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A46895 The booke of conscience opened and read in a sermon preached at the Spittle on Easter-Tuesday, being April 12, 1642 / by John Jackson. Jackson, John. 1642 (1642) Wing J76; ESTC R36019 31,589 156

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And that faith is but equivocall faith and no true justifying salvificall faith which doth not work by love love to God in holinesse love to man in righteousnesse and love to our selves in sobrietie These are the severall ingredients into this balme of Gilead according to the dispensatory of Divinity These are the severall degrees of this Ladder whose foot like Jacob's standeth upon earth and the top reacheth heaven Let us recollect them by an analyticall methode and so conclude this point I. Practise charity and that 's a signe of true faith 2. Have faith and you shall be able to apply on your part what God imputes on his 3. Apply and what is sufficient in it selfe shall be effectuall to you 4. Nothing is sufficient but Jesus Christ 5. The reason of his sufficiencie is from the dignitie and excellencie of his person 6. Nor yet were his person of sufficient dignity if it were not in him an infinite dignity 7. And being infinite the ransome and satisfaction is proportion to the fault 8. And upon this satisfaction must needs follow remission 9. And having remission there followes also reconciliation with God 10. And being reconciled with God we shall have tranquillity of mind and peace of Conscience passing all understanding The third Point Conscience thus qualified with the goodnesse both of Integritie and tranquillitie is a Feast NOt any phantasticall feast as if a man should dreame of a furnished table and be hungry when he wakens nor any Tropologicall Metaphoricall feast a feast by way of similitude and proportion onely as Christ is called the a bread of Life and the holy Ghost the b water of Life but a true reall feast a feast properly so called junketting both the minde and the body and presenting them both with cheer becoming a feast First it feasteth the mind with the desireable food of Contentation Peace Joy Comfort Hope and the like Secondly it feasteth and fatneth the body also for as Conscience of evill done causeth feare and expectation of some evill to be suffered and that feare againe causeth many a thought-sick houre indigestive meale lancke cheekes trembling joynts marrowless bones restless nights c. so Conscience of good done makes a c cheerfull and a merry heart and a cheerfull heart causeth good health Prov. 17. 22. and maketh a cheerfull countenance Pro. 15. 13. and not onely this but when night comes which is the one d halfe of our life that we are to lay us downe and take our rest then also consciousnesse of a day well spent rocks us and drops a sleepy silence upon our eyes and sleep you know is the stay the prop of the Microcosme it is thoughts charme it is digestions carefull nurse c. It is a rule in Art and we see it true in hourely Experience Contraries placed together do mutually illustrate each other Venus her mole was a foile to her beauty The tender eyes of Leah did the more commend the beauty of Rachel unto Jacob The seven leane kine in Pharaoh's dreame did eate up the seven fat kine So the ill-favoured raw-bon'd leanenesse the biting and gnawing of an ill Conscience will let us better see the festivity of a good Conscience An evill Conscience is a e WORME a brest-worm gnawing upon the soule with the teeth of bloodless fear of wrinckled sorrow of self-consuming care and of sad despaire and this worme is not like that which St Paul shooke off into the fire it is a Salamander and will live and gnaw in the fire of hell it s a worme that never dyeth a continuall worme and that 's the gall of bitternesse wormewooding even hell it self Well were it with wicked men if as Herod Acts 12. 23. and Antiochus a Macc. 9. 9● were devoured and eaten up with wormes this worme would dispatch them But it is that f sanguisuga ever sucking and never full ever gnawing but never killing ever eating but never devouring and that with a deadly tooth too every bit worse then ten thousand deaths and yet g not unto death Compare now these two texts together A good Conscience is a FEAST An ill one is a WORME a good one a plentifull feast an ill one an hungry gnawing worme a good one a continuall feast an ill one a continuall a never dying worme and do they not answer one another as in water face answereth face● And these two points 1. That an ill Conscience is a worme and 2. a good Conscience a feast being thus entorted wreathed together Let us stretch out the further illustration of them by enquiring into the learning and Confessions of the Heathen who had no inky Divinity no other books of Theologie but the books of Conscience no other law but the Law written in their hearts For be it granted that the word is best when it is pure and not dilute or mingled or if mingled then with nothing but h faith and that humane learning being brought to illustrate divine is for the most part but as painture in Church-windowes making the glasse lesse cleare and transparent yet some points there are and this is one of those some wherin it perswades much to shew that Divinity is the same with the law of nature 〈◊〉 will only gleane an handfull out of an whole field And I will begin with the greek proverbe {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} i. conscience is the strappado and bastinado of the soule it doth whip and lash her with secret but more smarting stroaks the whip of cords that Christ made is not to be compared to it all the discipline on a good Friday in the Church of Rome comes short of it before sinne it is k fraenum a bridle after sinne it is flagrum a whip Secondly the significant fable of Prometheus may have the next place Prometheus stole fire from heaven his punishment was that he was tied to the mountaine Caucasus where a rapacious Eagle did day and night feed upon his heart The morall is Prometheus represents every sinner that is injurious against heaven his affixing to the mountaine Caucasus sheweth that it is as possible to carry away the mountaine as to escape the vengeance of God when he will punish the Eagle feeding upon his heart is the angor of conscience which do●h l eate and devoure the very heart of man as a Gangrene in the flesh Thirdly let us remember the three m snake-tressed sisters Alecto Megera and Tisiphone three dismall Elves which the Poets make the daughters of Nox and Acheron and call them Furies which indeed are nothing else but the n torments of a wicked mind when the pains and throws of conscience are upon it Fourthly we will call in the example of Orestes in the Tragedy o O wretched Orestes saith an interlocutor in the Tragedy what disease afflicteth thee Orestes makes answer upon the stage Conscience quoth he O the
that which Conscience judgeth right In which respect take notice what high language the Scripture adapteth to expresse this thing as calling a man in relation to this work of Conscience a debtor Rom. 1. 14. a servant Rom. 6. 16. bound Acts 20. 22. constrained ● Cor. 5. 14. necessitated 1 Cor. 9. 17. so as a man cannot otherwise do● Acts 4. 20. Such is the strength and vertue of Conscience that an action by its owne nature indifferent it can make bad or good and an Action in it selfe good it can corrupt and make naught Only an action which is ill and naught in it self it cannot make good Yea such is the validity of Conscience that it binds in some cases even when it erres for Conscience judging that to be unlawfull which is lawfull bindeth to abstaine from that lawfull Rom. 14. 14. and Conscience judging that to be debt and necessary which is only allowable and arbitrary bindeth to doe that arbitrary thing Rom. 14. 5. So as both these requisites taken in together and a due proportionable contemperation made therof to wit of both j●s and vis the light and heat the good eyes and lustly limbs of Conscience do constitute a rectified conscience fit to goe about that work and labour for which God created such a faculty and seated it in the soul of man A law without sufficient force to execute it is but a dead letter and lets a man lye like the lame creeple at the pooles side seeing the bath but wanting strength to step into it And force without law is but a riot serving for no better use then Sampsons brawny wrists without his eyes to pull an old house over our head to crush us Only a Conscience informedly strong is shee When then O Christian man or woman thou perceivest thy Conscience to be in this frame plight that it is legal●y valiant silence not her voyce muzzle not her mouth Say rather as Cant. 2. 1● Let me see thy countenance let me heare thy voyce for sweet is thy voyce and thy counten●nce is comely Shake off that dull and lethargick sloth and stupidity which is upon it either in stimulation to good or repression from evill Cry aloud and say Hoe Conscience conscience up and be doing and the Lord shall be with thee To day is a Chancery-day to thine office Tell me first what 's the law in such and such a point Secondly tell me what correspondence for matter of fact have I held with that law Be a true witnesse either to excuse me if I have done well or accuse me if evill Lastly give right sentence and play the part of a just Judge in either condemning or absolving me that thus judging my self I may not be judged of the Lord And having thus shewed the method of rectifying the erring conscience let us now also declare the right order of pacifying the troubled conscience Upon which point before we fall directly we must needs put a difference for a difference there is betwixt sicknesse of fancie when the thoughts are distracted and drawne aside from off pleasing and contenting objects and doe wholly fasten and sit abrood on sad and dreadfull things and true formall trouble of minde which alwaies gathers to an head either by reason of solicitation to sin or remorse for sin distemper of fancie is commonly a wild and unreasonable thing and swerves from that we call judgement or recta ratio Or if it fasten upon sinne which sometimes it doth it s troubled either with scruples which is no sin or with some generall notions and idea's of transgression without due shame and sorrow for particular lapses or with motes and gnats more then with beames and camels Now rationall and congruous trouble of Conscience when God wounds and will heale is charactered by this that it is neither so superficiall for sin in generall as not to have an aspect upon particular miscarriages and misdemeanours nor so superstitious of particulars as not to regard the generall taint and depravednesse of nature also The best report or book-case hereof is in Psal. 51. which is * the chiefe of the seven penitentials There DAVID rightly pressed in his spirit and panged in his Conscience in deed layes the ponitentiall axe first to the root of the tree confessi●● that which was the spawne and brood-mother of all his actuall wickednesse Behold I was shapen in iniquite and in sin did my mother conceive me ver. 5. and then that very sin in particular which had been as a thiefe in the candle or an obstruction in the liver to gangrene and waste all the quiet and peace of his minde Deliver me from bloud-guiltiness O God c vers. 14. This being premised by way of a praecognitum the Method it selfe now followes which consists in a certaine Scale or Ladder The severall grades or steps whereof are these 1. There can be no sound peace of Conscience till we be atoned and reconciled to God for Conscience is as Gods setting-dog or as his Serjeant which will not take off the arrest till its Master be satisfyed 2. Neither can there be any agreement or atonement with God without pardon of sin God will not be reconciled to any man lite pendente till the fault which caused the variance be forgiven 3. Nor can there be any remission without satisfaction for if the Salvation or damnation of all mankinde lay'd thereupon God will not cannot be unjust to himselfe to be kind to us 4. No satisfaction neither will serve the turne but such as is porportionable to the sault for t is the very Motto of Justice * Let the punishment be equall to the damage the payment to the debt 5. No satisfaction can be proportionable which is not infinite because our sins are committed against a Majestie absolutely infinite and they also are as neere infinite as number or hainousnesse can make them and if there could be another infinite besides God I would say it were the sinnes of the world 6. No infinite satisfaction can be made but by a person of infinite excellencie and worth whose personall dignitie must give such a tincture of price and value to his sufferings as what he suffered in a short time was equivalent to what all the world should have suffered for ever and ever 7. We never knew nor heard of never did any Historian tell or Prophet foretell of any such worthy person but JESUS CHRIST who was God-man man to suffer God to overcome in suffering man to dye God to rise againe 8. That price though most sufficient in it selfe yet not effectuall to us if not applyed and made our owne The best cordiall comforts not if not taken The most magisterial plaister heales not if not applyed to the fore 9. As that Application is made on Gods part by imputation so on our part by faith God must impute the righteousness of Christ unto us and we must receive it from God by the hand of faith 10.