and adherences of love and obedience to his heavenly Father were next to infinite yet in his external actions in which only with the correspondence of the Spirit in those actions he propounds himself imitable he did so converse with men that men after that example might for ever converse with him We find that some Saints have had excrescencies and eruptions of Holiness in the instances of uncommanded Duties which in the same particulars we find not in the story of the Life of Jesus John Baptist was a greater Mortifier than his Lord was and some Princes have given more money than all Christ's Family did whilest he was alive but the difference which is observable is that although some men did some acts of Counsel in order to attain that perfection which in Jesus was essential and unalterable and was not acquired by degrees and means of danger and difficulty yet no man ever did his whole duty save only the Holy Jesus The best of men did sometimes actions not precisely and strictly requisite and such as were besides the Precept but yet in the greatest flames of their shining Piety they prevaricated something of the Commandment They that have done the most things beyond have also done some things short of their duty But Jesus who intended himself the Example of Piety did in manners as in the rule of Faith which because it was propounded to all men was fitted to every understanding it was true necessary short easie and intelligible So was his Rule and his Copy 〈◊〉 not only with excellencies worthy but with compliances possible to be imitated of glories so great that the most early and constant industry must confess its own imperfections and yet so sweet and humane that the greatest infirmity if pious shall find comfort and encouragement Thus God gave his children Manna from Heaven and though it was excellent like the food of Angels yet it conformed to every palate according to that appetite which their several fancies and constitutions did produce 9. But now when the Example of Jesus is so excellent that it allures and tempts with its facility and sweetness and that we are not commanded to imitate a Life whose story tells of 〈◊〉 in Prayer and Abstractions of senses and immaterial Transportations and Fastings to the exinanition of spirits and disabling all animal operations but a Life of Justice and Temperance of Chastity and Piety of Charity and Devotion such a Life without which humane Society cannot be conserved and by which as our irregularities are made regular so our weaknesses are not upbraided nor our miseries made a mockery we find so much reason to address our selves to a heavenly imitation of so blessed a Pattern that the reasonableness of the thing will be a great argument to chide every degree and minute of neglect It was a strange and a confident encouragement which Phocion used to a timorous Greek who was condemned to die with him Is it not enough to thee that thou must die with Phocion I am sure he that is most incurious of the issues of his life is yet willing enough to reign with Jesus when he looks upon the Glories represented without the Duty but it is a very great stupidity and unreasonableness not to live with him in the imitation of so holy and so prompt a Piety It is glorious to do what he did and a shame to decline his Sufferings when there was a God to hallow and sanctifie the actions and a Man clothed with infirmity to undergo the sharpness of the passion so that the Glory of the person added excellency to the first and the Tenderness of the person excused not from suffering the latter 10. Thirdly Every action of the Life of Jesus as it is imitable by us is of so excellent merit that by making up the treasure of Grace it becomes full of assistances to us and obtains of God Grace to enable us to its imitation by way of influence and impetration For as in the acquisition of Habits the very exercise of the Action does produce a Facility to the action and in some proportion becomes the cause of its self so does every exercise of the Life of Christ kindle its own fires inspires breath into it self and makes an univocal production of its self in a differing subject And Jesus becomes the fountain of spiritual Life to us as the Prophet Elisha to the dead child when he stretched his hands upon the child's hands laid his mouth to his mouth and formed his posture to the boy and breathed into him the spirit returned again into the child at the prayer of Elisha so when our lives are formed into the imitation of the Life of the Holiest Jesus the spirit of God returns into us not only by the efficacy of the imitation but by the merit and impetration of the actions of Jesus It is reported in the Bohemian Story that S. Wenceslaus their King one winter-night going to his Devotions in a remote Church bare-footed in the snow and sharpness of unequal and pointed ice his servant Podavivus who waited upon his Master's piety and endeavoured to imitate his affections began to faint through the violence of the snow and cold till the King commanded him to follow him and set his feet in the same footsteps which his feet should mark for him the servant did so and either fansied a cure or found one for he followed his Prince help'd forward with shame and zeal to his imitation and by the forming footsteps for him in the snow In the same manner does the Blessed Jesus for since our way is troublesome obscure full of objection and danger apt to be mistaken and to affright our industry he commands us to mark his footsteps to tread where his feet have stood and not only invites us forward by the argument of his Example but he hath troden down much of the difficulty and made the way easier and fit for our feet For he knows our infirmities and himself hath felt their experience in all things but in the neighbourhoods of sin and therefore he hath proportioned a way and a path to our strengths and capacities and like Jacob hath marched softly and in evenness with the children and the cattel to entertain us by the comforts of his company and the influences of a perpetual guide 11. Fourthly But we must know that not every thing which Christ did is imitable by us neither did he in the work of our Redemption in all things imitate his heavenly Father For there are some things which are issues of an absolute Power some are expresses of supreme Dominion some are actions of a Judge And therefore Jesus prayed for his enemies and wept over Jerusalem when at the same instant his Eternal Father laughed them to scorn for he knew that their day was coming and himself had decreed their ruine But it became the Holy Jesus to imitate his Father's mercies for himself was the great instrument of
For there is an unpardonable estate by reason of its malice and opposition to the Covenant of Grace and there is a state unpardonable because the time of Repentance is past There are days and periods of Grace If thou hadst known at least in this thy day said the weeping Saviour of the world to foreknown and determined Jerusalem When God's decrees are gone out they are not always revocable and therefore it was a great caution of the Apostle that we should follow peace and holiness and look diligently that we fall not from the grace of God lest any of us become like 〈◊〉 to whose Repentance there was no place left though he sought it carefully with tears meaning that we also may put our selves into a condition when it shall be impossible we should be renewed unto Repentance and those are they who sin a sin unto death for whom we have from the Apostle no encouragement to pray And these are in so general and conclusive terms described in Scripture that every persevering sinner hath great reason to suspect himself to be in the number If he endeavours as soon as he thinks of it to recover it is the best sign he was not arrived so far but he that liveth long in a violent and habitual course of sin is at the margin and brim of that state of final reprobation and some men are in it before they be aware and to some God reckons their days swifter and their periods shorter The use I make of this consideration is that if any man hath reason to suspect or to be certain that his time of Repentance is past it is most likely to be a death-bed Penitent after a vicious life a life contrary to the mercies and grace of the Evangelical Covenant for he hath provoked God as long as he could and rejected the offers of Grace as long as he lived and refused Vertue till he could not entertain her and hath done all those things which a person rejected from hopes of Repentance can easily be imagined to have done And if there be any time of rejection although it may be earlier yet it is also certainly the last 31. Concerning the second I shall add this to the former discourse of it that perfect Pardon of sins is not in this world at all after the first emission and great efflux of it in our first Regeneration During this life we are in imperfection minority and under conditions which we have prevaricated and our recovery is in perpetual flux in heightnings and declensions and we are highly uncertain of our acceptation because we are not certain of our restitution and innocence we know not whether we have done all that is sufficient to repair the breach made in the first state of favour and Baptismal grace But he that is dead saith S. Paul is justified from sin not till then And therefore in the doctrine of the most learned Jews it is affirmed He that is guilty of the profanation of the Name of God he shall not interrupt the apparent malignity of it by his present Repentance nor make attonement in the day of Expiation nor wath the stains away by chastising of himself but during his life it remains wholly in suspence and before death is not extinguished according to the saying of the Prophet Esay This iniquity shall not be blotted out till ye die saith the LORD of Hosts And some wise persons have affirmed that Jacob related to this in his expression and appellatives of God whom he called the God of Abraham and the fear of his father Isaac because as the Doctors of the Jews tell us Abraham being dead was ascribed into the final condition of God's family but Isaac being living had apprehensions of God not only of a pious but also of a tremulous fear he was not sure of his own condition much less of the degrees of his reconciliation how far God had forgiven his sins and how far he had retained them And it is certain that if every degree of the Divine favour be not assured by a holy life those sins of whose pardon we were most hopeful return in as full vigour and clamorous importunity as ever and are made more vocal by the appendent ingratitude and other accidental degrees And this Christ taught us by a Parable For as the lord made his uncharitable servant pay all that debt which he had formerly forgiven him even so will God do to us if we from our hearts forgive not one another their trespasses Behold the goodness and severity of God saith S. Paul on them which fell severity but on thee goodness if thou continue in that goodness otherwise thou shalt be cut off For this is my Covenant which I shall make with them when I shall take away their sins And if this be true in those sins which God certainly hath forgotten such as were all those which were committed before our illumination much rather is it true in those which we committed after concerning whose actual and full pardon we cannot be certain without a revelation So that our pardon of sins when it is granted after the breach of our Covenant is just so secure as our perseverance is concerning which because we must ascertain it as well as we can but ever with fear and trembling so also is the estate of our Pardon hazardous conditional revocable and uncertain and therefore the best of men do all their lives ask pardon even of those sins for which they have wept bitterly and done the sharpest and severest penance And if it be necessary we pray that we may not enter into temptation because temptation is full of danger and the danger may bring a sin and the sin may ruine us it is also necessary that we understand the condition of our pardon to be as is the condition of our person variable as will sudden as affections alterable as our purposes revocable as our own good intentions and then made as ineffective as our inclinations to good actions And there is no way to secure our confidence and our hope but by being perfect and holy and pure as our heavenly Father is that is in the sence of humane capacity free from the habits of all sin and active and industrious and continuing in the ways of godliness For upon this only the Promise is built and by our proportion to this state we must proportion our confidence we have no other revelation Christ reconciled us to his Father upon no other conditions and made the Covenant upon no other articles but of a holy life in obedience universal and perpetual and the abatements of the rigorous sence of the words as they are such as may infinitely testifie and prove his mercy so they are such as must secure our duty and habitual graces an industry manly constant and Christian and because these have so great latitude and to what degrees God will accept our returns he hath
and therefore less likely to deceive for which reason it is said that he shall deceive if it were possible the very elect that is therefore not possible because that by which he insinuates himself to others is by the elect the Church and chosen of God understood to be his sign and mark of discovery and a warning And therefore as the Prophecies of Jesus were an infinite verification of his Miracles so also this Prophecy of Christ concerning Antichrist disgraces the reputation and faith of the Miracles he shall act The old Prophets foretold of the Messias and of his Miracles of power and mercy to prepare for his reception and entertainment Christ alone and his Apostles from him foretold of Antichrist and that he should come in all Miracles of deception and lying that is with true or false Miracles to perswade a lie and this was to prejudice his being accepted according to the Law of Moses So that as all that spake of Christ bade us believe him for the Miracles so all that foretold of Antichrist bade us disbelieve him the rather for his and the reason of both is the same because the mighty and surer word of Prophecy as S. Peter calls it being the greatest testimony in the world of a Divine principle gives authority or reprobates with the same power They who are the predestinate of God and they that are the praesciti the foreknown and marked people must needs stand or fall to the Divine sentence and such must this be acknowledged for no enemy of the Cross not the Devil himself ever foretold such a contingency or so rare so personal so voluntary so unnatural an event as this of the great Antichrist 12. And thus the Holy Jesus having shewed forth the treasures of his Father's Wisdom in Revelations and holy Precepts and upon the stock of his Father's greatness having dispended and demonstrated great power in Miracles and these being instanced in acts of Mercy he mingled the glories of Heaven to transmit them to earth to raise us up to the participations of Heaven he was pleased by healing the bodies of infirm persons to invite their spirits to his Discipline and by his power to convey healing and by that mercy to lead us into the treasures of revelation that both Bodies and Souls our Wills and Understandings by Divine instruments might be brought to Divine perfections in the participations of a Divine nature It was a miraculous mercy that God should look upon us in our bloud and a miraculous condescension that his Son should take our nature and even this favour we could not believe without many Miracles and so contrary was our condition to all possibilities of happiness that if Salvation had not marched to us all the way in Miracle we had perished in the ruines of a sad eternity And now it would be but reasonable that since God for our sakes hath rescinded so many laws of natural establishment we also for his and for our own would be content to do violence to those natural inclinations which are also criminal when they derive into action Every man living in the state of Grace is a perpetual Miracle and his Passions are made reasonable as his Reason is turned to Faith and his Soul to Spirit and his Body to a Temple and Earth to Heaven and less than this will not dispose us to such glories which being the portion of Saints and Angels and the nearest communications with God are infinitely above what we see or hear or understand The PRAYER O Eternal Jesu who didst receive great power that by it thou mightest convey thy Father's mercies to us impotent and wretched people give me grace to believe that heavenly Doctrine which thou didst ratifie with arguments from above that I may fully assent to all those mysterious Truths which integrate that Doctrine and Discipline in which the obligations of my duty and the hopes of my felicity are deposited And to all those glorious verifications of thy Goodness and thy Power add also this Miracle that I who am stained with Leprosie of sin may be cleansed and my eyes may be opened that I may see the wondrous things of thy Law and raise thou me up from the death of sin to the life of righteousness that I may for ever walk in the land of the living abhorring the works of death and darkness that as I am by thy miraculous mercy partaker of the first so also I may be accounted worthy of the second Resurrection and as by Faith Hope Charity and Obedience I receive the fruit of thy Miracles in this life so in the other I may partake of thy Glories which is a mercy above all Miracles Lord if thou wilt thou canst make me clean Lord I believe help mine unbelief and grant that no 〈◊〉 or incapacity of mine may hinder the wonderful operations of thy Grace but let it be thy first Miracle to turn my water into wine my barrenness into fruitfulness my aversations from thee into unions and intimate adhesions to thy infinity which is the fountain of mercy and power Grant this for thy mercie 's sake and for the honour of those glorious Attributes in which thou hast revealed thy self and thy Father's excellencies to the world O Holy and Eternal Jesu Amen The End of the Second Part. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 THE HISTORY OF THE Life and Death OF THE HOLY JESUS BEGINNING At the Second Year of his PREACHING until his ASCENSION WITH CONSIDERATIONS and DISCOURSES upon the several parts of the Story And PRAYERS fitted to the several MYSTERIES THE THIRD PART Seneca apud Lactant. lib. 6. c. 17. Hic est ille homo qui sive toto corpore tormenta patienda sunt sive flamma ore recipienda est sive extendenda per patibulum manus non quaerit quid patiatur sed quà m bene LONDON Printed by R. Norton for R. Royston 1675 TO The Right Honourable and Vertuous Lady The LADY FRANCES Countess of CARBERY MADAM SInce the Divine Providence hath been pleased to bind up the great breaches of my little fortune by your Charity and Nobleness of a religious tenderness I account it an excellent circumstance and handsomeness of condition that I have the fortune of S. Athanasius to have my Persecution relieved and comforted by an Honourable and Excellent Lady and I have nothing to return for this honour done to me but to do as the poor Paralyticks and infirm people in the Gospel did when our Blessed Saviour cured them they went and told it to all the Countrey and made the Vicinage full of the report as themselves were of health and joy And although I know the modesty of your person and Religion had rather do favours than own them yet give me leave to draw aside the curtain and retirement of your Charity for I had rather your vertue should blush than my unthankfulness make me ashamed Madam I intended by this Address not onely to return you spirituals for
the Angel's coming because it was a great necessity which was incumbent upon our Lord for his sadness and his Agony was so great mingled and compounded of sorrow and zeal fear and desire innocent nature and perfect grace that he sweat drops as great as if the bloud had started through little undiscerned fontinels and outrun the streams and rivers of his Cross. Euthymius and Theophylact say that the Evangelists use this as a tragical expression of the greatest Agony and an unusual sweat it being usual to call the tears of the greatest sorrow tears of 〈◊〉 But from the beginning of the Church it hath been more generally apprehended literally and that some bloud mingled with the 〈◊〉 substance issued from his veins in so great abundance that they moistened the ground and bedecked his garment which stood like a new firmament studded with stars portending an approaching storm Now he came from Bozrah with his garments red and bloudy And this Agony verified concerning the Holy Jesus those words of David I am poured out like water my bones are dispersed my heart in the midst of my body is like melting wax saith Justin Martyr Venerable Bede saith that the descending of these drops of bloud upon the earth besides the general purpose had also a particular relation to the present infirmities of the Apostles that our Blessed Lord obtained of his Father by the merits of those holy drops mercies and special support for them and that effusion redeemed them from the present participation of death And S. Austin meditates that the Body of our Lord all overspread with drops of bloudy sweat did prefigure the future state of Martyrs and that his Body mystical should be clad in a red garment variegated with the symbols of labour and passion sweat and bloud by which himself was pleased to purifie his Church and present her to God holy and spotless What collateral designs and tacite significations might be designed by this mysterious sweat I know not certainly it was a sad beginning of a most dolorous Passion and such griefs which have so violent permanent and sudden effects upon the body which is not of a nature symbolical to interiour and immaterial causes are proclaimed by such marks to be high and violent We have read of some persons that the grief and fear of one night hath put a cover of snow upon their heads as if the labours of thirty years had been extracted and the quintessence drank off in the passion of that night but if Nature had been capable of a greater or more prodigious impress of passion than a bloudy sweat it must needs have happened in this Agony of the Holy Jesus in which he undertook a grief great enough to make up the imperfect Contrition of all the Saints and to satisfie for the impenitencies of all the world 7. By this time the Traitor Judas was arrived at Gethsemani and being in the vicinage of the Garden Jesus rises from his prayers and first calls his Disciples from their sleep and by an Irony seems to give them leave to sleep on but reproves their drousiness when danger is so near and bids them henceforth take their rest meaning if they could for danger which now was indeed come to the Garden-doors But the Holy Jesus that it might appear he undertook the Passion with choice and a free election not only refused to flie but called his Apostles to rise that they might meet his Murtherers who came to him with swords and staves as if they were to surprise a Prince of armed Out-laws whom without force they could not reduce So also might Butchers do well to go armed when they are pleased to be afraid of Lambs by calling them Lions Judas only discovered his Master's retirements and betrayed him to the opportunities of an armed band for he could not accuse his Master of any word or private action that might render him obnoxious to suspicion or the Law For such are the rewards of innocence and prudence that the one secures against sin the other against suspicion and appearances 8. The Holy Jesus had accustomed to receive every of his Disciples after absence with entertainment of a Kiss which was the endearment of persons and the expression of the oriental civility and Judas was confident that his Lord would not reject him whose feet he had washed at the time when he foretold this event and therefore had agreed to signifie him by this sign and did so beginning war with a Kiss and breaking the peace of his Lord by the symbol of kindness which because Jesus entertained with much evenness and charitable expressions calling him Friend he gave evidence that if he retained civilities to his greatest enemies in the very acts of hostility he hath banquets and crowns and scepters for his friends that adore him with the kisses of Charity and love him with the sincerity of an affectionate spirit But our Blessed Lord besides his essential sweetness and serenity of spirit understood well how great benefits himself and all the World were to receive by occasion of that act of Judas and our greatest enemy does by accident to holy persons the offices of their dearest friends telling us our faults without a cloak to cover their deformities but out of malice laying open the circumstances of aggravation doing us affronts from whence we have an instrument of our Patience and restraining us from scandalous crimes lest we become a scorn and reproof to them that 〈◊〉 us And it is none of God's least mercies that he permits enmities amongst men that animosities and peevishness may reprove more sharply and correct with more severity and simplicity than the gentle hand of friends who are apter to bind our wounds up than to discover them and make them smart but they are to us an excellent probation how friends may best do the offices of friends if they would take the plainness of enemies in accusing and still mingle it with the tenderness and good affections of friends But our Blessed Lord called Judas Friend as being the instrument of bringing him to glory and all the World to pardon if they would 9. Jesus himself begins the enquiry and leads them into their errand and tells them he was JESUS of Nazareth whom they sought But this also which was an answer so gentle had in it a strength greater than the Eastern wind or the voice of thunder for God was in that still voice and it struck them down to the ground And yet they and so do we still persist to persecute our Lord and to provoke the eternal God who can with the breath of his mouth with a word or a sign or a thought reduce us into nothing or into a worse condition even an eternal duration of torments and cohabitation with a never-ending misery And if we cannot bear a soft answer of the merciful God how shall we dare to provoke the wrath of the Almighty Judge But in
as now it is that which we call natural death and supposing that God should preserve the Body for ever or restore it at the day of Judgment to its full substance and perfect organs yet the man would be dead for ever if the Soul for ever should continue separate from the Body So that the other life that is the state of Resurrection is a re-uniting Soul and Body And although in a Philosophical sence the Resurrection is of the Body that is a restitution of our flesh and bloud and bones and is called Resurrection as the entrance into the state of Resurrection may have the denomination of the whole yet in the sence of Scripture the Resurrection is the restitution of our life the renovation of the whole man the state of Re-union and untill that be the man is not but he is dead and onely his essential parts are deposited and laid up in trust and therefore whatsoever the Soul does or perceives in its incomplete condition is but to it as embalming and honourable funerals to the Body and a safe monument to preserve it in order to a living again and the felicities of the intervall are wholly in order to the next life And therefore if there were to be no Resurrection as these intermedial joys should not be at all so as they are they are but relative and incomplete and therefore all our hopes all our felicities depend upon the Resurrection without it we should never be persons men or women and then the state of Separation could be nothing but a phantasm trees ever in blossome never bearing fruit corn for ever in the blade eggs always in the shell a hope eternal never to pass into fruition that is for ever to be deluded for ever to be miserable And therefore it was an elegant expression of S. Paul Our life is hid with Christ in God that is our life is passed into custody the dust of our body is numbred and the Spirit is refreshed visited and preserved in celestial mansions but it is not properly called a Life for all this while the man is dead and shall then live when Christ produces this hidden life at the great day of restitution But our faith of all this Article is well wrapt up in the words of S. John Beloved now we are the Sons of God and it doth not yet appear what we shall be but we know that when he shall appear we shall be like him for we shall see him as he is The middle state is not it which Scripture hath propounded to our Faith or to our Hope the reward is then when Christ shall appear but in the mean time the Soul can converse with God and with Angels just as the holy Prophets did in their Dreams in which they received great degrees of favour and revelation But this is not to be reckoned any more than an entrance or a waiting for the state of our Felicity And since the glories of Heaven is the great fruit of Election we may consider that the Body is not predestinate nor the Soul alone but the whole Man and until the parts embrace again in an essential complexion it cannot be expected either of them should receive the portion of the predestinate But the article and the event of future things is rarely set in order by Saint Paul But ye are come into the mount Sion and to the City of the living God the heavenly Jerusalem and to an innumerable company of Angels To the general assembly and Church of the first born which are written in heaven and to God the Judge of all and then follows after this general assembly after the Judge of all appears to the spirits of just men made perfect that is re-united to their bodies and entring into glory The beginning of the contrary Opinion brought some new practices and appendent perswasions into the Church or at least promoted them much For those Doctors who receding from the Primitive belief of this Article taught that the glories of Heaven are fully communicated to the Souls before the day of Judgment did also upon that stock teach the Invocation of Saints whom they believed to be received into glory and insensibly also brought in the opinion of Purgatory that the less perfect Souls might be glorified in the time that they assigned them But the safer opinion and more agreeable to Piety is that which I have now described from Scripture and the purest Ages of the Church 16. When Jesus appeared to the Apostles he gave them his Peace for a Benediction and when he departed he left them Peace for a Legacy and gave them according to two former promises the power of making Peace and reconciling Souls to God by a ministerial act so conveying his Father's mercy which himself procured by his Passion and actuates by his Intercession and the giving of his Grace that he might comply with our infirmities and minister to our needs by instruments even and proportionate to our selves making our brethren the conduits of his Grace that the excellent effect of the Spirit might not descend upon us as the Law upon Mount Sinai in expresses of greatness and terrour but in earthen vessels and images of infirmity so God manifesting his power in the smalness of the instrument and descending to our needs not only in giving the grace of Pardon but also in the manner of its ministration And I meditate upon the greatness of this Mercy by comparing this Grace of God and the blessing of the Judgment and Sentence we receive at the hand of the Church with the Judgment which God makes at the hour of death upon them who have despised this mercy and neglected all the other parts of their duty The one is a Judgment of mercy the other of vengeance In the one the Devil is the Accuser and Heaven and earth bear witness in the other the penitent sinner accuses himself In that the sinner gets a pardon in the other he finds no remedy In that all his good deeds are remembred and returned and his sins are blotted out in the other all his evil deeds are represented with horrour and a sting and remain for ever In the first the sinner changes his state for a state of Grace and only smarts in some temporal austerities and acts of exteriour mortification in the second his temporal estate is changed to an eternity of pain In the first the sinner suffers the shame of one man or one society which is sweetned by consolation and homilies of mercy and health in the latter all his sins are laid open before all the world and himself confounded in eternal amazement and confusions In the judgment of the Church the sinner is honoured by all for returning to the bosome of his Mother and the embraces of his heavenly Father in the judgment of vengeance he is laughed at by God and mocked by accursed spirits and perishes without pity In this he is prayed for by none
the eternal Compassion and was the instance of Mercy and therefore in the operation of his Father's design every action of his was univocal and he shewed the power of his Divinity in nothing but in miracles of Mercy and illustrations of Faith by creating arguments of Credibility In the same proportion we follow Jesus as himself followed his Father For what he abated by the order to his intendment and design we abate by the proportions of our Nature for some excellent acts of his were demonstrations of Divinity and an excellent Grace poured forth upon him without measure was their instrument to which proportions if we should extend our infirmities we should crack our sinews and dissolve the silver cords before we could entertain the instances and support the burthen Jesus fasted forty days and forty nights but the manner of our Fastings hath been in all Ages limited to the term of an artificial day and in the Primitive Observations and the Jewish Rites men did eat their meal as soon as the Stars shone in the firmament We never read that Jesus laughed and but once that he rejoyced in spirit but the declensions of our Natures cannot bear the weight of a perpetual grave deportment without the intervals of refreshment and free alacrity Our ever-blessed Saviour suffered the Devotion of Mary Magdalene to transport her to an expensive expression of her Religion and twice to anoint his feet with costly Nard and yet if persons whose conditions were of no greater lustre or resplendency of Fortune than was conspicuous in his family and retinue should suffer the same profusion upon the dressing and perfuming their bodies possibly it might be truly said It might better be sold and distributed to the poor This Jesus received as he was the CHRIST and Anointed of the Lord and by this he suffered himself to be designed to Burial and he received the oblation as Eucharistical for the ejection of seven Devils for therefore she loved much 12. The instances are not many For how-ever Jesus had some extraordinary transvolations and acts of emigration beyond the lines of his even and ordinary conversation yet it was but seldom for his being exemplary was of so great consideration that he chose to have fewer instances of Wonder that he might transmit the more of an imitable Vertue And therefore we may establish this for a rule and limit of our imitations Because Christ our Law-giver hath described all his Father's will in Sanctions and signature of Laws whatsoever he commanded and whatsoever he did of precise Morality or in pursuance of the Laws of Nature in that we are to trace his footsteps and in these his Laws and his practice differ but as a Map and a Guide a Law and a Judge a Rule and a Precedent But in the special instances of action we are to abate the circumstances and to separate the obedience from the effect whatsoever was moral in a ceremonial performance that is highly imitable and the obedience of Sacrificing and the subordination to Laws actually in being even now they are abrogated teach us our duty in a differing subject upon the like reason Jesus's going up to Jerusalem to the Feasts and his observation of the Sabbaths teach us our duty in celebration of Festivals constitute by a competent and just Authority For that which gave excellency to the observation of Mosaical Rites was an Evangelical duty and the piety of Obedience did not only consecrate the observations of Levi but taught us our duty in the constitutions of Christianity 13. Fifthly As the Holy Jesus did some things which we are not to imitate so we also are to do some things which we cannot learn from his Example For there are some of our Duties which presuppose a state of Sin and some suppose a violent temptation and promptness to it and the duties of prevention and the instruments of restitution are proper to us but conveyed only by Precept and not by Precedent Such are all the parts and actions of Repentance the duties of Mortification and Self-denial For whatsoever the Holy Jesus did in the matter of Austerity looked directly upon the work of our Redemption and looked back only on us by a reflex act as Christ did on Peter when he looked him into Repentance Some states of life also there are which Jesus never led such are those of temporal Governors Kings and Judges Merchants Lawyers and the state of Marriage in the course of which lives many cases do occur which need a Precedent and the vivacity of an excellent Example especially since all the rules which they have have not prevented the subtilty of the many inventions which men have found out nor made provision for all contingencies Such persons in all their special needs are to govern their actions by the rules of proportion by analogy to the Holiness of the person of Jesus and the Sanctity of his Institution considering what might become a person professing the Discipline of so Holy a Master and what he would have done in the like case taking our heights by the excellency of his Innocency and Charity Only remember this that in such cases we must always judge on the strictest side of Piety and Charity if it be a matter concerning the interest of a second person and that in all things we do those actions which are farthest removed from scandal and such as towards our selves are severe towards others full of gentleness and sweetness For so would the righteous and merciful Jesus have done these are the best analogies and proportions And in such 〈◊〉 when the Wells are dry let us take water from a Cistern and propound to our selves some exemplar Saint the necessities of whose life have determined his Piety to the like occurrences 14. But now from these particulars we shall best account to what the duty of the Imitation of Jesus does amount for it signifies that we should walk as he walked tread in his steps with our hand upon the Guide and our eye upon his Rule that we should do glory to him as he did to his Father and that whatsoever we do we should be careful that it do him honour and no reproach to his Institution and then account these to be the integral parts of our Duty which are imitation of his Actions or his Spirit of his Rule or of his Life there being no better Imitation of him than in such actions as do him pleasure however he hath expressed or imitated the precedent 15. He that gives Alms to the poor takes Jesus by the hand he that patiently endures Injuries and affronts helps him to bear his Cross he that comforts his brother in Affliction gives an amiable kiss of peace to Jesus he that bathes his own and his neighbour's sins in tears of penance and compassion washes his Master's feet We lead Jesus into the recesses of our heart by holy Meditations and we enter into his heart when we express him in our actions for so
adore thy glorious Name whereby thou hast shut up the abysses and opened the gates of Heaven restraining the power of Hell and discovering and communicating the treasures of thy Father's mercies O Jesu be thou a JESUS unto me and save me from the precipices and ruines of sin from the expresses of thy Father's wrath from the miseries and unsufferable torments of accursed spirits by the power of thy Majesty by the sweetnesses of thy Mercy and sacred influences and miraculous glories of thy Name I adore and worship thee in thy excellent Obedience and Humility who hast submitted thy Innocent and spotless flesh to the bloudy Covenant of Circumcision Teach me to practise so blessed and holy a precedent that I may be humble and obedient to thy sacred Laws severe and regular in my Religion mortified in my body and spirit of circumcised heart and tongue that what thou didst represent in symbol and mysterie I may really express in the exhibition of an exemplar pious and mortified life cutting off all excrescences of my spirit and whatsoever may minister to the flesh or any of its ungodly desires that now thy holy Name is called upon me I may do no dishonour to the Name nor scandal to the Institution but may do thee honour and worship and adorations of a pure Religion O most Holy and ever-Blessed JESU Amen DISCOURSE II. Of the Vertue of Obedience 1. THere are certain Excellencies either of habit or consideration which Spiritual persons use to call General ways being a dispersed influence into all the parts of good life either directing the single actions to the right end or managing them with right instruments and adding special excellencies and formalities to them or morally inviting to the repetition of them but they are like the general medicaments in Physick or the prime instruments in Mathematical Disciplines such as are the consideration of the Divine presence the Example of JESUS right Intention and such also is the vertue of Obedience which perfectly unites our actions to God and conforms us to the Divine will which is the original of goodness and sanctifies and makes a man an holocaust to God which contains in it eminently all other Graces but especially those Graces whose essence consists in a conformity of a part or the whole such are Faith Humility Patience and Charity which gives quietness and tranquillity to the spirit and is an Antepast of Paradise where their Jubilee is the perpetual joys of Obedience and their doing is the enjoying the Divine pleasure which adds an excellency and lustre to pious actions and hallows them which are indifferent and lifts up some actions from their unhallowed nature to circumstances of good and of acceptation If a man says his prayers or communicates out of custome or without intuition of the Precept and divine Commandment the act is like a Ship returning from her voyage without her venture and her burthen as unprofitable as without stowage But if God commands us either to eat or to abstain to sleep or to be waking to work or to keep a Sabbath these actions which are naturally neither good nor evil are sanctified by the Obedience and rank'd amongst actions of the greatest excellency And this also was it which made Abraham's offer to kill his Son and the Israelites spoiling the Egyptians to become acts laudable and not unjust they were acts of Obedience and therefore had the same formality and essence with actions of the most spiritual Devotions God's command is all our rule for practice and our Obedience united to the Obedience of Jesus is all our title to acceptance 2. But by Obedience I do not here mean the exteriour execution of the work for so Obedience is no Grace distinct from the acting any or all the Commandments but besides the doing of the thing for that also must be presupposed it is a sacrifice of our proper Will to God a chusing the duty because God commands it For beasts also carry burthens and do our commands by compulsion and the fear of slaves and the rigour of task-masters made the number of bricks to be compleated when Israel groaned and cried to God for help But sons that labour under the sweet paternal regiment of their Fathers and the influence of love they love the precept and do the imposition with the same purposes and compliant affections with which the Fathers made it When Christ commanded us to renounce the World there were some that did think it was a hard saying and do so still and the young rich man forsook him upon it but Ananias and Sapphira upon whom some violences were done by custome or the excellent Sermons of the Apostles sold their possessions too but it was so against their will that they retain'd part of it but St. Paul did not only forsake all his secular fortunes but counted all to be dross that he might gain Christ he gave his Will made an offertory of that as well as of his goods chusing the act which was enjoyned This was the Obedience the Holy Jesus paid to his heavenly Father so voluntary that it was meat to him to do his Father's will 3. And this was intended always by God My son give me thy heart and particularly by the Holy Jesus for in the saddest instance of all his Precepts even that of suffering persecution we are commanded to rejoyce and to be exceeding glad And so did those holy Martyrs in the primitive Ages who upon just grounds when God's glory or the 〈◊〉 of the Church had interest in it they offered themselves to Tyrants and dared the violence of the most cruel and bowelless hang-men And this is the best oblation we can present to God To offer Gold is a present fit to be made by young beginners in Religion not by men in Christianity yea Crates the Theban threw his gold away and so did Antisthenes but to offer our Will to God to give our selves is the act of an Apostle the proper act of Christians And therefore when the Apostles made challenge of a reward for leaving all their possessions Christ makes no reply to the instance nor says You who have left all but You who have followed me in the regeneration shall sit upon twelve thrones and judge the twelve Tribes of Israel meaning that the quitting the goods was nothing but the obedience to Christ that they followed Jesus in the Regeneration going themselves in pursuit of him and giving themselves to him that was it which intitled them to a Throne 4. And this therefore God enjoyns that our offerings to him may be intire and complete that we pay him a holocaust that we do his work without murmuring and that his burthen may become easie when it is born up by the wings of love and alacrity of spirit For in effect this obedience of the Will is in true speaking and strict Theology nothing else but that Charity which gives excellency to Alms and energy to Faith and
acceptance to all Graces But I shall reduce this to particular and more minute considerations 5. First We shall best know that our Will is in the obedience by our prompt undertaking by our chearful managing by our swift execution for all degrees of delay are degrees of immorigerousness and unwillingness And since time is extrinsecal to the act and alike to every part of it nothing determines an action but the Opportunity without and the desires and Willingress within And therefore he who deliberates beyond his first opportunity and exteriour determination and appointment of the act brings fire and wood but wants a Lamb for the sacrifice and unless he offer up his Isaac his beloved Will he hath no ministery prepared for God's acceptance He that does not repent to day puts it to the Question whether he will repent at all or no. He that defers Restitution when all the Circumstances are fitted is not yet resolved upon the duty And when he does it if he does it against his will he does but do honorary Penance with a Paper upon his hat a Taper in his hand it may satisfie the Law but not satisfie his Conscience it neither pleases himself and less pleases God A Sacrifice without a Heart was a sad and ominous presage in the superstition of the Roman Augurs and so it is in the service of God for what the exhibition of the work is to man that the presentation of the Will is to God It is but a cold Charity to a naked begger to say God help thee and do nothing give him clothes and he feels your Charity But God who is the searcher of the heart his apprehension of actions relative to him is of the inward motions and addresses of the Will and without this our exteriour services are like the paying of a piece of mony in which we have defaced the image it is not currant 6. Secondly But besides the Willingness to do the acts of express command the readiness to do the Intimations and tacite significations of God's pleasure is the best testimony in the world that our Will is in the obedience Thus did the Holy Jesus undertake a Nature of infirmity and suffer a Death of shame and sorrow and became obedient from the Circumcision even unto the death of the Cross not staying for a Command but because it was his Father's pleasure Mankind should be redeemed For before the susception of it he was not a person subjicible to a Command It was enough that he understood the inclinations and designs of his Father's Mercies And therefore God hath furnished us with instances of uncommanded Piety to be a touchstone of our Obedience He that does but his endeavour about the express commands hath a bridle in his mouth and is restrained by violence but a willing spirit is like a greedy eye devours all it sees and hopes to make some proportionable returns and compensations of duty for his infirmity by taking in the intimations of God's pleasure When God commands Chastity he that undertakes a holy Coelibate hath great obedience to the command of Chastity God bids us give Alms of our increase he obeys this with great facility that sells all his goods and gives them to the poor And provided our hastiness to snatch at too much does not make us let go our duty like the indiscreet loads of too forward persons too big or too inconvenient and uncombin'd there is not in the world a greater probation of our prompt Obedience than when we look farther than the precise Duty swallowing that and more with our ready and hopeful purposes nothing being so able to do miracles as Love and yet nothing being so certainly accepted as Love though it could do nothing in productions and exteriour ministeries 7. Thirdly but God requires that our Obedience should have another excellency to make it a becoming present to the Divine acceptance our Understanding must be sacrificed too and become an ingredient of our Obedience We must also believe that whatsoever God commands is most fitting to be commanded is most excellent in it self and the best for us to do The first gives our Affections and desires to God and this also gives our Reason and is a perfection of Obedience not communicable to the duties we owe to Man For God only is Lord of this faculty and being the fountain of all wisdom therefore commands our Understanding because he alone can satisfie it We are bound to obey humane Laws but not bound to think the Laws we live under are the most prudent Constitutions in the World But God's Commandments are not only a lantern to our feet and a light unto our paths but a rule to our Reason and satisfaction to our Understandings as being the instruments of our address to God and conveyances of his Grace and manuductions to Eternity And therefore St. John Climacus defines Obedience to be An unexamined and unquestioned motion a voluntary death and sepulture of the Will a life without curiosity a laying aside our own discretion in the midst of the riches of the most excellent understandings 8. And certainly there is not in the world a greater strength against temptations than is deposited in an obedient Understanding because that only can regulary produce the same affections it admits of fewer degrees and an infrequent alteration But the actions proceeding from the Appetite as it is determined by any other principle than a satisfied Understanding have their heightnings and their declensions and their changes and mutations according to a thousand accidents Reason is more lasting than Desire and with fewer means to be tempted but Affections and motions of appetite as they are procured by any thing so may they expire by as great variety of causes And therefore to serve God by way of Understanding is surer and in it self unless it be by the accidental increase of degrees greater than to serve him upon the motion and principle of passions and desires though this be fuller of comfort and pleasure than the other When Lot lived amongst the impure 〈◊〉 where his righteous Soul was in a continual agony he had few exteriour incentives to a pious life nothing to enkindle the sensible flame of burning desires toward Piety but in the midst of all the discouragements of the world nothing was left him but the way and precedency of a truly-informed Reason and Conscience Just so is the way of those wise souls who live in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation where Piety is out of countenance where Austerity is ridiculous 〈◊〉 under persecution no Examples to lead us on there the Understanding is left to be the guide and it does the work the surest for this makes the duty of many to be certain regular and chosen constant integral and perpetual but this way is like the life of an unmarried or a retired person less of grief in it and less of joy But the way of serving God with the
our Redemption he adds Looking for that blessed hope and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Who gave himself for us to this very purpose that he might redeem us from all iniquity and purifie unto himself a peculiar people zealous of good works Purifying a people peculiar to himself is cleansing it in the Laver of Regeneration and appropriating it to himself in the rites of Admission and Profession Which plainly designs the first consignation of our Redemption to be in Baptism and that Christ there cleansing his Church from every spot or wrinkle made a Covenant with us that we should renounce all our sins and he should cleanse them all and then that we should abide in that state Which is also very explicitely set down by the same Apostle in that divine and mysterious Epistle to the Romans How shall we that are dead to sin live any longer therein Know ye not that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death Well what then Therefore we are buried with him by Baptism into his death that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father even so we also should walk in newness of life That 's the end and mysteriousness of Baptism it is a consignation into the Death of Christ and we die with him that once that is die to sin that we may for ever after live the life of righteousness Knowing this that our old man is crucified with him that the body of sin might be destroyed that henceforth we should not serve sin that is from the day of our Baptism to the day of our death And therefore God who knows the weaknesses on our part and yet the strictness and necessity of conserving Baptismal grace by the Covenant Evangelical hath appointed the auxiliaries of the Holy Spirit to be ministred to all baptized people in the holy Rite of Confirmation that it might be made possible to be done by Divine aids which is necessary to be done by the Divine Commandments 10. And this might not be improperly said to be the meaning of those words of our Blessed Saviour He that speaks a word against the Son of man it shall be forgiven him but he that speaks a word against the Holy Ghost it shall not be forgiven him That is those sins which were committed in Infidelity before we became Disciples of the Holy Jesus are to be remitted in Baptism and our first profession of the Religion but the sins committed after Baptism and Confirmation in which we receive the Holy Ghost and by which the Holy Spirit is grieved are to be accounted for with more severity And therefore the Primitive Church understanding our obligations according to this discourse admitted not any to holy Orders who had lapsed and fallen into any sin of which she could take cognisance that is such who had not kept the integrity of their Baptism but sins committed before Baptism were no impediments to the susception of Orders because they were absolutely extinguished in Baptism This is the nature of the Covenant we made in Baptism that 's the grace of the Gospel and the effect of Faith and Repentance and it is expected we should so remain For it is nowhere expressed to be the mercy and intention of the Covenant Evangelical that this Redemption should be any more than once or that Repentance which is in order to it can be renewed to the same or so great purposes and present effects 11. But after we are once reconciled in Baptism and put intirely into God's favour when we have once been redeemed if we then fall away into sin we must expect God's dealing with us in another manner and to other purposes Never must we expect to be so again justified and upon such terms as formerly the best days of our Repentance are interrupted not that God will never forgive them that sin after Baptism and recover by Repentance but that Restitution by repentance after Baptism is another thing than the first Redemption No such intire clear and integral determinate and presential effects of Repentance but an imperfect little growing uncertain and hazardous Reconciliation a Repentance that is always in production a Renovation by parts a Pardon that is revocable a Salvation to be wrought by fear and trembling all our remanent life must be in bitterness our hopes allayed with fears our meat attempered with Coloquintida and death is in the pot as our best actions are imperfect so our greatest Graces are but possibilities and aptnesses to a Reconcilement and all our life we are working our selves into that condition we had in Baptism and lost by our relapse As the habit lessens so does the guilt as our Vertues are imperfect so is the Pardon and because our Piety may be interrupted our state is uncertain till our possibilities of sin are ceased till our fight is finished and the victory therefore made sure because there is no more fight And it is remarkable that S. Peter gives counsel to live holily in pursuance of our redemption of our calling and of our escaping from that corruption that is in the world through Lust lest we lose the benefit of our purgation to which by way of antithesis he opposes this Wherefore the rather give diligence to make your calling and election sure And if ye do these things ye shall never fall Meaning by the perpetuating our state of Baptism and first Repentance we shall never fall but be in a sure estate our calling and election shall be sure But not if we fall if we forget we were purged from our old sins if we forfeit our calling we have also made our election unsure movable and disputable 12. So that now the hopes of lapsed sinners relie upon another bottom And as in Moses's Law there was no revelation of Repentance but yet the Jews had hopes in God and were taught the succours of Repentance by the Homilies of the Prophets and other accessory notices So in the Gospel the Covenant was established upon Faith and Repentance but it was consigned in Baptism and was verifiable onely in the integrity of a following holy life according to the measures of a man not perfect but sincere not faultless but heartily endeavoured but yet the mercies of God in pardoning sinners lapsed after Baptism was declared to us by collateral and indirect occasions by the Sermons of the Apostles and the Commentaries of Apostolical persons who understood the meaning of the Spirit and the purposes of the Divine mercy and those other significations of his will which the blessed Jesus left upon record in other parts of his Testament as in Codicills annexed besides the precise Testament it self And it is certain if in the Covenant of Grace there be the same involution of an after-Repentance as there is of present Pardon upon past Repentance and future Sanctity it is impossible to
proportionable reception of his and hath also commanded us to ask pardon all days of our life even in our daily offices and to beg it in the measure and rule of our own Charity and Forgiveness to our Brother And therefore God in his infinite wisdom foreseeing our frequent relapses and considering our infinite infirmities appointed in his Church an ordinary ministery of Pardon designing the Minister to pray for sinners and promising to accept him in that his advocation or that he would open or shut Heaven respectively to his act on earth that is he would hear his prayers and verifie his ministery to whom he hath committed the word of Reconciliation This became a duty to Christian Ministers Spiritual persons that they should restore a person overtaken in a fault that is reduce him to the condition he begins to lose that they should pray over sick persons who are also commanded to confess their sins and God hath promised that the sins they have committed shall be forgiven them Thus S. Paul absolved the incestuous excommunicate Corinthian in the person of Christ he forgave him And this also is the confidence S. John taught the Christian Church upon the stock of the excellent mercy of God and propitiation of Jesus If we confess our sins he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all 〈◊〉 Which discourse he directs to them who were Christians already initiated into the Institution of Jesus And the Epistles which the Spirit sent to the Seven Asian Churches and were particularly addressed to the Bishops the Angels of those Churches are exhortations some to Perseverance some to Repentance that they may return from whence they are fallen And the case is so with us that it is impossible we should be actually and perpetually free from sin in the long succession of a busie and impotent and a tempted conversation And without these reserves of the Divine grace and after-emanations from the Mercy-seat no man could be saved and the death of Christ would become inconsiderable to most of his greatest purposes for none should have received advantages but newly-baptized persons whose Albs of Baptism served them also for a winding-sheet And therefore our Baptism although it does consign the work of God presently to the baptized person in great certain and intire effect in order to the remission of what is past in case the Catechumen be rightly disposed or hinders not yet it hath also influence upon the following periods of our life and hath admitted us into a lasting state of Pardon to be renewed and actually applied by the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper and all other Ministeries Evangelical and so long as our Repentance is timely active and affective 18. But now although it is infinitely certain that the gates of Mercy stand open to sinners after Baptism yet it is with some variety and greater difficulty He that renounces Christianity and becomes Apostate from his Religion not by a seeming abjuration under a storm but by a voluntary and hearty dereliction he seems to have quitted all that Grace which he had received when he was illuminated and to have lost the benefits of his Redemption and former expiation And I conceive this is the full meaning of those words of S. Paul which are of highest difficulty and latent sense For it is impossible for those who were once enlightned c. if they shall fall away to renew them again unto Repentance The reason is there subjoyned and more clearly explicated a little after For if we sin wilfully after we have received the knowledge of the truth there remains no more sacrifice for sins For he hath counted the bloud of the Covenant wherewith he was sanctified an unholy thing and hath done despite to the Spirit of Grace The meaning is divers according to the degrees of apostasie or relapse They who fall away after they were once enlightned in Baptism and felt all those blessed effects of the sanctification and the emanations of the Spirit if it be into a contradictory state of sin and mancipation and obstinate purposes to serve Christ's enemies then there remains nothing but a fearful expectation of Judgment but if the backsliding be but the interruption of the first Sanctity by a single act or an unconformed unresolved unmalicious habit then also it is impossible to renew them unto Repentance viz. as formerly that is they can never be reconciled as before integrally fully and at once during this life For that Redemption and expiation was by Baptism into Christ's death and there are no more deaths of Christ nor any more such sacramental consignations of the benefit of it there is no more sacrifice for sins but the Redemption is one as the Sacrifice is one in whose virtue the Redemption does operate And therefore the Novatians who were zealous men denied to the first sort of persons the peace of the Church and remitted them to the Divine Judgment The Church her self was sometimes almost as zealous against the second sort of persons lapsed into capital crimes granting to them Repentance but once by such disciplines consigning this truth That every recession from the state of Grace in which by Baptism we were established and consigned is a farther step from the possibilities of Heaven and so near a ruine that the Church thought them persons fit to be transmitted to a Judicature immediately Divine as supposing either her power to be too little or the others malice too great or else the danger too violent or the scandal insupportable For concerning such persons who once were pious holy and forgiven for so is every man and woman worthily and aptly baptized and afterwards fell into dissolution of manners extinguishing the Holy Ghost doing despite to the Spirit of Grace crucisying again the Lord of Life that is returning to such a condition from which they were once recovered and could not otherwise be so but by the death of our dearest Lord I say concerning such persons the Scripture speaks very suspiciously and to the sense and signification of an infinite danger For if the speaking a word against the Holy Ghost be not to be pardoned here nor hereafter what can we imagine to be the end of such an impiety which crucifies the Lord of Life and puts him to an open shame which quenches the Spirit doing despite to the Spirit of Grace Certainly that is worse than speaking against him And such is every person who falls into wilful Apostasie from the Faith or does that violence to Holiness which the other does to Faith that is extinguishes the sparks of Illumination quenches the Spirit and is habitually and obstinately criminal in any kind For the same thing that 〈◊〉 was in the first period of the world and Idolatry in the second the same is Apostasie in the last it is a state wholly contradictory to all our religious relation to God according to the
as all our happiness consists so God takes greatest complacency and delights in it above all his other Works He punishes to the third and fourth Generation but shews mercy unto thousands Therefore the Jews say that Michael 〈◊〉 with one wing and Gabriel with two meaning that the pacifying Angel the Minister of mercy 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but the exterminating Angel the Messenger of wrath is slow And we are called to our approximation to God by the practice of this Grace we are made partakers of the Divine nature by being merciful as our heavenly Father is merciful This mercy consists in the affections and in the effects and actions In both which the excellency of this Christian Precept is eminent above the goodness of the moral precept of the old Philosophers and the piety and charity of the Jews by virtue of the Mosaic Law The Stoick Philosophers affirm it to be the duty of a wise man to succour and help the necessities of indigent and miserable persons but at no hand to pity them or suffer any trouble or compassion in our affections for they intended that a wise person should be dispassionate unmoved and without disturbance in every accident and object and concernment But the Blessed Jesus who came to reconcile us to his Father and purchase us an intire possession did intend to redeem us from sin and make our passions obedient and apt to be commanded even and moderate in temporal affairs but high and active in some instances of spiritual concernment and in all instances that the affection go along with the Grace that we must be as merciful in our compassion as compassionate in our exteriour expressions and actions The Jews by the prescript of their Law were to be merciful to all their Nation and confederates in Religion and this their Mercy was called Justice He hath dispersed abroad and given to the poor his righteousness or Justice 〈◊〉 for ever But the mercies of a Christian are to extend to all Do good to all men especially to the houshold of Faith And this diffusion of a Mercy not only to Brethren but to Aliens and Enemies is that which S. Paul calls goodness still retaining the old appellative for Judaical mercy 〈◊〉 For scarcely for a 〈◊〉 man will one die yet peradventure for a good man some will even dare to die So that the Christian Mercy must be a mercy of the whole man the heart must be merciful and the hand operating in the labour of love and it must be extended to all persons of all capacities according as their necessity requires and our ability permits and our endearments and other obligations dispose of and determine the order 14. The acts of this Grace are 1. To pity the miseries of all persons and all calamities spiritual or temporal having a fellow-feeling in their afflictions 2. To be afflicted and sad in the publick Judgments imminent or incumbent upon a Church or State or Family 3. To pray to God for remedy for all afflicted persons 4. To do all acts of bodily assistence to all miserable and distressed people to relieve the Poor to redeem Captives to forgive Debts to disabled persons to pay Debts for them to lend them mony to feed the hungry and clothe the naked to rescue persons from dangers to defend and relieve the oppressed to comfort widows and fatherless children to help them to right that suffer wrong and in brief to do any thing of relief support succour and comfort 5. To do all acts of spiritual 〈◊〉 to counsel the doubtful to admonish the erring to strengthen the weak to resolve the scrupulous to teach the ignorant and any thing else which may be instrumental to his Conversion Perseverance Restitution and Salvation or may rescue him from spiritual dangers or supply him in any ghostly necessity The reward of this Vertue is symbolical to the Vertue it self the grace and glory differing in nothing but degrees and every vertue being a reward to it self The merciful shall receive mercy mercy to help them in time of need mercy from God who will not only give them the great mercies of Pardon and Eternity but also dispose the hearts of others to pity and supply their needs as they have done to others For the present there is nothing more noble than to be beneficial to others and to lift up the poor 〈◊〉 of the mire and rescue them from misery it is to do the work of God and for the future nothing is a greater title to a mercy at the Day of Judgment than to have shewed mercy to our necessitous Brother it being expressed to be the only rule and instance in which Christ means to judge the world in their Mercy and Charity or their Unmercifulness respectively I was hungry and ye fed me or ye fed me not and so we stand or fall in the great and eternal scrutiny And it was the prayer of Saint Paul Onesiphorus shewed kindness to the great Apostle The Lord shew him a mercy in that day For a cup of charity though but full of cold water shall not lose its reward 15. Sixthly Blessed are the Pure 〈◊〉 heart for they shall see God This purity of heart includes purity of hands Lord who shall dwell in thy Tabernacle even he that is of clean hands and a pure heart that is he that hath not given his mind unto vanity nor sworn to deceive his Neighbour It signifies justice of action and candour of spirit innocence of manners and sincerity of purpose it is one of those great circumstances that consummates Charity For the end of the Commandment is Charity out of a pure heart and of a good Conscience and Faith unfeigned that is a heart free from all carnal affections not only in the matter of natural impurity but also spiritual and immaterial such as are Heresies which are theresore impurities because they mingle secular interest or prejudice with perswasions in Religion Seditions hurtful and impious Stratagems and all those which S. Paul enumerates to be works or fruits of the flesh A good Conscience that 's a Conscience either innocent or penitent a state of Grace 〈◊〉 a not having prevaricated or a being restored to our Baptismal purity Faith unfeigned that also is the purity of Sincerity and excludes Hypocrisie timorous and half perswasions neutrality and indifferency in matters of Salvation And all these do integrate the whole duty of Charity But Purity as it is a special Grace signifies only honesty and uprightness of Soul without hypocrisie to God and dissimulation towards men and then a freedom from all carnal desires so as not to be governed or led by them Chastity is the purity of the body Simplicity is the purity of the spirit both are the Sanctification of the whole Man for the entertainment of the Spirit of Purity and the Spirit of Truth 16. The acts of this Vertue are 1. To quit all Lustful thoughts not to take delight in
and the caltel upon a thousand hills are God's and they find the poor man meat the Rich also need this Prayer because although they have the bread yet they need the blessing and what they have now may perish or be taken from them and as preservation is a perpetual creation so the continuing to rich men what God hath already bestowed is a continual giving it Young men must pray because their needs are like to be the longer and Old men because they are present but all these are to pray but for the present that which in estimation of Law is to be reckoned as imminent upon the present and part of this state and condition But it is great improvidence and an unchristian spirit for old men to heap up provisions and load their sumpters still the more by how much their way is shorter But there is also a bread which came down from heaven a diviner nutriment of our Souls the food and wine of Angels Christ himself as he communicates himself in the expresses of his Word and Sacraments and if we be destitute of this bread we are miserable and perishing people We must pray that our Souls also may feed upon those celestial viands prepared for us in the antepasts of the Gospel till the great and fuller meal of the Supper of the Lamb shall answer all our prayers and 〈◊〉 every desire 8. Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them that trespass against us Not only those sins of infirmity invasion and sudden surprise which like excrescencies of luxuriant trees adhere to many actions by inadvertency and either natural weakness or accidental prejudice but also all those great sins which were washed off from our Souls and the stain taken away in Baptism or when by choice and after the use of Reason we gave up our names to Christ when we first received the adoption of sons for even those things were so pardoned that we must for ever confess and glory in the Divine mercy and still ascertain it by performing what we then promised and which were the conditions of our covenant For although Christ hath taken off the guilt yet still there remains the disreputation and S. Paul calls himself the chiefest of sinners not referring to his present condition but to his former persecuting the Church of God which is one of the greatest crimes in the world and for ever he asked pardon for it and so must we knowing that they may return if we shake off the yoke of Christ and break his cords from us the bands of the covenant Evangelical the sins will return so as to undo us And this we pray with a tacite obligation to forgive for so only and upon that condition we beg pardon to be given or continued respectively that is as we from our hearts forgive them that did us injury in any kind never entertaining so much as a thought of revenge but contrariwise loving them that did us wrong for so we beg that God should do to us and therefore it is but a lesser revenge to say I will forgive but I will never have to do with him For if he become an object of Charity we must have to do with him to relieve him because he needs prayers we must have to do with him and pray for him and to refuse his society when it is reasonably and innocently offered is to deny that to him which Christians have only been taught to deny to persons excommunicate to persons under punishment i. e. to persons not yet forgiven and we shall have but an evil portion if God should forgive our sins and should not also love us and do us grace and bestow benefits upon us So we must forgive others so God forgives us 9. And lead us not into temptation S. Cyprian out of an old Latin copy reads it Suffer us not to be led into temptation that is Suffer us not to be overcome by temptation And therefore we are bound to prevent our access to such temptation whose very approximation is dangerous and the contact is irregular and evil such as are temptations of the flesh yet in other temptations the assault sometimes makes confident and hardens a resolution For some spirits who are softned by fair usages are steeled and emboldned by a persecution But of what nature soever the temptations be whether they be such whose approach a Christian is bound to fear or such which are the certain lot of Christians such are troubles and persecutions into which when we enter we must count it joy yet we are to pray that we enter not into the possession of the temptation that we be not overcome by it 10. But deliver us from evil From the assaults or violence of evil from the Wicked one who not only presents us with objects but heightens our concupiscence and makes us imaginative phantastical and passionate setting on the temptation making the lust active and the man full of appetite and the appetite full of energy and power therefore deliver us from the Evil one who is interested as an enemy in every hostility and in every danger Let not Satan have any power or advantage over us and let not evil men prevail upon us in our danger much less to our ruine Make us safe under the covering of thy wings against all fraud and every violence that no temptation destroy our hopes or break our strength or alter our state or overthrow our glories In these last Petitions which concern our selves the Soul hath affections proper to her own needs as in the former proportion to God's glory In the first of these the affection of a poor indigent and necessitous Begger in the second of a delinquent and penitent servant in the last of a person in affliction or danger And after all this the reason of our confidence is derived from God 11. For thine is the kingdom the power and the glory for ever That is These which we beg are for the honour of thy kingdom for the manifestation of thy power and the glory of thy Name and mercies And it is an express Doxology or Adoration which is apt and 〈◊〉 to conclude all our Prayers and addresses to God 12. These are the generals and great Treasures of matter to which all our present or sudden needs are reducible and when we make our Prayers more minute and particular if the instance be in matter of duty and merely spiritual there is no danger but when our needs are temporal or we are transported with secular desires all descending to particulars is a confining the Divine Providence a judging for our selves a begging a temptation oftentimes sometimes a mischief and to beg beyond the necessities of our life is a mutiny against that Providence which assigns to Christians no more but food and raiment for their own use all other excrescencies of possessions being entrusted to the rich man's 〈◊〉 only as to a steward and he shall be accountable for the
that is to come That is plain And although Christ revealed his Father's mercies to us in new expresses and great abundance yet he took nothing from the world which ever did in any sense invite Piety or indear Obedience or cooperate towards Felicity And 〈◊〉 the Promises which were made of old are also presupposed in the new and mentioned by intimation and implication within the greater When our Blessed Saviour in seven of the Eight Beatitudes had instanced in new Promises and Rewards as Heaven Seeing of God Life eternal in one of them to which Heaven is as certainly consequent as to any of the rest he did chuse to instance in a temporal blessing and in the very words of the Old Testament to shew that that part of the old Covenant which concerns Morality and the rewards of Obedience remains firm and included within the conditions of the Gospel 16. To this purpose is that saying of our Blessed Saviour Man liveth not by bread alone but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God meaning that besides natural means ordained for the preservation of our lives there are means supernatural and divine God's Blessing does as much as bread nay it is Every word proceeding out of the 〈◊〉 of God that is every Precept and Commandment of God is so for our good that it is intended as food and Physick to us a means to make us live long And therefore God hath done in this as in other graces and issues Evangelical which he purposed to continue in his Church for ever He first gave it in miraculous and extraordinary manner and then gave it by way of perpetual ministery The Holy Ghost appeared at first like a prodigy and with Miracle he descended in visible representments expressing himself in revelations and powers extraordinary but it being a Promise intended to descend upon all Ages of the Church there was appointed a perpetual ministery for its conveyance and still though without a sign or miraculous representment it is ministred in Confirmation by imposition of the Bishop's hands And thus also health and long life which by way of ordinary benediction is consequent to Piety Faith and Obedience Evangelical was at first given in a miraculous manner that so the ordinary effects being at first confirmed by miraculous and extraordinary instances and manners of operation might for ever after be confidently expected without any dubitation since it was in the same manner consigned by which all the whole Religion was by a voice from Heaven and a verification of Miracles and extraordinary supernatural effects That the gift of healing and preservation and restitution of life was at first miraculous needs no particular probation All the story of the Gospel is one entire argument to prove it and amongst the fruits of the Spirit S. Paul reckons gifts of healing and government and helps or exteriour assistences and advantages to represent that it was intended the life of Christian people should be happy and healthful for ever Now that this grace also descended afterwards in an ordinary ministery is recorded by S. James Is any man sick amongst you let him call for the Elders of the Church and let them pray over him anointing him with oyl in the name of the Lord that was then the ceremony and the blessing and effect is still for the prayer of faith shall save the sick and the Lord shall raise him up For it is observable that the blessing of healing and recovery is not appendent to the Anealing but to the Prayer of the Church to manifest that the ceremony went with the first miraculous and extraordinary manner yet that there was an ordinary ministery appointed for the daily conveyance of the blessing the faithful prayers offices of holy Priests shall obtain life and health to such persons who are receptive of it and in spiritual and apt dispositions And when we see by a continual flux of extraordinary benediction that even some Christian Princes are instruments of the Spirit not only in the government but in the gifts of healing too as a reward for their promoting the just interests of Christianity we may acknowledge our selves convinced that a holy life in the faith and obedience of Jesus Christ may be of great advantage for our health and life by that instance to entertain our present desires and to establish our hopes of life eternal 17. For I consider that the fear of God is therefore the best antidote in the World against sickness and death because it is the direct enemy to sin which brought in sickness and death and besides this that God by spiritual means should produce alterations natural is not hard to be understood by a Christian Philosopher take him in either of the two capacities 2. For there is a rule of proportion and analogy of effects that if sin destroys not only the Soul but the Body also then may Piety preserve both and that much rather for if sin that is the effects and consequents of sin hath abounded then shall grace superabound that is Christ hath done us more benefit than the Fall of Adam hath done us injury and therefore the effects of sin are not greater upon the body than either are to be restored or prevented by a pious life 3. There is so near a conjunction between Soul and Body that it is no wonder if God meaning to glorifie both by the means of a spiritual life suffers spirit and matter to communicate in effects and mutual impresses Thus the waters of Baptism purifie the Soul and the Holy Eucharist not the symbolical but the mysterious and spiritual part of it makes the Body also partaker of the death 〈◊〉 Christ and a holy union The flames of Hell whatsoever they are torment accursed Souls and the stings of Conscience vex and disquiet the Body 4. And if we consider that in the glories of Heaven when we shall live a life purely spiritual our Bodies also are so clarified and made spiritual that they also become immortal that state of Glory being nothing else but a perfection of the state of Grace it is not unimaginable but that the Soul may have some proportion of the same operation upon the Body as to conduce to its prolongation as to an antepast of immortality 5. For since the Body hath all its life from its conjunction with the Soul why not also the perfection of life according to its present capacity that is health and duration from the perfection of the Soul I mean from the ornaments of Grace And as the blessedness of the Soul saith the Philosopher consists in the speculation of honest and just things so the perfection of the Body and of the whole Man consists in the practick the exercise and operations of Vertue 18. But this Problem in Christian Philosophy is yet more intelligible and will be reduced to certain experience if we consider good life in union and concretion with particular
her in the midst of her journey Against this David prayed O my God cut me 〈◊〉 off in the midst of my days But in this there is some variety For God does it sometimes in mercy sometimes in judgment The righteous die and no man regardeth not considering that they are taken away from the evil to come God takes the righteous man hastily to his Crown lest temptation snatch it from him by interrupting his hopes and sanctity And this was the case of the old World For from Adam to the Floud by the Patriarchs were eleven generations but by Cain's line there were but eight so that Cain's posterity were longer liv'd because God intending to bring the Floud upon the World took delight to rescue his elect from the dangers of the present impurity and the future Deluge Abraham lived five years less than his son Isaac it being say the Doctors of the Jews intended for mercy to him that he might not see the iniquity of his Grandchild 〈◊〉 And this the Church for many Ages hath believed in the case of baptized Infants dying before the use of Reason For besides other causes in the order of Divine Providence one kind of mercy is done to them too for although their condition be of a lower form yet it is secured by that timely shall I call it or untimely death But these are cases extraregular ordinarily and by rule God hath revealed his purposes of interruption of the lives of sinners to be in anger and judgment for when men commit any signal and grand impiety God suffers not Nature to take her course but strikes a stroke with his own hand To which purpose I think it a remarkable instance which is reported by 〈◊〉 that for 3332 years even to the twentieth Age there was not one example of a Son that died before his Father but the course of Nature was kept that he who was first born in the descending line did die first I speak of natural death and therefore Abel cannot be opposed to this observation till that Terah the father of Abraham taught the People to make Images of clay and worship them and concerning him it was first remarked that Haran died before his father Terah in the land of his nativity God by an unheard-of Judgment and a rare accident punishing his newly-invented crime And when-ever such 〈◊〉 of a life happens to a vicious person let all the world acknowledge it for a Judgment and when any man is guilty of evil habits or unrepented sins he may therefore expect it because it is threatned and designed for the lot and curse of such persons This is threatned to Covetousness Injustice and Oppression As a Partridge sitteth on eggs and hatcheth them not so he that getteth riches and not by right shall leave them in the midst of his days and at his end shall be a Fool. The same is threatned to Voluptuous persons in the highest caresses of delight and Christ told a parable with the same design The rich man said Soul take thy ease but God answered O fool this night shall thy Soul be required of thee Zimri and Cozbi were slain in the trophies of their Lust and it was a sad story which was told by Thomas Cantipratanus Two Religious persons tempted by each other in the vigour of their youth in their very first pleasures and opportunities of sin were both struck dead in their embraces and posture of entertainment God smote Jeroboam for his Usurpation and Tyranny and he died Saul died for Disobedience against God and asking counsel of a Pythonisse God smote 〈◊〉 with a Leprosie for his profaneness and distressed 〈◊〉 sorely for his Sacrilege and sent a horrid disease upon Jehoram for his Idolatry These instances represent Voluptuousness and Covetousness Rapine and Injustice Idolatry and Lust Profaneness and Sacrilege as remarked by the signature of exemplary Judgments to be the means of shortening the days of man God himself proving the Executioner of his own fierce wrath I instance no more but in the singular case of Hananiah the false Prophet Thus saith the LORD Behold I will cut thee from off the face of the earth this year thou shalt die because thou hast taught Rebellion against the LORD That is the curse and portion of a false Prophet a short life and a suddén death of God's own particular and more immediate 〈◊〉 23. And thus also the sentence of the Divine anger went forth upon criminal persons in the New Testament Witness the Disease of Herod Judas's Hanging himself the Blindness of 〈◊〉 the Sudden death of Ananias and Sapphira the Buffetings with which Satan 〈◊〉 the bodies of persons excommunicate Yea the blessed Sacrament of CHRIST's Body and Bloud which is intended for our spiritual life if it be unworthily received proves the cause of a natural death For this cause many are weak and sickly among you and many are fallen asleep saith S. Paul to the 〈◊〉 Church 24. Thirdly But there is yet another manner of ending man's life by way of Chance or Contingency meaning thereby the manner of God's Providence and event of things which is not produced by the disposition of natural causes nor yet by any particular and special act of God but the event which depends upon accidental causes not so certain and regular as Nature not so conclusive and determined as the acts of decretory Providence but comes by disposition of causes irregular to events rare and accidental This David expresses by entring into battel and in this as in the other we must separate cases extraordinary and rare from the ordinary and common Extraregularly and upon extraordinary reasons and permissions we find that holy persons have miscarried in battel So the 〈◊〉 fell before Benjamin and Jonathan and 〈◊〉 and many of the Lord's champions fighting against the Philistines but in these deaths as God served other ends of Providence so he kept to the good men that fell all the mercies of the Promise by giving them a greater blessing of event and compensation In the more ordinary course of Divine dispensation they that prevaricate the Laws of God are put out of protection God withdraws his special Providence or their tutelar Angel and leaves them exposed to the influences of Heaven to the power of a Constellation to the accidents of humanity to the chances of a Battel which are so many and various that it is ten thousand to one a man in that case never escapes and in such variety of contingencies there is no probable way to assure our safety but by a holy life to endear the Providence of God to be our Guardian It was a remarkable saying of Deborah The Stars sought in their courses 〈◊〉 in their orbs against Sisera Sisera fought when there was an evil Aspect or malignant influence of Heaven upon him For even the smallest thing that is in opposition to us is enough to turn the
himself to his house who received him with gladness and repentance of his crimes purging his Conscience and filling his heart and house with joy and sanctity for immediately upon the arrival of the Master at his house he offered restitution to all persons whom he had injured and satisfaction and half of his remanent estate he gave to the poor and so gave the fairest entertainment to Jesus who brought along with him Salvation to his house There it was that he spake the Parable of the King who concredited divers talents to his servants and having at his return exacted an account rewarded them who had improved their bank and been faithful in their trust with rewards proportionable to their capacity and improvement but the negligent servant who had not meliorated his stock was punished with ablegation and 〈◊〉 to outer darkness And from hence sprang up that dogmatical proposition which is mysterious and 〈◊〉 in Christianity To him that hath shall be given and from him that hath not shall be taken away even what he hath After this going forth of Jericho he cured two blind men upon the way 5. Six days before Easter Jesus came to Bethany where he was feasted by Martha and Mary and accompanied by Lazarus who sate at the table with Jesus But Mary brought a pound of Nard Pistick and as formerly she had done again anoints the feet of Jesus and fills the house with the odour till God himself smelt thence a savour of a sweet-smelling sacrifice But Judas Iscariot the Thief and the Traitor repined at the vanity of the expence as he pretended because it might have been sold for three hundred pence and have been given to the poor But Jesus in his reply taught us that there is an opportunity for actions of Religion as well as of Charity Mary did this against the Burial of Jesus and her Religion was accepted by him to whose honours the holocaust of love and the oblations of alms-deeds are in their proper seasons direct actions of worship and duty But at this meeting there came many Jews to see Lazarus who was raised from death as well as to see Jesus and because by occasion of his Resurrection many of them believed on Jesus therefore the Pharisees deliberated about putting him to death But God in his glorious providence was pleased to preserve him as a trumpet of his glories and a testimony of the Miracle thirty years after the death of Jesus 6. The next day being the fifth day before the Passeover Jesus came to the foot of the mount of Olives and sent his Disciples to Bethphage a village in the neighbourhood commanding them to unloose an asse and a colt and bring them to him and to tell the owners it was done for the Master's use and they did so and when they brought the Asse to Jesus he rides on him to Jerusalem and the People having notice of his approach took branches of Palm-trees and went out to meet him strewing branches and garments in the way crying out Hosanna to the son of David Which was a form of exclamation used to the honour of God and in great Solemnities and signifies Adoration to the Son of David by the rite of carrying branches which when they used in procession about their Altars they used to pray Lord save us Lord prosper us which hath occasioned the reddition of Hoschiannah to be amongst some that Prayer which they repeated at the carrying of the Hoschiannah as if it self did signifie Lord save us But this honour was so great and unusual to be done even to Kings that the Pharisees knowing this to be an appropriate manner of address to God said one to another by way of wonder Hear ye what these men say For they were troubled to hear the People revere him as a God 7. When Jesus from the mount of Olives beheld Jerusalem he wept over it and foretold great sadnesses and infelicities futurely contingent to it which not only happened in the sequel of the story according to the main issues and significations of this Prophecy but even to minutes and circumstances it was verified For in the mount of Olives where Jesus shed tears over perishing Jerusalem the Romans first pitched their Tents when they came to its final overthrow From thence descending to the City he went into the Temple and still the acclamations followed him till the Pharisees were ready to burst with the noises abroad and the tumults of envy and scorn within and by observing that all their endeavours to suppress his glories were but like clapping their hands to veil the Sun and that in despight of all their stratagems the whole Nation was become Disciple to the glorious Nazarene And there 〈◊〉 cured certain persons that were blind and lame 8. But whilest he abode at Jerusalem certain Greeks who came to the Feast to worship made their address to Philip that they might be brought to Jesus Philip tells Andrew and they both tell Jesus who having admitted them discoursed many things concerning his Passion and then prayed a petition which is the end of his own Sufferings and of all humane actions and the purpose of the whole Creation Father glorifie thy Name To which he was answered by a voice from Heaven I have both glorified it and will glorifie it again But this nor the whole series of Miracles that he did the Mercies the Cures nor the divine Discourses could gain the Faith of all the Jews who were determined by their humane interest for many of the Rulers who believed on him durst not confess him because they loved the praise of men more than the praise of God Then Jesus again exhorted all men to believe on him that so they might in the same act believe on God that they might approach unto the light and not abide in darkness that they might obey the commandments of the Father whose express charge it was that Jesus should preach this Gospel and that they might not be judged at the last Day by the Word which they have rejected which Word to all its observers is everlasting life After which Sermon retiring to Bethany he abode there all Night 9. On the morrow returning to Jerusalem on the way being hungry he passed by a Fig-tree where expecting fruit he found none and cursed the Fig-tree which by the next day was dried up and withered Upon occasion of which preternatural event Jesus discoursed of the power of Faith and its power to produce Miracles But upon this occasion others the Disciples of Jesus in after-Ages have pleased themselves with phancies and imperfect descants as that he cursed this Tree in mystery and secret intendment it having been the tree in the eating whose fruit Adam prevaricating the Divine Law made an inlet to sin which brought in death and the sadnesses of Jesus's Passion But Jesus having entred the City came into the Temple and preached the Gospel and the chief Priests and
this instance there was a rare mixture of effects as there was in Christ of Natures the voice of a Man and the power of God For it is observed by the Doctors of the Primitive Ages that from the Nativity of our Lord to the day of his Death the Divinity and Humanity did so communicate in effects that no great action passed but it was like the Sun shining through a cloud or a beauty with a thin veil drawn over it they gave illustration and testimony to each other The Holy Jesus was born a tender and a crying Infant but is adored by the Magi as a King by the Angels as their GOD. He is circumcised as a Man but a name is given him to signifie him to be the SAVIOUR of the World He flies into Egypt like a distressed Child under the conduct of his helpless Parents but as soon as he enters the Country the Idols fall down and confess his true Divinity He is presented in the Temple as the Son of man but by Simeon and Anna he is celebrated with divine praises for the MESSIAS the SON OF GOD. He is baptized in Jordan as a Sinner but the Holy Ghost descending upon him proclaimed him to be the well-beloved of God He is hungry in the Desart as a Man but sustained his body without meat and drink for forty days together by the power of his Divinity There he is tempted of Satan as a weak Man and the Angels of light minister unto him as their supreme Lord. And now a little before his death when he was to take upon him all the affronts miseries and exinanitions of the most miserable he receives testimonies from above which are most wonderful For he was tranfigured upon Mount Tabor entred triumphantly into Jerusalem had the acclamations of the people when he was dying he darkned the Sun when he was dead he opened the sepulchres when he was fast nailed to the Cross he made the earth to tremble now when he suffers himself to be apprehended by a guard of Souldiers he strikes them all to the ground only by replying to their answer that the words of the Prophet might be verified Therefore my people shall know my Name therefore they shall know in that day that I am he that doth speak behold it is I. 10. The Souldiers and servants of the Jews having recovered from their fall and risen by the permission of Jesus still persisted in their enquiry after him who was present ready and desirous to be sacrificed He therefore permitted himself to be taken but not his Disciples for he it was that set them their bounds and he secured his Apostles to be witnesses of his suffering and his glories and this work was the Redemption of the world in which no man could have an active share he alone was to tread the wine-press and time enough they should be called to a fellowship of sufferings But Jesus went to them and they bound him with cords and so began our liberty and redemption from slavery and sin and cursings and death But he was bound faster by bands of his own his Father's Will and Mercy Pity of the world Prophecies and Mysteries and Love held him fast and these cords were as strong as death and the cords which the Souldiers malice put upon his holy hands were but symbols and figures his own compassion and affection were the morals But yet he undertook this short restraint and condition of a prisoner that all sorts of persecution and exteriour calamities might be hallowed by his susception and these pungent sorrows should like bees sting him and leave their sting behind that all the sweetness should remain for us Some melancholick Devotions have from uncertain stories added sad circumstances of the first violence done to our Lord That they bound him with three cords and that with so much violence that they caused bloud to start from his tender hands That they 〈◊〉 then also upon him with a violence and incivility like that which their Fathers had used towards Hur the brother of Aaron whom they choaked with impure spittings into his throat because he refused to consent to the making a golden Calf These particulars are not transmitted by certain Records Certain it is they wanted no malice and now no power for the Lord had given himself into their hands 11. S. Peter seeing his Master thus ill used asked Master shall we strike with the sword and before he had his answer cut off the ear of Malchus Two swords there were in Christ's family and S. Peter bore one either because he was to kill the Paschal Lamb or according to the custom of the Country to secure them against beasts of prey which in that region were frequent and dangerous in the night But now he used it in an unlawful war he had no competent authority it was against the Ministers of his lawful Prince and against our Prince we must not draw a sword for Christ himself himself having forbidden us as his kingdom is not of this world so neither were his defences secular he could have called for many legions of Angels for his guard if he had so pleased and we read that one Angel slew 185000 armed men in one night and therefore it was a vast power which was at the command of our Lord and he needs not such low auxiliaries as an army of Rebels or a navy of Pirates to 〈◊〉 his cause he first lays the foundation of our happiness in his sufferings and hath ever since supported Religion by patience and suffering and in poverty and all the circumstances and conjunctures of improbable causes Fighting for Religion is certain to destroy Charity but not certain to support Faith S. Peter therefore may use his keys but he is commanded to put up his sword and he did so and presently he and all his fellows fairly ran away and yet that course was much the more Christian for though it had in it much infirmity yet it had no malice In the mean time the Lord was pleased to touch the ear of Malchus and he cured it adding to the first instance of power in throwing them to the ground an act of miraculous mercy curing the wounds of an enemy made by a friend But neither did this pierce their callous and obdurate spirits but they led him in uncouth ways and through the brook Cedron in which it is said the ruder souldiers plunged him and passed upon him all the affronts and rudenesses which an insolent and cruel multitude could think of to signifie their contempt and their rage And such is the nature of evil men who when they are not softned by the instruments and arguments of Grace are much hardned by them such being the purpose of God that either Grace shall cure sin or accidentally increase it that it shall either pardon it or bring it to greater punishment for so I have seen healthful medicines abused by the incapacities of a
heathless body become fuel to a fever and increase the distemperature from indisposition to a sharp disease and from thence to the margent of the grave But it was otherwise in Saul whom Jesus threw to the ground with a more angry sound than these persecutors but Saul rose a Saint and they persisted Devils and the grace of God distinguished the events The PRAYER O Holy Jesus make me by thy example to conform to the will of that Eternal God who is our Father merciful and gracious that I may chuse all those accidents which his Providence hath actually disposed to me that I may know no desires but his commands and his will and that in all afflictions I may fly thither for mercy pardon and support and may wait for deliverance in such times and manners which the Father hath reserved in his own power and graciously dispenses according to his infinite wisdom and compassion Holy Jesus give me the gift and spirit of Prayer and do thou by thy gracious intercession supply my ignorances and passionate desires and imperfect choices procuring and giving to me such returns of favour which may support my needs and serve the ends of Religion and the Spirit which thy wisdom chuses and thy Passion hath purchased and thy grace loves to bestow upon all thy Saints and servants Amen II. ETernal God sweetest Jesu who didst receive Judas with the affection of a Saviour and sufferedst him to kiss thy cheek with the serenity and tranquillity of God and didst permit the souldiers to bind thee with Patience exemplary to all ages of Martyrs and didst cure the wound of thy enemy with the Charity of a Parent and the tenderness of an infinite pity O kiss me with the kisses of thy mouth embrace me with the entertainments of a gracious Lord and let my Soul dwell and feast in thee who art the repository of eternal sweetness and refreshments Bind me O Lord with those bands which tied thee fast the chains of Love that such holy union may dissolve the cords of vanity and confine the bold pretensions of usurping Passions and imprison all extravagancies of an impertinent spirit and lead Sin captive to the dominion of Grace and sanctified Reason that I also may imitate all the parts of thy holy Passion and may by thy bands get my liberty by thy kiss enkindle charity by the touch of thy hand and the breath of thy mouth have all my wounds cured and restored to the integrity of a holy Penitent and the purities of Innocence that I may love thee and please thee and live with thee for ever O Holy and sweetest Jesu Amen Considerations upon the Scourging and other Accidents happening from the Apprehension till the Crucifixion of JESUS Christ brought before the Highpreist Iohn 18 12. Then the Band and the Captain and the Officers of the Iews took Iesus and bound him 25. And lead him away to Annas first for he was Father-in-law to Cajaphas which was Highpreist that same yeare Christ arraigned before Herod Luk. 23. 7. 8. 11. And assoone as he knew that he belonged to Herods jurisdiction he sent him to Herod 8. And when Herod saw Iesus he was exceeding glad 11. And Herod with his men of war set him at nought and mocked him and arrayed him in a gorgeous robe and sent him againe to Pilate 1. THE house of Annas stood in the mount Sion and in the way to the house of Caiaphas and thither he was led as to the first stage of their triumph for their surprise of a person so feared and desired and there a naughty person smote the 〈◊〉 Jesus upon the face for saying to Annas that he had made his Doctrine publick and that all the people were able to give account of it to whom the Lamb of God 〈◊〉 as much meekness and patience in his answer as in his answer to Annas he had 〈◊〉 prudence and modesty For now that they had taken Jesus they wanted a crime to object against him and therefore were desirous to snatch occasion from his discourses to which they resolved to tempt him by questions and affronts but his answer was general and indefinite safe and true enough to acquit his Doctrine from suspicions of secret designs and yet secure against their present snares for now himself who always had the innocence of Doves was to joyn with it the prudence and wariness of Serpents not to prevent death for that he was resolved to suffer but that they might be destitute of all apparence of a just cause on his part Here it was that Judas received his money and here that holy Face which was designed to be that object in the beholding of which much of the celestial glory doth consist that Face which the Angels stare upon with wonder like infants at a bright Sun-beam was smitten extrajudicially by an incompetent person with circumstances of despight in the presence of a Judge in a full assembly and none reproved the insolency and the cruelty of the affront for they resolved to use him as they use Wolves and Tigres with all things that may be destructive violent and impious and in this the injury was heightned because the blow was said to be given by Malchus an Idumaean slave and therefore a contemptible person but far more unworthy by his ingratitude for so he repayed the Holy Jesus for working a Miracle and healing his ear But so the Scripture was fulfilled He shall give his body to the smiters and his cheeks to the nippers saith the Prophet Isay and They shall smite the cheek of the Judge of Israel saith Micah And this very circumstance of the Passion Lactantius affirms to have been foretold by the Erythraean Sibyll But no meekness or indifferency could engage our Lord not to protest his innocency and though following his steps we must walk in the regions of patience and tranquillity and admirable toleration of injuries yet we may represent such defences of our selves which by not resisting the sentence may testifie that our suffering is undeserved and if our Innocency will not preserve our lives it will advance our title to a better and every good cause ill judged shall be brought to another tribunal to receive a just and unerring sentence 2. Annas having suffered this unworthy usage towards a person so excellent sent him away to Caiphas who had formerly in a full council resolved he should die yet now palliating the design with the scheme of a tribunal they seek out for witnesses and the witnesses are to seek for allegations and when they find them they are to seek for proof and those proofs were to seek for unity and consent and nothing was ready for their purposes but they were forced to use the semblance of a judicial process that because they were to make use of Pilate's authority to put him to death they might perswade Pilate to accept of their examination and conviction without farther enquiry But such
endeavour is the Sacrifice which God delights in that in the firmament of Heaven there are little Stars and they are most in number and there are but few of the greatest magnitude that there are children and babes in Christ as well as strong men and amongst these there are great difference that the interruptions of the state of Grace by intervening crimes if they were rescinded by Repentance they were great danger in the intervall but served as increment of the Divine Glory and arguments of care and diligence to us at the restitution These and many more are then to be urged when the sick person is in danger of being swallowed up with over-much sorrow and therefore to be insisted on in all like cases as the Physician gives him Cordials that we may do charity to him and minister comfort not because they are always necessary even in the midst of great sadnesses and discomforts For we are to secure his love to God that he acknowledge the Divine Mercy that he believe the Article of Remission of sins that he be thankful to God for the blessings which already he hath received and that he lay all the load of his discomfort upon himself and his own incapacities of mercy and then the sadness may be very great and his tears clamorous and his heart broken all in pieces and his Humility lower than the earth and his Hope indiscernible and yet no danger to his final condition Despair reflects upon God and dishonours the infinity of his Mercy And if the sick person do but confess that God is not at all wanting in his Promises but ever abounding in his Mercies and that it is want of the condition on his own part that makes the misery and that if he had done his duty God would save him let him be assisted with perpetual prayers with examples of lapsed and returning sinners whom the Church celebrates for Saints such as Mary Magdalen Mary of Egypt Asra Thasis Pelagia let it be often inculcated to him that as God's Mercy is of it self infinite so its demonstration to us is not determined to any certain period but hath such latitudes in it and reservations which as they are apt to restrain too great boldness so also to become sanctuaries to disconsolate persons let him be invited to throw himself upon God upon these grounds that he who is our Judge is also our Advocate and Redeemer that he knows and pities our infirmities and that our very hoping in him does indear him and he will deliver us the rather for our confidence when it is balanced with reverence and humility and then all these supernumerary fears are advantagious to more necessary Graces and do more secure his final condition than they can disturb it 11. When Saint Arsenius was near his death he was observed to be very tremulous sad weeping and disconsolate The standers by asked the reason of his fears wondring that he having lived in great Sanctity for many years should not now rejoyce at the going forth of his prison The good man confessed the fear and withall said it was no other than he had always born about with him in the days of his pilgrimage and what he then thought a duty they had no reason now to call either a fault or a misery Great sorrows fears and distrustings of a man 's own condition are oftentimes but abatements of confidence or a remission of joys and gayeties of spirit they are but like salutary clouds dark and fruitful and if the tempted person be strengthened in a love of God though he go not farther in his hopes than to believe a possibility of being saved than to say God can save him if he please and to pray that he will save him his condition is a state of Grace it is like a root in the ground trod upon humble and safe not so fine as the state of flowers yet that which will spring up in as glorious a Resurrection as that which looks fairer and pleases the sense and is indeed a blessing but not a duty 12. But there is a state of Death-bed which seems to have in it more Question and to be of nicer consideration A sick person after a vicious and base life and if upon whatsoever he can do you give him hopes of a Pardon where is your promise to warrant it if you do not give him hopes do you not drive him to Despair and ascertain his ruine to verifie your proposition To this I answer that Despair is opposed to Hope and Hope relies upon the Divine Promises and where there is no Promise there the Despair is not a sin but a mere impossibility The accursed Spirits which are sealed up to the Judgment of the last Day cannot hope and he that repents not cannot hope for pardon And therefore if all which the state of Death-bed can produce be not the duty of Repentance which is required of necessity to Pardon it is not in such a person properly to be called Despair any more than it is Blindness in a stone that it cannot see Such a man is not within the capacities of Pardon and therefore all those acts of exteriour Repentance and all his sorrow and resolution and tears of emendation and other preparatives to interiour Repentance are like oil poured into mortal wounds they are the care of the Physician and these are the cautions of the Church and they are at no hand to be neglected For if they do not alter the state they may lessen the judgment or procure a temporal blessing and if the person recover they are excellent beginnings of the state of Grace and if they be pursued in a happy opportunity will grow up into Glory 13. But if it be demanded whether in such cases the Curate be bound to give Absolution I can give no other answer but this that if he lie under the Censure of the Church the Laws of the Church are to determine the particular and I know no Church in the World but uses to absolve Death-bed Penitents upon the instances of those actions of which their present condition is capable though in the Primitive Ages in some cases they denied it But if the sick person be under no positive Censure and is bound only by the guilt of habitual vice if he desires the Prayers of the Church she is bound in charity to grant them to Pray for Pardon to him and all other Graces in order to Salvation and if she absolves the Penitent towards God it hath no other efficacy but of a solemn Prayer and therefore it were better that all the charity of the Office were done and the solemnity omitted because in the earnest Prayer she co-operates to his Salvation as much as she can and by omitting the solemnity distinguishes evil livers from holy persons and walks securely whilst she refuses to declare him pardoned whom God hath not declared to be so And possibly that form of Absolution which the Churches
of the West now use being indicative and declaratory of a present Pardon is for the very form sake not to be used to Death bed Penitents after a vicious life because if any thing more be intended in the form than a Prayer the truth of the affirmation may be questioned and an Ecclesiastical person hath no authority to say to such a man I absolve thee but if no more be intended but a Prayer it is better to use a mere Prayer and common form of address than such words which may countenance unsecure confidences evil purposes and worse lives 14. Thirdly If the Devil tempts a sick person who hath lived well to Presumption and that he seems full of Confidence and without trouble the care that is then to be taken is to consider the Disease and to state the Question right For at some instants and periods God visits the spirit of a man and sends the immission of a bright ray into him and some good men have been so used to apprehensions of the Divine mercy that they have an habitual chearfulness of spirit and hopes of Salvation Saint Hierome reports that Hilarion in a Death-bed agony felt some tremblings of heart till reflecting upon his course of life he found comforts springing from thence by a proper emanation and departed chearfully and Hezekiah represented to God in Prayer the integrity of his life and made it the instrument of his hope And nothing of this is to be calied Presumption provided it be in persons of eminent Sanctity and great experience old Disciples and the more perfect Christians But because such persons are but seldome and rare if the same Confidence be observed in persons of common imperfection and an ordinary life it is to be corrected and allayed with consideration of the Divine Severity and Justice and with the strict requisites of a holy life with the deceit of a man 's own heart with consideration and general remembrances of secret sins and that the most perfect state of life hath very great needs of mercy and if the righteous scarcely be saved where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear And the spirit of the man is to be promoted and helped in the encrease of Contrition as being the proper deletery to cure the extravagancies of a forward and intemperate spirit 15. But there is a Presumption commenced upon opinion relying either upon a perswasion of single Predestination or else which is worse upon imaginary securities that Heaven is to be purchased upon conditions easier than a Day 's labour and that an evil life may be reconciled to Heaven by the intervening of little or single acts of Piety or Repentance If either of them both have actually produced ill life to which they are apt or apt to be abused the persons are miserable in their condition and cannot be absolutely remedied by going about to cure the Presumption that was the cause of all but now it is the least thing to be considered his whole state is corrupted and men will not by any discourses or spiritual arts used on their Death-beds be put into a state of Grace because then is no time to change the state and there is no mutation then but by single actions from good to better a dying man may proceed but not from the state of Reprobation to the life of Grace And yet it is good charity to unloose the bonds of Satan whereby the man is bound and led captive at his will to take off the Presumption by destroying the cause and then let the work of Grace be set as forward as it can and leave the event to God for nothing else is left possible to be done But if the sick man be of a good life and yet have a degree of Confidence beyond his Vertue upon the phancie of Predestination it is not then a time to rescind his opinion by a direct opposition but let him be drawn off from the consideration of it by such discourses as are apt to make him humble and penitent for they are the most apt instruments to secure the condition of the man and attemper his spirit These are the great Temptations incident to the last scene of our lives and are therefore more particularly suggested by the Tempter because they have in them something contrary to the universal effect of a holy life and are designs to interpose between the end of the journey and the reception of the crown and therefore it concerns every man who is in a capacity of receiving the end of his Faith the Salvation of his Soul to lay up in the course of his life something against this great day of expence that he may be better fortified with the armour of the Spirit against these last assaults of the Devil that he may not shipwreck in the haven 16. Eschewing evil is but the one half of our work we must also do good And now in the few remanent days or hours of our life there are certain exercises of Religion which have a special relation to this state and are therefore of great concernment to be done that we may make our condition as certain as we can and our portion of Glory greater and our Pardon surer and our Love to increase and that our former omissions and breaches be repaired with a condition in some measure proportionable to those great hopes which we then are going to possess And first Let the sick person in the beginning of his sickness and in every change and great accident of it make acts of Resignation to God and intirely submit himself to the Divine will remembring that Sickness may to men properly disposed do the work of God and produce the effect of the Spirit and promote the interest of his Soul as well as Health and oftentimes better as being in it self and by the grace of God apt to make us confess our own impotency and dependencies and to understand our needs of mercy and the continual influences and supports of Heaven to withdraw our appetites from things below to correct the vanities and insolencies of an impertinent spirit to abate the extravagancies of the flesh to put our carnal lusts into fetters and disability to remember us of our state of pilgrimage that this is our way and our stage of trouble and banishment and that Heaven is our Countrey for so Sickness is the trial of our Patience a fire to purge us an instructer to teach us a bridle to restrain us and a state inferring great necessities of union and adhesions unto God And as upon these grounds we have the same reason to accept sickness at the hands of God as to receive Physick from a Physician so it is argument of excellent Grace to give God hearty thanks in our Disease and to accept it chearfully and with spiritual joy 17. Some persons create to themselves excuses of discontent and quarrel not with the pain but the ill consequents of Sickness It makes them troublesome to
death even the death of the Cross Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him and given him a Name above every name Thus his present life was a state of merit and work and as a reward of it he was crowned with glory and immortality his Name was exalted his Kingdom glorified he was made the Lord of all the Creatures the first-fruits of the Resurrection the exemplar of glory and the Prince and Head of the Catholick Church and because this was his recompence and the fruits of his Humility and Obedience it is certain it was not a necessary consequence and a natural efflux of the personal union of the Godhead with the Humanity This I discourse to this purpose that we may not in our esteem lessen the suffering of our dearest Lord by thinking he had the supports of actual Glory in the midst of all his Sufferings For there is no one minute or ray of Glory but its fruition does outweigh and make us insensible of the greatest calamities and the spirit of pain which can be extracted from all the infelicities of this world True it is that the greatest beauties in this world are receptive of an allay of sorrow and nothing can have pleasure in all capacities The most beautious feathers of the birds of Paradise the Estrich or the Peacock if put into our throat are not there so pleasant as to the eye But the beatifick joys of the least glory of Heaven take away all pain wipe away all tears from our eyes and it is not possible that at the same instant the Soul of Jesus should be ravished with Glory and yet abated with pains grievous and 〈◊〉 On the other side some say that the Soul of Jesus upon the Cross suffered the pains of Hell and all the torments of the damned and that without such sufferings it is not imaginable he should pay the price which God's wrath should demand of us But the same that reproves the one does also reprehend the other for the Hope that was the support of the Soul of Jesus as it confesses an imperfection that is not consistent with the state of Glory so it excludes the Despair that is the torment proper to accursed souls Our dearest Lord suffered the whole condition of Humanity Sin only excepted and freed us from Hell with suffering those sad pains and merited Heaven for his own Humanity as the Head and all faithful people as the Members of his mystical Body And therefore his life here was only a state of pilgrimage not at all trimmed with beatifick glories Much less was he ever in the state of Hell or upon the Cross felt the formal misery and spirit of torment which is the 〈◊〉 of damned spirits because it was impossible Christ should despair and without Despair it is impossible there should be a Hell But this is highly probable that in the intension of degrees and present anguish the Soul of our Lord might feel a greater load of wrath than is incumbent in every instant upon perishing souls For all the sadness which may be imagined to be in Hell consists in acts produced from principles that cannot surpass the force of humane or Angelical nature but the pain which our Blessed Lord endured for the expiation of our sins was an issue of an united and concentred anger was received into the heart of God and Man and was commensurate to the whole latitude of the Grace Patience and Charity of the Word incarnate The Crucisixion Mark 15 25. Erat autem Hora tertia crucifixerunt eum Mark 15 25. And is was the third houre they crucified him The takeing down from the Cross. Luk. 23 50 And there was a man named Ioseph a Counsellour he was a good man a lust y e same had not consented to y e counsell deed of them 52. This man went unto Pilate begged y e Body of Iesus 53 And he took it down wrapped it in linen layd it in a Sepulehre that was hewn in stone wherein never man before was layd 6. And now behold the Priest and the Sacrifice of all the world laid upon the Altar of the Cross bleeding and tortured and dying to reconcile his Father to us and he was arrayed with ornaments more glorious than the robes of Aaron The Crown of Thorns was his Mitre the Cross his Pastoral staffe the Nails piercing his hands were in stead of Rings the ancient ornament of Priests and his flesh rased and checker'd with blew and bloud in stead of the parti-coloured Robe But as this object calls for our Devotion our Love and Eucharist to our dearest Lord so it must needs irreconcile us to Sin which in the eye of all the world brought so great shame and pain and amazement upon the Son of God when he only became engaged by a charitable substitution of himself in our place and therefore we are assured by the demonstration of sense and experience it will bring death and all imaginable miseries as the just expresses of God's indignation and hatred for to this we may apply the words of our Lord in the prediction of miseries to Jerusalem If this be done in the green tree what shall be done in the dry For it is certain Christ infinitely pleased his Father even by becoming the person made 〈◊〉 in estimate of Law and yet so great Charity of our Lord and the so great love and pleasure of his Father exempted him not from suffering pains intolerable and much less shall those escape who provoke and displease God and despise so great Salvation which the Holy Jesus hath wrought with the expence of bloud and so precious a life 7. But here we see a great representation and testimony of the Divine Justice who was so angry with sin who had so severely threatned it who does so essentially hate it that he would not spare his only Son when he became a conjunct person relative to the guilt by undertaking the charges of our Nature For although God hath set down in holy Scripture the order of his Justice and the manner of its manifestation that one Soul shall not perish for the sins of another yet this is meant for Justice and for Mercy too that is he will not curse the Son for the Father's fault or in any relation whatsoever substitute one person for another to make him involuntarily guilty But when this shall be desired by a person that cannot finally perish and does a mercy to the exempt persons and is a voluntary act of the suscipient and shall in the event also redound to an infinite good it is no deflection from the Divine Justice to excuse many by the affliction of one who also for that very suffering shall have infinite compensation We see that for the sin of Cham all his posterity were accursed the Subjects of David died with the Plague because their Prince numbred the people Idolatry is punished in the children of the fourth generation
parent of as great Religion as the good women make their fancy their softness and their passion 12. Our Blessed Lord appeared next to Simon and though he and John ran forthtogether and S. John outran Simon although Simon Peter had denied and forsworn his Lord and S. John never did and followed him to his Passion and his death yet Peter had the savour of seeing Jesus first Which some Spiritual persons understand as a testimony that penitent 〈◊〉 have accidental eminences and priviledges sometimes 〈◊〉 to them beyond the temporal graces of the just and innocent as being such who not only 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 against the remanent and inherent evils even of repented sins and their aptnesses to relapse but also because those who are true Penitents who understand the infiniteness of the Divine mercy and that for a sinner to pass from death to 〈◊〉 from the state of sin into pardon and the state of Grace is a greater gift and a more excellent and improbable mutation than for a just man to be taken into glory out of gratitude to God and indearment 〈◊〉 so great a change added to a fear of returning to such danger and misery will re-enforce all their industry and double their study and 〈◊〉 more diligently and watch more carefully and redeem the 〈◊〉 and make amends for their omissions and oppose a good to the former evils beside the duties of the 〈◊〉 imployment and then commonly the life of a holy Penitent is more holy active zealous and impatient of Vice and more rapacious of Vertue and holy actions and arises to greater 〈◊〉 of Sanctity than the even and moderate affections of just persons who as our Blessed Saviour's expression is 〈◊〉 no Repentance that is no change of state nothing but a perseverance and an improvement of degrees There is more joy in heaven before the Angels of God over 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that 〈◊〉 than 〈◊〉 ninety nine just persons that need it not for where sin hath abounded there doth grace super abound and that makes joy in Heaven 13. The Holy Jesus having received the affections of his most passionate Disciples the women and S. 〈◊〉 puts himself upon the way into the company of two good men going to Emmaus with troubled spirits and a reeling faith shaking all its upper building but leaving some of its foundation firm To them the Lord discourses of the necessity of the Death and Resurrection of the 〈◊〉 and taught them not to take estimate of the counsels of God by the designs and proportions of man for God by ways contrary to humane judgment brings to pass the purposes of his eternal Providence The glories of Christ were not made pompous by humane circumstances his Kingdom was spiritual he was to enter into Felicities through the gates of Death he refused to do Miracles before 〈◊〉 and yet did them before the people he confuted his accusers by silence and did not descend from the Cross when they offered to believe in him if he would but 〈◊〉 them to be perswaded by greater arguments of his power the miraculous circumstances of his Death and the glories of his Resurrection and by walking in the secret paths of Divine election hath commanded us to adore his footsteps to admire and revere his Wisdom to be satisfied with all the events of Providence and to rejoyce in him if by Afflictions he makes us holy if by Persecutions he supports and enlarges his Church if by Death he brings us to life so we arrive at the communion of his Felicities we must let him chuse the way it being sufficient that he is our guide and our support and our exceeding great reward For therefore Christ preached to the two Disciples going to 〈◊〉 the way of the Cross and the necessity of that passage that the wisdom of God might be glorified and the conjectures of man ashamed But whilest his discourse lasted they knew him not but in the breaking of bread he discovered himself For he turned their meal into a Sacrament and their darkness to light and having to his Sermon added the Sacrament opened all their discerning faculties the eyes of their body and their understanding too to represent to us that when we are blessed with the opportunities of both those instruments we want no exteriour assistence to guide us in the way to the knowing and enjoying of our Lord. 14. But the Apparitions which Jesus made were all upon the design of laying the foundation of all Christian Graces for the begetting and establishing Faith and an active Confidence in their persons and building them up on the great fundamentals of the Religion And therefore he appointed a general meeting upon a mountain in Galilee that the number of witnesses might not only disseminate the same but establish the Article of the Resurrection for upon that are built all the hopes of a Christian and if the dead rise not then are we of all men most miserable in quitting the present possessions and entertaining injuries and affronts without hopes of reparation But we lay two gages in several repositories the Body in the bosome of the earth the Soul in the 〈◊〉 of God and as we here live by Faith and lay them down with hope so the 〈◊〉 is a restitution of them both and a state of re-union And therefore although the glory of our spirits without the body were joy great enough to make compensation for mere than the troubles of all the world yet because one shall not be glorified without the other they being of themselves incomplete substances and God having revealed nothing clearly concerning actual and complete felicities till the day of Judgment when it is promised our bodies shall rise therefore it is that the Resurrection is the great Article upon which we rely and which Christ took so much care to prove and ascertain to so many persons because if that should be disbelieved with which all our felicities are to be received we have nothing to establish our Faith or entertain our Hope or satisfie our desires or make retribution for that state of secular inconveniences in which by the necessities of our nature and the humility and patience of our Religion we are engaged 15. But I consider that holy Scripture onely instructs us concerning the life of this world and the life of the Resurrection the life of Grace and the life of Glory both in the body that is a life of the whole man and whatsoever is spoken of the Soul considers it as an essential part of man relating to his whole constitution not as it is of it self an intellectual and separate substance for all its actions which are separate and removed from the body are relative and incomplete Now because the Soul is an incomplete substance and created in relation to the Body and is but a part of the whole man if the Body were as eternal and incorruptible as the Soul yet the separation of the one from the other would be
to have consisted in gathering the Customs of Commodities that came by the Sea of Galilee and the Tribute which Passengers were to pay that went by Water a thing frequently mentioned in the Jewish writings where we are also told of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Ticket consisting of two greater Letters written in Paper or some such matter called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Ticket or signature of the Publicans which the Passenger had with him to certifie them on the other side the Water that he had already paid the Toll or Custom upon which account the Hebrew Gospel of S. Matthew published by Munster renders Publican by 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Lord of the Passage For this purpose they kept their Office or Custom-house by the Sea-side that they might be always near at hand and here it was as S. Mark intimates that Matthew had his Toll-booth where He sate at the Receipt of Custome 3. OUR Lord having lately cured a famous Paralytick retired out of Capernaum to walk by the Sea-side where he taught the People that flocked after him Here he espied Matthew sitting in his Custom-office whom he called to come and follow Him The Man was rich had a wealthy and a gainful Trade a wise and prudent Person no fools being put into that Office and understood no doubt what it would cost him to comply with this new imployment that he must exchange Wealth for Poverty a Custom-house for a Prison gainful Masters for a naked and despised Saviour But he overlooked all these considerations left all his Interests and Relations to become our Lord's Disciple and to embrace 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Chrysostom observes a more spiritual way of commerce and traffique We cannot suppose that he was before wholly unacquainted with our Saviour's Person or Doctrine especially living at Capernaum the place of Christ's usual residence where his Sermons and Miracles were so frequent by which he could not but in some measure be prepared to receive the impressions which our Saviour's call now made upon him And to shew that he was not discontented at his change nor apprehended himself a loser by this bargain he entertained our Lord and his Disciples at a great Dinner in his House whither he invited his Friends especially those of his own Profession piously hoping that they also might be caught by our Saviour's converse and company The Pharisees whose Eye was constantly evil where another Man 's was good and who would 〈◊〉 find or make occasions to snarle at him began to suggest to his Disciples that it was unbecoming so pure and holy a Person as their Master pretended himself to be thus familiarly to converse with the worst of men Publicans and sinners Persons infamous to a Proverb But he presently replied upon them that they were the sick that needed the Physician not the sound and healthy that his company was most suitable where the necessities of Souls did most require it that God himself preferred acts of Mercy and Charity especially in reclaiming sinners and doing good to Souls infinitely before all ritual observances and the nice rules of Persons conversing with one another and that the main design of his coming into the World was not to bring the righteous or those who like themselves proudly conceited themselves to be so and in a vain Opinion of their own strictness loftily scorned all Mankind besides but sinners modest humble self-convinced offenders to repentance and to reduce them to a better state and course of life 4. AFTER his election to the Apostolate he continued with the rest till our Lord's Ascension and then for the first eight Years at least Preached up and down 〈◊〉 After which being to betake himself to the Conversion of the Gentile-world he was intreated by the Convert Jewes to commit to Writing the History of our Saviour's Life and Actions and to leave it among them as the standing Record of what he had Preached to them which he did accordingly and so composed his Gospel whereof more in due place Little certainty can be had what Travails he underwent for the advancement of the Christian Faith so irrecoverably is truth lost in a crowd of Legendary stories AEthiopia is generally assigned as the Province of his Apostolical Ministry Metaphrastes tells us that he 〈◊〉 first into Parthia and having successfully planted Christianity in those Parts thence travailed into AEthiopia that is the Asiatick AEthiopia lying near to India here by Preaching and Miracles he mightily triumphed over error and Idolatry convinced and converted Multitudes ordained spiritual Guides and Pastors to confirm and build them up and bring over others to the Faith and then finished his own course As for what is related by Nicephorus of his going into the Country of the Cannibals constituting Plato one of his followers Bishop of Myrmena of Christ's appearing to him in the form of a beautiful Youth and giving him a Wand which he pitching into the ground immediately it grew up into a Tree of his strange converting the Prince of that Country of his numerous Miracles peaceable Death and sumptuous Funerals with abundance more of the same stamp and coin they are justly to be reckoned amongst those fabulous reports that have no Pillar nor ground either of truth or probability to support them Most probable it is what an Ancient Writer affirms that he suffered Martyrdom at Naddaber a City in AEthiopia but by what kind of Death is altogether uncertain Whether this Naddaber be the same with Beschberi where the Arabick Writer of his Life affirms him to have suffered Martyrdom let others enquire he also adds that he was buried Arthaganetu 〈◊〉 but where that is is to me unknown Dorotheus makes him honourably buried at Hierapolis in Parthia one of the first places to which he Preached the Gospel 5. HE was a great instance of the power of Religion how much a Man may be brought off to a better temper If we reflect upon his circumstances while yet a stranger to Christ we shall find that the World had very great advantages upon him He was become Master of a plentiful Estate engaged in a rich and a gainful Trade supported by the power and favour of the Romans prompted by covetous inclinations and these confirmed by long habits and customs And yet notwithstanding all this no sooner did Christ call but without the least scruple or dissatisfaction he flung up all at once and not only renounced as S. Basil observes his gainful incomes but ran an immediate hazard of the displeasure of his Masters that imployed him for quitting their service and leaving his accounts intangled and confused behind him Had our Saviour been a mighty Prince it had been no wonder that he should run over to his service but when he appeared under all the circumstances of meanness and disgrace when he seemed to promise his followers nothing but misery and suffering in this life