary speaks Gods soft and whispering voyce in ward remorses of thine owne and motions of the Spirit of God to thy spirit yet thinke not thy spirituall resurrection accomplished till in this place thou heare his loud voyce Till thou heare Christ descending from Heaven as the text sayes that is working in his Church Till thou heare him In clamore in this cry in this shout in this voyce of Penetration of perswasion of power that is till thou feele in thy selfe in this place a liquefaction a colliquation a melting of thy bowels under the commination of the Judgements of God upon thy sin and the application of his mercy to thy Repentance And then In voce Archangeli this thou must heare In voce Archangeli In the voice of the Archangel S. Iohn in the beginning of the Revelation cals every Governour of a Church an Angel And much respect and reverence much faith and credit behoves it thee to give to thine Angell to the Pastour of that Church in which God hath given thee thy station for he is thine Angel Mal. 2.7 thy Tutelar thy guardian Angell Men should seeke the Law at the mouth of the Priest saies God in Malachi of that Priest that is set over him For the lips of the Priest of every Priest to whom the soules of others are committed should preserve knowledge should be able to instruct and rectifie his flock Quia Angelus Domini Exercituum because every such Priest is the Angell of the Lord of Hosts Hearken thou therefore to that Angel thine Angel But here thou art directed above thine Angell to the Archangell Acts 20.28 Ephes 5.23 Now not the governour of any particular Church but he Who hath purchased the whole Church with his blood
upon beauty in that face that misleads thee or upon honour in that place that possesses thee And let the opening of thine eyes be to look upon God in every object to represent to thy self the beauty of his holinesse and the honour of his service in every action And in this rapture and in this twinkling of an eye will thy Resurrection soon though not suddenly speedily though not instantly be accomplished And if God take thee out of the world before thou think it throughly accomplished yet he shall call thine inchoation consummation thine endeavour performance and thy desire effect For all Gods works are intire and done in him at once and perfect as soon as begun And this spirituall Resurrection is his work and therefore quickned even in the Conception and borne even in the quickning and grown up even in the birth that is perfected in the eyes of God as soone as it is seriously intended in our heart And farther we carry not your consideration upon those two Branches which constitute our second Part That some shall be alive at Christs comming That they that are alive shall receive such a change as shall be a true death and a true Resurrection And so shall be caught up into the Clouds to meet the Lord in the Aire and so be with the Lord for ever which are the Circumstances of our third and last Part. In this last part we proposed it for the first Consideration 3 Part. Resurrectio justorum that the Apostle determines the Consideration of the Resurrection in those two Them and Us They that slept in Christ and We that expect the comming of Christ Of any Resurrection of the wicked here is no mention Not that there is not one but that the resurrection of the wicked conduced not to the Apostles purpose which was to minister comfort in the losse of the dead because they were to come again and to meet the Lord and to be with him for ever whereas in the Resurrection of the wicked who are only to rise that they may fall lower there is no argument of comfort And therefore our Saviour Christ determines his Commission in that This is the Fathers will that sent me John 6.39 that of all which he hath given me I should lose nothing but should raise it up again at the last day This was his not losing if it were raised again but he hath only them in charge to raise at the last day whom the Father had given him given him so as that they were to be with him for ever for others he never mentions And upon this much very much depends For Chiliasts this forbearing to mention the resurrection of the wicked with the righteous gave occasion to many in the Primitive Church to imagine a two-fold a former and a later Resurrection which was furthered by their mistaking of those words in S. Iohn Apoc. 20.6 Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first Resurrection which words being intended of the Resurrection from sin by grace in this life the Chiliasts the Millenarians interpreted of this Resurrection in our Text That at Christs comming the righteous should rise and live a thousand yeares as S. Iohn sayes in all temporall abundances with Christ here in recompence of those temporall calamities and oppressions which here they had suffered and then after those thousand yeares so spent with Christ in temporall abundances should follow the resurrection of the wicked and then the wicked and the righteous should be disposed and distributed and setled in those Mansions in which they should remain for ever And of this errour as very many of the Fathers persisted in it to the end S. Augustine himself had a touch and a tincture at beginning And this errour S. Hierome also though truly I think S. Hierome was never touched with it himselfe out of a reverence to those many and great men that were Irenaeus Tertullian Lactantius and the rest would never call an Heresie nor an Errour nor by any sharper name then an opinion which is no word of heavy detestation And as those blessed Fathers of tender bowels Pagani enlarged themselves in this distribution and apportioning the mercy of God that it consisted best with the nature of his mercy that as his Saints had suffered temporall calamities in this world in this world they should be recompenced with temporall abundances so did they inlarge this mercy farther and carry it even to the Gentiles to the Pagans that had no knowledge of Christ in any established Church You shall not finde a Trumegistus a Numa Pompilius a Plato a Socrates for whose salvation you shall not finde some Father or some Ancient and Reverend Author an Advocate In which liberality of Gods mercy those tender Fathers proceed partly upon that rule That in Trismegistus and in the rest they finde evident impressions and testimonies that they knew the Son of God and knew the Trinity and then say they why should not these good men beleeving a Trinity be saved and partly they goe upon that rule which goes through so many of the Fathers Facienti quod in se est That to that man who does as much as he can by the light of nature God never denies grace and then say they why should not these men that doe so be saved And upon this ground S. Dionyse the Areopagite sayes That from the beginning of the world God hath called some men of all Nations and of all sorts by the ministry of Angels though not by the ministry of the Church To me to whom God hath revealed his Son in a Gospel by a Church there can be no way of salvation but by applying that Son of God by that Gospel in that Church Nor is there any other foundation for any nor other name by which any can be saved but the name of Jesus But how this foundation is presented and how this name of Jesus is notified to them amongst whom there is no Gospel preached no Church established I am not curious in inquiring I know God can be as mercifull as those tender Fathers present him to be and I would be as charitable as they are And therefore humbly imbracing that manifestation of his Son which he hath afforded me I leave God to his unsearchable waies of working upon others without farther inquisition Neither did those tender Fathers then Angeli lopsi in Coelis much lesse the School after consist in carying this overflowing and inexhaustible mercy of God upon his Saints after their Resurrection in temporall abundances nor upon the Gentiles who had no solemne nor cleare knowledge of Christ Psal 138.2 Psal 17.7 which is Magnificare misericordiam to magnifie to extend to stretch the mercy of God but Mirificant misericordiam as David also speaks they stretch this mercy miraculously for they carry this mercy even to hell it self For first for the Angels that fell in heaven from the time that they
all knowledge in heaven is experimentall As all knowledge in this world is causall we know a thing if we know the cause thereof so the knowledge in heaven is effectuall experimentall we know it because we have found it to be so The endowments of the blessed those which the School calls Dotes beatorum are ordinarily delivered to be these three Visio Dilectio Fruitio The sight of God the love of God and the fruition the injoying the possessing of God Now as no man can know what it is to see God in heaven but by an experimentall and actuall seeing of him there nor what it is to love God there but by such an actuall and experimentall love of him nor what it is to enjoy and possesse God but by an actuall enjoying and an experimentall possessing of him So can no man tell what the eternity and everlastingnesse of all these is till he have passed through that eternity and that everlastingnesse and that he can never doe for if it could be passed through then it were not eternity How barren a thing is Arithmetique and yet Arithmetique will tell you how many single graines of sand will fill this hollow Vault to the Firmament How empty a thing is Rhetorique and yet Rherorique will make absent and remote things present to your understanding How weak a thing is Poetry and yet Poetry is a counterfait Creation and makes things that are not as though they were How infirme how impotent are all assistances if they be put to expresse this Eternity The best help that I can assigne you is to use well Aeternum vestrum your owne Eternity as S. Gregory calls our whole course of this life Aeternum nostrum our Eternity Aequum est ut qui in aeterno suo peccaverit in aeterno Dei puniatur sayes he It is but justice that he that hath sinned out his owne Eternity should suffer out Gods Eternity So if you suffer out your owne Eternity in submitting your selves to God in the whole course of your life in surrendring your will intirely to his and glorifying of him in a constant patience under all your tribulations It is a righteous thing with God sayes our Apostle in his other Epistle to these Thessalonians To recompence tribulation to them that trouble you 2 Thess 1.6 and to you that are troubled rest with us sayes hee there with us who shall be caught up in the Clouds to meete the Lord in the Ayre and so shall be with the Lord for ever Amen SERMON XXVII Preached to the LL. upon Easter-day at the Communion The KING being then dangerously sick at New-Market PSAL. 89.47 What man is he that liveth and shall not see death AT first God gave the judgement of death upon man when he should transgresse absolutely Morte morieris Thou shalt surely dye The woman in her Dialogue with the Serpent she mollifies it Ne fortè moriamur perchance if we eate we may die and then the Devill is as peremptory on the other side Nequaquam moriemini do what you will surely you shall not die And now God in this Text comes to his reply Quis est homo shall they not die Give me but one instance but one exception to this rule What man is hee that liveth and shall not see death Let no man no woman no devill offer a Ne fortè perchance we may dye much lesse a Nequaquam surely we shall not dye except he be provided of an answer to this question except he can give an instance against this generall except he can produce that mans name and history that hath lived and shall not see death Wee are all conceived in close Prison in our Mothers wombes we are close Prisoners all when we are borne we are borne but to the liberty of the house Prisoners still though within larger walls and then all our life is but a going out to the place of Execution to death Now was there ever any man seen to sleep in the Cart between New-gate and Tyborne between the Prison and the place of Execution does any man sleep And we sleep all the way from the womb to the grave we are never throughly awake but passe on with such dreames and imaginations as these I may live as well as another and why should I dye rather then another but awake and tell me sayes this Text Quis homo who is that other that thou talkest of What man is he that liveth and shall not see death In these words we shall first for our generall humiliation consider the unanswerablenesse of this question There is no man that lives and shall not see death Secondly we shall see how that modification of Eve may stand fortè moriemur how there may be a probable answer made to this question that it is like enough that there are some men that live and shall not see death And thirdly we shall finde that truly spoken which the Devill spake deceitfully then we shall finde the Nequaquam verified we shall finde a direct and full answer to this question we shall finde a man that lives and shall not see death our Lord and Saviour Christ Jesus of whom both S. Augustine and S. Hierome doe take this question to be principally asked and this Text to be principally intended Aske me this question then of all the sons of men generally guilty of originall sin Quis homo and I am speechlesse I can make no answer Aske me this question of those men which shall be alive upon earth at the last day when Christ comes to judgement Quis homo and I can make a probable answer forte moriemur perchance they shall die It is a problematicall matter and we say nothing too peremptorily Aske me this question without relation to originall sin Quis homo and then I will answer directly fully confidently Ecce homo there was a man that lived and was not subject to death by the law neither did he actually die so but that he fulfilled the rest of this verse Eruit animam de inferno by his owne power he delivered his soule from the hand of the grave From the first this lesson rises Generall doctrines must be generally delivered All men must die From the second this lesson Collaterall an unrevealed doctrines must be soberly delivered How we shall be changed at the last day we know not so clearly From the third this lesson arises Conditionall Doctrines must be conditionally delivered If we be dead with him we shall be raised with him First then 1. Part. Quis homo for the generality Those other degrees of punishment which God inflicted upon Adam and Eve and in them upon us were as absolutely and illimitedly pronounced as this of death and yet we see they are many wayes extended or contracted To man it was said In sudore vultus In the sweat of thy browes thou shalt eate thy bread and how many men never sweat till they sweat with eating To the woman it
see Death we answer It may be that those Men whom Christ shal find upon the earth alive at his returne to Judge the World shall dye then and it may be they shall but be changed and not dye That Christ shall judge quick and dead is a fundamentall thing we heare it in S. Peters Sermon Acts 10.42 to Cornelius and his company and we say it every day in the Creed Hee shall judge the quick and the dead But though we doe not take the quick and the dead August Chrys as Augustine and Chrysostome doe for the Righteous which lived in faith and the unrighteous which were dead in sinne Though wee doe not take the quick and the dead as Ruffinus and others doe for the soule and the body He shall judge the soule which was alwaies alive and he shall the body which was dead for a time though we take the words as becomes us best literally yet the letter does not conclude but that they whom Christ shall finde alive upon earth shall have a present and sudden dissolution and a present and sudden re-union of body and soul again Saint Paul sayes Behold I shew you a mystery Therefore it is not a cleare case and presently 1 Cor. 15.51 and peremptorily determined but what is it We shall not all sleep but we shall all be changed But whether this sleeping be spoke of death it self and exclude that that we shall not die or whether this sleep be spoke of a rest in the grave and exclude that we shall not be buried and remain in death that may be a mystery still S. Paul sayes too 1 Thes 4.17 The dead in Christ shall rise first Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the ayre But whether that may not still be true that S. Augustine sayes that there shall be Mors in raptu August An instant and sudden dis-union and re-union of body and soul which is death who can tell So on the other side when it is said to him in whom all we were to Adam Pulvis es Dust thou art Gen. 3.19 1 Cor. 15.22 Rom. 5.12 and into dust thou shalt return when it is said In Adam all die when it is said Death passed upon all men for all have sinned Why may not all those sentences of Scripture which imply a necessity of dying admit that restriction Nisi dies judicii natur ae cursum immutet Pet. Mar. We shall all die except those in whom the comming of Christ shall change the course of Nature Consider the Scriptures then and we shall be absolutely concluded neither way Consider Authority and we shall finde the Fatherrs for the most part one way and the Schoole for the most part another Take later men and all those in the Romane Church Then Cajetan thinks that they shall not die and Catharin is so peremptory Cajetan Catharinus that they shall as that he sayes of the other opinion Falsam esse confidenter asserimus contra Scripturas sat is manifestas omnino sine ratione It is false and against Scriptures and reason saith he Take later men and all those in the reformed Church Calvin and Calvin sayes Quia aboletur prior natura censetur species mortis sed non migrabit anima à corpore S. Paul calls it death because it is a destruction of the former Beeing but it is not truly death saith Calvin and Luther saith Luther That S. Pauls purpose in that place is only to shew the suddennesse of Christs comming to Judgement Non autem inficiatur omnes morituros nam dormire est sepeliri But S. Paul doth not deny but that all shall die for that sleeping which he speaks of is buriall and all shall die though all shall not be buried saith Luther Take then that which is certain It is certain a judgement thou must passe If thy close and cautelous proceeding have saved thee from all informations in the Exchequer thy clearnesse of thy title from all Courts at Common Law thy moderation from the Chancery and Star-Chamber If heighth of thy place and Authority have saved thee even from the tongues of men so that ill men dare not slander thy actions nor good men dare not discover thy actions no not to thy self All those judgements and all the judgements of the world are but interlocutory judgements There is a finall judgement In judicantes judicatos against Prisoners and Judges too where all shal be judged again Datum est omne judicium All judgement is given to the Son of man John 5. and upon all the sons of men must his judgement passe A judgement is certain and the uncertainty of this judgement is certain too perchance God will put off thy judgement thou shalt not die yet but who knows whether God in his mercy do put off this judgement till these good motions which his blessed Spirit inspires into thee now may take roote and receive growth and bring forth fruit or whether he put it off for a heavier judgement to let thee see by thy departing from these good motions and returning to thy former sins after a remorse conceived against those sins that thou art inexcusable even to thy self and thy condemnation is just even to thine own conscience So perchance God will bring this judgement upon thee now now thou maist die but whether God will bring that judgement upon thee now in mercy whilest his Graces in his Ordinance of preaching work some tendernesse in thee and gives thee some preparation some fitnesse some courage to say Veni Domine Iesu Come Lord Iesu come quickly come now or whether he will come now in judgement because all this can work no tendernesse in thee who can tell Thou hearest the word of God preached as thou hearest an Oration with some gladnesse in thy self if thou canst heare him and never be moved by his Oratory thou thinkest it a degree of wisdome to be above perswasion and when thou art told that he that feares God feares nothing else thou thinkest thy self more valiant then so if thou feare not God neither Whether or why God defers or hastens the judgement we know not This is certain this all S. Pauls places collineate to this all the Fathers and all the Schoole all the Cajetans and all the Catharins all the Luthers and all the Calvins agree in A judgement must be and it must be In ictu oculi In the twinkling of an eye and Fur in nocte A thiefe in the night Make the question Quis homo What man is he that liveth and shall not passe this judgement or what man is he that liveth and knowes when this judgement shall be So it is a Nemo scit A question without an answer but ask it as in the text Quis homo Who liveth and shall not die so it is a problematicall matter and in such
it selfe retaine an Almighty power and an effectuall purpose to deliver his soule from death by a glorious a victorious and a Triumphant Resurrection So it is true Christ Josus dyed else none of us could live but yet hee dyed not so as is intended in this question Not by the necessity of any Law not by the violence of any Executioner not by the separation of his best soule if we may so call it the God-head nor by such a separation of his naturall and humane soule as that he would not or could not or did not resume it againe If then this question had beene asked of Angels at first Quis Angelus what Angel is that that stands and shall not fall though as many of those Angels as were disposed to that answer Erimus similes Altissimo We will be like God and stand of our selves without any dependance upon him did fall yet otherwise they might have answered the question fairly All we may stand if we will If this question had been asked of Adam in Paradise Quis homo though when he harkned to her who had harkned to that voyce Erit is sicut Dii You shall be as Gods he fell too yet otherwise he might have answered the question fairly so I may live and not dye if I will so if this question be asked of us now as the question implies the generall penalty as it considers us onely as the sons of Adam we have no other answer but that by Adam sin entred upon all and death by sin upon all as it implies the state of them onely whom Christ at his second comming shall finde upon earth wee have no other answer but a modest non liquet we are not sure whether we shall dye then or no wee are onely sure it shall be so as most conduces to our good and Gods glory but as the question implies us to be members of our Head Christ Jesus as it was a true answer in him it is true in every one of us adopted in him Here is a man that liveth and shall not see death Death and life are in the power of the tongue sayes Solomon in another sense Prov. 18.21 and in this sense too If my tongue suggested by my heart and by my heart rooted in faith can say Non moriar non moriar If I can say and my conscience doe not tell me that I belye mine owne state if I can say That the blood of my Saviour runs in my veines That the breath of his Spirit quickens all my purposes that all my deaths have their Resurrection all my sins their remorses all my rebellions their reconciliations I will harken no more after this question as it is intended de morte naturali of a naturall death I know I must die that death what care I nor de morte spirituali the death of sin I know I doe and shall die so why despaire I but I will finde out another death mortem raptus 2 Cor. 12. a death of rapture Acts 9. Greg. and of extasie that death which S. Paul died more then once The death which S. Gregory speaks of Divina contemplatio quoddam sepulchrum animae The contemplation of God and heaven is a kinde of buriall and Sepulchre and rest of the soule and in this death of rapture and extasie in this death of the Contemplation of my interest in my Saviour I shall finde my self and all my sins enterred and entombed in his wounds and like a Lily in Paradise out of red earth I shall see my soule rise out of his blade in a candor and in an innocence contracted there acceptable in the sight of his Father Though I have been dead 1 Tim. 5.6 in the delight of sin so that that of S. Paul That a Widow that liveth in pleasure is dead while she liveth be true of my soule that so viduatur gratiâ mortuâ when Christ is dead not for the soule but in the soule that the soule hath no sense of Christ Viduatur anima the soul is a Widow and no Dowager she hath lost her husband and hath nothing from him Esay 28.15 yea though I have made a Covenant with death and have been at an agreement with hell and in a vain confidence have said to my self that when the overflowing scourge shall passe through it shall not come to me yet God shall annull that covenant he shall bring that scourge that is some medicinall correction upon me and so give me a participation of all the stripes of his son he shall give me a sweat that is some horrour and religious feare and so give me a participation of his Agony he shall give me a diet perchance want and penury and so a participation of his fasting and if he draw blood if he kill me all this shall be but Mors raptus a death of rapture towards him into a heavenly and assured Contemplation that I have a part in all his passion yea such an intire interest in his whole passion as though all that he did or suffered had been done and suffered for my soul alone 2 Cor. 6.9 Quasi moriens ecce vivo some shew of death I shall have for I shall sin and some shew of death again for I shall have a dissolution of this Tabernacle Sed ecce vivo still the Lord of life will keep me alive and that with an Ecce Behold I live that is he will declare and manifest my blessed state to me I shall not sit in the shadow of death no nor I shall not sit in darknesse his gracious purpose shall evermore be upon me and I shall ever discerne that gracious purpose of his I shall not die nor I shall not doubt that I shall If I be dead within doores If I have sinned in my heart why Suscitavit in domo Mar. 9.23 Christ gave a Resurrection to the Rulers daughter within doores in the house If I be dead in the gate If I have sinned in the gates of my soule in mine Eies Luke 7.11 or Eares or Hands in actuall sins why Suscitavit in porta Christ gave a Resurrection to the young man at the gate of Naim If I be dead in the grave in customary and habituall sins why John 11. Suscitavit in Sepulchro Christ gave a Resurrection to Lazarus in the grave too If God give me mortem raptus a death of rapture of extasie of fervent Contemplation of Christ Jesus a Transfusion a Transplantation a Transmigration a Transmutation into him for good digestion brings alwaies assimilation certainly if I come to a true meditation upon Christ I come to a conformity with Christ this is principally that Pretiosa mors Sanctorum Psal 116.15 Pretious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his Saints by which they are dead and buryed and risen again in Christ Jesus pretious is that death by which we apply that pretious blood to our selves and grow strong
therefore proposed it to the Senate that so that honour which Jesus should have might bee derived from him And when the Senate had an inclination of themselves to have done Christ that honour but yet forbore it because the intimation came not from themselves but from the Emperour who still wrought and gained upon their priviledges neither of these though they meant collaterally and obliquely to doe Christ an honour neither of them did say Iesum Dominum that is professe Jesus so as is intended here for they had their owne ends and their own honors principally in Contemplation There is first an open profession of the tongue required And therefore the Holy Ghost descended in fiery tongues Et lingua propria Spiritui Sancto sayes S. Gregory The tongue is the fittest Instrument for the Holy Ghost to worke upon and to worke by Qui magnam habet cognationem cum Verbo sayes he The Son of God is the Word and the Holy Ghost proceeds from him And because that faith that unites us to God is expressed in the tongue howsoever the heart be the center in which the Holy Ghost rests the tongue is the Spheare in which he moves And therefore sayes S. Cyril as God set the Cherubim with a fiery sword to keep us out of Paradise so he hath set the Holy Ghost in fiery tongues to let us in againe As long as Iohn Baptist was unborne Zachary was dumbe when hee was borne Zachary spoke Christ is not borne in us we are not regenerate in him if we delight not to speake of his wondrous mercyes and infinite goodnesse to the sons of men as soone as he is borne in us his Spirit speakes in us and by us in which our first profession is Iesum esse That Jesus is That there is a Jesus This is to professe with Esay Iesus Esay 4.2 That he is Germen Iehovae The Bud of the Lord The Blossome of God himselfe for this Profession is a two-edged sword for it wounds the Arians on one side That Jesus is Jehovah because that is the name that signifies the very Essence of God And then it wounds the Jews on the other side because if Jesus be Germen Iehovae The Bud the Blossome the Off-spring of God then there is a plurality of Persons Father and Son in the God-head So that it is a Compendiary and Summary Abridgement and Catechisme of all our Religion to professe that Jesus is for that is a profession of his everlasting Essence that is his God-head It hath been denyed that he was such as he was pretended to be that is borne of a Virgin for the first Heretiques of all Gerinthus and Ebion who occasioned S. Iohns Gospel affirmed him to be a meere man made by ordinary generation between Ioseph and Mary It hath been denyed that he was such a man as those Heretiques allowed him to bee for Apelles his Heresie was That he made himselfe a Body out of the Elements as hee came downe from Heaven through them It hath been denyed that he had any Body at all Cerdon and Marcion said That he lived and dyed but in Phantasmate in apparance and onely in a forme and shape of a Body assumed but in truth no Body that did live or dye but did onely appeare and vanish It hath beene denyed that that Body which hee had though a true and a naturall Body did suffer for Basilides said That when he was led to Execution and that on the way the Crosse was laid upon Simon of Cyren Christ cast a mist before their eyes by which they tooke Simon for him and crucified Simon Christ having withdrawne himselfe invisibly from them as at other times he had done It hath been denyed though he had a true Body and suffered truly therein that he hath any Body now in Heaven or shall returne with any for hee that said hee made his Body of the Elements as hee came downe from Heaven sayes also that hee resolved that Body into those Elements againe at his returne It hath beene denyed That hee was That he is That he shall be but this Profession that Jesus is includes all for He of whom that is alwayes true Est He is He is Eternall and He that is Eternall is God This is therefore a Profession of the God-head of Christ Jesus Now Dominus A Lord. in the next as we professe him to be Dominus A Lord we professe him to be God and man we behold him as he is a mixt person and so made fit to be the Messias the Anointed high Priest King of that Church which he hath purchased with his blood And the anointed King of that Kingdome which he hath conquered with his Crosse As he is Germen Iehovae The off-spring of Jehovah so he must necessarily be Jehovah that is the name which is evermore translated The Lord So also as he is Jehovah which is the fountaine of all Essence and of all Beeing so he is Lord by his interest and his concurrence in our Creation It is a devoute exercise of the soule to consider how absolute a Lord he is by this Title of Creation If the King give a man a Creation by a new Title the King found before in that man some vertuous and fit disposition some preparation some object some subject of his favour The King gives Creations to men whom the Universities or other Societies had prepared They Created persons whom other lower Schooles had prepared At lowest he that deales upon him first finds a man begotten and prepared by Parents upon whom he may worke But remember thy Creator that called thee when thou wast not as though thou hadst beene and brought thee out of nothing which is a condition if we may call it a condition to be nothing not to be farther removed from Heaven then hell it selfe Who is the Lord of life and breathed this life into thee and sweares by that eternall life which he is that he would have this life of thine immortall As I live saith the Lord I would not the death of a sinner This Contemplation of Jesus as a Lord by Creating us is a devout and an humble Contemplation but to contemplate him as Lord by Redeeming us and breeding us in a Church where that Redemption is applied to us this is a devout and a glorious Contemplation As he is Lord over that which his Father gave him his Father gave him all power in Heaven and in earth and Omne Iudicium His Father put all Judgement into his hands all judiciary and all military power was his He was Lord Judge and Lord of Hosts As he is Lord over his owne purchase Quod acquisivit sanguine Acts 20.28 That Church which he purchased with his owne blood So he is more then the Heretiques of our time have made him That he was but sent as a principall Prophet to explaine the Law and make that cleare to us in a Gospel Or as a Priest to sacrifice
an emphaticall denotation for to this purpose Ille and Ipse is all one And then you know the Emphasis of that Ipse Ipse conteret He or It shall bruise the Serpents head denotes the Messias though there be no Messias named This Ipse is so emphaticall a denotation as that the Church of Rome and the Church of God strives for it for they will needs reade it Ipsa and so refer our salvation in the bruising of the Serpents head to the Virgin Mary we refer it according to the truth of the doctrine and of the letter to Christ himselfe and therefore reade it Ipse He. If there were no more but that in David Psal 100.3 Rom. 8.16 It is He that hath made us every man would conclude that that He is God And if S. Paul had said Ipse alone and not Ipse spiritus That He and not He the Spirit beares witnesse with our spirit every spirit would have understood this to be the holy Spirit the holy Ghost If in our text there had been no more but such a denotation of a person that should speak to the hearts of all the world that that I lle that He would proceed thus we must necessarily have seen an Almighty power in that denotation But because that denotation might have carried terrour in it being taken alone therefore we are not left to that but have a relation to a former name and specification of the holy Ghost The Comforter For the establishment of Christs divinity Esay 9.6 Christ is called The mighty God for his relation to us he hath divers names As we were all In massa damnata Forfeited lost he is Redemptor Esay 59.20 A Redeemer for that that is past The Redeemer shall come to Sion sayes the Prophet Job 19.2 and so Iob saw His Redeemer one that should redeem him from those miseries that oppressed him As Christ was pleased to provide for the future so he is Salvator Mat. 1.21 A Saviour Therefore the Angel gave him that name Iesus For he shall save his people from their sins So because to this purpose Christ consists of two natures God and man he is called our Mediator 1 Tim. 2.5 There is one Mediator between God and man the man Christ Iesus Because he presents those merits which are his as ours and in our behalfe he is called an Advocate 1 John 2.1 Rom. 2.6 Acts 10.42 1 Cor. 12.3 If any man sin we have an Advocate with the Father Iesus Christ the righteous And because every man is to expect according to his actions he is called the Judge We testifie that it is he that is ordained of God to bee the Iudge of quick and dead Now for Christs first name which is the roote of all which is The mighty God No man can say that Iesus is the Lord but by the holy Ghost And there is our first comfort in knowing that Christ is God for he were an Intruder for that which is past no Redeemer he were a weak Saviour for the future an insufficient Mediator a silenced Advocate and a Judge that might be misinformed if he were not God And though he were God he might be all these to my discomfort if there were not a holy Ghost to make all these offices comfortable unto me To be a Redeemer and not a Saviour is but to pay my debts and leave me nothing to live on To be a Mediator a person capable by his composition of two natures to intercede between God and man and not to be my Advocate is but to be a good Counsellor but not of counsell with me To be a Judge of quick and dead and to proceed out of outward evidence and not out of his bosome mercy is but an acceleration of my conviction I were better lie in Prison still then appeare at that Assize better lye in the dust of the grave for ever then come to that judgement But as there is Mens in anima There is a minde in the soule and every man hath a soule but every man hath not a minde that is a Consideration an Actuation an Application of the faculties of the soule to particulars so there is Spiritus in Spiritu a Holy Ghost in all the holy offices of Christ which offices being in a great part directed upon the whole world are made comfortable to me by being by this holy Spirit turned upon me and appropriated to me for so even that name of Christ which might most make me afraid 〈◊〉 The name of Judge becomes a comfort to me To this purpose does S. Baesil call the holy Ghost Verbum Dei quia interpres filii The Son of God is the word of God because he manifests the Father and the Holy Ghost is the word of God because he applies the Son Esay 62.11 Christ comes with that loud Proclamation Ecce auditum fecit Behold the Lord hath proclaimed it to the end of the world Ecce Salvator and Ecce Merces Behold his Salvation Behold thy Reward This is his publication in the manifest Ordinances of the Church And then the Holy Ghost whispers to thy soule as thou standest in the Congregation in that voyce that he promises Sibilabo populum meum I will hisse Zach. 10.8 I will whisper to my people by soft and inward inspirations Christ came to tell us all That to as many as received him he gave power to become the Sons of God Iohn 1.12 The Holy Ghost comes to tell thee that thou art one of them The Holy Ghost is therefore Legatus and Legatum Christi He is Christs Ambassadour sent unto us and he is his Legacy bequeathed unto us by his Will his Will made of force by his death and proved by his Ascension Now when those dayes were come that the Bridegroome was to bee taken from them Christ Jesus to be removed from their personall sight and conversation and therefore even the children of the mariage Chamber were to mourne and fast Mat. 9.15 Cant. when that Church that mourned and lamented his absence when she was but his Spouse must necessarily mourn now in a more vehement manner when she was to be in some sense his Widow when that Shepheard was not onely to be smitten and so the flock dispersed Mat. 26.21 this was done in his passion but he was to be taken away in his Ascension what a powerfull Comforter had that need to be that should be able to recompence the absence of Christ Jesus himselfe and to infuse comfort into his Orphans the children of his mariage Chamber into his Widow the desolate and disconsolate Church into his flock his amazed his distressed and as we may properly enough say in this case his beheaded Apostles and Disciples Quantus ergo Deus qui dat Deum Aug. Lesse then God could not minister this comfort How great a God is he that sends a God to comfort us and how powerfull a Comforter hee who
The naturall and essentiall word of God He hath his first name in the text He is the Lord As he is verbum illatum and Conceptum A person upon whom there is a Decree and a Commission that he shall be a person capable to redeem Man by death he hath this second name in the text He is Christ As he is The Lord he cannot die As he is Christ under the Decree he cannot chuse but die But as he is Iesus He is dead already and that is his other his third his last name in this Text If any man love not c. We have inverted a little the order of these names or titles in the Text Iesus because the Name of Christ is in the order of nature before the name of Iesus as the Commission is before the Execution of the Commission And in other places of Scripture to let us see how both the capacity of doing it and the actuall doing of it belongs onely to this person the Holy Ghost seems to convey a spirituall delight to us in turning and transposing the Names every way sometimes Iesus alone and Christ alone sometimes Iesus Christ and sometimes Christ Iesus that every way we might be sure of him Now we consider him as Iesus a reall an actuall Saviour And this was his Name The Angel said to his Mother Thou shalt call his name Iesus for he shall save his people And we say to you Call upon this name Iesus for he hath saved his people for Rom. 8.1 Now there is no condemnation to them that are in Christ Iesus As he was verbum conceptum and illatum The word which the Trinity uttered amongst themselves so he was decreed to come in that place The Lord of the vineyard that is Almighty God seeing the misery of Man Luk. 20.13 to be otherwise irremediable The Lord of the vineyard said what shall I doe I will send my beloved Sonne it may be they will reverence him when they see him But did they reverence him when they saw him This sending made him Christ a person whom though the Sonne of God they might see They did see him but then says that Gospell they drew him out and killed him And this he knew before he came and yet came and herein was Iesus a reall an actuall a zealous Saviour even of them that slew him And in this with piety and reverence we may be bold to say that even the Son of God was filius prodigus that powred out his blood even for his Enemies but rather in that acclamation of the prodigall childs Father This my sonne was dead and is alive againe he was lost and is found For but for this desire of our salvation why should he who was the Lord be ambitious of that Name the name of Iesus which was not Tam expectabile apud Iudaeos nomen Tertull. no such name as was in any especiall estimation amongst the Iews for we see in Ioscphus divers men of that name of no great honour of no good conversation But because the name implyes salvation Iosua who had another name before Idem Cum in hujus sacramenti imagine parabatur when he was prepared as a Type of this Iesus to be a Saviour a Deliverer of the people Etiam nominis Dominici inaugur atus est figurae Iesus cognominatus then he was canonized with that name of salvation and called Iosuae which is Iesus The Lord then the Son of God had a Sitio in heaven as well as upon the Crosse He thirsted our salvation there and in the midst of the fellowship of the Father from whom he came and of the Holy Ghost who came from him and the Father and all the Angels who came by a lower way from them all he desired the conversation of Man for Mans sake He that was God The Lord became Christ a man and he that was Christ became Iesus no man a dead man to save man To save man all wayes in all his parts And to save all men in all parts of the world To save his soule from hell where we should have felt pains and yet been dead then when we felt them and seen horrid spectacles and yet been in darknes and blindnes then when we saw them And suffered unsufferable torments yet have told over innumerable ages in suffering them To save this soule from that hell and to fill that capacity which it hath and give it a capacity which it hath not to comprehend the joyes and glory of Heaven this Christ became Iesus To save this body from the condemnation of everlasting corruption where the wormes that we breed are our betters because they have a life where the dust of dead Kings is blowne into the street and the dust of the street blowne into the River and the muddy River tumbled into the Sea and the Sea remaunded into all the veynes and channels of the earth to save this body from everlasting dissolution dispersion dissipation and to make it in a glorious Resurrection not onely a Temple of the holy Ghost but a Companion of the holy Ghost in the kingdome of heaven This Christ became this Iesus To save this man body and soule together from the punishments due to his former sinnes and to save him from falling into future sinnes by the assistance of his Word preached and his Sacrrments administred in the Church which he purchased by his bloud is this person The Lord the Christ become this Iesus this Saviour To save so All wayes In soule in body in both And also to save all men For to exclude others from that Kingdome is a tyrannie an usurpation and to exclude thy selfe is a sinfull and a rebellious melancholy But as melancholy in the body is the hardest humour to be purged so is the melancholy in the soule the distrust of thy salvation too Flashes of presumption a calamity will quench but clouds of desperation calamities thicken upon us But even in this inordinate dejection thou exaltest thy self above God and makest thy worst better then his best thy sins larger then his mercy Christ hath a Greek name and an Hebrew name Christ is Greeke Iesus is Hebrew He had commission to save all nations and he hath saved all Thou givest him another Hebrew name and another Greek Apoc. 9.11 when thou makest his name Abaddon and Apollyon a Destroyer when thou wilt not apprehend him as a Saviour and love him so which is our second Part in our order proposed at first If any man love not c. In the former part 2 Part. we found it to be one argument for the Deitie of Christ That he was Iehovah The Lord we have another here That this great branch nay this very root of all divine worship due to God is required to be exhibited to this person That is Love Cicero If any man love not c. If any man could see Vertue with his eye he would be
whom it is hid But that is not all that is intended by the Apostle in this place It is not onely a censorious speech It is a shame for them and an inexcusable thing in them if they doe not love the Lord Jesus Christ but it is a judiciary speech thus much more since they doe not love the Lord The Lord judge them when he comes I sayes the Apostle take away none of his mercy when he comes but I will have nothing to doe with them till he comes to me he shall be Anathema Maran Atha separated from me till then then the Lord who shews mercy in minutes do his will upon him Our former Translation had it thus Let him be had in execration and excommunicated till death In death Lord have mercy upon him till death I will not live with him To end all If a man love not the Lord if he love not God which is which was and which is to come what will please him whom will he love If hee love the Lord and love not Christ and so love a God in generall but lay no hold upon a particular way of his salvation Sine Christo sine Deo sayes the Apostle to the Ephesians when ye were without Christ Eph. 2.12 ye were without God A non-Christian is an Atheist in that sense of the Apostle If any man finde a Christ a Saviour of the World but finde not a Iesus an actuall Saviour 1 Iohn 2.22 that this Jesus hath saved him Who is a lyar sayes another Apostle but he that denieth that Iesus is the Christ 1 Iohn 5.1 And as he sayes after Whosoever beleeveth that Iesus is the Christ is borne of God From the presumptuous Atheist that beleeves no God from the reserved Atheist that beleeves no God manifested in Christ from the melancholique Atheist that beleeves no Jesus applied to him from him of no Religion from him of no Christian Religion from him that erres fundamentally in the Christian Religion the Apostle enjoynes a separation not till clouds of persecution come and then joyne not till beames of preferment come and then joyne not till Lawes may have beene slumbred some yeares and then joyne not till the parties grow somewhat neare an equality and then joyne but Maran Atha donec Dominus venit till the Lord come to his declaration in judgement If any man love not the Lord Iesus Christ let him be accursed Amen SERM. XLI Preached upon Trinity-Sunday PSAL. 2.12 Kisse the Son lest he be angry WHether we shall call it a repeating againe in us of that which God had done before to Israel or call it a performing of that in us which God promised by way of Prophesie to Israel that is certainely afforded to us by God which is spoken by the Prophet of Israel Hos 11.4 God doth draw us with the cords of a man and with bands of love with the cords of a man the man Christ Jesus the Son of God and with the bands of love the band and seale of love a holy kisse Kisse the Son lest he be angry No man comes to God except the Father draw him The Father draws no man but by the Son and the Son receives none but by love and this cement and glue of a zealous and a reverentiall love a holy kisse Kisse the Son c. The parts upon which for the enlightning of your understandings Divisio and assistance of your memories we shall insist are two first our duty then our danger The first is an expression of love Kisse the Son the second is an impression of feare lest he be angry In the first we shall proceed thus we shall consider first The object of this love the Person the second Person in the Trinity The Son The rather because that consideration will cleare the Translation for in no one place of Scripture do Translations differ more then in this Text and the Roman Translation and ours differ so much as that they have but Apprehendite disciplinam Embrace knowledge where we have as you heard Kisse the Son From the Person The Son we shall passe to the act Osculamini Kisse the Son In which we shall see That since this is an act which licentious men have depraved carnal men doe it and treacherous men doe it Iudas and not onely Iudas have betrayed by a kisse and yet God commands this and expresses love in this Every thing that hath or may be abused must not therefore be abandoned the turning of a thing out of the way is not a taking of that thing away but good things deflected to ill uses by some may be by others reduced to their first goodnesse And then in a third branch of this first part we shall consider and magnifie the goodnesse of God that hath brought us into this distance that we may Kisse the Son that the expressing of this love lies in our hands and that whereas the love of the Church in the Old Testament even in the Canticle went no farther but to the Osculetur me O that he would kisse me with the kisses of his mouth now Cant. 1.1 in the Christian Church and in the visitation of a Christian soule he hath invited us enabled us to kisse him for he is presentially amongst us And this will lead us to conclude that first part with an earnest perswasion and exhortation to kisse the Son with all those affections which we shall there finde to be expressed in the Scriptures in that testimony of true love a holy kisse But then lest that perswasion by love should not be effectuall and powerfull enough to us we shall descend from that duty to the danger from love to feare Lest he be angry And therein see first that God who is love can be angry And then that this God who is angry here is the Son of God He that hath done so much for us and therefore in Justice may be angry He that is our Judge and therefore in reason we are to feare his anger And then in a third branch we shall see how easily this anger departs a kisse removes it Do it lest he be angry And then lastly we shall inquire what does anger him and there consider That as we attribute power to the Father and so sins against power the undervaluing of Gods power in the Magistrate over us or the abusing of Gods power in our selves over others were sins against the Father so wisedome being the attribute of the Sonne ignorance which is so far under wisedome and curiosity which carries us beyond wisedome will be sinnes against the Sonne Our first branch in our first part 1 Part. Persona Filius directs us upon him who is first and last and yesterday and to day and the same for ever The Son of God Osculamini filium Kisse the Sonne Where the Translations differ as much as in any one passage The Chalde paraphrase which is for the most part good evidence and the
ends but since we see no such ends nor use of this we are at our liberty to doubt of the thing it selfe God told Simeon that he should not die till he had seen Christ but he did not tell him that he should die as soone as he had seen him But so much as was told him was enough to make him content to die when he had seen him and to come to his Nunc dimittis to that chearfulnesse as to sing his owne Requiem God accustomed S. Paul no doubt to such notifications from him and such apprehensions in himselfe of death as because it was not new it could not be terrible When S. Paul was able to make that protestation I protest by your rejoycing which I have in Christ Iesus our Lord I die dayly 1 Cor. 15.31 2 Cor. 11.23 And againe I am in prisons oft and often in deaths I die often No Executioner could have told him you must die to morrow but he could have said Alas I died yesterday and yesterday was twelve-month and seaven yeare and every yeare and month and weeke and day and houre before that There is nothing so neare Immortality as to die daily for not to feele death is Immortality and onely hee shall never feele death that is exercised in the continuall Meditation thereof Continuall Mortification is Immortality As Cordials lose their vertue and become no Cordials if they be taken every day so poysons do their venome too If a man use himselfe to them in small proportions at first he may grow to take any quantity He that takes a dram of Death to day may take an ounce to morrow and a pound after He that begins with that mortification of denying himselfe his delights which is a dram of Death shall be able to suffer the tribulations of this world which is a greater measure of death and then Death it selfe not onely patiently but cheerefully And to such a man death is not a dissolution but a redintegration not a divorce of body and soule but a sending of both divers wayes the soule upward to Heaven the body downeward to the earth to an indissoluble marriage to him who for the salvation of both assumed both our Lord and Saviour Christ Jesus Psal 2.17 Therefore does S. Paul say of himselfe If I be offered upon the sacrifice and service of your faith I joy and rejoyce with you all that is It is a just occasion of our common joy on your part and on mine too And therefore does S. Augustine say in his behalfe whatsoever can be threatned him Si potest vivere tolerabile est Whatsoever does not take away life may be endured for if it could not be endured it would take away life and Si non potest vivere sayes he If it doe take away life what shall he feele when hee is dead He adds the reason of all Opus cum fine merces sine fine Death hath an end but their reward that dye for Christ and their peace that dye in Christ hath no end Therefore was not S. Paul afraid of melancholique apprehensions by drawing his death into contemplation and into discourse he was not afraid to thinke nor to talke of his death But then S. Paul had another end in doing so here which is our last consideration To make the deeper impression in them to whom he preached then by telling them that he knew they should see his face no more This that S. Paul sayes Moriturus he sayes to the Ephesians but not at Ephesus He was departed from thence the yeare before for upon the newes that Claudius the Emperour who persecuted the Christians was dead he purposed to goe by Jerusalem to Rome In that peregrination and visitation of his his way fell out after to be by Miletus a place not far from Ephesus Ver. 22. He was bound in the Spirit as he sayes here to go to Ierusalem and therefore he could not visit them at Ephesus A man may have such obligations even for the service of God upon him as that it shall not be in his power to doe that service which he may owe and desire to pay in some particular Church It was in part S. Pauls case Vers 17. But yet he did what he could from Miletus he sent to Ephesus to call the Elders of that Church thither And then he preached this short but powerfull Sermon And as his manner ever was though still without prevaricating or forbearing to denounce the judgements of God upon them in cases necessary to make those whom he preached or writ to as benevolent and well-affected to him as he could for he was Omnia omnibus Made all things to all men to which purpose it is that he speakes and poures out himselfe Gal 4.14 with such a loving thankfulnesse to the Galatians Ye received me as an Angel of God even as Christ Iesus himselfe pursuing I say this manner of a mutuall endearing and a reciprocall embowelling of himselfe in the Congregation and the Congregation in him as certainely if we consider all unions the naturall union of Parents and children the matrimoniall union of Husband and Wife no union is so spirituall nor so neare to that by which we are made Idem spiritus cum Domino The same Spirit with the Lord as when a good Pastor and a good flock meete and are united in holy affections to one another to unite himselfe to his Ephesians inseparably even after his separation to be still present with them in his everlasting absence and to live with them even after death to make the deeper impressions of all his past and present instructions he speaks to them as a dying man I know you shall see my face no more Why did he so S. Paul did not dye in eleven yeares after this But he dyed to them for bodily presence now They were to see him no more As the day of my death is the day of Judgement to me so this day of his departing was the day of his death to them And for himselfe from this time when he gave this judgement of death upon himselfe all the rest of his life was but a leading far off to the place of execution For first very soone after this Agabus gave him notice of manifold afflictions in that Girdle which we spake of before There he was bound and emprisoned at Jerusalem from thence sent bound to Caesarea practised upon to be killed by the way forced to appeale to Caesar upon that Appeale sent prisoner to Rome ship-wracked upon the way at Malta Emprisoned under guard though not close prisoner two yeares after his comming thither and though dismissed and so enabled to visit some Churches yet laid hold upon againe by Nero and executed So that as it was literally true that the Ephesians never saw his face after this valediction so he may be said to have dyed then in such a sense as himselfe sayes to the Corinthians 1 Cor.
32.29 Though Iacob seeme to have been rebuked for asking Gods name when he wrastled with him And so also the Angel which was to doe a miraculous worke Judg. 13.18 a worke appertaining onely to God to give a Childe to the barren because he represented God and had the person of God upon him would not permit Manoah to enquire after his name Because as he sayes there that name was secret and wonderfull And though God himselfe Exod. 23.20 to dignifie and authorize that Angel which he made his Commissioner and the Tutelar and Nationall Guide of his people sayes of that Angel to that people Feare him provoke him not for my Name is in him and yet did not tell them what that name was Yet certainly we could not so much as say God cannot be named except we could name God by some name we could not say God hath no name except God had a name for that very word God is his name God calls upon us often in the Scriptures To call upon his Name and in the Scriptures he hath manifested to us divers names by which we may call upon him Doest thou know what name to call him by when thou callest him to beare false witnesse to averre a falshood Hath God a name to sweare by Doest thou know what name to call him by when thou wouldest make him thy servant thy instrument thy executioner to plague others upon thy bitter curses and imprecations Hath God a name to curse by Canst thou wound his body exhaust his bloud teare off his flesh breake his bones excruciate his soule and all this by his right name Hath God a name to blaspheme by and hath God no name to pray by is he such a stranger to thee Dost thou know every faire house in thy way as thou travellest whose that is and dost thou not know in whose house thou standest now Beloved to know God by name and to come to him by name is to consider his particular blessings to thee to consider him in his power and how he hath protected thee there and in his wisedome and how he hath directed thee there and in his love and how he hath affected thee there and exprest all in particular mercies He is but a darke but a narrow a shallow a lazy man in nature that knows no more but that there is a heaven and an earth and a sea He that will be of use in this world comes to know the influences of the heavens the vertue of the plants and mines of the earth the course and divisions of the Sea To the naturall man God gives generall notions of himselfe a God that spreads over all as the heavens a God that sustaines all as the earth a God that transports and communicates all to all as the sea But to the Christian Church God applies himselfe in more particular notions as a Father as a Son as a holy Ghost And to every Christian soule as a Creator a Redeemer a Benefactor that I may say This I was not born to and yet this I have from my God this a potent adversary sought to evict from me but this I have recovered by my God sicknesse had enfeebled my body but I have a convalescence calumnie had defamed my reputation but I have a reparation malice in other men or improvidence in my selfe had ruined my fortune but I have a redintegration from my God And then by these which are indeed but Cognomina Dei his sir-names names of distinction names of the exercise of some particular properties and attributes of his to come to the root of all to my very Being that my present Being in this world and my eternall Being in the next is made knowne to me by his name of Iehovah which is his Essentiall name to which David had recourse in this exinanition when his affliction had even annihilated and brought him to nothing he fled to Iehovah the God of all Being which is the foundation of all his other Attributes and includes all his other names and is our next and last branch in this first Part. This name then of Iehovah that is here translated Lord Iehovah is agreed by all to be the greatest name by which God hath declared and manifested himselfe to man This is that name which the Jews falsly but peremptorily for falshood lives by peremptorinesse and feeds and armes it selfe with peremptorinesse deny ever to have been attributed to the Messias in the Scriptures This is that name in the vertue and use whereof those Calumniators of our Saviours miracles doe say that he did his miracles according to a direction and schedule for the true and right pronouncing of that name which Solomon in his time had made and Christ in his time had found and by which say they any other man might have done those miracles if he had had Solomons directions for the right sounding of this name Iehovah This is that name which out of a superstitious reverence the Jews alwayes forbore to found or utter but ever pronounced some other name either Adonai or Elohim in the place thereof wheresoever they found Iehovah But now their Rabbins will not so much as write that name but still expresse it in foure other letters So that they dare not not onely not sound it not say it but not see it How this name which we call Iehovah is truly to be sounded because in that language it is exprest in foure Consonants onely without Vowels is a perplext question we may well be content to be ignorant therein since our Saviour Christ himselfe in all those places which he cited out of the Old Testament never sounded it he never said Iehovah Nor the Apostles after him nor Origen nor Ierome all persons very intelligent in the propriety of language they never sounded this name Iehovah For though in S. Ieromes Exposition upon the 8. Psalme we finde that word Iehovah in some Editions which we have now yet it is a cleare case that in the old Copies it is not so in Ieroms mouth it was not so from Ieroms hand it came not so Neither doth it appeare to me that ever the name of Iehovah was so pronounced till so late as in our Fathers time for I think Petrus Gallatinus was the first that ever called it so But howsoever this name be to be sounded that which falls in our consideration at this time is That David in his distresses fled presently to God and to God by name that is in consideration and commemoration of his particular blessings and to a God that had that name the name of Iehovah the name of Essence and Being which name carryed a confession that all our wel-being and the very first being it selfe was and was to be derived from him David therefore comes to God In nomine totali in nomine integrali He considers God totally entirely altogether Not altogether that is confusedly but altogether that is in such a Name as
comprehends all his Attributes all his Power upon the world and all his benefits upon him The Gentiles were not able to consider God so not so entirely not altogether but broke God in pieces and changed God into single money and made a fragmentarie God of every Power and Attribute in God of every blessing from God nay of every malediction and judgement of God A clap of thunder made a Iupiter a tempest at sea made a Neptune an earthquake made a Pluto Feare came to be a God and a Fever came to be a God Every thing that they were in love with or afraid of came to be canonized and made a God amongst them David considered God as a center into which from which all lines flowed Neither as the Gentiles did nor as some ignorants of the Roman Church do that there must be a stormie god S. Nicholas and a plaguie god S. Rook and a sheepshearing god a swineherd god a god for every Parish a god for every occupation God forbid Acknowledg God to be the Author of thy Being find him so at the spring-head then thou shalt easily trace him by the branches to all that belongs to thy well-being The Lord of Hosts and the God of peace the God of the mountaines and the God of the valleyes the God of noone and of midnight of all times the God of East West of all places the God of Princes and of Subjects of all persons is all one and the same God and that which we intend when we say Iehovah is all Hee And therefore hath S. Bernard a patheticall and usefull meditation to this purpose Every thing in the world sayes he can say Creator meus es tu Lord thou hast made me All things that have life and growth can say Pastor meus es tu Lord thou hast fed me increast me All men can say Redemptor meus es tu Lord I was sold to death through originall sin by one Adam and thou hast redeemed me by another All that have falne by infirmity and risen againe by grace can say Susceptor meus es tu Lord I was falne but thou hast undertaken me and dost sustaine me But he that comes to God in the name of Iehovah he meanes all this and all other things in this one Petition Let me have a Being and then I am safe for In him we live and move and have our Being If we solicite God as the Lord of Hosts that he would deliver us from our enemies perchance he may see it fitter for us to be delivered to our enemies If we solicite him as Proprietarie of all the world as the beasts upon a thousand mountaines are his as all the gold and silver in the earth is his perchance he sees that poverty is fitter for us If we solicite him for health or long life he gives life but he kills too he heales but he wounds too and we may be ignorant which of these life or death sicknesse or health is for our advantage But solicite him as Iehovah for a Being that Being which flowes from his purpose that Being which he knowes fittest for us and then we follow his owne Instructions Fiat voluntas tua thy will be done upon us and we are safe Now that which Iehovah was to David Iesus is to us Iesus Man in generall hath relation to God as he is Iehovah Being We have relation to Christ as he is Iesus our Salvation Salvation is our Being Iesus is our Iehovah And therfore as David delights himself with that name Iehovah for he repeats it eight or nine times in this one short Psalm and though he ask things of a diverse nature at Gods hands though he suffer afflictions of a diverse nature from Gods hands yet still he retains that one name he speaks to God in no other name in all this Psalm but in the name of Iehovah So in the New Testament he which may be compared with David because he was under great sins and yet in great favour with God S. Paul he delights himself with that name of Iesus so much as that S. Ierome says Quē superfluè diligebat extraordinariè nominavit As he loved him excessively so he named him superabundantly It is the name that cost God most and therefore he loves it best it cost him his life to be a Iesus a Saviour The name of Christ which is Anointed he had by office he was anointed as King as Priest as Prophet All those names which he had in Isaiah The Counsellor The Wonderfull The Prince of Peace Esay 9. and the name of Iehovah it self which the Jews deny ever to be given to him and is evidently given to him in that place Christ had by nature But his name of Iesus a Saviour he had by purchase that purchase cost him his bloud And therefore as Iacob preferred his name of Israel Gen. 32.28 before his former name of Iacob because he had that name upon his wrastling with God and it cost him a lamenesse so is the name of Iesus so precious to him who bought it so dearly that not only every knee bows at the name of Iesus here but Jesus himself and the whole Trinity bow down towards us to give us all those things which we ask in that name For even of a devout use of that veryname do some of the Fathers interpret that Oleū effusum Nomen tuu That the name of Iesus should be spread as an ointment breathed as perfume diffused as a soul over all the petitions of our prayers As the Church concludes for the most part all her Collects so Grant this O Lord for our Lord and Saviour Christ Iesus sake And so much does S. Paul abound in the use of this name as that he repeats it thrice in the superscription of one of his Letters the title of one of his Epistles his first to Timothy And with the same devotion S. August sayes even of the name Melius est mihi non esse quā sine Iesu esse I were better have no being then be without Jesus Melius est non vivere quam vivere sine vita I were better have no life then any life without him For as David could finde no beeing without Iehovah a Christian findes no life without Iesus Both these names imply that which is in this Text in our Translation The Lord Dominus to whom only and intirely we appertaine his we are And therefore whether we take Dominus to be Do minas to threaten to afflict us or to be Do manus to succour and relieve us as some have pleased themselves with those obvious derivations as David did still we must make our recourse to him from whom as he is Iehovah Beeing or being our wel-beeing our eternall beeing our Creation Preservation and Salvation is derived all is from him Now when he hath his accesse to the Lord 2 Part. to this Lord the Lord that hath all and gives all
all timorousnesse that my Transgressions are not forgiven or my sins not covered In the first Act we consider God the Father to have wrought He proposed he decreed he accepted too a sacrifice for all mankind in the death of Christ In the second The Covering of sinnes we consider God the Sonne to worke Incubare Ecclesiae He sits upon his Church as a Hen upon her Eggs He covers all our sinnes whom he hath gathered into that body with spreading himselfe and his merits upon us all there In this third The not Imputing of Iniquity we consider God the Holy Ghost to worke and as the Spirit of Consolation to blow away all scruples all diffidences and to establish an assurance in the Conscience The Lord imputes not that is the Spirit of the Lord The Lord the Spirit The Holy Ghost suffers not me to impute to my selfe those sinnes which I have truly repented The over-tendernesse of a bruised and a faint conscience may impute sinne to it selfe when it is discharged And a seared and obdurate Conscience may impute none when it abounds If the Holy Ghost work he rectifies both and if God doe inflict punishments according to the signification of this word Gnavah after our Repentance and the seals of our Reconciliation yet he suffers us not to impute those sinnes to our selves or to repute those corrections punishments as though he had not forgiven them or as though he came to an execution after a pardon but that they are laid upon us medicinally and by way of prevention and precaution against his future displeasure This is that Pax Conscientiae The peace of Conscience when there is not one sword drawne This is that Serenitas Conscientiae The Meridionall brightnesse of the Conscience when there is not one Cloud in our sky I shall not hope that Originall sin shall not be imputed but feare that Actuall sin may not hope that my dumbe sins shall not but my crying sins may not hope that my apparant sins which have therefore induced in me a particular sense of them shall not but my secret sins sins that I am not able to returne and represent to mine owne memory may for this Non Imputabit hath no limitation God shall suffer the Conscience thus rectified to terrifie it selfe with nothing which is also farther extended in the Originall where it is not Non Imputat but Non Imputabit Though after all this we doe fall into the same or other sins yet we shall know our way and evermore have our Consolation in this That as God hath forgiven our transgression in taking the sins of all mankinde upon himselfe for he hath redeemed us and left out Angels And as he hath covered our sin that is provided us the Word and Sacraments and cast off the Jews and left out the Heathen So he will never Impute mine Iniquity never suffer it to terrifie my Conscience Not now when his Judgements denounced by his Minister call me to him here Nor hereafter when the last bell shall call me to him into the grave Nor at last when the Angels Trumpets shall call me to him from the dust in the Resurrection But that as all mankinde hath a Blessednesse in Christs taking our sins which was the first Article in this Catechisme And all the Christian Church a Blessednesse in covering our sins which was the second So I may finde this Blessednesse in this worke of the Holy Ghost not to Impute that is not to suspect that God imputes any repented sin unto me or reserves any thing to lay to my charge at the last day which I have prayed may be and therefore hoped hath been forgiven before But then after these three parts which we have now in our Order proposed at first passed through That David applies himselfe to us in the most convenient way by the way of Catechisme and instruction in fundamentall things And then that he lays for his foundation of all Beatitude Blessednesse Happinesse which cannot be had in the consummation and perfection thereof but in the next world But yet in the third place gives us an inchoation an earnest an evidence of this future and consummate Blessednesse in bringing us faithfully to beleeve That Christ dyed sufficiently for all the world That Christ offers the application of all this to all the Christian Church That the Holy Ghost seals an assurance thereof to every particular Conscience well rectified After all this done thus largely on Gods part there remains something to be done on ours that may make all this effectuall upon us Vt non sit dolus in spiritu That there be no guile in our spirit which is our fourth part and Conclusion of all Of all these fruits of this Blessednesse there is no other root but the goodnesse of God himselfe but yet they grow in no other ground then in that man 4. Part. Dolus In cujus spiritu non est dolus The Comment and interpretation of S. Paul Rom. 4.5 hath made the sense and meaning of this place cleare To him that worketh the reward is of debt but to him that beleeveth and worketh not his faith is counted for righteousnesse Even as David describeth the blessednesse of Man sayes the Apostle there and so proceeds with the very words of this Text. Doth the Apostle then in this Text exclude the Co-operation of Man Differs this proposition That the man in whom God imprints these beames of Blessednesse must be without guile in his spirit from those other propositions Si vis ingredi Mat. 19.17 If thou wilt enter into life keepe the Commandements And Maledictus qui non Cursed is he that performes not all Grows not the Blessednesse of this Text from the same roote as the Blessednesse in the 119. Psal ver 1. Blessed are they who walke in the way of the Lord Or doth Saint Paul take David to speake of any other Blessednesse in our Text then himselfe speaks of If through the Spirit yee mortifie the deeds of the body yee shall live Rom. 8.13 Doth S. Paul require nothing nothing out of this Text to be done by man Surely he does And these propositions are truly all one Tantùm credideris Onely beleeve and you shall be saved And Fac hoc vives Doe this and you shall be saved As it is truly all one purpose to say If you live you may walke and to say If you stretch out your legges you may walke To say Eat of this Tree and you shall recover and to say Eat of this fruit and you shall recover is all one To attribute an action to the next Cause or to the Cause of that Cause is to this purpose all one And therefore as God gave a Reformation to his Church in prospering that Doctrine That Justification was by faith onely so God give an unity to his Church in this Doctrine That no man is justified that works not for without works how much soever he magnifie his faith
shall seeke his face yea when God shall kill him yet he will trust in God and seeke him And as the Prophet carries it farther Cum ingreditur putredo when Rottennesse enters into their Bones yet they shall rest even in that day of trouble of dissolution of putrefaction God shall call upon them as he did upon Judah Tritura mea filius are ae O my threshing place and the sonne of my floore Esay 21.10 Thou whom I have beaten and bruised with my flayls when I have threshed and winnowed and sifted thee by these afflictions and by this heavy hand still thou shalt fix thy faithfull eyes in heaven and see a roome reserved there for thee amongst those Apoc. 7 14.17 which come out of great tribulations and have made their long robes white in the bloud of the Lambe who shall therefore dwell in the midst of them and governe them and lead them to the lively fountains of waters and wipe away all teares from their eyes Even upon his own Children his hand shall grow heavy but that heavinesse that waight shall awake them and that hand shall guide them to and in the wayes of peace and reconciliation And this both day and night as our Text sayes That is Die ac nocte both in the day of their prosperity and the night of their adversitie Even in prosperity the childe of God shall feele the hand of God grow heavy upon him He shall finde a guiltinesse of not having employed those temporall benefits to their right use He shall finde the Pluit laqueos Psal 11.6 a showre of snares to have been powred downe upon him occasions of sinne occasions of falling into sinnes himselfe occasions of drawing others and of buying those soules with his money which Christ Jesus had a pre-emption of and had bought them before with his bloud He shall finde the hand of God in adversity and love it because it shall deliver him He shall finde his hand in prosperity and be afraid of it because that prosperity hath before and may againe lead him into tentations To end all all this the Holy Ghost by the pen of David Selah seales with the last word of this Text Selah A word of uncertain sense and signification for the Jews themselves do not know exactly and certainly what it signifies but deriving this Selah from Selal which signifies Attollere To lift up they think it to be but a Musicall note for the raising of the voyce at that part of the Psalme where that word is used as indeed the word is never used in the Bible but in the Psalmes and twice in one Chapter in the Prophet Habakkuk which is a Musicall a Metricall Chapter In the Latine Translation Hab. 3.3 9. and in the Arabique Translation of the Psalmes it is cleane left out because they were not sure how to translate it aright But to speak upon the best grounds in the Grammar of that language and upon best Authority too the word signifies a Vehement a Patheticall a Hyperbolicall asseveration and attestation and ratification of something said before Such in a proportion as our Saviours Amen Amen is Verily verily I say unto you Such as S. Pauls fidelis Sermo with which he seales so many truths is This is a faithfull saying Such as that Apostles Coram Domino is with which he ratifies many things Before the Lord I speak it and such as Moses his Vivo ego and Vivit Dominus As I live saith the Lord and As the Lord liveth And therefore though God be in all his words Yea and Amen no word of his can perish in it selfe nor should perish in us that is passe without observation yet in setting this seale of Selah to this Doctrine he hath testified his will that he would have all these things the better understood and the deeplier imprinted That if a man conceale and smother his sins Selah Assuredly God will open that mans mouth and it shall not shew forth his praise but God will bring him Ad rugitum to fearfull exclamations out of the sense of the affliction if not of the sin Selah Assuredly God wil shiver his bones shake his best actions and discover their impurity Selah assuredly God will suffer to be dried up all his moysture all possibility of repentant teares and all interest in the blood of Christ Jesus Selah Assuredly Gods hand shall be heavy upon him and he shall not discerne it to be his hand but shall attribute all to false causes and so place all his comfort in false remedies Hee shall leave out God all day and God shall leave out him all night all his everlasting night in which he shall never see day more Selah Assuredly Verily Amen Fidelis Sermo This is a faithfull an infallible Truth Coram Domino Before the Lotd Vivit Dominus as the Lord liveth as Moses as Christ as S. Paul testifie their David testifies his Doctrine All between God and man is conditionall and where man will not be bound God will not be bound neither If man invest a habit and purpose of sinning God will study a judgement against that man 1. Sam 3.11 and doe that even in Israel which shall make all our eares to tingle and all our hearts to ake Till that man repent God will not and when he does God will repent too For though God be not Man that he can repent yet that God who for Mans sake became Man for our sakes and his owne glory will so farre become Man againe as upon Mans true repentance to repent the Judgements intended against that Man SERM. LVIII Preached upon the Penitentiall Psalmes PSAL. 32.5 I acknowledged my sin unte thee and mine iniquity have I not hid I said I will confesse my transgressions unto the Lord and thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin THis is the Sacrament of Confession So we may call it in a safe meaning That is The mystery of Confession for true Confession is a mysterious Art 2. Thess 2.7 Mat. 22.1 As there is a Mystery of iniquity so there is a Mystery of the Kingdome of heaven And the mystery of the Kingdome of heaven is this That no man comes thither but in a sort as he is a notorious sinner One mystery of iniquity is that in this world though I multiply sins yet the Judge cannot punish me if I can hide them from other men though he know them but if I confesse them he can he will he must The mystery of the Kingdome of heaven is That onely the Declaring the Publishing the Notifying and Confessing of my sins possesses me of the Kingdome of heaven There is a case in which the notoriety of my sins does harme when my open sinning or my publishing of my sin by way of glory in that sin casts a scandall upon others and leads them into tentation for so my sin becomes theirs because they sin my sin by example And their sin becomes
those embers of sin that are but raked up and not trod out and doe breake forth upon every tentation that is presented and if they be not effectually opposed shall aggravate my condemnation more then if I had never been baptized But David conceives such a forgivenesse here as carries up the soule to the contemplation of that state which it had before the fall of Adam It is not this present sin of a cold delivering and a drowsie hearing of the messages of God It is not my yesterdayes sin nor my sins since my last repentance that are forgiven me but my sin committed six thousand yeares before I was borne my sin in Adam before any promise nay before any apprehension of any need of a Messias I am so restored that now by the application of the merits of my Redeemer I am as well as I should have been though there had never been any use of a Redeemer no occasion given by me in Adam of the incarnation and passion of Christ Jesus The comfort of being presented to God as innocent as Adam then when God breathed a soule into him yea as innocent as Christ Jesus himselfe when he breathed out his soule to God oh how blessed is that soule that enjoyes it and how bold that tongue that goes about to expresse it This is the blessednesse which the godly attaine to by prayer but not by every sudden Lord Lord or every occasionall holy interjection but by serious prayer invested as with the former so with that other circumstance that remains In tempore opportuno In a time when thou mayest be found This time is not those Horae stativae Horae canonicae In tempore those sixed houres in the Romane Church where men are bound to certaine prayers at certaine houres Not that it is inconvenient for men to binde themselves to certaine fixed times of prayer in their private Exercises and though not by such a vow as that it shall be an impiety yet by so solemne a purpose as that it shall be a levity to breake it I have known the greatest Christian Prince in Style and Title even at the Audience of an Ambassador at the sound of a Bell kneele downe in our presence and pray and God forbid he should be blamed for doing so But to place a merit in observing those times as they doe is not a right understanding of this time of finding Nor is it those transitory and interlocutory prayers which out of custome and fashion we make and still proceed in our sin when we pretend to speake to God but like Comedians upon a stage turne over our shoulder and whisper to the Devill Esay 1.15 When you stretch out your hands I will hide mine eyes when you make many prayers I will not heare for your hands are full of blood And if they be full of blood they can take in no more If they be full of the blood of oppression they can lay no hold upon the blood of propitiation Is●●● Irrisor est non poenitens qui adhuc agit quod poeniter He mocks God that repents and sins over those sins every night that every day he repents The Apostle sayes so too He makes a mock of the Sonne of God and crucifies him againe This onely is true Repentance Ambro. He makes a mock of the Sonne of God and crucifies him againe This onely is true Repentance Plangere plangenda non committere To bewayle our sins and forbeare the sins we have bewayled Neither alone will serve which deludes many Many thinke they doe enough if they repent and yet proceed in their sin and many thinke they doe enough if they forbeare their sin now though they never repent that which is past August both are illusory both deceitfull distempers Laoessit Iudicem qui post-posita satisfactione quaerit praemiis honorari He doth but provoke and exasperate the Judge that solicites him for heaven before he hath appeased his anger by repentance for former sins for this is to call for costs before he be discharged These then are not the times of finding God but what are Gospel August Generally it is Manifestatio Euangelii The time of the Gospel is the time of finding God now when God hath vouchsafed Induere hominem to put on us in his Incarnation and enabled us Induere Deum to put on him in the Sacraments to stay with us here upon Earth and to carry us up with him in his Ascension to Heaven when he is made one body with us and hath made us one Spirit with him how can we doubt of a fit time to finde him Christs time was alwayes for even under the law God sayes Esay 49.8 I have heard thee in an accepted time and in the day of Salvation have I succoured thee But this doth the Holy Ghost apply to the time of the Gospel Behold now the accepted time behold now the day of salvation 2 Cor. 2.6 Calamitie Psal 116.4 The time then of the Gospel is the time of finding But now all times are not alike Calamities are a good time When I found trouble and sorrow then I called upon the name of the Lord saying I beseech thee O Lord deliver my soule This is a good time but it is somewhat a darke time the withdrawing of Gods countenance from us Exod. 14.25 The Egyptians when they deprehended their danger said We will fly from the face of Israel But whither The Seareturned and the Egyptians fled against it and perished We may be benighted benummed by calamities and they may as well deject us as raise us Ioab pursued Abner hotly vehemently Abner asks What Vsque ad internecionem 2 Sam. 2.25 Shall the sword devoure for ever Ioab answered as the Vulgat reads those words Vivit dominus si locutus fuisses mane As the Lord liveth if thou hadst spoken in the morning in the morning every man had departed If we turne to the Lord in the morning in the beginning of an affliction the Lord turnes his fierce wrath from us but if we stand out long and bend not under his corrections he pursues Ad internecionem even to destruction by obduration So then the manifestation of the Gospel that is the helpes which God offers us Prosperitus more then Jews or Gentils in the Ministery of the Gospel and the Ordinances of his Church is the time of finding God And woe unto us if we seeke him not whilest he affords us these helpes And then the time of affliction when God threatens to hide his face but hath not yet hidden it but awakens us by a calamity is a time of finding God But the best and the clearest time is in the Sun-shine then when he appeares to us in the warme and chearefull splendor of temporall blessings upon us Then when thou hast a good estate and good children to let it descend upon Then when thou hast good health and a good profession to exercise
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
Cooke The other is a Physitian and though by bitter things provides for thy future health And such is the hony of Flatterers and such is the wormewood of better Counsellors I will not shake a Proverbe not the Ad Corvos That wee were better admit the Crowes that picke out our eyes after we are dead then Flatterers that blinde us whilst we live I cast justly upon others I take willingly upon my selfe the name of wicked if I blesse the covetous whom the Lord abhorreth or any other whom he hath declared to be odious to him But making my object goodnesse in that man and taking that goodnesse in that man to be a Candle set up by God in that Candlesticke God having engaged himselfe that that good man shall be praised I will be a Subsidy man so far so far pay Gods debts as to celebrate with condigne praise the goodnesse of that man for in that I doe as I should desire to be done to And in that I pay a debt to that man And in that I succour their weaknesse who as S. Gregory sayes when they heare another praised Greg●r Si non amore virtutis at delectatione laudis accenduntur At first for the love of Praise but after for the love of goodnesse it selfe are drawne to bee good Phil. 4.8 For when the Apostle had directed the Philippians upon things that were True and honest and just and purc and lovely and of a good report he ends all thus If there be any vertue and if there be any praise thinke on these things In those two sayes S. Augustine he divides all Vertue and Praise Vertue in our selves that may deserve Praise Praise towards others that may advance and propagate Vertue This is the retribution which God promises to all the upright in heart Gloriabuntur Laudabuntur They shall Glory they shall have they shall give praise And then it is so far from diminishing this Glory as that it infinitely exalts our consolation that God places this Retribution in the future Gloriabuntur If they doe not yet yet certainly they shall glory And if they doe now that glory shall not goe out still they shall they shall for ever glory In the Hebrew there is no Present tense In that language wherein God spake Futurum it could not be said The upright in heart Are praised Many times they are not But God speaks in the future first that he may still keepe his Children in an expectation and dependance upon him you shall be though you be not yet And then to establish them in an infallibility because he hath said it I know you are not yet but comfort your selves I have said it and it shall be As the Hebrew hath no Superlatives because God would keepe his Children within compasse and in moderate desires to content themselves with his measures though they be not great and though they be not heaped so considering what pressures and contempts and terrors the upright in heart are subject to it is a blessed reliefe That they have a future proposed unto them That they shall be praised That they shall be redeemed out of contempt This makes even the Expectation it selfe as sweet to them as the fruition would be This makes them that when David sayes Expecta viriliter Waite upon the Lord with a good courage Waite I say Psal 27.14 upon the Lord they doe not answer with the impatience of the Martyrs under the Altar Vsquequo How long Lord wilt thou defer it Rev. 6.10 Psal 40.1 Psal 52.9 But they answer in Davids owne words Expectans expectavi I have waited long And Expectabo nomen tuum still I will waite upon thy Name I will waite till the Lord come His kingdome come in the mean time His kingdome of Grace and Patience and for his Ease and his Deliverance and his Praise and his Glory to me let that come when he may be most glorified in the comming thereof Nay not onely the Expectation that is that that is expected shall be comfortable because it shall be infallible but that very present state that he is in shall be comfortable according to the first of our three Translations They that are true of heart shall be glad thereof Glad of that Glad that they are true of heart though their future retribution were never so far removed Nay though there were no future retribution in the case yet they shall finde comfort enough in their present Integrity Nay not onely their present state of Integrity but their present state of misery shall be comfortable to them for this very word of our Text Halal that is here translated Ioy and Glory and Praise in divers places of Scripture as Hebrew words have often such a transplantation signifies Ingloriousnesse and contempt and dejection of spirit Psal 75.4 Esa 44.25 Job 12.17 So that Ingloriousnesse and contempt and dejection of spirit may be a part of the retribution God may make Ingloriousnesse and Contempt and Dejection of spirit a greater blessing and benefit then Joy and Glory and Praise would have been and so reserve all this Glory and Praising to that time that David intends Psal 112.6 The righteous shall be in everlasting remembrance Though they live and die contemptibly they shall be in an honorable remembrance even amongst men as long as men last and even when time shall be no more and men no more they shall have it in futuro aeterno where there shall be an everlasting present and an everlasting future there the upright in heart shall be praised and that for ever which is our conclusion of all If this word of our Text Halal shall signifie Ioy as the Service Booke Aeternum and the Geneva translation render it that may be somewhat towards enough which we had occasion to say of the Joyes of heaven in our Exercise upon the precedent Psalme when we say-led thorough that Hemispheare of Heaven by the breath of the Holy Ghost in handling those words Vnder the shadow of thy wings I will rejoyce So that of this signification of the word Gaudebunt in aeterno They shall rejoyce for ever we adde nothing now If the word shall signifie Glory as our last translation renders it consider with me That when that Glory which I shall receive in Heaven shall be of that exaltation as that my body shall invest the glory of a soule my body shall be like a soule like a spirit like an Angel of light in all endowments that glory it selfe can make that body capable of that body remaining still a true body when my body shall be like a soule there will be nothing left for my soule to be like but God himselfe 2 Pet. 1.4 1 Cor. 6.17 I shall be partaker of the Divine nature and the same Spirit with him Since the glory that I shall receive in body and in soule shall be such so exalted what shall that glory of God be which I shall
there is wholesome meat before too The cleare light is in the Gospel but there is light in Nature too Revel 19.9 At the last Supper the Supper of the Lambe in Heaven there is no bill of fare there are no particular dishes named there It is impossible to tell us what we shall feed upon what we shall be feasted with at the Marriage Supper of the Lamb Our way of knowing God there cannot be expressed At that Supper of the Lambe which is here here in our way homewards that is in the Sacramentall Supper of the Lambe it is very hard to tell what we feed upon How that meat is dressed how the Body and Blood of Christ is received by us at that Supper in that Sacrament is hard to be expressed hard to be conceived for the way and manner thereof So also in the former meale that which we have called the Dinner which is The knowledge which the Jews had in the Law it was not easie to distinguish the taste and the nature of every dish and to finde the signification in every Type and in every Ceremony There are some difficulties if curious men take the matter in hand and be too inquisitive even in the Gospel more in the Law most of all in Nature But yet even in this first refection this first meale that God sets before man which is our knowledge of God in Nature because wee are then in Gods House all this World and the next make God but one House though God doe not give Marrow and fatnesse Psal 63.6 81.16 as David speaks though he doe not feed them with the fat of the wheat nor satisfie them with honey out of the Rock for the Gospel is the honey and Christ is the Rock yet even in Nature hee gives sufficient meanes to know him though they come to neither of the other Meales neither to the Jews Dinner The benefit of the Law nor to the Christians Supper either when they feed upon the Lamb in the Sacrament or when they feed with the Lamb in the possession and fruition of Heaven Though therefore the Septuagint in their Translation of the Psalms have in the Title of this Psalme added this A Psalme of Ieremy and Ezekiel when they were departing out of the Captivity of Babylon intimating therein that it is a Psalme made in contemplation of that blessed place which we are to go to as literally it was of their happie state in their restitution from Babylon to Jerusalem And though the ancient Church by appropriating this Psalme to the office of the dead to the service at Burials intimate also that this Psalme is intended of that fulnesse of knowledge and Joy and Glory which they have that are departed in the Lord yet the Holy Ghost stops as upon the way before we come thither and since we must lie in an Inne that is Lodge in this World he enables the World to entertaine us as well as to lodge us and hath provided that the World the very world it selfe before wee consider the Law in the World or the Church in the World or Glory in the next World This very World that is Nature and no more should give such an universall light of the knowledge of God as that he should bee The confidence of all the ends of the Earth and of them that are a farre off upon the Sea And therefore as men that come to great places and preferments when they have entred by a faire and wide gate of Honour but yet are laid downe upon hard beds of trouble and anxiety in those places for when the body seemes in the sight of men to go on in an easie amble the minde is every day if not all day in a shrewd and diseasefull trot As those men will sometimes say It was better with me when I was in a lower place and fortune and will remember being Bishops the pleasures they had when they were Schoole-boyes and yet for all this intermit not their thankfulnesse to God who hath raised them to that height and those meanes of glorifying him so howsoever we abound with joy and thankfulnesse for these gracious and glorious Illustrations of the Law and the Gospel and beames of future Glory which we have in the Christian Church Let us reflect often upon our beginning upon the consideration of Gods first benefits which he hath given to us all in Nature That light Iohn 1.9 by which he enlighteneth every man that commeth into the World That he hath given us a reasonable soule capable of grace here that he hath denied no man and no other creature hath that That he hath given us an immortal soul capable of glory hereafter and that that immortality he hath denied no man and no other creature hath that Consider we alwaies the grace of God to be the Sun it selfe but the nature of man and his naturall faculties to be the Sphear in which that Sun that Grace moves Consider we the Grace of God to be the soule it self but the naturall faculties of man to be as a body which ministers Organs for that soule that Grace to worke by That so as how much soever I feare the hand of a mighty man that strikes yet I have a more immediate feare of the sword he strikes with So though I impute justly my sins and my feares of judgements for them to Gods withdrawing or to my neglecting his grace yet I looke also upon that which is next me Nature and naturall light and naturall faculties and that I consider how I use to use them whether I be as watchfull upon my tongue that that minister no tentation to others and upon mine eye that that receive no tentation from others as by the light of Nature I might and as some morall Men without addition of particular Grace have done That so first for my selfe I be not apt to lay any thing upon God and to say that hee starved me though he should not bid me to the Jews dinner in giving me the light of the Law nor bid me to the Christians Supper in giving me the light of the Gospell because he hath given me a competent refection even in Nature And then that for others I may first say with the Apostle Rom. 1.20 11.33 That they are without excuse who doe not see the invisible God in the visible Creature and may say also with him O altitudo The wayes of the Lord are past my finding out And therefore to those who doe open their eyes to that light of Nature in the best exaltation thereof God does not hide himselfe though he have not manifested to me by what way he manifests himselfe to them For God disappoints none and he is The confidence of all the ends of the Earth and of them who are a farre off upon the Sea Commit thy way unto the Lord Psal 37.5 sayes David And he sayes more then our Translation seemes to expresse The Margin hath
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
and as the Carthusians in a proud humility despise all other Orders that eat flesh so doe the Fueillans the Carthusians that eat fish There is a pride in such humility That Order of Friers that called themselves Ignorantes Ignorant men that pretended to know nothing sunk as low as they thought it possible into an humble name and appellation And yet the Minorits Minorits that are lesse then any think they are gone lower and then the Minimes Minimes that are lesse then all lower then they And when one would have thought that there had not been a lower step then that another Sect went beyond all beyond the Ignorants and the Minorits and the Minimes and all and called themselves Nullanos Nothings But yet even these Diminutives the Minorits and Minimes and Nullans as little as lesse as least as very nothing as they professe themselves lie under this disease which is opposed in the Sequere me follow come after in our Text For no sort nor condition of men in the world are more contentious more quarrelsome more vehement for place and precedency then these Orders of Friers are there where it may appeare that is in their publique Processions as we finde by those often troubles which the Superiours of the severall Orders and Bishops in their severall Dioces and some of those Councels which they call Generall have been put to for the ranking and marshalling of these contentious and wrangling men Which makes me remember the words in which the eighteenth of Queene Elizabeths Injunctions is conceived That to take away fond Curtesie that is needlesse Complement and to take away challenging of places which it seemes were frequent and troublesome then To take away fond curtesie and challenging of places Processions themselves were taken away because in those Processions these Orders of Friers that pretended to follow and come after all the world did thus passionately and with so much scandalous animosity pursue the love of place and precedency Therefore is our humility here limited Sequere me follow me follow Christ How is that done Consider it in Doctrinall things first and then in Morall Sequendus in Doctrina First how we are to follow Christ in beleeving and then how in doing in practising First in Doctrinall things There must have gone some body before else it is no following Take heed therefore of going on with thine owne inventions thine owne imaginations for this is no following Take heed of accompanying the beginners of Heresies and Schismes for these are no followings where none have gone before Nay there have not gone enow before to make it a path to follow in except it have had a long continuance and beene much trodden in And therfore to follow Christ doctrinally is to embrace those Doctrins in which his Church hath walked from the beginning and not to vexe thy selfe with new points not necessary to salvation That is the right way and then thou art well entred but that is not all thou must walke in the right way to the end that is to the end of thy life So that to professe the whole Gospel and nothing but Gospel for Gospel and professe this to thy death for no respect no dependance upon any great person to slacken in any fundamentall point of thy Religion nor to bee shaken with hopes or feares in thine age when thou wouldst faine live at ease and therefore thinkest it necessary to do as thy supporters doe To persevere to the end in the whole Gospel this is to follow Christ in Doctrinall things In practicall things Sequendus in vitae Iam. 5.11 things that belong to action wee must also follow Christ in the right way and to the end They are both way and end laid together Sufferentiam Iob audiistis finem Domini vidistis You have heard of the patience of Iob and you bave seen the end of the Lord and you must goe Iobs way to Christs end Iob hath beaten a path for us to shew us all the way A path that affliction walked in and seemed to delight in it in bringing the Sabaean upon his Oxen the Chaldean upon his Camels the fire upon his Sheep destruction upon his Servants and at last ruine upon his Children One affliction makes not a path iterated continued calamities doe and such a path Iob hath shewed us not onely patience but cheerfulnesse more thankfulnesse for our afflictions because they were multiplied And then wee must set before our eyes as the way of Iob so the end of the Lord Now the end of the Lord was the crosse So that to follow him to the end is not onely to beare afflictions though to death but it is to bring our crosses to the Crosse of Christ How is that progresse made for it is a royall progresse Matt. 16.24 not a pilgrimage to follow Christ to his Crosse Our Saviour saith Hee that will follow me let him take up his crosse and follow me You see foure stages foure resting baiting places in this progresse It must bee a crosse And it must be my crosse And then it must be taken up by me And with this crosse of mine thus taken up by me I must follow Christ that is carry my crosse to his First it must bee a Crosse Crux Gal. 6.14 Tollat crucem for every man hath afflictions but every man hath not crosse Onely those afflictions are crosses whereby the world is crucified to us and we to the world The afflictions of the wicked exasperate them enrage them stone and pave them obdurate and petrifie them but they doe not crucifie them The afflictions of the godly crucifie them And when I am come to that conformity with my Saviour Col. 1.24 as to fulfill his sufferings in my flesh as I am when I glorifie him in a Christian constancy and cheerfulnesse in my afflictions then I am crucified with him carried up to his Crosse 2 King 4.34 And as Elisha in raysing the Shunamits dead child put his mouth upon the childs mouth his eyes and his hands upon the hands and eyes of the child so when my crosses have carried mee up to my Saviours Crosse I put my hands into his hands and hang upon his nailes I put mine eyes upon his and wash off all my former unchast looks and receive a soveraigne tincture and a lively verdure and a new life into my dead teares from his teares I put my mouth upon his mouth and it is I that say My God my God why hast thou forsaken me and it is I that recover againe and say Into thy hands O Lord I commend my spirit Thus my afflictions are truly a crosse when those afflictions doe truely crucifie me and souple me and mellow me and knead me and roll me out to a conformity with Christ It must be this Crosse and then it must be my crosse that I must take up Tollat suam Other mens crosses are not my crosses Crux mea no man
same thing againe I beleeve in the Holy Ghost but doe not finde him if I seeke him onely in private prayer But in Ecclesia when I goe to meet him in the Church when I seeke him where hee hath promised to bee found when I seeke him in the execution of that Commission which is proposed to our faith in this Text in his Ordinances and meanes of salvation in his Church instantly the savour of this Myrrhe is exalted and multiplied to me not a dew but a shower is powred out upon me and presently followes Communio Sanctorum The Communion of Saints the assistance of Militant and Triumphant Church in my behalfe And presently followes Remissio peceatorum The remission of sins the purifying of my conscience in that water which is his blood Baptisme and in that wine which is his blood the other Sacrament and presently followes Carnis resurrectio A resurrection of my body My body becomes no burthen to me my body is better now then my soule was before and even here I have Goshen in my Egypt incorruption in the midst of my dunghill spirit in the midst of my flesh heaven upon earth and presently followes Vita aeterna Life everlasting this life of my body shall not last ever nay the life of my soul in heaven is not such as it is at the first For that soule there even in heaven shall receive an addition and accesse of Joy and Glory in the resurrection of our bodies in the consummation When a winde brings the River to any low part of the banke instantly it overflowes the whole Meadow when that winde which blowes where he will The Holy Ghost leads an humble soule to the Article of the Church to lay hold upon God as God hath exhibited himselfe in his Ordinances instantly he is surrounded under the blood of Christ Jesus and all the benefits thereof The communion of Saints the remission of sins the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting are poured out upon him And therefore of this great worke which God hath done for man in applying himselfe to man in the Ordinances of his Church S. Augustine sayes Obscuriùs dixerunt Prophetae de Christo August quàm de Ecclesia The Prophets have not spoken so clearely of the person of Christ as they have of the Church of Christ Hieron for though S. Hierom interpret aright those words of Adam and Eve Erunt duo in carnem unam They two shall be one flesh to be applyable to the union which is betweene Christ and his Church Ephes 5. for so S. Paul himselfe applies them that Christ and his Church are all one as man and wife are all one yet the wife is or at least it had wont to be so easilier found at home then the husband wee can come to Christs Church but we cannot come to him The Church is a Hill and that is conspicuous naturally but the Church is such a Hill as may be seene every where August S. Augustine askes his Auditory in one of his Sermons doe any of you know the Hill Olympus and himselfe sayes in their behalfe none of you know it no more sayes he do those that dwell at Olympus know Giddabam vestram some Hill which was about them trouble not thy selfe to know the formes and fashions of forraine particular Churches neither of a Church in the lake nor a Church upon seven hils but since God hath planted thee in a Church where all things necessary for salvation are administred to thee and where no erronious doctrine even in the confession of our Adversaries is affirmed and held that is the Hill and that is the Catholique Church and there is this Commission in this text meanes of salvation sincerely executed So then such a Commission there is and it is in the Article of the Creed that is the ubi We are now come in our order to the third circumstantiall branch the Vnde Vnde from whence and when this Commission issued in which we consider that since we receive a deepe impression from the words which our friends spake at the time of their death much more would it worke upon us if they could come and speake to us after their death You know what Dives said Si quis ex mortuis Luke 16. If one from the dead might goe to my Brethren he might bring them to any thing Now Primitiae mortuorum The Lord of life and yet the first borne of the dead Christ Jesus returnes againe after his death to establish this Commission upon his Apostles It hath therefore all the formalities of a strong and valid Commission Christ gives it Ex mero motu meerely out of his owne goodnesse He foresaw no merit in us that moved him neither was he moved by any mans solicitations for could it ever have fallen into a mans heart to have prayed to the Father that his Son might take our Nature and dye and rise again and settle a course upon earth for our salvation if this had not first risen in the purpose of God himself Would any man ever have solicited or prayed him to proceed thus It was Ex mero motu out of his owne goodnesse and it was Ex certa scientia He was not deceived in his grant he knew what he did he knew this Commission should be executed in despight of all Heretiques and Tyrans that should oppose it And as it was out of his owne Will and with his owne knowledge so it was Ex plenitudine potestatis He exceeded not his Power for Christ made this Commission then Mat. 28.18 when as it is expressed in the other Euangelist he produced that evidence Data est mihi All power is given to me in Heaven and in earth where Christ speakes not of that Power which he had by his eternall generation though even that power were given him for he was Deus de Deo God of God nor he speakes not of that Power which was given him as Man which was great but all that he had in the first minute of his conception in the first union of the two Natures Divine and Humane together but that Power from which he derives this Commission is that which he had purchased by his blood and came to by conquest Ego vici mundum sayes Christ I have conquered the world and comming in by conquest I may establish what forme of Government I will and my will is to governe my Kingdome by this Commission and by these Commissioners to the Worlds end to establish these meanes upon earth for the salvation of the world And as it hath all these formalities of a due Commission made without suite made without error made without defect of power so had it this also that it was duely and authentically testified for though this Euangelist name but the eleven Apostles to have beene present and they in this case might be thought Testes domestici Witnesses that witnesse to their owne
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
we thought the Sunne had moved I need not that helpe that the Earth it selfe is in Motion to prove this That nothing upon Earth is permanent The Assertion will stand of it selfe till some man assigne me some instance something that a man may relie upon and find permanent Consider the greatest Bodies upon Earth The Monarchies Objects which one would thinke Destiny might stand and stare at but not shake Consider the smallest bodies upon Earth The haires of our head Objects which one would thinke Destiny would not observe or could not discerne And yet Destiny to speak to a naturall man And God to speake to a Christian is no more troubled to make a Monarchy ruinous then to make a haire gray Nay nothing needs be done to either by God or Destiny A Monarchy will ruine as a haire will grow gray of it selfe In the Elements themselves of which all sub-elementary things are composed there is no acquiescence but a vicissitudinary transmutation into one another Ayre condensed becomes water a more solid body And Ayre rarified becomes fire a body more disputable and in-apparant It is so in the Conditions of men too A Merchant condensed kneaded and packed up in a great estate becomes a Lord And a Merchant rarified blown up by a perfidious Factor or by a riotous Sonne evaporates into ayre into nothing and is not seen And if there were any thing permanent and durable in this world yet we got nothing by it because howsoever that might last in it selfe yet we could not last to enjoy it If our goods were not amongst Moveables yet we our selves are if they could stay with us yet we cannot stay with them which is another Consideration in this part The world is a great Volume and man the Index of that Booke Corpus hominis Even in the body of man you may turne to the whole world This body is an Illustration of all Nature Gods recapitulation of all that he had said before in his Fiat lux and Fiat firmamentum and in all the rest said or done in all the six dayes Propose this body to thy consideration in the highest exaltation thereof as it is the Temple of the Holy Ghost Nay not in a Metaphor or comparison of a Temple or any other similitudinary thing but as it was really and truly the very body of God in the person of Christ and yet this body must wither must decay must languish must perish When Goliah had armed and fortified this body And Iezabel had painted and perfumed this body And Dives had pampered and larded this body As God said to Ezekiel when he brought him to the dry bones Fili hominis Sonne of Man doest thou thinke these bones can live They said in their hearts to all the world Can these bodies die And they are dead Iezabels dust is not Ambar nor Goliahs dust Terra sigillata Medicinall nor does the Serpent whose meat they are both finde any better rellish in Dives dust then in Lazarus But as in our former part where our foundation was That in nothing no spirituall thing there was any perfectnesse which we illustrated in the weaknesses of Knowledge and Faith and Hope and Charity yet we concluded that for all those defects God accepted those their religious services So in this part where our foundation is That nothing in temporall things is permanent as we have illustrated that by the decay of that which is Gods noblest piece in Nature The body of man so we shall also conclude that with this goodnesse of God that for all this dissolution and putrefaction he affords this Body a Resurrection The Gentils Resurrectio and their Poets describe the sad state of Death so Nox una obeunda That it is one everlasting Night To them a Night But to a Christian it is Dies Mortis and Dies Resurrectionis The day of Death and The day of Resurrection We die in the light in the sight of Gods presence and we rise in the light in the sight of his very Essence Nay Gods corrections and judgements upon us in this life are still expressed so Dies visitationis still it is a Day though a Day of visitation and still we may discerne God to be in the action Gen. 2. The Lord of Life was the first that named Death Morte morieris sayes God Thou shalt die the Death I doe the lesse feare or abhorre Death because I finde it in his mouth Even a malediction hath a sweetnesse in his mouth for there is a blessing wrapped up in it a mercy in every correction a Resurrection upon every Death When Iezabels beauty exalted to that height which it had by art or higher then that to that height which it had in her own opinion shall be infinitely multiplied upon every Body And as God shall know no man from his own Sonne so as not to see the very righteousnesse of his own Sonne upon that man So the Angels shall know no man from Christ so as not to desire to looke upon that mans face because the most deformed wretch that is there shall have the very beauty of Christ himselfe So shall Goliahs armour and Dives fulnesse be doubled and redoubled upon us And every thing that we can call good shall first be infinitely exalted in the goodnesse and then infinitely multiplied in the proportion and againe infinitely extended in the duration And since we are in an action of preparing this dead Brother of ours to that state for the Funerall is the Easter-eve The Buriall is the depositing of that man for the Resurrection As we have held you with Doctrine of Mortification by extending the Text from Martha to this occasion so shall we dismisse you with Consolation by a like occasionall inverting the Text from passion in Martha's mouth Lord if thou hadst been here my Brother had not dyed to joy in ours Lord because thou wast here our Brother is not dead The Lord was with him in all these steps In vita with him in his life with him in his death He is with him in his funerals and he shall be with him in his Resurrection and therefore because the Lord was with him our Brother is not dead He was with him in the beginning of his life in this manifestation That though he were of Parents of a good of a great Estate yet his possibility and his expectation from them did not slacken his own industry which is a Canker that eats into nay that hath eat up many a family in this City that relying wholly upon what the Father hath done the Sonne does nothing for himselfe And truly it falls out too often that he that labours not for more does not keepe his own God imprinted in him an industrious disposition though such hopes from such parents might have excused some slacknesse and God prospered his industry so as that when his Fathers estate came to a distribution by death he needed it not God was with
him Psal 81.11 as with David in a Dilatation and then in a Repletion God enlarged him and then he filled him He gave him a large and a comprehensive understanding and with it A publique heart And such as perchance in his way of education and in our narrow and contracted-times in which every man determines himselfe in himselfe and scarce looks farther it would be hard to finde many Examples of such largenesse You have I thinke a phrase of Driving a Trade And you have I know a practise of Driving away Trade by other use of money And you have lost a man that drove a great Trade the right way in making the best use of our home-commodity To fetch in Wine and Spice and Silke is but a drawing of Trade The right driving of trade is to vent our owne outward And yet for the drawing in of that which might justly seeme most behoofefull that is of Arts and Manufactures to be imployed upon our owne Commodity within the Kingdome he did his part diligently at least if not vehemently if not passionately This City is a great Theater and he Acted great and various parts in it And all well And when he went higher as he was often heard in Parliaments at Councell tables and in more private accesses to the late King of ever blessed memory as for that comprehension of those businesses which he pretended to understand no man doubts for no man lacks arguments and evidences of his ability therein So for his manner of expressing his intentions and digesting and uttering his purposes I have sometimes heard the greatest Master of Language and Judgement which these times or any other did or doe or shall give that good and great King of ours say of him That he never heard any man of his breeding handle businesses more rationally more pertinently more elegantly more perswasively And when his purpose was to do a grace to a Preacher of very good abilities and good note in his owne Chappell I have heard him say that his language and accent and manner of delivering himselfe was like this man This man hath God accompanied all his life and by performance thereof seemes to have made that Covenant with him which he made to Abraham Multiplicabote vehementer Gen. 17.2 I will multiply thee exceedingly He multiplied his estate so as was fit to endow many and great Children and he multiplied his Children so both in their number and in their quality as they were fit to receive a great Estate God was with him all the way In a Pillar of Fire in the brightnesse of prosperity and in the Pillar of Clouds too in many darke and sad and heavy crosses So great a Ship required a great Ballast So many blessings many crosses And he had them and sailed on his course the steadier for them The Cloud as well as the Fire was a Pillar to him His crosses as well as his blessings established his assurance in God And so in all the course of his life The Lord was here and therefore our Brother is not dead not dead in the evidences and testimonies of life for he whom the world hath just cause to celebrate for things done when he was alive is alive still in their celebration The Lord was here that is with him at his death too In morte He was served with the Processe here in the City but his cause was heard in the Country Here he sickned There he languished and dyed there In his sicknesse there those that assisted him are witnesses of his many expressings of a religious a constant heart towards God and of his pious joyning with them even in the holy declaration of kneeling then when they in favour of his weakenesse would disswade him from kneeling I must not defraud him of this testimony frō●y selfe that into this place where we are now met I have observed him to enter with much reverence compose himselfe in this place with much declaration of devotion And truly it is that reverence which those persons who are of the same ranke that he was in the City that reverence that they use in this place when they come hither is that that makes us who have now the administration of this Quire glad that our Predecessors but a very few yeares before our time and not before all our times neither admitted these Honourable and worshipfull Persons of this City to sit in this Quire so as they do upon Sundayes The Church receives an honour in it But the honour is more in their reverence then in their presence though in that too And they receive an honour and an ease in it and therefore they do piously towards God and prudently for themselves and gratefully towards us in giving us by their reverent comportment here so just occasion of continuing that honour and that ease to them here which to lesse reverend and unrespective persons we should be lesse willing to doe To returne to him in his sicknesse He had but one dayes labour and all the rest were Sabbaths one day in his sicknesse he converted to businesse Thus He called his family and friends together Thankfully he acknowledged Gods manifold blessings and his owne sins as penitently And then to those who were to have the disposing of his estate joyntly with his Children he recommended his servants and the poore and the Hospitals and the Prisons which according to his purpose have beene all taken into consideration And after this which was his Valediction to the world he seemed alwaies loath to returne to any worldly businesse His last Commandement to Wife and Children was Christs last commandement to his Spouse the Church in the Apostles To love one another He blest them and the Estate devolved upon them unto them And by Gods grace shall prove as true a Prophet to them in that blessing as he was to himselfe when in entring his last bed two dayes before his Death he said Help me off with my earthly habit let me go to my last bed Where in the second night after he said Little know ye what paine I feele this night yet I know I shall have joy in the morning And in that morning he dyed The forme in which he implored his Saviour was evermore towards his end this Christ Iesus which dyed on the Crosse forgive me my sins He have mercy upon me And his last and dying words were the repetition of the name of Jesus And when he had not strength to utter that name distinctly and perfectly they might heare it from within him as from a man a far off even then when his hollow and remote naming of Jesus was rather a certifying of them that he was with his Jesus then a prayer that he might come to him And so The Lord was here here with him in his Death and because the Lord was here our Brother is not dead not dead in the eyes and eares of God for as the blood of Abel
JOHN 11.21 Lord if thou hadst been here my brother had not dyed pa. 816 NOVEMB 29. 1639. Imprimatur THO BROUN SERMONS Preached upon Christmas-day SERMON I. PREACHED AT St. PAVLS upon Christmas day 1622. Coloss 1.19 20. For it pleased the Father that in him should all fulnesse dwell And having made peace through the bloud of his Crosse by Him to reconcile all things to himselfe by Him whether they be things in Earth or things in heaven THE whole journey of a Christian is in these words and therefore we were better set out early then ride too fast better enter presently into the parts then be forced to passe thorow them too hastily First then wee consider the Collation and Reference of the Text and then the Illation and Inference thereof For the Text looks back to all that was said from the twelfth verse For the first word of the text For which is a particle of connexion as well as of argumentation is a seale of all that was said from that place And then the Text looks forward to the 23 ver where all these blessings are sealed to us with that Condition If ye continue setled in the Gospell This is the Collation the Reference of the text for the Illation and Inference the first clause thereof For it pleased the Father that in him should all fulnesse dwell presents a double Instruction First that we are not bound to accept matters of Religion meerely without all reason and probable inducements And secondly with what modesty we are to proceed and in what bounds we are to limit that inquisition that search of Reason in matters of that nature When the Apostle presents to us here the great mystery of our reconciliation to God he in whose power it was not to infuse faith into every reader of his Epistle proceeds by reason He tels us V. 13. That the Father hath translated us into the Kingdome of his deare Son the Son of his love That were well if we were sure of it If our consciences did not accuse us and suggest to us our owne unworthinesse and thereby an impossibility of being so translated Why no sayes the Apostle V. 14. there is no such impossibility now For Now we have Redemption and forgivenesse of sinnes Who should procure us that If a man sin against God who shall plead for him What man is able to mediate 1 Sam. 2.25 and stand in the gap between God and man You say true sayes the Apostle no man is able to doe it and therefore He that is the Image of the invisible God V. 15. he by whom all things were created and by whom all things consist he hath done it Hath God reconciled me to God And reconciled me by way of satisfaction for that I know his justice requires What could God pay for me What could God suffer God himselfe could not V. 18. and therefore God hath taken a body that could And as he is the Head of that body he is passible so he may suffer And as he is the first born of the dead he did suffer so that he was defective in nothing not in Power as God not in passibility as man for Complacuit It pleased the Father that in him All fulnesse a full capacity to all purposes should dwell Thus farre we are to trace the reason of our redemption intimated in that first word For. And then we are to limit and determine our reason in the next Quia complacuit because it was his will his pleasure to proceed so and no otherwise Christ himselfe goes no farther then so Mat. 11.25 in a case of much strangenesse That God had hid his mysteries from the wise and revealed them unto babes This was a strange course but Ita est quia Even so Father for so it seemed good in thy sight I would faine be able to prove to my selfe that my redemption is accomplished and therefore I search the Scriptures and I grow sure that Christ hath redeemed the world and I search the Scriptures again to finde what marks are upon them that are of the participation of that Redemption and I grow to a religious and modest assurance that those marks are upon me I finde reasons to prove to me that God does love my soule but why God should love men better then his own Son or why God should love me better then other men I must end in the reason of the text Quia complacuit and in the reason of Christ himself Ita est quia It is so O Father because thy good pleasure was it should be so To passe then from the Collation and Reference Divisio by which the text hath his Cohaerence with the precedent and subsequent passages and the Illation and Inference by which you have seene the generall doctrine That reason is not to be excluded in religion but yet to be tenderly and modestly pressed we have here the Person that redeemed us and his Qualification for that great office That all fulnesse should dwell in him And then we have the Pacification and the Meanes thereof Peace was made through the bloud of his Crosse And then the Effect the application of all this to them for whom it was wrought That all things in earth and heaven might be reconciled to God by him In the qualification of the person we finde plenitudinem fulnesse and omnem plenitudinem all fulnesse and omnem plenitudinem inhabitantem all fulnesse dwelling permanent And yet even this dwelling fulnesse even in this person Christ Jesus by no title of merit in himselfe but onely quia complacuit because it pleased the Father it should be so In the pacification which is our second part Peace was made by the bloud of his Crosse we shall see first quod bellum what the warre was and then quae pax what the peace is and lastly quis modus how this peace was made which was strange per sanguinem by bloud to save bloud and yet by bloud And per sanguinem ejus by his bloud his who was victoriously to triumph in this peace and per sanguinem Crucis ejus by the bloud of his Crosse that is his death the bloud of his Circumcision the bloud of his Agony the bloud of his scourging was not enough It must be and so it was the bloud of his Crosse And these peeces constitute our second part the Pacification And then in the third the Application That all things might be reconciled to God we shall see first what this Reconciliation is and then how it extends to all things on earth which we might thinke were not capable of it and all things in heaven which we might think stood in no need of it And in these three parts The person and his qualification The thing it selfe The Pacification The effect of this The Reconciliation the Application wee shall determine all First 1. Part. Plenitudo In the person that redeemes us we finde fulnesse And there