13.16 Therefore to do good and to distribute forget not for with such sacrifices God is well pleased This then may well go for one part or limb of Religion In the next place as in the visitation of the fatherless and widows all charity to our brother is implyed so all charity to our selves is shut up in the other in keeping our selves unspotted of the world And this phrase of keeping our selves is very significant and hath its weight For those spots which defile us and make us such leopards are not so much from the world as from our selves as a cheat is not onely from the cunning of the impâ—stour but from the want of wisdome and experience in him that is deceived It is ignorance that promoteth the cheat that draweth the power and faculty into act that maketh him that hath a subtle wit injurious and it is an evil heart that makes the world contagious Wisdome preventeth a cheat and watchfulness a spot This world in it self hath nothing in it that can defile us Gen. 1 31. For God saw all that he made was good Tertull. de â—pectaculis c. 2. yea very good Yet Nihil non est Dei quod Deum offendit there is nothing by which we offend God but is from God That Beauty which kindleth lust is his gift that Gold which hath made that desolation upon the earth was the work of his hands He giveth us the bread we surfet on Psal 24.1 he filleth the cup that intoxicateth us The world is the Lord's and all that therein is but yet this world bespotteth us not because it is his who cannot behold much less could make any unclean thing We must therefore search out another world And you need not travel far for you may stay at home 1 ep 2. 16. and find it in your selves S. John hath made the discovery for you in this first Epistle where he draweth the map of it and divideth it to our hands into three provinces or parts 1. the lust of the flesh where unlawful Pleasures sport themselves 2. the lust of the eyes where Covetousness buildeth her an house 3. the pride of life which whetteth a sword for the Revenger erecteth a throne for the Ambitious raiseth up a triumphant arch for the Vain-glorious This is the world saith S. John even a world of wickedness This inverteth the whole course of Nature and maketh the wheel of the Creation move disorderly This world within us maketh that world without us an enemy Prov. 31.30 Prov. 20.1 1 Tim. 6.9 maketh Beauty deceitful Wine a mocker Riches a snare worketh that into sin out of which we might have made a key to open the gates of heaven droppeth its poyson under every leaf upon every object and by its mixture with the World ingendreth that serpent which spitteth the poyson back again upon us and not onely bespotteth and defileth James 1.15 but stingeth us to death For when Lust hath conceived it bringeth forth sin and when sin is finished it defileth a man and leaveth those spots behind it which deface him and give him a thousand several shapes The Schools call it maculam peccati the blot and stain of sin which is of no positive reality but a deprivation and defect of beauty in the soul and varieth as a shadow doth according to the diversity of those bodies that cast it We see then that there is a world within us as well as without us And when these two are in conjunction when our Lust joyneth it self to the things of this world Luke 15.13 15 as the Prodigal is said to do to a master in a far countrey then followeth pollution and deformity and as many spots as there be sins which are as many as the hairs of our head Beauty bringeth in deformity riches poverty plenty leanness into the soul Prov. 4.23 Therefore to conclude this to keep our hearts with all diligence and to keep our selves unspotted of the world is a main and principal part of our Religion and will keep us members of Christ and parts of the Church Col. 3.5 when Profaneness and Covetousness which is idolatry shall have laid her discipline her honour in the dust A man of tender bowels and a pure heart is as the Church Matth. 16.18 The gates of hell cannot prevail against him By this we intimate that we worship God and draw near unto him as near as flesh and mortality will permit Our escaping the spots and pollutions of this world maketh us followers of that God who marketh every spot we have 2 Pet. 2 20. and is not touched who seeth us in our blood and pollution Ezek. 16.6 and is not defiled who beholdeth all the wickedness in the world and yet remaineth the same for ever even Goodness and Purity it self 2 Pet. 1.4 This maketh us partakers as S. Peter speaketh of the Divine nature In a word to be in the world and tread it under our feet to be in Sodom and yet be Lots to be on the hills of the robbers and do no wrong to be in the midst of snares and not be taken to be in Paradise to see the apple pleasant to the sight to be compast about with glorious objects of delight and pleasures and not to taste or touch or handle is the nearest assimilation that dust and ashes Col. 2.21 that mortal Man can have to his Creatour I may well then call these two the Essential parts of Religion Of which as you have taken a short several view Antigoni imaginem Protogenes obliquam fecit ut quod corpore decrat picturae potiùs deesse videretur tantúmque eam partem ostendit quam totam poterat ostendere Plin. Nat. Hist l. 35 c. 10. so be pleased to observe also their mutual dependence and necessary connexion If either be wanting you spoil the whole piece Neither will my Charity to my brother entitle me to Religion if I be an enemy to my self nor will my abstaining from evil canonize me a Saint if my goodness be not diffusive on others If we draw-out in our selves the picture of Religion but with one of these we do but like the painter who to flatter Antigonus because he had but one eye drew but the half-face First to visit the fatherless and widows i. e. to be plenteous in good works ista sunt quasi incunabula pietatis saith Gregory These are the very beginnings and nurcery of the love of God And there is no surer and readier step to the love of God whom we have not seen 1 John 4.20 then by the love of our Brethren whom we see Tunc ad alta charitas mirabiliter surgit cùm ad ima proximorum se misericorditer attrahit saith the same Father Then our Charity beginneth to improve it self and rise as high as heaven when it boweth and descendeth and falleth low to sit with a Brother in the dust And if you search the
by the neglect of their duty which is quite lost and forgot in an unseasonable acknowledgement of what God can and a lazy expectation of what he will work in them and so make God Omnipotent to do what his Wisdom forbiddeth and themselves weak and impotent to do what by the same Wisdom he commandeth and then when they commune with their heart and find not there those longings and pantings after piety that true desire and endeavour to mortifie their earthly members which God requireth when in this Dialogue between one and himself their hearts cannot tell them they have watched one hour with Christ flatter and comfort themselves that this emptiness and nakedness shall never be imputed to them by God who if he had pleased might have wrought all in them in a moment by that force which flesh and blood could never withstand And thus they sin and pray and pray and sin and their Impiety and Devotion like the Sun and the Moon have their interchangeable courses it is now night with them and anon it is day and then night again and it is not easie to discern which is their day or which is their night for there is darkness over them both They hear and commend Virtue and Piety and since they cannot but think that Virtue is more then a breath and that it is not enough to commend it they pray and are frequent in prayer pray continually but do nothing pray but do not watch pray but do not strive against a temptation but leave that to a mightier hand to do for them and without them whilst they pray and sin call upon God for help when they fight against him as if it were God's will to have it so If he would have had it otherwise he would have heard their prayers and wrought it in them And therefore he will be content with his Talent though hid in a napkin which if he had pleased might have been made ten and with his seed again which if he had spoke the word had brought forth fruit a hundred-fold Hence it cometh to pass that though they be very evil yet they are very secure 1 Joh. 5.4 this being the triumph of their Faith not to conquer the world but to leave that work for the Lord of hosts himself and in all humility to stay till he do it For they can do nothing of themselves and they have done what they can which is nothing And now this heartless and feeble and if I may so speak this do-nothing devotion which may be as hot on the tongue of a Pharisee and tied to his phylactery must be made a sign of their election before all times Gal. 5.21 Phil. 3.18 who in time do those things of which we have been told often that they that do them shall not inherit the kingdome of heaven I do not derogate from the power of Gods Grace They that do are not worthy to feel it but shall feel that power which shall crush them to pieces They rather derogate from its power who bring it in to raise that obedience which coming with that tempest and violence it must needs destroy and take away quite For what obedience is there where nothing is done where he that is under command doth nothing Vis ergò ista non gratia saith Arnobius This were not Grace or Royal favour but a strange kind of emulation to gain the upper hand We cannot magnifie the Grace of God enough which doth even expect and wait upon us woo and serve us It is that unction that precious ointment 1 John 2.27 1 Thess 5.19 20. S. John speaketh of but we must not pour it forth upon the hairy scalp of wilful offenders who loath the means despise prophecy quench the spirit and so hinder it in its operation of men who are as stubborn against Grace as they are loud in its commendations as active to resist as to extoll it For this is to cast it away and nullifie it this is to make it nothing by making it greater nay to turn it into wantonness But it may be said That when we are fallen from God we are not able to rise again of our selves We willingly grant it That we have therefore need of new strength and new power to be given us which may raise us up We deny it not And thirdly That not onely the power but the very act of our recovery is from God Ingratitude it self cannot deny it But then That man can no more withstand the power of that grace which God is ready to supply us with then an infant can his birth or the dead their resurrection That we are turned whether we will or no is a conclusion which those premisses will not yield This flint vvill yield no such fire though you strike never so oft We are indeed sometimes said to sleep and sometimes to be dead in sin but it is ill building conclusions upon no better Basis then a figure and because we are said to be dead in sin infer a necessity of rising when we are called Nor is our obedience to Gods inward call of the same nature with the obedience of the Creature to the voice and command of the Creatour for the Creature hath neither reason nor will as Man hath nor doth Gods power work after the same manner in the one as in the other How many Fiats of God have been frustrate in this kind How often hath he smote our stony and rocky hearts and no water flowed out How often hath he said Fiat Lux let there be light and we remained still in darkness We are free agents and God made us so when he made us men and our actions when his power is mighty in us are not necessary but voluntary nor doth his Power work according to the working of our phansie nor lie within the level of our carnal imaginations to do what they appoint but it is accompanied and directed by that Wisdom which he is and he doth nothing can do nothing but what is agreeable to it As it was said of Caesar in Lucane though in another sense Velle putant quodcunque potest we think that God will do whatsoever he can But we must know that as he is powerful and can do all things so he is wise and sweetly disposeth all things as he will and he will not save us against our will For to necessitate us to goodness were not to try our obedience but to force it Et quod necessitas praestat depretiat ipsa Necessity taketh off the price and value of that it worketh and maketh it of no worth at all And then God doth not voluntarily take his Grace from any but if the power of it defend us not from Sin and Death it is because we abuse and neglect it and will not work with it which is ready to work with us For Grace is not blind as Fortune nec cultores praeterit nec haeret contemtoribus She will neither pass
this world saith the Apostle passeth away And what is that that passeth away to that which is immortal The Heart of man is but a little member It will not saith S. Bernard give a Kite its break fast and yet it is too large a receptacle for the whole world In toto nihil singulis satìs est There is nothing in the whole Universe which is enough for one particular man in which the appetite of any one man can rest And therefore since Satisfaction cannot be had under the Sun here below we must seek for it above And herein consisteth the excellency the very life and essence of Christian Religion To exalt the Soul to draw it back from mixing with these things below and lift it up above the highest heavens To unite it to its proper object To make that which was the breath of God Gen. 2.7 breathe nothing but God think of nothing desire nothing seek for nothing but from above from whence it had its beginning The Soul is as the Matter the things above the Form The Soul is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 so Plato calleth Matter the receptacle of things above as the Matter is of Forms And it is never rightly actuated or of a perfect being till it receiveth the heavenly graces The Soul is the Pot the Vial so Chrysostom calleth it not wherein is put Manna but the Son and the holy Ghost and those things which they send from above The Soul is as the Ground and these the Seed the Soul the Matrix the Womb to receive them Matth. 13. And there is a kind of sympathy betwixt the immortal Seed and the Heart and Mind of Man as there is between Seed and the Womb of the earth For the Soul no sooner seeth the things above unveiled and unclouded not disguised by the interveniencie of things below by disgrace poverty and the like but upon a full manifestation she is taken as the Bridegroom in the Canticles with their eye and beauty Heaven is a fair sight even in their eyes whose wayes tend to destruction For there is a kind of nearness and alliance between the things above and those notions and principles which God imprinted in us at the first Therefore Nature it self had a glimpse and glimmering light of these things and saw a further mark to aim at then the World in this span of time could set up Hence Tully calleth Man a mortal God born to two things to Vnderstand and Do. And Seneca telleth us that by that which is best in Man our Reason we go before other creatures but follow and seek after the first Good which is God himself Again as these things bear a correspondence with the Mind and Soul of man as the Seed doth with the Womb of the earth so hath the Soul of man 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a formative faculty to shape and fashion them and by the influence of God's Grace and the kindly aspect of the Spirit to bring forth something of the same nature some heavenly creature to live in the world and hate it to walk in it and tread it under its foot THE NEW MAN which is renewed after the image of God Vers 1◠made up in righteousness and holiness The beauty of Holiness may beget that Violence in us which may break open the gates of heaven the virtue of Christ's Cross may beget an army of Martyrs and the Glory above may raise us up even out of the dust out of all our faculties to lay hold on it that so we may be fitted as with planes and marked out as with the compass as the Prophet Esay speaketh in another sense that we may be fitted to glory and those things above as others are to destruction Rom. 9.22 2 Tim. 4.8 1 Cor. 2.9 John 14.3 And hence this glory is said to be laid up and to be prepared for them which love God And our Saviour now sitteth in heaven to prepare a place for them even for all those who by setting their affections on things above are fitted and prepared for them Thus you see it is the chief work and end of Christian Religion to abstract and draw the Soul from sensual and carnal objects and to level and confine it to that object which is fitted and proportioned to it even the things above This is the work of the Gospel by which if we walk we shall suspect and fear the things below the pleasures and glory of this world as full of danger and set our affections on those things which are above and so have our conversation in heaven from whence we look for the Saviour the Lord Jesus Christ Let us now see what use we can make of this and draw it near to us by application And certainly if Christian Religion doth draw the Soul from that which is pleasing to the Sensitive part then we ought to try and examine our selves and our Religion by this touch-stone by this rule and be jealous and suspicious and afraid of that Religion which most holdeth compliance with the Sense and with our worldly desires which flattereth and cherisheth that part at which the Soul goeth forth and too often bringeth back Death along with her which doth miscere Deum seculum joyn God and Mammon the Spirit and the Flesh Christ and the World together and maketh them friendly to communicate with each other and so maketh the Christian a monster crying Abba Father but honouring the world falling down and worshipping Christ not in a stable but in a palace taking him not with persecution and self-denial but with honours riches and pleasures which in true esteem are but as the Apostle termeth them dung I will not mention the Heathen For what Religion can they have who are without God in the world Nor yet Mahumetism although wee see with what ease it prevailed and got a side and overflowed the greater part of the world because it brought with it a carnal Paradise an eternity of lusts and such alluring promises as the sensual part could relish and digest well enough though they were never fo absurd If from these we pass over into Christendom we shall soon see Christian Religion falling from its primitive purity remitting much of its rigour and severity painted over with a smiling countenance made to favour that which formerly it looked upon as capital and which deserved no better wages then death For how hath the Church of Rome fitted and attempered it to the sensitive part and most corrupt imaginations pulled off her sackcloth put on embroidery and made her all glorious without Allaying it with Worshipping of Saints which is but a carnal thing and Worshipping of Images a carnal thing Turning Repentance into Penance Fasting into Difference of meats Devotion into Numbering of beads Shutting up all Religion in Obedience and Submission to that Church Drawing out Religion from the heart to the gross and outward act With what art doth she uphold her self in that state and
narrow understandings could receive it would not add one hair to our stature and growth in grace That Christ is God and Man that the two Natures are united in the Person of thy Saviour and Mediatour is enough for thee to know and to raise thy nature up to him Take the words as they lye in their native purity and simplicity and not as they are hammered and beat out and stampt by every hand by those who will be Fathers not Interpreters of Scripture and beget what sense they please and present it not as their own but as a child of God Then Lo here is Christ and there is Christ This is Christ and that is Christ Thou shalt see many images and characters of him but not one that is like him an imperfect Christ a half-Christ a created Christ a phansied Christ a Christ that is not the Son of God and a Christ that is not the Son of Man and thus be rowled up and down in uncertainties and left to the poor and miserable comfort of conjecture in that which so far as it concerneth us is so plain easie to be known Do thoughts arise in thy heart do doubts and difficulties beset thee doth thy wit and thy reason forsake thee and leave thee in thy search at a loss 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saith Justine Martyr Thy Faith is the solution and will soon quit thee of all scruples and cast them by thy Faith not assumed or insinuated into thee or brought in as thy vices may be by thy education but raised upon a holy hill a sure foundation the plain and express word of God and upheld and strengthned by the Spirit Christian dost thou believe Thou hast then seen thy God in the flesh from Eternity yet born Invisible yet seen immense yet circumscribed Immortal yet dying the Lord of life yet crucified God and man Christ Jesus Amaze not thy self with an inordinate fear of undervaluing thy Saviour wrong not his Love and call it thy Reverence Why should thoughts arise in thy heart His Power is not the less because his Mercy is great nor doth his infinite Love shadow or eclipse his Majesty For see he counteth it no disparagement to be seen in our flesh nor to be at any loss by being thus like us Our Apostle telleth us 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 there was a Decorum in it and it behoved him to be made like unto his brethren That Christ was made like unto us is the joy of this Feast but that he ought to be so is the wonder and extasie of our joy That he would descend is mercy but that he must descend is our astonishment Oportet and Debet are binding terms words of duty Had the Apostle said It behoved us that he should be made like unto us it had found an easy belief the Debuit had been placed in loco suo in its proper place on a sweating brow on dust and putrefaction on the face of a captive All will say it behoved as much But to put a Debet upon the Son of God and make it a beseeming thing for him to become flesh to be made like unto us is as if one should set a Rubie in clay a Diamond in brass a Chrysolith in baser metall and say they are placed well there as if one should worry the lambs for the woolf or take the master by the throat for the debt of a Prodigal and with an Opertet say it should be so To give a gift and call it a Debt is not our usual language On earth it is not but in heaven it is the proper dialect fixed in capital letters on the Mercy-seat It is the joy of this Feast the Angels Antheme SALVATOR NATVS A Saviour is born And if he will be a Saviour an Undertaker a Surety such is the nature of Fidejussion and Suretiship DEBET he must it behoveth him he is as deeply engaged as the party whose Surety he is And oh our numberless accounts that engaged God! Oh our prodigality that made him here come sub ratione debiti Adam had brought God in debt to death to Satan to his own Justice and God in Justice did ow us all to the Grave and to Hell Therefore if he will have us if he will bring his children unto glory he must pay down a price for us Heb. 2.14 he must take us out of his hands who hath the power of death if he will have his own inheritance he must purchase it And let us look on the aptness of the means and we shall soon find that this Foolishness of God as the Apostle calls it is wiser than men 1 Cor. 1.26 and this weakness of God is stronger than men and that the Debuit is right set For medio exsistente conjunguntur extrema If you will have extremes meet you must have a middle line to draw them together And behold here they meet and are made one The proprieties of either Nature being entire yet meet and concentre as it were in one Person Majesty putteth on Humility Power Infirmity Eternity Mortality By the one our Saviour dyeth for us by the other he â—â—seth again By the one he suffereth as Man by the other he conquereth as God by both he perfecteth and consummateth the great work of our Redemption This Debuit reacheth home to each part of the Text First to Christ as God The same hand that made the vessel when it was broken and so broken that there was not one sherd left to fetch water at any pit ought to repair and set it together again that it may receive and contain the water of life Qui fecit nos debuit reficere Our Creation and Salvation must be wrought by the same hand and turned about upon the same wheel Next we may set the debuit upon Christ's Person He is media Persona a middle Person the office therefore will best fit him even the office of Mediatour Further as he is the Son of God and the Image of his Father most proper it may seem for him to repair that Image which was defaced and well near lost in us We had not onely blemished God's Image but set the Devil's face and superscription upon God's coyn For righteousness there was sin for purity pollution for beauty deformity for rectitude perversness for the Man a Beast scarce any thing left by which God might know us Venit Filius ut iterum signet The Son cometh and with his blood reviveth the first character marketh us with his own signature imprinteth the graces of God upon us maketh us current money and that his Father may know us and not cast us off for refuse silver sheweth him his face Indeed the Father and the holy Ghost dignified the Flesh but took it not filled it with their Majesty but not with their Persons wrought in the Incarnation but were not Incarnate As three may weave a garment and but one wear it as Hugo And as in Musick saith St.
them were not an act of our Faith but of our Knowledge Therefore Christ shewed not himself openly to all the people at his resurrection Tert. Apol. ut fides non mediocri praemio destinata non nisi difficultate constaret that faith by which we are destined to a crown might not consist without some difficulty but commend it self by our obedience the perfection and beauty whereof is best seen in making its way through difficulties And so Hilary Habet non tam veniam quà m praemium ignorare quod credis Lib. 8. De Trin Not perfectly to know what thou certainly believest doth so little stand in need of pardon that it is that alone which draweth on the reward For what obedience can it be for me to assent to this That the whole is greater then the part that the Sun doth shine or any of those truths which are visible to the eye What obedience it is to assent to that which I cannot deny But when the object is in part hidden in part seen when the truth we assent to hath more probability to establish it then can be brought to shake it then our Saviour himself pronounceth John 20.29 Blessed are they who have not seen and yet have believed Besides it were in vain he should afford us more light who hath given us enough For to him that will not rest in that which is enough nothing is enough When God had divided the Red sea when he rained down Manna upon the Israelites and wrought many wonders amongst them the Text saith For all this they sinned still Psal 78.31 and believed not his wondrous works The Pharisees saw Christ's miracles yet would have stoned him They saw him raise Lazarus from the dead and would have killed them both The people said He hath done all things well Mar. 7.37 John 7.48 yet these were they that crucified the Lord of life Did any of the Pharisees believe in him We might ask Did any of his Disciples believe in him Christ himself calleth them Fools and slow of heart to believe what the Prophets had foretold Luke 24.25 Their Fear had sullied the evidence that they could not see it the Text sayth they forsook him and fled Matth. 26.56 And the reason of this is plain For though Faith be an act of the Understanding yet it dependeth upon the Will and men are incredulous nor for want of those means which may raise a faith but for want of will to follow that light which leadeth unto it they do not believe because they will not and so bear themselves strongly upon opinion preconceived beyond the strength of all evidence whatsoever When our affections and lusts are high and stand out against it the evidence is put by and forgot and the object which calls for our eye and faith begins to disappear and vanish and at last is nothing Quot voluntates tot fides saith Hilary So many Wills so many Creeds For there is no man that believeth more than he will To make this good we may appeal to men of the slendrest observation and least experience we may appeal to our very eye which cannot but see those uncertain and uneven motions in which men are carried on in the course of their life For what else is that that turneth us about like the hand of a Dial from one point to another from one perswasion to a contrary How cometh it to pass that I now embrace what anon I tremble at What is the reason that our Belief shifteth so many scenes and presenteth it self in so many several shapes now in the indifferency of a Laodicean anon in the violence of a Zealot now in the gaudiness of Superstition anon in the proud and scornful slovenry of factious Profaneness that many make so painful a peregrination through so many modes and forms of Religion and at last end in Atheists What reason is there There can be none but this the prevalency and victory of our Sensitive part over our Reason and the mutability yea and stubbornness of our Will which cleaveth to that which it will soon forsake but is strongly set against the Truth which bringeth with it the fairest evidence but not so pleasing to the sense This is it which maketh so many impressions in the mind Self-love and the Love of the world these frame our Creeds these plant and build these root and pull down build up a faith and then beat it to the ground and then set up another in its place James 1.8 2 Tim. 2 8 A double-minded man saith S. James is unstable in all his wayes Remember saith S. Paul that Jesus Christ of the seed of David was raised up from the dead according to my Gospel That is a sure foundation for our faith to build on There we have 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 fair and certain pledges of faith as it were a commentary upon EGO VIVO or as so many beams of light to make it open and manifest to every eye which give up so fair an evidence that the malice of the Jew cannot avoid it Matth. 28.13 Let them say His Disciples stole him away whilest their stout watchmen slept What stole him away and whilest they slept It is a dream and yet it is not a dream it is a studied lye and doth so little shake that it confirmeth our faith so transparent that through it we may behold more clearly the face of Truth which never shineth brighter than when a lye is drawn before it to vail and shadow it Matth. 28.6 He is not here he is risen if an Angel had not spoken it yet the Earthquake the Clothes the Clothes so diligently wrapt up the Grave it self did speak it And where such strange impossibilities are brought in to colour and promote a lye they help to confute it Id negant quod ostendunt They deny what they affirm and Malice it self is made an argument for the truth 1 Cor. 15.5 6. For it we have a better verdict given by Cephas and the twelve yea we have a cloud of witnesses above five hundred brethren at once who would not make themselves the fathers of a lye to propogate that Gospel which either maketh our yea yea and nay nay or damneth us Nor did they publish it to raise themselves in wealth and honour For it teacheth them to contemn these matters maketh Poverty a beatitude and sheweth them a sword and persecution which they were sure to meet with and did afterwards in the prosecution of their office and publication of that faith Nor could they take any delight in such a lye as would gather so many clouds over their heads which would at last dissolve in that bitterness that would make life it self a punishment and at last take it away And how could they hope that men would ever believe that which themselves knew to be a lye These witnesses then are 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 many and beyond exception
Scripture Eph. 5.14 Awake thou that sleepest in Sloth and Idleness thou that sleepest in a tempest in the midst of thy unruly and turbulent Passions arise from the grave and sepulchre wherein thy Sloth hath intombed thee arise from the dead from that nasty charnel-house of rotten bones where so many vitious Habits have shut thee up Break up thy monument Hebr. 12.1 cast aside every weight and every sin that presseth down and rise up and be but a Man improve thy Reason to thy best advantage and this Good shall shine upon thee with all its beams and brightness and Christ shall give thee light if not to see things to come to satisfie thy Curiosity yet to see things to come which shall fill thy soul as with marrow and fatness Psal 63.5 if not to know the uncertain yet certain wayes of Gods providence yet to know the certain and infallible way to bliss if not to know things too high for thee yet to know that which shall exalt thee to heavenly places in Christ Jesus He hath shewn thee O man what is good Dost thou see it dost thou believe it Thou shalt see greater things then these Thou shalt see what thou dost believe and enjoy what thou dost but hope for Thou shalt see God who hath shewed thee this Good that thou mightest see him Thou shalt then have a more exact knowledge of his Wayes and Providence a fuller tast of his Love and Goodness a clearer sight of his Beauty and Majesty and with all his Angels and all his Saints behold his Glory for evermore Thus much of this Good as it is an Object to be lookt on We shall in the next place consider it as a Law QVID REQVIRIT What doth the Lord require The Third SERMON PART III. MICAH VI. 8. He hath shewed thee O man what is good and what doth the Lord require of thee but to do justly c. HE hath shewed thee O man what is good what it is thou wert made for even that which is fitted and proportioned to thy Soul that which is lovely and amiable and so a fit object to look on that which will fill and satisfy thy Soul and turn the greatest evil the world can lay as a stone of offense in thy way into good and raise it self upon it to its highest pitch of glory And this he hath made plain and manifest drawn out in so visible a character that thou mayest run and read it And thus far we have already brought you We must yet lead you further even to the foot of mount Sinai What doth the Lord require of thee This is as the publication of it and making it a Law Hebr. 12.19 For with the thunder and the lightning and the sound of the trumpet Exod. 20.2 and the voice of words this voice was heard I AM THE LORD THVS SAITH THE LORD is the Prophets Warrant or Commission I THE LORD HAVE SPOKEN IT is a seal to the Law By this every word shall stand by this every Law is of force It is a word of power and command and authority For he that can do what he will may also require what he will in heaven or in earth So then if he be the Lord he may require it In this one word in this Monosyllable all power in heaven and in earth is contained For in calling him Lord he assigneth unto him an absolute Will which must be the rule of our Will and of all our actions which are the effects and works of our Will and issue from it as from their first principle and mover And this his Will is attended 1. with Power 2. with Wisdome 3. with Love By his Power he made us and still protecteth and preserveth us and from this issueth his legislative Power Again as by his Wisdome he made us so by the same Wisdome he giveth us such a Law as shall sweetly and certainly lead us to that end for which he made us And last of all his Love it is to the work of his own hands thus to lead us And all these are shut up in this one word Lord. Let us view and consider all these and so look upon them as to draw down their influence and virtue into our souls to work that obedience in us which this Lord requireth and will reward First it is the Lord requireth I need not trouble you with a recital of those places of Scripture where God is called the Lord. For if the Scripture be as the Heaven this is a Star of the greatest magnitude and spreadeth its beams of Majesty and Power in the eyes of all men And to require is the very form of a Law I will I require if Power speak it is a Law It will be more apposit and agreeable to our purpose that we may the more willingly embrace and entertein this Good which is publisht as a Law to look upon this word Lord as it expresseth the Majesty and Greatness of God He is therefore said to be the Lord because he is omnipotent and can do all things that he will He is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saith Nazianzene a vast and boundless Ocean of Essence and he is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a boundless and infinite Sea of Power Take the highest pitch of Dominion and Lordship that our imagination can reach yet it falleth short of his who is Lord of Lords to whom all earthly Majesty must vail and at whose feet all Princes lay down their Crowns and Sceptres And therefore Dionysius Longinus falling upon the story of the Creation De sublimi genere orat Sect. 7. maketh that expression of Moses 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Let there be light and there was light Let there be earth and there was earth the highest and most sublime that the art or thought of man could reach 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for thus the Majesty of God is best set forth He no sooner speaketh but it is done Nor can it be otherwise For as he is a Lord and hath an absolute and uncontrollable Will so his Will is attended by an infinite Power which is inseparable from it You may find them both joyned together Acts 4.28 All things are done 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 whatsoever his hand and his counsel determined to do Because he can do all things therefore he bringeth to pass whatsoever he will And his Hand and Power hath here the first place because all Counsell falleth to the ground if Power be not as a pillar and supporter to uphold it What is the strength of a strong man if there be a stronger then he to bind and disarm him What is it to conceive something in the womb of the mind to shape and form and fashion it and to bring it even to the door of life if there be no strength to bring it forth What is my Will if it be defeated Libera voluntas in nullum habet imperium praeterquam in se Hierocles apud
of the soul which are called by the Apostle 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 puffings up for riches or learning or beauty or strength or eloquence or virtue or any thing which we admire our selves for elations and liftings up of the Mind above it self stretching of it beyond its measure 2 Cor. 10.14 making us to complain of the Law as unjust to start at the shadow of an injury to do evil and not to see it to commit sin and excuse it making our tongues our own Psal 12.4 our hands our own our understandings our own our wills our own leaving us Independents under no law but our own The Prophet David calleth it highness or haughtiness of the heart Solomon Psal 131 1. Prov. 16.18 haughtiness of the spirit which is visible in our sin and visible in our apologies for sin lifting up the eyes Psal 10.4 and lifting up the nose for so the phrase signifieth and lifting up the head and making our necks brass as if we had devoured a spit as Epictetus expresseth it I am and I alone Graeci 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 appellant Arrian in Epict. is soon writ in any mans heart and it is the office and work of Humility to wipe it out to wipe out all imaginations which rise and swell against the Law our Neighbour and so against God himself For the mind of man is very subject to these fits of swelling Humility Our very nature riseth at the mention of it Habet mens nostra sublime quiddam impatiens superioris saith the Oratour Mens minds naturally are lifted up and cannot endure to be overlookt Humility It is well we can hear her named with patience It is something more that we can commend her But quale monstrum quale sacrilegium saith the Father O monstruous sacrilege we commend Humility and that we do so swelleth us We shut her out of doors when we entertein her When we deck her with praises we sacrilegiously spoil her and even lose her in our panegyricks and commendations We see for it is but too visible what light materials we are made of what tinder we are that the least spark will set us on fire to blaze and be offensive to every eye We censure Pride in others and are proud we do so we humble our brethren and exalt our selves It is the art and malice of the world when men excel either in virtue or learning to say they are proud and they think with that breath to level every hill that riseth so high and calleth so many eyes to look upon it But suppose they were alass a very fool will be so and he that hath not one good part to gain the opinion of men will do that office for himself and wonder the world should so mistake him Doth Learning or Virtue do our good parts puff us up and set us in our altitudes No great matter the wagging of a feather the gingling of a spur a little ceruss and paint any thing nothing will do it nay to descend yet lower that which is worse then nothing will do it Wickedness will do it 〈◊〉 10.3 He boasteth of his hearts desire saith David he blesseth himself in evil Prov. 2.14 He rejoyceth in evil saith Solomon he pleaseth and flattereth himself in mischief And what are these benedictions these boastings these triumphs in evil but as the breathings the sparkles the proclamations of Pride Psal 10.4 The wicked is so proud he careth not for God God is not in all his thoughts When Adam by pride was risen so high as to fall from his obedience God looketh upon him in this his exaltation or rather in this ruine and beholdeth him not as his creature but as a prodigie and seemeth to put on admiration 〈…〉 22. ECCE ADAM FACTVS TANQVAM VNVS E NOBIS See the man is become as one of us God speaketh it by an Irony A God he is but of his own making Whilest he was what I made him he was a Man but innocent just immortal of singular endowments and he was so truly and really but now having swelled and reached beyond his bounds a God he is but per mycterismum a God that may be pitied that may be derided a mortal dying God a God that will run into a thicket to hide himself His Greatness is but figurative but his misery is real Being turned out of paradise he hath nothing left but his phansie to deifie him This is our case our teeth are on edge with the same sowr grapes We are proud and sin and are proud in our sins We lift up our selves against the Law and when we have broke it we lift up our selves against Repentance When we are weak then we are strong when we are poor and miserable then we are rich when we are naked then we clothe our selves with pride as with a garment And as in Adam so in us our Greatness is but a tale and a pleasing lye our sins and imperfections true and real our heaven but a thought and our hell burning A strange soloecisme a look as high as heaven and the soul as low as the lowest pit It was an usual speach with Martine Luther that every man was born with a Pope in his belly And we know what the Pope hath long challenged and appropriated to himself Infallibility and Supremacy which like the two sides of an Arch mutually uphold each other For do we question his Immunity from errour It is a bold errour in us for he is supreme Judge of controversies and the conjecture is easie which way the question will be stated Can we not be perswaded and yield to his Supremacy Then his Parasites will tell you that he is Infallible By this we may well ghess what Luther meant For so it is in us Pride maketh us incorrigible and the thought that we are so increaseth our Pride We are too high to stand and too wise to be wary too learned to be taught and too good to be reproved We now stand upon our Supremacy See how the Worm swelleth into an Angel The Heart forgetteth it is flesh and becometh a stone and you cannot set Christs Impress HVMILITY upon a stone Learn of me for I am humble The Ear is deaf the Heart stubborn Matth. 11.29 the Mind 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saith S. Paul 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saith Theodoret a reprobate Rom. 1.28 reverberating mind a heart of marble which violently beateth back the blow that should soften it Now the office of Humility is to abate this swelling its proper work is to hammer this rock and break it to pieces Jer. 23.29 to drive it into it self to pull it down at the sight of this Lord to place it under it self under the Law under God to bind it as it were with cords to let out this corrupt blood and this noxious humour and so sacrifice it to that God that framed it to depress it in it self that
he commandeth threatneth beseecheth calleth upon us again and again And the beseechings of Lords are commands preces armatae armed prayers backt with power And therefore next consider the Virtue and Power of his Dominion and bow before him and do what he commandeth with fear and trembling Let this Power walk along with thee in all thy wayes When thou art giving an alms let it strike the trumpet out of thy hand When thou fastest let it be in capite jejunii let it begin and end it When thou art strugling with a tentation let it drive thee on that thou faint not and fall back and do the work of the Lord negligently Jer. 48.10 When thou art adding virtue to virtue let it be before thy eyes that thou mayest double thy diligence and make it up complete in every circumstance And when thou thinkest of evil let it joyn with that thought that thou mayest hate the very appearance of it and chace it away Why should Dust and Ashes more aw thee then Omnipotency Why should thy Eye be stronger then thy Faith Not onely the frown but the look of thy Superiour composeth and modelleth thee putteth thee into any fashion or form thou wilt go or run or sit down thou wilt venture thy body would that were all nay thou wilt venture thy soul do any thing be any thing what his beck doth but intimate but thy Faith is fearless as bold as blind will venture on the point of the sword feareth what Man not what this Lord can do feareth him more that sitteth on the bench than him that sitteth at the right hand of God If we did believe as we profess we could not but lay this more to our hearts even lay it so as to break them For who can stand up when this Lord is angry Let us next view the Largeness and Compass of his Dominion which taketh in all that will come reacheth those who refuse to come and would not be contracted in its compass if none should come And why shouldst thou turn a Saviour into a Destroyer Why shouldst thou die in thy Physicians arms with thy cordials about thee Why shouldst thou behold him as a Lord till he be angry He calleth all inviteth all to come Why should Publicanes and sinners enter and thy disobedience shut thee out Lastly consider the Duration of his Dominion which shall not end but with the world nor end then when it doth end for the virtue of it shall reach to all eternity And then think that under this Lord thou must either be eternally happy or eternally miserable and let not a flattering but a fading World let not thy rebellious and traiterous Flesh let not the Father of lies a gilded temptation an apparition a vain shadow thrust thee on his left hand For both at his right and left there is Power which worketh to all eternity And now we have walkt about this Sion and told the towers thereof shewed you Christs Territories and Dominion the nature of his Laws the Virtue and Power the Largeness and Compass the Duration of his Kingdom we must in the next place consider his Advent consider him as now coming For we cannot imagin as was said before that he fitteth idle like Epicurus his God nec sibi facessens negotium nec alteri not regarding what is done below but like the true Prometheus governing and disposing the state of times and actions of men Divinum numen etiam qua non apparet rebus humanis intervenit M. Sen Contr. His Power insinuateth it self and worketh even there where it doth not appear Though he be in heaven yet he can work at this distance For he fileth the heaven and the earth 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 He beholdeth all things he heareth all things He speaketh to thee and he speaketh in thee He heareth thee when thou speakest and he heareth thee when thou speakest not In his book are all things written nay he keepeth a book in the very closet of thy heart the onely book which shall go along with thee and when he cometh it shall fly open Every chapter every letter every character of sin shall be as plain to thy eye as to his And though we here seal up this book he can read it when it is shut He sitteth above tanquam venturus as one coming Indeed to us who like those Philosophers in Tully seeing nothing with our mind refer all to our sense and scarce believe any thing but that for which we have an ocular demonstration the eye of whose faith is so dull and heavy that it cannot clearly discern that eye of our Lord which is ten thousand times brighter then the Sun he is most times as lost like Epicurus his God doing nothing Eccl. 23.17 like Baal either in his journey or sleeping 1 Kings 18.27 And as at his first coming he was had in no reputation Phil 2 5. so now he is at the right hand of God he is in a manner forgot Wo do not insult over him in plain terms as those did in Theodoret 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Luke 24.25 What doth the carpenters Son now do but we are as slow of heart to believe what we are taught and what we say we believe as those disciples which went to Emmaus We are told that he did rise again from the dead and ascended and sitteth at the right hand of God and will come again but it is a long time since those things were done and he is long a coming To the Atheist to the profane person to the luke-warm Christian to the hypocrite he is in a manner lost they have sealed up his grave and he will come no more And this is one argument that he will come even this That we so little regard it For can a Lord that breatheth forth nothing but Love bear with such contempt Can he whom the voice of God and Man whom Scripture and Miracles and Reason have placed on the tribunal and made Judge of all the world be kept back by these vain imaginations which are nothing else but the steam and exhalations of our sensual and brutish part Shall not he judge all the earth because we are guilty and deserve to be condemned No veniet veniet hic August etiamsi nolis veniet He will come he will certainly come whether thou wilt or no. Nor is delay in coming an argument that he will not come For the Lord is not slack concerning his promise and coming 2 Pet. 3.3 4 9. as some count slackness some scoffers who walk after their own lusts and ask Where is the promise of his coming Sensuality is the mother and nurse of Unbelief and the Sense flyeth the knowledge of that which is terrible to it and so we are as S. Peter telleth us willingly ignorant of that which we are taught and will not consider that the world is made of corruptible parts and therefore must at last be dissolved and
and help himself out of them and take himself off from that amazement Marcion ran dangerously upon the greatest blasphemy Duos Ponticus Deos tanquam duaâ— Symplegadas naufragit sui adfert quem negare non potuit i. e. creatorem i. e. nostrum quem probare non poterit i. e. suum Tertull. 1. adv Marcion c. 1. and brought in two Principles one of Good and another of Evil that is two Gods But when the Lord shall come and lay judgment to the line all things will be even and equal and the Heretick shall see that there is but one Now all is jarring discord and confusion but the Lord when he cometh will make an everlasting harmony He will draw every thing to its right and proper end restore order and beauty to his work fill up those breaches which Sin hath made and manifest his Wisdome and Providence which here are lookt upon as hidden mysteries in a word he will make his glory shine out of darkness as he did Light when the earth was without form 1 Cor. 15.28 That the Lord may be all in all Here in this world all lyeth as in a night in darkness in a Chaos or confusion and we see neither what our selves nor others are We see indeed as we are seen see others as they see us with no other eyes but those which the Prince of this world hath blinded Our Judgment is not the result of our Reason but is raised from by and vile respects If it be a friend we are friends to his vice and study apologies for it If it be an enemy we are angry with his virtue and abuse our wits to disgrace it If he be in power our eyes dâ—zle and we see a God come down to us in the shape of a man and worship this Meteor though exhaled and raised from the dung with as great reverence and ceremony as the Persians did the Sun What he speaketh is an oracle and what he doth is an example and the Coward the Mammonist or the Beast giveth sentence in stead of the Man which is lost and buried in these If he be small and of no repute in the world he is condemned already though he have reason enough to see the folly of his Judges and with pitty can null the censure which they pass If he be of our faction we call him as the Manichees did the chiefest of their sect one of the Elect But if his Charity will not suffer him to be of any we cast him out and count him a Reprobate The whole world is a theatre or rather a Court of corrupt Judges which judge themselves and one another but never judge righteous judgment For as we judge of others so we do of our selves Judicio favor officit our Self love putteth out the eye of our Reason or rather diverteth it from that which is good and imployeth it in finding out many inventions to set up evil in its place as the Prophet speaketh We feed on ashes Isa 44.20 a deceived heart hath turned us aside that we cannot deliver our soul nor say Is there not a lye in our right hand Thus he that soweth but sparingly is Liberal he that loveth the world is not covetous he whose eyes are full of the adulteress is chast he that setteth up an image and falleth down before it is not an Idolater he that drinketh down bloud as an ox doth water is not a Murderer he that doth the works of his father the Devil is a Saint Many things we see in the world most unjustly done Multa injustè fieri possunt quae nemo possit reprehendere Cic. de Finibus Mic. 6.16 which we call Righteousness because no man can commence a suit against us or call us into question and we doubt not of Heaven if we fall not from our cause or be cast as they speak in Westminster-hall If Omri's statutes be kept we soon perswade our selves that the power of this Lord will not reach us and if our names hold fair amongst men we are too ready to tell our selves that they are written also in the book of life This is the judgment of the world Thus we judge others and thus we judge our selves so byassed with the Flesh that for the most we pass wide of the Truth Others are not to us nor are we to our selves what we are but the work of our own hands made up in the world and with the help of the world For the Wisdome of this world is our Spirit and Genius that rayseth every thought dictateth all our words begetteth all our actions and by it as by our God we live and move and have our being And now since Judgment is thus corrupted in the world even Justice requireth it Et veniet Dominus qui malè judicata rejudicabit the Lord will come and give judgment against all these crooked and perverse judgements and shall lay Righteousness to the plummet Isa 28.17 and with his breath sweep away the refuge of lyes and shall judge and pass another manner of sentence upon us and others then we do in this world Then shall we be told what we would never believe though we have had some grudgings and whisperings and half-informations within us which the love of this world did soon silence and suppress Then shall he speak to us in his displeasure and Aliud est judicium Christi aliud anguli su surrorum Hier. though we have talked of him all the day long tell us we forgot him If we set up a golden image he shall call us Idolaters though we intended it not and when we build up the sepulchres of the Prophets and flatter our selves and accuse our forefathers tell us we are as great murderers as they and thus find us guilty of that which we protest against and haters of that which we think we love and lovers of that which we think we detest and take us from behind the bush from every lurking hole from all shelter of excuse take us from our rock our rock of ayr on which we were built and dash our presumptuous assurance to nothing Nor can a sigh or a grone or a loud profession or a fast or long prayers corrupt this Lord or alter his sentence but he shall judge as he knoweth who knoweth more of us then we are willing to take notice of and is greater then our Conscience which we shrink and dilate at pleasure 1 John 3.20 and fit to every purpose and knoweth all things and shall judge us not by our pretense Rom. 2.16 our intent or forced imagination but according to his Gospel VENIET He shall come when all is thus out of Order to set all right and straight again And this is the end of his Coming And now being well assured that he will come we are yet to seek and are ready with the Disciples to ask Matth. 24.3 When will these things be and What hour will he
esse debet ager quà m agricola The farm must not be too great for the husbandman but what he may be well able to manure and dress And the reason is good Quia si fundus praevaleat colliditur dominus Because if he prevail not if he cannot manage it he must needs be at great loss And it is so in the speculations and works of the mind Those inquiries are most fruitful and yield a more plentiful increase which we are able to bring unto the end which is truly to resolve our selves Thus it is as a little plot of ground well tilled will yield a fairer crop and harvest then many acres which we cannot husband for the Understanding doth not more foully miscarry when it is deceived with false appearances and sophismes then when it looketh upon and would apprehend unnecessary and unprofitable objects and such as are set out of sight Res frugi est sapientia Spiritual Wisdome is a frugal and thrifty thing sparing of her time which she doth not wantonly wast to purchase all knowledge whatsoever but that which may adorn and beautifie the mind which was made to receive Virtue and Wisdome and God himself To know that which profiteth not is next to ignorance But to be ambitious of impertinent speculations carrieth with it the reproch of folly Hom. 29. adv calumn 8. Trin. What is it then 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Basil speaketh to seek with such diligence for that which is past finding out And first the knowledge of the hour of Christ's coming is most impertinent Acts 1.7 Psal 31.15 and concerneth us not It is not for us to know the times As our dayes so the times are in God's hand and he disposeth and dispenseth them as it pleaseth him fitteth a time to every thing which all the wisdome of the world cannot do Thou wouldst know when he would take the yoke from off thy neck It is not for thee to know That which concerneth thee is to possess thy soul with patience which will make thy yoke easie Thou wouldst know when he will break the teeth of the ungodly and wrest the sword out of the hand of them that delight in blood It is not for thee to know Thy task is to learn to suffer and rejoyce and to make a blessing of persecution Thou wouldst know when the world shall be dissolved Why shouldst thou desire to know it Thy labour must be to dissolve the body of sin and set an end and period to thy transgressions Thou wouldst know what hour this Lord will come It is not for thee to know but to work in this thy hour and be ready and prepared for his coming 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The present the present time that is thine and thou must fill it up with thy obedience That which is to come of what aspect so ever it be thou must onely look upon and consider as an help and advantage to thee in thy work The Lord will come speaketh no more to me then this To labour and sweat in his vineyard till he come All the daies of my appointed time will I wait Job 14.14 saith Job There is a time and an appointed time and appointed by a God of eternity and I do not study to calculate or find out the last minute of it but I will wait which is but a syllable but of a large and spreading signification and taketh in the whole duty of man For what is the life of a Christian but expectation of and waiting for the coming of the Lord David indeed desireth to know his end and the measure of his dayes Psal 39.4 but he doth not mean so to calculate them as Arithmeticians do to know a certain and determined number of them so to number them as to tell them at his fingers ends and say This will be the last but himself interpreteth himself and hath well explained his own meaning in the last words Let me know the measure of my dayes that I may know how frail I am know not exactly how many but how few they be let me so measure them that I may know and consider that they are but few that in this little time I may strive forward and make a way to eternity This was the Arithmetick he desired to have skill in It may seem a paradox but there is much truth in it few men are so fully resolved of their mortality as to know their dayes are few We can say indeed that we are but shadows but the dreams of shadows but bubbles but vapours that we began to die before we were born and in the womb did move and strive forward towards the gates of Death and we think it no disparagement because we speak to men of the same mold who will say the same of themselves and lay to heart as little as we But should we pass over Methusalem's age a thousand times yet when we were drawing even towards our end we should be ready to conceive a possibility of a longer race and hope like the Sun to run the same compass again And though we die every day yet we are not so fully confirmed in this that we shall ever die Egregia res est condiscere mortem saith Seneca The best art is the knowledge of our frailty and he must needs live well who hath well learnt to die And egregia res est condiscere adventum Domini Ep. 26. It is a most useful thing to have learnt and well digested the coming of the Lord. For we cannot take out this as we should but we must be also perfect in those lessons which may make us fit to meet him when he cometh The hour of his coming is lockt up in the treasury of his Wisdome and he hath left us no key to open it that we might not so much as hope to find it and so mispend our thoughts in that which they cannot lay hold on and which should be fastened on the other to advance and promote our duty 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Fix that well which is present here lay out all thy store all the powers of thy soul Whilest it is time whilest it is day whilest it is thy day make ready for his coming For secondly though it be in the future tense VENIET he will come though it lie hid as it were in the womb of Time and we know not when it will be brought to birth yet at this distance it looketh upon us and hath force enough in it self to work that fear and caution in us which the knowledge of the very hour peradventure might not do We say we believe it and that is enough And some have given Faith the preeminence above Knowledge and count the evidence we have by Faith clearer and more convincing then that we have by Demonstration But if it were not yet even that which is but probable in other things doth prevail with us and is as it were principium motus the
It will concern us to take heed how he findeth us when be cometh Oh let him not find us digging of pits and spreading of nets to catch our brethren spinning the spiders web wearying and wasting our selves in vanity Let him not find us in strange apparel in spotted garments in garments stained with blood Let not this Lord find thee in rebellion against him this Saviour find thee a destroyer this Christ who should anoint thee find thee bespotted of the world Let not an humble Lord find thee swelling a meek Lord find thee raging a merciful Lord find the cruel an innocent Lord find thee boasting in mischief the Son of man find thee a beast But to day if ye will hear his voice harden not your hearts This is your Day and this day you may work out Eternity Psal 95.7 8. This is your hour to look into your selves to be jealous of your selves Hebr. 3.7 8. vereri omnia opera to be afraid of every word work and thought every enterprise you take in hand For whatsoever you are saying whatsoever you are doing whatsoever you are imagining whilst you act whilst you speak before you speak whilst you think and that thought is a promise or prophecy of riches and delights and honours which are in the approch and ready to meet you or a seal and confirmation of those glories which are already with you whilst you think as the Prophet David speaketh that your houses shall continue for ever Psal 49.11 even then he may come upon you and then this inward thought all your thoughts perish or return again upon you like Furies to lash and torment you for ever And therefore to conclude since the Premisses are plain the Evidence fair Since he is a Lord and will come to judge us Since he will certainly come Since the time of his coming is uncertain and since it is sudden he is no Christian he is no Man but hath prostituted that which maketh him so his Reason to his Sense and Brutish part who cannot draw this Conclusion to himself That he must therefore watch Which is in the next place to be considered The Twelfth SERMON PART III. MATTH XXIV 42. Watch therefore c. WE have seen Christ our Lord at the right hand of God considered him 1. as our Lord 2. as coming 3. as keeping from our eye and knowledge the time of his coming And now what inference can we make He is a Lord and shall we not fear him To come and shall we not expect him To come at an hour we know not and shall we not watch This every one of them naturally and necessarily affordeth and no other conclusion can be drawn from them But when we consult with Flesh and Blood we force false conclusions even from the Truth it self and to please and flatter our sensual part conclude against Nature to destroy our selves Sensuality is the greatest Sophister that is worketh Darkness out of Light Poyson out of Physick Sin out of Truth See what paralogismes she maketh God is merciful Therefore presume He is patient Therefore provoke him He delayeth his coming We may now beat our fellow-servants and eat and drink with the drunken It is uncertain when he will come Therefore he will never come This is the reasoning of Flesh and Blood this is the Devils Logick And therefore that we be not deceived nor deceive our selves with these Fallacies behold here Wisdome it self hath shewn us a more excellent way and drawn the Conclusion to our hands VIGILATE ERGO He is a Lord and to come and at an hour ye know not of Watch therefore And this word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Vigilate is verbum vigilans as Augustine speaketh a waking busy stirring word and implieth as the Scholiast telleth us 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 all manner of care and circumspection And what are all the Exhortations in Scripture but a commentary and exposition of this Duty There we find it rendred by Awaking Working Running Striving Fasting Praying We shall find it to be Repentance Faith spiritual Wisdome that golden chain wherein all Virtues and Graces that Vniversitas donorum as Tertullian speaketh that Academy that World of spiritual Gifts meet and are united When we awake we watch to look about and see what danger is near When we work we watch till our work be brought to perfection that no trumpet scatter our Alms no hypocrisie corrupt our Fast no unrepented sin deny our Prayers no wandring thought defile our Chastity no false fire kindle our Zeal no lukewarmness dead our Devotion When we strive we watch that lust which is must predominant And Faith if it be not dead hath a restless eye an eye that never sleepeth which maketh us even here on earth like unto the Angels For so Anastasius defining an Angel calleth him a reasonable creature but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 such a one as never sleepeth Corde vigila fide vigila spe vigila charitate vigila saith S. Augustine An active Faith a waking Heart a lively Hope a spreading Charity Assiduity and perseverance in the work of this Lord these make up the VIGILATE the Watching here These are the seals Faith Hope and Charity set them on and the Watch is sure But this is too general To give you yet a more particular account we must consider first That God hath made man a Judge and Lord of all his actions and given him that freedom and power which is libripens emancipati à Deo boni Tert. l. 2. cont Marcion doth hold as it were the ballance and weigh and poyse both good and evil and may touch or strike which scale it please that either Good shall out weigh Evil or Evil Good For Man is not evil by necessity or chance but by his will alone See Dent. 30.15.19 I have set before thee this day Life and Good Death and Evil Therefore chuse Life Secondly God hath placed an apparancy of some good on that which is evil by which Man may be wooed and enticed to it and an apparency of smart and evil on that which is good Difficulty Calamity Persecution by which he may be frighted from it But then thirdly he hath given him an Understanding by which he may discover the horrour of Evil though coloured over and drest with the best advantage to deceive and behold the beauty and glory of that which is good though it be discouloured and defaced with the blackness and darkness of this world He hath given him a Spirt Prov. 20.27 which the Wiseman calleth the Candle of the Lord searching the inward parts of the belly his Reason that should sway and govern all the parts of the body and faculties of the soul by which he may see to eschew evil and chuse that which is good adhere to the good though it distaste the sense and fly from evil though it flatter it By this we discover the enemy and by this we conquer him By this we
Scriptures if you look over Christs Sermon on the mount you will easily be induced to believe that to serve one another in love is the greatest service we can do to God who made us all and to this end Alterutra diligentia charitatis as Tertullian calleth it This mutual and reciprocal work of charity in upholding each other is that which maketh us indeed the servants Christ Secondly as Compassion to our brethren is a fair preparation to purity of life so doth Purity of conversation commend our liberality and make it to be had in remembrance in the sight of the Lord. Compassion in a profane and impure person is but a sudden forced motion is but by fits and starts for sure it cannot stay and dwell in such a sty He that walloweth in the pleasures of this world and devoteth himself to riot and luxury cannot gain the title of religious by some cup of cold water or some piece of money which he giveth He that gathereth by oppression and then le ts fall an almes doth but steal an ox to make a sacrifice Perdere scit donare nescit as Piso said of Otho Tac. 1 Hist. He knoweth how to blast and spoil but not how to give an almes And commonly those winds blow not out of the Treasury of the Lord this bounty floweth not from the clear fountain of Divine Love but hath some other spring Thus to visit the fatherless and widows to reach out that hand unto them which is stained with the blood of others is not pure and undefiled Religion It may be bread it is not an almes that is brought by the hand of an oppressour or a Pharisee Therefore in the next place as they bear this fair correspondence and mutually uphold each other so we must not think it possible to separate them Some there be who come on slowly to the works of charity because they are not guilty of those sins which have shame written in their very foreheads pigri ad exercenda bona praecipua Hom. 36. in Evang. quia securi quòd non commiserint mala graviora as Gregory They are very backward to do good because they have not been overforward to do evil dull and heavy to the performance of the best deeds because they have not been active in the worst men for the many of them of more forecast then conscience that owe their morality not to the love of God but to the world knowing well enough that those vices which the world crieth down are commonly enemies to thrift delightful but costly there being scarce any one of them which is not a stake in his way who maketh haste to be rich and therefore they do abstain that they may not abstain they abstain from these disgraced expensive vices that their abstinence from these may be as a warrant or commission for them to make their brethren their daily sustenance Psal 14.4 53.4 to eat them up as they eat bread and devour these Temples of the Holy Ghost with as little regret as they do those which are made with hands And this is a common fault amongst Christians to think the performance of one part of our duty to be an apologie for the neglect of the other and that the observance of some few precepts will absolve us from the breach of all the rest that a sigh is louder then an oath and can sooner call down a pardon then the flying Book can bring a curse Zech. 5.1 2 3. that the diligence of the ear will answer for the boldness of the hand that a Fast will make Sacriledge a virtue and the keeping of the seventh day acquit us of those sins which we have resolved already to commit in the other six Indeed saith Basil the first rise and motion in Religion is to depart from all evil but yet it is a great deal easier to do nothing at all then to finish and perfect a good work THOV SHALT NOT KILL THOV SHALT NOT COMMIT ADVLTERY THOV SHALT NOT STEAL these are negative precepts and require but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 forbearance and sitting still a not drawing to the harlots lips a not touching the wedge of gold a not taking up the instruments of cruelty but To love our neighbour as our selves To sell all and give to the poor To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction In Psal 1. are 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 works fit for a souldier and strong man in Christ. We must beat down many enemies many wilde passions in our way before we can raise our selves to this height Nor can any man take this honour to himself but he that is called and fitted of God as were Abraham and Isaac and those Patriarchs and Apostles who were full of good works Both then are required at our hands and if God hath joyned them both together let no man take upon him to divorce or put them asunder For in the next place these two thus linked and united together will keep Religion pure and undefiled which I told you are as the colours and beauty of it the beauty of Holiness which hath its colour and grace from whence it hath its being and strength and if it be true will shine in the perfection of beauty Religion if it be true and not a name onely is as a virgin pure and undefiled and maketh us so and espouseth us to Christ Basil De Virginitate And as the Father telleth us Omnia virginis virgo sunt all that a virgin hath is so a virgin Her eyes are not touched with vanity her ears not defloured with evil communication her thoughts not ravished with the insiliencie of wanton desires her taste not violated with studied dainties and devised meats but all is like her self a Virgin So is true Religion simple and solid full of it self having no heterogeneous matter but ever the same and about the same There is nothing in our Love which sowreth our Justice nothing in our Justice to kill our Compassion nothing in our Liberality to defile our Chastity nothing in our Fear to beat down our Confidence nothing in our Zeal to consume our Charity Tertull. De corona militis Christianus nusquam est aliud A true Religious man is alwaies himself And as Religion is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 pure without mixture so it is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 undefiled and cannot subsist with pollution and profaneness 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Now are our Olympicks now is the great trial to be made before God and the Father 2 Tim. 2 5. And our Religion consisteth in this to fight it out 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 legally a condition they were bound to who were admitted to those games and exercises Before they did contend a proclamation was made to this purpose whether they were not servants or thieves or otherwise of an infamous life and if any of these were proved against them they were put back The same proclamation is made
who refused to hearken to their father Chap. 2.17 or to harden them whose sin was very great before the Lord But we must conclude these two within the four and thirty thousand that were slain And now the delivering up the people in such a number to the sword may seem to prejudice and call in question the Justice of God What his people his own people culled out of the Nations of the earth must these fall by the sword of Aliens of enemies to God Gen. 18.25 that know not his Name Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right Yes he will For even in this DOMINVS EST It is the Lord. Isa 50.1 For as the Lord once said to his people Where is the bill of your Mothers divorcement whom I have put away so here he may ask Where is that bill and obligation which I made to protect you If there be any brought forth we shall finde it rather like a Bill of sale then the Conveyance of an absolute gift On the one side God promiseth something on his behalf on the other there is something required on ours Read the Covenant and Contract between God and his people Gen. 17.8 They had his promise to be their God Exod. 29.45 Gal. 4.28 and were the sons of promise But then these promises were conditional and in every conditional promise there is an obligation and command Lev. 26.12 I will be their God that is his promise and they shall be my people that is their duty and if these meet not the promise is void and of none effect There is not a more true and natural gloss upon this promise than that of Azariah 2 Chron. 15.2 Hear ye me Asa and all Judah and Benjamin The Lord is with you whilst ye are with him and if ye seek him he will be found of you but if ye forsake him he will forsake you Both must go together or both are lost If Israel will be God's people then the promise is firm being founded on the eternal essence of God and so as constant and immutable as himself but if they break his commandment and put it from them then to be their God were not to be their God then to make good his promises were to vilifie and debauch them Tertul. This were liberalitatem ejus mutare in servitutem to turn his liberality into slavery prodigally to pour the pretious oyl of his goodness into a vessel that cannot hold it to protect and countenance a man of Belial because he beareth the name of an Israelite Therefore Isai 27.11 where God upbraideth his people of folly he presently cancelleth the bill and putteth them out of his protection Therefore he that made them will not have mercy upon them and he that formed them will shew them no favour What though they be the people which he hath purchased yet he will take no care of his own purchase Though they be his possession he will give them up He will not do what he promised and yet be Truth it self For if they do not their duty he did not promise Though he made them and formed them yet he will not own them but forsake and abhor his own work he will surrender them up and deliver them to destruction Even here upon the forehead of a desolate and rejected Israelite we may set up this Inscription DOMINVS EST It is the Lord. And now if we look up upon the Inscription we may read and interpret it without a guide and learn not to trifle with God because he is our Lord not to mock him with our Hypocrisie and force our Profession to countenance our Sin to be worse then Philistines because we are Israelites to be his enemies because we call our selves Gods people to be worse then Turks or Jews because we are Christians Oh the happy times of the infant Church when the Pagan could find nothing amongst the Christians to accuse but their Name And then what times are these when you can scarce see any thing commendable in the Christian but his Name You may call it if you please the Dotage or Blindness of the Church For The Temple of the Lord The Temple of the Lord The Israelite Jer. 7.4 The Israelite The Christian The Christian The Protestant The Protestant This is the Musick with which most use to drive away the evil Spirit all sad and melancholick thoughts from their hearts But indeed saith Basil the Devil 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 doth daunce and leap for joy to hear it when he heareth not withall the noise of our gronings of our prayers of our good works nor the harmony of a well tuned and well-composed life to go up to heaven along with it Oh what pity is it that God should place us in Paradise in a place of pleasure and safety and we forfeit it that he should measure out unto us as it were by the line a goodly heritage and we pluck up our own hedges and lay our selves open to every wild-beast that he should make us his people and we force him to be our Enemy in a word that our inheritance should begger us our security betray us and our royal prerogative undo us And further we carry not this consideration but pass to the second particular II. In so great a number as four and thirty thousand I may say in the whole common wealth of Israel for a Common-wealth may suffer in a far less number we cannot doubt but some there were that feared the Lord And shall there be as the Wise-man speaketh Eccl. 9.2 the same event to the righteous and to the wicked to the good and to the clean Horat. od 3.2 and to the unclean to him that sacrificeth and to him that sacrificeth not Gen. 18.23 Will God Incesto addere integrum will he destroy the righteous with the sinner This indeed is the depth of God and a great part of the world have been troubled at the very sight of it but yet if we behold it with that light which Scripture holdeth forth we shall find it is not so unfordable but we may make some passage through it 1. If we could not make answer or render any reason yet this ought not to prejudice or call in question the justice of God's proceedings especially with us men who are of dull and slow understandings When we have wearied our selves in searching out the causes of natural things yet after all our sweat and oyl we cannot attain so far as to know why the grass under our feet is green rather then purple or of any other colour and therefore we are far below those Supernaturals most unfit to search out those causes which God may seem to have locked up in his own breast God is the Lord of all the earth Josh 3.11 13. and as the Psalmist telleth us a thousand years in his sight are but as one day Psal 90.4 so in the case
attributes which are not onely visible but also speak unto us to follow this heavenly method His Wisdome instructeth us his Justice calleth upon us and his Mercy his eloquent Mercy bespeaketh us a whole Trinity of Attributes are instant and urgent with us to turn from our evil wayes And this is the Authority I may say the Majesty of Repentance It hath these three Gods Wisdome Justice Mercy to seal and ratifie it and make it authentick We come now to the Dictum it self It being God's we must well weigh and ponder it And we shall find it comprehendeth the duty of Repentance in its full latitude As Sin is nothing else but aversio à Creatore conversio ad creaturam an aversion and turning of the soul from God and an inordinate conversion and application to the Creature so by our Repentance we do referre pedem start back and alter our course work and withdraw our selves from evil waies and turn to the Lord by cleaving to his laws which are the mind of the Lord and having our feet enlarged we run the way of his commandments A straight line drawn out at length is of all lines the weakest and the further you draw it the weaker it is nor can it be strengthened but by being redoubled and bowed and brought back again towards its first point The Wise man telleth us that God at first made man upright Eccles 7.29 that is simple and single and sincere bound him as it were to one point but he sought out many inventions mingled himself and ingendered with divers extravagant conceits and so ran out not in one but many lines drawn out now to this object by and by to another still running further and further sometimes on the flesh sometimes on the world now on Idolatry anon on Oppression and so at a sad distance from him in whom he should have dwelt and rested as in his centre Therefore God seeing Man gone so far seeing him weak and feeble wound and turned about by the activity of the Devil and sway of the Flesh and not willing to lose him ordained Repentance as a remedy as in instrument to bend and bow him back again that he might recover and gain strength and subsistency in his former and proper place to draw him back from those objects in which he was lost and to carry him on forward to the rock out of which he was hewed Whilest he is yet in his evil wayes all is out of tune and order for the Devil who hath 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Chrysost hom de Paenitent invert the order of things placeth shame upon Repentance and boldness and senslesness upon Sin But Repentance is a perfect Methodist upon our turn we see the danger we plaid with and the horrour of those paths in which we sported we see in our flight a banishment in every sin a hell and in our turn a Paradise Divers words we have to express the true nature of Repentance but none more usual full and proper then this of Turning This includeth all the rest It is more then a bare Knowledge of our sins more then Grief more then an Acknowledgement or Confession more then a Desire of change more then an Endeavour For if we do not turn a termino ad terminum from one term or state to another from every sin we now embrace to its contrary if we do not fly and loath the one and rest and delight in the other our Knowledge of sin is but an accusation our Grief is but a frail and vanishing displacency Lugentibus lachryma quietis recreationis loco sunt Moses Mairmon Doct. perplex l. 3. c. 41. our Tears are our recreation our Desires but as thought and our endeavours proffers But if we turn and our turn be real these instruments or antecedents These disposing and preparing acts must needs be so also true and real We talk much of the Knowledge and Sense of our sin when we cannot be ignorant of it of Grief when we have no feeling of Confession and Acknowledgement when the heart is not broken of a Desire to be good when we resolve to be evil of an Endeavour to leave off our sins when we feed and nourish them and even hire them to stay with us In udo est Maenas Attis Pers sat 1. Our Repentance is languid and faint our Knowledge without observation our Grief without compunction our Acknowledgement without trepidation our Desire without strength and our Endeavour without activity But they are all complete and made perfect in our Turn and Conversion If we turn from our sins then we know them and know them in their deformity and all those circumstances which put so much horrour upon them If we turn our head will be a fountain of tears Jer. 9.1 and the eye will cast out water our Confession will be loud and hearty Lam. 1.16 our Desire eager and impatient our Endeavours strong and earnest and violent This Turn is as the hinge on which all the rest move freely and orderly Optima paenitentia nova vita saith Luther The best and truest repentance is a new life A Turn carrieth all the rest along with it to the end the end of our Knowledge of our Grief of our Acknowledgement of our Desires and Endeavours For we know our sins we bewail them we acknowledge them we desire and endeavour to leave them in a word we turn that we may be saved First it includeth the Knowledge of our sins He that knoweth not his malady will neither seek for cure nor admit it He that knoweth not the danger of the place he standeth in will not turn his face another way Isid Pelusiot l. 1111. ep 149 He that dwelleth in it as in a paradise will look upon all other that yield not the same delight as upon hell it self He that knoweth not his wayes are evil will hardly go out of them Malum notum res est optima saith Luther It is a good thing to know evil For the knowledge of that which is evil can have no other end but this To drive us from it to that which is good When Sin appeareth in its ugliness and monstrosity when the Law and the Wrath of God and Death it self display their terrours that face is more then brass or adamant that will not gather blackness and turn it self But this prescript To know sin one would think should rather be tendred to the Heathen then to Christians Act 15.29 Quando hoc factum non est quando reprehensum quando non permissum Cic. pro M. Caelio Rom. 1.31 To them some sins were unknown as Revenge Ambition Fornication and therefore they are enjoyned to abstein from them yet even those which the light of Nature had discovered to them they did commit though they knew that they who did commit them were worthy of death But to Christians it may seem unnecessary For they live in the Church which is
was muzled he was silent he could not speak a word For conclusion then Let us as the Wise-man counselleth keep our heart Prov. 4.23 our Will with all diligence for out of it are the issues of life and out of it are the issues of Death Let us take it from Death and confine and bind it to its proper object bind it with those bonds which were made to bind Kings and Nobles the most stout and stubborn and imperious heart bind it with the Fear of Death with the Fear of that God which here doth ask the question and not seek to ease our selves by an indiscreet and ill-applied consideration of our natural Weakness For how many make themselves wicked because they were made weak How many never make any assay to go upon this thought That they were born lame Original Weakness is an article of our Creed and it is our Apologie but it is the Apologie of the worst of the Covetous 1 John 2.16 of the Ambitious of the Wanton when it is the lust of the eyes that burieth the covetous in the earth the lusts of the flesh that setteth the Wanton on fire the pride of life that maketh the Ambitious climb so high Prima haec elementa these are the first Elements these are their Alphabet They learn â—â—â—m their Parents they learn from their friends they learn from servants to raise a bank to enoble their name to delight themselves in the things of this world These they are taught and they have their method drawn to their hands By these evils words which are the proper language and dialect of the world their manners are corrupted And for this our father Adam is brought to the bar when it is Mammon Venus and the World that have bruised us more then his fall could do Secondly pretend not the Want of Grace For a Christian cannot commit a greater soloecisme then to pretend the want of that which hath been so often offered which he might have had if he would or to conceive that God should be unwilling he should do his will unwilling he should repent and turn unto him This is a charge as well as a pretense even a charge against God forbidding us rise up and walk when we were lame and not affording us a staff nor working a miracle Grace is of that nature that we may want it though it be not denied we may want it when we have it and indeed we want Grace as the covetous man wanteth money we want it because we will not use it and so we are starved to death with bread in our hands For if we will not eat our daily bread we must die In the next place let us not shut up our selves in our own darkness nor plead Ignorance of that which we were bound to know which we do know and will not which is written with the Sun-beams which we cannot say we see not when we may run and read it For what mountainous evils do men run upon what gross what visible what palpable sins do they foster quae se suâ corpulentiâ produnt sins which betray themselves to be so by their bulk and corpulency Sacrilege is no sin and I cannot see how it now should for there is scarce any thing left for its gripe Lying is no sin it is our Language and we speak as many lies almost as words Perjury is no sin for how many be there that reverence an oath Jura perjura Iusjurandum rei servandae non perdendae conditum est Plaut Rud. Act. 5. sc 3. Mantile quo quotidianae noxae extergentur â—aber is an Axiome in our Morality and Politie and secureth our estates and intaileth them on our posterity Deceit is no sin for is is our trade Nay Adultery is no sin you would think with the Heathen with those who never heard of the name of Christ nay but with those who call upon it every day and call themselves the knowing men the Gnosticks of this age And whilst men love darkness more then light with some men there will scarce be any sins upon that account as sins till the day of judgement Next bring not in thy Conscience to plead for that sin which did 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 beat and wound thy Conscience For the office of thy Conscience is before the fact to inform thee and after the fact if it be evil to accuse thee and what comfort can there be in this thought That thou didst not follow her information That she called it a sin and thou didst it That she pointed out to it as to a rock and thou wouldst needs chuse it for thy haven No commonly this is the plea of those whose hearts are hard and yet will tell you they have a tender conscience And so they have tender in respect of a ceremony or thing indifferent Here they are struck in a manner dead quite beside themselves as if it were a basilisk here they are true and constant to their conscience which may erre but not tender in respect of an eternal Law where it cannot mistake Here they too often leave their conscience and then excuse themselves that they did so In the one they are as bold as a Lion in the other they call it the frailty of a Saint This they do with regret and some reluctancy that is by interpretation against their will Last of all do not think thy action is not evil because thy Intention was good For it is as easie to fix a good intention upon an evil action as it is to set a fair and promising title on a box of poison Hay and stubble may be laid upon a good foundation 1 Cor. 3.12 but it will neither head vvell nor bed vvell as they say in the vvork of the Lord. We must look as vvell to vvhat vve build as to the Basis vve raise and set it on or else it vvill not stand and abide We see vvhat a fire good Intentions have kindled on the earth and vve are told that many of them burn in hell I may intend to beat down Idolatry and bury Religion in the ruines of that I beat down I may intend the establishing of a Common-wealth and shake the foundation of it I may intend the Reformation of a Church and fill it with Locusts and Caterpillars innumerable I may intend the Glory of God and do that for which his Name shall be evil spoken of and it will prove but a poor plea when we blasphemed him to say we did it for his Glory Let us then lay aside these Apologies for they are not Apologies but accusations and detain us longer in our evil wayes then the false beauty and deceitful promises of a tentation could which we should not yield to so often did not these betray us nor be fools so long if we had not something to say for our selves And since we cannot answer the Expostulation with these since these will be no plea in the court of
in Scripture words of Command and Duty carry with them more then they shew and have wrapped up in them both the Act and the End and are of the largest signification in the Spirit 's Dictionary To HEAR is to Hear and to Doe To KNOW is to Know and to Practice To BELIEVE is to Believe and to Obey The Schools will tell us FIDES absque addito in Scriptura formata intelligitur Where Faith is named in Scripture without some addition as a dead Faith a temporary Faith an hypocritical Faith there evermore that Faith is commended which worketh by Charity And so to shew or to preach the death of the Lord is more then to Utter it with the tongue and Profess it For thus Judas might shew it as well as Peter thus the Jews might shew it that crucified him Thus the profane person that crucifieth him every day may shew it Yea Christ's death may be the common subject for discourse and the language of the whole world Therefore our shewing must look farther even to the end For what is Hearing without Doing What is Knowledge without Practice What is Faith without Chariâ—y What is shewing the death of the Lord if we do it not to that end for which he did die Our hearing is but the sensuality of the ear our Knowledge but an empty speculation our Faith but phansie and our shewing the death of the Lord a kind of nailing him again to the cross For to draw his picture in our ear or mind to character him out in our words and yet fight against him is to put him to shame We must then understand our selves when we speak to God as we understand God when he speaketh to us and in the same manner we must shew him to himself and the world as he is pleased to shew and manifest himself unto us Christ did not present us with a picture with a phantasm with a bare shew and appearance of suffering for us Nor must we present him with shadows and shews And what is God's shewing himself Psal 80. Thou that sittest between the Cherubims shew thy self saith the Psalmist shine thou clearly to our comfort and to the terrour of our enemies God manifesteth his Power and breaketh the Cedars of Libanus He maketh known his Wisdom and teacheth the children of men He publisheth his Love and filleth us with good things His Words are his blessings and his demonstrations in glory He speaketh to us by peace and shadoweth us by plenty and our garners are full And see how the creature echoeth back again to him The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament sheweth his handy-work Day unto day uttereth welleth out speech and night unto night sheweth knowledge God's language is Power God's language is Love and God's language is Hope God planted a vineyard Isa 5. that expresseth his Power and built a tower in it and made a wine-press therein there is his Love and he lookâ—d for grapes there Hope speaketh for he that planteth planteth in hope He spake by his Prophets he spake by his judgments and he spake by his mercies but still he spake in hope for he doth neither shine nor thunder but in hope This is the heavenly dialect and we must take it out We must not speak as one that beggeth on a stage but as he that beggeth on the high way naked and cold and pinched with hunger Verba in opera vertenda By a religious Alchymie we must turn words into works and when God speaketh to us by his Prophets answer him by our obedience when he speaketh to us in Love give him our hearts and when he looketh for grapes be full of good works This is Christ's own dialect and he best understandeth it and his reply is a reward But from shews and words he turneth away his ears and will not hear that is for still in God's language more is understood then spoke he will bring us to judgment And now we see what it is to shew the death of the Lord not to draw it out in our imagination or to speak it with the tongue but to express the power and virtue of it in our selves to labour and travel in birth till Christ be fully formed in us till all Christian virtues which are as the spirits of his bloud be quick and operative in us till we be made perfect to every good work And thus we shew his death by our Faith For Faith if it be not dead will speak and make it self known to all the world speak to the naked and clothe him to the hungry and feed him to those who erre and are in darkness and shine upon them This is the dialect of Faith But if the cold frost of temptations as S. Gregorie speaketh hath so niped it that it is grown chil and cold and can speak but faintly if we have talked so long of Faith till we have left her speechless if she speak but imperfectly and in broken language now by a drop of water and now by a mite and then silent shew the death of Christ onely in some rare and slender performance behold this is your hour and the power of light this your time of receiving the Sacrament is the time to actuate and quicken your Faith to make it more apprehensive more operative more lively to give it a tongue that it may shew and preach the wonderful works of the Lord. And as we shew the Lord's death by our Faith so we shew it by our Hope which if it be that Hope which purifieth the heart will awake our glory the Tongue If it be well built and underpropped with Charity it will speak and cry and complain And the language is the same with that of the souls under the Altar How long Lord Rev. 6. How long shall the Flesh fight against the Spirit How long shall we struggle with temptations When wilt thou deliver us from this body of death When shall we appear in the presence of our God Though we fall we shall rise again Though we are shaken we shall not be overthrown Though thou killest us yet we will trust in thee This is the dialect of Hope And here at this Table we must learn to speak out to speak it more plainly to raise and exalt it to a Confidence which is the loudest report it can make Thirdly we shew and preach the Lord's death by our Love Which is but the echo of his Love And we speak it fully as he doth to us fill up the sentence and leave not out a word make it manifest in the equality and universality of our obedience as he offered up himself a full perfect and sufficient sacrifice for us Quicquid propter Deum fit aequaliter fit Our love to Christ must be equal and like himself not meet him at Church and run from him in the streets not embrace him in a Sermon and throw him from us in our conversation not flatter him with a peny
down to meat and will come forth and sâ—rve thee that is will fill thee with all those comforts enrich thee with all those blessings give thee all that honour which he hath promised to those who trie and examine and make themselves fit to be guests at his Table I must conclude though I should proceed to the second Part the Grant and the Privilege But he that hath performed the first is already intitled to the second and may nay ought to eat of that bread â—nd drink of that cup For even the Privilege it self is a Duty But the time is spent and I fear your patience I will but re-assume my Text and there needeth no more Use For you see my Text it self is an Exhortation Let a man examine himself A man that is every man Let him that taketh the tribunal and sitteth upon the life and death of his brethren that exalteth himself as God and taketh the keyes out of his hand and bindeth and looseth at pleasure that wondereth how such or such a man who is not his brother in evil as factious as himself dareth approch the Table of the Lord let him examine himself Let him look into himself and there he shall see a great wonder a Wolf and a Lamb a John Baptist and a Herod a Devil and a Saint bound up together in one man the greatest prodigy in the world and as ominous as any ominous to his neighbours ominous to Commonwealths and ominous to all that live in the same coasts And let them examine themselves who with their Tribunitial VETO forbid all to come to this Feast who will not submit to their Examination Young men and maids old men as well as children they that have been catechised and instructed in season and out of season whom they themselves have taught for many years all must pass by this door of Trial to the Table of the Lord. I shall be bold to ask them a question since they ask so many WHERE IS IT WRITTEN Ostendat scriptum Hermogenis officina It is plain in my Text that we are bound to examine our selves but that some should be set apart to examine others we do not read And quorsum docemur si semper docendi simus why are we taught so much if we are ever to learn Certainly that Charity believeth little which will suspect that a man full of years and who hath sate at his feet many of them should now in his old age and gray hairs be to be instructed in the principles of faith It is true we cannot be too diligent in instructing one another in the common salvation we cannot labour enough in this work of building up one another in our holy faith and it concerneth every man to seek knowledge at those lips that preserve it and if he doubt to make them his oracle who are set over him in the Lord For Ignorance as well as Profaneness maketh us uncapable of this Privilege unfit to come to this Feast But this formal and magisterial Examination for ought we can judge can proceed from no other Spirit then that which was sent from Rome to Trent in a Cloke-bag and there at the XIII Session made Auricular Confession a necessary preparative for the receiving of the Sacrament Sacramental Confession and Sacramental Examination may have the same ends and the same effects and there may be as idle and as fruitless questions asked at the one as at the other But I judge them not onely call upon them in the Apostle's words Let them examine themselves whether Love of the world Love of preeminence or Love of mens souls do fan that fiery zele which is so hot in the defence of it Let them also examine themselves who are God's familiars and yet fight against him who know what is done in his closet and do what they please at his footstool and so upon a feigned assurance of life build nothing but a certainty of death who think nay profess and write it that the Elect of which number you may be sure they make themselves may fall into the greatest sins Adultery Murther and Treason and yet still remain men after God's heart and the members of Christ and that to think the contrary is an opinion Stygiae infernalis incredulitatis which upholdeth a Stygian and hellish incredulity and can proceed from none but the Devil himself Let these I say examine themselves And if this Luciferian pride will once bow to look into this charnel-house of rotten bones if the hypocrite will pluck off his visour and behold his face naked as it is in the glass of God's Word we need not call so loud on open and notorious offenders Intestinum malum periculosius These intestine secret applauded errours are most dangerous and that wound which is least visible must be most searched But the exhortation concerneth all Let the Pharisee examine himself and let the Publican examine himself Let the Oppressour examine himself and melt in compassion to the poor Let the Intemperate examine himself and wage war with his appetite Let the Covetous person examine himself and tread Mammon under his feet Let the Deceitful man examine himself and do that which is just Let him that is secure and let him that feareth Let him that is confident and let him that wavereth Let the proud spirit and let the drooping spirit examine himself Let every man examine himself Let every man that nameth Christ and in that Name draweth near to his Table depart from all iniquity And then behold here is a Grant passed over to them a Privilege enrolled and upon record They may eat of this bread and drink of thiâ— cup taste and see how gracious the Lord is be partakers of his body and bloud that is of all the benefits of his Cross Redemption Justification his continued and uninterrupted Intercession for us Peace of conscience unspeakable Joy in the holy Ghost And when he shall come again in glory they shall have a gracious reception and admittance to sit down at his Table with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the Patriarchs and all the Apostles and that noble army of Martyrs in the Kingdom of heaven And with these ravishing thoughts I shut up all and leave them with you to dwell and continue and abound in you and to bring you with comfort on the next great Lord's day to the Table of the Lord. The Seven and Twentieth SERMON GAL. I. 10. The last part of the Verse For do I now perswade men or God or do I seek to please men For if I yet pleased men I should not be the servant of Christ WHich words admit a double sense but not contrary for the one is virtually included in the other As first If I should yet do as I did when I was a Jew seek to please men and to gain repute and honour and wealth fit my doctrine to their corrupt disposition I should never have entred into Christs service which setteth
hopes or satisfie his lusts or justifie his anger or answer his love or look friendly on that which his wild passions drive him to Opinion is as a wheel on which the greatest part of the world are turned and wheeled about till they fall of several waies into several evils and do scarce touch at Truth in the way Opinion buildeth our Church chuseth our Preacher formeth our Discipline frameth our Gesture measureth our Prayers methodizeth our Sermons Opinion doth exhort instruct correct teach and command If it say Go we go and if it say Do this we do it We call it our Conscience and it is our God and hath more worshippers then Truth For though Opinion have a weaker ground-work then Truth yet she buildeth higher but it is but hay and stubble fit for the fire Good God! what a Babel may be erected upon a thought I verily thought Acts 26.9 12 14. saith S. Paul and what a whirlwind was that thought It drove him to Damascus with letters and made him kick against the pricks Psal 74.6 Shall I tell you that it was but Phansie that in Davids time beat down the carved works with axes and hammers that it was but a thought that destroyed the Temple it self that killed the Prophets and persecuted the Apostles and crucified the Lord of life himself And therefore it will concern us to watch our Phansie and to deal with it as mothers do with their children who when they desire that which may hurt them deny them that but to still and quiet them give them some other thing they may delight in take away a knife and give them an apple So when our Phansie sporteth and pleaseth it self with vain and aery speculations let us suspect and quarrel them and by degrees present unto it the very face of Truth as the Stoick speaketh 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Epictet sift and winnow our imaginations bring them to the light and as the devout Schoolman speaketh Gerson resolve all our affectual notions by the Accepistis by the Rule and so demolish all those idoles which our Passions by the help of Phansie have set up For why should such a deceit pass unquestioned why should such an imposture scape without a mark 3. But now if we may not walk SICVT VISVM EST as it seemeth good unto us yet we may SICVT VISVM EST SPIRITVI SANCTO as it seemeth good to the holy Ghost Yes for that is to walk according to the Rule for he speaketh in the Word And to walk after the Spirit and to walk by this Rule are one and the same thing But yet the World hath learned a cursed art to set them at distance and when the Word turneth from us and will not be drawn up to our Phansie to carry on our pleasing but vain imaginations we then appeal to the Spirit we bring him in either to deny his own word or which in effect is the same to interpret it against his own meaning and so with reverence be it spoken make him no better then a Knight of the post to witness a lie This we would do but cannot For make what noise we will and boast of his name we are still at Visum est nobis it is but Phansie still it is our own Spirit not the holy Ghost Matth. 24.24 1 John 4.1 For as there be many false Christs so there are many false spirits and we are commanded not to believe but to try them and what can we try them by but by the Rule And as they will say Lo here is Christ or there is Christ so they will say Lo here is the Spirit and there is the Spirit The Pope layeth claim to it and the Enthusiast layeth claim to it and whoso will may lay claim to it on the same grounds when neither hath any better argument to prove it by then their bare words no evidence but what is forged in that shop of vanities their Phansie Idem Accio Titióque Both are alike in this And if the Pope could perswade me that he never opened his mouth but the Spirit spake by him I would then pronounce him Infallible and place him in the Chair and if the Enthusiast could build me up in the same faith and belief of him I would be bold to proclaim the same of him and set him by his side and seek the Law at his mouth Would you know the two grand Impostours of the world which have been in every age and made that desolation which we see on the earth They are these two a pretended Zeal and a pretense of the Spirit If I be a Zelote what dare I not do And when I presume I have the Spirit what dare I not say What action so foul which these may not authorize what wickedness imaginable which these may not countenance What evil may not these seal for good and what good may they not call evil Oh take heed of a false light and too much fire These two have walkt these many ages about the earth not with the blessed Spirit which is a light to illuminate and as fire to purge us but with their Father the Devil transformed into Angels of light and burning Seraphim and have led men upon those Precipies into those works of darkness which no night is dark enough to cover I might here much enlarge my self for it is a subject fitter for a whole Sermon then a part of one and for a Volume then a Sermon but I must conclude And for conclusion let us whilst the light shineth in the world walk on guided by the Rule which will bring us at last to the holy mount For objects will not come to us but have onely force to move us to come to them Eternal happiness is a fair sight and spreadeth its beams and unvaileth its beauty to win our love to allure and draw us And if it draw us we must up and be stirring and walk on to meet it What that devout writer saith of his Monk Climacus is true of the Christian He is assidua naturae violentia His whole life is a constant continued violence against himself against his corrupt nature which as a weight hangeth upon him and cloggeth and fettereth him which having once shaken off he not onely walketh but runneth the wayes of Gods commandments Psal 119.32 Rom. 13.13 Again let us walk honestly as in the day 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as becometh Christians in our several stations and conditions of life and not think Christ dishonoured if we mingle him with the common actions of our life We never dishonour him more then when we take him not in and use him not as our guide and rule even in those actions which for the grossness of the subject and matter they work on may seem to have no savour or relish of that which we call Religion Be not deceived He that thus taketh him in is a Priest and a King the most honourable person
evidence or confirmation at all And therefore saith Tertullian Christ shewed not himself openly to the people after his resurrection ut fides non mediocri praemio destinata difficultate constaret that faith which is destined to a crown might not consist without some difficulty but commend it self by our obedience Nec tam veniam quà m praemium habet ignorare quod credis Not perfectly to know what thou believest doth so little stand in need of pardon that it will procure and bring with it a reward What obedience is it for a man to assent to this That the whole is greater then the part That the Sun doth shine or to any of those truths which are so visible to the eye that they force the understanding and leave there an impossibility â—o dissent But when the object is in part hidden and in part seen when the truth which I assent to hath more probability to speak for it and persuade it then can be brought to shake and weaken it John 20.29 then our Saviour himself pronounceth Blessed are they who have not seen and yet have believed Again it were in vain that Christ should thus visibly every day shew himself We have Moses and the Prophets We have the testimony of his Disciples who saw him ascend And if we will not believe them neither would we have believed if we had been with them on mount Olivet and seen him received up into the cloud For if we will not believe God's word we should soon learn to discredit his miracles though they were done before the Sun and the people God rained down Manna upon the Israelites For all this they sinned still and believed not his wondrous works The Pharisees saw Christ's miracles yet would have stoned him The people said He hath done all things well yet these were they who crucified the Lord of Life And the reason is plain For though Faith be an act of the Understanding yet it dependeth upon the Will Whence it cometh to pass that many men build up an opinion without any basis or foundation at all without any evidence nay against all evidence whatsoever Quot voluntates tot fides So many Wills as there are nay so many Humours so many Creeds there be For every man believeth as he will I dare appeal to men of the poorest observation and least experience What else is that which turneth us about like the hand of a dial from one point to another from one persuasion to a contrary What is that that wheeleth and circleth us about that we touch at every opinion and settle on none How cometh it to pass that I now tremble at that which anon I embrace though I have the same evidence that that is not Perjury to day which was so yesterday that that is Devotion and Zeal now which from my youth upwards to this present I branded with the loathsom name of Sacrilege How is it that my belief shifteth so many scenes and presenteth it self in so many several shapes Beloved it is the prevalency and victory of our Sensitive part over our Reason that maketh so many several so many contrary impressions in the mind Self-love and the Love of the world these frame our Creeds these plant and build these root out and pull down build up a belief and then beat it down to the ground and then set up another in its place For commonly we believe and disbelieve for the same reason We are Atheists for advantage and we are Christians for advantage We embrace the Truth for our profit and convenience and for our profit we renounce it and we make the same overture for heaven which we do for destruction will believe any thing for a truth that flattereth our humour and count that Truth it self a heresie that thwarteth it In a word that we believe not the Truth is not for want of evidence but for want of will Last of all the knowledge a Christian hath of these high mysteries can be no other but by Faith Novimus si credimus Christian dost thou believe Thou hast then been at mount Olivet and seen thy crucified Saviour ascend into heaven With S. Stephen thou hast seen the glory of God and Jesus standing at his right hand And though thou canst not argue or dispute though thou canst not untie every knot and resolve every doubt though thou canst not silence the Jew nor stop the mouth of the unbelieving Arheist yet qui credit satis est ei quod credat there is required of thee no more then to believe and to believe is salvation One man saith the Father hath faith another hath also skill and ability to stand out against all the world and comâ— forth a defender of the faith another is strong and mighty in faith but not so able with art and skill to maintain it The one is doctior non fidelior The one hath advantage and preeminence over the other in learning and knowledge but not in faith may be the deeper scholar but not the better Christian may be of necessary use titubantibus to men who doubt but not credentibus to those who stand fast in the faith and liberty wherewith Christ hath made them free Both have the same evidence and it may be as powerful in the one for practice as it is in the other for speculation and argument We know those who saw Christ suscitantem mortuos raising up men from the dead believed not when he believed and confessed him who saw him pendentem in ligno hanging on the cross Surgunt indocti Simple and unlearned men take the kingdom of heaven by violence when the great Rabbies stand below and make no approch Illi ratiocinentur nos credamus Let the wise and the scribe and the disputer of this world argue and doubt our rejoycing is in our faith Let them dispute we will fall down at this great sight Let them reason we will believe not onely that this Jesus was thus taken up but that he shall come again Which is another article of our Creed and our last part and must now serve onely for conclusion And it is good to conclude with comfort And VENIET He shall come again was not onely a Resolve but a Message of comfort by two Angels who stood by in albis in the colours of joy to comfort the Disciples who were now troubled and did stoop for heaviness of heart because Christ was taken away He shall come again Prov. 12.25 was that good word which did make their hearts glad made them return to Jerusalem as Christ ascended into heaven in Jubilo in triumph But now it may be a word of comfort yet not unto all that shall hear it That which is comfort to one may be a sentence of condemnation to another The VENIET He shall come again may open as the heavens to receive the one and as the gates of hell to devour the other For what is a promise to him that is not partaker of
hid in the secret pavilion of our thoughts but the Tongue is the door by which we go out and manifest and expose our selves to the publick view But even this gate this door may be a wall a pavillion to skreen us and many times we are least seen when we are most exposed For words are deceitful upon the balance When you come to weigh them those words which went for talents weigh not a mite and though they present unto us the softness of butter yet upon the touch and trial they have an edge and wound like swords To bless with the mouth and curse with the heart is the Devil's lecture who in these last Atheistical times hath set the heart and tongue at such a distance that they hold no intelligence Hosanna is the word when we wish Christ on the cross and we call him Lord when we trample him under our feet If we look upon the greatest part of Christendom we may take them not for a Church but rather 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for a convention or congregation of idle talking men who say it and never say it say it often but never speak it as they should To say it then is of a more spreading signification and taketh in the Tongue the Heart the Hand taketh in 1. an outward Profession 2. an inward Persuasion 3. a constant Practice answerable to them both This is the best language of a Christian when he speaketh by his Tongue his Eye his Ear his Hand by every member that he hath Rom. 10.9 First we are bound to say it That we may be saved we must confess with the mouth the Lord Jesus 1 John 4.15 God dwelleth in him that confesseth Jesus is the Son of God The Mouth is named by S. Paul in allusion to that of Moses The word is in thy mouth Where by a Synecdoche the Mouth is mentioned when all the other parts of the body are understood For if the Mouth were enough if to say it were sufficient there needed no holy Ghost to descend to teach it We might learn to say Jesus is the Lord as the Pye or Parrot did to salute Caesar and between our Jesu Domine and the birds Ave Caesar the difference would not be great And indeed if we send our eyes abroad and take a survey of the conversation of most Christians we shall find that our Confession is much after the language of birds To name Christ and speak well of his name To bless the child Jesus and to curse the Jews this is the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the total of our Say of our Confession And if we were to frame a Religion out of mens lives as one is said to have done a Grammar out of Homer's works we should find none but this For what can we discover in most mens lives but noise and words How good is the Lord How beautiful are the feet of Jesus Doth any man speak against Jesus Ad ignem leones Let him die for it And thus some say it because they are inwardly convinced and willing to think so For not onely out of the mouths of babes and sucklings but also out of the mouths of wicked men hath God ordained strength And Jesus is justified and magnified not onely by his children but also by his enemies Again some are Christians in a throng and dare not but say it for very shame dare not oppose it lest the multitude of those they live with should confute or silence them or stone them to death Si nomen Christi in tanta gloria non esset tot professores Christi sancta Ecclesia non haberet saith Gregory If the name of Christ had not been made glorious on the earth the Church of Christ would fall short in her reckoning and number of Professours whereof the greatest part name him but for companie 's sake And that is the reason why so many fall from him in time of persecution and are so ready to forget him For that Religion which we take up by the way will never bring us forward upon the point of the sword Besides the Heart doth not alwayes sympathize and keep time with the Voice but is often dull and heavy when our Hosannas and Hallelujahs are loudest nay most times turneth away from that which our Profession tendeth to The Voice may be for Jesus and the Heart for Mammon the Voice for Christ the Heart on his Patrimony the Voice for his miracles the desire for his loaves We may say he is the Lord when are ready to crucifie him O miserable disproportion and contradiction of Voice and Heart Foolish men that we are to profess the Gospel is true and yet so live as it were most certainly false I did not well to mention this For thus to say it is not to say it This Confession is at best but a beam cast forth from the light of Reason but an acknowledgement against our wills and we may truly say Vox est preterea nihil It is a voice a sound of words and no more Thus they may name him who never name him but in their cursed oaths and exsecrations who shall be said never to have named Jesus because they name him too often and whom he will not know because they have been too familiar with him Thus the Profane person may say it who teareth him pieces the Sacrilegious person who devoureth him the Covetous who selleth him the Ambitious who treadeth upon him the Devil who will have nothing to doe with him and that white Devil the Hypocrite that trumpet of an uncertain sound that monster with the voice of an Angel and the malice of a fiend But this is not to say it And we must learn to distinguish between Samuel and the Devil which the witch brought up in his mantle Outward Profession will not reach home But In the next place as there is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a word floating on the tongue so there is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a word conceived and shaped in the mind the word of the Heart a kind of dialogue within our selves as Plato calleth it when by due examination and comparing one thing with another and well weighing the inducements and evidences which are brought we are well persuaded of the Truth and settle our selves upon this conclusion That Jesus is the Lord. We commonly call it Faith Which of it self is operative as a fire in the bones which will not be concealed My heart was hot within me and whilst I was musing the fire burned Psal 39. Psal 116. then spake I with my tongue saith David I believed and therefore have I spoken The love of Christ constraineth us saith S. Paul And indeed of its own nature so it will For it is of an active nature Sometimes we read of its valour it stoppeth the mouths Lions Sometimes of its policy it is not ignorant of the Devil's enterprises Sometimes of its strength that it removeth mountains And we find
furta fidei the thefts and pious depredations of Faith But that Faith should be idle or speechless or dead is contrary to its nature and proceedeth from our depraved dispositions from Love of the world and Love of our selves which can silence it or lull it asleep or bury it in oblivion Thus we may have Faith as if we had it not and use it as we should use the world as if we used it not or worse abuse it not believe and say it but believe and deny it not believe and be saved but believe and be damned For the Devil can haereticare propositiones make propositions which are absolutely true heretical Believe and be saved is as true as Gospel nay it is the Gospel it self but by his art and deceit many believe and are by so much the bolder in the wayes which lead unto Death believe Jesus to be the Lord and contemn him believe him to be a Saviour and upon presumption of mercy make themselves uncapable of mercy and because he saveth sinners will be such sinners as he cannot save because they believe he taketh away the sins of the world will harden themselves in those sins which he will not take away Many there be who do veritatem sed non per vera tenere maintain the Truth but by those wayes which are contrary to the Truth make that which should confirm Religion destroy Religion and their whole life a false gloss upon a good Text having a form of godliness but denying the power of it crying Jesus is the Lord but scourging him with their blasphemies as if he were a slave and fighting against him with their lusts and affections as if he were an enemy sealing him up in his grave as if he were not that Jesus that Saviour that Lord but in the Jews language that deceiver that blasphemer But this is a most broken and imperfect language And though we are said to believe it when we cannot believe it to have the habit of Faith when we have not the use of Reason and so cannot bring it forth into act as some Divines conceive though it be spoke for us at the Font when we cannot speak and though when we can speak it we speak it again and again as often almost at we speak Lord Lord though we gasp it forth with our last breath and make it the last word we speak yet all this will not make up the Dicere all this will not rise to thus much as to say JESUS IS THE LORD Therefore In the third place that we may truly say it we must speak it to God as God speaketh to us whose word is his deed who cannot lie who Numb 23.19 if he saith it will doe it if he speak it will make it good And as he speaketh to us by his Benefits which are not words but blessings the language of Heaven by his Rain to water the earth by his Wool to clothe us and by his Bread to feed us so must we speak to him by our Obedience by Hearts not hollow by Tongues not deceitful by Hands pure and innocent Our heart conceiveth and our obedience is the report made abroad And this is indeed LO QUI to speak out 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to make our works vocal and our words operative to have lightning in our words and thunder in our deeds as Nazianzene spake of Basil that not onely Men and Angels may hear and see and applaud us but this Lord himself may understand our dialect and by that know us to be his children and accept and reward us In our Lord and Saviour's Alphabet these are the Letters in his Grammar these are the Words Meekness and Patience Compassion and Readiness to forgive Self-denial and Taking up our cross This must be our Dialect We cannot better express our Jesus and our Lord then idiomate operum by the language of our works by the language of the Angels whose Elogium is They doe his will the Tongue of Angels is not so proper as their Ministery for indeed their Ministery is their Tongue by the language of the Innocents who confessed him to be the Lord not by speaking but by dying by the language of the blessed Martyrs who in their tumultuary executions when they could not be heard for noise were not suffered to confess him said no more but took their death on it And this is truly to say Jesus is the Lord. For if he be indeed our Lord then shall we be under his command and beck Not a thought must rise which he would controll not a word be uttered which he would silence not an action break forth which he forbideth not a motion be seen which he would stop The very name of Lord must awe us must possess and rule us must inclose and bound us and keep us in on every side Till this be done nothing is done nothing is said We are his purchase and must fall willingly under his Dominion For as God made Man a little World so hath he made him a little Commonwealth Tertullian calleth him Fibulam utriusque substantiae the Clasp or Button which tieth together two diverse substances the Soul and the Body the Flesh and the Spirit And these two are contrary one to the other saith S. Paul are carried diverse wayes the Flesh to that which is pleasing to it and the Spirit to that which is proportioned to it looking on things neither as pleasing nor irksom but as they may be drawn in to contribute to the perfection and beauty of the soul Gal. 5.17 They lust and struggle one against the other and Man is the field the theatre where this battel is fought and one part or other still prevaileth Many times nay most times the Flesh with her sophistry prevaileth with the Will to joyn with her against the Spirit against those inclinations and motions which the Word and the Spirit beget in us And then Sin taketh the chair the place and throne of Christ and is Lord over us reigneth as S. Paul speaketh in our mortal bodies If it say Go we go and if it say Come we come and if it say Doe this we doe it It maketh us lay down that price for dung with which we might purchase heaven See how Mammon condemneth one to the mines to dig for metalls and treasure for that money which will perish with him See how Lust fettereth another with a look and the glance of an eye and bindeth him with a kiss which will at last bite like a serpent See how Self-love driveth on thousands as Balaam did his beast on the point of the sword And thus doth Sin 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Rom. 6.12 Lord it and King it over us And in this bondage and slavery can we truly say Jesus is the Lord when he is disgraced deposed and even crucified again Beloved whilest this fighting and contention lasteth in us something or other will lay hold on us and draw us within its
speak in Faith speak in the bitterness of your souls speak in Hope and speak in the heavenly dialect which is Love ye then truly say JESUS EST DOMINUS Jesus is the Lord. And this Jesus shall be your Jesus shall plead and intercede for you fill you with all the comforts and ravishments of his Gospel And this Lord shall descend to meet you here and welcome you to his Table And when he shall descend with a shout with the voice of the Archangel and with the trump of God he will enable and encourage you to meet him in the air and take you up with him into heaven that ye may be and rejoyce with Jesus the Lord for evermore Which the Lord grant for his infinite mercy's sake The Eighteenth SERMON PART II. 1 COR. XII 3. Wherefore I give you to understand that no man speaking by the Spirit of God calleth Jesus accursed and that no man can say that Jesus is the Lord but by the holy Ghost WE have hitherto detained you in the Lesson Which is indeed a short one but in it is comprised the whole Gospel For when we have let loose our phansie and sought out many inventions when we have even wearied our selves in the uncertain gyres and Meanders which our imaginations cut out when we have laid out that time in following that we cannot overtake which we should have imployed in that work which is visible and put into our hands when our Curiosity hath even spent it self this is all Jesus is the Lord. And to profess him to be the Lord whom we must obey in all things who hath power in heaven and in earth a power to command our Understandings to bow to the Truth and our Wills to imbrace it is compendium Evangelii the sum of Religion the whole intent and scope of the Gospel of Christ This is the Lesson And I told you in the next place we must learn to say it that is first to Profess it But that is not enough All Nations have said it and the Devils have said it And what Religion is that in which the sons of perdition and the Devils themselves may joyn with us What a Profession is that which may be heard in Hell What a poor progress do we make towards happiness if the cursed Spirits go along with us and reach as far as we There is then secondly verbum mentis a word conceived in the mind a perswasion of the Truth And this also may come too short For many times there is not so much Rhetorick and power in this to move us to our duty as there is in a piece of money or a painted face to carry us from it but it lieth useless and of no efficacy at all suffering our members to rebel our flesh to riot it our passions to break loose and hurry us into by-wayes and dangerous precipices speaking to us for the Lord whilst we despise and tread him under foot For if we consider that intimacy and familiarity that many men have with those sins which cannot but present to the mind so much monstrosity as might fright them from them if we behold with what eagerness and delight men pursue that which is as loathsome as Hell it self how they labour and dig for it as for treasure how they devote both body and mind to its service how every trifle is in esteem above Grace and every Barabbas preferred before Jesus the Lord we might easily be induced to conclude that they do not believe that there is a God or that Jesus is the Lord but as the Heathen in scorn did ask Ecquis Christus cum suâ fabulâ count the Gospel and Christianity as a fable For it is not easie to conceive how a man that is verily persuaded in his heart that Jesus is the Lord and that to break Christ's command is to forfeit his soul that for every wilful sin he loseth Paradise and for a moments brutish pleasure he shall find no better purchase then an irreversible state in hell should dare to do that which he doeth every day in a kind of triumph and Jubilee or dip but the tip of his finger in the water of bitterness which he drinketh down greedily as an oxe But upon a review and more mature consideration we may observe that Sin is not alwaies the effect of Infidelity but sometimes of Incogitancy and because we do not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 stoop and look intentively upon this truth that we have indeed learned this lesson but when we should make use of it to restrain us are willing to forget that Jesus is the Lord. We believe that we shall die but so live as if we were eternal We believe there is hell-fire but stoln waters are sweet and quench those flames We believe that there is a heaven but every trifle is a better sight We believe that Jesus is the Lord but the object that next smileth upon us becometh our Master We believe but are willing to forget what we believe Heaven and Hell the Law and the Gospel and the Lord himself In a word we believe that Death is the wages of sin but the pleasures and vanities of the world come towards us in a gaudy and triumphant march and swallow up this faith and this persuasion in victory detain it and put it in chains that it is not able to do its office not to move and work by Charity For if Heaven did display all its glory and Hell breathe forth all its terrour yet if we do but look upon it and then turn away our eye our persuasion will soon shrink back and withdraw it self and leave us naked and open to every temptation weak and impotent not able to struggle and resist it and we shall laetari in rebus pessimis rejoyce in evil sport and delight our selves at the very gates of hell as an intoxicated thief may laugh and jest at the ridge of the gallows Be not then too well persuaded of every persuasion For if it be but the word and the language of the mind it may soon be silenced And therefore we must nourish and soment it stir it up and enliven it that in the last place it may be of force to move the Tongue and the Hand that as the Heart doth speak to the Lord by a sincere belief Lord I belive so we may speak it with our Hands and Eyes and Feet and sound it out with every member that we have and together make that glorious report which may enter the highest heavens Lord we are ready to do whatsoever thou commandest that we may pray in his ears and weep in his ears Numb 11.18 that our Alms may speak louder then our Trumpet and our Fasting and Humility may houl unto him and not our exterminated face that he may hearken to our thoughts as well as to our words and that an universal Obedience may declare our Faith as the heavens do his glory This is the language of Canaan the
celestial dialect and not as some of late have been ready to make it the language of the Whore of Babylon as if Faith onely did make a Protestant and Good works were the mark of a Papist What mention we Papist or Protestant The Christian is the member of this Body and Common-wealth this is his language Zeph. 3.9 the pure language When Hand and Tongue Faith and Good works a full Persuasion and a sincere Obedience are joyned together then we shall speak this language plainly and men will understand us and glorifie God the Angels will understand and applaud us and the Lord will understand and crown us We shall speak it not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 faintly and feignedly ready upon any allurement or terrour to eat our words but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 we shall make it plain by an Ocular demonstration And this is truly to say JESUS EST DOMINUS Jesus is the Lord. This is the Lesson our first Part. And thus far we are gone And we see it is no easie matter 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to speak but these three words JESUS EST DOMINUS Jesus is the Lord. For we must comprehend Eph. 3.18 saith the Apostle the breadth and length and depth and height of this Divine mystery the breadth saith S. Augustine in the expansion and dilatation of my Charity the length by my continued perseverance unto the end the height in the exaltation of my hope to reach at things above and the depth in the contemplation of the bottomless sea of God's mercies These are the dimensions And if we will learn these Mathematicks because we see the Lesson is difficult we must have a skilful Master And behold my next Part bringeth him forth bringeth us news of one who is higher then heaven broader then the sea and longer then the earth as Job speaketh It is the holy Ghost For no man can say that Jesus is the Lord but by the holy Ghost And indeed good reason that he should be our Teacher For as the Lesson is such should the Master be The Lesson is spiritual the Teacher a Spirit The Lecture is a lecture of piety and the Spirit is an holy Spirit The Lesson proposeth a method to joyn Heaven and Earth God and Man Mortality and Immortality Misery and Happiness in one to draw us near unto God and make us one with him and the holy Ghost is that consubstantial and coeternal Friendship of the Father and the Son nexus amorosus as the Schools speak the essential Love and Love-knot of the undivided Trinity Flesh and blood cannot reveal this great mystery it must be a Spirit And the Spirit of this world bringeth no news from Heaven we may be sure It must be SPIRITUS SANCTUS the holy Ghost SPIRITUS SANCTUS for JESUS DOMINUS the holy Ghost for Jesus the Lord that by the grace of the holy Spirit we may learn the Power of the Son and by the inspiration of his Holiness learn the mystery of Holiness For it is not sharpness of wit or quickness of apprehension or force of eloquence that can raise us to this Truth but the Spirit of God must lead us to this tree of Knowledge Therefore Tertullian calleth Christian Religion commentum Divinitatis the invention of the Divine Spirit as Faith is called the gift of God not onely because it is given to every believer but because the Spirit first found out the way to save us by so weak a means as Faith O qualis artifex Spiritus sanctus What a skilful Artificer what an excellent Master is the blessed Spirit who found out a way to lift up Dust it self as high as Heaven and clothe it with eternity whose least beam is more glorious then the Sun and maketh it day unto us whose every whisper is as thunder to awake us cujus tetigisse docuisse est whose every touch and breathing is an instruction 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saith Nazianzene For this Spirit is wise and can he is loving and will teach us if we will learn He inspireth an Herdsman and he straight becometh a Prophet He calleth a Fisherman and maketh him an Apostle Et non opus est morâ Spiritui Sancto He standeth not in need of any help from delay Without him Miracles are sluggish and of no efficacy but upon his breathing our Saviour shall appear glorious in his ignominy and the Thief shall worship him on his cross as if he had been in his Kingdom in whom he wrought such an alteration that in S. Hierom's phrase mutavit homicidii poenam in martyrium he was so changed that he died not a thief or murtherer but a Martyr And such a powerful Teacher we stood in need of to raise our Nature and that corrupt unto so high a pitch as the participation of the Divine Nature For no act and so no act of holiness or spiritual knowledge can be produced by any power which is not connatural to it and as it were a principle of that act So that as there is a natural light by which we are brought to the apprehension of natural principles whether speculative or practick by which light many of the Heathen proceeded so far as to leave most of them behind them who have the Sun of righteousness ever shining upon them so there must be a supernatural light by which we may be guided to attain unto truths of a higher nature Which the Heathen wanting did run uncertainly as S. Paul speaketh and beat the air and all those glorious acts by which they did out shine many of us were but as the Rainbow before the Floud for shew but for no use at all The Power must ever be connatural to the Act. Nature may move in her own sphere and turn us about in that compass to do those things which Nature is capable of but Nature could not make a Saint or a member of Christ To spiritualize a man to make him Christi-formem to bring him to a conformity and uniformity with Christ is the work alone of the Spirit of Christ Which he doth sweetly and secretly powerfully characterizing our hearts and so taking possession of them The Apostle telleth us that Christ dwelleth in us by his Spirit by his power and efficacy Rom. 8.11 which worketh like fire enlightning warming and purging our hearts Matth. 3.11 which are the effects of Fire First by sanctifying our knowledge of him by shewing us the riches of his Gospel and the beauty and majesty of Christ's Dominion and Kingdom with that evidence that we are forced to fall down and worship by filling the soul with the glory of it as God filled the Tabernacle with his Exod. 30. that all the powers and faculties of our soul are ravished at the sight that we come willingly and fall down willingly before this Lord in a word by bringing on that Truth which our heart assenteth to with that clearness and fulness of demonstration that it passeth through all the
the same Apostle telleth the Athenians Act. 17.14 c. that God made the world and all things therein and made of one bloud all nations that they should seek the Lord if haply they might feel after him and find him though he be not far from every one of us not far from us if we will seek him The Schools call it vehiculum creaturae the chariot of the creature by which we may be carried up as Elijah was to Heaven by which Man who amongst all the creatures was made for a supernatural end is lifted up nearer to that end For as the Angels have the knowledge of the Creature in the Creator himself saith Bernard for what a poor sight is the Creature to an Angel that seeth the face of him that made it so Man by degrees gaineth a view of God by looking on the works of his hands Secondly As God manifesteth himself in his creature so he appeareth as a light in our very souls Prov. 20.27 He hath set up a candle there Solomon calleth it so The spirit of man is the candle of the Lord searching all the inward parts of the belly a light to all the faculties of the soul and to all the parts of the body to guide and direct them in the seeking after God By this light it is that thou lookest upon thy self and art afraid of thy self By this light they that are in darkness they that are darkness it self the profanest Atheists in the world at one time or other behold themselves as stubble and God as a consuming fire behold that horror in themselves which striketh them into a trembling fit This candle may burn dim being compassed about with the damp of our corruptions but it can no more be put out then the light of the Sun In my prosperity I said I shall never be moved I am a Saint of God a man of blessings guided assisted applauded by God himself Here the candle burneth dim But when Fortune or rather Providence shall turn the wheel and throw me on the ground then it will blaze and by that light I shall behold God my enemy whom I called my friend and fellow-worker Whilest we are men we have reason or we are not men and whilest the spirit remaineth it is a candle though we use it not as we should but are guided rather by the prince of darkness Thirdly to quicken and revive this light God hath sent another Light into the world God was made manifest in the flesh 1 Tim. 3 16. John 1.14 saith S. Paul The Word was made flesh not onely to dwell amongst us but to teach us to improve the light of nature and all those principles of the knowledge of good and evil with which we were born John 17.26 He declared his father's name he made him visible to the eye and set him up as an ensample of purity and justice of mercy and love His Flesh being the window through which Immortality and Eternity and God himself was discovered to mortal men that so he might joyn finem principio the end to the beginning Man to God that so we might seek him in the light of his face God being made thus conspicuous in his Gospel Psal 89.15 shining in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face and person of Jesus Christ who is the brightness of his glory 2 Cor. 4.6 Hebr. 1.3 and the express image of his person And indeed to seek God is not to seek his essence which is past finding out but his will which Chirst hath fully manifested in his Gospel This true light hath made God an object indeed hath given us a more distinct knowledge of him then the light of Nature could do hath declared his attributes revealed his will rent every veil cleared all obscurity scattered every mist and cloud made him of an unknown a known God hath revealed his arm his power to punish us if we seek him not hath opened his bowels proclaimed a jubilee a re-instating of all those who will forsake their old wayes and seek him with their whole heart For we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus unto good works Ephes 2.10 2 Cor. 5.17 which God hath ordained before that we should walk in them that so we might be new creatures that as he created the world out of a rude heap or mass without form to bring forth fruits so he might make us of disobedient and disorderly men composed and plyable to his will that he might draw us out of the chaos of our own confused imaginations and redeem us from bondage into the glorious liberty of the sons of God which liberty consisteth alone in seeking and serving him Thus then you see though God be invisible and incomprehensible yet he hath discovered himself so far as to draw us after him we may see so much of him as to seek him so much as to make us happy and unite us to him And is not this enough Is it not enough for us to be happy Unhappy we if we neglect this delight by desiring more Unhappy we if we do not seek him because he is not as visible as our selves This were indeed to make him like unto our selves to confine and limit him that is to deny him to be God this were to be the worst Anthropomorphites in the world to give God hands and eyes and voice and not believe he is unless he object and offer himself to our very senses And yet see he doth in a manner present himself to thy very sense For why shouldst thou not hear him in his thunder see him in his miracles feel him in every work of his hands Or rather why canst thou not hear him in his Word for that is his voice see him in thy self for thou art built up after his image and no hand but that which is Almighty could have raised such a structure Why canst thou not feel him in his sweet and secret insinuations in the inward checks he giveth thee when thou art doing evil and in his incitements to piety When we feel these we may truly say Est Deus in nobis that God is in us of a truth Hold up then the buckler against this temptation against this fiery dart of Satan which is of force if thou repellest it not to consume and wast thy soul this temptation I say That God and Divine things appear not in so visible a shape as thou wouldst have them What folly is it to aim at impossibilities and to desire to see that which cannot be seen It is plain they are the worst and meanest things that are open to the eye Who ever saw Vertue saith Ambrose who ever handled Justice And wouldst thou dust and ashes have thy God appear in such a shape as thou mayst behold him Walk then by faith For that is the eye thou hast to see him with whilest thou art in this mortal body
behold God's precious promises but when we are urged with this undeniable Consequence That we must therefore forgive we start back and will not yield to the Conclusion nor be convinced by that evidence which is as clear as the day So prevalent is the flattery of this world above the Mercy of God! so powerful is a gilded vanity above the glory of the Mercy-seat It is argument of great force à majori ad minus If Christ forgave us who were his enemies then ought they that take his name upon them to forgive them who are their Brethren And he that is Christ's and truly religious must needs see the force of this argument and confirm and make it good by practice To this end in the next place we must make use of those helps which will draw this consequence out of these premisses which will so fit and prepare us that the Mercy of God may work kindly in us to bring its power into act that as God's Mercy is a convincing argument that we must be merciful so our Compassion to our brother may be as a strong confirmation and full assurance to us that God hath forgiven us First then as the Psalmist speaketh let us have God's Mercy in everlasting remembrance to curb our appetite to check our lusts to bridle our tongue to stay our hand to beat down all our animosity and to make our anger set before the Sun For the Memory saith S. Bernard is stomachus animi the stomach of the soul to make all God's benefits become food and nourishment to turn them into good bloud that we may be strong in the Lord and in the power of the Spirit strong to the casting down of all imaginations which may stand in opposition to the Mercy of God when it is begetting something in us like unto it self to turn them into the very bloud and substance of our soul that she shall not breath nor think nor speak nor actuate the hand but in a way of mercy And in this respect that of Plato may be true 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 We learn and are instructed by those notions which were formerly imprinted in our memory This is as it were parturire misericordiam to conceive and be in travel with Mercy till it be fully formed in us to work it out first in the elaboratory of our heart to have this article of our faith Remission of sins before our eyes that may check us at every turn that may break the bow and snap the spear asunder and burn every instrument revenge that may scatter those thoughts which warm our bloud and raise our spirits and make our glory and triumph to tread down our enemies under our feet The frequent meditation of this begat a love in many which was stronger then death This was the chain which bound the Martyrs to the stake this sealed up their lips when they were laughed to scorn Sic posuerunt animas suas With the remembrance of God's mercy in Christ they laid down their lives praying for their enemies with their last breath as Christ did for his commending their souls to the mercy of God whose bloudy cruelty had devoted their bodies to the fire By frequent contemplation of God's love we draw our soul from out of those incumbrances which many times involve and fetter her we recollect our mind into it self and do not let it out to our passions to be torn and distracted but fasten it upon the Goodness of God where it resteth as upon a holy hill from whence looking down it beholdeth every object in its proper shape It looketh upon the World as upon a a shop of vanity upon Riches as that which may be lost and we never the worse upon Beauty as that which is lost whilest we look on it upon Honour as on a falling star which shineth and falleth and is turned into dung upon Injury as a benefit upon Persecution as a blessing upon Contempt as upon that sword which will slay none but the scornful upon Oppression as that which shall undoe none but the covetous Yea it seeth Life in the face and countenance of Death Oh it is a sad speculation that our Memory should keep its retentive faculty to preserve that which is poisonous and deleterial but that we should 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 leak and let out the water of life which should quicken and refresh the soul and make it grow in grace that at the impression of a wedge of gold our Memory should conceive theft or fraud or rapine at the sight of a face bring forth lust at the shew of an injury set the soul on fire but be as marble to receive the signature of God's goodness that it should be a well-lockt treasury to every fading vanity but a through-fare for those lasting and powerful objects which should work and fashion the soul to a mild and heavenly constitution Oh that we should never call our Memory good but in evil Therefore in the second place it is not enough to behold these glorious phantasms and for a while to carry them about with us as precious antidotes unless we mould and fashion and rightly apply them For many times nitimur infirmamur saith Hilary Contemplation bringeth us forward but then letteth us fall to the ground we profer and look back we put on resolutions and fling them off again before they are well on we remember God's mercy and when our bloud is a little chafed study to forget it The good which we would which we approve that do we not and soon learn not to think it good Et mentis judicium rectitudinem conspicit sed ad hoc operis fortitudo succumbit We fall short of that rectitude which the eye hath discovered and which we have but weakly framed and set up in our mind and so leave the truth behind us and go on undauntedly to that which our Anger or Lust doth hurry us to We do not so place God's Mercy before our eyes as to conceive something like unto it as Jacob's sheep did amongst the rods This hindereth the powerful operation of Mercy that we see it as the Jews did their Manna and know not what it meaneth But if we will put on the bowels of mercy we must contemplate Mercy in its own sphere in that site and aspect in which it looketh upon us deliberare causas expendere deliberate and question with our selves for what cause it was thus set up and draw it down to the right end and use of it Now to what end was the hand of Mercy reached out unto us Questionless to work in us peace of conscience and save us But if we look again and view it more nearly and considerately we shall find another use namely to make us fruitful in every good work O thou wicked servant saith the Lord in the Gospel Matth. 18. I forgave thee all thy debt shouldst not thou also have had compassion on thy fellow-servant even as
treadeth under foot from fear of the Law when we should have no other law but Piety That which is born of the flesh is flesh saith our Saviour John 3.6 Nor can the flesh work in us a love to and chearfulness in the things of the Spirit The flesh perfecteth nothing contributeth nothing to a good work Nor doth any thing work kindly till it come to perfection Perfection and Sincerity work our joy In Scripture we find even inanimate and senseless things said to be glad when they attain unto and abide in their natural perfection a Ps 19.5 The Sun is as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber and rejoyceth as a strong man to run a race b Ps 65.12 â—3 The little hills rejoyce on every side The valleys are covered over with corn they shout for joy they also sing Prata rident So Solomon c Prov. 13.9 The light of the righteous rejoyceth because it shineth clear and continually The blessed Angels are in a state of perfection and their motion from place to place the Schools say is instantaneous and in a moment as sudden and quick as their will by which they move Therefore they are drawn out with wings Isa 6. and said to go forth like lightning Which signifieth unto us their alacrity speed in executing all God's commands Their constant office is to be ready at his beck and they ever have the heavenly characters of his will before their eyes as a Father speaketh And such also will our activity and chearfulness be in devotion and the service of God if we be thus animated and informed as it were with the love thereof if our minds be shaped and configured to it as S. Basil saith If either the Word or the Sword either the power of the truth or calamity and persecution hath made it sweet unto us and stirred up in us an earnest expectation and longing after it then IBIMUS We will go go with chearfulness to the house of mourning and sit with those who are in the dust go to that Lazar and relieve him to that prisoner and visit him to our friends and counsel them to our enemies and reconcile them with the Jews here go to the Temple to the Church and pray for the Nation Joel 2.17 and say Spare thy people O Lord and give not thine heritage to reproch go and fall down and worship him yea go to the stake and dy for him Psal 39.3 When this fire burneth within us we shall speak with the tongue and that with a chearful accent IBIMUS We will go into the house of the Lord. And so we are fallen upon our last circumstance 5. The place of their devotion the house of the Lord. When a company go to serve the Lord they must needs go to some place For how can they serve him together but in a place Adam and his sons had a place Gen. 4.3 4. The Patriarchs had a place altars and mountains and groves In the wilderness the people of God had a movable Tabernacle And though Solomon said that a Acts 7.48 1 Kings 8.27 God dwelleth not in temples made with hands yet b Acts 7.47 Solomon that said so built him an house And the work was commended by God himself not onely when it was finished and brought to perfection but even while it was yet but in design and was raised no further then in thought The Lord said unto David 2 Chron. 6.8 Forasmuch as it was in thine heart to build an house for my name thou didst well in that it was in thine heart And when Christ came he blessed in this house prayed in it taught in it disputed in it he drove the profaners out of it he spake by his presence by his tongue by his gesture he giveth it its name and in a manner Christneth it Matth. 21.13 by calling it his house and the house of prayer For though he came to strike down the Law yet he came not to beat down right Reason Though he did disanull what was fitted but for a time as Sacrifices and all that busy and troublesome that ceremonious and typical Worship yet he never abolished what common reason will teach us is necessary for all ages How could he require that men should meet together and worship him if there were to be no place at all to meet in Or what needed an express command for that which the very nature of the duty enjoyneth and necessity it self will bring in He that enjoyneth publick worship doth in that command imply that there must be a certain publick place to meet in We hear indeed Christ saying to the Jews John 2.19 Destroy this Temple but it was to make a window in their breasts that they might see he knew their very hearts 21. He bid them do what they meant to do He spake of the Temple of his body saith the Text and they did destroy both his body and their own Temple For they who had nothing more in their mouthes then The Temple of the Lord Jer. 7.4 set fire on the Temple of the Lord with their own hands as Josephus relateth And so their Ceremonies had an end so their Temple was destroyed but not to the end that all Churches and places of publick meeting should be for ever buried in its ruines before they were built That house of the Lord was dissolved indeed but at the dissolution thereof there was no voice heard that did tell us vve should build no more in any other place The first Christians we may be sure heard no such voice For assoon as persecution suffered them to move their arms they were busy in erecting of Oratories in a plain manner indeed answerable to their present estate But when the favour of Princes shined upon them and their substance encreased they poured it out plentifully this way and founded Churches in every place Nor did they think they could lay too much cost upon them none counted that wast which was expended about so good a work They built sumptuous houses for God's worship and rejoyced and after-ages applauded it both by their words and practice they magnified it and did the like Such cost hath ever gone under the name of Piety and Devotion till these later times when almost all are ready with Judas to condemn Mary Magdelene for pouring forth her ointment John 12 3-6 Churches were 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Houses of the Lord and so were esteemed and not Idole Synagogues not Styes till Swine entred into them and defiled them and holp to pull them down We know God dwelleth not in Temples made with hands Acts 7.48 17.24 nor can his infinite Majesty be circumscribed we remember and therefore need not to be told that Christ said to the woman of Samaria that the hour was coming when men should neither in that mountain nor yet at Jerusalem worship the Father John 4.21 23. but should worship him
resolve together To go alone is dangerous S. Cyprian and others of the Fathers will tell us that Schism is a sin not to be expiated no not with martyrdom and that to dy for the Head will little avail him who hath divided the Body But the truth is If we resolve to serve the Lord though we be millions we shall all agree and be one Religion pure Religion and undefiled cannot raise a schisme in the Church For if there be an errour she teacheth us to pardon it if an injury to forget it A religious man saith Nazianzene is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 simple and sincere in himself ever like himself but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 various and manifold towards others He applieth himself as S. Paul did to all and is made all things to all men And when they do not gather together 1 Cor. 9.19 c there is nothing in him to hinder it Look upon all the contentions that ever were in the world observe the persons that raised them mark their original and ye shall see that the name of Religion was onely taken in to carry them on but it was something else that gave them life and continued them Private ends and love of the world first kindle the fire and then the name of Christ is taken up that it may rage the more the name of Christ who hath left unto us that water of life which would easily quench it For I cannot yet see how a truly-religious man should be a schismatick If he be he doth it oblitus professionis suae quite beside the meaning of his profession the chief end whereof is to gather all into one Eph. 4.3 and to preserve the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace 4. They went chearfully and with great alacrity A prompt and ready mind an active and vigorous will in God's service is all in all My son give me thy heart saith God Prov. 23.26 And when we have given him that then Awake viol and harp Awake all the powers of my soul Stir up your selves all the parts of my body then we do our duty and serve God with all our strength and might then our feet are as hinds feet and we run the wayes of God's commandments Hab. 3.18 Psal 119.32 Chrysostom saith the Church is the place of Angels and Archangels the presence-chamber of God yea heaven it self And shall not we go more chearfully towards heaven then others do to hell If we go to Church but for fashion for company or out of formality if Love drive us not forward it is plain that we are not willing to come into God's presence and had rather mingle ourselves with our worldly affairs then appear before God and his Angels in his house Shame or fear or compliance may serve as wings to bear us to Church but they will never carry us up so high as heaven He that mounteth thither ascendeth in a jubilee with melody and joy 5. The Church is the house of God Let us therefore enter his gates with joy Psal 100.4 and his courts with rejoycing and not raise needless questions which edifie not Here we receive the doctrine of truth the commands of God which are as Angels descending from above here we breathe out our souls and send up our holy desires which are as so many Angels of commerce between God and us Hoc opus hic labor est This is the business of the day this is the work of the place What gaze we upon the walls the fabrick the fashion the beauty of it Why perplex we our selves and others where there is no reason and blow up bubbles which swell and are straight nothing It is an observation of the Ancients That they who can once prevail with themselves to desire nothing more then piety and vertue and to have no other intent then to be good men will rest in that contentedness which Religion bringeth as on a holy hill and will never descend and stoop to low considerations True Devotion never questioneth what fashion what form what beauty the place hath where it must shew it self He that fighteth against his lust and so beateth down the beast within him he that presseth forward onely to that end for which he should go to the house of the Lord and maketh it his chief aim to serve him will never startle at that which cannot hinder but may facilitate and promote the end he aimeth at he will not fall out with colours nor tremble at the sight of a picture it may be of a leg or an arm much less will he question the fashion that he may pull down the fabrick No this humour springeth not from devotion or from a tender conscience neither indeed can it For a tender conscience is alway so it doth not stumble at a straw and leap over a mountain it doth not check at a feather at that which is nothing in it self but hath all its value and dignity from its end This humour hath its original from Pride and Covetousness as Hippocrates saith all the distempers of the body have their original from Choler and Phlegme from pride I say foolish pride which misliketh every thing and covetousness that would make every thing a prey 1 Cor. 11.16 But as S. Paul saith if any man seem to be thus contentious we have no such custome neither the Churches of God Neither was there any such contention till those latter times when Sacrilege lifted up the ax and the mattock to break down the carved works yea to dig up the very foundations of the houses of the Lord. 1 Pet. 2.1 Wherefore as S. Peter exhorteth let us lay aside all malice and all guile and hypocrises and envies and all evil speakings and so go together to the house of God It is his house therefore 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as the ancient form was let us appear there with reverence What though he be no more present here then in any other place Yet I am sure thou oughtest to be as reverent as if he were It is his holy place What though it hath no inherent holiness we cannot say it hath Yet it is thy part to carry thy self as one that hath Raise not idle questions but be serious in thy duty Do not bring a groundless phansie along with thee and leave thy duty behind thee in the land of oblivion Sanctorum vel sola recordatio sanctitatem parit saith a Father The very remembrance of the Saints by a kind of influence and insinuation may vvork holiness in us And if vve could once chace avvay these empty and insignificant phansies these impertinent and heretogeneous thoughts which spring from the Flesh as serpents out of carrion or dung I see no reason but we might gain some advantage from the places of God's worship To conclude this point IBIMUS We will go or EAMUS Let us go into the houses of the Lord and bless his name for these blessed
heart can make lawful for us unless we will conclude that the Law can make us perfect and that which is so weak and unprofitable bring us to the kingdom of God Hebr. 7.18 There is a third kind of Righteousness mentioned in Sc ipture 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees the learnedest amongst the Jews and those who were most famous for sanctity and strictness of life Christ himself speaketh of their Righteousness and the Righteousness of some of them was true according to the Law Matth. 5.20 For where our Saviour telleth us that except our righteousness exceed the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees we shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven he meaneth not hypocritical but real righteousness saith Chrysostom Otherwise he had compared not Righteousness with Righteousness but Righteousness with Hypocrisie which is the greatest unrighteousness And yet all this will not reach home nor make up that which the Christian is to seek For even these wise and righteous persons did come short of true wisdom and righteousness The sons of Levi who did purifie others were to be purified themselves that they might offer unto the Lord an offering in righteousness Mal. 3.3 S. Paul himself who was a Pharisee and had sate at the feet of Gâ—maliel where he learned the Law telleth us That he was unblameable Phil. 3.6 but touching the righteousness which is by the Law And what Seneca speaketh is true in this case also Angusta est innocentia ad legem bonum esse That righteousness is but of a narrow compass which looketh no further then the Laws which restraineth no more then the outward man Therefore the Apostle in many places calleth the Law the Law of works not onely in opposition to the Law of faith but to that better and more perfect Law which doth not onely bind the hand but the thought The Righteousness which was by the Law was indeed justifiable but before men and had no other reward but of the Basket of temporal blessings And in plain terms we read of none else But the Righteousness which hath the promise of this life and of that which is to come whose reward is eternity of bliss is more spiritual and offereth up no other sacrifice then the man himself is busie in purging and cleansing the soul in rooting out those evils which are visible and naked to God though the eye of flesh cannot behold them in curing those diseases which neither Jew nor Gentile were sensible of but rejoyced in them as in health it self For this is it with which Christ and his blessed servant S. Paul in his Epistle to the Romans upbraid the Jews that they would not yield their necks to Christ's yoke though it were easie nor put their shoulders to his burthen though it were light that they would not be obedient to the righteousness of God which is spiritual but set up and established and gloried in one of their own The Righteousness then neither of the Heathen nor of the Jew in general nor of the strictest Sect of them the Scribes and Pharisees is meant here in this place nor indeed doth it deserve that name There is then a fourth kind justitia Christianorum the Righteousness of Christians Which was revealed by the most exact Master that ever was and commanded by that Majesty which pierceth the very heart and reins and which cannot be contemned Now even Christians themselves do not agree about this Righteousness but have made and left the word ambiguous Some stand much upon an Imputed Righteousness and it is true which they say if they understood themselves and upon Christ's righteousness imputed to us which might be true also if they did not interpret what they say For this in a pleasing phrase they call to appear in our elder Brother's robes and apparel that as Jacob did we may steal away the blessing Thus the adulterer may say I am chast with Christ's chastity the intemperate I am sober with Christ's temperance the covetous I am poor with Christ's poverty the revenger I am quiet with Christ's meekness And if he please every wicked person may say that with Christ he is crucified dead and buried and that though he did nothing yet he did it though he did ill yet he did well because Christ did it For no better use can be drawn out of such doctrines as do not offer themselves unto us but are forced out of the word of God We have a story in Seneca of one Calvisius Sabinus who thought he did himself what any servant of his did Putabat se scire quod quisquam in domo suâ sciret Such an opinion possest him that he thought himself skilled in that which any of his family knew If his servant were a good Poet he was so too if his servant were well limbed he could wrastle if his servant were a good Grammarian he could play the Critick Now Christ we know took upon him the form of a servant he came not to be served but to serve and some men are we I content to be of Sabinus his mind to think that whatsoever Christ did they do also or at least that they may be said to do it If he fasted forty dayes and forty nights they fast as long though they never abstained from a meal If he overcame the Devil when he tempted him they are also victorious though they never resist him If Christ was as a sheep which opened not his mouth they also are sheep though they open theirs as a sepulchre Therefore what the Stoick speaketh of that man Nunquam vidi hominem beatum indecentiùs I never saw man whose happiness did less become him will fit and apply it self to these men This Righteousness if they have no other doth but ill become them because it had no artificer but the phansie to make it For that Christ's Righteousness is thus imputed to any we do not read no not so much as that it is imputed though in some sense the phrase may be admitted For what is done cannot be undone no not by Omnipotency it self for it implyeth a contradiction Deo qui omnia potest hoc impossibile saith Hierom God who can do all things cannot restore a lost virginity or make that to be no sin which was a sin He may forgive it blot it out bury it not impute it account of it as if it had never been but a sin it was We read indeed Rom. 4.3 that Faith was imputed to Abraham for righteousness And the Apostle interpreteth himself out of the 32. Psalm Blessed is the man unto whom God imputeth righteousness without works that is as followeth whose sins are forgiven to whom the Lord imputeth no sin And Abraham believed God Gal. 3.6 2 Cor. 5.21 and it was imputed to him for righteousness And We are made the righteousness of God in him that is we are counted righteous for his sake And it is more
onely which emptieth it self to receive it Nor can we purchase the pearl a clear sight of Christ Matth. 13.46 but we must sell all that we have our wisdome our riches our nobility our self-love and our corrupt affections It is not Riches nor Wisdome that invites Christ It is not Simplicity nor Poverty that excludes him Humility and Self-denial usher him in and enter he will if we make him room He will manifest himself you see to a poor silly woman and the quick-sighted Pharisee shall not see him And the reason was because she was meek and humble did not so dote on what she had already learnt as to be unwilling to learn any more but brought a mind well prepared to receive instruction The Pharisees on the contrary were so possessed and blinded with prejudice that they saw not the virtue in Christ which was manifest to this woman It was Prejudice that shut the door against the Truth and that would by no means admit of those works which came in to bear witness to it Certainly a most dangerous disease this It maketh a man angry with his physician and to count his physick poyson it maketh him loth to acknowledge yea even to hear that evidence which may convince him This maladie is very common in the world Yea the Church is not purged from it to this day For though we have no Pharisees yet we have such qui quicquid dicunt legem Dei putant who call their very errours the law of God and dictates of the Spirit who cannot endure the least shew of opposition but like wanton lovers stick closest to their beloved errour when it is exploded Some lessons they so abhor that they cannot endure so much as the name and mention of them and is it probable they will ever come so near as to woo and buy the Truth who are afraid of her very shadow We complain many times of the weakness of our capacities of the abstruseness of the teacher and of the obscurity of the Scripture and this we think a sufficient apologie for our ignorance but none of these nor all of these will make up a just excuse The truth is we will not hear the Truth and the reason why we are no better scholars is because we will not learn If it were not so why should any truth displease us why in any dress why should we take it upon the point of a knife so tenderly as if we were afraid it would hurt us Quid dimidiamus veritatem why do we take it down by halves It is an easie matter to observe how mens countenances and behaviour yea and their affections alter in hearing of that doctrine which suteth with their humour and that which seemeth to be levelled against some fond opinion of theirs long resolved upon Their stomack riseth straight against this but the other is sweet in their mouths and they devour the whole roll though in it self it be as bitter as gall Do we preach Christian Liberty ye kiss our lips But do we bound it with Charity to our neighbour and Obedience to Goverment that note ye think is harsh and tuned too near the ruggedness of the times Do we build up to the Saints of God an Assurance of salvation ye are in heaven already But do we tell you that this Assurance cannot be had at pleasure but must be wrought out with fear and trembling Phil 2.12 Do we tell you that that which ye call assurance may be not security but stupefaction Do we beseech you not to deceive your selves Behold we are not the same men but setters out of new doctrine and verso pollice vulgi with the turning of your finger we are in the dust and stabbed with a censure He who clothed not Truth to others phantasie he who presenteth more of Truth then can be easily digested shall be shut out of doors cum veritate sua naked and destitute and shall have none but Truth to keep him company Though he speak these things even the same truth that Christ did the Pharisees will cry him down and well it is if one woman some one witness of the multitude bless his lips that speaketh it Prejudice will make a man perswade himself that is false which he cannot but know is most true That which to a clear eye is a gross sin and appeareth horrour to a corrupted mind may be as the beauty of holiness For where Covetousness and Self-love have taken up the heart and conceived and brought forth Prejudice it is an easie matter for a man to dispute himself into sin and infidelity For the phansie hath a creating power to make what shee pleaseth or what she list to put new forms and shapes upon objects to make Gods of clay to make that delightful which in it self is grievous that desirable which is lothsome that fair and beautiful which is full of horrour to set up a golden calf and say it is a God And many times habeantur phantasmata pro cognitione these shadows and apparitions are taken for substances these airy phantasms for well-grounded conclusions and the mind of man doth so apply it self unto them that what is but in the phansie is supposed to be seen by the eye of the Understanding And thus many times we place our hatred on that which we should love and our love upon that which we cannot hate enough We fear that which we should hope for and hope for that which we should fear we are angry with a friend and kiss an enemy Thus one man trembleth at that which another embraceth one man calleth that sacriledge which another calleth zeal one man looks upon it as striking at God himself another as pleading his cause one man calls it murder another the work of the Lord. What beauty can there be in Christ if a Pharisee look upon him We read of the leaven of the Pharisees and sure this is it For it leaveneth the whole lump all our opinions all our actions All have a kind of tast of it Whatsoever come in to strengthen an anticipated opinion whatsoever walks within the compass of our desires or complies with our Covetousness or Ambition or Lustful affections we readily embrace and believe it to be true because we wish it so and because it is conducible and behoofull for those ends which we have set up Every fallacy is a demonstration every prosperous event is a voice from heaven to confirm us But if it thwart our inclination if it run counter to our intendments then Truth it self though manifested with signs and wonders will enrage us and we shall first disgrace him that brings it and then naile him to the cross We see here Christ cast out a devil which was dumb and the dumb spoke and the people wondred The Pharisees saw it and the Woman saw it the one saw nothing but that which could not be seen one devil casting out another the other saw the finger and mighty power of God
time of age it was best for men to marry it was answered That for old men it was too late and for young men too soon This was but a merry reply But the truth is many of our civil businesses whensoever they are done are either done too soon or too late for they are seldome done without some inconvenience But this our Rising may peradventure be too late for old men but it can never be too timely for the young It is a lesson in Husbandry Serere nè metuas Be not afraid to sow your seed when the time comes delay it not And it is a good lesson in Divinity Vivere nè metuas Be not afraid to live You cannot be alive too soon Vult non vult He wills and he wills not is the character of a Sluggard which would rise and yet loves his grave would see the light and yet loveth darkness better then light like the twin Gen. 38. puts forth his hand and then draws it back again doth make a shew of lifting up himself and sinks back again into his sepulchre Awake then from this sleep early and stand up from the dead at the first sound of the trump at the first call of grace But if any have let pass the first opportunity let him bewail his great unhappiness that he hath stayed longer in this place of horrour in these borders of hell then he should and as travellers which set out late moram celeritate compensare recompense and redeem his negligence by making greater speed And now we should pass to our last consideration That the manifestation of this our Conversion and Rising consists in the seeking of those things which are above But the time is welnear spent and the present occasion calls upon me to shorten my Discourse For conclusion Let me but remember you that this our Rising must have its manifestation and as S. James calls upon us to shew our faith by our works so must we shew and manifest our Resurrection by our seeking those things which are above It is not enough with S. Paul to rise into the third heaven but we must rise and ascend with Christ above all heavens Nor can we conceal our Resurrection and steal out of our graves but as Christ arose and was seen 1 Cor. 15. as S. Paul speaks of above five hundred brethren at once and as S. Luke having told us of Christ The Lord is risen presently adds and hath appeared unto Simon so there must be after our Resurrection an Apparuit we must appear unto our brethren appear in our Charity forgiving them in our Patience forbearing in our Holiness of life instructing them in our Hatred of the world and our Love of those things which are above Indeed some mens rising is but an apparition a phantasme a shadow a visour and no more But this hinders not us when we are risen but we may make our appearance nor must the Pharisee fright away the Christian Quaedam videntur non sunt Many things appear to be that which indeed they are not But this action cannot be if it do not appear If there be no apparition there is no Resurrection It is natural to us when we rise to shâ—w our selves If we rise to honour Acts 25. you may see us in the streets like Agrippa and Bernice 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 with great pomp If we rise in our Estates for that is the Worldlings Resurrection and not to rise thus with him is indeed to be dead you may see it in the next purchase If we rise and increase in knowledge which is a rising from the grave of Ignorance then scire meum nihil est we are even sick till we vent knowledge is nothing it the world cry us not up for men of knowledge And shall we be so ready to publish that which the world looks upon with an evil eye and conceal that from mens eyes which onely is worth the sight and by beholding of which even evil-doers may glorifie God in the day of visitation Shall Dives appear in his purple and Herod in his royal apparel and every scribler be in print and do we think that rising from sin is an action so low that it may be done in a corner that we may rise up and never go abroad to be seen in albis in our Easter-day-apparel in the white garment of Innocency and Newness of life never make any shew of the riches and glory of the Gospel have all our Goodness locked up in archivis in secret nothing set forth and publisht to the world What is this but to conceal nay to bury our Resurrection it self Nay rather since we are risen with Christ let us be seen in our march accoutred with the whole armour of God Ephes 2. â—0 Let us be full of those good works which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them for by these we appear to be risen and they make us shine as stars in the firmament We may pretend perhaps that God is the searcher and seer of the heart Well he is so sed tamen luceat opera saith the Father yet let thy light shine forth make thy apparition For as God looketh down into thy heart so will thy good works ascend and come before him and he hath pleasure in them Lift up your hearts They are the words we use before the Administration and you answer We lift them up unto the Lord. Let it appear that you do And therefore as you lift up your hearts so lift up your hands also Lift up pure and clean hands such hands as may be known for the hands of men risen from the dead Let us now begin to be that which we hope to be spiritual bodies that the Body being subdued to the Spirit we may rise with Christ here to newness of life which is our first Resurrection and when he shall come again to judge both the quick and the dead we may have our second Resurrection to glory in that place of bliss where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God To which he bring us who is our Resurrection and Life even Jesus Christ the righteous who died for our sins and rose again for our justification To whom with the Father and the holy Ghost be all honour and glory for evermore The Six and Thirtieth SERMON PHILIPP I. 23. For I am in a strait betwixt two having a desire to depart and to be with Christ which is far better Or For I am greatly in doubt on both sides desiring to be loosed and to be with Christ which is best of all WE may here behold our blessed Apostle S. Paul as it were between heaven and earth doubtfully contemplating the happiness which his Death and the profit which his Life may bring perplexed and labouring between both and yet concluding for neither side To be with Christ is best for him to remain on earth is best for the Philippians
unto death There is lex Factorum the Law of Works For they are not all Credenda in the Gospel all articles of Faith there be Agenda some things to be done Nor is the Decalogue shut out of the Gospel Nay the very articles of our Creed include a Law and in a manner bind us to some duty and though they run not in that imperial strain Do this and live yet they look towards it as towards their end Otherwise to believe them in our own vain and carnal sense vvere enough and the same faith vvould save us vvith vvhich the Devils are tormented No thy Faith to vvhich thou art also bound as by a Law is dead that is is not faith if it do not vvork by a Law Thou believest there is a God Thou art then bound to vvorship him Thou believest that Christ is thy Lord Thou art then obliged to do what he commandeth His Word must be thy Law and thou must fulfill it His Death is a Law and bindeth thee to mortification His Cross should be thy obedience his Resurrection thy righteousness and his Coming to judge the quick and the dead thy care and solicitude In a word in a Testament in a Covenant in the Angel's message in the Promises of the Gospel in every Article of thy Creed thou mayest find a Law Christ's Legacy his Will is a Law the Covenant bindeth thee the Good news obligeth thee the Promises engage thee and every Article of thy Creed hath a kind of commanding and legislative power over thee Either they bind to some duty or concern thee not at all For they are not proposed for speculation but for practice and that consequence vvhich thou mayest easily draw from every one must be to thee as a Law What though honey and milk be under his tongue and he sendeth embassadours to thee and they intreat and beseech thee in his stead and in his name Yet is all this in reference to his command and it proceedeth from the same Love which made his Law And even these beseechings are binding and aggravate our guilt if we melt not and bow to his Law Principum preces mandata sunt the very intreaties of Kings and Princes are as binding as Laws preces armatae intreaties that carry force and power with them that are sent to us as it were in arms to invade and conquer us And if we neither yield to the voice of Christ in his royal Law nor fall down and worship at his condescensions and loving parlies and earnest beseechings we increase our guilt and make sin sinful in the highest degree Nor need we thus boggle at the word or be afraid to see a Law in the Gospel if either we consider the Gospel it self or Christ our King and Lord or our selves who are his redeemed captives and owe him all service and allegeance For first the Gospel is not a dispensation to sin nor was a Saviour born to us that he should do and suffer all and we do what we list No the Gospel is the greatest and sharpest curb that was ever yet put into the mouth of Sin The grace of God saith S. Paul hath appeared unto all men teaching us that is commanding us Tit. 2.11 to deny ungodliness and worldly lusts Libertas in Christo non fecit innocentiae injuriam saith the Father Our liberty in Christ was not brought in to beat down innocency before it but to uphold it rather and defend it against all those assaults which flesh and bloud our lusts and concupiscence are ready to make against it Behold the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world He taketh away those sins that are past by remission and pardon but he setteth up a Law as a rampire and bulwork against Sin that it break not in and reign again in our mortal bodies There Christ is said to take away not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the sins but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the sin of the world that is the whole nature of Sin that it may have no subsistence or being in the world If the Gospel had nothing of Law in it there could be no sin under the Gospel For Sin is a transgression of a Law But flatter our selves as we please those are the greatest sins which we commit against the Gospel And it shall be easier in the day of judgment for Sodom and Gomorrah then for those Christians who turn the grace of God into wantonness who sport and revel it under the very wings of Mercy who think Mercy cannot make a Law but is busie onely to bestow Donatives and Indulgences who are then most licencious when they are most restrained For what greater curb can there be then when Justice and Wisdom and Love and Mercy all concur and joyn together to make a Law Secondly Christ is not onely our Redeemer but our King and Law-giver As he is the wonderful Counsellour Isa 9 6. Psal 2.6 so he came out of the loyns of Judah and is a Law-giver too Yet have I set my King upon my holy hill of Zion The government shall be upon his shoulder He crept not to this honour Isa 9.6 but this honour returned to him as to the true and lawful Lord With glory and honour did God crown him and set him over the works of his hands Heb. 2.7 As he crowned the first Adam with Understanding and freedom of Will so he crowned the second Adam with the full Knowledge of all things with a perfect Will and with a wonderful Power And as he gave to Adam Dominion over the beasts of the field so he gave to Christ Power over things in heaven and things on earth And he glorified not himself Heb. 5.5 but he who said Thou art my Son this day have I begotten thee he it was that laid the government upon his shoulder Not upon his shoulders For he was well able to bear it on one of them For in him the Godhead dwelleth bodily And with this power he was able to put down all other rule autority and power 1 Cor. â—5 24 to spoil principalities and powers and to shew them openly in triumph to spoil them by his death and to spoil them by his Laws due obedience to which shaketh the power of Hell it self For this as it pulleth out the sting of Death so also beateth down Satan under our feet This if it were universal would be the best exorcism that is and even chase the Devil out of the world which he maketh his Kingdom For to run the way of Christ's commandments is to overthrow him and bind him in chains is another hell in hell unto him Thirdly if we look upon our selves we shall find there is a necessity of Laws to guide and regulate us and to bring us to the End All other creatures are sent into the world with a sense and understanding of the end for which they come and so without particular direction and yet unerringly
vanity or the next business will drive it away and take its place Nor let us make a room for it in our Phansie For it is an easie matter to think we are free when we are in chains Who is so wicked that he is not ready to persuade himself he is just And that false persuasion too shall go for the dictate of the Holy Ghost Paganism it self cannot shew such monsters as many of them are who call themselves Saints But let us gird up our loins and be up and doing the work those works of piety which the Gospel injoyneth It is Obedience alone that tieth us to God and maketh us free denisons of that Jerusalem which is above In it the Beauty the Liberty the Royalty the Kingdom of a Christian is visible and manifest For by it we sacrifice not our Flesh but our Will unto God and so have one and the same will with him and if we have his will we have his power also and his wisdom to accompany it and to to fulfil all that we can desire or expect Servire Deo regnare est To serve God is to reign as Kings here and will bring us to reign with him for evermore Let us then stand fast in our obedience which is our liberty against all the wiles and invasions of the enemy all those temptations which will shew themselves in power and craft to remove us from our station In a calm to steer our course is not so difficult but when the tempest beateth hard upon us not to dash against the rock will commend our skill Every man is ready to build a tabernacle for Christ when he is in his glory but not to leave him at the Cross is the glory and crown of a Christian And first let us not dare a temptation as Pliny dared the vapour at Mount Vesuvius and died for it Let us not offer and betray our selves to the Enemy For he that affecteth and loveth danger is in the ready way to be swallowed up in that gulf Valiant men saith the Philosopher are 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 quiet and silent before the combat but in the trial 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ready and active But audacious daring men are commonly loud and talkative before encounters but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 flag and fail in them The first weigh the danger and resolve by degrees the other are peremptory and resolve suddenly and talk their resolution away It is one thing to talk of a tempest at sea another to discourse of it leaning against a wall It is one thing to dispute of pain another to feel it Grief and Anguish hath not such a sting in the Stoicks gallery as it hath on the rack For there Reason doth fight but with a shadow and a representation here with the substance it self And when things shew themselves naked as they are they stir up the affections When the Whip speaketh by its smart not by my phansie when the Fire is in my flesh not my understanding when temptations are visible and sensible then they enter the soul and the spirit then they easily shake that resolution which was so soon built and soon beat down that which was made up in haste Therefore let us not rashly thrust our selves upon them But in the second place let us arm and prepare our selves against them For Preparation is half the conquest It looketh upon them handleth and weigheth them before hand seeeth where their great strength lieth and goeth forth in the power of the Spirit and in the name of Christ and so maketh us more then conquerers before the sight And this is our Martyrdom in peace For the practice of a Christian in the calmest times must nothing differ in readiness and resolution from times of rage and fire As Josephus speaketh of the military exercises practised amongst the Romans that they differed from a true battel only in this that their battel was a bloudy exercise and their exercise a bloudless battel So our preparation should make us martyrs before we come to resist ad sanguinem to shed a drop of bloud To conclude as the Apostle exhorteth let us take unto us the whole armour of God that we may be able to withstand in the evil day and having done all to stand to stand against the horrour of a prison against the glittering of the sword against the terrour of death to stand as expert souldiers of Christ and not to forsake our place to stand as mount Sion which cannot be moved in a word to be stedfast unmoveable alwayes abounding in the work of the Lord forasmuch as we know that our labour is not in vain in the Lord. For whoso looketh into the perfect Law of Liberty and continueth therein he being not a forgetful hearer but a doer of the work this man shall be blessed in his deed The Seven and Fortieth SERMON PART VII JAMES I. 25. But whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty and continueth therein he being not a forgetful hearer but a doer of the work this man shall be blessed in his deed TO Persevere or continue in the Gospel and To be blessed for ever are the two stages of a Christian the one here on earth the other in heaven and there is scarce a moment but a last breath between them nothing but a mouldering and decaying wall this tabernacle of flesh which falleth down suddenly and then we pass and enter And that we may persevere and continue means are here prescribed first assiduous Meditation in this Law we must not be forgetful hearers of it but look into it as into a glass vers 23 24. yet not as a man that beholdeth his natural face in a glass and then goeth away and forgetteth himself not as a man who looketh carelesly casteth an eye and thinketh no more of it but rather as a woman who looketh into her glass with intention of mind with a kind of curiosity and care stayeth and dwelleth upon it fitteth her attire and ornaments to her by a kind of method setteth every hair in its proper place and accurately dresseth and adorneth her self by it And sure there is more care and exactness due to the soul then to the body Secondly that we may continue and persevere we must not only hear and remember but do the work For Piety is confirmed by Practice To these we may now add a third which hath so near a relation to Practice that it is even included in it and carrried along with it And it is To be such students in Christ's School as S. Paul was Acts 24.16 To study and exercise our selves to have alwayes a conscience void of offence toward God and toward men Not to triflle with our God or play the wanton with our Conscience Not to displease and wound her in one particular with a resolution to follow her in the rest Not to let our love of the world or fear of danger make that a truth which we formerly