true worship Luke 7.38 And to that purpose kisse his feet as Mary Magdalen did Speciosi pedes Euangelizantium Let his feet his Ministers in whom he comes be acceptable unto you and love that upon which himselfe stands The Ordinance which he hath established for your salvation Kisse the Son that is imbrace him depend upon him all these wayes As thy kinsman As thy Soveraigne At thy going At thy comming At thy Reconciliation in the truth of religion in thy selfe in a peaceable unity with the Church in a reverent estimation of those men and those meanes whom he sends Kisse him and be not ashamed of kissing him Cant. 8.1 It is that which the Spouse desired I would kisse thee not be despised If thou be despised for loving Christ in his Gospel remember that when David was thought base for dancing before the Arke his way was to be more base If thou be thought frivolous for thrusting in at Service in the fore-noone bee more frivolous and come againe in the after-noone Gregor Tanto major requies quanto ab amore Iesu nulla requies The more thou troublest thy selfe or art troubled by others for Christ the more peace thou hast in Christ We descend now to our second Part 2 Part. from the duty to the danger from the expressing of love to the impression of feare Kisse the Son lest he be angry And first that anger and love are not incompatible that anger consists with love God is immutable and God is love and yet God can be angry God stops a little upon scorne in the fourth verse of this Psalme When the Kings of the earth take counsell against his anointed he laughs them to scorne he hath them in dirision But it ends not in a jest He shall speake to them in his wrath and vexe them in his sore displeasure And that is not all He shall breake them with a rod of iron and dash them in pieces like a Potters vessell Lactantius reprehends justly two errors and proposes a godly middle way in the Doctrine of the anger of God Some say sayes he that onely favour and gentlenesse can be attributed to God Quia illaesibilis He himselfe cannot be hurt and then why should he be angry And this is sayes he Favorabilis popularis oratio It is a popular and an acceptable proposition God cannot be angry doe what you will you cannot anger him for he is all gentlenesse Others sayes Lactantius take both anger and gentlenesse from God and say he is affected neither way And this is sayes he well Constantior error An error that will better hold together better consist in it selfe and be better stood to for they are inseparable things whosoever does love the good does hate the bad and therefore if there be no anger there is no love in God but that cannot be said And therefore sayes he we must not argue thus Because there is no anger in God therefore there is no love for that indeed would follow if the first were true But because there is love in God therefore there is anger And so he concludes thus This is Cardo Religionis This is the hinge upon which all Religion all the Worship of God turnes and moves Si nihil praestat colenti non debetur cultus nec metus si non irascitur non cobenti If God gave me nothing for my love I should not love him nor feare him if he were not angry at my displeasing him It is argument enough against the Epicures against whom principally hee argues Si non curat non habet potestatem If God take no care of humane actions he hath no power for it is impossible to thinke that hee hath power and uses it not An idle God is as impossible an imagination as an impotent God or an ignorant God Anger as it is a passion that troubles and disorders and discomposes a man so it is not in God but anger as it is a sensible discerning of foes from friends and of things that conduce or disconduce to his glory so it is in God In a word Hilarie hath expressed it well Poena patientis ir a decernentis Mans suffering is God anger when God inflicts such punishments as a King justly incensed would doe then God is thus angry Now here our case is heavier It is not this Great and Almighty Filius and Majesticall God that may be angry that is like enough But even the Son whom we must kisse may be angry It is not a person whom we consider meerly as God but as man Nay not as man neither but a worme and no man and he may be angry and angry to our ruine But is it he Is it the Son that is intended here Ask the Romane Translation and it is not he There it is Ne irascatur Dominus Lest the Lord be angry But the Record the Originall will be against them Though it were so The Lord it might be He the Sonne but it is not the Lord but must necessarily bee the Sonne The Son may the Son will be angry with us If he could be angry why did he not shew it to the Devill that tempted him to the Jews that crucified him God blesse us from such an anger as works upon the Devill in a desperate unsensiblenesse of any mercy from any trade in that Sea which environs the whole world and makes all that one Iland where onely the Devill can be no Merchant The bottomelesse Sea of his blood And God blesse us from such an anger as works upon the Jews in an obduration and the punishment of it a dispersion Are ye sure David was not angry with Shimei because he reprieved him for a time Are ye sure the Son is not angry now because ye perish not yet Doe you not say A fruit is perished if it be bruised in one place Is not your Religion perished if Locusts and Eare-wigges have eaten into it though they have not eaten it up Is not your Religion perished if irreligion and prophanenesse be entred into your manners into your lives though Religion have some motion in our ordinary meetings and publique exercises here The Son is Caput and Corpus as S. Augustine sayes often Christ and the Church of Christ are Christ And Quis enumeret omnia quibus corpus Christi irascitur sayes the same Father Who can reckon how many wayes this Christ this body of Christ the Church is constrained to expresse anger How many Excommunications how many Censures how many Suspensions how many Irregularities how many Penances and Commutations of Penances is the body of Christ the Church forced to inflict upon sinners And how heavy would these be to us if we did not waigh them with the waights of flesh in the Shambles or of Iron in the Shop if we did not consider them only in their temporall damage how little an excommunication took from us of our goods or worldly substance and not how much it shut up
expresse himselfe Norah which is rather Reverendus Mal. 2.5 then Terribilis as that word is used I gave him life and peace for the feare wherewith he feared me and was afraid before my Name So that this Terriblenesse which we are called upon to professe of God is a Reverentiall a Majesticall not a Tyrannicall terriblenesse And therefore hee that conceives a God that hath made man of flesh and blood and yet exacts that purity of an Angel in that flesh A God that would provide himselfe no better glory then to damme man A God who lest hee should love man and be reconciled to man hath enwrapped him in an inevitable necessity of sinning A God who hath received enough and enough for the satisfaction of all men and yet not in consideration of their future sinnes but meerely because he hated them before they were sinners or before they were any thing hath made it impossible for the greatest part of men to have any benefit of that large satisfaction This is not such a Terriblenesse as arises out of his Works his Actions or his Scriptures for God hath never said never done any such thing as should make us lodge such conceptions of God in our selves or lay such imputations upon him The true feare of God is true wisedome It is true Joy Rejoice in trembling saith David Psal 2.11 There is no rejoycing without this feare there is no Riches without it Reverentia Ichovae The feare of the Lord is his treasure and that is the best treasure Thus farre we are to goe Heb. 12.28 Let us serve God with reverence and godly feare godly feare is but a Reverence it is not a Jealousie a suspition of God And let us doe it upon the reason that followes in the same place For our God is a consuming fire There is all his terriblenesse he is a consuming fire to his enemies but he is our God and God is love And therefore to conceive a cruell God a God that hated us even to damnation before we were as some who have departed from the sense and modesty of the Ancients have adventured to say or to conceive a God so cruell as that at our death or in our way he will afford us no assurance that hee is ours and we his but let us live and die in anxiety and torture of conscience in jealousie and suspition of his good purpose towards us in the salvation of our soules as those of the Romane Heresie teach to conceive such a God as from all eternity meant to damne me or such a God as would never make me know and be sure that I should bee saved this is not to professe God to be terrible in his works For his Actions are his works and his Scriptures are his works and God hath never done or said any thing to induce so terrible an opinion of him And so we have done with all those pieces which in our paraphrasticall distribution of the text at beginning did constitute our first our Historicall part Davids retrospect his commemoration of former blessings In which he proposes a duty a declaration of Gods goodnesse Dicite publish it speake of it He proposes Religious duties in that capacity as he is King Religion is the Kings care He proposes by way of Counsaile to all by way of Commandment to his owne Subjects And by a more powerfull way then either counsaile or Commandment that is by Example by doing that himselfe which he counsailes and commands others to doe Dicite Say speake It is a duty more then thinking and lesse then doing Every man is bound to speake for the advancement of Gods cause but when it comes to action that is not the private mans office but belongs to the publique or him who is the Publique David himselfe the King The duty is Commemoration Dicite Say speake but Dicite Deo Do this to God ascribe not your deliverances to your Armies and Navies by Sea or Land no nor to Saints in Heaven but to God onely Nor are ye called upon to contemplate God in his Essence or in his Decrees but in his works In his Actions in his Scriptures In both those you shall find him terrible that is Reverend majesticall though never tyrannicall nor cruell Passe we now according to our order laid downe at first to our second part the Propheticall part Davids prospect for the future and gather wee something from the particular branches of that Through the greatnesse of thy power thine enemies shall submit themselves unto thee In this our first consideration is that God himselfe hath enemies and then 2 Part. Habet Deus hostes how should we hope to be nay why would wee wish to be without them God had good that is Glory from his enemies And we may have good that is advantage in the way to glory by the exercise of our patience from enemies too Those for whom God had done most the Angels turned enemies first vex not thou thy selfe if those whom thou hast loved best hate thee deadliest There is a love in which it aggravates thy condemnation that thou art so much loved Does not God recompence that if there be such a hate as that thou art the better and that thy salvation is exalted for having beene hated And that profit the righteous have from enemies God loved us then when we were his enemies Rom. 5.10 and we frustrate his exemplar love to us if we love not enemies too The word Hostis which is a word of heavy signification and implies devastation and all the mischiefes of war is not read in all the New Testament Inimicus that is non amicus unfriendly is read there often very very often There is an enmity which may consist with Euangelicall charity but a hostility that carries in it a denotation of revenge of extirpation of annihilation that cannot This gives us some light how far we may and may not hate enemies God had enemies to whom he never returned The Angels that opposed him and that is because they oppose him still and are by their owne perversenesse incapable of reconciliation We were enemies to God too but being enemies Rom. 5.10 we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son As then actual reconciliation makes us actually friends so in differences which may be reconciled we should not be too severe enemies but maintaine in our selves a disposition of friendship but in those things which are in their nature irreconciliable we must be irreconciliable too There is an enmity which God himselfe hath made and made perpetuall Ponam inimicitias sayes God Gen. 3.15 God puts an enmity betweene the seed of the Serpent and the seed of the woman And those whom God joynes let no man sever those whom God severs let no man joyne The Schoole presents it well wee are to consider an enemy formally or materially that is that which makes him an enemy or that which makes him a man In that
mony is issued that is his Church where his merits should be applied to the discharge of particular consciences Coloss 2.9 So that here is one fulnesse that in this person dwelleth all the fulnesse of the Godhead bodily Here is another fulnesse that this person fulfilled all righteousnesse and satisfied the Justice of God by his suffering Thren 1.12 non est dolor sicut there was no sorrow like unto his sorrow It was so full that it exceeded all others And then there is a third fulnesse the Church Eph. 1.23 which is his body the fulnesse of him that filleth all in all perfit God there is the fulnesse of his dignity perfit man there is the fulnesse of his passibility and a perfit Church there is the fulnesse of the distribution of his mercies and merits to us And this is omnis plenitudo all fulnesse which yet is farther extended in the next word Inhabitavit It pleased the Father that all fulnesse should dwell in him The Holy Ghost appeared in the Dove Inhabitavit Remigius but he did not dwell in it The Holy Ghost hath dwelt in holy men but not thus So as that ancient Bishop expresses it Habitavit in Salomone per sapientiam He dwelt in Salomon in the spirit of wisedome in Ioseph in the spirit of chastity in Moses in the spirit of meeknesse but in Christo in plenitudine in Christ in all fulnesse Now this fulnesse is not fully expressed in the Hypostaticall union of the two natures God and Man in the person of Christ For concerning the divine Nature here was not a dram of glory in this union This was a strange fulnesse for it was a fulnesse of emptinesse It was all Humiliation all exinanition all evacuation of himselfe by his obedience to the death of the Crosse But when it was done Ne evacuaretur Crux Christi 1 Cor. 1.17 as the Apostle speaks in another case lest the Crosse of Christ should be evacuated and made of none effect he came to make this fulnesse perfit by instituting and establishing a Church Esay 1. ult The spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him saies the Prophet of Christ There is a fulnesse in generall for his qualification The Spirit of the Lord but what kinde of spirit It followes the spirit of wisedome and understanding the Spirit of Counsell and Power the Spirit of knowledge and of the feare of the Lord we see the spirit that must rest upon Christ is the Spirit in those beames in those functions in those operations 〈…〉 as conduce to government that is Wisedome and Counsell and Power So that this is Christs fulnesse that he is in a continuall administration of his Church in which he flowes over upon us his Ministers Joh. 1.16 for of his fulnesse have all we received and grace for grace that is power by his grace to derive grace upon the Congregation And so of his fulnesse all the Congregation receives too and receives in that full measure That they are filled with all the fulnesse of God Eph. 3.19 that is all the fulnesse that was in both his natures united in one person when the fulnesse of the Deity dwelt in him bodily all the merits of that person are derived upon us in his Word Sacraments in his Church which Church being to continue to the end it is most properly said habitavit in him in him as head of the Church all fulnesse all meanes of salvation dwell and are to be had permanently constantly infallibly Now how came Christ by all this fulnesse Complacuit this superlative fulnesse in himselfe this derivative fulnesse upon us That his merits should be able to build and furnish such a house to raise and rectifie such a Church acceptable to God in which all fulnesse should dwell to the worlds end It was onely because complacuit it pleased God for this personall name of the Father It pleased the Father is but added suppletorily by our Translators and is not in the Originall It pleased God to give him wherewithall to enable him so farre for this complacuit is as we say in the Schoole vox beneplaciti it expresses onely the good will and love of God without contemplation or foresight of any goodnesse in man Catharin nam hac posita plenitudine exorta sunt merita First we are to consider this fulnesse to have been in Christ and then from this fulnesse arose his merits we can consider no merit in Christ himselfe before whereby he should merit this fulnesse for this fulnesse was in him before he merited any thing and but for this fulnesse he had not so merited August Ille homo ut in unitatem filii Dei assumeretur unde meruit How did that man sayes St. Augustine speaking of Christ as of the son of man how did that man merit to be united in one person with the eternall Son of God Quid egit ante Quid credidit What had he done nay what had he beleeved Had he eyther faith or works before that union of both natures If then in Christ Jesus himselfe there were no praevisa merita That Gods fore-sight that he would use this fulnesse well did not work in God as a cause to give him this fulnesse but because hee had it of the free gift of God therefore he did use it well and meritoriously shall any of us be so frivolous in so important a matter as to think that God gave us our measure of grace or our measure of Sanctification because he fore-saw that we would heap up that measure and employ that talent profitably What canst thou imagine he could fore-see in thee A propensnesse a disposition to goodnesse when his grace should come Eyther there is no such propensnesse no such disposition in thee or if there be even that propensnesse and disposition to the good use of grace is grace it is an effect of former grace and his grace wrought before he saw any such propensnesse any such disposition Grace was first and his grace is his it is none of thine To end this point and this part non est discipulus supra magistrum The fulnesse of Christ himselfe was rooted in the complacuit It pleased the Father nothing else wrought in the nature of a Cause and therefore that measure of that fulnesse which is derived upon us from him our vocation our justification our sanctification are much more so we have them quia complacuit because it hath pleased him freely to give them God himselfe could see nothing in us till he of his owne goodnesse put it into us And so we have gone as farre as our first part carries us in those two branches and the fruits which we have gathered from thence First those generall doctrines that reason is not to be excluded in matters of religion and then that reason in all those cases is to be limited with the quia complacuit meerly in the good
all claimes and encumbrances upon his childrens children Psal 37.26 The righteous is mercifull and lendeth saies David Mercifull as his Father in Heaven is mercifull that is in perpetuall not transitory endowments for God did not set up his lights his Sun and his Moone for a day but for ever and such should our light or good works be too Hee is mercifull and he lendeth to whom for to the poore he giveth he looks for no returne from them for they are the waters upon which he casts his bread Yet he lendeth Eccles 11.1 Prov. 19.17 He that hath pity on the poore lendeth to the Lord. The righteous is mercifull and lendeth and then as David addes there His seed is blessed Blessed in this which followes there that he shall inherit the land Psal 37.29 Psal 112.4 and dwell therein for ever which he ratifies againe Surely he shall not be moved for ever that is he shall never be moved in his posterity And as he is blessed that way blessed in the establishment of his possession upon his childrens children so is he blessed in this that his honour and good name shall bee poured out as a fragrant oyle upon his posterity Ibid. The righteous shall be had in everlasting remembrance Their memory shall be alwaies alive Prov. 10.7 Prov. 11.30 and alwaies fresh in their posterity when The name of the wicked shall rot So then the fruit of the righteous is the tree of life saies Solomon that is the righteous shall produce plants that shall grow up and flourish so his posterity shall be a tree of life to many generations Prov. 17.6 and then The glory of children are their Fathers saies that wise King As Fathers receive comfort from good children so children receive glory from good parents in this are children glorified that they had righteous Fathers that lent unto the Lord. So that to recollect these peeces it is no small reward that God affords you if men seeing your good workes glorifie that is esteeme and respect and love and honour your children upon earth But it is not onely that your good workes shall bee an occasion of carrying glory upon the right object They shall glorifie your Father which is in heaven It is not the Father which is in Heaven Non Patrem that they should glorifie God as the common Father of all by creation For for that they need not your light your good works The Heavens declare the glory of God Psal 19.1 saies David that is glorifie him in an acknowledgement that he is the Father of them Deut. 32.6 and of all other things by creation Is not hee thy Father hath he not made thee is an interrogatory ministred by Moses to which all things must answer with the Prophet Malachie Malac. 2.10 yes He is our Father for he hath made us But that 's not the paternity of this text as God is Father of us all by creation Nor as he is a Father of some in a more particular consideration in giving them large portions great patrimonies in this world for thus he may be my Father and yet disinherit me hee may give me plenty of temporall blessings and withhold from me spirituall and eternall blessings Now to see this men need not your light your good workes for they see dayly That he maketh his sun to shine on the evill Mat. 5.45 and on the good and causeth it to raine on the just and the unjust He feeds Goates as well as Sheepe he gives the wicked temporall blessings as well as the righteous These then are not the paternities of our text that men by this occasion glorifie God as the Father of all men by creation nor as the Father of all rich men by their large patrimonies not as he is the Father not as he is a Father but as he is your Father as he is made yours as he is become yours by that particular grace of using the temporall blessings which he hath given you to his glory in letting your light shine before men For it were better God disinherited us so as to give us nothing then that he gave us not the grace to use that that he gave us well without this all his bread were stone Mat. 7.9 and all his fishes serpents all his temporall liberality malediction How much happier had that man beene that hath wasted thousands in play in riot in wantonnesse in sinfull excesses if his parents had left him no more at first then he hath left himselfe at last How much nearer to a kingdome in Heaven had hee beene if he had beene borne a begger here Nay though he have done no ill of such excessive kinds how much happier had he beene if he had had nothing left him if hee have done no good There cannot be a more fearfull commination upon man nor a more dangerous dereliction from God Ps 50.8 12. then when God saies I will not reprove thee for thy sacrifices Though thou offer none I care not I le never tell thee of it nor reprove thee for it I will not reprove thee for thy sacrifices And when he saies as he does there If I bee hungry I will not tell thee I will not awake thy charity I will not excite thee not provoke thee with any occasion of feeding me in feeding the poore When God shall say to me I care not whether you come to Church or no whether you pray or no repent or no confesse receive or no this is a fearfull dereliction so is it when he saies to a rich man I care not whether your light shine out or no whether men see your good works or no I can provide for my glory other waies For certainly God hath not determined his purpose and his glory so much in that to make some men rich that the poore might be relieved for that ends in bodily reliefe as in this that he hath made some men poore whereby the rich might have occasion to exercise their charity for that reaches to spirituall happinesse for which use the poore doe not so much need the rich as the rich need the poore the poore may better be saved without the rich then the rich without the poore But when men shall see that that God who is the Father of us all by creating us and the father of all the rich by enriching them is also become your father yours by adoption yours by infusion of that particular grace to doe good with your goods then are you made blessed instruments of that which God seeks here his glory They shall glorifie your father which is in heaven Glory is so inseparable to God as that God himself is called Glory They changed their Glory into the similitude of an Oxe Their glory their true God into an inglorious Idol Gloria Psal 106.20 Psal 85.10 That glory may dwell in our land sayes he that is that God may dwell therein The
that with sweetnesse with respect with reverence It was a better rule in so high a businesse then a man would look for at a Friars hands which S. Bernard hath Absque prudentia benevolentia non sunt perfecta consilia No man is a good Counsellor for all his wisdome and for all his liberty of speech except he love the person whom he counsels If he do not wish him well as well as tell him his faults he is rather a Satyrist and a Calumniator and seeks to vent his own wisdome and to exercise his authority then a good Counsellor And therefore sayes that Father before Christ took Peter into that high place he asked him and asked him thrice Amas me Lovest thou me He would be sure of his love to him first before he preferred him Vix in multitudine hominum unum reperio in utraque gratia consummatum sayes he still Not one man amongst a thousand that is both able to give counsell to great persons and then doth that office out of love to that person but rather to let others see his ability in himself or his authority and power over that person and so upon pretence of counselling opens his weaknesses to the knowledge and to the contempt of other men as Davids wife when he had danced as she thought undecently before the Ark spoke freely enough with liberty enough but it was with scorn and contempt And this is in no sort any payment of this ceremoniall debt which is that the foundations and the substance being preserved that is the glory of God and morall and religious truths being kept inviolate to think and say and doe those things which may conduce to the estimation and dignity of his superiour Now this hath led us to our other list of humane creditors that is our inferiours Inferiores and to render to them also their dues for to them we said at beginning there was due counsell if they were weak in understanding and there was due reliefe if they were weak in their fortunes For the first there are some persons in so high place in this world as that they can owe nothing to any temporall superiour for they have none But there is none so low in this world but he hath some lower then he is to pay this debt of counsell and advise to at least the debt of prayer for him if he will not receive the debt of counsell to him But in this place for haste we contract our selves to the debt of reliefe to the poore Amongst whom we may consider one sort of poore whom we our selves have made poore and damnified and then our debt is Restitution and another sort whom God for reasons unknowne to us hath made poore and there our debt is Almes For the first of these those whom thou hast damnified and made poore thou needst not come to the Apostles question of the blinde man Did this man sin or his parents that he is born blinde Did this man waste himselfe in house-keeping or in play or in wantonnesse that he is become poore Neither he sinned nor his parents sayes Christ neither excesse nor play nor wantonnesse hath undone this man but thy prevarication in his cause thy extortion thy oppression And now he starves and thou huntest after a popular reputation of a good house-keeper with his meate now he freezes in nakednesse and thy train shines in liveries out of his Wardrobe every Constable is ready to lay hold upon him for a rogue and thy son is Knighted with his mony Sileat licèt fama non silet fames sayes good and holy Bernard fame may be silent but famine will not perchance the world knowes not this or is weary of speaking of it but those poore wretches that starve by thy oppression know it and cry out in his hearing where thine own conscience accompanies them and cryes out with them against thee Pay this debt this debt of restitution and pay it quickly for nothing perishes nothing decayes an estate more nothing consumes nothing enfeebles a soule more then to let a great debt run on long But if they be poore of Gods making Eleemosyna and not of thine as they are to thee if thou know not why or how they are become poore for though God have inflicted poverty upon them for their sins that is a secret between God and them that which God hath revealed to thee is their poverty and not their sins then thou owest them a debt of almes though not restitution though thou have nothing in thy hands which was theirs yet thou hast something which should be theirs nothing perchance which thou hast taken from them but something certainly which thou hast received from God for them and in that sense S. Bernard sayes truly in the behalfe and in the person of the poore to wastfull men Nostrum est quod effunditis you are prodigall there is one fault but then you are prodigall of that which is not your own but ours and that is a greater and then we whose goods you wast are poore and miserable and that is the greatest fault of all Nobis crudeliter subtrahitur quod inaniter expenditis whatsoever you spend wantonly and vainly upon your selves or sinfully upon others is cruelly and bloodily drawen out of our bowels and worse then so sacrilegiously too because we are the Temples of the Holy Ghost If not properly taken away because we had it not yet unjustly and cruelly with-held and kept away because we should have it say those poore soules to these wastfull prodigalls in that devout and perswasive mouth of S. Bernard Here is a double misery of which you you that are prodigals are authors Vos vanitando peritis nos spoliando perimitis In this prodigality you waste your selves even your soules and you rob us you leave us naked in the cold and you cast your selves into dark and tormenting fire So that whether they be poore of Gods making or poore of your making Reddite debitum pay the debt you owe to the one by almes to the other by restitution We descend now to our last creditors 3. Part. Nos our selves It is a good rule of S. Bernard Qui ad sui mensuram proximum diligit seipsum diligere norit since we are commanded to love our neighbour as our selves we must be sure to love our selves so as we should doe or else we proceed by a wrong and a crooked rule So to give some guesse of our ability and of our willingnesse to pay our debts to God and our debts to man we must consider what we owe Rom. 1.14 and how we pay our selves Thou art a debtor as S. Paul sayes of himselfe to the Greek and to the Barbarian to the wise and to the unwise And thou thy selfe art amongst some of these wise and learned in the best art though thou know not a letter rich and mighty in the best treasure though thou possesse not a penny
City and save it for mine own sake 2 Reg. 19.34 and for my servant Davids sake Quantus murus Patriae vir justus is a holy exclamation of S. Ambrose What a Wall to any Towne what a Sea to any Iland what a Navy to any Sea what an Admirall to any Navy is a good man Apply thy selfe therefore and make thy conversation with good men and get their love and that shall be an armour of proofe to thee When Saint Augustines Mother lamented the ill courses that her sonne tooke in his youth still that Priest to whom she imparted her sorrowes said Filius istarum lacrymarum non potest perire That Son for whom so good a Mother hath shed so many teares cannot perish He put it not upon that issue filius Dci the elect child of God the son of predestination cannot perish for at that time that name was either no name or would scarce have seemed to have belonged to S. Augustine but the child of these teares of this devotion cannot be lost Mat. 8.13 Christ said to the Centurion fiat sicut credidisti Goe thy way and as thou beleevest so be it done unto thee and his servant was healed in the selfe-same houre The master beleeved and the servant was healed Little knowest thou what thou hast received at Gods hands by the prayers of the Saints in heaven that enwrap thee in their generall prayers for the Militant Church Little knowest thou what the publique prayers of the Congregation what the private prayers of particular devout friends that lament thy carelesnesse and negligence in praying for thy selfe have wrung and extorted out of Gods hands in their charitable importunity for thee And therfore at last make thy selfe fit to doe for others that which others when thou wast unfit to doe thy selfe that office have done for thee in assisting thee with their prayers If thou meet thine enemies Oxe Exod. 23 4 5. or Asse going astray sayes the Law thou shalt surely bring it back to him again If thou see the Asse of him that hateth thee lying under his burden and wouldest forbeare to help him thou shalt surely help him Estnè Deo cura de Bobus is the Apostles question Hath God care of Oxen of other mens Oxen How much more of his owne Sheep And therefore if thon see one of his Sheep one of thy fellow Christians strayed into sins of infirmity and negligent of himselfe joyne him with thine owne soule in thy prayers to God Relieve him if that be that which he needs with thy prayers for him and relieve him if his wants be of another kinde according to his prayers to thee Cur apud te homo Collega non valeat sayes S. Ambrose why should not he that is thy Colleague thy fellow-man as good a man that is as much a man as thou made of the same bloud and redeemed with the same bloud as thou art why should not he prevaile with thee so farre as to the obtaining of an almes Cum apud Deum servus interveniendi meritum jus habe at impetrandi when some fellow-servant of thine hath had that interest in God as by his intercession and prayers to advance thy salvation wilt not thou save the life of another man that prayes to thee when perchance thy soule hath been saved by another man that prayed for thee Well then Ejus Christ had respect to their faith that brought this sick man to him Consuetudo est miserecordis Dei It is Gods ordinary way sayes S. Chysost hunc honorem dare servis suis ut propter eos salventur alii to afford this honour to his servants that for their sakes he saves others But neither this which we say now out of S. Crhysostome nor that which we said before out of S. Ambrose nor all that we might multiply out of the other Fathers doth exclude the faith of that particular man who is to be saved It is true that in this particular case S. Hierome sayes Non vidit fidem ejus qui offer ebatur sed corum qui offerebant That Christ did not respect his faith that was brought but onely theirs that brought him but except S. Hierome be to be understood so that Christ did not first respect his faith but theirs we must depart from him to S. Chrysostome Neque enim se portari sustinuisset He would neither have put himselfe nor them to so many difficulties as he did if he had not had a faith that is a constant assurance in this meanes of his recovery And therefore the Rule may be best given thus That God gives worldly blessings bodily health deliverance from dangers and the like to some men in contemplation of others though themselves never thought of it all the examples which we have touched upon convince abundantly That God gives spirituall blessings to Infants presented according to his Ordinance in Baptisme in Contemplation of the faith of their Parents or of the Church or of their sureties without any actuall faith in the Infant is probable enough credible enough But take it as our case is de adultis in a man who is come to the use of his own reason and discretion so God never saves any man for the faith of another otherwise then thus that the faithfull man may pray for the conversion of an unfaithfull who does not know nor if he did would be content to be prayed for and God for his sake that prayes may be pleased to work upon the other but before that man comes to the Dimittuntur peccata that his sinnes are forgiven that man comes to have faith in himselfe Iustus in fide sua vivit there is no life without faith nor In fide aliena Habak 2.4 no such life as constitutes Righteousnesse without a personall faith of our owne So that this fides illorum in our Text this that is called their faith hath reference to the sick man himselfe as well as to them that brought him And then in Him and in Them it was fides visa faith which by an ouvert act Visae was declared and made evident For Christ who was now to convay into that company the knowledge that he was the Messias which Messias was to be God and Man as afterwards for their conviction who would not beleeve him to be God he shewed that he knew their inward thoughts and did some other things which none but God could doe so here for the better edification of men he required such a faith as might be evident to men For though Christ could have seene their faith by looking into their hearts yet to think that here he saw it by that power of his Divinity nimis coactum videtur It is too narrow and too forced an interpretation of the place sayes Calvin They then that is all they declared their faith their assurance that Christ could and would help him It was good evidence of a strength of faith in him that
and the Elders come to Iudith and they say to her Judith 15.8 Thou art the exaltation of Jerusalem thou art the great glory of Israel thou art the rejoycing of our Nation thou hast done all these things by thy hand And all this was true of Iudith and due to Iudith and such recognitions and such acclamations God requires of such people as have received such benefits by such instruments For as there is Treason and petty-treason so there is Sacriledge and petty-sacriledge and petty-sacriledge is to rob Princes and great persons of their just praise But then as we must confer this upon them so must they and we and all transfer all upon God for so Iudith proceeds there with her Priests and Elders Begin unto my God with Timbrels sing unto the Lord with Cymbals exalt him and call upon his name So likewise Elizabeth magnifies the blessed Virgin Mary Blessed art thou amongst women And this was true of her and due to her Luke 1.42 and she takes it to her self when she sayes there From henceforth all Generations shall call me blessed but first she had carried it higher to the highest My soule doth magnifie the Lord and my spirit doth rejoyce in God my Saviour In a word Christ forbids not this man to call him good but he directs him to know in what capacity that attribute of goodnesse belonged to him as he was God That when this man beleeved before that Christ was good and learnt from him now that none was good but God he might by a farther concoction a farther rumination a farther meditation of this come in due time to know that Christ was God And this was his Method Now this leads us into two rich and fragrant fields this sets us upon the two Hemispheares of the world the Western Hemispheare the land of Gold and Treasure and the Eastern Hemispheare the land of Spices and Perfumes for this puts us upon both these considerations first That nothing is Essentially good but God and there is the land of Gold centricall Gold viscerall Gold gremiall Gold Gold in the Matrice and womb of God that is Essentiall goodnesse in God himself and then upon this consideration too That this Essentiall goodnesse of God is so diffusive so spreading as that there is nothing in the world that doth not participate of that goodnesse and there is the land of Spices and Perfumes the dilatation of Gods goodnesse So that now both these propositions are true First That there is nothing in this world good and then this also That there is nothing ill As amongst the Fathers it is in a good sense as truly said Deus non est Ens Deus non est substantia God is no Essence God is no substance for feare of imprisoning God in a predicament as it is said by others of the Fathers that there is no other Essence no other Substance but God First then there is nothing good but God neither can I conceive any thing in God that concerns me so much as his goodnesse for by that I know him and for that I love him I know him by that for as Damascen sayes primarium Dei nomen Bonitas Gods first name that is the first way by which God notified him self to man was Goodness for out of his goodnesse he made him His name of Jehova we admire with a reverence but we cannot expresse that name not only not in the signification of it but not considently not assuredly in the sound thereof we are not sure that we should call it Jehova not sure that any man did call it Jehova a hundred yeares agoe But August ineffabili dulcedine teneor cum audio Bonus Dominus I am not transported with astonishment as at his name of Jehova but replenished with all sweetnesse established with all soundnesse when I hear of my God in that name my good God By that I know him and for that I love him For the object of my understanding is truth but the object of my love my affection my desire is goodnesse If my understanding be defective in many cases faith will supply it if I beleeve it I am as well satisfied as if I knew it but nothing supplies nor fills nor satisfies the desire of man on this side of God Every man hath something to love and desire till he determine it in God because God only hath Imminuibi lem bonitatem as they render Dyonisius the Areopagite an inexhaustible goodnesse a sea that no land can suck in a land that no sea can swallow up a forrest that no fire can waste a fire that no water can quench Aug. He is so good goodnesse so as that he is Causa bonorum quae in nos quae in nobis the cause of all good either received by us or conceived in us of all either prepared externally for us Idem or produced internally in us In a word he is Bonum caetera bona colorans amabilia reddens it is his goodnesse that gilds and enamels all the good persons or good actions in this world There is none good but God and quale bonum ille sayes that Father what kinde of goodnesse God is this doth sufficiently declare Quòd nulli ab co recedenti bene sit That no man that ever went from him went by good way or came to good end There is none good but God there is centricall viscerall gremiall gold goodnesse in the roote in the tree of goodnesse God Now Arbor bona bonos fructus sayes Christ If the tree be good the fruit is good too The tree is God What are the fruits of this tree What are the off-spring of God S. Ambr. tells us Angeli homines virtutes eorum Angels and men and the good parts and good actions of Angels and men are the fruit of this tree they grow from God Angels as they fell Adam as he fell the sins of Angels and men are not fruits of this tree they grow not radically not primarily from God Nihil in se habet Deus semi-plenum saies Damascen God is no half-god no fragmentary God he is an intire God and not made of remnants not good only so as that he hath no roome for ill in himself but good so too as that he hath no roome for any ill will towards any man no mans damnation no mans sin growes radically from this tree When God had made all sayes Tertullian he blessed all Maledicere non norat quia nec malefacere saies he God could no more meane ill then doe ill God can no more make me sin then sin himself It is the foole that saies There is no God saies David And it is the other foole sayes S. Basil that saies God produces any ill par precii scelus quia negat Deum bonum It is as impiously done to deny God to be intirely good as to deny him to be God For we see the Manichees and the Marcionites and such
from sin Inter abjectos abjectissimus peccator Grego No man falls lower then he that falls into a course of sin Sin is a fall It is not onely a deviation a turning out of the way upon the right or the left hand but it is a sinking a falling In the other case of going out of the way a man may stand upon the way and inquire and then proceed in the way if he be right or to the way if he be wrong But when he is fallen and lies still he proceeds no farther inquires no farther To be too apt to conceive scruples in matters of religion stops and retards a man in the way to mistake some points in the truth of religion puts a man for that time in a wrong way But to fall into a course of sin this makes him unsensible of any end that he hath to goe to of any way that he hath to goe by God hath not removed man not with-drawne man from this Earth he hath not given him the Aire to flie in as to Birds nor Spheares to move in as to Sun and Moone he hath left him upon the Earth and not onely to tread upon it as in contempt or in meere Dominion but to walk upon it in the discharge of the duties of his calling and so to be conversant with the Earth is not a falling But as when man was nothing but earth nothing but a body he lay flat upon the earth his mouth kissed the earth his hands embraced the earth his eyes respected the earth And then God breathed the breath of life into him and that raised him so farre from the earth as that onely one part of his body the soles of his feet touches it And yet man so raised by God by sin fell lower to the earth againe then before from the face of the earth to the womb to the bowels to the grave So God finding the whole man as low as he found Adams body then fallen in Originall sin yet erects us by a new breath of life in the Sacrament of Baptisme and yet we fall lower then before we were raised from Originall into Actuall into Habituall sins So low as that we think not that we need know not that there is a resurrection and that is the wonderfull that is the fearfull fall Though those words Quomodo cecidisti de Coelo Lucifer Esay 14.12 How art thou fallen from heaven O Lucifer the Son of the morning be ordinarily applied to the fall of the Angels yet it is evident that they are literally spoken of the fall of a man It deserves wonder more then pity that man whom God had raised to so Noble a heighth in him should fall so low from him Man was borne to love he was made in the love of God but then man falls in love when he growes in love with the creature he falls in love As we are bid to honour the Physitian and to use the Physitian but yet it is said in the same Chapter Ecclus. 38.1 V. 15. He that sinneth before his Maker let him fall into the hands of the Physitian It is a blessing to use him it is a curse to rely upon him so it is a blessing to glorifie God in the right use of his creatures but to grow in love with them is a fall For we love nothing that is so good as our selves Beauty Riches Honour is not so good as man Man capable of grace here of glory hereafter Nay as those things which we love in their nature are worse then we which love them so in our loving them we endeavour to make them worse then they in their own nature are by over-loving the beauty of the body we corrupt the soule by overloving honour and riches we deflect and detort these things which are not in their nature ill to ill uses and make them serve our ill purposes Man falls as a fall of waters that throwes downe and corrupts all that it embraces Nay beloved when a man hath used those wings which God hath given him and raised himselfe to some heighth in religious knowledge and religious practise Acts 29.9 as Eutichus out of a desire to hear Paul preach was got up into a Chamber and up into a window of that Chamber and yet falling asleep fell downe dead so we may fall into a security of our present state into a pride of our knowledge or of our purity and so fall lower then they who never came to our heighth So much need have we of a resurrection So sin is a fall and every man is affraid of falling even from his temporall station Mâ—rs Clem. Alex. more affraid of falling then of not beeing raised And Qui peccat quatenus peccat fit seipso deterior In every sin a man falls from that degree which himselfe had before In every sin he is dishonoured he is not so good a man as he was impoverished he hath not so great a portion of grace as hee had Infatuated hee hath not so much of the true wisedome of the feare of God as he had disarmed he hath not that interest and confidence in the love of God that he had and deformed he hath not so lively a representation of the Image of God as before In every sin we become prodigals but in the habit of sin we become bankrupts affraid to come to an account A fall is a fearfull thing that needs a raising a help but sin is a death and that needs a resurrection and a resurrection is as great a work as the very Creation it selfe It is death in semine in the roote it produces it brings forth death It is death in arbore in the body in it selfe death is a divorce and so is sin and it is death in fructu in the fruit thereof sin plants spirituall death and this death produces more sin Obduration Impenitence and the like Be pleased to returne and cast one halfe thought upon each of these Sin is the roote of death Death by sin entred and death passed upon all men for all men have sinned Rom. 5.12 It is death because we shall dye for it But it is death in it selfe We are dead already dead in it Thou hast a name that thou livest and art dead was spoken to a whole Church Apoc. 3.1 It is not evidence enough to prove that thou art alive to say I saw thee at a Sermon that spirit that knowes thy spirit he that knowes whether thou wert moved by a Sermon melted by a Sermon mended by a Sermon he knows whether thou be alive or no. That which had wont to be said That dead men walked in Churches is too true Men walk out a Sermon or walk out after a Sermon as ill as they walked in they have a name that they live Iohn 5.25 and are dead But the houre is come and now is when the dead shall heare the voyce of the Son of God That is at
judgements did God shew Adam Iudicia pessimorum spirituum sayes he the better to containe Adam in his duty God declared to him the judgement that he had executed upon those disobedient Angels So that as Adam if he had made a right use of Gods grace had been immortall in his body and yet not immortall then by nature as our bodies in the state of glory in the resurrection shall be immortall and yet not immortall then by nature so no Angell after this Confirmation that is the mediation of Christ applied to him shall fall For Quis Catholicus ignorat Aug. nullum novum Diabolum ex bonis Angelis futurum Who can pretend to be a Catholique and beleeve that ever there shall be any new Devill from amongst the good Angels And yet by the way many of the Ancient Fathers thought that those words That the sons of God saw the daughters of men to be faire and fell in love with them were meant of good Angels who fell in love with those women that were committed to their charge and that they sinned in so doing and that they never returned to heaven but fell to the first fallen Angels So that those Fathers have more then implied a possibility of falling into sin and punishment for sin in the good Angels But this none sayes now nor with any probability ever did It is enough that they stand confirmed confirmed by the grace of God in Christ Jesus so that now being in possession of the sight of God and the light of Gâ—ry their understanding is perfectly illustrated so that they can apprehend nothing erroneously and therefore their will is perfectly rectified so that they can desire nothing irregularly and therefore they cannot sin and therefore they cannot die for all sin is from the perversenesse of the will and all disorder in the will from errour in the understanding In heaven they are and we by our assimilation to them shall be free from both and impeccable and impassible by the continuall grace of God Though if they or we were left to our selves even there God could put no trust in his servants nor leave his Angels uncharged with folly And so we have done with the pieces which constitute our first part De quibus of whom these words are spoken First that they were spoken of Angels rejecting that single Capuccin who only denies it and then of good Angels accepting Calvins interpretation because though he be singular in applying this Text to that Doctrine yet in the Doctrine it self he hath authority enough and faire reasons for the Text it selfe and lastly how that which we call Confirmation in those Angels accrewes to them and how it works in them And so we passe to our second Part what is inferred upon these premisses what concluded upon these propositions what by our assimilation to Angels reflects upon us And here 2. Part. Testis Eliphaz because the matter is of much consideration we proposed first to be considered the waight and validity of the testimony in the person of him that gives it for many times the credit of the restimony depends much upon the credit of the witnesse And here it is not Iob himself it is but Eliphaz Eliphaz the Temanite an Alien a stranger to the Covenant and Church of God But surely no greater a stranger then those secular Poets whose sentences S. Paul cites not only in his Epistles but in his Sermons too Certainly not so great a stranger as the Devill and yet in how many places of Scripture are words spoken by the Devill himself inserted into the Scriptures and thereby so farre made the word of God as that the word of God the Bible were not perfect norintire to us if we had not those words of those Poets those words of the Devill himself in it How can I doubt but that God can draw good out of ill and make even some sin of mine some occasion of my salvation when the God of truth can make the word of the father of lies his word There is but one place in all this Book of Iob cited in the New Testament Job 5.13 that is He taketh the wise in their owne craft and those words are not spoken by Iob himself but by this very friend of Iob this Eliphaz that speaks in our Text 1 Cor. 3.19 and yet they are cited in the phrase and manner in which holy Scripture is ordinarily cited It is written sayes the Apostle there and so the Holy Ghost that spoke in S. Paul hath canonized the words spoken by Eliphaz But besides the credit which these words have Visio à posteriori that they are after inserted into the word of God which is another manner of credit and authentiquenesse then that which the Canonists speak of that when any sentence of a Father is cited and inserted into a Decretall Epistle of a Pope or any part of the Canon Law that sentence is thereby made authenticall and canonicall these words have their credit à priori for before be spake them to Iob he received them in a vision from God I had a vision in the night Ver. 12. sayes he and feare and trembling came upon me and a spirit stood before me and I heard this voyce Neither is there any necessity no nor reason to charge Eliphaz with a false relation or counterfaiting a revelation from God which he had not had as some Expositors have done For howsoever in some argumentations and applyings of things to Iobs particular case we may finde some errors in Eliphaz in modo probandi in the manner of his proceeding yet we shall not finde him to proceed upon false grounds and therefore we beleeve Eliphaz to have received this that he sayes from God in a vision and for the instruction of a man more in Gods favour then himself of Iob. Balaam had the reputation of a great Wizard and yet God made his Asse wiser then he and able to instruct and catechize him Generally we are to receive our instructions from Gods established Ordinances from his ordinary meanes afforded to us in his Church And where those meanes sufficient in themselves are duly exhibited to us we are not to hearken after revelations nor to beleeve every thing that may have some such apparance to be a revelation But yet we are not so to conclude God in his Law as that he should have no Prerogative nor so to binde him up in his Ordinances as that he never can or never does work by an extraordinary way of revelation Neither must the profusion of miracles the prodigality and prostitution of miracles in the Romane Church where miracles for every naturall disease may be had at some Shrine or miracle-shop better cheap then a Medicine a Drugge a Simple at an Apothecaries bring us to deny or distrust all miracles done by God upon extraordinary causes and to important purposes Eliphaz was a prophane person and yet received a Vision from
never spoken of the Resurrection to them they were likely to have heard of it from them to whom Christ had spoken of it It was Cleophas his question to Christ though he knew him not then to be so when they went together to Emaus Art thou onely a stranger in Ierusalem that is hast thou been at Jerusalem and is this Luke 24.16 The death of Christ strange to thee So may we say to any that professes Christianity Art thou in the Christian Church and is this The Resurrection of Christ strange to thee Are there any amongst us that thrust to Fore-noones and After-noones Sermons that pant after high and un-understandable Doctrines of the secret purposes of God and know not this the fundamentall points of Doctrine Even these womens ignorance though they were in the number of the Disciples of Christ makes us affraid that some such there may be and therefore blessed be they that have set on foote that blessed way of Catechizing that after great professions we may not be ignorant of small things These things these women might have learnt of others who were to instruct them Luke 24. â—â— But for their better assurance the Angell tells them here that Christ himself had told them of this before Remember sayes he how Christ spoke to you whilst he was with you in Galile We observe that Christ spoke to his Disciples of his Resurrection five times in the Gospell Now these women could not be present at any of the five but one which was the third Mat. 17.22 And before that it is evident that they had applied themselves to Christ and ministred unto him The Angell then remembers them what Christ said to them there Luke 24.6 It was this The Sonne of man must be delivered into the hands of sinfull men and Crucified and the third day rise againe And they remembred his words sayes the Text there Then they remembred them when they heard of them again but not till then Which gives me just occasion to note first the perverse tendernesse and the supercilious and fastidious delicacy of those men that can abide no repetitions nor indure to heare any thing which they have heard before when as even these things which Christ himself had preached to these women in Galile had been lost if this Angel had not preached them over again to them at Jerusalem Remember how he spake to you sayes he to them And why shouldst thou be loath to heare those things which thou hast heard before when till thou heardst them again thou didst not know that is not consider that ever thou hadst heard them So have we here also just occasion to note their impertinent curiosity who though the sense be never so well observed call every thing a salfification if the place be not rightly cyphard or the word exactly cited and magnifie one another for great Text men though they understand no Text because they cite Book and Chapter and Verse and Words aright whereas in this place the Angel referres the women to Christs words and they remember that Christ spake those words and yet if we compare the places Mat. 17.22 Luke 24.6 that where Christ speaks the words and that where the Angell repeats them though the sense be intirely the same yet the words are not altogether so Thus the Angell erects them in the consternation Remember what was promised that in three dayes he would rise The third day is come and he is risen as he said and that your senses may be exercised as well as your faith Come and see the place where the Lord lay Even the Angell calls Christ Lord Dominus Angeli Heb. 1.6 and his Lord for the Lord and the Angell calls him so is Lord of all of men and Angels When God brings his Soninto the world sayes the Apostle he sayes let all the Angels of God worship him And when God caries his Son out of the world by the way of the Crosse they have just cause to worship him too Colâ—â—â— 1.20 for By the blood of his Crosse are all things reconciled to God both things in earth and things in heaven Men and Angels Therefore did an Angel minister to Christ before he was Luke 1. Mat. 1. Luke 2. Mat. 4. Luke 22. Acts 1.10 in the Annunciation to his blessed Mother that he should be And an Angel to his imaginary Father Ioseph before he was born And a Quire of Angels to the Shepheards at his birth An Angel after his tentation And in his Agony and Bloody-sweat more Angels Angels at his last step at his Ascension and here at his Resurrection Angels minister unto him The Angels of heaven acknowledged Christ to be their Lord. In the beginning some of the Angels would be Similes Altissimo like to the most High But what a transcendent what a super-diabolicall what a prae-Luciferian pride is his that will be supra Altissimum 2 Thes 2.4 superiour to God That not only exalteth himselfe above all that is called God Kings are called Gods and this Arch-Monarch exalts himselfe above all Kings but above God literally and in that wherein God hath especially manifested himself to be God to us that is in prescribing us a Law how he will be obeyed for in dispensing with this Law and adding to and withdrawing from this law he exalts himself above God as our Law-giver And as it is also said there He exalteth himself and opposeth himselfe against God There is no trusting of such neighbours as are got above us in power This man of sin hath made himselfe superiour to God and then an enemy to God for God is Truth and he opposes him in that for he is heresie and falshood and God is Love and he opposes him in that for he is envy and hatred and malice and sedition and invasion and rebellion The Angell confesses Christ to be The Lord his Lord Dominus mortuus and he confesses him to be so then when he lay dead in the grave Come seethe place where the Lord lay A West Indian King having beene well wrought upon for his Conversion to the Christian Religion and having digested the former Articles when he came to that He was crucified dead and buried had no longer patience but said If your God be dead and buried leave me to my old god the Sunne for the Sunne will not dye But if he would have proceeded to the Article of the Resurrection hee should have seene that even then when hee lay dead hee was GOD still Then when hee was no Man hee was GOD still Nay then when hee was no man hee was God and Man in this true sense That though the body and soule were divorced from one another and that during that divorce he were no man for it is the union of body and soule that makes a man yet the Godhead was not divided from either of these constitutive parts of man body or soule Psal 22.7 1
dependance or relation to any faculty in man or man himselfe have some concurrence and co-operation therein There we found that in the first creation God wrought otherwise for the production of creatures then he does now At first he did it immediatly intirely by himselfe Now he hath delegated and substituted nature and imprinted a naturall power in every thing to produce the like So in the first act of mans Conversion God may be conceived to work otherwise then in his subsequent holy actions for in the first man cannot be conceived to doe any thing in the rest he may not that in the rest God does not all but that God findes a better disposition and souplenesse and maturity and mellowing to concurre with his motion in that man who hath formerly been accustomed to a sense and good use of his former graces then in him who in his first conversion receives but then the first motions of his grace But yet even in the first creation the Spirit of God did not move upon that nothing which was before God made heaven and earth But he moved upon the waters though those waters had nothing in themselves to answer his motion yet he had waters to move upon Though our faculties have nothing in themselves to answer the motions of the Spirit of God yet upon our faculties the Spirit of God works And as out of those waters those creatures did proceed though not from those waters so out of our faculties though not from our faculties doe our good actions proceed too All in all is from the love of God but there is something for God to love There is a man there is a soul in that man there is a will in that soul and God is in love with this man and this soul and this will Aug. would have it Non amor ita egenus indigus ut rebus quas diligit subjiciatur sayes S. Aug. excellently The love of God to us is not so poore a love as our love to one another that his love to us should make him subject to us as ours does to them whom we love but Superfertur sayes that Father and our Text he moves above us He loves us but with a Powerfull a Majesticall an Imperiall a Commanding love He offers those whom he makes his his grace but so as he sometimes will not be denyed So the Spirit moves spiritually upon the waters He comes to the waters to our naturall faculties but he moves above those waters He inclines he governes he commands those faculties And this his motion upon those waters we may usefully consider in some divers applications and assimilations of water to man and the divers uses thereof towards man We will name but a few Baptisme and Sin and Tribulation and Death are called in the Scripture by that name Waters and we shall onely illustrate that consideration how this Spirit of God moves upon these Waters Baptisme Sin Tribulation and Death and we have done The water of Baptisme is the water that runs through all the Fathers Baptismus All the Fathers that had occasion to dive or dip in these waters to say any thing of them make these first waters in the Creation the figure of baptisme Tertul. There Tertullian makes the water Primam sedem Spiritus Sancti The progresse and the setled house The voyage and the harbour The circumference and the centre of the Holy Ghost And therefore S. Hierome calls these waters Matrem Mundi The Mother of the World Hieron and this in the figure of Baptisme Nascentem Mundum in figura Baptismi parturiebat The waters brought forth the whole World were delivered of the whole World as a Mother is delivered of a childe and this In figura Baptismi To fore-shew that the waters also should bring forth the Church That the Church of God should be borne of the Sacrament of Baptisme So sayes Damascen Damase Basil And he establishes it with better authority then his owne Hoc Divinus asseruit Basilius sayes he This Divine Basil said Hoc factum quia per Spiritum Sanctum aquam voluit renovare hominem The Spirit of God wrought upon the waters in the Creation because he meant to doe so after in the regeneration of man And therefore Pristinam sedem recognoscens conquiescit Terrul Till the Holy Ghost have moved upon our children in Baptisme let us not think all done that belongs to those children And when the Holy Ghost hath moved upon those waters so in Baptisme let us not doubt of his power and effect upon all those children that dye so We know no meanes how those waters could have produced a Menow a Shrimp without the Spirit of God had moved upon them and by this motion of the Spirit of God we know they produce Whales and Leviathans We know no ordinary meanes of any saving grace for a child but Baptisme neither are we to doubt of the fulnesse of salvation in them that have received it And for our selves Mergimur emergimus Aug. In Baptisme we are sunk under water and then raised above the water againe which was the manner of baptizing in the Christian Church by immersion and not by aspersion till of late times Affectus ameres sayes he our corrupt affections Idem and our inordinate love of this world is that that is to be drowned in us Amor securitatis A love of peace and holy assurance and acquiescence in Gods Ordinance is that that lifts us above water Therefore that Father puts all upon the due consideration of our Baptisme And as S. Hierome sayes Hier. Certainly he that thinks upon the last Judgement advisedly cannot sin then Aug. So he that sayes with S. Augustine Procede in confessionc fides mea Let me make every day to God this confession Domine Deus meus Sancte Sancte Sancte Domine Deus meus O Lord my God O Holy Holy Holy Lord my God In nomine tuo Baptizatus sum I consider that I was baptized in thy name and what thou promisedst me and what I promised thee then and can I sin this sin can this sin stand with those conditions those stipulations which passed between us then The Spirit of God is motion the Spirit of God is rest too And in the due consideration of Baptisme a true Christian is moved and setled too moved to a sense of the breach of his conditions setled in the sense of the Mercy of his God in the Merits of his Christ upon his godly sorrow So these waters are the waters of Baptisme Sin also is called by that name in the Scriptures Aquae peccatum Water The great whore sitteth upon many waters she sits upon them as upon Egges and hatches Cockatrices venomous and stinging sins Apoc. 17. Aqum and yet pleasing though venomous which is the worst of sin that it destroyes and yet delights for though they be called waters yet that is
himself I said I shall not be moved And there is a security of the faithfull a constant perswasion grounded upon those marks which God in his Word hath set upon that state That neither height nor depth nor any creature shall separate us from God But yet this security is never discharged of that feare which he that said that 1 Cor. 9.27 Phil. 2.12 1 Cor. 10.12 had in himself I keep under my body lest when I have preached to others I my self should be a cast-away And which he perswades other how safe soever they were Work out your salvation with feare and trembling And Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall As then there is a vitious an evill security and that holy security which is good is not without feare so there is no feare of God though it have some servility so farre as servility imports but a feare of punishment but it is good August For Timor est amor inchoativus The love of God begins in feare and then Amor est timor consummatus The feare of God ends in love 1 sâ—l 2.11 which David intends when he sayes Rejoyce with trembling Conceive no such feare as excludes spirituall joy conceive no such assurance as excludes an humble and reverentiall feare There is feare of God too narrow when we thinke every naturall crosse every worldly accident to be a judgement of God and a testimony of his indignation which the Poet not altogether in an ill sense calls a disease of the soule Quo morbo mentem concusse timore deorum He imagines a man may be sick of the feare of God that is not distinguish between naturall accidents and immediate judgements of God between ordinary declarations of his power and extraordinary declarations of his anger There is also a feare of God too large too farre extended when for a false feare of offending God I dare not offend those men who pretend to come in his name and so captivate my conscience to the traditions and inventions of men as to the word and law of God And there is a feare of God conceived which never quickens but putrifies in the womb before inanimation the feare and trembling of the Devill and men whom he possesses desperate of the mercies of God But there is a feare acceptable to God and yet hath in it a trembling a horrour a consternation an astonishment an apprehension of Gods dereliction for a time The Law was given in thundring Exod. 20.20 and lightning and the people were afraid How proceeds Moses with them Feare not saies he for God is come to prove you that his feare might be before your faces Here is a feare not that is feare not with despaire nor with diffidence but yet therefore That you may feare the Law for in this place the very Law it selfe which is given to direct them is called feare As in another place God himselfe is called feare as he is in other places called love too Iacob swore by the Feare of his Father Isaac that is Gen. 32.53 by him whom his Father Isaac feared as the Chalde Paraphrase rightly expresses it Briefly this is the difference between Fearfulnesse and Feare for sowe are fain to call Timiditatem and Timorem Timidity Fearfulnesse is a fear where no cause of fear is and there is no cause of feare where man and man onely threatens on one side and God commands on the other Feare not thou worme of Iacob I will help thee Esâ—y 41.14 Heb. 11.23 saith the Lord thy redeemer the Holy one of Israel Moses Parents had overcome this fearfulnesse They hid him sayes the Text Et non metucrunt Edictum Regis They feared not the Proclamation of the King Because it was directly and evidently and undisputably against the manifest will of God Queen Esther had overcome this fearfulnesse she had fasted and prayed and used all prescribed and all possible meanes and then she entred the Kings Chamber against the Proclamation with that necessary resolution Si peream peream If I perish Esther 4.16 I perish Not upon a disobedient not upon a desperate undertaking but in a rectified conscience and well established opinion that either that Law was not intended to forbid her who was his Wife or that the King was not rightly informed in that bloody command which he had given for the execution of all her Countrymen And for those who doe not overcome this fearfulnesse that is that feare where no cause of feare is and there is no cause of feare where Gods cause is by godly wayes promoved though we doe not alwayes discern the wayes by which this is done for those men that frame imaginary feares to themselves to the with-drawing or discouraging of other in the service of God we see where such men are ranked by the Holy Ghost when S. Iohn sayes The unbeleeving the murderer the whore-monger the sorcerer the idolater Apoc. 21.8 shall have their portion in the lake of brimstone which is the second death We fee who leads them all into this irrecoverable precipitation The fearfull that is he that beleeves not God in his promises that distrusts God in his owne cause as soone as he seemes to open us to any danger or distrusts Gods instruments as soone as they goe another way then he would have them goe To end this there is no love of God without feare no Law of God no God himselfe without feare And here as in very many other places of Scripture the feare of God is our whole Religion the whole service of God for here Feare him includes Worship him reverence him obey him Which Counsell or Commandement though it need no reason no argument yet the Apostle does pursue with an argument and that constitutes our second Part. Now the Apostles arguments grow out of a double root 2 Part. One argument is drawne from God another from man From God thus implied If God be a Father feare him for naturally we acknowledge the power of a Father to be great over his children and consequently the reverent feare of the children great towards him The Father had Potestatem vitae necis A power over the life of his child he might have killed his childe but that the child should kill his Father it never entred into the provision of any Law and it was long before it fell into the suspition of any Law-maker Romulus in his Laws called every man-slaughter Parricidium because it was Paris occisio He had killed a man a Peere a creature equall to himselfe but for Parricide in the later sense when Parricide is Patricide the killing of a Father it came not into the jealousie of Romulus Law nor into the heart or hand of any man there in sixe hundred yeares after Cum lege coeperunt Seneca facinus poena monstravit sayes their Morall man That sin began not till the Law forbad it and only the punishment ordained for
in love with her Christ Jesus hath beene seen so Quod vidimus sayes the Apostle That which we have seene with our eyes we preach to you and therefore If any man love not c. If he love him not with that love which implyes a Confession that the Lord Jesus is God Levit. 10.12 That is if he love him not with all his heart and all his power What doth the Lord thy God require of thee To love him with all thy heart and all thy soule God forbids us not a love of the Creature proportionable to the good that that creature can doe us To love fire as it warms me and meat as it feeds me and a wife as she helps me But because God does all this in all these severall instruments God alone is centrically radically directly to be loved and the creature with a love reflected and derived from him And Christ to be loved with the love due to God himselfe Mat. 10.37 He that loveth father or mother son or daughter more then me is not worthy of me sayes Christ himselfe If then we love him so as we love God intirely we confesse him to be the Lord And if we love him so as he hath loved us we confesse him to be Christ Iesus And we consider his love to us for the present in these two demonstrations of it first Dilexit in finem As he loved so he loved to the end And then Posuit animam Greater love there is not then to die for one and he did that Our Saviour Christ forsooke not Peter when Peter forsooke him In finem because he loved him he loved him to the end Love thou Christ to the end To His end and to Thy end Finem Domini vidistis sayes S. Iames You have seene the end of the Lord That is 1 〈◊〉 5.11 sayes August to what end the Lord came His way was contempt and misery and his end was shame and death Love him there Thy love is not required onely in the Hosanna's of Christ when Christ is magnified and his Gospel advanced and men preferred for loving it No nor onely in the Transfiguration of Christ when Christ appeares to thee in some particular beames and manifestation of his glory but love him in his Crucifigatur then when it is a scornfull thing to love him And love him in the Nunquid tu when thou must passe that examination Wert not thou one of them Iohn 18.25 26. And in the Nonne ego te vidi if witnesses come in against thee for the love of Christ love him when it is a suspicious thing a dangerous thing to love him And love him not onely in spirituall transfigurations when he visits thy soule with glorious consolations but even in his inward eclipses when he withholds his comforts and withdrawes his cheerfulnesse even when he makes as though he loved not thee love him Love him all the way to his end and to thy end too to the laying downe of thy life for him Love him then in the laying downe of the pleasures of this life for him Mortificatio and love him in the laying downe of the life it selfe if his love need that testimony Of the first case of crucifying himselfe to the world Epist 39. S. Augustine had occasion to say much to a young Gentleman young and noble and rich and which is not in such persons an ordinary tentation but where it is it is a shrewd one as he was young and noble and rich so he was learned in other learnings and upon that strength withdrew and kept off from Christ It was Licentius to whom S. Augustine writes his 39. Epistle He had sent to S. Augustine a handsome Elegie of his making in which Poeme he had said as much of the vanity and deceivablenesse of this world as S. Augustine could have looked for or perchance have said in a Homily And he ends his Elegy thus Hoc opus ut jubeas All this concerning this world I know already Do you but tell me doe you command me what I shall doe Iubebit Augustinus conservo suo sayes that sensible and blessed Father Shall I shall Augustine command his fellow-servant Et non plang at potiùs frustra juberc Dominum Must not Augustine rather lament that the Lord hath commanded thee and is not obeyed Wouldst thou heare me Canst thou pretend that Exaudi teipsum Durissime Immanissime Surdissime Thou that art inoxorable against the perswasions of thine owne soule Hard against the tendernesse of thine owne heart Deafe against the charmes of thine owne Verses canst thou pretend a willingnesse to be led by me Quam animam quod ingenium non licet immolare Deo nostro How well disposed a soule how high pitched a wit is taken out of my hands that I may not sacrifice that soule that I may not direct that wit upon our God because with all these good parts thou turnest upon the pleasures of this world Mentiuntur moriuntur in mortem trahunt Doe not speake out of wit nor out of a love to elegant expressions nor doe not speake in jest of the dangerous vanities of this world Mentiuntur they are false they performe not their promises Moriuntur they are transitory they stay not with thee and In mortem trahunt they dye and they dye of the infection and they transfuse the venome into thee and thou dyest with them Non dicit verum nisi veritas Christus veritas Nothing will deale truely with thee but the Truth it selfe and onely Christ Jesus is this Truth He followes it thus much farther Si calicem aureum invenisses in terrae If thou foundest a chalice of gold in the earth so good a heart as thine would say Surely this belongs to the Church and surely thou wouldst give it to the Church Accepisti à Deo ingenium spiritualiter aureum God hath given thee a wit an understanding not of the gold of Ophir but of the gold of the heavenly Jerusalem Et in illo Satanae propinas teipsum In that chalice once consecrated to God wilt thou drink a health to the devill and drink a health to him in thine owne bloud in making thy wit thy learning thy good parts advance his kingdome He ends all thus Miserearis jam mei si tibi viluisti If thou undervalue thy selfe if thou thinke not thy selfe worth hearing if thou follow not thine owne counsels yet miserearis mei Have mercy upon me me whose charge it is to bring others to heaven me who shall not bee received there if I bring no body with mee bee content to goe with me that way which by the inspiration of the holy Ghost I do shew and that way which by the conduct of the holy Ghost I would fain goe All bends to this First love Christ so far as to lay down the pleasures of this life for him and so far as to lay down the life it self for him Christ did so
kisse before he kissed his Master and so betrayed him Homo sum inter homines vivo sayes S. Augustine I am but a man my selfe and I look but for men to live amongst Nec mihi arrogare audeo meliorem domum meam quam Arca Noah I cannot hope to have my house clearer than Noahs Arke and there in eight there was one ill nor then Iacobs house and there the Sonne went up to the Fathers bed nor then Davids and there the brother forced the sister nor then Christs and there Iudas betrayed his Master and with a kisse which alone does so aggravate the fact as that for the atrocity and hainousnesse thereof three of the Evangelists remember that circumstance That he betrayed him with a kisse and as though it might seeme impossible incredible to man that it could be so S. Iohn pretermits that circumstance That it was done with a kisse In Ioabs treachery in Iudas treason is the kisse defamed and in the carnall and licentious abuse of it it is every day depraved They mistake the matter much that thinke all adultery is below the girdle A man darrs out an adultery with his eye in a wanton look and he wraps up adultery with his fingers in a wanton letter and he breaths in an adultery with his lips in a wanton kisse But though this act of love be so defamed both wayes by treachery by licentiousnes yet God chooses this Metaphore he bids us kisse the Sonne It is a true and an usefull Rule That ill men have been Types of Christ Hieron Ep. 131. G. Sanctius 2 Sam. 11. n. 29. and ill actions figures of good Much more may things not ill in themselves though deflected and detorted to ill be restored to good againe and therfore doth God in more then this one place expect our love in a kisse for if we be truly in love with him it will be a holy and an acceptable Metaphore unto us els it will have a carnall and a fastidious taste Frustra ad legendum amoris carmen qui non amat accedit Bernar. He that comes to read Solomons Love song and loves not him upon whom that Song is directed will rather endanger then profit himselfe by that reading Non capit ignitum eloquium frigidum pectus Idem A heart frozen and congealed with the love of this world is not capable not sensible of the fires of the holy Ghost Idem Graecè loquentes non intelligit qui Graecè non novit lingua amoris ei qui non amat barbara As Greek it selfe is barbarous to him that understands not Greek so is the language of love and the kisse which the holy Ghost speaks of here to him that alwayes groveleth and holds his face upon the earth Treachery often but licentiousnesse more hath depraved this seale of love and yet Vt nos ad amplexus sacri amoris accendat Gregor usque ad turpis amoris nostri verba se inclinat God stoops even to the words of our foule and unchast love that thereby he might raise us to the heavenly love of himselfe Idem and his Son Cavendum ne machina quae ponitur ut levet ipsa aggrevet Take thou heed that that ladder or that engine which God hath given to raise thee doe not load thee oppresse thee cast thee downe Take heed lest those phrases of love and kisses which should raise thee to him do not bury thee in the memory and contemplation of sinfull love Idem and of licentious kisses Palea tegit frumentum palea jumentorum frumentum hominum There is corne under the chaffe and though the chaffe and straw be for cattell there is corne for men too There is a heavenly love under these ordinary phrases the ordinary phrase belongs to ordinary men the heavenly love and the spirituall kisse to them who affect an union to God and him whom he sent his Son Christ Jesus S. Paul abhors not good and applyable sentences because some secular Poets had said them before nor hath the Christian Church abhorred the Temples of the Gentiles because they were profaned before with idolatrous sacrifices I do not conceive how that Jesuit Serarius should conceive any such great joy In Jos 6. q. 40. as he sayes he did when he came to a Church-porch and saw an old statue of Iupiter and another of Hercules holding two basins of holy water when Iupiter and Hercules were made to doe Christians such services the Jesuit is over-joyed His Iupiter and his Hercules might well enough have been spared in the Christian Church but why some such things as have beene abused in the Roman Church may not be preserved in or reduced to their right use here I conceive not as well as in a proportion this outward testimony of inward love though defamed by treachery though depraved by licentiousnesse is exacted at our hands by God himselfe towards his Son Kisse the Son lest he be angry For all Ioabs and Iudas treason Propinquitas and carnall lovers licentiousnesse kisse thou the Sonne and be glad that the Sonne hath brought thee in the Christian Church within that distance as that thou mayest kisse him The nearest that the Synagogue or that the Spouse of Christ not yet married came to Cant. 11.1 was Osculetur me Let him kisse me with the kisses of his mouth It was but a kissing of his hand when he reached them out their spirituall food by others It was a mariage but a mariage by a proxie The personall mariage the consummation of the mariage was in the comming of Christ in establishing a reall presence of himselfe in the Church Praecepta Dei oscula sunt sayes Gregory In every thing that God sayes to us he kisses us Sed per Prophetas Ministros alieno ore nos osculatur He kissed us by another mans mouth when he spoke by the mouth of the Prophets but now that he speaks by his owne Son Exod. 6.12 it is by himselfe Even his servant Moses himself was of uncircumcised lips and with the uncircumcised there was no mariage Even his servant Esay was of uncleane lips Esay 6.5 Jer. 1.6 and with the uncleane there was no mariage Even his servant Ieremie was oris infantilis he was a child and could not speake and with children in infancie there is no mariage But in Christ God hath abundantly performed that supply promised to Moses there Aaron thy brother shall be thy Prophet Christ himselfe shall come and speake to thee and returne and speak for thee In Christ the Seraphim hath brought that live coale from the Altar and touched Esayes lips and so spoken lively and clearly to our soules In Christ God hath done that which he said to Ieremy Feare not I am with thee for in this Immanuel God and man Christ Jesus God is with us In Eschines mouth when he repeated them they say even Demosthenes Orations were flat and
Life or that I should bee separated from Christ though all the world beside were to be blotted out and separated if I staid in The benefit that we are to make of the errors of holy men is not that That man did this therefore I may doe it but this God suffered that holy man to fall and yet loved that good soule well God hath not therefore cast me away though he have suffered me to fall too Bread is mans best sustenance yet there may be a dangerous surfet of bread Charity is the bread that the soule lives by yet there may be a surfet of charity I may mis-lead my selfe shrewdly if I say surely my Father is a good man my Master a good man my Pastor a good man men that have the testimony of Gods love by his manifold blessings upon them and therefore I may be bold to doe whatsoever I see them doe Be perfect even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect Mat. 5.48 1 Cor. 11.1 is the example that Christ gives you Be yee followers of mee as I am of Christ is â—he example that the Apostle gives you Good Examples are good Assistances but no Example of man is sufficient to constitute a certaine and constant rule All the actions of the holiest man are not holy Hence appeares the vanity and impertinency of that calumny with which our adversaries of the Roman perswasion labour to oppresse us That those points in which we depart from them cannot be well established because therein we depart from the Fathers As though there were no condemnation to them that pretended a perpetuall adhering to the Fathers nor salvation to them who suspected any Father of any mistaking And they have thought that one thing enough to discredit and blast and annihilate that great and usefull labour which the Centuriators the Magdeburgenses tooke in compiling the Ecclesiasticall Story that in every age as they passe those Authors have laid out a particular section a particular Chapter De navis Patrum to note the mistakings of the Fathers in every age This they thinke a criminall and a hainous thing inough to discredit the whole worke As though there were ever in any age any Father that mistook nothing or that it were blasphemy against the Holy Ghost to note such a mistaking And yet if those blessed Fathers now in possession of heaven be well affected with our celebrating or ill with our neglecting their works certainly they finde much more cause to complaine of our adversaries then of us Never any in the Reformation hath spoken so lightly nay so heavily so negligently nay so diligently so studiously in diminution of the Fathers as they have done One of the first Jesuits proceeds with modesty and ingenuity and yet sayes Quaelibet aetas antiquitati detulit Salmeron Every age hath been apt to ascribe much to the Ancient Fathers Hoc autem asserimus sayes he Iuniores Doctores perspicaciores This we must necessarily acknowledge that our later Men have seen farther then the elder Fathers did His fellow Jesuit goes farther Hoc omnes dicunt Maldon sed non probant sayes he speaking of one person in the Genealogy of Christ This the Fathers say sayes he and later men too Catholiques and Heretiques All But none of them prove it He will not take their words not the whole Churches though they all agree But a Bishop of as much estimation and authority in the Council of Trent as any Cornel. Mussuâ— goes much farther Being pressed with S. Augustins opinion he sayes Nec nos tantillum moveat Augustinus Let it never trouble us which way S. Augustine goes Hoc enim illi peculiare sayes he ut alium errorem expugnans alteri ansam praebeat for this is inseparable from S. Augustine That out of an earnestnesse to destroy one error he will establish another Nor doth that Bishop impute that distemper onely to S. Augustine but to S. Hierome too Of him he sayes In medio positus certamine ar dore feriendi adversarios premit socios S. Hierome laies about him and rather then misse his enemy he wounds his friends also But all that might better be borne then this Turpiter errarunt Patres The Fathers fell foully into errors And this better then that Eorum opinio opinio Haereticorum The Fathers differ not from the Heretiques concurre with the Heretiques Who in the Reformation hath charged the Fathers so farre and yet Baronius hath If they did not oppresse us with this calumny of neglecting or undervaluing the Fathers we should not make our recourse to this way of recrimination for God knowes if it be modestly done and with the reverence in many respects due to them it is no fault to say the Fathers fell into some faults Yet it is rather our Adversaries observation then ours That all the Ancient Fathers were Chiliasts Millenarians and maintained that error of a thousand yeares temporall happinesse upon this earth betweene the Resurrection and our actuall and eternall possession of Heaven It is their observation rather then ours That all the Ancient Fathers denied the dead a fruition of the sight of God till the day of Judgement It is theirs rather then ours That all the Greek Fathers and some of the Latin assigned Gods foreknowledge of mans works to be the cause of his predestination It is their note That for the first six hundred yeares the generall opinion and generall practise of the Church was To give the Sacrament of the Lords Supper to Infants newly baptized as a thing necessary to their salvation They have noted That the opinion of the Ancient Fathers was contrary to the present opinion in the Church of Rome concerning the conception of the blessed Virgin without Originall sin These notes and imputations arise from their Authors and not from ours and they have told it us rather then we them Indeed neither we nor they can dissemble the mistakings of the Fathers The Fathers themselves would not have them dissembled Hieron De me sayes S. Hierom ubicunque de meo sensu loquor arguat me quilibet August For my part wheresoever I deliver but mine owne opinion every man hath his liberty to correct me It is true S. Augustine does call Iulian the Pelagian to the Fathers but it is to vindicate and redeeme the Fathers from those calumnies which Iulian had laid upon them that they were Multitudo caecorum a herd a swarme of blinde guides and followers of one another And that they were Conspiratio perditorum Damned Conspirators against the truth To set the Fathers in their true light and to restore them to their lustre and dignity and to make Iulian confesse what reverend persons they were S. Aug. cals him to the consideration of the Fathers but not to try matters of faith by them alone Lactant. For Sapientiam sibi adimit qui sine judicio majorum inventa probat That man devests himselfe of all discretion who
came to put a war upon us The zeale of his glory and the course of this world fight against one another It is not against all warre nay it is not against all victory that David prayes He cannot hope that he should be overcome by no Tentations but against such a war and such a victory as should bring him to servility and bondage to sinne That sin entring by Conquest upon him should governe as a tyran over him against such a sicknesse as should induce a consumption it is that he directs this prayer Sana me Domine Not Lord make me impeccable but Lord make me penitent and then heale me And he comes not to take physick upon wantonnesse but because the disease is violent because the accidents are vehement so vehement so violent as that it hath pierced Ad ossa and Ad animam My bones are vexed and my soule is sore troubled Therefore heale me which is the Reason upon which he grounds this second petition Heale me because my bones are vexed c. We must necessarily insist a little upon these termes Ossa The Bones The Soule The Trouble or Vexation First Ossa Bones We know in the naturall and ordinary acceptation what they are They are these Beames and Timbers and Rafters of these Tabernacles these Temples of the Holy Ghost these bodies of ours But Immanebimus nativae significationi sayes S. Basil Shall we dwell upon the native and naturall signification of these Bones Et intelligentia passim obvia contenti erimus Shall we who have our conversation in heaven finde no more in these Bones then an earthly a worldly a naturall man would doe By S. Basils example we may boldly proceed farther Membra etiam animae sunt Esay 42. sayes he The soule hath her limbs as well as the body Surdi audite caeci aspicite sayes God in Esay If their soules had not eares and eyes the blinde could not see the deafe could not heare and yet God cals upon the deafe and blinde to heare and see As S. Paul sayes to the Ephesians The eyes of your understanding being enlightned so David sayes Psal 3.7 Dentes peccatorum contrivisti Thou hast broken the teeth That is the pride and the power the venom and malignity of the wicked Membra etiam animae sunt The soule hath her Bones too and here Davids Bones were the strongest powers and faculties of his soule and the best actions and operations of those faculties and yet they were shaken For this hereditary sicknesse Originall sinne prevayles so far upon us that upon our good dayes we have some grudgings of that Fever Even in our best actions we have some of the leaven of that sinne So that if we goe about to comfort our selves with some dispositions to Gods glory which we finde in our selves with some sparks of love to his precepts and his commandements with some good strength of faith with some measure of good works yea with having something for the Name and glory of Christ Jesus yet if we consider what humane and corrupt affections have been mingled in all these Conturbabuntur ossa our Bones will be troubled even those that appeared to be strong works and likely to hold out will need a reparation an exclamation Sana me Domine O Lord heale these too or els these are as weake as the worst Ossa non dolent The Bones themselves have no sense they feele no paine We need not say That those good works themselves which we doe have in their nature the nature of sinne That every good worke considered alone and in the substance of the act it selfe is sinne But membranae dolent Those little membrans those filmes those thin skins that cover and that line some bones are very sensible of paine and of any vexation Though in the nature of the worke it selfe the worke be not sinne yet in those circumstances that invest and involve the worke in those things which we mingle with the worke whether desire of glory towards men or opinion of merit towards God Whensoever those bones those best actions come to the examination of a tender and a diligent Conscience Si ossa non dolent membranae dolent If the worke be not sinfull the circumstances are and howsoever they may be conceived to be strong as they are Ossa Bones works in a morall consideration good yet as they are Ossa mea sayes David as they are My bones such good works as taste of my ill corruptions so long they are vexed and troubled and cannot stand upright nor appeare with any confidence in the sight of God Thus far then first David needed this sanation this health that he prayes for Anima that his best actions were corrupt But the corruption went farther to the very roote and fountaine of those actions Ad ipsam animam His very soule was sore vexed It is true that as this word Anima the soule is sometimes taken in the Scriptures this may seeme to goe no farther then the former no more that his soule was vexed then that his bones were so for Anima in many places is but Animalis Homo The soule signifies but the naturall man And so opponitur spiritui The soule is not onely said to be a diverse thing but a contrary thing to the Spirit When the Apostle sayes to the Thessalonians 1 Thes ult 23. Now the very God of peace sanctifie you throughout that your whole spirit and soule and body may be kept blamelesse unto the comming of our Lord Iesus Christ And where the same Apostle sayes to the Hebrews The word of God divideth asunder the soule and the spirit Heb. 4.12 here is a difference put between corrupt nature and the working of the Spirit of God the Holy Ghost in man for here the soule is taken for Animalis home The naturall man and the Spirit is taken for the Spirit of God But besides this these two words Soule and Spirit are sometimes used by the Fathers in a sense diverse from one another and as different things and yet still as parts of one and the same man Man is said by them not onely to have a body and a soule but to have a soule and a spirit not as Spirit is the Spirit of God and so an extrinsecall thing but as Spirit is a constitutive part of the naturall man So in particular amongst many Gregory Nyssen takes the Body to be spoken De nutribili The flesh and bloud of man And the soule De sensibili The operation of the senses And the Spirit De Intellectuali The Intellectuall the reasonable faculties of man That in the body Man is conformed to Plants that have no sense In the soule to Beasts that have no reason In the spirit to Angels But so The Spirit is but the same thing with that which now we doe ordinarily account the soule to be for we make account that the Image of God is imprinted in the soule and that gives him his
an idle God which is as great an Atheisme as the other But because it goes thus with them that they have many and great sorrowes they conclude that all have so But The heart knoweth his owne bitternesse Prov. 14.10 They know their own case Ibid. the case of the godly they know not The stranger shall not meddle with their Ioy He that is a stranger to this trust in God understands nothing of the joy that appertaines to them that have it Esth 14.19 Let that be thy prayer which was the prayer of Esther Thy handmaid hath had no joy but in thee O Lord God of Abraham O thou mightie God above all heare thou the voyce of them that have no other hope Our Adversaries of Rome charge us that we have but a negative Religion If that were true it were a heavy charge if we did onely deny and establish nothing But we deny all their new additions so as that we affirme all the old foundations The Negative man that trusts in nothing in the world may be but a Philosopher but an Atheist but a stupid and dead carcasse The Affirmative man that does acknowledge all blessings spirituall and temporall to come from God that prepares himselfe by holinesse to be fit to receive them from God that comes for them by humble prayer to God that returnes for them humble thankes to God this man hath the first marke of this person upon him He trusts in God But he that trusts not in the world nor in God neither is worse then he that trusts in the world and not in God because he is farther removed from all humility that attributes all to himselfe He pretends to be an Atheist and to beleeve in no God and yet he constitutes a new Idolatry he sacrifices to himselfe and makes himselfe his God The second Character Righteous and specification of this Person is that he is Righteous And this word we shall doe best to containe here within a legall Righteousnesse that Righteousnesse in which S. Paul protested and proclaimed himselfe to be unblamable For howsoever this apparant Righteousnesse Righteousnesse in the eyes of the world be not enough alone yet no other Righteousnesse is enough without this The hypocrite by being an hypocrite may aggravate his own condemnation when he comes to reckon with God But to the Church who knows him not to be an hypocrite he does good by his exemplar and outward Righteousnesse He that does good for vaine-glory may lead another man to good upon good grounds And the prayers of those poore soules whom he may have benefited by his vain-glorious good worke may prevaile so with God in his behalfe as that his vaine-glory here may become true glory even in the Kingdome of Heaven So then we carry this word Righteous no farther but to the doing of those honest things which we are bound to doe in the sight of men The word is Tzadok which is often used for the exaltation and perfection of all true holinesse But as it is very often in the old Testament taken for Verax and Aequus when a mans word and worke answer one another towards men so in the New Testament in the Syriake Translation where the word is the same as in the Hebrew it is Oportuit It behoved Christ to suffer and in such a sense in very many places to be Righteous is to doe that which it behoved us to doe became us to doe concerned us to doe in the sight of men Which can be exprest in no one thing more fully then in this To embrace a lawfull Calling and to walke honestly in that Calling That is Righteousnesse For Iustus sua fide vivit The Righteous lives by his owne faith Not without faith nor with the faith of another so Iustus suo sudore vescitur The Righteous eats his Bread in the sweat of his owne browes He labours in an honest Calling and drinks not the sweat of others labours And this is that Righteousnesse in this Text the second marke upon this Person who is partaker of this Portion And the third is Vpright in heart that he is Rectus corde Vpright in heart That he direct even all the works of his Calling all the actions of his life upon the glory of God If you carry a Line from the Circumference to the Circumference againe as a Diameter it passes the Center it flowes from the Center it looks to the Center both wayes God is the Center The Lines above and the Lines below still respect and regard the Center Whether I doe any action honest in the sight of men or any action acceptable to God whether I doe things belonging to this life or to the next still I must passe all through the Center and direct all to the glory of God and keepe my heart right without variation towards him For as I doe no good action here meerly for the interpretation of good men though that be one good and justifiable reason of my good actions so I must doe nothing for my Salvation hereafter meerly for the love I beare to mine owne soule though that also be one good and justifiable reason of that action But the primary reason in both as well the actions that establish a good name as the actions that establish eternall life must be the glory of God Distortum lignum semper nutat August A wry and crooked planke in the floore will alwayes shake and kicke up and creake under a mans foote A wry and a crooked heart will alwayes shake distrustfully and kicke rebelliously and creake repiningly under the hand of God Non potest collineari rectitudine Dei Idem sayes the same Father He is not paralleld with God he is not leveld with God if he use not his blessings if he accept not his corrections as God intends them First To trust in God and then to deale Righteously with men and all the way to keepe the heart straight upon God these three make up the Person And these three his Portion That he shall be glad and he shall rejoyce and jubilabit he shall shout for joy Now as three great summes of gold put into one bagge Mercy these three branches of this Portion of the Righteous are fixt in one roote raised upon one foundation Mercy shall compasse him about But then this mercy this Compassing mercy reaches not so farre as that thou shalt have no affliction though thou trust in God David had been an unfit person to have delivered such a Doctrine who sayes of himselfe Psal 73.14 Daily have I been punished and chastned every morning He had it every day it was his daily bread and it was the first thing that he had he had it in the morning Here is mention of a morning early sorrowes even to the godly and mention of a Day continuing sorrowes even to the godly But he speaks of no Night here the Son of grace the Son of God does not
set in a Cloud of anger upon him The Martyrs that abounded with this Trust in God and this Righteousnesse and this Vprightnesse of heart abounded with these afflictions too They that bestowed themselves upon God and his Church 2 Cor. 12.15 as the Apostle expresses it had these sorrowes plentifully bestowed upon themselves And to passe from them to the Author of their constancy Christ himselfe He is Vir dolorum A man of sorrowes Esay 53.3 and acquainted with Griefe And now Whom he loveth he chastneth and he scourgeth every one that he receiveth Flagellat omnem He scourgeth every one Vis audire quem omneem August Will you know how generall and yet how particular this is Vnicus sine peccato non tamen sine flagello There was one Man without any sin but even that Man was not without punishment Christ Jesus himselfe So generall is correction as that in this case and in this sense it is more generall then sin it selfe It is not then that the godly shall no afflictions no sorrowes But mutant fortitudinem They that waite upon the Lord shall renue their strength Esay 40.31 say our Translators in the body of their Translation but in the Margin and neerer to the Originall They shall change their strength They that have been strong in sinning that have sinned with a strong hand when they feele a judgement upon them and finde that it is Gods hand and Gods hand for their sinnes they faint not they lose not their strength but mutant fortitudinem They change their strength they grow as strong in suffering as they were in sinning and invest the Prophets resolution I will beare the indignation of the Lord Mic. 7.9 Ezek. 2.10 because I have sinned against him The Booke which God gave Ezekiel to eate was written within and without with Lamentations and Mournings and Woes but when he eate it he found it in his mouth as sweet as honey When God offers the Booke which is the Register of our sinnes to our Consciences or the Decree of his Judgements to our understanding or to our sense it is writ in gall and wormwood and in the bitternesse of sorrow but if we can bring it to the first concoction the first digestion to that mastication that rumination which is the consideration of Gods purpose upon us in that Judgement we shall change our taste for we shall Taste and See Quam suavis Dominus Psal 34.9 How good and how sweet the Lord is for even this Judgement is Mercy Think not then thy valour sufficiently tried if thou canst take it patiently to have mist a fute long pursued or failed of a Preferment long expected no not if thou have stood in a haile of bullets without winking or sate the searching of a wound without starting but Muta fortitudinem Change thy valour and when thou commest to beare great crosses proportionable to thy great sins with a spirituall courage acknowledge that courage to be the mercy of God and not thine owne morall constancy God loves his owne example to doe as he hath done Omni quaestione severius à te interrogari It was said to a Romane Emperour who examined with Wisedome and Majesty too It is truer of God that it is more fearfull then any rack or torture when he comes to search and sift a conscience Yet God did come to that office upon Adam before he would condemne him He came to a worse place then Paradise hee came to Sodome to rack and torture them with that confession that there could not be found ten Righteous men amongst them But yet this he did before he condemned them God will visit thee in this wrack in this furnace in these trialls before he proceed to thy condemnation But when God doth so beleeve thou David in his Indulgence to his Son to have been a Type of Gods disposition to thy soule When he sent out his Army against Absalom he stood in the gate to survey the Muster and to every one of the Commanders Ioab and the rest still he said Servate mihi puerum Absalom Intreat the young man Absalom well for my sake The Lord of Hosts may send forth his Army against thee Sicknesse Losse Shame Paine Banishment Imprisonment which are all swords of his but he sayes to them all Servate mihi Absalom That soule that I have bought with my blood preserve for me Fight but against mine enemies his Pride his Security his Presumption but Servate Absalom Preserve his soule unshaken and un-offended God hath said it before Jer. 29.11 and he sayes againe to thee in all thy afflictions I know the thoughts that I think towards you the thoughts of peace and not of evill to give you an expected end God said this when a False Prophet had promised them deliverance in two yeares God prorogues the time he would doe it but he would not doe it under threescore and ten yeares Limit not God in his time nor in his meanes The mercy consists in relieving thee so as that thy soule suffer not though thou doe And if that be preserved this mercy is a Compassing mercy which is also another Circumstance in this Branch The Devill had Compast all the Earth Compasse and he was angry that God had Compast Iob. He sayes in indignation Job 1.9 Hast thou not made a hedge about him and about his house and about all that he hath on every side God did so for Iob and he will doe so for thee He redeemeth thy life from the grave Psal 103.4 and crowneth thee with mercy and compassion This is the Compassing in heaven when we come to be crowned there But there is a Compassing here Rom 8 28. and an empailing of Gods children in S. Pauls Co-operantur When all things work together for good to them that love God When Prosperity and Adversity Honour and Disgrace Profit and Losse the Lords Giving and the Lords Taking doe all concurre to the making up of this Paile that must Compasse us When we acknowledge that there must be nailes in the Paile as well as stakes there must be thornes in the hedge as well as fruit trees Crosses as well as Blessings when we leere not over the Paile neither into the Common that is to the Gentiles and Nations and begin to thinke that we might be saved by the light of nature without this burden of Christianity nor leere over into the Pastures and Corne of our neighbours that is to think that we are not well in our own Church but must needs hearken to the Doctrine or Discipline of another When we see all that comes to come from God and are content with that then Omnia co-operantur Every piece serves to the making up this Paile and his Mercy compasses us about This is the roote of our three Branches the foundation of our three Stories the bagge of our three summes in this portion Mercy Compassing mercy and then the Branches
of man do not become the servants and instruments of that Grace Let all that we all seeke be who may glorifie God most and we shall agree in this That as the Pelagian wounds the glory of God deepely in making Naturall faculties joynt-Commissioners with Grace so do they diminish the glory of God too if any deny naturall faculties to be the subordinate servants and instruments of Grace for as Grace could not worke upon man to Salvation if man had not a faculty of will to worke upon because without that will man were not man so is this Salvation wrought in the will by conforming this will of man to the will of God not by extinguishing the will it selfe by any force or constraint that God imprints in it by his Grace God saves no man without or against his will Glory be to God on high and on earth Peace and Good will towards men And to this God of Glory the Father and this God of Peace and reconciliation the Son and this God of Good will and love amongst men the Holy Ghost be ascribed all praise c. PREBEND SERMONS Preached at St. PAULS The first of the Prebend of Cheswicks five Psalmes which five are appointed for that Prebend as there are five other for every other of our thirty Prebendaries SERM. LXV Preached at S. Pauls May 8. 1625. PSAL. 62.9 Surely men of low degree are vanity and men of high degree are a lie To bee laid in the balance they are altogether lighter then vanity WE consider the dignity of the Booke of Psalmes either in the whole body together or in the particular limmes and distribution thereof Of the whole Body Basil it may be enough to tell you that which S. Basil saith That if all the other bookes of Scripture could perish there remained enough in the booke of Psalmes for the supply of all And therefore he cals it Amuletum ad profligandum daemonem Any Psalme is Exorcisme enough to expell any Devill Charme enough to remove any tentation Enchantment enough to ease nay to sweeten any tribulation It is abundantly enough that our Saviour Christ himselfe cites the Psalmes not onely as Canonicall Scripture but as a particular and entire and noble limme of that Body All must be fulfilled of me saith he which is written in the Law Luk. 24.44 in the Prophets and in the Psalmes The Law alone was the Sadduces Scripture they received no more The Law and the Prophets were especially the Scribes Scripture they interpreted that The Christians Scripture in the Old Testament is especially the Psalmes For except the Prophecy of Esay be admitted into the comparison no booke of the Old Testament is so like a Gospel so particular in all things concerning Christ as the Psalmes So hath the Booke of Psalmes an especiall dignity in the intire Body all together It hath so also in divers distributions thereof into parts For even amongst the Jewes themselves those fifteen Psalmes which follow immediatly and successively after the 119. Psalme were especially distinguished and dignified by the name of Graduall Psalmes Whether because they were sung upon the Degrees and staires ascending to the Altar Or because hee that read them in the Temple ascended into a higher and more eminent place to reade them Or because the word Graduall implies a degree of excellency in the Psalmes themselves I dispute not But a difference those fifteen Psalmes ever had above the rest in the Jewish and in the Christian Church too So also hath there beene a particular dignity ascribed to those seven Psalmes which we have ever called the Penitentiall Psalmes Of which S. Augustine had so much respect August as that he commanded them to be written in a great Letter and hung about the curtaines of his Death-bed within that hee might give up the ghost in contemplation and meditation of those seven Psalmes And it hath beene traditionally received and recommended by good Authors that that Hymne Matt. 26.30 which Christ and his Apostles are said to have sung after the Institution and celebration of the Sacrament was a Hymne composed of those six Psalmes which we call the Allelujah Psalmes immediatly preceding the hundred and nineteenth So then in the whole Body and in some particular limmes of the Body the Church of God hath had an especiall consideration of the booke of Psalmes This Church in which we all stand now and in which my selfe by particular obligation serve hath done so too In this Church by ancient Constitutions it is ordained That the whole booke of Psalmes should every day day by day bee rehearsed by us who make the Body of this Church in the eares of Almighty God And therefore every Prebendary of this Church is by those Constitutions bound every day to praise God in those five Psalmes which are appointed for his Prebend And of those five Psalmes which belong to mee this out of which I have read you this Text is the first And by Gods grace upon like occasions I shall here handle some part of every one of the other foure Psalmes for some testimony that those my five Psalmes returne often into my meditation which I also assure my selfe of the rest of my brethren who are under the same obligation in this Church For this whole Psalme Psalmus integer which is under our present consideration as Athanasius amongst all the Fathers was most curious and most particular and exquisite in observing the purpose and use of every particular Psalm for to that purpose he goes through them all in this maner If thou wilt encourage men to a love and pursuit of goodnesse say the first Psalme and 31. and 140 c. If thou wilt convince the Jewes say the second Psalme If thou wilt praise God for things past say this and this And this and this if thou wilt pray for future things so for this Psalme which we have in hand he observes in it a summary abridgement of all For of this Psalme he sayes in generall Adversus insidiantes Against all attempts upon thy body thy state thy soule thy fame tentations tribulations machinations defamations say this Psalme As he saith before that in the booke of Psalmes every man may discerne motus animi sui his owne finfull inclinations expressed and arme himselfe against himselfe so in this Psalme he may arme himselfe against all other adversaries of any kinde And therefore as the same Father entitles one Sermon of his Contr a omnes haereses A Sermon for the convincing of all Heresies in which short Sermon he meddles not much with particular heresies but onely establishes the truth of Christs Person in both natures which is indeed enough against all Heresies and in which that is the consubstantiality of Christ with the Father God of God this Father Athanasius hath enlarged himselfe more then the rest insomuch that those heretiques which grow so fast in these our dayes The Socinians who deny the Godhead of Christ
If thou desire revenge upon thine enemies as they are Gods enemies That God would bee pleased to remove and root out all such as oppose him that Affection appertaines to Glory Let that alone till thou come to the Hemisphear of Glory There joyne with those Martyrs under the Altar Revel 6.10 Vsquequo Domine How long O Lord dost thou deferre Judgement and thou shalt have thine answere there for that Whilst thou art here here joyne with David and the other Saints of God in that holy increpation of a dangerous sadnesse Why art thou cast downe O my soule why art thou disquieted in mee That soule that is dissected and anatomized to God Psal 42.5 in a sincere confession washed in the teares of true contrition embalmed in the blood of reconciliation the blood of Christ Jesus can assigne no reason can give no just answer to that Interrogatory Why art thou cast downe O my soule why art thou disquieted in me No man is so little as that he can be lost under these wings no man so great as that they cannot reach to him Semper ille major est August quantumcumque creverimus To what temporall to what spirituall greatnesse soever wee grow still pray wee him to shadow us under his Wings for the poore need those wings against oppression and the rich against envy The Holy Ghost who is a Dove shadowed the whole world under his wings Incubabat aquis He hovered over the waters he sate upon the waters and he hatched all that was produced and all that was produced so was good Be thou a Mother where the Holy Ghost would be a Father Conceive by him and be content that he produce joy in thy heart here First thinke that as a man must have some land or els he cannot be in wardship so a man must have some of the love of God or els he could not fall under Gods correction God would not give him his physick God would not study his cure if he cared not for him And then thinke also that if God afford thee the shadow of his wings that is Consolation respiration refreshing though not a present and plenary deliverance in thy afflictions not to thanke God is a murmuring and not to rejoyce in Gods wayes is an unthankfulnesse Howling is the noyse of hell singing the voyce of heaven Sadnesse the damp of Hell Rejoycing the serenity of Heaven And he that hath not this joy here lacks one of the best pieces of his evidence for the joyes of heaven and hath neglected or refused that Earnest by which God uses to binde his bargaine that true joy in this world shall flow into the joy of Heaven as a River flowes into the Sea This joy shall not be put out in death and a new joy kindled in me in Heaven But as my soule as soone as it is out of my body is in Heaven and does not stay for the possession of Heaven nor for the fruition of the sight of God till it be ascended through ayre and fire and Moone and Sun and Planets and Firmament to that place which we conceive to be Heaven but without the thousandth part of a minutes stop as soone as it issues is in a glorious light which is Heaven for all the way to Heaven is Heaven And as those Angels which came from Heaven hither bring Heaven with them and are in Heaven here So that soule that goes to Heaven meets Heaven here and as those Angels doe not devest Heaven by comming so these soules invest Heaven in their going As my soule shall not goe towards Heaven but goe by Heaven to Heaven to the Heaven of Heavens So the true joy of a good soule in this world is the very joy of Heaven and we goe thither not that being without joy we might have joy infused into us but that as Christ sayes Iohn 16.24.22 Our joy might be full perfected sealed with an everlastingnesse for as he promises That no man shall take our joy from us so neither shall Death it selfe take it away nor so much as interrupt it or discontinue it But as in the face of Death when he layes hold upon me and in the face of the Devill when he attempts me I shall see the face of God for every thing shall be a glasse to reflect God upon me so in the agonies of Death in the anguish of that dissolution in the sorrowes of that valediction in the irreversiblenesse of that transmigration I shall have a joy which shall no more evaporate then my soule shall evaporate A joy that shall passe up and put on a more glorious garment above and be joy super-invested in glory Amen SERM. LXVII The third of my Prebend Sermons upon my five Psalmes Preached at S. Pauls November 5. 1626. In Vesperis PSAL. 64.10 And all the upright in heart shall glory I Have had occasion to tell you more then once before that our Predecessors in the institution of the Service of this Church have declared such a reverence and such a devotion to this particular Booke of Scripture The Psalmes as that by distributing the hundred and fifty Psalmes of which number the body of this booke consists into thirty portions of which number the body of our Church consists and assigning to every one of those thirty persons his five Psalmes to bee said by him every day every day God receives from us howsoever wee be divided from one another in place the Sacrifice of Praise in the whole Booke of Psalmes And though we may be absent from this Quire yet wheresoever dispersed we make up a Quire in this Service of saying over all the Psalmes every day This sixty fourth Psalme is the third of my five And when according to the obligation which I had laid upon my selfe to handle in this place some portion of every one of these my five Psalmes in handling of those words of the Psalme immediately before this in the seventh verse Because thou hast beene my helpe therefore in the shadow of thy Wings I will rejoyce I told you that the next world Heaven was as this world is divided into two Hemispheares and that the two Hemispheares of Heaven were Joy and Glory for in those two notions of Joy and Glory is Heaven often represented unto us as in those words which we handled then wee sailed about the first Hemispheare That of Joy In the shadow of thy Wings will I rejoyce So in these which I have read to you now our voyage lies about the Hemispheare of Glory for All the upright in heart shall Glory As we said then of Joy we say of Glory now There is an inchoative joy here though the consummative joy be reserved for Heaven so is there also such a taste such an inchoation of glory in this life And as no man shall come to the joyes of Heaven that hath no joy in this world for there is no peace of conscience without this joy so no man
a right value upon Holinesse and to give a due respect to holy men For so where we read Psal 78.63 Their Maidens were not given in Marriage we finde this word of our Text Their Maidens were not praised that is there was not a due respect held of them nor a just value set upon them So that this retribution intended for the upright in heart as in the growth and extension of the word it reaches to Joy and Glory and Eminency and Respect so in the roote it signifies Praise And it is given them by God as a Reward That they shall be Praised now Praise sayes the Philosopher is Sermo elucidans magnitudinem virtutis It is the good word of good men a good testimony given by good men of good actions And this difference we use to assigne betweene Praise and Honour Laus est in ordine ad finem Honor eorum qui jam in fine Praise is an encouragement to them that are in the way and so far a Reward a Reward of good beginnings Honour is reserved to the end to crowne their constancy and perseverance And therefore where men are rewarded with great honours at the beginning in hope they will deserve it they are paid beforehand Thanks and Grace and good countenance and Praise are interlocutory encouragements Honours are finall Rewards But since Praise is a part of Gods retribution a part of his promise in our text They shall be praised we are thereby not onely allowed but bound to seeke this praise from good men and to give this praise to good men for in this Coine God hath promised that the upright in heart shall be paid They shall be praised To seeke praise from good men by good meanes Laus à bonis quaerenda Prov. 22.1 Bernar. is but the same thing which is recommended to us by Solomon A good name is rather to be chosen then great riches and loving favour then silver and Gold For Habent mores colores suos habent odores Our good works have a colour and they have a savor we see their Candor their sincerity in our owne consciences there is their colour for in our owne consciences our works appeare in their true colours no man can be an hypocrite to himselfe nor seriously deliberately deceive himselfe And when others give allowance of our works and are edified by them there is their savour their odor their perfume their fragrancy And therefore S. Hierom and S. Augustin differ little in their manner of expressing this Hieron Non paratum habeas illud è trivio Serve not thy selfe with that triviall and vulgar saying As long as my conscience testifies well to me I care not what men say of me August And so sayes that other Father They that rest in the testimony of their owne consciences and contemne the opinion of other men Imprudenter agunt crudeliter They deale weakly and improvidently for themselves in that they assist not their consciences with more witnesses And they deale cruelly towards others in that they provide not for their edification by the knowledge and manifestation of their good works For as he adds well there Qui à criminibus vitam custodit bene facit He that is innocent in his owne heart does well for himselfe but Qui famam custodit in alios misericors est He that is known to live well he that hath the praise of good men to bee a good man is mercifull in an exemplary life to others and promoves their salvation For when that Father gives a measure how much praise a man may receive and a rule how he may receive it when he hath first said Nec totum nec nihil accipiatur Receive not all but yet refuse not all praise he adds this That that which is to be received is not to be received for our owne sakes sed propter illos quibus consulere non potest si nimia dejectione vilescat but for their sakes who would undervalue goodnesse it selfe if good men did too much undervalue themselves or thought themselves never the better for their goodnesse And therefore S. Bernard applies that in the Proverbs to this case Prov. 25.16 Hast thou found Honey eate that which is sufficient Mellis nomine favor humanae laudis sayes he By Honey favour and praise and thankfulnesse is meant Meritóque non ab omni sed ab immoderato edulio prohibemur We are not forbid to taste nor to eate but to surfet of this Honey of this praise of men S. Augustine found this love of praise in himselfe and could forbid it no man Laudari à bene viventibus si dicam nolo mentior If I should say that I desired not the praise of good men I should belie my selfe He carries it higher then thus He does not doubt but that the Apostles themselves had a holy joy and complacency when their Preaching was acceptable and thereby effectuall upon the Congregation Such a love of praise is rooted in Nature and Grace destroyes not Nature Grace extinguishes not but moderates this love of praise in us nor takes away the matter but onely exhibits the measure Certainly he that hath not some desire of praise will bee negligent in doing praise-worthy things and negligent in another duty intended here too that is To praise good men which is also another particular branch in this Part. The hundred forty fift Psalme is Laus danda aliis in the Title thereof called A Psalme of Praise And the Rabbins call him Filium futuri Seculi A child of the next World that sayes that Psalme thrice a day We will interpret it by way of Accommodation thus that he is a child of the next World that directs his Praise every day upon three objects upon God upon himselfe upon other men Of God there can be no question And for our selves it is truly the most proper and most literall signification of this word in our Text Iithhalelu That they shall praise themselves that is They shall have the testimony of a rectified conscience that they have deserved the praise of good men in having done laudible service to God And then for others That which God promises to Israel in their restauration Zephan 3.19 belongs to all the Israel of the Lord to all the faithfull I will get thee praise and fame in every land and I will make thee a name and a praise amongst all the people of the earth This God will doe procure them a name a glory By whom When God bindes himselfe he takes us into the band with him and when God makes himselfe the debtor he makes us stewards when he promises them praise he meanes that we should give them that praise Be all waies of flatterings and humourings of great persons precluded with a Protestation with a detestation Be Philo Iudaeus his comparison received His Coquus and his Medicus One provides sweetnesse for the present taste but he is but a
his Gomer his explicite knowledge of Articles absolutely necessary to salvation The simplest man as well as the greatest Doctor is bound to know that there is one God in three persons That the second of those the Sonne of God tooke our nature and dyed for mankinde And that there is a Holy Ghost which in the Communion of Saints the Church established by Christ applies to every particular soule the benefit of Christs universall redemption But then for our Quails birds of higher pitch meat of a stronger digestion which is the knowledge how to rectifie every straying conscience how to extricate every entangled and scrupulous and perplexed soule in all emergent doubts how to defend our Church and our Religion from all the mines and all the batteries of our Adversaries and to deliver her from all imputations of Heresie and Schisme which they impute to us this knowledge is not equally necessary in all In many cases a Master of servants and a Father of children is bound to know more then those children and servants and the Pastor of the parish more then parishioners They may have their fulnesse though he have more but he hath not his except he be able to give them satisfaction This fulnesse then is not an equality in the measure our fulnesse in heaven shall not be so Abraham dyed sayes the text Plenus dierum full of yeares Gen. 25.8 It is not said so in the text of Methusalem that he dyed full of yeares and yet he had another manner of Gomer another measure of life then Abraham for he lived almost eight hundred yeares more then he But he that is best disposed to die is fullest of yeares One man may be fuller at twenty then another at seaventy David lived not the tithe of Methusalems yeares not ten to his hundred he lived lesse then Abraham and yet David is said to have dyed Plenus dierum full of yeares he had made himselfe agreeable to God 1 Chro. 29.28 and so was ripe for him So David is said there to have dyed full of honor God knowes David had cast shrowd aspersions upon his own and others honor but as God sayes of Israel Because I loved thee thou wast honorable in my sight so because God loved David and he persevered in that love to the end he dyed full of honor So also it is said of David that he dyed full of Riches for though they were very great additions which Solomon made yet because David intended that which he left for Gods service and for pious uses he dyed full of Riches fulnesse of riches is in the good purpose and the good employment not in the possession In a word the fulnesse that is inquired after and required by this prayer carry it upon temporall carry it upon spirituall things is such a proportion of either as is fit for that calling in which God hath put us And then the satisfaction in this fulnesse is not to hunt and pant after more worldly possessions by undue meanes or by macerating labour as though we could not be good or could doe no good in the world except all the goods of the world passed our hands nor to hunt and pant after the knowledge of such things as God by his Scriptures hath not revealed to his Church nor to wrangle contentiously and uncharitably about such points as doe rather shake others consciences then establish our own as though we could not possibly come to heaven except we knew what God meant to doe with us before he meant to make us S. Paul expresses fully what this fulnesse is Colos 4.12 and satisfies us in this satisfaction Vt sitis pleni in omni voluntate Dei That yee may be filled according to the will of God What is the will of God How shall I know the will of God upon me God hath manifested his will in my Calling and a proportion competent to this Calling is my fulnesse and should be my satisfaction Gen. 8.21 that so God may have Odorem quietis as it is said in Noahs sacrifice after he came out of the Arke that God smelt a savour of rest a sacrifice in which he might rest himselfe for God hath a Sabbath in the Sabbaths of his servants a fulnesse in their fulnesse a satisfaction when they are satisfied and is well pleased when they are so So then this Prayer is for fulnesse Nos and fulnesse is a competency in our calling And a prayer for satisfaction and satisfaction is a contentment in that competency And then this prayer is not onely a prayer of appropriation to our selves but of a charitable extention to others too Satura nos Satisfie us All us all thy Church Charity begins in our selves but it does not end there but dilates it selfe to others The Saints in heaven are full as full as they can hold and yet they pray Though they want nothing they pray that God would powre down upon us graces necessary for our peregrination here as he hath done upon them in their station there We are full full of the Gospel present peace and plenty in the preaching thereof and faire apparances of a perpetuall succession we are full and yet we pray we pray that God would continue the Gospel where it is restore the Gospel where it was and transfer the Gospel where it hath not yet been preached Charity desires not her own sayes the Apostle but much lesse doth charity desire no more then her own so as not to desire the good of others too True love and charity is to doe the most that we can all that we can for the good of others So God himselfe proceeds when he sayes What could I doe that I have not done And so he seems to have begun at first when God bestowed upon man his first and greatest benefit his making it is expressed so Faciamus hominem Let us All us make man God seems to summon himselfe to assemble himselfe to muster himselfe all himselfe all the persons of the Trinity to doe what he could in the favour of man So also when he is drawne to a necessity of executing judgement and for his own honor and consolidation of his servants puts himselfe upon a revenge he proceeds so too when man had rebelled and began to fortifie in Babel Gen. 11.7 then God sayes Venite Let us All us come together And Descendamus confundamus Let us all us goe down and confound their language and their machinations and fortifications God does not give patterns God does not accept from us acts of half-devotion and half-charities God does all that he can for us And therefore when we see others in distresse whether nationall or personall calamities whether Princes be dispossest of their naturall patrimony and inheritance or private persons afflicted with sicknesse or penury or banishment let us goe Gods way all the way First Faciamus hominem ad imaginem nostram Let us make that Man according
that That he knows nothing S. Paul found that to be all knowledge To know Christ And Mahomet thinks himselfe wise therefore because he knows not acknowledges not Christ as S. Paul does Though a man knew not that every sin casts another shovell of Brimstone upon him in Hell yet if he knew that every riotous feast cuts off a year and every wanton night seaven years of his seventy in this world it were some degree towards perfection in knowledge He that purchases a Mannor will thinke to have an exact Survey of the Land But who thinks of taking so exact a survey of his Conscience how that money was got that purchased that Mannor We call that a mans meanes which he hath But that is truly his meanes what way he came by it And yet how few are there when a state comes to any great proportion that know that that know what they have what they are worth We have seen great Wills dilated into glorious uses and into pious uses and then too narrow an estate to reach to it And we have seen Wills where the Testator thinks he hath bequeathed all and he hath not knowne halfe his own worth When thou knowest a wife a sonne a servant a friend no better but that that wife betrayes thy bed and that sonne thine estate and that servant thy credit and that friend thy secret what canst thou say thou knowest But we must not insist upon this Consideration of knowledge for though knowledge be of a spirituall nature yet it is but as a terrestriall Spirit conversant upon Earth Spirituall things of a more rarified nature then knowledge even faith it selfe and all that grows from that in us falls within this Rule which we have in hand That even in spirituall things nothing is perfect We consider this therefore in Credendis Fides In things that we are bound to Beleeve there works our faith And then in Petendis In things that we are bound to pray for there works our hope And lastly in Agendis In things that we are bound to doe and there works our charity And there is nothing in any of these three perfect When you remember who they were Luk. 17.5 that made that prayer Domine adauge That the Apostles themselves prayed that their faith might receive an encrease Lord increase our faith you must necessarily second that consideration with a confession That no mans faith is perfect When you heare Christ so often upbraid sometimes whole Congregations with that Mat. 6.30 Modicae fidei O yee of little faith And sometimes his Disciples alone with the same reproach Mat. 8.26 Modicae fidei O yee of little faith when you may be perplexed with the variety of opinions amongst the ancient Interpreters whether Christ spoke but to the incredulous Jewes Mat. 17.17 or to his own Disciples when he said O faithlesse and perverse generation how long shall I be with you how long shall I suffer you for many Interpreters goe one way and many the other And when you may be cleared without any colour of perplexity that to whom soever Christ spoke in that place he spoke plainly to his owne Disciples Vers 20. when he said Because of your unbeliefe you cannot doe this In which Disciples of his he denies also that there is such a proportion of faith as a graine of Mustard-seed can ye place a perfectnesse of faith in any When the Apostle takes knowledge of the good estate and condition of the Thessalonians and gave God thanks for their Workes of faith for their labours of love for their patience of hope in our Lord Iesus Christ 1 Thes 1.2.3.10 does he conclude them to be perfect No for after this he sayes Night and day we pray exceedingly that we may perfect that which is lacking in your faith And after this he sees the fruit of those prayers We are bound to thanke God alwayes 2 Thes 1.3 because your faith groweth exceedingly still at the best it is but a growing faith and it may be better There are men that are said to be Rich in faith Iames 2.5 men that are come from the weake and beggarly elements of Nature or of the Law to the knowledge of the precious and glorious Gospell Galat. 4.9 and so are Rich in faith enriched emproved by faith 2 Cor. 8.7 There are men that Abound in faith that is in comparison of the emptinesse of other men or of their owne emptinesse before they embraced the Gospell they abound now But still it is Rom. 12.3 As God hath given the measure of faith to every man Not as of his Manna a certaine measure and an equall measure and a full measure to every man no man hath such a measure of faith as that he needs no more or that he may not lose at least some of that When Christ speakes so doubtfully When the Son of man commeth shall he finde faith upon earth Luke 18. â— Any faith in any man If the Holy Ghost be come into this presence into this Congregation does he find faith in any A perfect faith he does not Deceive not your selves then with that new charme and flattery of the soule That if once you can say to your selves you have faith you need no more or that you shall alwaies keepe that alive The Apostle sayes All boasting that is all confidence Rom. 3.27 is excluded By what Law sayes he by the Law of faith Not by faith but by the Law of faith There is a Law of faith a rule that ordinates and regulates our faith by which law and rule the Apostle cals upon us To examine our selves whether we be in the faith or no 2 Cor. 13.5 not onely by the internall motions and private inspirations of his blessed Spirit but by the Law and the Rule which he hath delivered to us in the Gospell The Kings pardon flowes from his meere grace and from his brest but we must have the writing and the Seale that we may plead it So does faith from God But we must see it our selves and shew it to others or else we doe not observe the Law of faith Rom. 4.11 Abraham received the Seale of the righteousnesse of faith sayes the Apostle Hee had an outward testimony to proceed by And then Abraham became an outward testimony and Rule to the faithfull Walke in the steps of the faith of Abraham sayes that Apostle in that place Ver. 12. Not a faith conceived onely but a faith which you saw The faith of Abraham for so the Apostle proposing to us the example of other men sayes Their faith follow you Heb. 13.7 Not faith in generall but their faith So that it is not enough to say I feele the inspiration of the Spirit of God He infuses faith and faith infused cannot be withdrawne but as there is a Law of faith and a practise of faith a Rule of faith and an example of
Silence which is good 576. B. C Silence which is bad 577. D Good to be Silent sometimes even in good things and when 576. E Simple-men of this world why chosen for Christs Apostles 719. C Singular Gods speakes of things of grace in the Singular but of heavie things in the plurall number ever 711. A Single instances no safe concluding from them 460. E Neither in the case of the Thiefe on the Crosse nor S. Paul 461. B Singularity not ground enough to condemne every opinion 234. C Against Singularity 51. D. 177. C. 573. D. 722. B Of a Single testimony 234. B Sinne the cause of all sicknesses 109. C Little light and customarie Sinnes how dangerous 117. B. 164. C. D. 585. E All Sin is from our selves not from any thing in God 118. A. 330. D The Sin of the Heart the greatest of all Sin and why 140. D How well some Men husband their Sin 147. A That it is good for men to fall into some Sinnes 171. B. C Sinne is a fall and how 186. D. 187. C Whether it have rationem demeriti and may properly offend God 342. C Sinne not meerly nothing 342. E Not so much of any thing as of Sinne 343. C How soone Sinne is followed of Repentance 540. C How Sinne rises by little and little in us 585. C Against sitting in the time of Divine Service 72. D Socinians their monstrous opinions 317. C And nicknaming of Athanasius Sathanasius 654. D Against the growth of that pestilent Heresie of Socinianisme 821. B Sorrow for the dead how lawfull 157. C. D. E. 822. D Of the end lesse Sorrow of the wicked 632. B No communication of their Sorrow 634. D The Soule of the miseries of it in the body 190. A Of the lazinesse of the Soule in the disquisition of any Divine Truths 190. B C Of her excellency of knowledge in the next world ibid. C. D Of bending the Soule up to her proper height and putting of her home 483. D Soule and Spirit what the Fathers understand by them in Scripture 517. C Subjects how to looke upon the faults and errors of their Governors 13. C How reverent to be towards their Princes 92. D Supererogation against Workes of Supererogation and of the fondnesse of them 390. C 494. E. 495. A. 547. C. 732. E Superstition better than Prophanesse and why 69. A The danger of it to be prevented but how 485. E Supplications how they differ from Petitions or Prayers 553. E Synedrion the Originall and power of the Synedrion or Sanhedrim amongst the Jewes 491. E Herod called before it but not when hee was King 492. A T TEares against their inordinatenesse 155. A Never ascribed to God 156. D Well employed for the dead though they be at rest 157. A Of those whose constitution will afford no Teares 160. D Foure considerations that will enforce Teares 160. E. 161. A Of Teares shed for worldly losses ib. C. D. 162. A For sinne 539. B Of the effect of Teares 162. B How God is said in Scripture to heare Teares that make no sound 552. E Teares the humidum-radicale of the Soule 577. E Temporall blessings how seldome prayed for in Antiquitie 750. D. E They are blessings but blessings of the left hand 751. D Nothing permanent in them 823. D Tentations all men not alike enabled against them 310. E Whether it be lawfull to pray against all kind of Tentations 527. C One of the Divels greatest Tentations it is to make us think our selves above Tentations or Tentation-proofe that they cannot hurt us 603. E The use and necessity of them 789. C Thanksgiving the duty of thanksgiving better than that of Prayer 549. D How small it is if proportioned to the love of God unto us 550. B Thoughts of the greatnesse of sinnes of thought 140. D. 543. D Titles and bare empty Names how men are puffed up with them 734. D Torturing whether or no to be admitted in case of Religion 194. D Tongue how many it hath damned 344. B Tradition against the making of Traditions articles of Faith 779. D Transubstantiation the riddles and contradictions of it 36. E What true Transubstantiation in the Sacrament may be admitted 693. C Tribulations the benefit of them 563. B 604. A. B Spirituall Tribulations and afflictions heavier than Temporall 665. B. D. E Tribulation and affliction part of our daily bread which wee ought to pray for and how 787. B Tribute God never wrought miracle in the matter of money but onely for Tribute to Caesar 91. E Trinitie the knowledge of it not by naturall reason attained 301. B Not one of a thousand knows what himselfe meanes when he speakes of the Trinity 307. E Some obumbrations of the Trinity even in nature 379 What are illustrations of it to us Christians are no Arguments unto the Jewes 417. B Foure severall trinities 417. E. 418. A It is the onely rule of our Faith the Trinitie 426. E To be believed first of all but not last of all to be understood 428. C. D The opinions of severall Hereticks concerning it 429. D The severall wayes of expressing it by figures and letters 429. E Troubles five severall sorts of Troubles 518. D The universality and inevitablenesse of them 664. B Truth not alwaies to be spoken 576. E Turning of Gods Turning to us and of our Turning to God 524. B. C. D. 525. A. B. 526. A. B V VAgabonds and incorrigible rogues against receiving or harbouring of them 415. B. C Vaine things in themselves may be brought to a religious use 226. E Vbiquetaries 67. E Confuted by the Angels Argument 248. C Of that Vicissitude which is in all temporall things 823. D Vigils why discontinued in the Primitive Church 813. A Virginitie The dignity and prayse of it 17. C. D Three Heresies impeaching the Virginity of the blessed Lady 17. D Against vowed Virginitie 30. D Virgin Mary The errour of Tertullian about her 18. A Of the Manichees and Anabaptists 23. D Against appeales to her in heaven 46. A Borne in Originall sinne 314. A Called of the Fathers Deipara but not Christipara and why 400. D Threatned at a siege of Constantinople to bee drowned if shee did not drowne the enemy 418. E The Church onely in the Virgin Mary according to the Schoole 603. C Against Vncharitable objecting of repented sinnes 499. D Vnitie the Devils way to breake it 138. D The Vnsatiablenesse of sinne 709 C Vprightnesse what Vprightnesse is required of man in this world 677 B. C What it is to bee Vpright in heart ibid. 678. A. B. C Against Vsury 753. E. 754. A. Vulgate Edition of the Antiquity and Authority of it 542. E Not to be preferred before the originall ibid. W VVArre the miseries and incommodities of it 146. C. D Waters those of Baptisme sinne tribulation and death 309. C. c What is meant by Waters in Scripture 598. D Waiting upon Gods time how it consists with fervent Prayer 34. D Wings the severall acceptations of the Word in Scripture 671. B Winning upon God by prayer how well God likes it 513. E Wisdome of sinnes against it especially ignorance and curiosity 411. B Witnesse the credit of the Testimony dependeth much upon his credit that is the Witnesse 238. B Women our Saviour came from such as were dangerously suspected and noted in Scripture for their incontinence 24. A Never any good Angell appeared in the likenesse of a Woman 242. D Whether Women were created after Gods Image a question in S. Ambrose his Commentaries upon the Epistles that hath called those Commentaries in doubt 242. E Of Womens able in State affaires and matters of Government ibid. Powerfull in matters of Religion both on the right hand and on the left 243. A Wonder the difference between the Philosophers and the Fathers about wondering 194. A Word of God the very Angels of heaven referre themselves unto it 249. E Stronger than any reason to a Christian 394. B 815. A The onely rule of Doctrine 738. E The World is a sea and in how many respects 735. C Workes wee no enemies to good workes as the Adversarie doth traduce us 82. A. c No Faith without them 136. A We are to continue in them 554. B Workes good when to a good end 82. E To be done of what 83. A How they may be seene of men 141. B Sometimes there is good use in concealing our Workes of mortification 538. E Of those imperfections which are in the best of our Good Works 820 D. E Wounds of love how God doth so wound us that we kisse that hand that strikes us 463. A Z ZEale to be reconciled to discretion 10. A How the devill makes it his Instrument 42. B Of the Zeale we ought to have to Gods service 72. D Zeale distempered what it will doe 237. A Zeale and uncharitablenesse are two incompatible things 480. E Of Daniels Zeale in praying against the expresse Proclamation of the King 814. A. B. C Zoroastes he only laughed when he was born 21. A FINIS Errata Pag. line reade 22 39 waives 22 40 waives 22 50 waives 110 52 when he 116 40 may come 142 31 the Cato's 164 39 Manours 196 15 in indignifying 420 32 man 426 45 blown 534 35 Topicks 710 46 exorcised 751 43 or any people 782 63 Interimists In the life Pag. 15 line 12 for merit reade mercy Pag. 16. line 40. for friends reade friend