shall be stability of thy times strength salvation wisdom and knowledge for the fear of the Lord shall be thy treasure It is our supply if we should fear want and it is our reason that we cannot fear want for he that fears God fears nothing else As therefore the Holy Ghost hath placed the beginning of wisdom in this fear so hath he the consummation and perfection of this wisdom even in the perfect pattern of all wisdom Esai 11.3 in the person of Christ himself The Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon thee the spirit of wisdom and understanding the spirit of counsel and of might the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of God For without this fear there is no courage no confidence no assurance And therefore Christ begun his Passion with a fear in his Agony Tristis anima My soul his heavie but that fear delivered him over to a present conformity to the will of God in his Veruntamen Yet not my will but thine be done And he ended his Passion with a fear Eli Eli My God my God why hast thou forsaken me and that fear deliver'd him over to a present assurance In manus tuas Domine confidently to commend his spirit into his hands whom he seem'd to be afraid of Since then the Holy Ghost whose name is Love since God who is Love it self disposes us to this fear we may see in that That neither God himself nor those of whom God said Ye are gods that is all those who have Authority over others can be lov'd so as they should except they be fear'd so as they should be too If you take away due Fear you take away true Love Even that fear of God which we use to call servile fear which is but an apprehension of punishment and is not the noblest the perfectest kinde of fear yet it is a fear which our Saviour counsels us to entertain Matth. 10. Fear him that can cast soul and body into hell even that fear is some beginning of wisdom That fear Job had use of when he said 31. Quid faciam cum surrexerit ad judicandum Deus Here I may lay hold upon means of Restitution but when the Lord shall raise himself to judgement how shall I stand So also had David use of this fear Psal 119. A judiciis tuis timui However I was ever confident in thy mercy yet I was in fear of thy judgement It is that fear which St. Basil directs us to upon those words Psal 33. Timorem Domini docebo vos I will teach you the fear of the Lord Cogita profundum barathrum To learn to fear God he sends us to the meditation of the torments of hell And so it is that fear which wrought that effect in St. Hierome Ego ob Gehennae metum carcere isto me damnavi For fear of that execution I have shut my self up in this prison for fear of perishing in the next world I banish my self from this There is a beginning there is a great degree of wisdom even in this fear Now as the fear of Gods punishments disposes us to love him so that fear which the Magistrate imprints by the execution of his Laws establishes that love which preserves him from all disestimation and irreverence for whom the Enemy does not fear the Subject does not love As no Peace is safe enough where there is no thought of War so the love of man towards God and those who represent him is not permanently setled if there be not a reverential fear a due consideration of greatness a distance a distinction a respect of Rank and Order and Majestie If there be not a little fear by Justice at home and by power and strength abroad mingled in it it is not that love which God requires to be first directed upon himself and then reflected upon his Stewards and Vice-gerents for as every Society is not Friendship so every Familiarity is not Love But to conclude As he will be fear'd so he will be fear'd no otherwise then as he is God Non timuerunt Deum is the increpation of the Text They feared not God It is timor Dei and not timor Jehovae God is not here expressed by the name of Jehovah that unexpressible and unutterable that incomprehensible and unimaginable name of Jehovah God calls not upon us to be consider'd as God in himself but as God towards us not as he is in heaven but as he works upon earth And here not in the School but in the Pulpit not in Disputation but in Application It is not timor Jehovae nor it is not timor Adonai God does not call himself in this place The Lord for to be Lord to be proprietary of all this is potestas tam utendi quam abutendi It gives the Lord of that thing power to do absolutely what he will with that which is his And so God as absolute Lord may damn without respect of sin if he will and save without respect of faith if he will But God is pleased to proceed with us according to that Contract which he hath made with us and that Law which he hath given to us in those two Tables Tantummodo crede Onely believe and thy faith shall save thee and Fac hoc vives Live well and thy good works shall make sure thy salvation Lastly God does not call himself here Dominum exercituum The Lord of hosts God would not onely be consider'd and serv'd by us when he afflicts us with any of his swords Famine War Pestilence Malice or the like but the fear requir'd here is to fear him as God and as God presented in this name Elohim which though it be a name primarily rooted in power and strength for El is Deus fortis The powerful God and as there is no love without fear so there is no fear without power yet properly it signifies his Judgment and Order and Providence and Dispensation and Government of his creatures It is that name which goes thorow all Gods whole work of the Creation and disposition of all creatures in the first of Genesis in all that he is call'd by no other name then this the name God not by Jehovah to present an infinite Majestie nor by Adonai to present an absolute power nor by Tzebaoth to present a Force or Conquest but onely in the name of God his name of Government All ends in this To fear God is to adhere to him in his way as he hath dispensed and notified himself to us that is as God is manifested in Christ in the Scriptures and applied to us out of those Scriptures by the Church not to rest in Nature without God nor in God without Christ nor in Christ without the Scriptures nor in our private interpretation of Scripture without the Church Almighty God fill us with these fears these reverences that we may reverence him who shall at last bring us where there shall be no more
Death of his Bitter Passion of the Ransome of his Blood of the Sanctuary of his Wounds and yet his Life and Death and Passion and Blood and Wounds is oftner in their mouthes in execrations then in the mouth of the most religious man in his prayers They revile Christ Praetereuntes Origen as they pass along not onely as Origen sayes here Non incedentes recte blasphemant they did not go perversly crookedly Hierom. wilfully and so blaspheme nor as Hierome Non ambulantes in vero itinere Scripturarum blasphemant they did not misinterpret places of Scripture to maintaine their errours and so blaspheme but they blasphemed Praetereuntes out of negligent custome and habit they blaspheme Christ and never think of it that they may be damned obiter by the way collaterally occasionately damned Luke 23.24 But it was not onely they Praetereuntes but the people that stood and beheld reviled Christ too men that doe understand Christ even then when they dishonour him doe dishonour him to accompany some greater persons upon whom they depend in their errours The Priests who should have called the Passengers Thr. 1.12 with that Have ye no regard all ye that passe by the way the Scribes who should have applyed the ancient Prophesies to the present accomplishment of them in the death of Christ the Pharisees who should have supplied their imperfect fulfilling of the Law in that full satisfaction the death of Christ the Elders the Rulers the Souldiers are all noted to have reviled Christ they all concurre to the performance of that Prophesie in the person of Christ and yet they will not see that the Prophesie is performed in him Psal 22.7 Psal 69.26 All they that see me have me in derision they persecute him whom thou hast smitten and they adde unto the sorrowes of him whom thou hast wounded Our Fathers trusted in thee they trusted in thee Psal 22.4 and were delivered but I am a worm and no man a shame to men and the contempt of the people Pilate had lost his plot upon the people to mollifie them towards Christ he brought him out to them Flagellatum illusum scourged and scorned John 19.1 thinking that that would have reduced them But this Preacher leaves all the rest either to their farther obduration or their fitter time of repentance if God had ordained any such time for them he turns to this one whose disposition he knew to have been like his own and therefore hoped his conversion would be so too for nothing gives the faithfull servants of God a greater encouragement that their labors shall prosper upon others then a consideration of their own case an acknowledgement what God hath done for their souls When the fear of God had wrought upon himself then he comes to his fellow Nonne tu times fearest not thou First Times Nonne tu We have not that advantage over our auditory which he had over his to know that in every particular man there is some reason why he should be more afraid of Gods judgements then another man But every particular man who is acquainted with his own history may be such a Preacher to himself and ask himself Nonne tu hast not thou more reason to stand in fear of God then any other man for any thing that thou knowest Knowest thou any man so deeply indebted to God so far behind-hand with God so much in danger of his executions as thou art Thou knowest not his colluctations before he fell nor his Repentances since when thou hearest S. Paul say Quorum maximus hadst not thou need say Nonne tu Dost not thou fear who knowest more by thy self then S. Pauls History hath told thee of S. Paul for in all his History thou never seest any thing done by him against his conscience and is thy case as good as that But to this thief this thief presses this no farther but this what hope soever of future happiness in this life by the coming of a Messias those that stay in the world can expect what 's all that to thee who art going out of the world Quid mihi sayes that man who looked upon the Rainbow when he was ready to drown though God have promised not to drown the world what 's that to me if I must drown I must be bold to say to thee Quid tibi if God by his omnipotent power will uphold his Gospel in the world he owes thee no thanks if thou do nothing in thy calling towards the upholding of it Nonne tu Dost not thou feare that though that stand Gods judgement will fall upon thee for having put no hand to the staying of it Nonne tu times It had been unreasonable to have spoken to him of the love of God first now when those heavy judgements were upon him The Fear of God is alwayes the beginning of Wisdome most of all in calamity which is properly Vehiculum timoris the Chariot to convey and the Seal to imprint this feare in us Because I thought surely the feare of God is not in this place Gen. 20.9 therefore I said Sarah was my sister Where there is not the fear of God in great persons other men dare not proceed clearly with them but with disguises and Modifications they dare not attribute their prosperity and good success to the goodness of God but must attribute it to their wisdome they dare not attribute their crosses and ill successe to the justice of God but must attribute it to the weakness or falshood of servants and ministers where there is not this fear of God there is no directness Beloved there is love enough at all hands it is a loving age every where love enough in every corner such as it is but scarce any feare amongst us Great men are above fear no envy can reach them Miserable men are below fear no change can make them worse and for persons of middle rank and more publick feares of plagues of famines or such the abundant and over-flowing goodness of God hath so long accustomed us to miraculous deliverances that we feare nothing but thinke to have miracles in ordinary and neglect ordinary remedies Deum But what should this man fear now his Glass was run out his Bell was rung out he was a dead man condemned and judged and executed what should he fear In Rome as the Vestal Virgins which dyed were buried within the city because they dyed innocent so persons which were executed by Justice were buryed there too because they had satisfied the Law and thereby seemed to be restored to their innocence So that condemned persons might seem least of all to feare But yet Nonne times Deum fearest not thou God for all that Have not the laws of Men Witnesses Judges and Executioners all men brought fearfull things upon thee already and is it not a fearfull thing if all those real torments be but Types and Figures of those greater which God
affected not to be entendred to wear those things which God hath made objects and subjects of affections that which St. Paul places in the bottome and lees Rom. 1.30 and dregs of all the sins of the Jews to be without natural affections this distemper this ill complexion this ill nature of the soul is under the first part of this curse if any man love not for he that loves not knows not God for God is love But this curse determins not upon that neither is it principally directed upon that not loving for as we say in the schools Amor est primus actus voluntatis the first thing that the will of man does is to affect to choose to love something and it is scarce possible to find any mans will so idle so barren as that it hath produced no act at all and therefore the first act being love scarce any man can be found that doth not love something But the curses extends yea is principally intended upon him that loves not Christ Jesus though he love the creature and orderly enough yea though he love God as a great and incomprehensible power yet if he love not Christ Jesus if he acknowledg not that all that passes between God and him is in and for Christ Jesus let him be accursed for all his love Now there are but two that can be loved God and the Creature and of the creatures that must necessarily be best loved which is neerest us which we understand best and reflect most upon and that 's our selves for for the love of other creatures it is but a secondary love if we lâ—â—e God we love them for his sake if we love our selves we love them for our sakes Now to love our selves is only allowable only proper to God himself for this love is a desire that all honor and praise and glory should be attributed to ones self and it can be only proper to God to desire that To love our selves then is the greatest treason we can commit against God and all love of the creatures determines in the love of our selves for though sometimes we may say that we love them better than our selves and though we give so good that is indeed so ill testimony that we do so that we neglect our selves both our religion and our discretion for their sakes whom we pretend to love yet all this is but a secondary love and with relation still to our selves and our own contentments for is this love which we bear to other creatures within that definition of love Velle bonum amato to wish that which we love happy doth any ambitious man love honor or office therefore because he thinks that title or that place should receive a dignity by his having it or an excellency by his executing it doth any covetous man love a house or horse therefore because he thinks that house or horse should be happy in such a Master or such Rider doth any licentious man covet or solicite a woman therefore because he thinks it a happiness to her to have such a servant No it is only himself that is within the difinition vult bonum sibi he wishes well as he mistakes it to himself and he is content that the slavery and dishonor and ruin of others should contribute to make up his imaginary happiness August O dementiam nescientem amare homines humaniter what a perverse madness is it to love a creature and not as a creature that is with all the adjuncts and circumstances and qualities of a creature of which the principal is that that love raise us to the contemplation of the Creator for if it be so we may love our selves as we are the Images of God and so we may love other men as they are the Images of us and our nature yea as they are members of the same body for omnes homines una humanitas all men make up but one mankind and so we love other creatures as we all meet in our Creator in whom Princes and Subjects Angels and men and wormes are fellow servants Si malè amaveris tunc odisti If thou hast lov'd thy self August or any body else principally or so that when thou dost any act of love thou canst not say to thine own conscience I do this for Gods sake and for his glory if thou hast loved so thou hast hated thy self and him whom thou hast loved and God whom thou shouldest love Si bonè oderis saies the same Father If thou hast hated as thou shouldst hate if thou hast hated thine own internal tentations and the outward solicitations of others Amasti then thou hast expressed a manifold act of love of love to thy God and love to his Image thy self and love to thine Image that man whom thy virtue and thy example hath declined and kept from offending his and thy God And as this affection love doth belong to God principally that is rather then to any thing else so doth it also principally another way that is rather then any affection else for the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom but the love of God is the consummation that is the marriage and union of thy soul and thy Saviour But can we love God when we will do we not find that in the love of some other things or some courses of life of some waies in our actions and of some particular persons that we would fain love them cannot when we can object nothing against it when we can multiply arguments why we should love them yet we cannot but it is not so towards God every man may love him that will but can every man have this will this desire certainly we cannot begin this love except God love us first we cannot love him but God doth love us all so well from the beginning as that every man may see the fault was in the perversness of his own will that he did not love God better If we look for the root of this love it is in the Father for though the death of Christ be towards us as a root as a cause of our love and of the acceptableness of it yet Augst Meritum Christi est affectum amoris Dei erga nos the death of Christ was but an effect of the love of God towards us So God loved the world that he gave his Son if he had not lov'd us first we had never had his Son here is the root then the love of the Father and the tree the merit of the Son except there be fruit too love in us to them again both root and tree will wither in us howsoever they grew in God I have loved thee with an everlasting love Jer. 31.3 saies God therfore with mercy I have drawn thee if therefore we do not perceive that we are drawn to lov again by this lov 't is not an everlasting lov that shines upon us All the sunshine all the glory of this life
though all these be testimonies of Gods love to us yet all these bring but a winters day a short day and a cold day and a dark day for except we love too God doth not love with an everlasting love God will not suffer his love to be idle and since it profits him nothing if it profits us nothing neither Ambrose he will withdraw it Amor Dei ut lumen ignis ut splendor solis ut odor lucis non praebenti proficit sed utenti The sun hath no benefit by his own light nor the fire by his own heat nor a perfume by the sweetness thereof but only they who make their use and enjoy this heat and fragrancy And this brings us to our other part to pass from loving to enjoying 2 Part. Tulerunt Dominum meum They have taken away my Lord and I know not where they have laid him this was one strain of Mary Magdalens lamentation when she found not her Saviour in the monument It is a lamentable case to be fain to cry so Tulerunt They have taken other men have taken away Christ by a dark and corrupt education which was the state of our Fathers to the Roman captivity But when the abjecerunt Dominum which is so often complained of by God in the Prophets is pronounced against thee when thou hast had Christ offered to thee by the motions of his grace and seal'd to thee by his Sacraments and yet wilt cast him so far from thee that thou knowest not where to find him when thou hast poured him out at thine eyes in prophane and counterfeit tears which should be thy souls rebaptization for thy sins when thou hast blown him away in corrupt and ill intended sighs which should be gemitus columbae the voice of the Turtle to sound thy peace and reconciliation with thy God yea when thou hast spit him out of thy mouth in execrable and blaphemous oathes when thou hast not only cast him so far as that thou knowest not where to find him but hast made so ordinary and so indifferent a thing of sin as thou knowest not when thou didst lose him no nor dost not remember that ever thou hadst him no nor dost not know that there is any such man as Dominus tuus a Jesus that is thy Lord. The Tulerunt is dangerous when others hide Christ from thee but the abjecerunt is desperate when thou thy self doest cast him away To lose Christ may befall the most righteous man that is but then he knows where he left him he knows at what sin he lost his way and where to seek it again even Christs imagin'd Father and his true mother Joseph and Mary lost him and lost him in the holy City at Jerusalem they lost him and knew it not they lost him and went a dayes journy without him and thought him to be in the company but as soon as they deprehended their error they sought and they found him when as his mother told him his father and she had sought with a heavy heart Alas we may lose him at Jerusalem even in his own house even at this present whilst we pretend to doe him service we may lose him by suffering our though â—s to look back with pleasure upon the sins which we have committed or to look forward with greedines upon some sin that is now in our purpose prosecution we may lose him at Jerusalem how much more if our dwelling be a Rome of Superstition and Idolatry or if it be a Babylon in confusion and mingling God and the world together or if it be a Sodome a wanton and intemperate misuse of Gods benefits to us we may think him in the company when he is not we may mistake his house we may take a Conventicle for a Church we may mistake his apparrel that is the outward form of his worship we may mistake the person that is associate our selves to such as are no members of his body But if we doe not return to our diligence to seek him and seek him and seek him with a heavy heart though we begun with a Tulerunt other men other tentations took him away yet we end in an abjecerunt we our selves cast him away since we have been told where to find him and have not sought him And let no man be afraid to seek or find him for fear of the loss of good company Religion is no sullen thing it is not a melancholly there is not so sociable a thing as the love of Christ Jesus It was the first word which he who first found Christ of all the Apostles Saint Andrew is noted to have said Invenimus Messiam we have found the Messias and it is the first act that he is noted to have done after he had found him to seek his brother Peter Jo. 1.34 duxit ad Jesum so communicable a thing is the love of Jesus when we have found him But when are we likeliest to find him It is said by Moses Deut. 30.11 of the words and precepts of God They are not hid from thee neither are far off Not in heaven that thou shouldst say Who shall goe up to heaven for us to bring them down nor beyond the Seas that thou shouldst go over the Sea for them but the word is very neer thee even in thy mouth and in thy heart and so neer thee is Christ Jesus or thou shalt never find him Thou must not so think him in heaven as that thou canst not have immediate accesse to him without intercession of others nor so beyond Sea as to seek him in a forrein Church either where the Church is but an Antiquaries Cabinet full of rags and fragments of antiquity but nothing fit for that use for which it was first made or where it is so new a built house with bare walls that it is yet unfurnished of such Ceremonies as should make it comly and reverend Christ is at home with thee he is at home within thee and there is the neerest way to find him It is true that Christ in the beginning of this chapter shadow'd under the name of wisdom when he discovers where he may be found speaks in the person of humane wisdom as well as divine Doth not wisdome cry and understanding utter her voice wher those two words Wisdom and Understanding signifie Sapientiam and Prudentiam That wisdom whose object is God and that which concerns our conversation in this world for Christ hath not taken so narrow a dwelling as that he may be found but one way or in one profession for in all professions in all Nations in all vocations when all our actions in our severall courses are directed principally upon his glory Christ is eminent and may easily be found To that purpose in that place Christ in the person of wisdom offers himselfe to be found in the tops of high places and in the gates of Cities to shew that this Christ and this wisdom