there is Dolus in spiritu Guile in his spirit As then the Prophet Davids principall purpose in this Text is according to the Interpretation of S. Paul to derive all the Blessednesse of man from God so is it also to put some conditions in man comprehended in this That there be no guile in his spirit For in this repentant sinner that shall be partaker of these degrees of Blessednesse of this Forgiving of this Covering of this Not Imputing there is required Integrapoenitentia A perfect and intire repentance And to the making up of that howsoever the words and termes may have been mis-used and defamed we acknowledge that there belongs a Contrition a Confession and a Satisfaction And all these howsoever our Adversaries slander us with a Doctrine of ease and a Religion of liberty we require with more exactnesse and severity then they doe For for Contrition we doe not we dare not say as some of them That Attrition is sufficient that it is sufficient to have such a sorrow for sin as a naturall sense and fear of torment doth imprint in us without any motion of the feare of God We know no measure of sorrow great enough for the violating of the infinite Majesty of God by our transgression And then for Confession we deny not a necessity to confesse to man There may be many cases of scruple of perplexity where it were an exposing our selves to farther occasions of sin not to confesse to man And in Confession we require a particular detestation of that sin which we confesse which they require not And lastly for Satisfaction we imbrace that Rule Condigna satisfactio malè facta corrigere Our best Satisfaction is to be better in the amendment of our lives And dispositions to particular sins we correct in our bodies by Discipline and Mortifications And we teach that no man hath done truly that part of Repentance which he is bound to doe if he have not given Satisfaction that is Restitution to every person damnified by him If that which we teach for this intirenesse of Repentance be practised in Contrition and Confession and Satisfaction they cannot calumniate our Doctrine nor our practise herein And if it be not practised there is Dolus in spiritu Guile in their spirit that pretend to any part of this Blessednesse Forgiving or Covering or Not imputing without this For he that is sorry for sin onely in Contemplation of hell and not of the joyes of heaven that would not give over his sin though there were no hell rather then he would lose heaven which is that which some of them call Attrition He that confesses his sin but hath no purpose to leave it He that does leave the sin but being growne rich by that sin retaines and enjoyes those riches this man is not intire in his Repentanne but there is guile in his spirit He that is slothfull in his work Prov. 18.9 is brother to him that is a great waster He that makes half-repentances makes none Men run out of their estates as well by a negligence and a not taking account of their Officers as by their own prodigality Our salvation is as much indangered if we call not our conscience to an examination as if we repent not those sins which offer themselves to our knowledge and memory And therefore David places the consummation of his victory in that Psal 18.37 I have pursued mine enemies and overtaken them neither did I turne againe till they were consumed We require a pursuing of the enemy a search for the sin and not to stay till an Officer that is a sicknesse or any other calamity light upon that sin and so bring it before us We require an overtaking of the enemy That we be not weary in the search of our consciences And we require a consuming of the enemy not a weakning only a dislodging a dispossessing of the sin and the profit of the sin All the profit and all the pleasure of all the body of sin for he that is sorry with a godly sorrow he that confesses with a deliberate detestation he that satisfies with a full restitution for all his sins but one Dolus in spiritu There is guile in his spirit he is in no better case Berna◠then if at Sea he should stop all leaks but one and perish by that Si vis solvi solve omnes catenas If thou wilt be discharged cancel all thy Bonds one chain till that be broke holds as fast as ten And therfore suffer your consideration to turn back a little upon this object that there may be Dolus in spiritu Guile in the spirit in our pretence to all those parts of Blessednesse which David recommends to us in this Catechisme In the Forgivenesse of transgrestions In the Covering of sin In the Not imputing of iniquity First then Forgiving in this Forgiving of transgressions which is our Saviour Christs taking away the sins of the world by taking them in the punishment due to them upon himselfe there is Dolus in spiritu Guile in that mans spirit that will so farre abridge the great Volumes of the mercy of God so farre contract his generall propositions as to restrain this salvation not only in the effect but in Gods own purpose to a few a very few soules When Subjects complaine of any Prince that he is too mercifull there is Dolus in spiritu Guile and deceit in this complaint They doe but think him too mercifull to other mens faults for where they need his mercy for their own they never think him too mercifull And which of us doe not need God for all sins If we did not in our selves yet it were a new sin in us not to desire that God should be as mercifull to every other sinner as to our selves As in heaven the joy of every soule shall be my joy so the mercy of God to every soule here is a mercy to my soule By the extension of his mercies to others I argue the application of his mercy to my selfe This contracting and abridging of the mercy of God will end in despaire of our selves that that mercy reaches not to us or if we become confident perchance presumptuous of our selves we shall despaire in the behalfe of other men and think they can receive no mercy And when men come to allow an impossibility of salvation in any they will come to assigne that impossibility nay to assigne those men and pronounce for this and this sin This man cannot be saved There is a sin against the Holy Ghost and to make us afraid of all approaches towards that sin Christ hath told us that that sin is irremissible unpardonable But since that sin includes impenitiblenesse in the way and actuall impenitence in the end we can never pronounce This is that sin or This is that sinner God is his Father that can say Our Father which art in heaven And his God that can say I beleeve in God And
pacto thus the contract led it to this he was obedient obedient unto death and unto the death of the Crosse Phil. 2.8 By bloud and not onely by comming into this world and assuming our nature which humiliation was an act of infinite value and not by the bloud of his Circumcision or Agony but bloud to death and by no gentler nor nobler death then the death of the Crosse was this peace to be made by him Though then one drop of his bloud had beene enough to have redeemed infinite worlds if it had beene so contracted and so applyed yet he gave us a morning showre of his bloud in his Circumcision and an evening showre at his passion and a showre after Sunset in the piercing of his side And though any death had beene an incomprehensible ransome for the Lord of life to have given for the children of death yet he refused not the death of the Crosse The Crosse to which a bitter curse was nayled by Moses Deut. 21 23. from the beginning he that is hanged is not onely accursed of God as our Translation hath it but he is the curse of God as it is in the Originall not accursed but a curse not a simple curse but the curse of God And by the Crosse which besides the Infamy was so painfull a death as that many men languished many dayes upon it before they dyed And by his bloud of this torture and this shame this painfull and this ignominious death was this peace made In our great work of crucifying our selves to the world too it is not enough to bleed the drops of a Circumcision that is to cut off some excessive and notorious practice of sin nor to bleed the drops of an Agony to enter into a conflict and colluctation of the flesh and the spirit whether we were not better trust in Gods mercy for our continuance in that sin then lose all that pleasure and profit which that sin brings us nor enough to bleed the drops of scourging to be lashed with viperous and venemous tongues by contumelies and slanders nor to bleed the drops of Thornes to have Thornes and scruples enter into our consciences with spirituall afflictions but we must be content to bleed the streames of naylings to those Crosses to continue in them all our lives if God see that necessary for our confirmation and if men will pierce and wound us after our deaths in our good name yea if they will slander our Resurrection as they did Christs if they will say that it is impossible God should have mercy upon such a man impossible that a man of so bad life and so sad and comfortlesse a death should have a joyfull Resurrection here is our comfort as that piercing of Christs side was after the Consummatum est after his passion ended and therefore put him to no paine as that slander of his Resurrection was after that glorious triumph He was risen and had shewed himselfe before and therefore it diminished not his power so all these posthume wounds and slanders after my death after my God and my Soule shall have passed that Dialogue Veni Domine Iesu and euge bone serve That I shall have said upon my death-bed Come Lord Jesu come quickly and he shall have said Well done good and faithfull servant enter into thy Masters joy when I shall have said to him In manus tuas Domine Into thy hands O Lord I commend my spirit And he to me Hodie mecum eris in paradiso This day this minute thou shalt be now thou art with me in Paradise when this shall be my state God shall heare their slanders and maledictions and write them all downe but not in my booke but in theirs and there they shall meet them at Judgement amongst their owne sinnes to their everlasting confusion and finde me in possession of that peace made by bloud made by his bloud made by the bloud of his Crosse which were all the peeces laid out for this second part with which we have done and passe from the qualification of the person It pleased the Father that in him all fulnesse should dwell which was our first part and the Pacification and the way thereof by the bloud of his Crosse to make peace which was our second to the Reconciliation it selfe and the Application thereof to all to whom that Reconciliation appertaines That all things whether they be things in earth or things in heaven might be reconciled unto him All this was done 3. Part. He in whom it pleased the Father that this fulnesse should dwell had made this peace by the bloud of his Crosse and yet after all this the Apostle comes upon that Ambassage 2 Cor. 5.20 We pray ye in Christs stead that ye be reconciled to God So that this Reconciliation in the Text is a subsequent thing to this peace The generall peace is made by Christs death as a generall pardon is given at the Kings comming The Application of this peace is in the Church as the suing out of the pardon is in the Office Ioab made Absaloms peace with his Father Bring the young man againe sayes David to Ioab 2 Sam. 14.22.2.28.24.16 but yet he was not reconciled to him so as that he saw his face in two yeare God hath sounded a Retreat to the Battle As I live saith the Lord I would not the death of a sinner He hath said to the destroyer It is enough stay now thy hand He is pacified in Christ and he hath bound the enemy in chaines Now let us labour for our Reconciliation for all things are reconciled to him in Christ that is offered a way of reconciliation All things in heaven and earth sayes the Apostle And that is so large as that Origen needed not to have extended it to Hell too Origen and conceive out of this place a possibility that the Devils themselves shall come to a Reconciliation with God But to all in Heaven and Earth it appertaines Consider we how First then there is a reconciliation of them in heaven to God In coelis and then of them on earth to God and then of them in heaven and them in earth to one another by the blood of his Crosse If we consider them in heaven to be those who are gone up to heaven from this world by death they had the same reconciliation as we Animae either by reaching the hand of faith forward to lay hold upon Christ before he came which was the case of all under the Law or by reaching back that hand to lay hold upon all that hee had done and suffered when he was come which is the case of those that are dead before us in the profession of the Gospell All that are in heaven and were upon earth are reconciled one way by application of Christ in the Church so that though they be now in heaven yet they had their reconciliation here upon earth But
erected Iegar-Sehadutha by an extraction from the last word of our Text Sahad Jacob calls it by the first word And the reason is given in the body of the Text it selfe in the vulgat Edition though how it got thither we know not for in the Originall it is not Vterque juxta proprietatem lingua suae Laban spake in his language Syriaque Jacob spake in his Hebrew and both called that heape of stones a witnesse Now our bestowing this little time upon the clearing of the words hath saved us much more time for by this meanes we have shortned this clause of our Text and all that we are to consider is but this My witnesse is in heaven And truly that is enough I care not though all the world knew all my faults I care not what they conclude of Gods not granting my prayers my witnesse is in heaven To be condemned unjustly amongst men to be ill interpreted in the acts of my Religion is a heavy case but yet I have a reliefe in all this my witnesse is in heaven The first comfort is Quia in Coelis Quia in Coelis because he whom I rely upon is in heaven For that is the foundation and Basis upon which our Saviour erects that prayer which he hath recommended unto us Qui es in coelis Our Father which art in heaven when I lay hold upon him there in heaven I pursue cheerefully and confidently all the other petitions for daily bread for forgivenesse of sins for deliverance from tentations from and for all Psal 〈◊〉 Acts. 〈◊〉 Est in coelis he is in heaven and then Sedet in coelis be sits in heaven That as I see him in that posture that Stephen saw him standing at the right hand of the Father and so in procinctu in a readinesse in a willingnesse to come to my succour so I might contemplate him in a judiciary posture in a potestative a soveraigne posture sitting and consider him as able as willing to relieve me He is in heaven and he sits in heaven and then habitat in coelis he dwels in heaven Psal 113.5 he is and he is alwayes there Baals Priests could not alwaies finde him at home Iobs God and our God is never abroad He dwels in the heavens and as it is expressed there In excelsis he dwels on high so high that as it is there added God humbles himselfe to behold the things that are in heaven With what amazednesse must we consider the humiliation of God in descending to the earth lower then so to hell when even his descending unto heaven is a humiliation God humbles himselfe when he beholds any thing lower then himselfe though Cherubins though Seraphins though the humane nature the body of his owne and onely eternall Son and yet he beholds considers studies us wormes of the earth and no men This then is Iobs Testis and our first comfort Quia in coelis because he is in heaven and sits in heaven and dwels in heaven in the highest heaven and so sees all things But then if God see and say nothing David apprehends that for a most dangerous condition and therefore he sayes Psal 28.1 Psal 1â—â— 1 Be not silent O Lord lest if thou be silent I perish And againe Hold not thy peace O God of my praise for the mouth of the wicked is opened against me And Lord let thy mercy be as forward as their malice And therefore as God from that heighth sees all and the strictest examination that we put upon any Witnesse is that if he pretend to testifie any thing upon his knowledge we aske how he came by that knowledge and if he be oculatus testis a Witnesse that saw it this is good evidence as God is to this purpose all eye and sees all so for our farther comfort he descends to the office of being a Witnesse There is a Witnesse in heaven But then Testis meus God may be a Witnesse and yet not my Witnesse and in that there is small comfort 〈◊〉 29.22 if God be a Witnesse on my adversaries side a Witnesse against me Even I know and am a Witnesse saith the Lord that is a Witnesse of the sins which I know by thee Job 10.27 And that is that which Iob with so much tendernesse apprehended Thou renewest thy witnesses against me Thou sent'st a witnesse against me in the Sabaeans upon my servants and then thou renewedst that witnesse in the Caldaeans upon my cattell and then thou renewedst that in thy stormes and tempests upon my children All this while God was a Witnesse but not his witnesse but a witnesse on his adversaries side Now if our own heart our owne conscience condemne us this is shrewd evidence saies S. Iohn 1 Iohn 3.20 for mine owne conscience single is a thousand witnesses against me But then saies the Apostle there God is greater then the heart for saies he he knowes all things He knowes circumstances of sinne as well as substance and that we seldome know seldome take knowledge of If then mine owne heart be a thousand God that is greater is ten thousand witnesses if he witnesse against me But if he be my Witnesse a Witnesse for me as he alwaies multiplies in his waies of mercy he is thousands of thousands millions of millions of witnesses in my behalfe for there is no condemation no possible condemnation Rom. 8.1 to them that are in him not if every graine of dust upon the earth were an Achitophel and gave counsell against me not if every sand upon the shoare were a Rabshakeh and railed against me not if every atome in the ayre were a Satan an Adversary an Accuser not if every drop in the Sea were an Abaddon an Apollyon a Destroyer there could be no condemuation if he be my Witnesse If he be my Witnesse he proceeds thus in my behalfe his Spirit beares witnesse with my spirit for mine inward assurance that I stand established in his favour and either by an actuall deliverance or by some such declaration as shall preserve me from fainting if I be not actually delivered he gives a farther testimony in my behalfe For he is in Heaven and he sits in Heaven and he dwels in Heaven in the highest Heaven and sees all and is a Witnesse and my Witnesse there is the largenesse of our comfort But will all this come home to Iobs end and purpose Iudeâ— That he need not care though all men knew all his faults he need not care though God passed over his prayers because God is his Witnesse what declarations soever he had in himselfe would the world beleeve that God testified in his behalfe when they saw his calamities multiplied upon him and his prayers neglected If they will not herein lyes his and our finall comfort That he that is my Witnesse is in the highest Heaven there is no person above him and therefore He that is my Witnesse is my
Congregation will I blesse the Lord But yet I finde the highest exaltations and the noblest elevations of my devotion Psal 35.18 when I give thanks in the great Congregation and praise him among much people for so me thinks I come nearer and nearer to the Communion of Saints in Heaven Apoc. 21.22 Where it is therefore said that there is no Temple I saw no Temple in Heaven because all Heaven is a Temple And because the Lord God Almighty and the Lambe who fill all Heaven are Obviam Domino as S. Iohn sayes there the Temple thereof So far towards that as into the Ayre this text carries us Obviam Domino To meet the Lord. The Lord requires no more not so much at our hands as he does for us When he is come from the right hand of his Father in heaven into the ayre to meet us he is come farther then we are to go from the grave to meet him But we have met the Lord in many a lower place in many unclean actions have we met the Lord in our owne hearts and said to our selves Surely the Lord is here and sees us Gen. â—9 9 and with Ioseph How then can I doe this great wickednesse and sin against my God and yet have proceeded gone forward in the accomplishment of that sin But there it was Obviam Iesu Obviam Christo We met a Iesus We met a Christ a God of mercy who forgave us those sins Here in our text it is Obviam Domino We must meet the Lord He invests here no other name but that He hath laid aside his Christ and his Iesus names of Mercy and Redemption and Salvation and comes only in the name of power The Lord The Judge of quick and dead In which Judgement he shews no mercy All his mercy is exercised in this life and he that hath not received his portion of that mercy before his death shall never receive any There he judges only by our workes Whom hast thou fed whom hast thou clothed Then in judgement we meet the Lord the Lord of power and the last time that ever we shall meet a Iesus a Christ a God of mercy is upon our death-bed but there we shall meet him so as that when we meet him in another name The Lord in the ayre yet by the benefit of the former mercy received from Iesus We shall be with the Lord for ever First Erimus We shall Bee we shall have a Beeing Erimus There is nothing more contrary to God and his proceedings then annihilation to Bee nothing Do nothing Think nothing It is not so high a step to raise the poore out of the dust Psal 113.7 and to lift the needy from the dunghill and set him with Princes To make a King of a Beggar is not so much as to make a Worm of nothing Whatsoever God hath made thee since yet his greatest work upon thee was that he made thee and howsoever he extend his bounty in preferring thee yet his greatest largenesse is in preserving thee in thy Beeing And therefore his own name of Majesty is Jehovah which denotes his Essence his Beeing And it is usefully moved and safely resolved in the School that the devill himself cannot deliberately wish himselfe nothing Suddenly a man may wish himself nothing because that seemes to deliver him from the sense of his present misery but deliberately he cannot because whatsoever a man wishes must be something better then he hath yet and whatsoever is better is not nothing Nihil contrarium Deo August There is nothing truly contrary to God To do nothing is contrary to his working but contrary to his nature contrary to his Essence there is nothing For whatsoever is any thing even in that Beeing and therefore because it is hath a conformity to God and an affinity with God who is Beeing Essence it self In him we have our Beeing sayes the Apostle Act. 17.28 But here it is more then so not only In illo but Cum illo not only In him but With him not only in his Providence but in his Presence The Hypocrite hath a Beeing and in God but it is not with God Cum illc Esay 29.13 Qua cor longe With his lips he honours God but removes his heart far from him And God sends him after his heart that he may keep him at that distance as S. Gregory reads and interprets that place of Esay Redite praevaricatores ad cor Return O sinners follow your own heart Esay 46.8 and then I am sure you and I shall never meet Our Saviour Christ delivers this distance plainly Discedite à me Depart from me ye cursed into everlasting fire Mat. 25.42 Where the first part of the sentence is incomparably the heaviest the departing worse then the fire the intensnesse of that fire the ayre of that brimstone the anguish of that worm the discord of that howling and gnashing of teeth is no comparable no considerable part of the torment in respect of the privation of the sight of God the banishment from the presence of God an absolute hopelesnesse an utter impossibility of ever comming to that which sustaines the miserable in this world that though I see no Sun here I shall see the Son of God there The Hypocrite shall not do so we shall Bee and Bee with him and Bee with him for ever which is the last thing that doth fall under ours or can fall under any consideration Of S. Hierome S. Augustine sayes Quae Hicronymus neseivit Semper nullus hominum unquam seivit That that S. Hierome knew not no man ever knew And S. Cyril to whom S. Augustine said that said also to S. Augustine in magnifying of S. Hierome That when a Catholique Priest disputed with an Heretique and cited a passage of S. Hierome and the Heretique said Hierome lyed instantly he was struck dumb yet of this last and everlasting joy and glory of heaven in the fruition of God S. Hierome would adventure to say nothing no not then when he was devested of his mortall body dead for as soon as he dyed at Bethlem he came instantly to Hippo S. Augustines Bishoprick and though he told him Hieronymi anima sum I am the soule of that Hierome to whom thou art now writing about the joyes and glory of heaven yet he said no more of that but this Quid quaeris brevi immittere vasculo totum mare Canst thou hope to poure the whole Sea into a thimble or to take the whole world into thy hand And yet that is easier then to comprehend the joy and the glory of heaven in this life Nor is there any thing that makes this more incomprehensible then this Semper in our text the Eternity thereof That we shall be with him for ever For this Eternity this Everlastingnesse is not only incomprehensible to us in this life but even in heaven we can never know it experimentally and
Abrahams taske was an easie taske to tell the stars of Heaven so it were to tell the sands or haires or atomes in respect of telling but our owne sins And will God say to me Confide Fili My Son be of good cheere thy sins are forgiven thee Mat. 9.2 Does he meane all my sins He knowes what originall sin is and I doe not and will he forgive me sin in that roote and sin in the branches originall sin and actuall sin too He knowes my secret sins and I doe not will he forgive my manifest sins and those sins too He knowes my relapses into sins repented and will he forgive my faint repentances and my rebellious relapses after them will his mercy dive into my heart and forgive my sinfull thoughts there and shed upon my lips and forgive my blasphemous words there and bathe the members of this body and forgive mine uncleane actions there will he contract himselfe into himselfe and meet me there and forgive my sins against himselfe And scatter himselfe upon the world and forgive my sins against my neighbour and emprison himselfe in me and forgive my sins against my selfe Will he forgive those sins wherein my practise hath exceeded my Parents and those wherein my example hath mis-led my children Will he forgive that dim sight which I have of sin now when sins scarce appeare to be sins unto me and will he forgive that over-quick sight when I shall see my sins through Satans multiplying glasse of desperation when I shall thinke them greater then his mercy upon my death bed In that he said all he left out nothing Heb. 2.8 is the Apostles argument and he is not almighty if he cannot his mercy endures not for ever if he doe not forgive all Sin and all sin even blasphemy now blasphemy is not restrained to God alone Blasphemia other persons besides God other things besides persons may be blasphemed 1 Tim. 6.1 Iude 8 10. The word of God the Doctrine Religion may be blasphemed Magistracy and Dignities may be blasphemed Nay Omnia quae ignorant saies that Apostle They blaspheme all things which they know not And for persons the Apostle takes it to his owne person 1 Cor. 4.13 Being blasphemed yet we intreat and he communicates it to all men Neminem blasphemate Tit. 3.2 Blaspheme no man Blasphemy as it is a contumelious speech derogating from any man that good that is in him or attributing to any man that ill that is not in him may be fastned upon any man For the most part it is understood a sin against God and that directly and here by the manner of Christ expressing himselfe it is made the greatest sin All sin even blasphemy And yet a drunkard that cannot name God will spue out a blasphemy against God A child that cannot spell God will stammer out a blasphemy against God If we smart we blaspheme God and we blaspheme him if we be tickled If I lose at play I blaspheme and if my fellow lose he blasphemes so that God is alwayes sure to be a loser An Usurer can shew me his bags and an Extortioner his houses the fruits the revenues of his sinne but where will the blasphemer shew mee his blasphemy or what hee hath got by it The licentious man hath had his love in his armes and the envious man hath had his enemy in the dust but wherein hath the blasphemer hurt God In the Schoole we put it for the consummation of the torment of the damned Aquin. 221. q. 13. ar 4. that at the Resurrection they shall have bodies and so be able even verbally to blaspheme God herein we exceed the Devill already that we can speake blaspemously There is a rebellious part of the body that Adam covered with figge leaves that hath damned many a wretched soule but yet I thinke not more then the tongue And therefore the whole torment that Dives suffered in hell Luke 16.24 is expressed in that part Father Abraham have mercy upon me and send Lazarus that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and coole my tongue The Jews that crucified God will not sound the name of God and we for whom he was Crucified belch him out in our surfets and foame him out in our fury An Impertinent sin without occasion before and an unprofitable sin without recompence after and an incorrigible sin too for almost what Father dares chide his son for blasphemy that may not tell him Sir I learnt it of you or what Master his servant that cannot lay the same recrimination upon him How much then do we need this extent of Gods mercy that he will forgive sin and all sin and even this sin of blasphemy and which is also another addition blasphemy against the Son This emphaticall addition arises out of the connexion in the next verse In filium A word that is a blasphemous word against the Son shall be forgiven And here wee carry not the word Son so high as that the Son should be the eternall Son of God Though words spoken against the eternall Son of God by many bitter and blasphemous Heretiques have beene forgiven God forbid that all the Photinians who thought that Christ was not at all till he was borne of the Virgin Mary That all the Nativitarians that thought he was from all eternity with God but yet was not the Son of God That all the Arians that thought him the Son of God but yet not essentially not by nature but by grace and adoption God forbid that all these should be damned and because they once spoke against the Son therefore they never repented or were not received upon repentance We carry not the word Son so high as to be the eternall Son of God for it is in the text Filius hominis The Son of Man And in that acceptation we doe not meane it of all blasphemies that have beene spoken of Christ as the Son of man that is of Christ invested in the humane nature though blasphemies in that kind have beene forgiven too God forbid that all the Arians that thought Christ so much the Son of Man as that he tooke a humane body but not so much as that he tooke a humane soule but that the Godhead it selfe such a Godhead as they allowed him was his soule God forbid that all the Anabaptists that confesse he tooke a body but not a body of the substance of the Virgin That all the Carpocratians that thought onely his soule and not his body ascended into Heaven God forbid all these should be damned and never called to repentance or not admitted upon it There were fearfull blasphemies against the Son as the Son of God and as the Son of Man against his Divine and against his Humane Nature and those in some of them by Gods grace forgiven too But here we consider him onely as the Son of Man meerely as Man but as such a Man so good a
sin no lesser covering serves then God in his Church It was the prayer against them Nehem. 4.5 August who hindered the building of the Temple Cover not their iniquity neither let their sin be put out in thy presence Our prayer is Peccata nostra non videat ut nos videat Lord looke not upon our sins that thou maist looke upon us And since amongst our selves 1 Pet. 4.8 Prov. 10.12 it is the effect of Love to cover Multitudinem peccatorum The multitude of sins yea to cover Vniversa delicta Lovè covereth all sins much more shall God who is Love it selfe cover our sins so as he covered the Egyptians in a red Sea in the application of his blood by visible meanes in his Church That therefore thou mayest be capable of this covering Psal 37.6 Commit thy wayes unto the Lord that is show unto him by way of confession what wrong wayes thou hast gone and inquire of him by prayer what wayes thou art to go and as it is in the same Psalme He shall bring forth thy righteousnesse as the light and thy judgement as the noone day And so there shall be no guile found in thy spirit which might hinder this covering of thy sin which is the application of Christs merits in the Ordinances of his Church nor the Not imputing of thine iniquity which is our last consideration and the conclusion of all This not imputing Imputing is that serenity and acquiescence which a rectified conscience enjoyes when the Spirit of God beares witnesse with my spirit that thus reconciled to my God I am now guilty of nothing S. Bernard defines the Conscience thus Inseparabilis gloria vel confusio uniuscujusque pro qualitate depositi It is that inseparable glory or that inseparable confusion which every soule hath according to that which is deposited and laid up in it Now what is deposited and laid up in it Naturally hereditarily patrimonially Con-reatus sayes that Father from our first Parents a fellow-guiltinesse of their sin and they have left us sons and heires of the wrath and indignation of God and that is the treasure they have laid up for us Against this God hath provided Baptisme and Baptisme washes away that sin for as we doe nothing to our selves in Baptisme but are therein meerely passive so neither did we any thing our selves in Originall sin but therein are meerely passive too and so the remedy Baptisme is proportioned to the disease Originall sin But originall sin being thus washed away we make a new stocke we take in a new depositum a new treasure Actuall and habituall sins and therein much being done by our selves against God into the remedy there must enter something to be done by our selves and something by God And therefore we bring water to his wine true teares of repentance to his true blood in the Sacrament and so receive the seales of our reconciliation and having done that we may boldly say unto God Doe not condemne me Iob 10.2 shew me wherefore thou contendest with me When we have said as he doth I have sinned Iob 7.20 what shall I doe to thee And have done that that he hath ordained we may say also as he doth O thou preserver of men why dost thou not pardon my transgression and take away mine iniquity Why doest thou suffer me to faint and pant under this sad apprehension that all is not yet well betweene my soule and thee We are far from encouraging any man to antidate his pardon to presume his pardon to be passed before it is But when it is truly passed the seales of Reconciliation there is Dolus in spiritu Guile and deceit in that spirit nay it is the spirit of falshood and deceit it selfe that will not suffer us to injoy that pardon which God hath sealed to us but still maintaine jealousies and suspition between God and us My heart is not opener to God then the bowels of his mercy are to me And to accuse my selfe of sin after God hath pardoned me were as great a contempt of God as to presume of that pardon before he had granted it and so much a greater as it is directed against his greatest attribute his Mercy Si apud Deum deponas injuriam Tertul. ipse ultor erit Lay all the injuries that thou sufferest at Gods feet and hee will revenge them Si damnum ipse restituet Lay all thy losses there and he will repaire them Si dolorem ipse medicus Lay downe all thy diseases there and he shall heale thee Si mortem ipse resuscitator Dye in his armes and he shall breath a new life into thee Add wee to Tertullian Si peccata ipse sepeliet lay thy sins in his wounds and he shall bury them so deepe that onely they shall never have resurrection The Sun shall set and have a to morrows resurrection Herbs shall have a winter death and a springs resurrection Thy body shall have a long winters night and then a resurrection Onely thy sins buried in the wounds of thy Saviour shall never have resurrection And therefore take heed of that deceit in the spirit of that spirit of deceit that makes thee impute sins to thy selfe when God imputes them not But rejoyce in Gods generall forgiving of Transgressions That Christ hath dyed for all multiply thy joy in the covering of thy sin That Christ hath instituted a Church in which that generall pardon is made thine in particular And exalt thy joy in the not imputing of iniquity in that serenity that tranquillity that God shall receive thee at thy last houre in thy last Bath the sweat of death as lovingly as acceptably as innocently as he received thee from thy first Bath the laver of Regeneration the font in Baptisme Amen SERM. LVII Preached upon the Penitentiall Psalmes PSAL. 32.3 4. When I kept silence my bones waxed old through my roaring all the day long For day and night thy hand was heavy upon me my moysture is turned into the drought of Summer Selah ALL wayes of teaching are Rule and Example And though ordinarily the Rule be first placed yet the Rule it selfe is made of Examples And when a Rule would be of hard digestion to weake understandinge Example concocts it and makes it easie for Example in matter of Doctrine is as Assimilation in matter of Nourishment The Example makes that that is proposed for our learning and farther instruction like something which we knew before as Assimilation makes that meat which we have received and digested like those parts which are in our bodies before David was the sweet singer of Israel shall we say Gods Precentor His sonne Solomon was the powerfull Preacher of Israel shall we say Gods Chaplain Both of them excellent abundantly super-abundantly excellent in both those wayes of Teaching Poet and Preacher proceed in these wayes in both Rule and Example the body and soule of Instruction So this Psalme is qualified in the Title
solicits us at least with some noyse at our doores some calamities upon our neighbours And againe he appeares not like a lightning that passes away as soon as it is seene that no man can reade by it nor work by it nor light a candle nor kindle a coale by it but he stands at the doore and expects us all day not only with a patience but with a hunger to effect his purpose upon us he would come in and sup with us Accept our diet our poore endeavours And then would have us sup with him as it is there added would feast us with his abundant Graces which he brings even home to our doores But those he does not give us at the doore not till we have let him in by the good use of his former grace And as he offers this fulnesse of his mercy by these meanes before so by way of Pardon and Remission if we have been defective in opening the doore upon his standing and knocking this fulnesse is fully expressed in this word of this Text as our two Translations neither departing from the naturall signification of the word have rendred it The word is the same here in Davids sweetnesse as in Cains bitternesse Gnavon Poena Gen 4.13 and we cannot tell whether Cain speake there of a punishment too great to be borne or of a sin too great to be pardoned Nor which David meanes here It fills up the measure of Gods mercy if we take him to meane both God upon Confession forgives the punishment of the sin So that the just terror of Hell and the imaginary terror of Purgatory for the next World is taken away and for this World what calamities and tribulations soever fall upon us after these Confessions and Remissions they have not the nature of punishments but they are Fatherly Corrections and Medicinall assistances against relapses and have their maine relation and prospect upon the future For not onely the sin it selfe but the iniquitie of the sin is said to be forgiven Iniquitas God keeps nothing in his minde against the last day But whatsoever is worst in the sin the venome The malignity of the sin The violation of his Law The affrontings of his Majesty residing in that Law though it have been a winking at his light a resisting of his light the ill nature the malignity the iniquity of the sin is forgiven Onely this remaines That God extinguishes not the right of a third Person nor pardons a Murder so as that he barres another from his Appeale Not that his pardon is not full upon a full Confession but that the Confession is no more full if it bee not accompanied with Satisfaction that is Restitution of all unjustly gotten then if the Confession lacked Contrition and true sorrow Otherwise the iniquity of the sin and the punishment of the sin are both fully pardoned And so we have shut one leafe of this doore The fulnesse The other is the speed and acceleration of his mercy and that leafe we will clap to in a word This is expressed in this David is but at his Dixit and God at his Remisit Promptitudo David was but Saying nay but Thinking and God was Doing nay Perfecting his work To the Lepers that cryed out for mercy Christ said Go shew your selves to the Priest Luke 17.11 So he put them into the way and they went sayes the text and as they went they were healed upon the way No man comes into the way but by the illumination and direction of God Christ put them into the way The way is the Church no man is cured out of the way no man that separates himselfe from the Church nor in the way neither except he goe If he live negligently and trust onely upon the outward profession nor though he goe except he goe according to Christ bidding except he conforme himself to that worship of God and to those means of sanctification which God hath instituted in his Church without singularities of his owne or Traditions of other mens inventing and imposing This this submitting and conforming our selves to God so as God hath commanded us the purposing of this and the endeavouring of this is our Dixit in the Text our saying that we will doe it and upon this Dixit this purposing this endeavouring instantly immediately infallibly follows the Remisit God will God does God hath forgiven the iniquity and the punishment of the sin Therefore to end all Poure out thy heart like water before the face of the Lord. Lament 2.19 No liquor comes so clearly so absolutely from the vessel not oyle not milk not wine not hony as that it leaves no taste behind so may sweet sins and therefore poure out saies the Prophet not the liquor but the heart it selfe and take a new heart of Gods making for thy former heart was never so of Gods making as that Adam had not a hand in it and his Image was in it in Originall sin as well as Gods in the Creation As liquors poured out leave a taste and a smell behinde them unperfected Confessions And who perfects his Confession leave ill gottten goods sticking upon thine heire and they leave a taste and a delight to thinke and speake of former sins sticking upon thy selfe But poure out thy heart like water All ill impressions in the very roote And for the accomplishment of this great Mystery of Godlinesse by Confession fixe thy Meditations upon those words and in the strength of them come now or when thou shalt bee better strengthened by the Meditation of them to the Table of the Lord The Lord looketh upon men And if any say I have sinned Job 33.27 and perverted that which was right and it profited me not he will deliver his soule from going down into the pit and his life shall see light and it is added Loe all these things worketh God twice and thrice Here is a fulnesse of consolation first plenary and here is a present forgivenesse If man if any man say I have sinned God doth God forgives and here is more then that an iteration if thou fall upon infirmity againe God will on penitence more carefully performed forgive againe This hee will doe twice or thrice sayes the Hebrew our Translation might boldly say as it doth This God will doe often But yet if God finde dolum in spiritu an over-confidence in this God cannot be mocked And therefore take heed of trusting upon it too often but especially of trusting upon it too late And whatsoever the Holy Ghost may meane by the twice or thrice be sure to doe it once doe it now and receive thy Saviour there and so as he offers himselfe unto thee in these his Ordinances this day once and twice and thrice that is in prayer in preaching in the Sacrament For this is thy trinity upon earth that must bring thee to the Trinity in heaven To which Trinity c. SERM. LIX Preached upon the
even the second death sorrowes that flow into desperation and impenitiblenesse and impenitiblenesse is hell As the torment is an inchoative hell so is the person the Wicked here an inchoated Devill It is S. Chrysostoms spontaneus daemon and voluntarius daemon He that is a devill to himselfe that could be and would be ambitious in a Spittle licentious in a Wildernesse voluptuous in a Famine and abound with tentations in himselfe though there were no devill Most of the names of the devill in the Scripture denote some action of his upon us As he is called The Prince of the power of the Ayre there he is called so because as it is added there Ephes 2.2 Hee works in the children of disobedience As the ayre works upon our bodies this Prince of the Ayre works upon our minds how works he hee deceives Revel 12.9 Hee deceived the whole world saith S. Iohn from this infinuation hee hath those other names there the great Dragon and the old Serpent When hee hath crept in as a Serpent then hee growes A roaring Lyon He professes his power he disguises not a tentation then he growes Satan an Adversary an Enemy he opposes all good endeavors in us then he growes Diabolus an Accuser an accuser to God an accuser to our owne conscience and when he hath made our sinne as great as it can be in our practise when by age or sicknesse or poverty he cannot multiply our sinnes for the present then by his multiplying glasse he multiplies the sins of our former times and presents them greater then even the mercies of God or the merits of Christ Jesus So he growes in mischievous names according to his mischievous actions and practises upon us but then out of himselfe arises the most vehement and the most collective name that is given him in all the Scriptures 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and that with the emphaticall article The wicked one One that is all wickednesse one that is the wickednesse of all One who if he had no object to direct his wickednesse upon no subject to exercise his wickednesse in If God should proclaime so generall a Pardon That all men All should effectually be saved and so all hope to have enlarged his Kingdome be withdrawne yet would still be as wicked and as opposite to God as he is So then by this character of Multiplicity Plurality this emphaticall note of the wicked in our Text the person whose portion this sorrow is this sorrow which is a brand of Hell at least a match by which Hell fire it selfe is kindled is not hee that is an Adulterer or that is a Murtherer not hee that hath fallen into some particular sinnes though great and continued those great sinnes in habits though long for David fell so and yet found a holy sorrow a medicinall sorrow but it is the wicked he that runnes headlong into all wayes of wickednesse and usque ad finem precludes or neglects all wayes of recovery That is glad of a tentation and afraid of a Sermon that is dry wood and tinder to Satans fire if he doe but touch him and is ashes it selfe to Gods Spirit if he blow upon him That from a love of sinne at first because it is pleasing comes at last to a love of sinne because it is sinne because it is liberty because it is a deliverance of himselfe from the bondage as he thinks it of the law of God and from the remorse and anguish of considering sinne too particularly This is the person in whom at first by this emphaticall note the wicked we designe a Plurality as we called it that is a Complicated a Multiplied a Compact sinner a Body rather a Carkasse of Many of All sins all that have fallen within his reach And then in the word we noted also a Singularity That upon such a sinner upon every such sinner these Many these Great these Eternall sorrowes shall fall and tarry As in the former Circumstance Singularity we noted that it was the They that aggravated it it was not an An an Adulterer an Ambitious man but a The The wicked whom God enwrapped in this irrecoverable this undeterminable sorrow so here it is not a This or That This wicked or that wicked man but The wicked every wicked man is surrounded with this sorrow He can propose no comfort in a decimation as in popular Rebellions where nine may be spared and the tenth man hanged No nor so much hope as to have nine hanged and the tenth spared He is not in Sodoms case That a few righteous might have saved the wicked Ezek. 14.20 But he feeles a necessity of applying to himselfe that If Noah Daniel and Iob were in the midst of them as I live saith the Lord God they should deliver neither Son August nor Daughter Iussisti Domine sic est ut poena sit sibi omnis inordinatus animus It is thy pleasure O God and thy pleasure shall be infallibly accomplished that every wicked person should be his owne Executioner He is Spontaneus Daemon as S. Chrysostome speaks an In-mate an in-nate Devill a bosome devill a selfe-Devill That as he could be a tempter to himselfe though there were no Devill so he could be an Executioner to himselfe though there were no Satan and a Hell to himselfe though there were no other Torment Sometimes he staies not the Assises but prevents the hand of Justice he destroies himselfe before his time But when he staies he is evermore condemned at the Assises Let him sleepe out as much of the morning as securelyas he can embellish and adorne himselfe as gloriously as he can dine as largely and as delicately as he can weare out as much of the afternoone in conversation in Comedies in pleasure as hee can sup with as much distension and inducement of drousinesse as he can that he may scape all remorse by falling asleepe quickly and fall asleepe with as much discourse and musicke and advantage as he can he hath a conscience that will survive and overwatch all the company he hath a sorrow that shall joyne issue with him when he is alone and both God and the devill who doe not meet willingly shall meet in his case and be in league and be one the sorrowes side against him The anger of God and the malice of the devill shall concurre with his sorrow to his farther vexation No one wicked person by any diversion or cunning shall avoid this sorrow for it is in the midst and in the end of all his forced contentments Prov. 14.13 Even in laughing the heart is sorrowfull and the end of that mirth is heavinesse The person is The wicked Communication Every wicked person He hath no reliefe in a decimation that some may scape Nor reliefe in the communication of the torment It is no ease to him that so many beare a part with him In some afflictions in the world men lay hold
set in a Cloud of anger upon him The Martyrs that abounded with this Trust in God and this Righteousnesse and this Vprightnesse of heart abounded with these afflictions too They that bestowed themselves upon God and his Church 2 Cor. 12.15 as the Apostle expresses it had these sorrowes plentifully bestowed upon themselves And to passe from them to the Author of their constancy Christ himselfe He is Vir dolorum A man of sorrowes Esay 53.3 and acquainted with Griefe And now Whom he loveth he chastneth and he scourgeth every one that he receiveth Flagellat omnem He scourgeth every one Vis audire quem omneem August Will you know how generall and yet how particular this is Vnicus sine peccato non tamen sine flagello There was one Man without any sin but even that Man was not without punishment Christ Jesus himselfe So generall is correction as that in this case and in this sense it is more generall then sin it selfe It is not then that the godly shall no afflictions no sorrowes But mutant fortitudinem They that waite upon the Lord shall renue their strength Esay 40.31 say our Translators in the body of their Translation but in the Margin and neerer to the Originall They shall change their strength They that have been strong in sinning that have sinned with a strong hand when they feele a judgement upon them and finde that it is Gods hand and Gods hand for their sinnes they faint not they lose not their strength but mutant fortitudinem They change their strength they grow as strong in suffering as they were in sinning and invest the Prophets resolution I will beare the indignation of the Lord Mic. 7.9 Ezek. 2.10 because I have sinned against him The Booke which God gave Ezekiel to eate was written within and without with Lamentations and Mournings and Woes but when he eate it he found it in his mouth as sweet as honey When God offers the Booke which is the Register of our sinnes to our Consciences or the Decree of his Judgements to our understanding or to our sense it is writ in gall and wormwood and in the bitternesse of sorrow but if we can bring it to the first concoction the first digestion to that mastication that rumination which is the consideration of Gods purpose upon us in that Judgement we shall change our taste for we shall Taste and See Quam suavis Dominus Psal 34.9 How good and how sweet the Lord is for even this Judgement is Mercy Think not then thy valour sufficiently tried if thou canst take it patiently to have mist a fute long pursued or failed of a Preferment long expected no not if thou have stood in a haile of bullets without winking or sate the searching of a wound without starting but Muta fortitudinem Change thy valour and when thou commest to beare great crosses proportionable to thy great sins with a spirituall courage acknowledge that courage to be the mercy of God and not thine owne morall constancy God loves his owne example to doe as he hath done Omni quaestione severius à te interrogari It was said to a Romane Emperour who examined with Wisedome and Majesty too It is truer of God that it is more fearfull then any rack or torture when he comes to search and sift a conscience Yet God did come to that office upon Adam before he would condemne him He came to a worse place then Paradise hee came to Sodome to rack and torture them with that confession that there could not be found ten Righteous men amongst them But yet this he did before he condemned them God will visit thee in this wrack in this furnace in these trialls before he proceed to thy condemnation But when God doth so beleeve thou David in his Indulgence to his Son to have been a Type of Gods disposition to thy soule When he sent out his Army against Absalom he stood in the gate to survey the Muster and to every one of the Commanders Ioab and the rest still he said Servate mihi puerum Absalom Intreat the young man Absalom well for my sake The Lord of Hosts may send forth his Army against thee Sicknesse Losse Shame Paine Banishment Imprisonment which are all swords of his but he sayes to them all Servate mihi Absalom That soule that I have bought with my blood preserve for me Fight but against mine enemies his Pride his Security his Presumption but Servate Absalom Preserve his soule unshaken and un-offended God hath said it before Jer. 29.11 and he sayes againe to thee in all thy afflictions I know the thoughts that I think towards you the thoughts of peace and not of evill to give you an expected end God said this when a False Prophet had promised them deliverance in two yeares God prorogues the time he would doe it but he would not doe it under threescore and ten yeares Limit not God in his time nor in his meanes The mercy consists in relieving thee so as that thy soule suffer not though thou doe And if that be preserved this mercy is a Compassing mercy which is also another Circumstance in this Branch The Devill had Compast all the Earth Compasse and he was angry that God had Compast Iob. He sayes in indignation Job 1.9 Hast thou not made a hedge about him and about his house and about all that he hath on every side God did so for Iob and he will doe so for thee He redeemeth thy life from the grave Psal 103.4 and crowneth thee with mercy and compassion This is the Compassing in heaven when we come to be crowned there But there is a Compassing here Rom 8 28. and an empailing of Gods children in S. Pauls Co-operantur When all things work together for good to them that love God When Prosperity and Adversity Honour and Disgrace Profit and Losse the Lords Giving and the Lords Taking doe all concurre to the making up of this Paile that must Compasse us When we acknowledge that there must be nailes in the Paile as well as stakes there must be thornes in the hedge as well as fruit trees Crosses as well as Blessings when we leere not over the Paile neither into the Common that is to the Gentiles and Nations and begin to thinke that we might be saved by the light of nature without this burden of Christianity nor leere over into the Pastures and Corne of our neighbours that is to think that we are not well in our own Church but must needs hearken to the Doctrine or Discipline of another When we see all that comes to come from God and are content with that then Omnia co-operantur Every piece serves to the making up this Paile and his Mercy compasses us about This is the roote of our three Branches the foundation of our three Stories the bagge of our three summes in this portion Mercy Compassing mercy and then the Branches
in a great measure very rich and very poore Prosperity or Adversity occasion most sinnes Though God call upon us in every leafe of the Scripture to pity the poore and relieve the poore and ground his last Judgement upon our works of mercy Mat. 25.34 Because you have fed and clothed the poore inherit the kingdome yet as the rich and the poore stand before us now as it were in Judgement as we inquire and heare evidence which statoâ—â— most obnoxious and open to most sinnes we embrace and apply to our selves that law Exod. 23.3 Levit. 19.15 Thou shalt not countenance a poore man in his cause And as it is repeated Thou shalt not respect the person of the poore in Iudgement There is then a poverty which without all question is the direct way to heaven but that is spirituall Mat. 5.3 Blessed are the poore in spirit This poverty is humility it is not beggary A rich man may have it and a beggar may be without it The Wiseman found not this poverty Ecclus 25.2 not humility in every poore man He found three sorts of men whom his soule hated And one of the three was a poore man that is proud And when the Prophet said of Jerusalem in her afflictions Esay 51.21 Paupercula es ebria Thou art poore and miserable and yet drunke though as he addes there it were not with wine which is now in our dayes an ordinary refuge of men of all sorts in all sadnesses and crosses to relieve themselves upon wine and strong drinke which are indeed strong illusions yet though Jerusalems drunkennesse were not with wine it was worse It was a staggering a vertiginousnesse an ignorance a blindnesse a not discerning the wayes to God which is the worst drunkennesse and fals often upon the poore and afflicted That their poverty and affliction staggers them and damps them in their recourse to God so far as that they know not That they are miserable and wretched and poore and blinde Revel 3.17 and raked The Holy Ghost alwaies makes the danger of the poore great as well as of the rich The rich mans wealth is his strong City There is his fault his confidence in that Pro. 10.15 But Pavor pauperum The destruction of the poore is his poverty There is his fault Desperation under it Solomon presents them as equally dangerous Give me neither poverty nor riches Pro. 30.8 Ruth 3.10 So does Booz to Ruth Blessed be thou of the Lord my daughter in as much as thou followedst not young men whether poore or rich That which Booz intended there Incontinency and all vices that arise immediately out of the corruption of nature and are not induced by other circumstances have as much inclination from poverty as from riches May we not say more I doubt we may He must be a very sanctified man whom extreame poverty and other afflictions doe not decline towards a jealousie and a suspicion and a distrusting of God And then the sins that bend towards desperation are so much more dangerous then those that bend towards presumption that he that presumes hath still mercy in his contemplation He does not thinke that he needs no mercy but that mercy is easily had He beleeves there is mercy he doubts not of that But the despairing man imagines a cruelty an unmercifulnesse in God and destroyes the very nature of God himselfe Riches is the Metaphor in which the Holy Ghost hath delighted to expresse God and Heaven to us Despise not the riches of his goodnesse sayes the Apostle And againe Rom. 2.4.11.33 Ephes 3.8 ver 16. O the depth of the riches of his wisdome And so after The unsearchable riches of Christ And for the consummation of all The riches of his Glory Gods goodnesse towards us in generall our Religion in the way his Grace here his Glory hereafter are all represented to us in Riches With poverty God ordinarily accompanies his comminations he threatens feeblenesse and warre and captivity and poverty every where but he never threatens men with riches Ordinary poverty that is a difficulty with all their labors and industry to sustaine their family and the necessary duties of their place is a shrewd and a slippery tentation But for that street-beggery which is become a Calling for Parents bring up their children to it nay they doe almost take prentises to it some expert beggers teach others what they shall say how they shall looke how they shall lie how they shall cry for these whom our lawes call Incorrigible I must say of them in a just accommodation of our Saviours words It is not meet to take the childrens bread Matt. 25.26 and to cast it to dogs It is not meet that this vermin should devoure any of that which belongs to them who are truely poore Neither is there any measure any proportion of riches that exposes man naturally to so much sin as this kinde of beggery doth Rich men forget or neglect the duties of their Baptisme but of these how many are there that were never baptized Rich men sleepe out Sermons but these never come to Church Rich men are negligent in the practise but these are ignorant in all knowledge It would require a longer disquisition then I can afford to it now whether Riches or Poverty considered in lesser proportions ordinary riches ordinary poverty open us to more and worse sins But consider them in the highest and in the lowest abundant riches beggerly poverty and it will scarce admit doubt but that the incorrigible vagabond is farther from all wayes of goodnesse then the corruptest rich man is And therefore labour wee all earnestly in the wayes of some lawfull calling that we may have our portion of this world by good meanes For first the advantages of doing good to others in a reall reliefe of their wants is in the rich onely whereas the best way of a good poore man to doe good to others is but an exemplary patience to catechize others by his suffering And then all degrees of poverty are dangerous and slippery even to a murmuring against God or an invading of the possessions and goods of other men but especially the lowest the desperate degree of beggery and then especially when we cannot say it is inflicted by the hand of God but contracted by our owne lazinesse or our owne wastfulnesse This is a problematicall a disputable case Whether riches or poverty occasion most sins And because on both sides there arise good doctrines of edification Men of low degree I have thus far willingly stopped upon that disputable consideration But now that which wee receive here upon Davids upon the Holy Ghosts security Surely it is thus It is surely so is this That we shall be deceived if we put our trust in men for what sort of men would we trust Surely men of low degree are vanity And this if it be taken of particular men needs no proving no
August 1630. being with his daughter Mistris Harvy at Abrey-Hatch in Essex he fell into a Feaver which with the helpe of his constant infirmity vapours from the spleene hastened him into so visible a Consumption that his beholders might say as S. Paul of himselfe he dyes daily And he might say with Iob Job 30.15 Job 7.3 My welfare passeth away as a cloud The dayes of affliction have taken hold of me And weary nights are appointed for me This sicknesse continued long not onely weakning but wearing him so much that my desire is he may now take some rest And that thou judge it no impertinent digression before I speake of his death to looke backe with me upon some observations of his life which while a gentle slumber seises him may I hope fitly exercise thy Consideration His marriage was the remarkable error of his life which though he had a wit apt enough and very able to maintaine paradoxes And though his wives competent yeares and other reasons might be justly urged to moderate a severe censure yet he never seemed to justifie and doubtlesse had repented it if God had not blest them with a mutuall and so cordiall an affection as in the midst of their sufferings made their bread of sorrow taste more pleasantly then the banquet of fooles The recreations of his youth were Poetry in which he was so happy as if nature with all her varieties had been made to exercise his great wit and high fancy And in those pieces which were carelesly scattered in his younger daies most of them being written before the twentieth yeare of his age it may appeare by his choice Metaphors that all the Arts joyned to assist him with their utmost skill It is a truth that in his penitentiall yeares viewing some of those pieces loosely scattered in his youth he wisht they had been abortive or so short-liv'd that he had witnessed their funeralls But though he was no friend to them he was not so falne out with heavenly Poetry as to forsake it no not in his declining age witnessed then by many divine Sonnets and other high holy and harmonious composures yea even on his former sick bed he wrote this heavenly Hymne expressing the great joy he then had in the assurance of Gods mercy to him A Hymne to God the Father VVIlt thou forgive that sin where I begun Which was my sin though it were done before Wilt thou forgive that sin through which I run And doe run still though still I doe deplore When thou hast done thou hast not done For I have more Wilt thou forgive that sin which I have won Others to sin and made my sin their dore Wilt thou forgive that sin which I did shun A yeare or two but wallowed in a score When thou hast done thou hast not done For I have more I have a sin of feare that when I have spun My last thred I shall perish on the shore But sweare by thy selfe that at my death thy Sonne Shall shine as he shines now and heretofore And having done that thou hast done I feare no more And on this which was his Death-bed writ another Hymne which bears this Title A Hymne to God my God in my sicknesse If these fall under the censure of a soule whose too much mixture with earth makes it unfit to judge of these high illuminations let him know that many devout and learned men have thought the soule of holy Prudentius was most refined when not many dayes before his death he charged it to present his God each morning with a new and spirituall Song justified by the examples of King David and the good King Hezekias who upon the renovation of his yeares payed his gratefull vowes to God in a royall hymne Esay 38. which he concludes in these words The Lord was ready to save therefore we will sing my songs to the stringed instruments all the dayes of our life in the Temple of my God The later part of his life was a continued studie Saturdaies onely excepted which he usually spent in visiting friends and resting himselfe under the weary burthen of his weeks Meditations And he gave himselfe this rest that thereby he might be refresht and inabled to doe the work of the day following not negligently but with courage and cheerfulnesse Nor was his age onely so industrious but in his most unsetled youth he was being in health never knowne to be in bed after foure of the clock in the morning nor usually out of his chamber till ten and imployed that time constantly if not more in his Studie Which if it seeme strange may gain beliefe by the visible fruits of his labours some of which remaine to testifie what is here written for he left the resultance of 1400. Authors most of them analyzed with his owne hand He left sixscore Sermons also all writ with his owne hand A large and laborious Treatise concerning Self-murther called Biathanatose wherein all the Lawes violated by that act are diligently survayed and judiciously censured A Treatise written in his youth which alone might declare him then not onely perfect in the Civil and Canon Law but in many other such studies and arguments as enter not into the consideration of many profest Scholars that labour to be thought learned Clerks and to know all things Nor were these onely found in his Studie but all businesses that past of any publique consequence in this or any of our neighbour Kingdoms he abbreviated either in Latine or in the Language of the Nation and kept them by him for a memoriall So he did the Copies of divers Letters and Cases of Conscience that had concerned his friends with his solutions and divers other businesses of importance all particularly and methodically digested by himselfe He did prepare to leave the world before life left him making his Will when no facultie of his soule was dampt or defective by sicknesse or he surprized by sudden apprehension of death But with mature deliberation expressing himselfe an impartiall Father by making his Childrens Portions equall a constant lover of his friends by particular Legacies discreetly chosen and fitly bequeathed them And full of charity to the poore and many others who by his long continued bounty might entitle themselves His almes-people For all these he made provision so largely as having six children might to some appeare more then proportionable to his estate The Reader may think the particulars tedious but I hope not impertinent that I present him with the beginning and conclusion of his last Will. IN the name of the blessed and glorious Trinitie Amen I Iohn Donne by the mercy of Christ Iesus and the calling of the Church of England Priest being at this time in good and perfect understanding praised be God therefore doe hereby make my last Will and Testament in manner and forme following First I give my gracious God an intire sacrifice of body and soule with my most humble thanks for
was a good King for all that Achaz is called ill both because himselfe sacrificed Idolatrously And the King was a commanding person And because he made the Priest Vriah to doe so And the Priest was an exemplar person And because he made his Son commit the abominations of the heathen And the actions of the Kings Son pierce far in leading others Achaz had these faults and yet God fought occasion of mercy If the evening skie be red Mat. 16.2 you promise your selves a faire day sayes Christ you would not doe so if the evening were black and cloudy when you see the fields white with corne you say harvest is ready Joh. 4.35 Esay 1.19 you would not doe so if they were white with frost If ye consent and obey you shall eat the good things of the Land sayes God in the Prophet shall ye doe so if you refuse and rebell Achaz did and yet God sought occasion of mercy There arise diseases for which there is no probatum est in all the bookes of Physitians There is scarce any sin of which we have not had experiments of Gods mercies He concludes with no sin excludes no occasion precludes no person And so we have done with our first part Gods generall disposition for the Rule declared in Achaz case for the example Our second part consists of a Rule and an Example too 2 Part. The Rule That God goes forward in his own wayes proceeds as he begun in mercy The Example what his proceeding what his subsequent mercy to Achaz was One of the most convenient Hieroglyphicks of God is a Circle and a Circle is endlesse whom God loves hee loves to the end and not onely to their own end to their death but to his end and his end is that he might love them still His hailestones and his thunder-bolts and his showres of bloud emblemes and instruments of his Judgements fall downe in a direct line and affect and strike some one person or place His Sun and Moone and Starres Emblemes and Instruments of his Blessings move circularly and communicate themselves to all His Church is his chariot in that he moves more gloriously then in the Sun as much more as his begotten Son exceeds his created Sun and his Son of glory and of his right hand the Sun of the firmament and this Church his chariot moves in that communicable motion circularly It began in the East it came to us and is passing now shining out now in the farthest West As the Sun does not set to any Nation but withdraw it selfe and returne againe God in the exercise of his mercy does not set to thy soule though he benight it with an affliction Remember that our Saviour Christ himselfe in many actions and passions of our humane nature and infirmities smothered that Divinity and suffered it not to worke but yet it was alwayes in him and wrought most powerfully in the deepest danger when he was absolutely dead it raised him again If Christ slumbred the God-head in himselfe The mercy of God may be slumbred it may be hidden from his servants but it cannot be taken away and in the greatest necessities it shall break out The Blessed Virgin was overshadowed but it was with the Holy Ghost that overshadowed her Thine understanding thy conscience may be so too and yet it may be the work of the Holy Ghost who moves in thy darknesse and will bring light even out of that knowledge out of thine ignorance clearnesse out of thy scruples and consolation out of thy Dejection of Spirit God is thy portion sayes David David does not speak so narrowly so penuriously as to say God hath given thee thy portion and thou must look for no more but God is thy portion and as long as he is God he hath more to give and as long as thou art his thou hast more to receive Thou canst not have so good a Title to a subsequent blessing as a former blessing where thou art an ancient tenant thou wilt look to be preferred before a stranger and that is thy title to Gods future mercies if thou have been formerly accustomed to them The Sun is not weary with sixe thousand yeares shining God cannot be weary of doing good And therefore never say God hath given me these and these temporall things and I have scattered them wastfully surely he will give me no more These and these spirituall graces and I have neglected them abused them surely he will give me no more For for things created we have instruments to measure them we know the compasse of a Meridian and the depth of a Diameter of the Earth and we know this even of the uppermost spheare in the heavens But when we come to the Throne of God himselfe the Orbe of the Saints and Angels that see his face and the vertues and powers that flow from thence we have no balance to weigh them no instruments to measure them no hearts to conceive them So for temporall things we know the most that man can have for we know all the world but for Gods mercy and his spirituall graces as that language in which God spake the Hebrew hath no superlative so that which he promises in all that he hath spoken his mercy hath no superlative he shewes no mercy which you can call his Greatest Mercy his Mercy is never at the highest whatsoever he hath done for thy soule or for any other in applying himselfe to it he can exceed that Onely he can raise a Tower whose top shall reach to heaven The Basis of the highest building is but the Earth But though thou be but a Tabernacle of Earth God shall raise thee peece by peece into a spirituall building And after one Story of Creation and another of Vocation and another of Sanctification he shall bring thee up to meet thy selfe in the bosome of thy God where thou wast at first in an eternall election God is a circle himselfe and he will make thee one Goe not thou about to square eyther circle to bring that which is equall in it selfe to Angles and Corners into dark and sad suspicions of God or of thy selfe that God can give or that thou canst receive no more Mercy then thou hast had already This then is the course of Gods mercy Signum He proceeds as he begun which was the first branch of this second part It is alwayes in motion and alwayes moving towards All alwaies perpendicular right over every one of us and alwayes circular alwayes communicable to all And then the particular beame of this Mercy shed upon Achaz here in our Text is Dabit signum The Lord shall give you a signe It is a great Degree of Mercy that he affords us signes A naturall man is not made of Reason alone but of Reason and Sense A Regenerate man is not made of Faith alone but of Faith and Reason and Signes externall things assist us all In the Creation it was part of
child is borne unto us a Son is given He was not given he was not borne in six hundred yeares after that but such is the clearenesse of a Prophets sight such is the infallibility of Gods declared purpose So then if the Prophet could have made the King beleeve with such an assurednesse as if he had seene it done that God would give a deliverance to all mankinde by a Messias that had beene signe enough evidence enough to have argued thereupon That God who had done so much a greater worke would also give him a deliverance from that enemy that pressed him then If I can fixe my selfe with the strength of faith upon that which God hath done for man I cannot doubt of his mercy in any distresse If I lacke a signe I seeke no other but this That God was made man for me which the Church and Church-writers have well expressed by the word Incarnation for that acknowledges and denotes that God was made my flesh It were not so strange that he who is spirit should be made my spirit my soule but he was made my flesh Therefore have the Fathers delighted themselves in the variation of that word so far as that Hilarie cals it Corporationem That God assumed my Body And Damascen cals it Inhumanationem That God became this man soule and body And Irenaeus cals it Adunationem and Nysen Contemperationem A mingling says one an uniting saies the other of two of God and man in one person Shall I aske what needs all this what needed God to have put himselfe to this I may say with S. Augustine Alio modo poterat Deus nos liberare sed si aliter faceret similiter vestrae stultitiae displiceret What other way soever God had taken for our salvation our curiosity would no more have beene satisfied in that way than in this But God having chosen the way of Redemption which was the way of Justice God could do no otherwise Si homo non vicisset inimicum hominis non justè victus esset inimicus saies Irenaeus As if a man should get a battaile by the power of the Devill without fighting this were not a just victory so if God in mans behalfe had conquered the devill without man without dying it had not beene a just conquest I must not aske why God tooke this way to Incarnate his Son And shall I aske how this was done I doe not aske how Rheubarb or how Aloes came by this or this vertue to purge this or this humour in my body In talibus rebus tota ratio facti est potentia facientis Even in naturall things all the reason of all that is done August is the power and the will of him who infused that vertue into that creature And therefore much more when we come to these supernaturall points such as this birth of Christ we embrace S. Basils modesty and abstinence Nativitas ista silentio honoretur This mysterie is not so well celebrated with our words and discourse as with a holy silence and meditation Immo potius ne cogitationibus permittatur Nay saies that Father there may be danger in giving our selves leave to thinke or study too much of it Ne dixer is quando saies he praeteri hanc interrogationem Aske not thy selfe overcuriously when this mystery was accomplished be not over-vehement over-peremptory so far as to the perplexing of thine owne reason and understanding or so far as to the despising of the reasons of other men in calculating the time the day or houre of this nativity Praeteri hanc interrogationem passe over this question in good time and with convenient satisfaction Quando when Christ was borne But noli inquirere Quomodo saies S. Basil still never come to that question how it was done cum ad hoc nihil sit quod responderi possit for God hath given us no faculties to comprehend it no way to answer it That 's enough which we have in S. Iohn Every spirit that confesses that Iesus is come in the flesh is of God 1 Ioh. 4.2 for since it was a comming of Iesus Iesus was before so he was God and since he came in the flesh hee is now made man And that God and Man are so met is a signe to mee that God and I shall never bee parted This is the signe in generall That God hath had such a care of all men Virgo is a signe to me That he hath a care of me But then there are signes of this signe Divers All these A Virgin shall conceive A Virgin shall bring forth Bring forth a Son And whatsoever have been prophesied before she shall call his name Immanuel First a Virgin shall be a mother which is a very particular signe and was seene but once That which Gellius and Plinie say that a Virgin had a child almost 200. yeares before Christ that which Genebrard saies that the like fell out in France in his time are not within our faith and they are without our reason our faith stoopes not downe to them and our Reason reaches not up to them of this Virgin in our text If that be true which Aquinas cites out of the Roman story that in the times of Constantine and Irene upon a dead body found in a sepulchre there was found this inscription in a plate of gold Christus nascetur ex Virgine ego credo in eum Christ shall be borne of a Virgin and I beleeve in that Christ with this addition in that inscription O Sol sub Irenae Constantini temporibus iterum me videbis Though I be now buried from the sight of the sun yet in Constantines time the sun shall see me againe If this be true yet our ground is not upon such testimonie If God had not said it I would never have beleeved it And therefore I must have leave to doubt of that which some of the Roman Casuists have delivered That a Virgin may continue a virgin upon earth and receive the particular dignity of a Virgin in Heaven and yet have a child by the insinuation and practise of the Devill so that there shall be a father and a mother and yet both they Virgins That this Mother in our text was a Virgin is a peculiar a singular signe given as such by God never done but then and it is a singular testimony how acceptable to God that state of virginity is Hee does not dishonour physick that magnifies health nor does hee dishonour marriage that praises Virginity let them embrace that state that can and certainly many more might doe it then do if they would try whether they could or no and if they would follow S. Cyprians way Virgo non tantum esse sed intelligi esse debet credi It is not enough for a virgin to bee a virgin in her owne knowledge but she must governe her selfe so as that others may see that she is one and see that shee hath a desire and a
in the warfare Mat. 26.38 so we have our example in our great Generall Christ Jesus Who though his soul were heavy and heavy unto death though he had a baptisme to be baptised with coarctabatur he was straightned and in paine till it were accomplished and though he had power to lay down his soul Iohn 10.18 and take it up againe and no man else could take it from him yet he sought it out to the last houre and till his houre came he would not prevent it nor lay downe his soule Vae desiderantibus woe unto them that desire any other end of Gods correction but what he hath ordained and appointed for ut quid vobis what shall you get by choosing your owne wayes Tenebrae non lux They shall passe out of this world in this inward darknesse of melancholy and dejection of spirit into the outward darknesse which is an everlasting exclusion from the Father of lights and from the Kingdome of joy their case is well expressed in the next verse to our Text they shall flie from a Lyon and a Beare shall meet them they shall leane on a wall and a Serpent shall bite them they shall end this life by a miserable and hasty death and out of that death shall grow an immortall life in torments which no wearinesse nor desire nor practice can ever bring to an end And here in this acceptation of these words this vae falls directly upon them who colouring and apparelling treason in martyrdome expose their lives to the danger of the Law Scribanius embrace death these of whom one of their own society saith that the Scevolaes the Caves the Porciaes the Cleopatraes of the old time were nothing to the Jesuites for saith he they could dye once but they lacked courage ad multas mortes perchance hee meanes that after those men were once in danger of the Law and forfeited their lives by one comming they could come again and again as often as the plentifull mercy of their King would send them away Rapiunt mortem spontanea irruptione sayes he to their glory they are voluntary and violent pursuers of their own death and as he expresses it Crederes morbo adesos Baron Martyrâ—â— 29. Decemb you would think that the desire of death is a disease in them A graver man then he mistakes their case and cause of death as much you are saith he incouraging those of our Nation to the pursuit of death in sacris septis ad martyrium saginati fed up and fatned here for martyrdome Sacramento sanguinem spospondistis they have taken an oath that they will be hanged but that he in whom as his great patterne God himselfe mercy is above all his works out of his abundant sweetnesse makes them perjured when they have so Tworne and vowed their owne ruine But those that send them give not the lives of these men so freely so cheaply as they pretend But as in dry Pumps men poure in a little water that they may pump up more so they are content to drop in a little blood of imaginary but traiterous Martyrs that by that at last they may draw up at last the royall blood of Princes and the loyall blood of Subjects vae desiderantibus woe to them that are made thus ambitious of their owne ruine ut quid vobis Tenebrae non lux you are kept in darknesse in this world and sent into darknesse from heaven into the next and so your ambition ad multas mortes shall be satisfied you dye more then one death morte moriemini this death delivers you to another from which you shall never be delivered We have now past through these three acceptations of these words Conclusion which have falne into the contemplation and meditation of the Ancients in their Expositions of this Text as this dark day of the Lord signifies his judgements upon Atheisticall scorners in this world as it signifies his last irrevocable and irremediable judgements upon hypocriticall relyers upon their own righteousnesse in the next world and between both as it signifies their uncomfortable passage out of this life who bring their death inordinately upon themselves and we shall shut up all with one signification more of the Lords day That that is the Lords day of which the whole Lent is the Vigil and the Eve All this time of mortification and our often meeting in this place to heare of our mortality and our immortality which are the two reall Texts and Subjects of all our Sermons All this time is the Eve of the Resurrection of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ That is the Lords day when all our mortification and dejection of spirit and humbling of our soules shall be abundantly exalted in his resurrection and when all our fasts and abstinence shall be abundantly recompenced in the participation of his body his bloud in the Sacrament Gods Chancery is alwayes open and his seale works alwaies at all times remission of sins may be sealed to a penitent soule in the Sacrament That clause which the Chancellors had in their Patents under the Romane Emperours Vt praerogativamgerat conscientiae nostrae is in our commission too for God hath put his conscience into his Church whose sins are remitted there are remitted in heaven at all times but yet dies Domini the Lords resurrection is as the full Terme a more generall application of this seale of reconciliation But vae desiderantibus woe unto them that desire that day only because they would have these dayes of preaching and prayer and fasting and trouble some preparation past and gone Vae desiderantibus woe unto them who desire that day onely that by receâ—â—ing the Sacrament day that they might delude the world as though they were not of a contrary religion in their heart vae desiderantibus woe unto them who present themselves that day without such a preparation as becomes so fearful and mystesious an action upon any carnall or collaterall respects Before that day of the Lord comes comes the day of his crucifying before you come to that day if you come not to a crucifying of your selves to the world and the world to you ut quid vobis what shall you get by that day you shall prophane that day and the Author of it as to make that day of Christs triumph the triumph of Satan and to make even that body and bloud of Christ Jesus Vehiculum Satanae his Chariot to enter into you as he did into Iudas That day of the Lord will be darknesse and not light and that darknesse will be that you shall not discerne the Lords body you shall scatter all your thoughts upon wrangling and controversies de modo how the Lords body can be there and you shall not discerne by the effects nor in your owne conscience that the Lords body is there at all But you shall take it to be onely an obedience to civill or Ecclesiasticall
Ephemerides his journals he writes them downe under that Title sins and he reads them every day in that booke as such and they grow greater and greater in his sight till our repentance have washed them out of his sight Casuists will say that though a dead man raised to life againe be not bound to his former marriage yet he is bound to that Religion that he had invested in Baptisme and bound to his former religious vowes and the same obedience to Superiours as before We were all dead in Adam and he that is raised againe even by Election though he be not so married to the world as others are not so in love with sin not so under the dominion of sin yet he is as much bound to an obedience to the Will of God declared in his Law and may no more presume of a liberty of sinning before nor of an impunity of sin after then he that pretends no such Election to confide in Prospeâ— For this is excellently said to be the working of our election by Prosper the Disciple of S. Augustines Doctrines and the Eccho of his words Vt fiat permanendi voluntaria foelixque necessitas That our assurance of salvation by perseverance is necessary and yet voluntary Consider it in Gods purpose easily it cannot consider it in our selves it might be resisted For we are no better then those Angels and In those servants he put no trust and those Angels he charged with folly But such as they are Numerus â—â—â— 130.7 we shall be And since with the Lord there is Copiosa Redemptio Plenteous Redemption that overflowing mercy of our God those super-superlative Merits of our Saviour that plenteous Redemption may hold even in this particular blessednesse in our assimilation to them That as though there fell great numbers of Angels yet great and greater then they that fell stood So though The way to Heaven be narrow and the gate strait which is said by Christ to excite our industry and are rather an expression arising out of his mercy lest we should slacken our holy endeavours then any intimidation or commination for though the way be narrow and the gate strait yet the roome is spacious enough within why by this plenteous redemption may we not hope 〈◊〉 12. â— that many more then are excluded shall enter there Those words The dragons taile drew the third part of the stars from Heaven the Fathers generally interprete of the fall of Angels with Lucifer and it was but a third part And by Gods grace whose mercy is overflowing whose merits are super-abundant with whom there is plenteous redemption the serpent gets no farther upon us I know some say that this third part of the stars is meant of eminent persons illustrated and assisted with the best meanes of salvation and if a third of them how many meanlier furnished fall But those that we can consider to be best provided of meanes of salvation nextto these are Christians in generall and so may this plenteous Redemption be well hoped to worke that but a third part of them of Christians shall perish and then the God of this plenteous Redemption having promised us that the Christian Religion shall be carried over all the world still the number of those that shall be saved is enlarged Apply to thy selfe that which S. Cyril saies of the Angels Tristaris quia aliqui vitam amiserunt Does it grieve thee that any are fallen At plures meliorem statum apud Deum obtinent Let this comfort thee even in the application thereof to thy selfe that more stood then fell As Elisha said to his servant in a danger of surprisall Feare not 2 King 6.16 for they that be with us are more then they that are with them so if a suspition of the paucity of them that shall be saved make thee afraid looke up upon this overflowing mercy of thy God this super-abundant merit of thy Saviour this plenteous Redemption and thou maist finde finde in a faire credulity and in a well regulated hope more with thee then with them that perish Live so in such a warfare with tentations in such a colluctation with thy concupiscences in such a jealousie and suspition of thine indifferent nay of thy best actions as though there were but one man to be saved and thou wouldst be that one But live and die in such a sense of this plenteous Redemption of thy God as though neither thou nor any could lose salvation except he doubted of it I doubt not of mine own salvation and in whom can I have so much occasion of doubt as in my self When I come to heaven shall I be able to say to any there Lord how got you hither Was any man lesse likely to come thither then I There is not only an Onely God in heaven But a Father a Son a Holy Ghost in that God which are names of a plurality and sociable relations conversable notions There is not only one Angel a Gabriel But to thee all Angels cry alond and Cherubim and Seraphim are plurall terminations many Cherubs many Seraphs in heaven There is not only one Monarchall Apostle a Peter but The glorious company of the Apostles praise thee There is not onely a Proto-Martyr a Stephen but The noble army of Martyrs praise thee Who ever amongst our Fathers thought of any other way to the Moluccaes or to China then by the Promontory of Good hope Yet another way opened it self to Magellan a Straite it is true but yet a way thither and who knows yet whether there may not be a North-East and a North-West way thither besides Go thou to heaven in an humble thankfulnesse to God and holy cheerfulnesse in that way that God hath manifested to thee and do not pronounce too bitterly too desperately that every man is in an errour that thinkes not just as thou thinkest or in no way that is not in thy way God found folly weaknesse in his Angels yet more stood then fell God findes weaknesse wickednesse in us yet hee came to call not the righteous but sinners to repentance and who that comes in that capacity a Repentant sinner can be shut out or denied his part in this Resurrection The key of David opens and no man shuts The Son of David is the key of David Christ Jesus He hath opened heaven for us all let no man shut out himself by diffidence in Gods mercy nor shut out any other man by overvaluing his own purity in respect of others But forbearing all lacerations and tearings and woundings of one another with bitter invectives all exasperations by odious names of subdivision let us all study first the redintegration of that body of which Christ Jesus hath declared himselfe to be the head the whole Christian Church and pray that he would and hope that he will enlarge the means of salvation to those who have not yet been made partakers of it That so he that called the gates of heaven
upon beauty in that face that misleads thee or upon honour in that place that possesses thee And let the opening of thine eyes be to look upon God in every object to represent to thy self the beauty of his holinesse and the honour of his service in every action And in this rapture and in this twinkling of an eye will thy Resurrection soon though not suddenly speedily though not instantly be accomplished And if God take thee out of the world before thou think it throughly accomplished yet he shall call thine inchoation consummation thine endeavour performance and thy desire effect For all Gods works are intire and done in him at once and perfect as soon as begun And this spirituall Resurrection is his work and therefore quickned even in the Conception and borne even in the quickning and grown up even in the birth that is perfected in the eyes of God as soone as it is seriously intended in our heart And farther we carry not your consideration upon those two Branches which constitute our second Part That some shall be alive at Christs comming That they that are alive shall receive such a change as shall be a true death and a true Resurrection And so shall be caught up into the Clouds to meet the Lord in the Aire and so be with the Lord for ever which are the Circumstances of our third and last Part. In this last part we proposed it for the first Consideration 3 Part. Resurrectio justorum that the Apostle determines the Consideration of the Resurrection in those two Them and Us They that slept in Christ and We that expect the comming of Christ Of any Resurrection of the wicked here is no mention Not that there is not one but that the resurrection of the wicked conduced not to the Apostles purpose which was to minister comfort in the losse of the dead because they were to come again and to meet the Lord and to be with him for ever whereas in the Resurrection of the wicked who are only to rise that they may fall lower there is no argument of comfort And therefore our Saviour Christ determines his Commission in that This is the Fathers will that sent me John 6.39 that of all which he hath given me I should lose nothing but should raise it up again at the last day This was his not losing if it were raised again but he hath only them in charge to raise at the last day whom the Father had given him given him so as that they were to be with him for ever for others he never mentions And upon this much very much depends For Chiliasts this forbearing to mention the resurrection of the wicked with the righteous gave occasion to many in the Primitive Church to imagine a two-fold a former and a later Resurrection which was furthered by their mistaking of those words in S. Iohn Apoc. 20.6 Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first Resurrection which words being intended of the Resurrection from sin by grace in this life the Chiliasts the Millenarians interpreted of this Resurrection in our Text That at Christs comming the righteous should rise and live a thousand yeares as S. Iohn sayes in all temporall abundances with Christ here in recompence of those temporall calamities and oppressions which here they had suffered and then after those thousand yeares so spent with Christ in temporall abundances should follow the resurrection of the wicked and then the wicked and the righteous should be disposed and distributed and setled in those Mansions in which they should remain for ever And of this errour as very many of the Fathers persisted in it to the end S. Augustine himself had a touch and a tincture at beginning And this errour S. Hierome also though truly I think S. Hierome was never touched with it himselfe out of a reverence to those many and great men that were Irenaeus Tertullian Lactantius and the rest would never call an Heresie nor an Errour nor by any sharper name then an opinion which is no word of heavy detestation And as those blessed Fathers of tender bowels Pagani enlarged themselves in this distribution and apportioning the mercy of God that it consisted best with the nature of his mercy that as his Saints had suffered temporall calamities in this world in this world they should be recompenced with temporall abundances so did they inlarge this mercy farther and carry it even to the Gentiles to the Pagans that had no knowledge of Christ in any established Church You shall not finde a Trumegistus a Numa Pompilius a Plato a Socrates for whose salvation you shall not finde some Father or some Ancient and Reverend Author an Advocate In which liberality of Gods mercy those tender Fathers proceed partly upon that rule That in Trismegistus and in the rest they finde evident impressions and testimonies that they knew the Son of God and knew the Trinity and then say they why should not these good men beleeving a Trinity be saved and partly they goe upon that rule which goes through so many of the Fathers Facienti quod in se est That to that man who does as much as he can by the light of nature God never denies grace and then say they why should not these men that doe so be saved And upon this ground S. Dionyse the Areopagite sayes That from the beginning of the world God hath called some men of all Nations and of all sorts by the ministry of Angels though not by the ministry of the Church To me to whom God hath revealed his Son in a Gospel by a Church there can be no way of salvation but by applying that Son of God by that Gospel in that Church Nor is there any other foundation for any nor other name by which any can be saved but the name of Jesus But how this foundation is presented and how this name of Jesus is notified to them amongst whom there is no Gospel preached no Church established I am not curious in inquiring I know God can be as mercifull as those tender Fathers present him to be and I would be as charitable as they are And therefore humbly imbracing that manifestation of his Son which he hath afforded me I leave God to his unsearchable waies of working upon others without farther inquisition Neither did those tender Fathers then Angeli lopsi in Coelis much lesse the School after consist in carying this overflowing and inexhaustible mercy of God upon his Saints after their Resurrection in temporall abundances nor upon the Gentiles who had no solemne nor cleare knowledge of Christ Psal 138.2 Psal 17.7 which is Magnificare misericordiam to magnifie to extend to stretch the mercy of God but Mirificant misericordiam as David also speaks they stretch this mercy miraculously for they carry this mercy even to hell it self For first for the Angels that fell in heaven from the time that they
committed their first sin to the time that they were cast down into hell they whom we call the more subtile part of the Schoole say That In illa moâ—â— la during that space between their falling into their sin and their expulsion from heaven the Angels might have repented and been restored for so long say they those Angels were but in statu viatorum in the state and condition of persons as yet upon their way as all men are as long as they are alive and not In termino in their last and determined station And that which is so often cited out of Damascen concerning the fall of Angels Quod hominibus mors est Angelis casus That as death works upon man and concludes him and makes him impenitible for ever so works the fall upon the Angels and concludes them for ever too they interpret to have been intended by Damascen not of the Angels fall in heaven but their fall from heaven for till then they were not say they Intermino in their last state and so not impenitible Apoc. 12.7 And those Ancients which expound that battle in heaven between Michael and the Dragon and their severall Angels to have been fought at that time after their fall and between Lucifers rebellion and his expulsion as the Ancients abound much in that sense of that place argue rationally That that battle what kinde of battle soever it were must necessarily have spent some time They conceive it to have been a battle of Disputation of Argumentation of Perswasion and that those good Angels which are so glad of our Conversion would have been infinitely glad to have reduced their rebellious brethren to their obedience And during that time which could not be a sudden instant they were not Inadeptivi gratiae Hiesolom incapable of repentance and of mercy S. Cyril comes towards it comes neare it nay if it be well observed goes beyond it Of Gods longanimity and patience toward man sayes he we have in part spoken Quanta ille Angelis condonaverit nescimus how great transgressions he hath forgiven in the Angels we know not only this we know sayes he Solus qui peccdre non possit Iesus est There is none impeccable none that cannot sin Man nor Angel but only Christ Jesus Nay after the expulsion of the Angels Angels lapsi in Infernum not onely after their fall in Heaven but their fall from Heaven many of the Ancients seeme loath to exclude all wayes of Gods mercy even from hell it selfe De statu moti sed non irremediabiliter moti saies Origen The Angels are fallen fallen even into hell but not so irrecoverably fallen Vt Institutionibus bonorum Angelorum non possint restitui But that by the counsaile and labour of the good Angels they may be restored againe Origen is thought to be single singular in this doctrine Eph. 3.10 but he is not Even S. Ambrose interpreting that place That S. Paul saies He was made a Minister of the Gospel Vt innotesceret to the intent that the wisdome of God might by the Church be made knowne to Powers and Principalities interprets it of fallen Angels That they the fallen Angels might receive benefit by the preaching of the Gospell in the Church Prudentius saies not so but this he does say That upon this day when our blessed Saviour arose from hell Poenarum celebres sub Styge feriae And Suppliciis mitibus Nee forvent solito flumina sulphure Some relaxation some ease in their torments at some time some very good men have imagined even in hell And more then that they have not absolutely cryed downe for so much it deserves that fable of Traian That after that Emperour had beene some time in hell yet upon the prayers of Pope Gregory he was removed to Heaven 〈…〉 Nay more then that for that was but of one man But an Author of our age and much esteemed in the Roman Church delivers as his owne opinion and thinks he hath the subtiler part of the Schoole on his side That that which is so often said from hell there is no redemption is only to be understood of them whom God sends to hell as to their last place to them certainely there is no redemption But saies he God may send soules of the heathen who had not the benefit of any Christian Church and yet were good morall men to burne out certaine errors or ignorances or sins in hell and then remove them to Heaven for for so long time they are but Viatores they are but in their way and not concluded Beloved that we might have something in the balance to weigh downe the curelty and the petulancy and the pertinacy of those men who in these later times have so attenuated the mercy of God as that they have almost brought it to nothing for there is no mercy where there is no misery and they place all mercy to have beene given at once and that before man was fallen into misery by sin or before man was made and have pronounced that God never meant to shew mercy to all them nor but to a very few of them to whom he pretended to offer it that we might have something in the balance to weigh against these unmercifull men I have staid thus long upon these over-mercifull men that have carried mercy upon the Saints of God in temporall abundances after the Resurrection and upon the Heathen who never heard Gospell preached and upon the Angels fallen in Heaven and upon those Angels fallen from Heaven into hell and upon the soules of men there not onely in the ease of their torments but in their translation from thence to Heaven That so our later men might see that the Ancients thought God so far from beginning at Hate That God should first for his glory hate some and then make them that he might execute his hate upon them as that they thought god implacable inexorable irreconciliable to none therfore to these unmercifull have we opposed these overmercifull men But yet to them wee must say Numquid Deus indiget mendacio vestro Iob 13.7 ut pro eo Ioquamini dolos Shall wee lye for God or speake deceitfully for him deceive your soules with over-extending his mercy wee may derive mercy from hell though wee carry not mercy to hell Gehenna non solum eorum qui puniendi causa facta Origen sed eorum qui salvandi Hell was not onely made for their sakes who were to suffer in it but for theirs who were to be warned by it and so there is mercy in hell Cooperatur regno saies S. Chrysostome elegantly Hell hath a co-operation with Heaven Chrysost It works upon us in the advancement of our Salvation as well as Heaven Nec saevitiaeres est sed misericordiae Hell is not a monument of Gods cruelty but of his mercy Et nisi fuisset intentata gehenna in gehennam omnes cecidissemus If we were not told of hell we
the five petitions of the Prayer and two of the five The Miserere Have mercy upon me and the Sana O Lord heale me are in these two verses And then the Reasons of the prayer arising partly out of himselfe and partly out of God and some being mixt and growing out of both roots together some of the Reasons of the first nature that is of those that arise out of himselfe are also in this Text. Therefore in this Text we shall consider first the extent of those two petitions that are in it Quid miserere what David intends by this prayer Have mercy upon me And then Quid sana me what he intends by that O Lord heale me And secondly we shall consider the strength of those Reasons which are in our text Quia infirmus why God should be moved to mercy with that Because David was weake And then Quia turbata ossa why Because his bones were vexed And againe Quia turbata anima valde Because his soule was sore vexed And in a third Consideration we shall also see that for all our petitions for mercy and for spirituall health and for all our Reasons weaknesse vexation of bones And sore vexation of the soule it selfe God doth not alwayes come to a speedy remedy but puts us to our Vsquequò But thou O Lord how long How long wilt thou delay And then lastly That how long soever that be yet we are still to attend his time still to rely upon him which is intimated in this That David changes not his Master but still applies himselfe to the Lord with that Name that he begun with in the first verse he proceeds and thrice in these few words he calls upon him by this name of Essence Iehova O Lord have mercy upon me O Lord heale me O Lord how long wilt thou delay He is not weary of attending the Lord he is not inclinable to turn upon any other then the Lord Have mercy upon me O Lord c. First then in our first part 1 Part. Quid misereri that part of Davids postulatory prayer in this Text Have mercy upon me This mercy that David begs here is not that mercy of God which is above all his works for those works which follow it are above it To heale him in this Text To returne to him To deliver his soule To save him in the next verses are greater works then this which he calls here in that generall name of Mercy For this word Chanan used in this place is not Dele iniquitates Have mercy upon me so as to blot out all mine iniquities It is not Dimitte debita Have mercy upon me so as to forgive all my sins but it is onely Des mihi gratiam Lord shed some drops of grace upon me or as Tremellius hath it Gratiosus sis mihi Be a gracious Lord unto me For this word is used where Noah is said to have found grace in the eyes of the Lord Gen. 6.8 which grace was that God had provided for his bodily preservation in the Arke And this word is used not onely of God towards men Psal 102.14 but also of men towards God when they expresse their zeale towards Gods house and the compassion and holy indignation which they had of the ruines thereof they expresse it in this word Thy servants delight in the stones of Sion miserti sunt pulveris ejus They had mercy they had compassion upon the dust and rubbish thereof So that here this Miserere mei which is the first grone of a sick soule the first glance of the soule directed towards God imports onely this Lord turne thy countenance towards me Lord bring me to a sense that thou art turned towards me Lord bring me within such a distance as my soule may feele warmth and comfort in the rising of that Sunne Miserere mei Look graciously upon me At the first meeting of Isaac and Rebecca Gen. 24.63 he was gone out to meditate in the fields and she came riding that way with his fathers man who was imployed in making that mariage and when upon asking she knew that it was he who was to be her husband she tooke a vaile and covered her face sayes that story What freedome and nearnesse soever they were to come to after yet there was a modesty and a bashfulnesse and a reservednesse required before and her first kindnesse should be but to be seen A man would be glad of a good countenance from her that shall be his before he asked her whether shee will be his or no A man would be glad of a good countenance from his Prince before he intend to presse him with any particular suit And a sinner may be come to this Miserere mei Domine to desire that the Lord would think upon him that the Lord would look graciously towards him that the Lord would refresh him with the beams of his favour before he have digested his devotion into a formall prayer or entred into a particular consideration what his necessities are Upon those words of the Apostle 1 Tim. 2.1 Bern. De 4. modis orandi I exhort you that supplications and prayers and Intercessions and giving of thanks be made for all men S. Bernard makes certaine gradations and steps and ascensions of the soule in prayer and intimates thus much That by the grace of Gods Spirit inanimating and quickning him without which grace he can have no motion at all a sinner may come Ad supplicationes which is S. Pauls first step To supplications which are à suppliciis That out of a sense of some Judgement some punishment he may make his recourse to God And then by a farther growth in that grace he may come Adorationes which are Oris rationes The particular expressing of his necessities with his mouth and a faithfull assurance of obtaining them in his prayer And after he may come farther Ad Intercessiones to an Intercession to such an interest in Gods favour as that he durst put himselfe betwixt God and other men as Abraham in the behalfe of Sodome to intercede for them with a holy confidence that God would doe good to them for his sake And to a farther step then these which the Apostle may intend in that last Ad gratiarum actiones to a continuall Thanksgiving That by reason of Gods benefits multiplyed upon him he finde nothing to aske but his Thanksgivings and his acknowledgements for former blessings possesse and fill all his prayers Though he be growne up to this strength of devotion To Supplications to Prayers to Intercessions to Thanksgivings yet sayes S. Bernard at first when he comes first to deprehend himselfe in a particular sin or in a course of sin he comes Verecunde affectu Bashfully shamefastly tremblingly he knows not what to aske he dares ask no particular thing at Gods hand But though he be not come yet to particular requests for pardon of past sins nor for strength against future not
thee and thou shalt feele him begin to storme and at first that spirit thy spirit 1 Kings 18. will say to the spirit of the Preacher Tune qui conturbas Art thou he that troublest Israel as Ahab said to Eliah Art thou he that troublest the peace of my conscience and the security of my wayes And when the Spirit of God shall search farther and farther even ad occulta to thy secretest sins and touch upon them and that that spirit of disobedience 1 King 21.20 when he feeles this powerfull Exorcisme shall say in thee and cry as Ahab also did Invenisti me Hast thou found me O mine enemy God shall answer Inveni te I have found thee and found that thou hadst sold thy selfe to worke wickednesse in the sight of the Lord And so shall bring thee to a more particular consideration of thine estate and from thy having joyned with the Church Psal 1â—2 13 in a Dominus miserebitur Sion In an assurance and acknowledgement that the Lord will arise and have mercy upon Sion that is of his whole Catholique Church Psal 67.1 And then come to a Dominus misereatur nostri God be mercifull unto us and blesse us and cause his face to shine upon us upon us that are met here according to his Ordinance and in confidence of his promise upon this Congregation of which thou makest thy selfe a part thou wilt also come to this of David here Domine miserere mei Have mercy upon me me in particular and thou shalt heare God answer thee Miserans miserebor tibi With great mercy will I have mercy upon thee upon thee For with him is plentifull Redemption Mercy for his whole Church mercy for this whole Congregation mercy for every particular soule that makes her selfe a part of the Congregation Accustome thy selfe therefore to a generall devotion to a generall application to generall ejaculations towards God upon every occasion and then as a wedge of gold that comes to be coyned into particular pieces of currant money the Lord shall stamp his Image upon all thy devotions and bring thee to particular confessions of thy sins and to particular prayers for thy particular necessities And this we may well conceive and admit to be the nature of Davids first prayer Miserere mei Have mercy upon me And then the reason upon which this first petition is grounded for so it will be fittest to handle the parts first the prayer and then the reason is Quia infirmus Have mercy upon me for I am weak First then Quia how imperfect how weak soever our prayers be yet still if it be a prayer it hath a Quia a Reason upon which it is grounded It hath in it some implied some interpretative consideration of ourselves how it becomes us to aske that which wee doe ask at Gods hand and it hath some implied and interpretative consideration of God how it conduces to Gods glory to grant it for that prayer is very farre from faith which is not made so much as with reason with a consideration of some possibility and some conveniency in it Every man that sayes Lord Lord enters not into heaven Every Lord Lord that is said enters not into heaven but vanishes in the ayre A prayer must be with a serious purpose to pray for else those fashionall and customary prayers are but false fires without shot they batter not heaven It is but an Interjection that slips in It is but a Parenthesis that might be left out whatsoever is uttered in the manner of a prayer if it have not a Quia a Reason a ground for it And therefore when our Saviour Christ gave us that forme of prayer which includes all he gave us in it a forme of the reason too Quia tuum For thine is the Kingdome c. It were not a prayer to say Adveniat Regnum Thy Kingdome come if it were not grounded upon that faithfull assurance that God hath a Kingdomehere Nor to say Sanctificetur nomen Hallowed be thy name If he desired not to be glorified by us Nor to aske daily bread nor forgivenesse of sins but for the Quia potestas Because he hath all these in his power We consider this first accesse to God Miserere mei Have mercy upon me to be but a kind of imperfect prayer but the first step but it were none at all if it had no reason and therefore it hath this Quia infirmus Because I am weake This reason of our own weaknesse is a good motive for mercy Quia infirmus Iohn 11.3 if in a desire of farther strength we come to that of Laâ—arus sisters to Christ Ecce quam amas infirmatur Behold Lord that soule that thou lovest and hast dyed for is weak and languishes Christ answered then Non est infirmitas ad mortem This weaknesse is not unto death but that the Son of God might be glorified He will say so to thee too if thou present thy weaknesse with a desire of strength from him he will say Quare moriemini domus Israel why will ye die of this disease Gratia mea sufficit you may recover for all this you may repent you may abstaine from this sin you may take this spirituall physick the Word the Sacraments if you will Tantummodo robustus esto as God sayes to Ioshuah Only be valiant and fight against it and thou shalt finde strength grow in the use thereof But for the most part De infirmitate blandimur sayes S. Bernard De gradibus humilitatis we flatter our selves with an opinion of weaknesse ut liberiùs peccemus libenter infirmamur we are glad of this naturall and corrupt weaknesse that we may impute all our licentiousnesse to our weaknesse and naturall infirmity But did that excuse Adam sayes that Father Quòd per uxorem tanquam per carnis infirmitatem peceavit That he took his occasion of sinning from his weaker part from his wife Quia infirmus That thou art weak of thy selfe is a just motive to induce God to bring thee to himselfe Qui verè portavit languores tuos who hath surely borne all thine infirmities Esay 53.4 But to leave him againe when he hath brought thee to refuse so light and easie yoake as his is not to make use of that strength which he by his grace offers thee this is not the affection of the Spouse Languor amantis when the person languishes for the love of Christ but it is Languor amoris when the love of Christ languishes in that person And therefore if you be come so far with David as to this Miserere quia infirmus that an apprehension of your owne weaknesse have brought you to him in a prayer for mercy and more strength goe forward with him still to his next Petition Sana me O Lord heale me for God is alwayes ready to build upon his owne foundations and accomplish his owne beginnings Acceptus in gratiam hilariter veni ad
determine wholly and entirely in God too and in his glory Quoniam non in morte Do it O Lord For in Death there is no remembrance of thee c. In some other places Propter misericordiam Psal 40.11 David comes to God with two reasons and both grounded meerely in God Misericordia veritas Let thy Mercy and thy Truth alwaies preserve me In this place he puts himselfe wholly upon his mercy for mercy is all or at least the foundation that sustaines all or the wall that imbraces all That mercy which the word of this text Casad imports is Benignitas in non promeritum Mercy is a good disposition towards him who hath deserved nothing of himselfe For where there is merit there is no mercy Nay it imports more then so For mercy as mercy presumes not onely no merit in man but it takes knowledge of no promise in God properly For that is the difference betweene Mercy and Truth that by Mercy at first God would make promises to man in generall and then by Truth he would performe those promises but Mercy goeth first and there David begins and grounds his Prayer at Mercy Mercy that can have no pre-mover no pre-relation but begins in it selfe For if we consider the mercy of God to mankinde subsequently I meane after the Death of Christ so it cannot bee properly called mercy Mercy thus considered hath a ground And God thus considered hath received a plentifull and an abundant satisfaction in the merits of Christ Jesus And that which hath a ground in man that which hath a satisfaction from man Christ was truly Man fals not properly precisely rigidly under the name of mercy But consider God in his first disposition to man after his fall That he would vouchsafe to study our Recovery and that he would turne upon no other way but the shedding of the blood of his owne and innocent and glorious Son Quid est homo aut filius hominis What was man or all mankinde that God should be mindfull of him so or so mercifull to him When God promises that he will be mercifull and gracious to me if I doe his Will when in some measure I doe that Will of his God begins not then to be mercifull but his mercy was awake and at worke before when he excited me by that promise to doe his Will And after in my performance of those duties his Spirit seales to me a declaration that his Truth is exercised upon mee now as his mercy was before Still his Truth is in the effect in the fruit in the execution but the Decree and the Roote is onely Mercy God is pleased also when we come to him with other Reasons When we remember him of his Covenant When we remember him of his holy servants Abraham Isaac and Iacob yea when we remember him of our owne innocencie in that particular for which wee may be then unjustly pursued God was glad to heare of a Righteousnesse and of an Innocencie and of cleane and pure hands in David when hee was unjustly pursued by Saul But the roote of all is in this Propter misericordiam Doe it for thy mercie sake For when we speake of Gods Covenant it may be mistaken who is and who is not within that Covenant What know I Of Nations and of Churches which have received the outward profession of Christ we may be able to say They are within the Covenant generally taken But when we come to particular men in the Congregation there I may call a Hypocrite a Saint and thinke an excomunicate soule to be within the Covenant I may mistake the Covenant and I may mistake Gods servants who did and who did not dye in his favour What know I We see at Executions when men pretend to dye cheerefully for the glory of God halfe the company will call them Traitors and halfe Martyrs So if we speake of our owne innocency we may have a pride in that or some other vicious and defective respect as uncharitablenesse towards our malicious Persecutors or laying seditious aspersions upon the justice of the State that may make us guilty towards God though wee be truly innocent to the World in that particular But let mee make my recourse to the mercy of God and there can bee no errour no mistaking And therefore if that and nothing but that be my ground God will Returne to me God will Deliver my soule God will Save me For his mercy sake that is because his mercy is engaged in it And if God were to sell me this Returning this Delivering this Saving and all that I pray for what could I offer God for that so great as his owne mercy in which I offer him the Innocencie the Obedience the Blood of his onely Son If I buy of the Kings land I must pay for it in the Kings money I have no Myne nor Mint of mine owne If I would have any thing from God I must give him that which is his owne for it that is his mercy And this is to give God his mercy To give God thanks for his mercy To give all to his mercy And to acknowledge that if my works be acceptable to him nay if my very faith be acceptable to him it is not because my works no nor my faith hath any proportion of equivalencie in it or is worth the least flash of joy or the least spangle of glory in Heaven in it selfe but because God in his mercy onely of his mercy meerely for the glory of his mercy hath past such a Covenant Crede fac hoc Beleeve this and doe this and thou shalt live not for thy deed sake not nor for thy faith sake but for my mercy sake And farther we carry not this first reason of the Prayer arising onely from God There remaines in these words another Reason In morte in which David himselfe and all men seeme to have part Quia non in morte For in death there is no remembrance of thee c. Upon occasion of which words because they seeme to imply a lothnesse in David to dye it may well be inquired why Death seemed so terrible to the good and godly men of those times as that evermore we see them complaine of shortnesse of life and of the neerenesse of death Certainely the rule is true in naturall and in civill and in divine things as long as wee are in this World Nolle meliorem est corruptio primae habitudinis Picus Heptapl l. 7. proem That man is not well who desires not to be better It is but our corruption here that makes us loth to hasten to our incorruption there And besides many of the Ancients and all the later Casuists of the other side and amongst our owne men Peter Martyr and Calvin assigne certaine cases in which it hath Rationem boni The nature of Good and therefore is to be embraced to wish our dissolution and departure out of this World and yet many good and
sighed and so he groaned he laboured he was affected bitterly with it himselfe And he declated it he made it exemplar and catechisticall that his dejection in himselfe might be an exaltation to others And then hee was not ashamed of it but as he said of his dancing before the Arke If this be to be vile I will be more vile So here if this passion be weaknesse I will yet be more weake for this winde brought raine These sighs brought teares All the night make I my bed to swim c. The concupiscencies of man are naturally dry powder combustible easily Lacrymae easily apt to take fire but teares dampe them and give them a little more leasure and us intermission and consideration David had laboured hard first Ad ruborem as Physitians advise to a rednesse to a blushing to a shame of his sin And now Ad sudorem Hilar. he had laboured to a sweat for Lacrymae sudor animae moerentis Teares are the sweat of a labouring soule and that soule that labours as David did will sweat as David did in the teares of contrition Till then till teares breake out and find a vent in outward declaration wee pant and struggle in miserable convulsions and distortions and distractions and earthquakes and irresolutions of the soule I can beleeve that God will have mercy upon me if I repent but I cannot beleeve that is repentance if I cannot weepe or come to outward declarations This is the laborious irresolution of the soule But Lacrymae diluvium Nazian evehunt animam These teares carry up our soule as the flood carried up the Arke higher then any hils whether hils of power and so above the oppression of potent adversaries or hils of our owne pride and ambition True holy teares carry us above all And therefore when the Angel rebuked the people for not destroying Idolatry They wept Iudg. 2.5 sayes the text there was their present remedy and they called the name of the place Bochim Teares that there might be a permanent testimony of that expressing of their repentance that that way they went to God and in that way God received them and that their Children might say to one another Where did God shew that great mercy to our Fathers Here here in Bochim that is Here in teares And so when at Samuels motions and increpation the people would testifie their repentance They drew water 1 Sam. 7.6 sayes the story and poured it out before the Lord and fasted and said We have sinned against the Lord. They poured water Vt esset symbolum lacrymarum That that might be a type and figure Nab. Oziel in what proportion of teares they desired to expresse their repentance For such an effusion of teares David may be well thought to intend when he sayes Effundite coram Deo animam vestram Poure out your soules before God poure them out in such an effusion in a continuall and a contrite weeping Still the Prophets cry out upon Idols and Idolaters Vlulate Sculptilia Howle ye Idols and Howle ye Idolaters He hath no hope of their weeping And so the devil and the damned are said to howle but not to weepe or when they are said to weepe it is with a gnashing of teeth which is a voyce of Indignation even towards God and not of humiliation under his hand So also sayes the Propher of an impenitent sinner Induratae super petram facies They have made their faces harder then stone Ier. 5.3 wherein Thou hast stricken them but they have not wept not sorrowed Out of a stone water cannot be drawne but by miracle though it be twice stricken Numb 20.11 as Moses stroke the Rock twice yet the water came by the miraculous power of God and not by Moses second stroke Though God strike this sinner twice thrice he will not weepe though inward terrors strike his conscience and outward diseases strike his body and calamities and ruine strike his estate yet he will not confesse by one teare that these are judgements of God but naturall accidents or if judgements that they proceeded not from his sin but from some decree in God or some purpose in God to glorifie himselfe by thus afflicting him and that if he had beene better he should have fared never the better for Gods purpose must stand Therefore sayes God of such in that place Surely they are poore that was plaine enough and they are foolish too sayes God there And God gives the reason of it for they know not the judgements of God They know not his judgements to be judgements They ascribe all calamities to other causes and so they turne upon other wayes and other plots and other miserable comforters But attribute all to the Lord never say of any thing This fals upon me but of all This is laid upon me by the hand of God and thou wilt come to him in teares Raine water is better then River water The water of Heaven teares for offending thy God are better then teares for worldly losses But yet come to teares of any kinde and whatsoever occasion thy teares Esay 25.8 Deus absterget omnem lacrymam there is the largenesse of his bounty He will wipe all teares from thine eyes But thou must have teares first first thou must come to this weeping or else God cannot come to this wiping God hath not that errand to thee to wipe teares from thine eyes if there be none there If thou doe nothing for thy selfe God finds nothing to doe for thee David wept thus Nocte thus vehemently and he wept thus thus continually In the Night sayes our Text Psal 42.3 Not that he wept not in the day He sayes of himselfe My teares have been my meate both day and night where though he name no fast you see his diet how that was attenuated Lament 1.2 And so when it is said of Jerusalem Shee weepeth continually in the night it is not that she put off her weeping till night but that she continued her dayes weeping to the night and in the night Plorando plorabit sayes the Originall in the place shee does weepe already and shee will weepe still shee puts it not off dilatorily I will weepe but not yet nor shee puts it not over easily suddenly I have wept and I neede no more but as God promises to his children Joel 1.23 the first and later raine so must his children give to him againe both raines teares of the day and teares of the night by washing the sinnes of the day in the evening and the sinnes of the night in the morning But this was an addition to Davids affliction in this night weeping that whereas the night was made for man to rest in David could not make that use of the night When he had proposed so great a part of his happinesse to consist in this Psal 4. ult That he would lay him downe and sleepe in peace we see
upon such a reliefe Many men are in as ill case as I why am I so sensible of it and they make shift to patch up a comfort of that kinde out of some chips of Poets and fragmentary sentences And they that cannot finde this reliefe ready made will make shift to make it when they are under the burden of a defamation of an ill name they will cast aspersions of the same crime upon as many as they can and thinke themselves the better if they can make others be thought as ill as they But all these are amongst Iobs miserable comforters It is a part of our joy in Heaven that every mans joy shall be my joy I shall have fulnesse of salvation in my selfe and I shall have as many salvations as there are soules saved But in hell there is no one feather towards such a Pillow no degree of ease in the communication of the torment Every soule shall murmure against God and curse God for damning every other soule as well as for damning his Though they would have them damned that are damned yet they shall reproach God for damning them And though they wish all the Saints in Heaven in hell yet they shall call it tyrannie in God to have sent a Cain or an Achitophel or a Iudas thither And as the person whom we consider in this text is an embryon of the Devill Genimina viperarum The spawne of the Devill a potentiall and as we said an inchoated Devill so is the torment this sorrow a Lucifer Such a Lucifer as hell can send out not a light of any light but a cloud of that darknesse As sure as this man The wicked shall be a Devill so sure this sorrow shall end not end but reach to hell Yet when all this is thus said said with a holy vehemence with a zealous animosity as indeed belongs to the denouncing of Gods judgements yet may wee not be askt where is there any such person or upon whom works there any such sorrow Is it alwaies true that the wicked make no good use of afflictions or is it alwaies true that they have them The first may admit a doubt for if God justifie the ungodly Rom. 8.5 God justifieth the ungodly then their affliction may be a way to prepare justification in them as well as in them whom we call godly And if Christ dyed for the ungodly Rom. 5.6 Christ dyed for the Vngodly they also may fulfill his sufferings in their flesh and their afflictions may produce good effects But for that they which are called ungodly in both those places are only such as were ungodly before Gods justification began to work upon them before Christs Death began to be applied to them but did not continue in their ungodlinesse after But these ungodly persons whom afflictions supple and mollifie no farther but to an intemperate and excruciating and exclamatory sorrow and continue ungodly still are such as never have good effect of affliction or sorrow But then have these alwaies affliction inflicted upon them one would doubt it by that in Iob The Tabernacles of robbers do prosper and they are in safety that provoke God Iob 12.6 Gods children are robbed and spoiled by the wicked and the wicked shew it in Gods face they hide not their Theft they maintaine publiquely their Wantonnesse and their Excesses with the spoile of the poore They have it and they will hold it and they bid God bring his action and recover how he can This the Prophet Ieremy saw and was affected and scandalized with it O Lord if I plead with thee thou art righteous Ier. 12.1 I know thou canst maintaine and make good that which thou hast done But yet saies hee Let me talke with thee of thy judgements wherefore doth the way of the wicked prosper wherefore are all they happy that deale very treacherously Why their wayes prosper in a just punishment of God for their former sins that they may have a larger and a broader way to destruction and they are happy in temporall happinesses that they may have more occasions of smarting If their wealth sticke not to their heires in a third generation call them not Rich If their prosperity cleave not to their soules call them not Happy He is a poor man whose wealth can be writ in an Inventorie That hath lockt all in such an iron Chest in such a Cabinet and hath sent up nothing to meet him in Heaven As all the wealth of the wicked is but counterfeit so is all the joy that they have in it counterfeit too And howsoever they disguise their sorrow yet if their torment be invisible to us it is the liker hell If we know not how they are afflicted it is the liker hell Their damnation sleepeth not nor they neither And when at midnight their owne consciences are a thousand witnesses to them it is but a poore ease that other men doe not know that they are those wicked persons and their sorrow the sorrow of this text that they are The wicked and their sorrowes many and great and eternall sorrowes But I would be glad to reserve as much time as I could for the other part The person and The portion that is in the other scale Mercy shall compasse c. In this part we will begin with the persons For when wee come to their portion 2 Part. with which we must end of that we shall be able to finde no end nay no beginning for it begins with Mercy Mercy shall compasse them and mercy is as much without beginning as eternall as God himselfe and it flowes on to joy and gladnesse and exultation and this joy shall no more see an end of it selfe then God himselfe shall see an end of himselfe Upon the persons we have three characters and in their portions wee have three waights Three degrees of goodnesse in their persons three degrees of greatnesse in their portions The persons first Trust in God and then They are Righteous and lastly They are upright in heart So also the reward is first Inward joy and then Outward declaration and lastly An exemplary working upon others And then all these are rooted in the roote of all that mercy shall compasse them First then They trust in God And that first Exclusivè They trust in him so Trust in God as that they trust in nothing else and Inclusivè too so as that they do actually and positively trust in God Some have bin so beaten out of all confidences in this world so evacuated of former power so devested of former favour so dispoiled of former treasures as that they are brought to trust in nothing else But then they trust not in God neither August Quia Deo non audent dare iniquitatem auferunt ei gubernationem Because they dare not say that God does any thing ill they come to say that God does nothing at all and to avoid the making of an unjust God they make
an idle God which is as great an Atheisme as the other But because it goes thus with them that they have many and great sorrowes they conclude that all have so But The heart knoweth his owne bitternesse Prov. 14.10 They know their own case Ibid. the case of the godly they know not The stranger shall not meddle with their Ioy He that is a stranger to this trust in God understands nothing of the joy that appertaines to them that have it Esth 14.19 Let that be thy prayer which was the prayer of Esther Thy handmaid hath had no joy but in thee O Lord God of Abraham O thou mightie God above all heare thou the voyce of them that have no other hope Our Adversaries of Rome charge us that we have but a negative Religion If that were true it were a heavy charge if we did onely deny and establish nothing But we deny all their new additions so as that we affirme all the old foundations The Negative man that trusts in nothing in the world may be but a Philosopher but an Atheist but a stupid and dead carcasse The Affirmative man that does acknowledge all blessings spirituall and temporall to come from God that prepares himselfe by holinesse to be fit to receive them from God that comes for them by humble prayer to God that returnes for them humble thankes to God this man hath the first marke of this person upon him He trusts in God But he that trusts not in the world nor in God neither is worse then he that trusts in the world and not in God because he is farther removed from all humility that attributes all to himselfe He pretends to be an Atheist and to beleeve in no God and yet he constitutes a new Idolatry he sacrifices to himselfe and makes himselfe his God The second Character Righteous and specification of this Person is that he is Righteous And this word we shall doe best to containe here within a legall Righteousnesse that Righteousnesse in which S. Paul protested and proclaimed himselfe to be unblamable For howsoever this apparant Righteousnesse Righteousnesse in the eyes of the world be not enough alone yet no other Righteousnesse is enough without this The hypocrite by being an hypocrite may aggravate his own condemnation when he comes to reckon with God But to the Church who knows him not to be an hypocrite he does good by his exemplar and outward Righteousnesse He that does good for vaine-glory may lead another man to good upon good grounds And the prayers of those poore soules whom he may have benefited by his vain-glorious good worke may prevaile so with God in his behalfe as that his vaine-glory here may become true glory even in the Kingdome of Heaven So then we carry this word Righteous no farther but to the doing of those honest things which we are bound to doe in the sight of men The word is Tzadok which is often used for the exaltation and perfection of all true holinesse But as it is very often in the old Testament taken for Verax and Aequus when a mans word and worke answer one another towards men so in the New Testament in the Syriake Translation where the word is the same as in the Hebrew it is Oportuit It behoved Christ to suffer and in such a sense in very many places to be Righteous is to doe that which it behoved us to doe became us to doe concerned us to doe in the sight of men Which can be exprest in no one thing more fully then in this To embrace a lawfull Calling and to walke honestly in that Calling That is Righteousnesse For Iustus sua fide vivit The Righteous lives by his owne faith Not without faith nor with the faith of another so Iustus suo sudore vescitur The Righteous eats his Bread in the sweat of his owne browes He labours in an honest Calling and drinks not the sweat of others labours And this is that Righteousnesse in this Text the second marke upon this Person who is partaker of this Portion And the third is Vpright in heart that he is Rectus corde Vpright in heart That he direct even all the works of his Calling all the actions of his life upon the glory of God If you carry a Line from the Circumference to the Circumference againe as a Diameter it passes the Center it flowes from the Center it looks to the Center both wayes God is the Center The Lines above and the Lines below still respect and regard the Center Whether I doe any action honest in the sight of men or any action acceptable to God whether I doe things belonging to this life or to the next still I must passe all through the Center and direct all to the glory of God and keepe my heart right without variation towards him For as I doe no good action here meerly for the interpretation of good men though that be one good and justifiable reason of my good actions so I must doe nothing for my Salvation hereafter meerly for the love I beare to mine owne soule though that also be one good and justifiable reason of that action But the primary reason in both as well the actions that establish a good name as the actions that establish eternall life must be the glory of God Distortum lignum semper nutat August A wry and crooked planke in the floore will alwayes shake and kicke up and creake under a mans foote A wry and a crooked heart will alwayes shake distrustfully and kicke rebelliously and creake repiningly under the hand of God Non potest collineari rectitudine Dei Idem sayes the same Father He is not paralleld with God he is not leveld with God if he use not his blessings if he accept not his corrections as God intends them First To trust in God and then to deale Righteously with men and all the way to keepe the heart straight upon God these three make up the Person And these three his Portion That he shall be glad and he shall rejoyce and jubilabit he shall shout for joy Now as three great summes of gold put into one bagge Mercy these three branches of this Portion of the Righteous are fixt in one roote raised upon one foundation Mercy shall compasse him about But then this mercy this Compassing mercy reaches not so farre as that thou shalt have no affliction though thou trust in God David had been an unfit person to have delivered such a Doctrine who sayes of himselfe Psal 73.14 Daily have I been punished and chastned every morning He had it every day it was his daily bread and it was the first thing that he had he had it in the morning Here is mention of a morning early sorrowes even to the godly and mention of a Day continuing sorrowes even to the godly But he speaks of no Night here the Son of grace the Son of God does not
him but his hinder parts Exod. 33.23 Let that be his Decrees then when in his due time they came to execution for then and not till then they are works And God would not suffer Moses his body to be seene when it was dead Deut. 34.6 because then it could not speake to them it could not instruct them it could not direct them in any duty if they transgressed from any God himselfe would not be spoken to by us but as hee speaks of himselfe and he speaks in his works And as among men some may Build and some may Write and wee call both by one name wee call his Buildings and wee call his Books his Works so if wee will speake of God this World which he hath built and these Scriptures which he hath written are his Works and we speak of God in his Works which is the commandement of this Text when we speak of him so as he hath manifested himselfe in his miracles and as hee hath declared himselfe in his Scriptures for both these are his Works There are Decrees in God but we can take out no Copies of them till God himselfe exemplifie them in the execution of them The accomplishing of the Decree is the best publishing the best notifying of the Decree But of his Works we can take Copies for his Scriptures are his Works and we have them by Translations and Illustrations made appliable to every understanding All the promises of his Scriptures belong to all And for his Miracles his Miracles are also his Works we have an assurance That whatsoever God hath done for any he will doe againe for us It is then his Works upon which we fix this Commemoration Deutipse in operibus illis considerandus and this glorifying of God but so as that wee determine not upon the Work it selfe but God in the Work Say unto God to Him how terrible art thou that God in thy Works It may bee of use to you to receive this note Then when it is said in this Psalme Come and see the Works of God and after Come and heare all yee that feare God in both places it is not Psal 66.5 Verse 16. Venite but Ite It is Lechu not Come but Goe Goe out Goe forth abroad to consider God in his Works Goe as farre as you can stop not in your selves nor stop not in any other till you come to God himselfe If you consider the Scriptures to be his Works make not Scriptures of your owne which you doe if you make them subject to your private interpretation My soule speaks in my tongue else I could make no sound My tongue speaks in English else I should not be understood by the Congregation So God speaks by his Sonne in the Gospel but then the Gospel speaks in the Church that every man may heare Ite goe forth stay not in your selves if you will heare him And so for matter of Action and Protection come not home to your selves stay not in your selves not in a considence in your owne power and wisedome but Ite goe forth goe forth into Aegypt goe forth into Babylon and look who delivered your Predecessors predecessors in Affliction predecessors in Mercy and that God who is Yesterday Heb. 13.8 and to day and the same for ever shall doe the same things which he did yesterday to day and for ever Turne alwayes to the Commemoration of Works but not your owne Ite goe forth goe farther then that Then your selves farther then the Angels and Saints in heaven That when you commemorate your deliverance from an Invasion and your deliverance from the Vault you doe not ascribe these deliverances to those Saints upon whose dayes they were wrought In all your Commemorations and commemorations are prayers and God receives that which wee offer for a Thanksgiving for former Benefits as a prayer for future Ite goe forth by the river to the spring by the branch to the root by the worke to God himselfe and Dicite say unto him say of him Quam terribilis Tu in Tuis which sets us upon another step in this part To consider what this Terriblenesse is that God expresses in his works Though there be a difference between timer and terror Terribilis feare and terror yet the difference is not so great but that both may fall upon a good man Not onely a feare of God must but a terror of God may fall upon the Best When God talked with Abraham a horror of great darknesse fell upon him Gen. 15.12 sayes that Text. The Father of lights and the God of all comfort present and present in an action of Mercy and yet a horror of great darknesse fell upon Abraham When God talked personally and presentially with Moses Exod. 13.6 Moses hid his face for sayes that Text he was afraid to looke upon God When I look upon God as I am bid to doe in this Text in those terrible Judgements which he hath executed upon some men and see that there is nothing between mee and the same Judgement for I have sinned the same sinnes and God is the same God I am not able of my selfe to dye that glasse that spectacle thorow which I looke upon this God in what colour I will whether this glasse shall be black through my despaire and so I shall see God in the cloud of my sinnes or red in the blood of Christ Jesus and I shall see God in a Bath of the blood of his Sonne whether I shall see God as a Dove with an Olive branch peace to my soule or as an Eagle a vulture to prey and to prey everlastingly upon mee whether in the deepe floods of Tribulation spirituall or temporall I shall see God as an Arke to take mee in or as a Whale to swallow mee and if his Whale doe swallow mee the Tribulation devour me whether his purpose bee to restore mee or to consume me I I of my selfe cannot tell I cannot look upon God in what line I will nor take hold of God by what handle I will Hee is a terrible God I take him so And then I cannot discontinue I cannot breake off this terriblenesse and say Hee hath beene terrible to that man and there is an end of his terror it reaches not to me Why not to me In me there is no merit nor shadow of merit In God there is no change nor shadow of change I am the same sinner he is the same God still the same desperate sinner still the same terrible God But terrible in his works Reverendus sayes our Text Terrible so as hee hath declared himselfe to be in his works His Works are as we said before his Actions and his Scriptures In his Actions we see him Terrible upon disobedient Resisters of his Graces and Despisers of the meanes thereof not upon others wee have no examples of that In his word we accept this word in which he hath beene pleased to
which makes him a man hee hath the Image of God in him and by that is capable of grace and glory and therefore that wee may not hate which excludes all personall and all nationall hatred In that which makes him an enemy he hath the Image of the Devill infidelity towards God perfidiousnesse towards man Heresie towards God infectious manners towards man and that we must alwaies hate for that is Odium perfectum A hate that may consist with a perfect man nay a hate that constitutes love it selfe I do not love a man except I hate his vices because those vices are the enemies and the destruction of that friend whom I love Inimici tui Dei sunt inimici God himselfe hath enemies Thine enemies shall submit sayes the text to God There thou hast one comfort though thou have enemies too but the greater comfort is That God cals thine enemies his Psal 105.15 Nolite tangere Christos meos sayes God of all holy people you were as good touch me Psal 17.8 as touch any of them for they are the apple of mine eye Our Saviour Christ never expostulated for himselfe never said why scourged you me why spit you upon me why crucifie you me as long as their rage determined in his person he opened not his mouth when Saul extended the violence to the Church to his servants Acts 9. then Christ came to that Saul Saul why persecutest thou me Cains trespasse against God himselfe was that he would binde God to an acceptation of his Sacrifice And for that God comes no farther Gen. 4.6 Ver. 11. but to Why doest thou thus but in his trespasse upon his brother God proceeds so much farther as to say Now art thou cursed from the earth Ieroboam suffered Idolatry and God let him alone that concerned but God himselfe But when Ieroboam stretched forth his hand to lay hold on the Prophet 1 King 13.4 his hand withered Here is a holy league Defensive and Offensive God shall not onely protect us from others but he shall fight for us against them our enemies are his enemies And beloved Magnitude potentiae it is well that it is so for if we were left to our selves we were remedilesse It is his mercy that we are not consumed by his indignation by himselfe But it must be the exercise of his power if we be not consumed by his and our enemies for there is but that one way in the text that can bring these enemies to any thing that is In multitudine virtutis tuae In the greatnesse of thy power It must be power Intreaty Appliablenesse Conformity Facility Patience does not serve It must be Power and His power To assist our selves by his enemies by Witches or by Idolaters is not his power It is Power that does all for the name that God is manifested in in all the making of the World in the first of Genesis is Elohim and that is Deus fortis The powerfull God It is Power and it is His power for his name is Dominus tzebaoth The Lord of Hosts Hosts and Armies of which he is not the Generall are but great insurrections great rebellions And then as it is Power and His power so it is the greatnesse of his Power His Power extended exalted It is in the Originall Berob In multitudine fortitudinis in thy manifold power in thy multiplied power Moses considers the assurance that they might have in God Deut. 20.4 in this That God fought their battails The Lord your God goeth with you to fight for you against your enemies and save you There was his power declared and exercised one way and then in this That he had afforded them particular Laws for their direction in all their actions Religious and Civill To what Nation is God come so neare what people have Lawes and Ordinances such as we have So that where God defends us by Armies and directs us by just Lawes that is Multitudo fortitudinis The greatnesse of his power his power magnified his power multiplied upon us Now Mentientur through this power and not without this power this double power Law and Armes Thine enemies shall submit themselves unto thee sayes our text And then is all the danger at an end shall we be safe then Not then The word is Cacash and Cacash is but Mendacem fieri to be brought to lie to dissemble to equivocate to modifie to temporize to counterfait to make as though they were our friends in an outward conformity And there are enemies of God whom no power of Armies or Lawes can bring any farther then that To hold their tongues and to hold their hands but to withhold their hearts from us still Iosh 9. So the Gibeonites deceived Ioshua in the likenesse of Ambassadors Ioshuahs power made them lie unto him So Pharaoh deceived and deluded Moses and Aaron Every Act of power brought Pharaoh to lie unto them I direct not your thoughts upon publique Considerations It is not my end It is not my way My way and end is to bring you home to your selves and to consider there That we are full of weaknesses in our selves full of enemies sinfull tentations about us That onely the power of God his power multiplied that is The receiving of his word that is the power of Law The receiving of his corrections that is the power of his Hosts can make our enemies our sinfull tentations submit and when they do so it is but a lie They returne to us and we turne to them againe In the greatnesse of thy power shall thine enemies submit unto thee But then Consolatio which is our last step and Conclusion even this That these enemies shall be forced to such a submission to any submission though disguised and counterfait is in this Text presented for a Consolation There is a comfort even in this That those enemies shall be faine to lie that they shall not dare to avow their malice nor to blaspheme God in open professions There is a conditionall blessing proposed to Gods people O that my people had hearkned unto me O that Israel had walked in my wayes Psal 80.15 What had been their recompence This. The haters of the Lord should have submitted themselves unto them Should they in earnest No truly there is the same word They should have lyed unto them they should have made as though they had submitted themselves and that God presents for a great degree of his mercy to them And therefore as in thy particular Conscience though God doe not take away that Stimulum carnis and that Angelum Satanae though he doe not extinguish all lusts and concupiscencies in thee yet if those lusts prevaile not over thee if they command not if they divert thee not from the sense and service of God thou hast good reason to blesse God for this to rest in this and to call it peace of conscience So hast thou reason too
his soule by Preservation and immortall in his body by Reparation in the Resurrection For though they be separated à Thoro Mensa from Bed and Board they are not divorced Though the soule be at the Table of the Lambe in Glory and the body but at the table of the Serpent in dust Though the soule be in lecto florido Cant. 1.16 in that bed which is alwayes green in an everlasting spring in Abrahams Bosome And the body but in that green-bed whose covering is but a yard and a halfe of Turfe and a Rugge of grasse and the sheet but a winding sheet yet they are not divorced they shall returne to one another againe in an inseparable re-union in the Resurrection To establish this assurance of a Resurrection in us God does sometimes in this life that which he hath promised for the next that is he gives a Resurrection to life after a bodily death here God hath made two Testaments two Wills And in both he hath declared his Power and his Will to give this new life after death in this world To the Widows sonne of Zarephtha 1. King 17. he bequeaths new life and to the Shunamites sonne he gives the same legacy 2 King 4. in the Old Testament In the New Testament to the widow of Naims sonne Luk. 7.8 he bequeaths new life And to Iairus daughter he gives the same legacy And out of the surplusage of his inexhaustible estate out of the overflowing of his Power he enables his Executors to doe as he did for Peter gives Dorcas this Resurrection too Act. 9.40 Divers examples hath he given us of the Resurrection of every particular man in particular Resurrections such as we have named And one of the generall Resurrection in the Resurrection of Christ himselfe for in him we all rose for he was All in All Con-vivificavit Ephes 2.5 sayes the Apostle and Considere nos fecit God hath quickned us all us not onely S. Paul and his Ephesians but all and God hath raised us and God hath made us to sit together in heavenly places in Christ Iesus They that are not faln yet by any actuall sinne children newly baptized are risen already in him And they that are not dead yet nay not alive yet not yet borne have a Resurrection in him who was not onely the Lambe slaine from the beginning but from before all beginnings was risen too and all that shall ever have part in the second Resurrection are risen with him from that time Now next to that great Propheticall action that type of the generall Resurrection in the Resurrection of Christ the most illustrious Evidence of the Resurrection of particular men is this Resuscitation of Lazarus whose sister Martha directed by faith and yet transported by passion seeks to entender and mollifie and supple him to impressions of mercy and compassion who was himselfe the Mold in which all mercy was cast nay the substance of which all mercy does consist Christ Jesus with this imperfect piece of Devotion which hath a tincture of Faith but is deeper dyed in Passion Lord if thou hadst been here my brother had not dyed This Text which you Heare Martha's single words Divisio complicated with this Text which you See The dead body of this our Brother makes up between them this body of Instruction for the soule first That there is nothing in this world perfect And then That such as it is there is nothing constant nothing permanent We consider the first That there is nothing perfect in the best things in spirituall things Even Martha's devotion and faith hath imperfections in it And we consider the other That nothing is permanent in temporall things Riches prosperously multiplied Children honorably bestowed Additions of Honor and Titles fairly acquired Places of Command and Government justly received and duly executed All testimonies all evidences of worldly happinesse have a Dissolution a Determination in the death of this and of every such Man There is nothing no spirituall thing perfect in this world Nothing no temporall thing permanent and durable And these two Considerations shall be our two parts And then these the branches from these two roots First in the first we shall see in generall The weaknesse of Mans best actions And secondly more particularly The weaknesses in Martha's Action And yet in a third place the easinesse the propensnesse the largenesse of Gods goodnesse towards us in the acceptation of our imperfect Sacrifices for Christ does not refuse nor discourage Martha though her action have these imperfections And in this largenesse of his Mercy which is the end of all we shall end this part And in our second That as in spirituall things nothing is perfect so in tempoporall things nothing is permanent we shall by the same three steps as in the former looke first upon the generall consideration the fluidnesse the transitorinesse of all such temporall things And then consider it more particularly in Gods Master-piece amongst mortall things the body of man That even that flowes into putrefaction And then lastly returne to that in which we determined the former part The largenesse of Gods goodnesse to us in affording even to mans body so dissolved into putrefaction an incorruptible and a glorious state So have you the frame set up and the roomes divided The two parts and the three branches of each And to the furnishing of them with meditations fit for this Occasion we passe now In entring upon the first branch of our first part 1. Part. In spiritualibus nihil perfectum Scientia That in spirituall things nothing is perfect we may well afford a kinde of spirituall nature to knowledge And how imperfect is all our knowledge What one thing doe we know perfectly Whether wee consider Arts or Sciences the servant knows but according to the proportion of his Masters knowledge in that Art and the Scholar knows but according to the proportion of his Masters knowledge in that Science Young men mend not their sight by using old mens Spectacles and yet we looke upon Nature but with Aristotles Spectacles and upon the body of man but with Galens and upon the frame of the world but with Ptolomies Spectacles Almost all knowledge is rather like a child that is embalmed to make Mummy then that is nursed to make a Man rather conserved in the stature of the first age then growne to be greater And if there be any addition to knowledge it is rather a new knowledge then a greater knowledge rather a singularity in a desire of proposing something that was not knowne at all before then an emproving an advancing a multiplying of former inceptions and by that meanes no knowledge comes to be perfect One Philosopher thinks he is dived to the bottome when he sayes he knows nothing but this That he knows nothing and yet another thinks that he hath expressed more knowledge then he in saying That he knows not so much as
proportion and the goodnesse of every particular mercy so is it an irreverent and inconsiderate thing not to take my particular wants into my thoughts and into my prayers that so I may take a holy knowledge that I have nothing nothing but from God and by prayer And as God is an accessible God as he is his owne Master of Requests and is ever open to receive thy Petions in how small a matter soever so is he an inexhaustible God he can give infinitely and an indefatigable God he cannot be pressed too much Therefore hath Christ given us a Parable of getting Bread at midnight by Importunity Luke 11.5.18.7 and not otherwise And another of a Iudge that heard the widows cause by Importunity and not otherwise And not a Parable Matt. 15.21 but a History and a History of his own of a woman of Canaan that overcame him in the behalfe of her daughter by Importunity when but by importunity she could not get so much as an answer as a deniall at his hands Pray personally rely not upon dead nor living Saints Thy Mother the Church prayes for thee but pray for thy selfe too Shee can open her bosome and put the breast to thy mouth but thou must draw and suck for thy selfe Pray personally and pray frequently David had may stationary times of the day and night too to pray in Pray frequently and pray fervently God took it not ill at Davids hands to be awaked and to be called up as though hee were asleepe at our prayers and to be called upon to pull his hand out of his bosome as though he were slack in relieving our necessities This was a weaknesse in those Sisters that they solicited not Christ in person still get as neare God as you can And that they declared not their case particularly It is not enough to pray nor to confesse in generall termes And that they pursued not their prayer earnestly thorowly It is not enough to have prayed once Christ does not onely excuse but enjoine Importunity And then a weaknesse there was in their Charity too Marthae charitas even towards their dead brother To lament a dead friend is naturall and civill and he is the deader of the two the verier carcasse that does not so But inordinate lamentation implies a suspition of a worse state in him that is gone And if I doe beleeve him to be in heaven deliberately advisedly to wish him here that is in heaven is an uncharitable desire For for me to say He is preferred by being where he is but I were better if he were againe where I am were such an indispofition as if the Princes servant should be loath to see his Master King because he should not hold the same place with him being King as he did when he was Prince Not to hope well of him that is gone is uncharitablenesse and at the same time when I beleeve him to be better to wish him worse is uncharitablenesse too And such weaknesses were in those holy and devout Sisters of Lazarus which establishes our Conclusion There is nothing in this world no not in spirituall things not in knowledge not in faith not in hope not in charity perfect But yet for all these imperfections Christ doth not refuse nor chide but cherish their piety which is also another circumstance in that Part. There is no forme of Building stronger then an Arch and yet an Arch hath declinations which even a flat-roofe hath not Non rejicit Christus The flat-roofe lies equall in all parts the Arch declines downwards in all parts and yet the Arch is a firme supporter Our Devotions doe not the lesse beare us upright in the sight of God because they have some declinations towards natural affections God doth easilier pardon some neglectings of his grace when it proceeds out of a tendernesse or may be excused out of good nature then any presuming upon his grace If a man doe depart in some actions from an exact obedience of Gods will upon infirmity or humane affections and not a contempt God passes it over often times For when our Saviour Christ sayes Be pure as your Father in heaven is pure that is a rule for our purity but not a measure of our purity It is that we should be pure so not that we should be so pure as our Father in heaven When we consider that weaknesse that went through the Apostles even to Christs Ascension that they looked for a temporall Kingdome and for preferment in that when we consider that weaknesse in the chiefe of them S. Peter at the Transfiguration when Mar. 9.6 as the Text sayes He knew not what to say when we consider the weaknesse of his action that for feare of death he renounced the Lord of Life and denied his Master when in this very story when Christ said that Lazarus was asleepe and that he would goe to awake him they could understand it so impertinently as that Christ should goe such a journey to come to the waking of a man asleep at that time when he spoke All these infirmities of theirs multiply this consolation upon us That though God look upon the Inscription he looks upon the metall too Though he look that his Image should be preserved in us he looks in what earthen vessels this Image is put and put by his own hand and though he hate us in our rebellions yet he pities us in our grievances though he would have us better he forsakes us not for every degree of illnesse There are three great dangers in this consideration of perfectnesse and purity First to distrust of Gods mercy if thou finde not this purity in thy selfe and this perfectnesse And then to presume upon God nay upon thine own right in an overvaluing of thine own purity and perfectnesse And againe to condemne others whom thou wilt needs thinke lesse pure or perfect then thy selfe Against this diffidence in God to thinke our selves so desperately impure as that God will not look upon us And this presumption in God to thinke our selves so pure as that God is bound to look upon us And this uncharitablenesse towards others to think none pure at all that are not pure our way Christ armes us by his Example He receives these sisters of Lazarus and accomplishes as much as they desired though there were weaknesses in their Faith in their Hope in their Charity expressed in that unperfect speech Lord if thou hadst been here my brother had not dyed for there is nothing not in spirituall things perfect This we have seen out of the Text we have Heard And now out of the Text which we See we shall see the rest That as in spirituall things there is nothing Perfect so in temporall there is nothing Permanent I need not call in new Philosophy that denies a settlednesse 2. Part. an acquiescence in the very body of the Earth but makes the Earth to move in that place where
Fundamentals every man is bound to have but not of the superstructure and superedification 807. B How Imperfect all our Knowledge is in Arts and Sciences 818. A Knowledge against over-much curiosity in attaining to it 63. E. 308. C. 319. A. B Whether wee shall Know one another in the next world 157. C Of sobriety in Knowledge 270. C. 701. A Knowing of our selves how hard a thing it is 563. C Knowing of God foure ordinary wayes of it in the Schooles 229. B L LAbour three-fold Labour in the Scripture 538. B Law and the Gospell of the severall state of either 284. E. 285. A Of the Law of Nature under which every man is 362. C How the Law is said to shew what is sinne 687. B Lawes of Temporall Princes whether or no they binde the conscience of the Subject wherefore never stated by the Pope or by any Councell 741. B Liberality and Bounty Civill and Spirituall what 759. E Liberality a vertue that begets a vertue ibid. The true body and true soule of Liberalitie what it is 760. C Life the excellencie of it 69. D. E. 70. A All that is good included in it 70. A Light the first creature 759. D Literae Formatae in the Primitive Church their Institution and use 415. A Lord whether God could be called the Lord before there were any creatures a disputable thing 757. A The Judgement of Tertullian and S. Augustine either way ibid. B Love the first Act of the Will 225. D How we may love the creatures 398. E 598. B Against the Love of the things of this world 187. C. 399. C Against loving of God for the Temporall blessings he bestowes upon us 750. C Loving our enemies six degrees observed in it 97. B Lust and Licentiousnesse the burdens that it makes men under goe 623. D Lying whether it be lawfull before one that is no competent Judge 491. B M Macchabees their torture and patience 221. E. 222. A. B. C. c. Man what Man is 64. D. E. 65. A. c. The dignitie and honour of Man 655. C. D Hee cannot deliberately wish himselfe an Angel for he should lose thereby ibid. E Of those helps and assistances which Man affords to Man 656. D. E. c. Man is called every creature in Scripture and why 770. C. D Mary the Crownes of England Scotland Denmark and Hungary much about one time fell upon women whose name was Mary 243. E It is a noble and a comprehensive name and why 244. A Marriage of second Marriages 216. D. E. c Masters of that esteeme and regard is to bee had to such as have taught us or have beene our Masters 288. E. 289. A why called Patres-familias 388. B Mediocrity of Estate the commendation of it 661. A. B. c. 685. D Orders in the Church of Rome from both extremes but not one from the Meane 661. B. What is a Mediocrity to one is not nor ought to be to another 714. C Memory the Holy Ghosts pulpit oftner than the Vnderstanding 290. B. C Of the sinfull Memory of past sins how dangerous it is 542. D Mercie of God how much above his judgements 12. B. 67. A. 71. A How full God is of it C Occasionall Mercies what and how many D The Devils capable of Mercy in the judgement of many Fathers 66. A. 262. D The proper difference betweene Mercy and Truth 530. D Against those that abridge the great volume of Gods Mercies 568. E Of severall Mercies and refreshments which are none of Gods 810. E. 811. A God can doe nothing but in Mercy 811. C Merits foreseene no cause of Graces in us 5. A Millenarii their errour what and how generall almost all the Fathers tainted with it 261. C Miracles against multiplying of them in the Roman Chuch 36. D Mirabilis or the man that workes Miracles the first of those great names given to Christ by the Prophet Esay 58. C Nothing dearer to God than a Miracle 215. A They are his owne Prerogative ibid. B It is more to change Nature by Miracles than to make Nature 394. E No man to ground his Faith upon a Miracle as it seemes to him 429. A How to judge of Miracles whether they bee true or false 429. B Dangerous putting of God to a Miracle in saving us 456. B What is properly a Miracle 683. D The Creation it selfe none ibid. Monuments not in Churches in the Primitive times 730 D Mortification outward Mortification and austerity a specious thing 492. E Mortification to be generall of all the parts and not of one onely 541. B Mosselim a kind of Doctors amongst the Jewes that taught the people by parables and obscure sayings 690. E The Multitude of their levity judgement and changing of opinions 482. B. D Against Murmuring at Gods blessings if they be not as great as we desire 576. C Mute against standing Mute at examinations 491. C Mysteries of two kinds in the Schooles 203. D Every Religion under heaven hath had her Mysteries and some things in-intelligible of all sorts of men 690. D N NAmes and Titles nothing puffeth men up more 734. D The Heathen never called their Tutelar Gods by their Names and why 608. A Of getting a good Name amongst men and against those that neglect it 680. A. E Of mens retaining those Names that are most acceptable 285. B Of the Name of Christian and when it was given and how 426. B Adam named all creatures but himselfe and why 563. B Natalitia Martyrum their dayes of suffering so called and why 268. C. 461. C Nativities three Nativities to every Christian and which they are 424. E Nature of that sight which wee have of God even by the light of Nature 227. B. 686. E Of that power which some of the Fathers attribute to Nature without Grace 314. C Men doe not halfe so much against sin as even by the power of Nature they are able to doe 315. B. C Of the testimony which a Naturall soule gives unto it selfe of it selfe 337. B Nature not equivalent to Grace 649 A Nature not our owne ibid. Nature and Grace how they co-operate ibid. D Neighbour-hood and evill Neighbour-hood and communicating with evill men 420. C Noctambulones men that walk in their sleep wake if they be called by their Names 467. A Nothing there is nothing more contrary to God than to be to doe or to thinke Nothing 265. B The Devill himselfe cannot wish himselfe deliberately to be nothing C An Order of Friars in the Roman Church that in humilitie called themselves Nullanos or Nothings 731. C Of the Numberlesse number of Gods benefits to Man 765. A O OCcasionall instruments of Gods glory what cold affections they meet with in the world amongst men disaffected to Gods cause 154. E Occasionall mercies offered what and how many 12. D Occasionall Convertites who 461. C God no Occasionall God and why 586. B Devotion no Occasionall thing and why 244. E A great
in the same voice of infirmity Ver. 32. Lord if thou hadst beene here my brother had not died No person so perfect that hath not of these imperfections Both these holy Sisters howsoever there might be differences of degrees in their holinesse have imperfections in all three in the consideration of their Faith and their Hone and their Charity though in all three they had also and had both good degrees towards perfection Looke first upon their Faith they both say Lord if thou hadst beene here our brother had not died We cannot say so to any Consultation to any Colledge of Physitians not to a Chiron to an Esculapius to a God of Physicke could any man say If you had beene here my friend had not died though surely there be much assistance to be received from them whom God hath endowed with knowledge to that purpose And yet there was a weakenesse in these Sisters in that they said but so and no more to Christ They thought Christ to be the best amongst good men but yet they were not come to the knowledge that he was God Martha saies I know that even now whatsoever thou askest of God Verse 22. God will give it thee but she does not know him to be God himselfe I doe not here institute a confutation but here and every where I lament the growth and insinuation of that pestilent Heresie of Socinianisme That Christ was a holy a thrice-holy man an unreproachable an irreprehensible an admirable an incomparable man A man to whom he that should equall any other man were worse then a Devill A man worthy to bee called God in a farre higher sense then any Magistrate any King any Prophet But yet hee was no God say they no Son of God A Redemer by way of good example but no Redeemer by way of equivalent satisfaction say those Heretiques S. Paul sayes Ephes 2.12 He is an Atheist that is without Christ And he is as much an Atheist still that pretends to receive Christ and not as God For if the receiving of Christ must redeeme him from being an Atheist there can no other way be imagined but by receiving him as God for that onely and no other good opinion of Christ overcomes and removes his Atheisme After the last day whatsoever is not Heaven is Hell Hee that then shall be where the Sunne is now if he be not then in heaven shall be as farre from heaven as if hee were where the Center of the earth is now Hee that confesses not all Christ confesses no Christ Horribile dictu dicam tamen sayes S. Augustine in another case There belongs a holy trembing to the saying of it yet I must say it If Christ were not God hee was a devill that durst say he was God This then was one weaknesse in these Sisters faith that it carried them not up to the consideration of Christ as God And then another rose out of that That they insisted so much relied so much upon his corporall and personall presence and promised themselves more from that then hee had ever given them ground for which was that which Christ diverted Mary from when after his Resurrection manifesting himselfe to her and shee flying unto him with that impatient zeale and that impetuous devotion Rabboni Master My Master Christ said to her Ioh. 20.16 Touch mee not for I am not ascended to my Father that is Dwell not upon this passionate consideration of my bodily and personall presence but send thy thoughts and thy reverence and thy devotion and thy holy amorousnesse up whither I am going to the right hand of my Father and consider me contemplate mee there S. Peter had another holy distemper of another kinde upon the personall presence of Christ He was so astonished at his presence in the power of a Miracle that he fell downe at his feet and said Luke 5.8 Depart from me for I am a sinfull man O Lord. These Sisters longed for him and S. Peter longed as much to be delivered of him both out of weaknesse and error So is it an error and a weaknesse to attribute too much or too little to Christs presence in his Sacraments or other Ordinances To imprison Christ in Opere operato to conclude him so as that where that action is done Christ must necessarily bee and necessarily work this is to say weakly with these Sisters Lord if thou hadst beene here our brother had not died As long as we are present at thine Ordinance thou art present with us But to banish Christ from those holy actions and to say That he is no otherwise present or works no otherwise in those actions then in other times and places this is to say with Peter in his astonishment Exi à me Domine O Lord depart from me It is enough that thy Sacrament be a signe I do not look that it should be a Seal or a Conduit of Grace This is the danger this is the distemper to ascribe too much or too little to Gods visible Ordinances and Institutions either to say with those holy Sisters Lord if thou hadst been here our brother had not died If we have a Sacrament if we have a Sermon all is well we have enough or else with Peter Exi à me Leave me to my selfe to my private motions to my bosome inspirations and I need no Church-work no Sermons no Sacraments no such assistances So there was weaknesse in their Faith Marthae spes there was so too in their Hope in their confidence in Christ and in their manner of expressing it For they did not goe to him when their brother was sick Joh. 3.1 Mat. 8.5 Mark 5.25 33. but sent Nicodemus came in person for his sick soule And the Centurion in person for his sick servant And Iairus in person for his sick daughter And the woman with the bloody Issue in person for her sick-selfe These sisters did but send but piously and reverendly Their Messenger was to say to Christ not Lazarus not Our Brother but He whom thou lovest is sick And they left this intimation to work upon Christ But that was not enough we must bring Christ and our necessities neerer together then so There is good instruction in the severall expressings of Christs curings of Peters mother in the Euangelists Mark 1.29 S. Marke sayes They told him of her And S. Luke sayes They brought him up to her And S. Matthew sayes He saw her and tooke her by the hand I must not wrap up all my necessities in generall termes in my prayers but descend to particulars For this places my devotion upon particular considerations of God to consider him in every Attribute what God hath done for me in Power what in Wisedome what in Mercy which is a great assistance and establishing and propagation of devotion As it is a degree of unthankfulnesse to thank God too generally and not to delight to insist upon the waight and measure and