which we shall no more be at war with Reason nor so much with Sense and not at all with Faith And for persons of the contradictory perswasion who to avoid the natural sence affirm it only to be figurative since their design is only to make this Sacrament to be Christ's Body in the sence of Faith and not of Philosophy they may remember that its being really present does not hinder but that all that reality may be spiritual and if it be Christ's Body so it be not affirmed such in a natural sence and manner it is still only the object of Faith and spirit and if it be affirmed only to be spiritual there is then no danger to Faith in admitting the words of Christ's institution This is my Body I suppose it to be a mistake to think what soever is real must be natural and it is no less to think spiritual to be only figurative that 's too much and this is too little Philosophy and Faith may well be reconciled and whatsoever objection can invade this union may be cured by modesty And if we profess we understand not the manner of this Mystery we say no more but that it is a Mystery and if it had been necessary we should have construed it into the most latent sence Christ himself would have given a Clavis and taught the Church to unlock so great a Secret Christ said This is my Body this is my 〈◊〉 S. Paul said The bread of blessing that we break is the communication of the body of Christ and the Chalice which we bless is the communication of the bloud of Christ and We are all one body because we eat of one bread One proposition as well as the other is the matter of Faith and the latter of them is also of Sense one is as literal as the other and he that distinguishes in his belief as he may place the impropriety upon which part he please and either say it is improperly called Bread or improperly called Christ's Body so he can have nothing to secure his proposition from errour or himself from boldness in decreeing concerning Mysteries against the testimonies of Sense or beyond the modesty and simplicity of Christian Faith Let us love and adore the abyss of Divine Wisdom and Goodness and entertain the Sacrament with just and holy receptions and then we shall receive all those fruits of it which an earnest disputer or a peremptory dogmatizer whether he happen right or wrong hath no warrant to expect upon the interest of his Opinion 4. In the Institution of this Sacrament Christ manifested first his Almighty Power secondly his infinite Wisdome and thirdly his unspeakable Charity First his Power is manifest in making the Symbols to be the instruments of conveying himself to the spirit of the Receiver He nourishes the Soul with Bread and feeds the Body with a Sacrament he makes the Body spiritual by his Graces there ministred and makes the Spirit to be united to his Body by a participation of the Divine nature In the Sacrament that Body which is reigning in Heaven is exposed upon the Table of blessing and his Body which was broken for us is now broken again and yet remains impassible Every consecrated portion of bread and wine does exhibit Christ intirely to the faithful Receiver and yet Christ remains one while he is wholly ministred in 10000 portions So long as we call these mysterious and make them intricate to exercise our Faith and to represent the wonder of the Mystery and to encrease our Charity our being inquisitive into the abyss can have no evil purposes God hath instituted the Rite in visible Symbols to make the secret Grace as presential and discernible as it might that by an instrument of Sense our spirits might be accommodated as with an exteriour object to produce an internal act But it is the prodigy of a miraculous power by instruments so easie to produce effects so glorious This then is the object of Wonder and Adoration 5. Secondly And this effect of Power does also remark the Divine Wisdome who hath ordained such Symbols which not only like spittle and clay toward the curing blind eyes proclaim an Almighty Power but they are apposite and proper to signifie a Duty and become to us like the Word of Life and from Bread they turn into a Homily For therefore our wisest Master hath appointed Bread and Wine that we may be corporally united to him that as the Symbols becoming nutriment are turned into the substance of our bodies so Christ being the food of our Souls should assimilate us making us partakers of the Divine Nature It also tells us that from hence we derive life and holy motion for in him we live and move and have our being He is the staff of our life and the light of our eyes and the strength of our spirit He is the Viand for our journey and the antepast of Heaven And because this holy Mystery was intended to be a Sacrament of Union that Lesson is morally represented in the Symbols That as the salutary juice is expressed from many clusters running into one 〈◊〉 and the Bread is a mass made of many grains of Wheat so we also as the Apostie infers from hence himself observing the analogy should be one bread and one bodr because we partake of that one bread And it were to be wished that from hence also all Christians would understand a signification of another Duty and that they would 〈◊〉 communicate as remembring that the Soul may need a frequent ministration as well as the Body its daily proportion This consideration of the Divine Wisdome is apt to produce Reverence Humility and Submission of our understanding to the immensity of God's unsearchable abysses 6. Thirdly But the story of the Love of our dearest Lord is written in largest characters who not only was at that instant busie in doing Man the greatest good even then when man was contriving his death and his dishonour but contrived to represent his bitter Passion to us without any circumstances of horror in symbols of pleasure and delight that we may taste and see how gracious our LORD is who would not transmit the record of his Passion to us in any thing that might trouble us No Love can be greater than that which is so beatifical as to bestow the greatest good and no Love can be better expressed than that which although it is productive of the greatest blessings yet is curious also to observe the smallest circumstances And not only both these but many other circumstances and arguments of Love concur in the Holy Sacrament 1. It is a tenderness of affection that ministers wholsome Physick with arts and instruments of pleasure And such was the Charity of our Lord who brings health to us in a golden Chalice life not in the bitter drugs of Egypt but in spirits and quintessences giving us apples of Paradise at the same time yielding food and health
and pleasure 2. Love desires to do all good to its beloved object and that is the greatest love which gives us the greatest blessings And the Sacrament therefore is the argument of his greatest love for in it we receive the honey and the honey-comb the Paschal Lamb with his bitter herbs Christ with all his griefs and his Passion with all the salutary effects of it 3. Love desires to be remembred and to have his object in perpetual representment And this Sacrament Christ designed to that purpose that he who is not present to our eyes might always be present to our spirits 4. Love demands love again and to desire to be beloved is of it self a great argument of love And as God cannot give us a greater blessing than his Love which is himself with an excellency of relation to us superadded so what greater demonstration of it can he make to us than to desire us to love him with as much earnestness and vehemency of desire as if we were that to him which he is essentially to us the author of our being and our blessing 5. And yet to consummate this Love and represent it to be the greatest and most excellent the Holy Jesus hath in this Sacrament designed that we should be united in our spirits with him incorporated to his body partake of his Divine nature and communicate in all his Graces and Love hath no expression beyond this that it desires to be united unto its object So that what Moses said to the men of Israel What nation is so great who hath God so nigh unto them as the Lord our God is in all things for which we call upon him we can enlarge in the meditation of this Holy Sacrament for now the Lord our God calls upon us not only to be nigh unto him but to be all one with him not only as he was in the Incarnation flesh of our flesh and bone of our bone but also to communicate in spirit in grace in nature in Divinity it self 7. Upon the strength of the premisses we may sooner take an estimate of the Graces which are conveyed to us in the reception and celebration of this Holy Sacrament and Sacrifice For as it is a Commemoration and representment of Christ's Death so it is a commemorative Sacrifice as we receive the symbols and the mystery so it is a Sacrament In both capacities the benefit is next to infinite First For whatsoever Christ did at the Institution the same he commanded the Church to do in remembrance and repeated rites and himself also does the same thing in Heaven for us making perpetual Intercession for his Church the body of his redeemed ones by representing to his Father his death and sacrifice there he sits a high Priest continually and offers still the same one perfect sacrifice that is still represents it as having been once finished and consummate in order to perpetual and never-failing events And this also his Ministers do on earth they offer up the same Sacrifice to God the sacrifice of the Cross by prayers and a commemorating rite and representment according to his holy Institution And as all the effects of Grace and the titles of glory were purchased for us on the Cross and the actual mysteries of Redemption perfected on earth but are applied to us and made effectual to single persons and communities of men by Christ's Intercession in Heaven so also they are promoted by acts of Duty and Religion here on earth that we may be workers together with God as S. Paul expresses it and in virtue of the eternal and all-sufficient Sacrifice may offer up our prayers and our duty and by representing that sacrifice may send up together with our prayers an instrument of their graciousness and acceptation The Funerals of a deceased friend are not only performed at his first interring but in the monthly minds and anniversary commemorations and our grief returns upon the fight of a picture or upon any instance which our dead friend desired us to preserve as his memorial we celebrate and exhibite the Lora's death in sacrament and symbol and this is that great express which when the Church offers to God the Father it obtains all those blessings which that sacrifice purchased Themistocles snatch'd up the son of King Admetus and held him between himself and death to mitigate the rage of the King and prevailed accordingly Our very holding up the Son of God and representing him to his Father is the doing an act of mediation 〈◊〉 advantage to our selves in the virtue and efficacy of the Mediatour As Christ is a Priest in Heaven for ever and yet does not sacrifice himself afresh nor yet without a sacrifice could he be a Priest but by a daily ministration and intercession represents his sacrifice to God and offers himself as sacrificed so he does upon earth by the ministery of his servants he is offered to God that is he is by Prayers and the Sacrament represented or offered up to God as sacrificed which in effect is a celebration of his death and the applying it to the present and future necessities of the Church as we are capable by a ministery like to his in Heaven It follows then that the celebration of this Sacrifice be in its proportion an instrument of applying the proper Sacrifice to all the purposes which it first designed It is ministerially and by application an instrument propitiatory it is Eucharistical it is an homage and an act of adoration and it is impetratory and obtains for us and for the whole Church all the benefits of the sacrifice which is now celebrated and applied that is As this Rite is the remembrance and ministerial celebration of Christ's sacrifice so it is destined to do honour to God to express the homage and duty of his servants to acknowledge his supreme dominion to give him thanks and worship to beg pardon blessings and supply of all our needs And its profit is enlarged not only to the persons celebrating but to all to whom they design it according to the nature of Sacrifices and Prayers and all such solemn actions of Religion 8. Secondly If we consider this not as the act and ministery of Ecclesiastical persons but as the duty of the whole Church communicating that is as it is a 〈◊〉 so it is like the Springs of Eden from whence issue many Rivers or the Trees of celestial Jerusalem bearing various kinds of Fruit. For whatsoever was offered in the Sacrifice is given in the Sacrament and whatsoever the Testament bequeaths the holy Mysteries dispense 1. He that 〈◊〉 my 〈◊〉 and drinketh my bloud abideth in me and 〈◊〉 in him Christ in his Temple and his resting-place and the worthy Communicant is in Sanctuary and a place of protection and every holy Soul having feasted at his Table may say as S. Paul 〈◊〉 live yet not I but Christ liveth in me So that to live is Christ Christ is
all the Province of his Cure with great zeal for the gaining of Souls to the belief and obedience of his holy Laws those are the Feet that should walk upon seas and hills of water as upon firm pavement at which the Lepers and diseased persons should stoop and gather health up which Mary Magdalen should wash with tears and wipe with her hair and anoint with costly Nard as expressions of love and adoration and there find absolution and remedy for her sins and which finally should be rent by the nails of the Cross and afterwards ascend above the Heavens making the earth to be his foot-stool From hence take patterns of imitation that our Piety be symbolical that our Affections be passionate and Eucharistical full of love and wonder and adoration that our feet tread in the same steps and that we transfer the Symbol into Mystery and the Mystery to Devotion praying the Holy Jesus to actuate the same mercies in us which were finished at his holy feet forgiving our sins healing our sicknesses and then place our selves irremoveably becoming his Disciples and strictly observing the rules of his holy Institution sitting at the feet of this our greatest Master 8. In the same manner a pious person may with the Blessed Virgin pass to the consideration of his holy Hands which were so often lifted up to God in Prayer whose touch was miraculous and medicinal cleansing Lepers restoring perishing limbs opening blind eyes raising dead persons to life those Hands which fed many thousands by two Miracles of multiplication that purged the Temple from prophaneness that in a sacramental manner bare his own Body and gave it to be the food and refreshment of elect Souls and after were cloven and rent upon the Cross till the Wounds became after the Resurrection so many transparencies and glorious Instruments of solemn spiritual and efficacious benediction Transmit this meditation into affections and practices lifting up pure hands in prayer that our Devotions be united to the merits of his glorious Intercession and putting our selves into his hands and holy providence let us beg those effects upon our Souls and spiritual Cures which his precious hands did operate upon their bodies transferring those Similitudes to our ghostly and personal advantages 9. We may also behold his holy Breast and consider that there lay that sacred Heart like the Dove within the Ark speaking peace to us being the regiment of love and sorrows the fountain of both the Sacraments running out in the two holy streams of Bloud and Water when the Rock was smitten when his holy Side was pierced and there with St. John let us lay our head and place our heart and thence draw a treasure of holy revelations and affections that we may rest in him onely and upon him lay our burthens filling every corner of our heart with thoughts of the most amiable and beloved JESUS 10. In like manner we may unite the Day of his Nativity with the day of his Passion and consider all the parts of his Body as it was instrumental in all the work of our Redemption and so imitate and in some proportion partake of that great variety of sweetnesses and amorous reflexes and gracious intercourses which passed between the Blessed Virgin and the Holy Child according to his present capacities and the clarity of that light which was communicated to her by Divine Infusion And all the Members of this Blessed Child his Eyes his Face his Head all the Organs of his Senses afford variety of entertainment and motion to our Affections according as they served in their several imployments and cooperations in the mysteries of our Restitution 11. But his Body was but his Soul' s upper garment and the considerations of this are as immaterial and spiritual as the Soul it self and more immediate to the mystery of the Nativity This Soul is of the same nature and substance with ours in this inferiour to the Angels that of it self it is incompleat and discursive in a lower order of ratiocination but in this superiour 1. That it is personally united to the Divinity full of the Holy Ghost over-running with Grace which was dispensed to it without measure And by the mediation of this Union as it self is exalted far above all orders of Intelligences so we also have contracted alliance with God teaching us not to unravel our excellencies by infamous deportments 2. Here also we may meditate that his Memory is indeterminable and unalterable ever remembring to do us good and to present our needs to God by the means of his holy intercession 3. That his Understanding is without ignorance knowing the secrets of our hearts full of mysterious secrets of his Father's Kingdom in which all the treasures of the wisdom and knowledge of God are hidden 4. That his Will is impeccable entertained with an uninterrupted act of Love to God greater than all Angels and beatified spirits present to God in the midst of the transportations and ravishments of Paradise That this Will is full of Love to us of Humility in it self of Conformity to God wholly resign'd by acts of Adoration and Obedience It was moved by six Wings Zeal of the honour of God and Compunction for our sins Pity to our miseries and Hatred of our impieties Desires of satisfying the wrath of God and great Joy at the consideration of all the fruits of his Nativity the appeasing of his Father the redemption of his brethren And upon these wings he mounted up into the throne of Glory carrying our nature with him above the seats of Angels These second considerations present themselves to all that with Piety and Devotion behold the Holy Babe lying in the obscure and humble place of his Nativity The PRAYER HOly and Immortal Jesus I adore and worship thee with the lowest prostrations and humility of Soul and body and give thee all thanks for that great Love to us whereof thy Nativity hath made demonstration for that Humility of thine expressed in the poor and ignoble circumstances which thou didst voluntarily chuse in the manner of thy Birth And I present to thy holy Humanity inchased in the adorable Divinity my Body and Soul humbly desiring that as thou didst clothe thy self with a Humane body thou mayest invest me with the robes of Righteousness covering my sins inabling my weaknesses and sustaining my mortality till I shall finally in conformity to thy Beauties and Perfections be clothed with the stole of Glory Amen 2. VOuchsafe to come to me by a more intimate and spiritual approximation that so thou mayest lead me to thy Father for of my self I cannot move one step towards thee Take me by the hand place me in thy heart that there I may live and there I may die that as thou hast united our Nature to thy Eternal Being thou mightest also unite my Person to thine by the interiour adunations of Love and Obedience and Conformity Let thy Ears be open to my prayers thy merciful Eyes
and therefore less likely to deceive for which reason it is said that he shall deceive if it were possible the very elect that is therefore not possible because that by which he insinuates himself to others is by the elect the Church and chosen of God understood to be his sign and mark of discovery and a warning And therefore as the Prophecies of Jesus were an infinite verification of his Miracles so also this Prophecy of Christ concerning Antichrist disgraces the reputation and faith of the Miracles he shall act The old Prophets foretold of the Messias and of his Miracles of power and mercy to prepare for his reception and entertainment Christ alone and his Apostles from him foretold of Antichrist and that he should come in all Miracles of deception and lying that is with true or false Miracles to perswade a lie and this was to prejudice his being accepted according to the Law of Moses So that as all that spake of Christ bade us believe him for the Miracles so all that foretold of Antichrist bade us disbelieve him the rather for his and the reason of both is the same because the mighty and surer word of Prophecy as S. Peter calls it being the greatest testimony in the world of a Divine principle gives authority or reprobates with the same power They who are the predestinate of God and they that are the praesciti the foreknown and marked people must needs stand or fall to the Divine sentence and such must this be acknowledged for no enemy of the Cross not the Devil himself ever foretold such a contingency or so rare so personal so voluntary so unnatural an event as this of the great Antichrist 12. And thus the Holy Jesus having shewed forth the treasures of his Father's Wisdom in Revelations and holy Precepts and upon the stock of his Father's greatness having dispended and demonstrated great power in Miracles and these being instanced in acts of Mercy he mingled the glories of Heaven to transmit them to earth to raise us up to the participations of Heaven he was pleased by healing the bodies of infirm persons to invite their spirits to his Discipline and by his power to convey healing and by that mercy to lead us into the treasures of revelation that both Bodies and Souls our Wills and Understandings by Divine instruments might be brought to Divine perfections in the participations of a Divine nature It was a miraculous mercy that God should look upon us in our bloud and a miraculous condescension that his Son should take our nature and even this favour we could not believe without many Miracles and so contrary was our condition to all possibilities of happiness that if Salvation had not marched to us all the way in Miracle we had perished in the ruines of a sad eternity And now it would be but reasonable that since God for our sakes hath rescinded so many laws of natural establishment we also for his and for our own would be content to do violence to those natural inclinations which are also criminal when they derive into action Every man living in the state of Grace is a perpetual Miracle and his Passions are made reasonable as his Reason is turned to Faith and his Soul to Spirit and his Body to a Temple and Earth to Heaven and less than this will not dispose us to such glories which being the portion of Saints and Angels and the nearest communications with God are infinitely above what we see or hear or understand The PRAYER O Eternal Jesu who didst receive great power that by it thou mightest convey thy Father's mercies to us impotent and wretched people give me grace to believe that heavenly Doctrine which thou didst ratifie with arguments from above that I may fully assent to all those mysterious Truths which integrate that Doctrine and Discipline in which the obligations of my duty and the hopes of my felicity are deposited And to all those glorious verifications of thy Goodness and thy Power add also this Miracle that I who am stained with Leprosie of sin may be cleansed and my eyes may be opened that I may see the wondrous things of thy Law and raise thou me up from the death of sin to the life of righteousness that I may for ever walk in the land of the living abhorring the works of death and darkness that as I am by thy miraculous mercy partaker of the first so also I may be accounted worthy of the second Resurrection and as by Faith Hope Charity and Obedience I receive the fruit of thy Miracles in this life so in the other I may partake of thy Glories which is a mercy above all Miracles Lord if thou wilt thou canst make me clean Lord I believe help mine unbelief and grant that no 〈◊〉 or incapacity of mine may hinder the wonderful operations of thy Grace but let it be thy first Miracle to turn my water into wine my barrenness into fruitfulness my aversations from thee into unions and intimate adhesions to thy infinity which is the fountain of mercy and power Grant this for thy mercie 's sake and for the honour of those glorious Attributes in which thou hast revealed thy self and thy Father's excellencies to the world O Holy and Eternal Jesu Amen The End of the Second Part. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 THE HISTORY OF THE Life and Death OF THE HOLY JESUS BEGINNING At the Second Year of his PREACHING until his ASCENSION WITH CONSIDERATIONS and DISCOURSES upon the several parts of the Story And PRAYERS fitted to the several MYSTERIES THE THIRD PART Seneca apud Lactant. lib. 6. c. 17. Hic est ille homo qui sive toto corpore tormenta patienda sunt sive flamma ore recipienda est sive extendenda per patibulum manus non quaerit quid patiatur sed quà m bene LONDON Printed by R. Norton for R. Royston 1675 TO The Right Honourable and Vertuous Lady The LADY FRANCES Countess of CARBERY MADAM SInce the Divine Providence hath been pleased to bind up the great breaches of my little fortune by your Charity and Nobleness of a religious tenderness I account it an excellent circumstance and handsomeness of condition that I have the fortune of S. Athanasius to have my Persecution relieved and comforted by an Honourable and Excellent Lady and I have nothing to return for this honour done to me but to do as the poor Paralyticks and infirm people in the Gospel did when our Blessed Saviour cured them they went and told it to all the Countrey and made the Vicinage full of the report as themselves were of health and joy And although I know the modesty of your person and Religion had rather do favours than own them yet give me leave to draw aside the curtain and retirement of your Charity for I had rather your vertue should blush than my unthankfulness make me ashamed Madam I intended by this Address not onely to return you spirituals for
material and circumstantiate actions of Piety For these have great powers and influences even in Nature to restore health and preserve our lives Witness the sweet sleeps of temperate persons and their constant appetite which Timotheus the son of Conon observed when he dieted in Plato's Academy with severe and moderated diet They that sup with Plato are well the next day Witness the symmetry of passions in meek men their freedome from the violence of inraged and passionate indispositions the admirable harmony and sweetness of content which dwells in the retirements of a holy Conscience to which if we add those joys which they only understand truly who feel them inwardly the joys of the Holy Ghost the content and joys which are attending upon the lives of holy persons are most likely to make them long and healthful For now we live saith S. Paul if ye stand fast in the Lord. It would prolong S. Paul's life to see his ghostly children persevere in holiness and if we understood the joys of it it would do much greater advantage to our selves But if we consider a spiritual life abstractedly and in it self Piety produces our life not by a natural efficiency but by Divine benediction God gives a healthy and a long life as a reward and blessing to crown our Piety even before the sons of men For such as be blessed of him shall inherit the Earth but they that be cursed of him shall be cut off So that this whole matter is principally to be referred to the act of God either by ways of nature or by instruments of special providence rewarding Piety with a long life And we shall more fully apprehend this if upon the grounds of Scripture Reason and Experience we weigh the contrary Wickedness is the way to shorten our days 19. Sin brought Death in first and yet Man lived almost a thousand years But he sinned more and then Death came nearer to him for when all the World was first drowned in wickedness and then in water God cut him shorter by one half and five hundred years was his ordinary period And Man sinned still and had strange imaginations and built towers in the air and then about Peleg's time God cut him shorter by one half yet two hundred and odd years was his determination And yet the generations of the World returned not unanimously to God and God cut him off another half yet and reduced him to one hundred and twenty years And by Moses's time one half of the final remanent portion was pared away reducing him to threescore years and ten so that unless it be by special dispensation men live not beyond that term or thereabout But if God had gone on still in the same method and shortned our days as we multiplied our sins we should have been but as an Ephemeron Man should have lived the life of a Fly or a Gourd the morning should have seen his birth his life have been the term of a day and the evening must have provided him of a shroud But God seeing Man's thoughts were onely evil continually he was resolved no longer so to strive with him nor destroy the kinde but punish individuals onely and single persons and if they sinned or if they did obey regularly their life should be proportionable This God set down for his rule Evil shall 〈◊〉 the wicked person and He that keepeth the Commandments keepeth his own Soul but he that despiseth his own ways shall die 20. But that we may speak more exactly in this Probleme we must observe that in Scripture three general causes of natural death are assigned Nature Providence and Chance By these three I onely mean the several manners of Divine influence and operation For God only predetermines and what is changed in the following events by Divine permission to this God and Man in their several manners do cooperate The saying of David concerning Saul with admirable Philosophy describes the three ways of ending Man's life David said furthermore As the LORD liveth the LORD shall smite him or his day shall come to die or he shall descend into battel and perish The first is special Providence The second means the term of Nature The third is that which in our want of words we call Chance or Accident but is in effect nothing else but another manner of the Divine Providence That in all these Sin does interrupt and retrench our lives is the undertaking of the following periods 21. First In Nature Sin is a cause of dyscrasies and distempers making our bodies healthless and our days few For although God hath prefixed a period to Nature by an universal and antecedent determination and that naturally every man that lives temperately and by no supervening accident is interrupted shall arrive thither yet because the greatest part of our lives is governed by will and understanding and there are temptations to Intemperance and to violations of our health the period of Nature is so distinct a thing from the period of our person that few men attain to that which God had fixed by his first law and 〈◊〉 purpose but end their days with folly and in a period which God appointed 〈◊〉 with anger and a determination secondary consequent and accidental And therefore says David Health is far from the 〈◊〉 for they regard not thy statutes And to this purpose is that saying of Abenezra He that is united to God the Fountain of Life his Soul being improved by Grace communicates to the Body an establishment of its radical moisture and natural heat to make it more healthful that so it may be more instrumental to the spiritual operations and productions of the Soul and it self be preserved in perfect constitution Now how this blessing is contradicted by the impious life of a wicked person is easie to be understood if we consider that from drunken Surfeits come Dissolution of members Head-achs Apoplexies dangerous Falls Fracture of bones Drenchings and dilution of the brain Inslammation of the liver Crudities of the stomach and thousands more which Solomen sums up in general terms Who hath woe who hath sorrow who hath redness of eyes they that tarry long at the 〈◊〉 I shall not need to instance in the sad and uncleanly consequents of Lusts the wounds and accidental deaths which are occasioned by Jealousies by Vanity by Peevishness vain Reputation and Animosities by Melancholy and the despair of evil Consciences and yet these are abundant argument that when God so permits a man to run his course of Nature that himself does not intervene by an extraordinary 〈◊〉 or any special acts of providence but only gives his ordinary assistence to natural causes a very great part of men make their natural period shorter and by sin make their days miserable and few 22. Secondly Oftentimes Providence intervenes and makes the way shorter God for the iniquity of man not suffering Nature to take her course but stopping
galled with the iron at his heels and nailed even before his Crucifixion But this and the other accidents of his journey and their malice so crushed his wounded tender and virginal body that they were forced to lay the load upon a Cyrenian fearing that he should die with less shame and smart than they intended him But so he was pleased to take man unto his aid not only to represent his own need and the dolorousness of his Passion but to consign the duty unto man that we must enter into a 〈◊〉 of Christ's sufferings taking up the Cross of Martyrdom when God requires us enduring affronts being patient under affliction loving them that hate us and being benefactors to our enemies abstaining from sensual and intemperate delight forbidding to our selves lawful festivities and recreations of our weariness when we have an end of the spirit to serve upon the ruines of the bodie 's strength mortifying our desires breaking our own will not seeking our selves being entirely resigned to God These are the Cross and the Nails and the Spear and the Whip and all the instruments of a Christian's Passion And we may consider that every man in this world shall in some sence or other bear a Cross few men escape it and it is not well with them that do but they only bear it well that 〈◊〉 Christ and tread in his steps and bear it for his sake and walk as he walked and he that follows his own desires when he meets with a cross there as it is certain enough he will bears the cross of his Concupiscence and that hath no fellowship with the Cross of Christ. By the Precept of bearing the Cross we are not tied to pull evil upon our selves that we may imitate our Lord in nothing but in being afflicted or to personate the punitive exercises of Mortification and severe Abstinencies which were eminent in some Saints and to which they had special assistances as others had the gift of Chastity and for which they had special reason and as they apprehended some great necessities but it is required that we bear our own Cross so said our dearest Lord. For when the Cross of Christ is laid upon us and we are called to Martyrdom then it is our own because God made it to be our portion and when by the necessities of our spirit and the rebellion of our body we need exteriour mortifications and acts of self-denial then also it is our own cross because our needs have made it so and so it is when God sends us sickness or any other calamity what-ever is either an effect of our ghostly needs or the condition of our temporal estate it calls for our sufferance and patience and equanimity for therefore Christ hath suffered for us saith S. Peter leaving us an example that we should follow his steps who bore his Cross as long as he could and when he could no longer he murmured not but sank under it and then he was content to receive such aid not which he chose himself but such as was assigned him 3. Jesus was led out of the gates of Jerusalem that he might become the sacrifice for persons without the pale even for all the world And the daughters of Jerusalem followed him with pious tears till they came to Calvary a place difficult in the ascent eminent and apt for the publication of shame a hill of death and dead bones polluted and impure and there beheld him stript naked who cloaths the field with flowers and all the world with robes and the whole globe with the canopy of Heaven and so dress'd that now every circumstance was a triumph By his Disgrace he trampled upon our Pride by his Poverty and nakedness he triumphed over our Covetousness and love of riches and by his Pains chastised the Delicacies of our flesh and broke in pieces the fetters of Concupiscence For as soon as Adam was clothed he quitted Paradise and Jesus was made naked that he might bring us in again And we also must be despoil'd of all our exteriour adherencies that we may pass through the regions of duty and divine love to a society of blessed spirits and a clarified immortal and beatified estate 4. There they nailed Jesus with four nails fixed his Cross in the ground which with its fall into the place of its station gave infinite torture by so violent a concussion of the body of our Lord which rested upon nothing but four great wounds where he was designed to suffer a long and lingring torment For Crucifixion as it was an excellent pain sharp and passionate so it was not of quick effect towards taking away the life S. Andrew was two whole days upon the Cross and some Martyrs have upon the Cross been rather starved and devoured with birds than killed with the proper torment of the tree But Jesus took all his Passion with a voluntary susception God heightning it to the great degrees of torment supernaturally and he laid down his life voluntarily when his Father's wrath was totally appeased towards mankind 5. Some have phansied that Christ was pleased to take something from every condition of which Man ever was or shall be possessed taking Immunity from sin from Adam's state of Innocence Punishment and misery from the state of Adam fallen the fulness of Grace from the state of Renovation and perfect Contemplation of the Divinity and beatifick joys from the state of Comprehension and the blessedness of Heaven meaning that the Humanity of our Blessed Saviour did in the sharpest agony of his Passion behold the face of God and communicate in glory But I consider that although the two Natures of Christ were knit by a mysterious union into one Person yet the Natures still retain their incommunicable properties Christ as God is not subject to sufferings as a man he is the subject of miseries as God he is eternal as man mortal and commensurable by time as God the supreme Law-giver as man most humble and obedient to the Law and therefore that the Humane nature was united to the Divine it does not infer that it must in all instances partake of the Divine felicities which in God are essential to man communicated without necessity and by an arbitrary dispensation Add to this that some vertues and excellencies were in the Soul of Christ which could not consist with the state of glorified and beatified persons such as are Humility Poverty of spirit Hope Holy desires all which having their seat in the Soul suppose even in the supremest 〈◊〉 a state of pilgrimage that is a condition which is imperfect and in order to something beyond its present For therefore Christ ought to suffer saith our Blessed Lord himself and so enter into his glory And S. Paul affirms that we see Jesus made a little lower than the Angels for the suffering of death 〈◊〉 with glory and honour And again Christ humbled himself and became obedient unto
following APPARATUS is only to present the Reader with a short Scheme of the state of things in the preceding periods of the Church to let him see by what degrees and measures the Evangelical state was introduc'd and what Methods God in all Ages made use of to conduct Mankind in the paths of Piety and Vertue In the Infancy of the World he taught men by the Dictates of Nature and the common Notices of Good and Evil 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Philo calls them the most Ancient Law by lively Oracles and great Examples of Piety He set forth the Holy Patriarchs as Chrysostom observes as Tutors to the rest of Mankind who by their Religious lives might train up others to the practice of Vertue and as Physicians be able to cure the minds of those who were infected and overrun with Vice Afterwards says he having sufficiently testified his care of their welfare and happiness by many instances of a wise and benign Providence towards them both in the land of Canaan and in Egypt he gave them Prophets and by them wrought Signs and Wonders together with innumerable other expressions of his bounty At last finding that none of these Methods did succeed not Patriarchs not Prophets not Miracles not daily Warnings and Chastisements brought upon the World he gave the last and highest instance of his love and goodness to Mankind he sent his only begotten Son out of his own bosom 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the great Physician both of Soul and Body who taking upon him the form of a Servant and being born of a Virgin conversed in the World and bore our sorrows and infirmities that by rescuing Humane Nature from under the weight and burden of Sin he might exalt it to Eternal Life A brief account of these things is the main intent of the following Discourse wherein the Reader will easily see that I considered not what might but what was fit to be said with respect to the end I designed it for It was drawn up under some more disadvantageous circumstances than a matter of this nature did require which were it worth the while to represent to the Reader might possibly plead for a softer Censure However such as it is it is submitted to the Readers Ingenuity and Candor W. C. IMPRIMATUR THO. TOMKYNS Ex AEd. Lambeth Feb. 25. 1674. AN APPARATUS OR Discourse Introductory TO THE Whole WORK concerning the Three Great Dispensations OF THE CHURCH PATRIARCHAL MOSAICAL and EVANGELICAL SECT I. Of the PATRIARCHAL Dispensation The Tradition of Elias The three great Periods of the Church The Patriarchal Age. The Laws then in force natural or positive Natural Laws what evinced from the testimony of natural conscience The 〈◊〉 Precepts of the Sons of Noah Their respect to the Law of Nature Positive Laws under that dispensation Eating Blood why prohibited The mystery and signification of it Circumcision when commanded and why The Laws concerning Religion Their publick Worship what Sacrifices in what sence natural and how far instituted The manner of God's testifying his acceptance What the place of their publick Worship Altars and Groves whence Abraham's Oke its long continuance and destruction by Constantine The Original of the Druids The times of their religious Assemblies In process of time Genes 4. what meant by it The Seventh Day whether kept from the beginning The Ministers of Religion who The Priesthood of the first-born In what cases exercised by younger Sons The state of Religion successively under the several Patriarchs The condition of it in Adam's Family The Sacrifices of Cain and Abel and their different success whence Seth his great Learning and Piety The face of the Church in the time of Enosh What meant by Then began Men to call upon the Name of the Lord. No Idolatry before the Flood The Sons of God who The great corruption of Religion in the time of Jared Enoch's Piety and walking with God His translation what The incomparable sanctity of Noah and his strictness in an evil Age. The character of the men of that time His preservation from the Deluge God's Covenant with him Sem or 〈◊〉 whether the Elder Brother The confusion of Languages when and why Abraham's Idolatry and conversion His eminency for Religion noted in the several instances of it God's Covenant with him concerning the Messiah The Piety of Isaac and Jacob. Jacob's blessing the twelve Tribes and foretelling the Messiah Patriarchs extraordinary under this dispensation Melchisedeck who wherein a type of Christ. Job his Name Country Kindred Quality Religion Sufferings when he lived A reflection upon the religion of the old World and its agreement with Christianity GOD who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past to the Fathers by the Prophets hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son For having created Man for the noblest purposes to love serve and enjoy his Maker he was careful in all Ages by various Revelations of his Will to acquaint him with the notices of his duty and to shew him what was good and what the Lord did require of him till all other Methods proving weak and ineffectual for the recovery and the happiness of humane nature God was pleased to crown all the former dispensations with the Revelation of his Son There is among the Jews an ancient Tradition of the House of Elias that the World should last Six Thousand Years which they thus compute 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Two Thousand Years empty little being recorded of those first Ages of the World Two Thousand Years the Law and Two Thousand the Days of the Messiah A Tradition which if it minister to no other purposes does yet afford us a very convenient division of the several Ages and Periods of the Church which may be considered under a three-fold Oeconomy the Patriarchal Mosaical and Evangelical dispensation A short view of the two former will give us great advantage to survey the later that new and better dispensation which God has made to the World 2. THE Patriarchal Age 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as the Jews call it the days of emptiness commenced from the beginning of the World and lasted till the delivery of the Law upon Mount Sinai And under this state the Laws which God gave for the exercise of Religion and the Government of his Church were either Natural or Positive Natural Laws are those innate Notions and Principles whether speculative or practical with which every Man is born into the World those common sentiments of Vertue and Religion those Principia justi decori Principles of fit and right that naturally are upon the minds of Men and are obvious to their reason at first sight commanding what is just and honest and forbidding what is evil and uncomely and that not only in the general that what is good is to be embraced and what is evil to be avoided but in the particular instances of duty according to their conformity or repugnancy
Opinions some making him contemporary with Abraham others with Jacob which had he been we should doubtless have found some mention of him in their story as well as we do of 〈◊〉 others again refer him to the time of the Law given at Mount Sinai and the Israelites travels in the Wilderness others to the times of the Judges after the settlement of the Israelites in the Land of Promise nay some to the reign of David and Solomon and I know not whether the Reader will not smile at the fancy of the Turkish Chronologists who make Job Major-domo to Solomon as they make Alexander the Great the General of his Army Others go further and place him among those that were carried away in the Pabylonish Captivity yea in the time of Ahasuerus and make his fair Daughters to be of the number of those beautiful young Virgins that were sought-for for the King Follies that need no confutation 'T is certain that he was elder than Moses his Kindred and Family his way of sacrificing the Idolatry rise in his time evidently placing him before that Age besides that there are not the least foot-steps in all his Book of any of the great things done for the 〈◊〉 deliverance which we can hardly suppose should have been omitted being examples so fresh in memory and so apposite to the design of that Book Most probable therefore it is that he lived about the time of the Israelitish Captivity in Egypt though whether as some Jews will have it born that very Year that Jacob came down into Egypt and dying that Year that they went out of Egypt I dare not peremptorily affirm And this no question is the reason why we find nothing concerning him in the Writings of Moses the History of those Times being crowded up into a very little room little being recorded even of the Israelites themselves for near Two Hundred Years more than in general that they were heavily oppressed under the Egyptian Yoke More concerning this great and good Man and the things relating to him if the Reader desire to know he may among others consult the elaborate exercitations of the younger 〈◊〉 in his Historia Jobi where the largest curiosity may find enough to satisfie it 22. AND now for a Conclusion to this Occonomy if we reflect a little upon the state of things under this period of the World we shall find that the Religion of those 〈◊〉 Ages was plain and simple unforced and natural and highly agreeable to the common dictates and notions of Mens minds They were not educated under any forreign Institutions nor conducted by a Body of numerous Laws and written Constitutions but were 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Philo calls them tutor'd and instructed by the dictates of their own minds and the Principles of that Law that was written in their hearts following the order of Nature and right Reason as the safest and most ancient Rule By which means as one of the Ancients observes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 they maintained a free and uninterrupted course of Religion conducting their lives according to the rules of Nature so that having purged their minds from lust and passion and attained to the true knowledge of God they had no need of external and written Laws Their Creed was short and perspicuous their notions of God great and venerable their devotion and piety real and substantial their worship grave and serious and such as became the grandeur and majesty of the Divine being their Rites and Ceremonies few and proper their obedience prompt and sincere and indeed the whole conduct of their conversation discovering it self in the most essential and important duties of the humane life According to this standard it was that our blessed Saviour mainly designed to reform Religion in his most excellent Institutions to retrieve the piety and purity the innocency and simplicity of those 〈◊〉 and more uncorrupted Ages of the World to improve the Laws of Nature and to reduce Mankind from ritual observances to natural and moral duties as the most vital and essential parts of Religion and was therefore pleased to charge Christianity with no more than two positive Institutions Baptism and the Lord's Supper that Men might learn that the main of Religion lies not in such things as these Hence Eusebius undertakes at large to prove the faith and manners of the Holy Patriarchs who lived before the times of Moses and the belief and practice of Christians to be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 one and the same Which he does not only assert and make good in general but deduce from particular instances the examples of Enoch Noah Abraham Melchisedeck Job c. whom he expresly proves to have believed and lived 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 altogether after the manner of Christians Nay that they had the name also as well as the thing 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as he shews from that place which he proves to be meant of Abraham Isaac and Jacob 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Touch not my Christians mine Anointed and do my Prophets no harm And in short that as they had the same common Religion so they had the common blessing and reward SECT II. Of the MOSAICAL Dispensation Moses the Minister of this Oeconomy His miraculous preservation His learned and noble education The Divine temper of his mind His conducting the Israelites out of Egypt Their arrival at Mount Sinai The Law given and how Moral Laws the Decalogue whether a perfect Compendium of the Moral Law The Ceremonial Laws what Reduced to their proper Heads Such as concerned the matter of their Worship Sacrifices and the several kinds of them Circumcision The Passover and its typical relation The place of Publick Worship The Tabernacle and Temple and the several parts of them and their typical aspects considered Their stated times and 〈◊〉 weekly monthly annual The Sabbatical Year The Year of Jubilee Laws concerning the Persons ministring Priests Levites the High-Priest how a type of Christ. The Design of the Ceremonial Law and its abolition The Judicial Laws what The Mosaick Law how divided by the Jews into affirmative and negative Precepts and why The several ways of Divine revelation Urim and Thummim what and the manner of its giving Answers Bath-Col Whether any such way of revelation among the Jews Revelation by Dreams By Visions The Revelation of the Holy Spirit what Moses his way of Prophecy wherein exceeding the rest The pacate way of the spirit of prophecy This spirit when it ceased in the Jewish Church The state of the Church under this Dispensation briefly noted From the giving of the Law till Samuel From Samuel till Solomon It s condition under the succeeding Kings till the Captivity From thence till the coming of Christ. The state of the Jewish Church in the time of Christ more particularly considered The prophanations of the Temple The Corruption of their Worship The abuse of the Priesthood The Depravation of the Law by false glosses
up the Cross and laying down our lives whenever the honour of God and the interest of Religion calls for it he not only commands us to do no wrong but when we have done it to make restitution not only to retrench our irregular appetites but to cut off our right hand and pluck out our right eye and cast them from us that is mortifie and offer violence to those vicious inclinations which are as dear to us as the most useful and necessary parts and members of our body Besides all this had God intended the Decalogue for a perfect summary of the Laws of Nature we cannot suppose that he would have taken any but such into the collection whereas the Fourth Commandment concerning the Seventh day is unquestionably Typical and Ceremonial and has nothing more of a Natural and Eternal obligation in it than that God should be served and honoured both with publick and private worship which cannot be done without some portions of time set apart for it But that this should be done just at such a time and by such proportions upon the Seventh rather than the Sixth or the Eighth day is no part of natural Religion And indeed the reasons and arguments that are annexed to it to enforce the observance of it clearly shew that it is of a later date and of another nature than the rest of those Precepts in whose company we find it though it seems at first sight to pass without any peculiar note of discrimination from the rest As for the rest they are Laws of Eternal righteousness and did not derive their value and authority from the Divine sanction which God here gave them at Mount Sinai but from their own moral and internal goodness and equity being founded in the nature of things and the essential and unchangeable differences of good and evil By which means they always were always will be obligatory and indispensable being as Eternal and Immutable as the nature of God himself 5. THE second sort of Laws were Ceremonial Divine Constitutions concerning Ritual observances and matters of Ecclesiastical cognizance and relation and were instituted for a double end partly for the more orderly government of the Church and the more decent administration of the worship of God partly that they might be types and figures of the Evangelical state Shadows of good things to come visible and symbolical representments of the Messiah and those great blessings and priviledges which he was to introduce into the World which doubtless was the reason why God was so infinitely punctual and particular in his directions about these matters giving orders about the minutest circumstances of the Temple ministration because every part of it had a glance at a future and better state of things The number of them was great and the observation burdensom the whole Nation groaning under the servility of that yoke They were such as principally related to God's worship and may be reduced either to such as concerned the worship it self or the circumstances of time place and persons that did attend it Their worship consisted chiefly in three things Prayers Sacrifices and Sacraments Prayers were daily put up together with their Offerings and though we have very few Constitutions concerning them yet the constant practice of that Church and the particular forms of Prayer yet extant in their writings are a sufficient evidence Sacrifices were the constant and most solemn part of their publick worship yea they had their 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 their continual burnt-offering a Lamb offered Morning and Evening with a Measure of Flower Oil and Wine the charge whereof was defrayed out of the Treasury of the Temple The rest of their Sacrifices may be considered either as they were Expiatory or Eucharistical Expiatory were those that were offered as an atonement for the sins of the people to 〈◊〉 the Divine displeasure and to procure his pardon which they did by vertue of their Typical relation to that great Sacrifice which the Son of God was in the fulness of time to offer up for the sins of the World They were either of a more general relation for the expiation of sin in general whole burnt-offerings which were intirely the skin and the entrails only excepted burnt to ashes or of a more private and particular concernment designed for the redemption of particular offences whereof there were two sorts 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or the sin-offering for involuntary offences committed through errour or ignorance which according to the condition and capacity of the Person were either for the Priest or the Prince or the whole Body of the People or a private Person The other 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or the trespass-offering for sins done wittingly studied and premeditated transgressions and which the Man could not pretend to be the effects of surprize or chance Eucharistical Sacrifices were testimonies of gratitude to God for mercies received whereof three sorts especially 1. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or the meat-offering made up of things without life oyl fine flower incense c. which the worshipper offered as a thankful return for the daily preservation and provisions of life and therefore it consisted only of the fruits of the ground 2. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or the peace-offering this was done either out of a grateful sense of some blessing conferred or as a voluntary offering to which the Person had obliged himself by vow in expectation of some safety or deliverance which he had prayed for In this Sacrifice God had his part the fat which was the only part of it burnt by fire the Priest his as the instrument of the ministration the Offerer his that he might have wherewith to rejoyce before the Lord. 3. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a thanksgivingoffering or a Sacrifice of praise it was a mixt kind of Sacrifice consisting of living Creatures and the fruits of the Earth which they might offer at their own will but it must be eaten the same day and none of it left until the morrow What other provisions we meet with concerning ceremonial uncleannesses first-fruits the first-born tenths c. are conveniently reducible to some of these heads which we have already mentioned The last part of their worship concerned their Sacraments which were two Circumcision and the Paschal Supper Circumcision was the federal Rite annexed by God as a Seal to the Covenant which he made with Abraham and his Posterity and accordingly renewed and taken into the Body of the Mosaical constitutions It was to be administred the eighth day which the Jews understand not of so many days compleat but the current time six full days and part of the other In the room of this Baptism succeeds in the Christian Church The Passover which was the eating of the Paschal Lamb was instituted as an Annual memorial of their signal and miraculous deliverance out of Egypt and as a typical representation of our spiritual Redemption by Christ from the bondage of sin and that
Holy Jesus perfected and restored the natural Law and drew it into a System of Propositions and made them to become of the family of Religion For God is so zealous to have Man attain to the End to which he first designed him that those things which he hath put in the natural order to attain that End he hath bound fast upon us not only by the order of things by which it was that he that prevaricated did naturally fall short of Felicity but also by bands of Religion he hath now made himself a party and an enemy to those that will be not-happy Of old Religion was but one of the natural Laws and the instances of Religion were distinct from the discourses of Philosophy Now all the Law of Nature is adopted into Religion and by our love and duty to God we are tied to do all that is reason and the parts of our Religion are but pursuances of the natural relation between God and us and beyond all this our natural condition is in all sences improved by the consequents and adherencies of this Religion For although Nature and Grace are opposite that is Nature depraved by evil habits by ignorance and ungodly customs is contrary to Grace that is to Nature restored by the Gospel engaged to regular living by new revelations and assisted by the Spirit yet it is observable that the Law of Nature and the Law of Grace are never opposed There is a Law of our members saith S. Paul that is an evil necessity introduced into our appetites by perpetual evil customs examples and traditions of vanity and there is a Law of sin that answers to this and they differ only as inclination and habit vicious desires and vicious practices But then contrary to these are 〈◊〉 a Law of my mind which is the Law of Nature and right Reason and then the Law of Grace that is of Jesus Christ who perfected and restored the first Law and by assistances reduced it into a Law of holy living and these two 〈◊〉 as the other the one is in order to the other as 〈◊〉 and growing degrees and capacities are to perfection and consummation The Law of the mind had been so rased and obliterate and we by some means or other so disabled from observing it exactly that until it was turned into the Law of Grace which is a Law of pardoning infirmities and assisting us in our choices and elections we were in a state of deficiency from the perfective state of Man to which God intended us 37. Now although God always designed Man to the same state which he hath now revealed by Jesus Christ yet he told him not of it and his permissions and licences were then greater and the Law it self lay closer 〈◊〉 up in the compact body of necessary Propositions in order to so much of his End as was known or could be supposed But now according to the extension of the revelation the Law it self is made wider that is more explicit and natural Reason is thrust forward into discourses of Charity and benefit and we tied to do very much good to others and tied to cooperate to each other's felicity 38. That the Law of Charity is a Law of Nature needs no other argument but the consideration of the first constitution of Man The first instances of Justice or entercourse of man with a second or third person were to such persons towards whom he had the greatest endearments of affection in the world a 〈◊〉 and Children and Justice and Charity at first was the same thing And it hath obtained in Ages far removed from the first that Charity is called Righteousness He hath dispersed and given to the poor his righteousness remaineth for ever And it is certain Adam could not in any instance be unjust but he must in the same also be uncharitable the band of his first Justice being the ties of love and all having commenced in love And our Blessed Lord restoring all to the intention of the first perfection expresses it to the same sence as I formerly observed Justice to our Neighbour is loving him as our selves For since Justice obliges us to do as we would be done to as the irascible faculty restrains us 〈◊〉 doing evil for fear of receiving evil so the concupiscible obliges us to Charity that our selves may receive good 39. I shall say nothing concerning the reasonableness of this Precept but that it concurs rarely with the first reasonable appetite of man of being like God Deus est mortali juvare mortalem 〈◊〉 haec est ad aeternitatem via said Pliny and It is more blessed to give than to receive said our Blessed Saviour And therefore the Commandment of Charity in all its parts is a design not only to reconcile the most miserable person to some participations and sense of felicity but to make the Charitable man happy and whether this be not very agreeable to the desires of an intelligent nature needs no farther enquiry And Aristotle asking the Question whether a man had more need of friends in prosperity or adversity makes the case equal 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 When they are in want they need assistance when they are prosperous they need partners of their felicity that by communicating their joy to them it may reflect and double upon their spirits And certain it is there is no greater felicity in the world than in the content that results from the emanations of Charity And this is that which S. John calls the old Commandment and the new Commandment It was of old for it was from the beginning even in Nature and to the offices of which our very bodies had an organ and a seat for therefore Nature gave to a man bowels and the passion of yerning but it grew up into Religion by parts and was made perfect and in that degree appropriate to the Law of Jesus Christ. For so the Holy Jesus became our Law-giver and added many new Precepts over and above what were in the Law of Moses but not more than was in the Law of Nature The reason of both is what I have all this while discoursed of Christ made a more perfect restitution of the Law of Nature than Moses did and so it became the second Adam to consummate that which began to be less perfect from the prevarication of the first Adam 40. A particular of the Precept of Charity is forgiving Injuries and besides that it hath many superinduced benefits by way of blessing and reward it relies also upon this natural reason That a pure and a simple revenge does no way restore man towards the felicity which the injury did interrupt For Revenge is a doing a simple evil and does not in its formality imply reparation For the mere repeating of our own right is permitted to them that will do it by charitable instruments and to secure my self or the publick against the future by positive inflictions upon
look upon my miseries thy holy Hands be stretched out to my relief and succour let some of those precious distilling Tears which nature and thy compassion and thy Sufferings did cause to distill and drop from those sacred fontinels water my stony heart and make it soft apt for the impressions of a melting obedient and corresponding love and moisten mine eyes that I may upon thy stock of pity and weeping mourn for my sins that so my tears and sorrows being drops of water coming from that holy Rock may indeed be united unto thine and made precious by such holy mixtures Amen 3. BLessed Jesus now that thou hast sanctified and exalted Humane nature and made even my Body precious by a personal uniting it to the Divinity teach me so reverently to account of it that I may not dare to prophane it with impure lusts or caitive affections and unhallow that ground where thy holy feet have troden Give to me ardent desires and efficacious prosecutions of these holy effects which thou didst design for us in thy Nativity and other parts of our Redemption give me great confidence in thee which thou hast encouraged by the exhibition of so glorious favours great sorrow and confusion of face at the sight of mine own imperfections and estrangements and great distances from thee and the perfections of thy Soul and bring me to thee by the strictnesses of a Zealous and affectionate imitation of those Sanctities which next to the hypostatical Union added lustre and excellency to thy Humanity that I may live here with thee in the expresses of a holy life and die with thee by mortification and an unwearied patience and reign with thee in immortal glories world without end Amen DISCOURSE I. Of Nursing Children in imitation of the Blessed Virgin-Mother 1. THese later Ages of the world have declined into a Softness above the effeminacy of Asian Princes and have contracted customes which those innocent and healthful days of our Ancestors knew not whose Piety was natural whose Charity was operative whose Policy was just and valiant and whose Oeconomy was sincere and proportionable to the dispositions and requisites of Nature And in this particular the good women of old gave one of their instances the greatest personages nurst their own Children did the work of Mothers and thought it was unlikely women should become vertuous by ornaments and superadditions of Morality who did decline the laws and prescriptions of Nature whose principles supply us with the first and most common rules of Manners and more perfect actions In imitation of whom and especially of the Virgin Mary who was Mother and Nurse to the Holy Jesus I shall endeavour to correct those softnesses and unnatural rejections of Children which are popular up to a custom and fashion even where no necessities of Nature or just Reason can make excuse 2. And I cannot think the Question despicable and the Duty of meanest consideration although it be specified in an office of small esteem and suggested to us by the principles of Reason and not by express sanctions of Divinity For although other actions are more perfect and spiritual yet this is more natural and humane other things being superadded to a full Duty rise higher but this builds stronger and is like a part of the foundation having no lustre but much strength and however the others are full of ornament yet this hath in it some degrees of necessity and possibly is with more danger and irregularity omitted than actions which spread their leaves fairer and look more gloriously 3. First here I consider that there are many sins in the scene of the Body and the matter of Sobriety which are highly criminal and yet the Laws of God expressed in Scripture name them not but men are taught to distinguish them by that Reason which is given us by nature and is imprinted in our understanding in order to the conservation of humane kind For since every creature hath something in it sufficient to propagate the kind and to conserve the individuals from perishing in confusions and general disorders which in Beasts we call Instinct that is an habitual or prime disposition to do certain things which are proportionable to the End whither it is designed Man also if he be not more imperfect must have the like and because he knows and makes reflexions upon his own acts and understands the reason of it that which in them is Instinct in him is natural Reason which is a desire to preserve himself and his own kind and differs from Instinct because he understands his Instinct and the reasonableness of it and they do not But Man being a higher thing even in the order of creation and designed to a more noble End in his animal capacity his Argumentative Instinct is larger than the Natural Instinct of Beasts for he hath Instincts in him in order to the conservation of Society and therefore hath Principles that is he hath natural desires to it for his own good and because he understands them they are called Principles and Laws of Nature but are no other than what I have now declared for Beasts do the same things we do and have many the same inclinations which in us are the Laws of Nature even all which we have in order to our common End But that which in Beasts is Nature and an impulsive force in us must be duty and an inviting power we must do the same things with an actual or habitual designation of that End to which God designs Beasts supplying by his wisdom their want of understanding and then what is mere Nature in them in us is Natural reason And therefore Marriage in men is made sacred when the mixtures of other creatures are so merely natural that they are not capable of being vertuous because men are bound to intend that End which God made And this with the superaddition of other Ends of which Marriage is representative in part and in part effective does consecrate Marriage and makes it holy and mysterious But then there are in marriage many duties which we are taught by Instinct that is by that Reason whereby we understand what are the best means to promote the End which we have assigned us And by these Laws all unnatural mixtures are made unlawful and the decencies which are to be observed in Marriage are prescribed us by this 4. Secondly Upon the supposition of this Discourse I consider again that although to observe this Instinct or these Laws of Nature in which I now have instanced be no great vertue in any eminency of degree as no man is much commended for not killing himself or for not degenerating into beastly Lusts yet to prevaricate some of these Laws may become almost the greatest sin in the world And therefore although to live according to Nature be a testimony fit to give to a sober and a temperate man and rises no higher yet to do an action against Nature is the greatest
dishonour and impiety in the world I mean of actions whose scene lies in the Body and disentitles us to all relations to God and vicinity to Vertue 5. Thirdly Now amongst actions which we are taught by Nature some concern the being and the necessities of Nature some appertain to her convenience and advantage and the transgressions of these respectively have their heightnings or depressions and therefore to kill a man is worse than some preternatural pollutions because more destructive of the end and designation of Nature and the purpose of instinct 6. Fourthly Every part of this Instinct is then in some sense a Law when it is in a direct order to a necessary End and by that is made reasonable I say in some sence it is a Law that is it is in a near disposition to become a Law It is a Rule without obligation to a particular punishment beyond the effect of the natural inordination and obliquity of the act it is not the measure of a moral good or evil but of the natural that is of comely and uncomely For if in the individuals it should fail or that there pass some greater obligation upon the person in order to a higher end not consistent with those means designed in order to the lesser end in that particular it is no fault but sometimes a vertue And therefore although it be an Instinct or reasonable towards many purposes that every one should beget a man in his own image in order to the preservation of nature yet if there be a superaddition of another and higher end and contrary means perswaded in order to it such as is holy Coelibate or Virginity in order to a spiritual life in some persons there the instinct of Nature is very far from passing obligation upon the Conscience and in that instance ceases to be reasonable And therefore the Romans who invited men to marriage with priviledges and punished morose and ungentle natures that refused it yet they had their chaste and unmarried Vestals the first in order to the Commonwealth these in a nearer order to Religion 7. Fifthly These Instincts or reasonable inducements become Laws obliging us in Conscience and in the way of Religion and the breach of them is directly criminal when the instance violates any end of Justice or Charity or Sobriety either designed in Nature's first intention or superinduced by God or man For every thing that is unreasonable to some certain purpose is not presently criminal much less is it against the Law of Nature unless every man that goes out of his way sins against the Law of Nature and every contradicting of a natural desire or inclination is not a sin against a law of Nature For the restraining sometimes of a lawful and a permitted desire is an act of great Vertue and pursues a greater reason as in the former instance But those things only against which such a reason as mixes with Charity or Justice or something that is now in order to a farther end of a commanded instance of Piety may be without errour brought those things are only criminal And God having first made our instincts reasonable hath now made our Reason and Instincts to be spiritual and having sometimes restrained our Instincts and always made them regular he hath by the intermixture of other principles made a separation of Instinct from Instinct leaving one in the form of natural inclination and they rise no higher than a permission or a decency it is lawful or it is comely so to do for no man can asfirm it to be a Duty to kill him that assaults my life or to maintain my children for ever without their own industry when they are able what degrees of natural fondness 〈◊〉 I have towards them nor that I sin if I do not marry when I can contain and yet every one of these may proceed from the affections and first inclinations of Nature but until they mingle with Justice or Charity or some instance of Religion and Obedience they are no Laws the other that are so mingled being raised to Duty and Religion Nature inclines us and Reason judges it apt and requisite in order to certain ends but then every particular of it is made to be an act of Religion from some other principle as yet it is but fit and reasonable not Religion and particular Duty till God or man hath interposed But whatsoever particular in nature was fit to be made a Law of Religion is made such by the superaddition of another principle and this is derived to us by tradition from Adam to Noah or else transmitted to us by the consent of all the world upon a natural and prompt reason or else by some other instrument derived to us from God but especially by the Christian Religion which hath adopted all those things which we call things honest things comely and things of good report into a law and a duty as appears Phil. 4. 8. 8. Upon these Propositions I shall infer by way of Instance that it is a Duty that Women should nurse their own Children For first it is taught to women by that Instinct which Nature hath implanted in them For as Favorinus the Philosopher discoursed it is but to be half a Mother to bring forth Children and not to nourish them and it is some kind of Abortion or an exposing of the Infant which in the reputation of all wise Nations is infamous and uncharitable And if the name of Mother be an appellative of affection and endearments why should the Mother be willing to divide it with a stranger The Earth is the Mother of us all not only because we were made of her Red clay but chiefly that she daily gives us food from her bowels and breasts and Plants and Beasts give nourishment to their off-springs after their production with greater tenderness than they bare them in their wombs and yet Women give nourishment to the Embryo which whether it be deformed or perfect they know not and cannot love what they never saw and yet when they do see it when they have rejoyced that a Child is born and forgotten the sorrows of production they who then can first begin to love it if they begin to divorce the Infant from the Mother the Object from the Affection cut off the opportunities and occasions of their Charity or Piety 9. For why hath Nature given to women two exuberant Fontinels which like two Rocs that are twins feed among the Lilics and drop milk like dew from Hermon and hath invited that nourishment from the secret recesses where the Infant dwelt at first up to the Breast where naturally now the Child is cradled in the entertainments of love and maternal embraces but that Nature having removed the Babe and carried its meat after it intends that it should be preserved by the matter and ingredients of its constitution and have the same diet prepared with a more mature and proportionable digestion If Nature
intended them not for Nourishment I am sure it less intended them for Pride and wantonness they are needless Excrescences and Vices of Nature unless imployed in Nature's work and proper intendment And if it be a matter of consideration of what bloud Children are derived we may also consider that the derivation continues after the birth and therefore abating the sensuality the Nurse is as much the Mother as she that brought it forth and so much the more as there is a longer communication of constituent nourishment for so are the first emanations in this than in the other So that here is first the Instinct or prime intendment of Nature 10. Secondly And that this Instinct may also become humane and reasonable we see it by experience in many places that Foster-Children are dearer to the Nurse than to the Mother as receiving and ministring respectively perpetual prettinesses of love and fondness and trouble and need and invitations and all the instruments of indearment besides a vicinity of dispositions and relative tempers by the communication of bloud and spirits from the Nurse to the Suckling which makes use the more natural and nature more accustomed And therefore the affections which these exposed or derelict Children bear to their Mothers have no grounds of nature or assiduity but civility and opinion and that little of love which is abated from the Foster-parents upon publick report that they are not natural that little is transferred to Mothers upon the same opinion and no more Hence come those unnatural aversions those unrelenting dispositions those carelesnesses and incurious deportments towards their Children which are such ill-sown seeds from whence may arise up a bitterness of disposition and mutual provocation The affection which Children bear to their Nurses was highly remarked in the instance of Scipio Asiaticus who rejected the importunity of his Brother Africanus in behalf of the ten Captains who were condemned for offering violence to the Vestals but pardoned them at the request of his Foster-sister and being asked why he did more for his Nurse's Daughter than for his own Mother's Son gave this answer I esteem her rather to be my Mother that brought me up than her that bare me and forsook me And I have read the observation That many Tyrants have killed their Mothers but never any did violence to his Nurse as if they were desirous to suck the bloud of their Mother raw which she refused to give to them digested into milk And the Bastard-Brother of the Gracchi returning from his Victories in Asia to Rome presented his Mother with a Jewel of Silver and his Nurse with a Girdle of Gold upon the same account Sometimes Children are exchanged and artificial Bastardies introduced into a Family and the right Heir supplanted It happened so to Artabanus King of Epirus his Child was changed at nurse and the Son of a mean Knight succeeded in the Kingdom The event of which was this The Nurse too late discovered the Treason a bloudy War was commenced both the Pretenders slain in Battel and the Kingdom it self was usurped by Alexander the Brother to Olympias the wife of Philip the Macedonian At the best though there happen no such extravagant and rare accidents yet it is not likely a Stranger should love the Child better than the Mother and if the Mother's care could suffer it to be exposed a Stranger 's care may suffer it to be neglected For how shall an Hireling endure the inconveniences the tediousnesses and unhandsomnesses of a Nursery when she whose natural affection might have made it pleasant out of wantonness or softness hath declined the burthen But the sad accidents which by too frequent observation are daily seen happening to Nurse-children give great probation that this intendment of Nature designing Mothers to be the Nurses that their affection might secure and increase their care and the care best provide for their Babes is most reasonable and proportionable to the discourses of Humanity 11. But as this instinct was made reasonable so in this also the reason is in order to grace and spiritual effects and therefore is among those things which God hath separated from the common Instincts of Nature and made properly to be Laws by the mixtures of Justice and Charity For it is part of that Education which Mothers as a duty owe to their children that they do in all circumstances and with all their powers which God to that purpose gave them promote their capacities and improve their faculties Now in this also as the temper of the Body is considerable in order to the inclinations of the Soul so is the Nurse in order to the temper of the Body and a Lamb sucking a Goat or a Kid sucking an Ewe change their fleece and hair respectively say Naturalists For if the Soul of Man were put into the body of a Mole it could not see nor speak because it is not fitted with an Instrument apt and organical to the faculty and when the Soul hath its proper Instruments its musick is pleasant or harsh according to the sweetness or the unevenness of the string it touches for David himself could not have charmed Saul's melancholick spirit with the strings of his Bow or the wood of his Spear And just so are the actions or dispositions of the Soul angry or pleasant lustful or cold querulous or passionate according as the Body is disposed by the various intermixtures of natural qualities And as the carelesness of Nurses hath sometimes returned Children to their Parents crooked consumptive half starved and unclean from the impurities of Nature so their society and their nourishment together have disposed them to peevishness to lust to drunkenness to pride to low and base demeanours to stubbornness And as a man would have been unwilling to have had a Child by Harpaste Seneca's wife's Fool so he would in all reason be as unwilling to have had her to be the Nurse for very often Mothers by the birth do not transmit their imperfections yet it seldome happens but the Nurse does Which is the more considerable because Nurses are commonly persons of no great rank certainly lower than the Mother and by consequence liker to return their Children with the lower and more servile conditions and commonly those vainer people teach them to be peevish and proud to lie or at least seldom give them any first principles contrariant to the Nurse's vice And therefore it concerns the Parents care in order to a vertuous life of the Child to secure its first seasonings because whatever it sucks in first it swallows and believes infinitely and practises easily and continues longest And this is more proper for a Mother's care while the Nurse thinks that giving the Child suck and keeping its body clean is all her duty But the Mother cannot think her self so easily discharged And this consideration is material in all cases be the choice of the Nurse never so prudent and curious and
it is not easily apprehended to be the portion of her care to give it spiritual milk and therefore it intrenches very much upon Impiety and positive relinquishing the education of their Children when Mothers expose the spirit of the Child either to its own weaker inclinations or the wicked principles of an ungodly Nurse or the carelesness of any less-obliged person 12. And then let me add That a Child sucks the Nurse's milk and digests her conditions if they be never so bad seldom gets any good For Vertue being superaddition to Nature and Perfections not radical in the body but contradictions to and meliorations of natural indispositions does not easily convey it self by ministrations of food as Vice does which in most instances is nothing but mere Nature grown to Custom and not mended by Grace so that it is probable enough such natural distemperatures may pass in the rivulets of milk like evil spirits in a white garment when Vertues are of harder purchase and dwell so low in the heart that they but rarely pass through the fountains of generation And therefore let no Mother venture her child upon a stranger whose heart she less knows than her own And because few of those nicer women think better of others than themselves since out of self-love they neglect their own bowels it is but an act of improvidence to let my Child derive imperfections from one of whom I have not so good an opinion as of my self 13. And if those many blessings and holy prayers which the Child needs or his askings or sicknesses or the Mother's fears or joyes respectively do occasion should not be cast into this account yet those principles which in all cases wherein the neglect is vicious are the causes of the exposing the Child are extremely against the Piety and Charity of Christian Religion which prescribes severity and austere deportment and the labours of love and exemplar tenderness of affections and piety to children which are the most natural and nearest relations the Parents have That Religion which commands us to visit and to tend sick strangers and wash the feet of the poor and dress their ulcers and sends us upon charitable embassies into unclean prisons and bids us lay down our lives for one another is not pleased with a niceness and sensual curiosity that I may not name the wantonnesses of lusts which denies suck to our own children What is more humane and affectionate than Christianity and what is less natural and charitable than to deny the expresses of a Mother's affection which certainly to good women is the greatest trouble in the world and the greatest violence to their desires if they should not express and minister 14. And it would be considered whether those Mothers who have neglected their first Duties of Piety and Charity can expect so prompt and easie returns of Duty and Piety from their Children whose best foundation is Love and that love strongest which is most natural and that most natural which is conveyed by the first ministeries and impresses of Nourishment and Education And if Love descends more strongly than it ascends and commonly falls from the Parents upon the Children in Cataracts and returns back again up to the Parents but in gentle Dews if the Child's affection keeps the same proportions towards such unkind Mothers it will be as little as atoms in the Sun and never express it self but when the Mother needs it not that is in the Sun-shine of a clear fortune 15. This then is amongst those Instincts which are natural heightned first by Reason and then exalted by Grace into the obligation of a Law and being amongst the Sanctions of Nature its prevarication is a crime very near those sins which Divines in detestation of their malignity call Sins against Nature and is never to be excused but in cases of Necessity or greater Charity as when the Mother cannot be a Nurse by reason of natural disability or is afflicted with a disease which might be 〈◊〉 in the milk or in case of the publick necessities of a Kingdom for the securing of Succession in the Royal Family And yet concerning this last Lycurgus made a Law that the Noblest amongst the Spartan women though their Kings Wives should at least nurse their Eldest son and the Plebeians should nurse all theirs and Plutarch reports that the second son of King Themistes inherited the Kingdom in Sparta only because he was nursed with his Mother's milk and the eldest was therefore rejected because a stranger was his Nurse And that Queens have suckled and nursed their own children is no very unusual kindness in the simplicity and hearty affections of elder Ages as is to be seen in Herodotus and other Historians I shall only remark one instance out of the Spanish Chronicles which Henry Stephens in his Apology for Herodotus reports to have heard from thence related by a noble personage Monsieur Marillac That a Spanish Lady married into France nursed her child with so great a tenderness and jealousie that having understood the little Prince once to have suck'd a stranger she was unquiet till she had forced him to vomit it up again In other cases the crime lies at their door who inforce neglect upon the other and is heightned in proportion to the motive of the omission as if Wantonness or Pride be the parent of the crime the Issue besides its natural deformity hath the excrescencies of Pride or Lust to make it more ugly 16. To such Mothers I propound the example of the Holy Virgin who had the honour to be visited by an Angel yet after the example of the Saints in the Old Testament she gave to the Holy Jesus drink from those bottles which himself had filled for his own drinking and her Paps were as surely blessed for giving him suck as her Womb for bearing him and reads a Lecture of Piety and Charity which if we deny to our children there is then in the world left no argument or relation great enough to kindle it from a cinder to a flame God gives dry breasts for a curse to some for an affliction to others but those that invite it to them by voluntary arts love not blessing therefore shall it be far from them And I remember that it was said concerning Annius Minutius the Censor that he thought it a prodigy and extremely ominous to Rome that a Roman Lady refused to nurse her Child and yet gave suck to a Puppy that her milk might with more safety be dried up with artificial applications Let none therefore divide the interests of their own Children for she that appeared before Solomon and would have the Child divided was not the true Mother and was the more culpable of the two The PRAYER O Holy and Eternal God Father of the Creatures and King of all the World who hast imprinted in all the sons of thy Creation principles and abilities to serve the end of their own preservation and to Men
sweetnesses which represent the glory of the reward by the Antepasts and refreshments dispensed even in the ruggedness of the way and incommodities of the journey All other delights are the pleasures of Beasts or the sports of Children these are the Antepasts and preventions of the full Feasts and overflowings of Eternity 10. When they came to Bethlehem and the Star pointed them to a Stable they entred in and being enlightned with a Divine Ray proceeding from the face of the Holy Child and seeing through the cloud and passing through the scandal of his mean Lodging and poor condition they bowed themselves to the earth first giving themselves an Oblation to this great King then they made offering of their Gifts for a man's person is first accepted then his Gift God first regarded Abel and then accepted his Offering which we are best taught to understand by the present instance for it means no more but that all outward Services and Oblations are made acceptable by the prior presentation of an inward Sacrifice If we have first presented our selves then our Gift is pleasant as coming but to express the truth of the first Sacrifice but if our Persons be not first made a Holocaust to God the lesser Oblations of outward Presents are like Sacrifices without Salt and Fire nothing to make them pleasant or religious For all other sences of this Proposition charge upon God the distinguishing and acceptation of Persons against which he solemnly protests God regards no man's Person but according to the doing of his Duty but then God is said first to accept the Person and then the Gist when the Person is first sanctified and given to God by the vows and habits of a holy life and then all the actions of his Religion are homogeneal to their principle and accepted by the acceptation of the man 11. These Magi presented to the Holy Babe Gold Frankincense and Myrrh protesting their Faith of three Articles by the symbolical Oblation By Gold that he was a King by Incense that he was a God by Myrrh that he was a Man And the Presents also were representative of interiour Vertues the Myrrh signifying Faith Mortification Chastity Compunction and all the actions of the Purgative way of Spiritual life the Incense signifying Hope Prayer Obedience good Intention and all the actions and Devotions of the Illuminative the giving the Gold representing Love to God and our Neighbours the Contempt of riches Poverty of spirit and all the eminencies and spiritual riches of the Unitive life And these Oblations if we present to the Holy Jesus both our Persons and our Gifts shall be accepted our Sins shall be purged our Understandings enlightned and our Wills united to this Holy Child and entitled to a communion of all his Glories 12. And thus in one view and two Instances God hath drawn all the world to himself by his Son Jesus in the Instance of the Shepherds and the Arabian Magi Jews and Gentiles Learned and Unlearned Rich and Poor Noble and Ignoble that in him all Nations and all Conditions and all Families and all persons might be blessed having called all by one Star or other by natural Reason or by the secrets of Philosophy by the Revelations of the Gospel or by the ministery of Angels by the Illuminations of the Spirit or by the Sermons and Dictates of spiritual Fathers and hath consigned this Lesson to us That we must never appear before the Lord empty offering Gifts to him by the expences or by the affections of Charity either the worshipping or the oblations of Religion either the riches of the World or the love of the Soul for if we cannot bring Gold with the rich Arabians we may with the poor Shepherds come and kiss the Son lest he be angry and in all cases come and serve him with fear and reverence and spiritual rejoycings The PRAYER MOst Holy Jesu Thou art the Glory of thy people Israel and a light to the Gentiles and wert pleased to call the Gentiles to the adoration and knowledge of thy sacred Person and Laws communicating the inestimable riches of thy holy Discipline to all with an universal undistinguishing Love give unto us spirits docible pious prudent and ductile that no motion or invitation of Grace be ineffectual but may produce excellent effects upon us and the secret whispers of thy Spirit may prevail upon our Affections in order to Piety and Obedience as certainly as the loudest and most clamorous Sermons of the Gospel Create in us such Excellencies as are fit to be presented to thy glorious Majesty accept of the Oblation of my self and my entire services but be thou pleased to verifie my Offering and secure the possession to thy self that the enemy may not pollute the Sacrifice or divide the Gift or question the Title but that I may be wholly thine and for ever clarifie my Understanding sanctifie my Will replenish my Memory with arguments of Piety then shall I present to thee an Oblation rich and precious as the treble gift of the Levantine Princes Lord I am thine reject me not from thy favour exclude me not from thy presence then shall I serve thee all the days of my life and partake of the glories of thy Kingdom in which thou reignest gloriously and eternally Amen SECT V. Of the Circumcision of JESUS and his Presentation in the Temple The Circumcision of Iesus S. LUKE 2. 21. And when eight daies were accomphshed for the circumcising of the Child his name was called Iesus which was so named of the angel before he was conceived in the Wombe The Purification and Presentation S. LUKE 2. 22. And when the dayes of her purification were accomplished they brought him to Ierusalem to present him to the Lord. 1. AND now the Blessed Saviour of the World began to do the work of his Mission and our Redemption and because Man had prevaricated all the Divine Commandments to which all humane nature respectively to the persons of several capacities was obliged and therefore the whole Nature was obnoxious to the just rewards of its demerits first Christ was to put that Nature he had assumed into a saveable condition by fulfilling his Father's preceptive will and then to reconcile it actually by suffering the just deservings of its Prevarications He therefore addresses himself to all the parts of an active Obedience and when eight days were accomplished for the circumcising of the Child he exposed his tender body to the sharpness of the circumcising stone and shed his bloud in drops giving an earnest of those rivers which he did afterwards pour out for the cleansing all Humane nature and extinguishing the wrath of God 2. He that had no sin nor was conceived by natural generation could have no adherences to his Soul or Body which needed to be pared away by a Rite and cleansed by a Mystery neither indeed do we find it expressed that Circumcision was ordained for abolition or pardon of original sin it
Ecclesiastical stories do frequently mention S. Lewis King of France wore Sack-cloth every day unless sickness hindred and S. Zenobius as long as he was a Bishop And when Severus Sulpitius sent a Sack-cloth to S. Panlinus Bishop of Nola he returned to him a letter of thanks and discoursed piously concerning the use of corporal Austerities And that I need not instance it was so general that this was by way of appropriation called the Garment of the Church because of the frequent use of such instruments of exteriour 〈◊〉 and so it was in other instances S. James neither are flesh nor drank wine S. Matthew lived upon acorns seeds and herbs and amongst the elder Christians some rolled themselves naked in snows some upon thorns some on burning coals some chewed bitter pills and masticated gumms and sipped frequently of horrid potions and wore iron upon their skin and bolts upon their legs and in witty torments excelled the cruelty of many of their persecutors whose rage determined quickly in death and had certainly less of torment than the tedious afflictions and rude penances of Simeon surnamed Stylites But as all great examples have excellencies above the ordinary Devotions of good people so have they some danger and much consideration 17. First therefore I consider that these Bodily and voluntary self 〈◊〉 can only be of use in carnal and natural Temptations of no use in spiritual for ascetick diet hard lodging and severe disciplines cannot be directly operative upon the spirit but only by mediation of the Body by abating its extravagancies by subtracting its maintenance by lessening its temptations these may help to preserve the Soul chaste or temperate because the scene of these sins lies in the Body and thence they have their maintenance and from thence also may receive their abatements But in actions which are less material such as Pride and Envy and Blasphemy and Impenitence and all the kinds and degrees of Malice external Mortifications do so little cooperate to their cure that oftentimes they are their greatest 〈◊〉 and incentives and are like Cordials given to cure a cold fit of an Ague they do their work but bring a hot fit in its place and besides that great Mortifiers have been soonest assaulted by the spirit of Pride we find that great Fasters are naturally angry and cholerick S. Hierom found it in himself and 〈◊〉 felt some of the effects of it And therefore this last part of corporal Mortification and the chusing such Afflictions by a voluntary imposition is at no hand to be applied in all cases but in cases of Lust only and Intemperance or natural Impatience or such crimes which dwell in the Senses and then it also would be considered whether or no rudeness to the Body applied for the obtaining Patience be not a direct temptation to Impatience a provoking the spirit and a running into that whither we pray that God would not suffer us to be led Possibly such Austerities if applied with great caution and wise circumstances may be an exercise of Patience when the Grace is by other means acquired and he that finds them so may use them if he dares trust himself but as they are dangerous before the Grace is obtained so when it is they are not necessary And still it may be enquired in the case of temptations to Lust whether any such Austerities which can consist with health will do the work So long as the Body is in health it will do its offices of nature if it is not in health it cannot do all offices of Grace nor many of our Calling And therefore although they may do some advantages to persons tempted with the lowest sins yet they will not do it all nor do it alone nor are they safe to all dispositions and where they are useful to these smaller and lower purposes yet we must be careful to observe that the Mortification of the spirit to the greatest and most perfect purposes is to be set upon by means spiritual and of immediate efficacy for they are the lowest operations of the Soul which are moved and produced by actions corporal the Soul may from those become lustful or chast chearful or sad timorous or confident but yet even in these the Soul receives but some dispositions thence and more forward inclinations but nothing from the Body can be operative in the begetting or increase of Charity or the Love of God or Devotion or in mortifying spiritual and 〈◊〉 Vices and therefore those greater perfections and heights of the Soul such as are designed in this highest degree of 〈◊〉 are not apt to be enkindled by corporal Austerities And Nigrinus in Lucian finds sault with those Philosophers who thought Vertue was to be purchased by cutting the skin with whips binding the nerves razing the 〈◊〉 with iron but he taught that 〈◊〉 is to be placed in the Mind by actions internal and immaterial and that from thence remedies are to be derived against perturbations and actions criminal And this is determined by the Apostle in fairest intimation Mortifie therefore your carthly members and he instances in carnal crimes fornication uncleanness inordinate affection evil concupiscence and covetousness which are things may be something abated by corporal Mortifications and that these are by distinct manner to be helped from other more spiritual Vices he adds But now therefore put off all these anger wrath malice blasphemy filthy communication and lying To both these sorts of sins Mortification being the general remedy particular applications are to be made and it must be only spiritual or also corporal in proportion to the nature of the sins he seems to distinguish the remedy by separation of the nature of the crimes and possibly also by the differing words of 〈◊〉 applied to carnal sins and put 〈◊〉 to crimes spiritual 18. Secondly But in the lesser degrees of Mortification in order to subduing of all Passions of the Sensitive appetite and the consequent and symbolical sins bodily Austerities are of good use if well understood and prudently undertaken To which purpose I also consider No acts of corporal Austerity or external Religion are of themselves to be esteemed holy or acceptable to God are no-where precisely commanded no instruments of union with Christ no immediate parts of Divine worship and therefore to suffer corporal Austerities with thoughts determining upon the external action or imaginations of Sanctity inherent in the action is against the purity the spirituality and simplicity of the Gospel And this is the meaning of S. Paul It is a good thing that the heart be established with Grace not with meats which have not profited them which have walked in them and The kingdom of God consists not in meat and drink but in righteousness and peace and joy in the holy Ghost and Bodily exercise profiteth little but Godliness is profitable unto all things Now if external Mortifications are not for themselves then they
confession and undertaking a holy life and therefore in Scripture 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 are conjoyned in the significations as they are in the mystery it is a giving up our names to Christ and it is part of the foundation or the first Principles of the Religion as appears in S. Paul's Catechism it is so the first thing that it is for babes and Neophytes in which they are matriculated and adopted into the house of their Father and taken into the hands of their Mother Upon this account Baptism is called in antiquity 〈◊〉 janua porta Gratiae primus introitus Sanctorum adaeternam Dei Ecclesiae consuetudinem The gate of the Church the door of Grace the first entrance of the Saints to an eternal conversation with God and the Church Sacramentum initiationis intrantium Christianismum investituram S. Bernard calls it The Sacrament of initiation and the investiture of them that enter into the Religion And the person so entring is called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 one of the Religion or a Proselyte and Convert and one added to the number of the Church in imitation of that of S. Luke 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 God added to the Church those that should be saved just as the Church does to this day and for ever baptizing Infants and Catechuments 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 they are added to the Church that they may be added to the Lord and the number of the Inhabitants of Heaven 15. Secondly The next step beyond this is Adoption into the Convenant which is an immediate consequent of the first Presentation this being the first act of man that the first act of God And this is called by S. Paul a being baptized in one spirit into one body that is we are made capable of the Communion of Saints the blessings of the faithful the priviledges of the Church by this we are as S. Luke calls it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ordained or disposed put into the order of Eternal Life being made members of the mystical Body under Christ our Head 16. Thirdly And therefore Baptism is a new birth by which we enter into the new world the new Creation the blessings and spiritualities of the Kingdom and this is the expression which our Saviour himself used Nicodemus Unless a man be born of Water and the Spirit and it is by S. Paul called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the laver of Regeneration for now we begin to be reckoned in new Census or account God is become our Father Christ our elder Brother the Spirit the earnest of our Inheritance the Church our Mother our food is the body and bloud of our Lord Faith is our learning Religion our employment and our whole life is spiritual and Heaven the object of our Hopes and the mighty price of our high Calling And from this time forward we have a new principle put into us the Spirit of Grace which besides our Soul and body is a principle of action of one nature and shall with them enter into the portion of our Inheritance And therefore the Primitive Christians who consigned all their affairs and goods and writings with some marks of their Lord usually writing 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Jesus Christ the Son of God our Saviour made it an abbreviature by writing only the Capitals thus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which the Heathens in mockery and derision made 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which signifies a Fish and they used it for Christ as a name of reproach but the Christians owned the name and turned it into a pious Metaphor and were content that they should enjoy their pleasure in the Acrostich but upon that occasion Tertullian speaks pertinently to this Article Nos pisciculi sccundùm 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 nostrum Jesum Christum in aqua nascimur Christ whom you call a Fish we knowledge to be our Lord and Saviour and we if you please are the little fishes for we are born in water thence we derive our spiritual life And because from henceforward we are a new Creation the Church uses to assign new relations to the Catechumens Spiritual Fathers and Susceptors and at their entrance into Baptism the Christians and Jewish Proselytes did use to cancel all secular affections to their temporal relatives Nec quicquam priùs 〈◊〉 quà m contemnere Deos exuere patriam parentes liberos fratres vilia habere said Tacitus of the Christians which was true in the sence only that Christ said He that doth not hate father or mother for my sake is not worthy of me that is he that doth not hate them praeme rather than forsake me forsake them is unworthy of me 17. Fourthly In Baptism all our sins are pardoned according to the words of a Prophet I will sprinkle clean water upon you and ye shall be clean from all your filthiness The Catechumen descends into the Font a Sinner he arises purified he goes down the son of Death he comes up the son of the Resurrection he enters in the son of Folly and prevarication he returns the son of Reconciliation he stoops down the child of Wrath and ascends the heir of Mercy he was the child of the Devil and now he is the servant and the son of God They are the words of Venerable Bede concerning this Mystery And this was ingeniously signified by that Greek inscription upon a Font which is so prettily contriv'd that the words may be read after the Greek or after the Hebrew manner and be exactly the same 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Lord wash my sin and not my face only And so it is intended and promised Arise and be baptized and wash away thy sins and call on the Name of the Lord said Ananias to Saul for Christ loved the Church and gave himself for it that he might sanctifie and cleanse it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 with the washing of water in the word that is Baptism in the Christian Religion and therefore Tertullian calls Baptism lavacrum compendiatum a compendious Laver that is an intire cleansing the Soul in that one action justly and rightly performed In the rehearsal of which Doctrine it was not an unpleasant Etymology that 〈◊〉 Sinaita gave of Baptism 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in which our sins are thrown off and they fall like leeches when they are full of bloud and water or like the chains from S. Peter's hands at the presence of the Angel Baptism is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 an intire full forgiveness of sins so that they shall never be called again to scrutiny Omnia Daemonis armae His merguntur aquis quibus ille renascitur Infans Qui captivus erat The captivity of the Soul is taken away by the bloud of Redemption and the fiery darts of the Devil are quenched by these salutary waters and what the flames of Hell are expiating or punishing to eternal
a participation of his felicities for he is strangely covetous who would enjoy the Sun or the Air or the Sea alone here was treasure sor him and all the world and by lighting his brother Simon' s taper he made his own light the greater and more glorious And this is the nature of Grace to be diffusive of its own excellencies for here no 〈◊〉 can inhabit the proper and personal ends of holy persons in the contract and transmissions of Grace are increased by the participation and communion of others For our Prayers are more effectual our aids increased our incouragement and examples more prevalent God more honoured and the rewards of glory have accidental advantages by the superaddition of every new Saint and beatified person the members of the mystical body when they have received nutriment from God and his Holy Son supplying to each other the same which themselves received and live on in the communion of Saints Every new Star gilds the firmament and increases its first glories and those who are instruments of the Conversion of others shall not only introduce new beauties but when themselves shine like the stars in glory they shall have some reflexions from the light of others to whose fixing in the Orb of Heaven themselves have been instrumental And this consideration is not only of use in the exaltations of the dignity Apostolical and Clerical but for the enkindling even of private charities who may do well to promote others interests of Piety in which themselves also have some concernment 4. These Disciples asked of Christ where he 〈◊〉 Jesus answered Come and see It was an answer very expressive of our duty in this instance It is not enough for us to understand where Christ inhabits or where he is to be found for our understandings may follow him afar off and we receive no satisfaction unless it be to curiosity but we must go where he is eat of his meat wash in his Lavatory rest on his beds and dwell with him for the Holy Jesus hath no kind influence upon those who stand at distance save only the affections of a Loadstone apt to draw them nigher that he may transmit his vertues by union and confederations but if they persist in a sullen distance they shall learn his glories as Dives understood the peace of Lazarus of which he was never to participate Although the Son of man hath not where to lay his head yet he hath many houses where to convey his Graces he hath nothing to cover his own but he hath enough to sanctifie ours and as he dwelt in such houses which the charity of good people then afforded for his entertainment so now he loves to abide in places which the Religion of his servants hath vowed to his honour and the advantages of Evangelical ministrations Thither we must come to him or any-where else where we may enjoy him He is to be found in a Church in his ordinances in the communion of Saints in every religious duty in the heart of every holy person and if we go to him by the addresses of Religion in Holy places by the ministery of Holy rites by Charity by the adherences of Faith and Hope and other combining Graces the Graces of union and society or prepare a lodging for him within us that he may come to us then shall we see such glories and interiour beauties which none know but they that dwell with him The secrets of spiritual benediction are understood only by them to whom they are conveyed even by the children of his house Come and see 5. S. Andrew was first called and that by Christ immediately his Brother Simon next and that by Andrew but yet Jesus changed Simon' s name and not the other 's and by this change design'd him to an eminency of Office at least in signification principally above his Brother or else separately and distinctly from him to shew that these Graces and favours which do not immediately cooperate to eternity but are gifts and offices or impresses of authority are given to men irregularly and without any order of predisponent causes or probabilities on our part but are issues of absolute predestination and as they have efficacy from those reasons which God conceals so they have some purposes as conccal'd as their causes only if God pleases to make us vessels of fair imployment and of great capacity we shall bear a greater burthen and are bound to glorifie God with special offices But as these exteriour and ineffective Graces are given upon the same good will of God which made this matter to be a humane Body when if God had so pleased it was as capable of being made a Fungus or a Sponge so they are given to us with the same intentions as are our Souls that we might glorifie God in the distinct capacity of Grace as before of a reasonable nature And besides that it teaches us to magnifie God's free mercy so it removes every such exalted person from being an object of envy to others or from pleasing himself in vainer opinions for God hath made him of such an imployment as freely and voluntarily as he hath made him a Man and he no more cooperated to this Grace than to his own creation and may as well admire himself for being born in Italy or from rich parents or for having two hands or two feet as for having received such a designation extraordinary But these things are never instruments of reputation among severe understandings and never but in the sottish and unmanly apprehensions of the vulgar Only this when God hath imprinted an authority upon a person although the man hath nothing to please himself withal but God's grace yet others are to pay the duty which that impression demands which duty because it rapports to God and touches not the man 〈◊〉 as it passes through him to the fountain of authority and grace it extinguishes all 〈◊〉 of opinion and pride 6. When Jesus espied 〈◊〉 who also had been called by the first Disciples coming towards him he gave him an excellent character calling him a true Israelite in whom was no guile and admitted him amongst the first Disciples of the Institution by this character in one of the first of his Scholars hallowing Simplicity of spirit and receiving it into his Discipline that it might now become a vertue and duty Evangelical For although it concerns us as a Christian duty to be prudent yet the Prudence of Christianity is a duty of spiritual effect and in instances of Religion with no other purposes than to avoid giving offence to those that are without and within that we cause no disreputation to Christianity that we do nothing that may incourage enemies to the Religion and that those that are within the communion and obedience of the Church may not suffer as great inconveniences by the indiscreet conduct of religious actions as by direct temptations to a sin These are the purposes of private Prudence to
chance of a Battel that although it be necessary for defence of the godly that a special Providence should intervene yet to confound the impious no special act is requisite If God exposes them to the ill aspect of a Planet or any other casualty their days are interrupted and they die And this is the meaning of the Prophet Jeremy Be not ye 〈◊〉 at the signs of Heaven for the Heathen are dismayed at them meaning that God will over-rule all inferiour causes for the safety of his servants but the wicked shall be exposed to chance and humane accidents and the signs of Heaven which of themselves do but signifie or at most but dispose and incline towards events shall be enough to actuate and consummate their ruine And this is the meaning of that Proverb of the Jews Israel hath no Planet which they expounded to mean If they observe the Law the Planets shall not hurt them God will over-rule all their influences but if they prevaricate and rebel the least Star in the firmament of Heaven shall bid them battel and overthrow them A 〈◊〉 shall lie in a wicked Man's way and God shall so expose him to it leaving him so unguarded and defenceless that he shall stumble at it and fall and break a bone and that shall 〈◊〉 a Fever and the Fever shall end his days For not onely every creature when it is set on by God can prove a ruine but if we be not by the Providence of God defended against it we cannot behold the least atome in the Sun without danger of losing an eye nor eat a grape without fear of choaking nor sneeze without breaking of a vein And Arius going to the ground purged his entrails forth and fell down unto the earth and died Such and so miserable is the great insecurity of a sinner And of this Job had an excellent meditation How oft is the candle of the wicked put out and how oft cometh their destruction upon them GOD distributeth sorrows in his anger For what pleasure hath he in his house after him when the number of his moneths is cut off in the midst This is he that dieth in his full strength being wholly at ease and quiet 25. I summe up this discourse with an observation that is made concerning the Family of Eli upon which for the remisness of Discipline on the Father's part and for the Impiety and Profaneness of his 〈◊〉 God sent this Curse All the increase of their house shall die in the flower of their age According to that sad malediction it happened for many generations the Heir of the Family died as soon as he begat a Son to succeed him till the Family being wearied by so long a Curse by the counsel of Rabbi Johanan Ben Zachary betook themselves universally to a sedulous and most devout meditation of the Law that is to an exemplar Devotion and strict Religion but then the Curse was turned into a Blessing and the line masculine lived to an honourable old age For the Doctors of the Jews said that God often changes his purposes concerning the death of man when the sick person is liberal in Alms or fervent in Prayer or changes his Name that is gives up his name to God by the serious purposes and religious vows of holy Obedience He that followeth after righteousness Alms it is in the vulgar 〈◊〉 and mercy findeth life that verifies the first and the fervent Prayer of Hezekiah is a great instance of the second and all the 〈◊〉 discourse was intended for probation of the third and proves that no disease is so deadly as a deadly Sin and the ways of Righteousness are therefore advantages of Health and preservatives of Life when health and life are good for us because they are certain title to all God's Promises and Blessings 26. Upon supposition of these premisses I consider there is no cause to wonder that tender persons and the softest women endure the violences of art and Physick sharp pains of Causticks and Cupping-glasses the abscission of the most sensible part for preservation of a mutilous and imperfect body but it is a wonder that when God hath appointed a remedy in Grace apt to preserve Nature and that a dying unto sin should prolong our natural life yet few men are willing to try the experiment they will buy their life upon any conditions in the world but those which are the best and easiest any thing but Religion and Sanctity although for so doing they are promised that immortality shall be added to the end of a long life to make the life of a mortal partake of the eternal duration of an Angel or of God himself 27. Fifthly The last testimony of the Excellency and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Christ's yoke the fair load of Christianity is the Reasonableness of it and the Unreasonableness of its contrary For whatsoever the wisest men in the world in all Nations and Religions did agree upon as most excellent in it self and of greatest power to make political or future and immaterial felicities all that and much more the Holy Jesus adopted into his Law for they receiving sparks or single irradiations from the regions of light or else having fair tapers shining indeed excellently in representations and expresses of Morality were all involved and swallowed up into the body of light the Sun of Righteousness Christ's Discipline was the breviary of all the Wisdome of the best men and a fair copy and transcript of his Father's Wisdome and there is nothing in the laws of our Religion but what is perfective of our spirits excellent rules of Religion and rare expedients of obeying God by the nearest ways of imitation and such duties which are the proper ways of doing benefits to all capacities and orders of men But I remember my design now is not to represent Christianity to be a better Religion than any other for I speak to Christians amongst whom we presuppose that but I design to invite all Christians in name to be such as they are called upon the interest of such arguments which represent the advantages of Obedience to our Religion as it is commanded us by God And this I shall do yet farther by considering that those Christian names who apprehend Religion as the Fashion of their Countrey and know no other use of a Church but customary or secular and profane that supposing Christian Religion to have come from God as we all profess to believe there are no greater fools in the world than such whose life conforms not to the pretence of their Baptism and Institution They have all the signs and characters of fools and undiscreet unwary persons 28. First Wicked persons like children and fools chuse the present whatsoever it is and neglect the infinite treasures of the future They that have no faith nor foresight have an excuse for snatching at what is now represented because it is that all which can move them but
are God's tokens marks upon the body of insected persons and declare the malignity of the disease and bid us all beware of those determined crimes 6. Thirdly But then in these and all other accidents we must first observe from the cause to the effect and then judge from the effect concerning the nature and the degree of the cause We cannot conclude This family is lessened beggered or extinct therefore they are guilty of Sacrilege but thus They are Sacrilegious and God hath blotted out their name from among the posterities therefore this Judgment was an express of God's anger against Sacrilege the Judgment will not conclude a Sin but when a Sin infers the Judgment with a legible character and a prompt signification not to understand God's choice is next to stupidity or carelesness Arius was known to be a seditious heretical and dissembling person and his entrails descended on the earth when he went to cover his feet it was very suspicious that this was the punishment of those sins which were the worst in him But he that shall conclude Arius was an Heretick or Seditious upon no other ground but because his bowels gushed out begins imprudently and proceeds uncharitably But it is considerable that men do not arise to great crimes on the sudden but by degrees of carelesness to lesser impieties and then to clamorous sins And God is therefore said to punish great crimes or actions of highest malignity because they are commonly productions from the spirit of Reprobation they are the highest ascents and suppose a Body of sin And therefore although the Judgment may be intended to punish all our sins yet it is like the Syrian Army it kills all that are its enemies but it hath a special commission to fight against none but the King of Israel because his death would be the dissolution of the Body And if God humbles a man for his great sin that is for those acts which combine and consummate all the rest possibly the Body of sin may separate and be apt to be scattered and subdued by single acts and instruments of mortification and therefore it is but reasonable in our making use of God's Judgments upon others to think that God will rather strike at the greatest crimes not only because they are in themselves of greatest malice and iniquity but because they are the summe total of the rest and by being great progressions in the state of sin suppose all the rest included and we by proportioning and observing the Judgment to the highest acknowledge the whole body of sin to lie under the curse though the greatest only was named and called upon with the voice of thunder And yet because it sometimes happens that upon the violence of a great and new occasion some persons leap into such a sin which in the ordinary course of sinners uses to be the effect of an habitual and growing state then if a Judgment happens it is clearly appropriate to that one great crime which as of it self it is equivalent to a vicious habit and interrupts the acceptation of all its former contraries so it meets with a curse such as usually God chuses for the punishment of a whole body and state of sin However in making observation upon the expresses of God's anger we must be careful that we reflect not with any bitterness or scorn upon the person of our calamitous Brother left we make that to be an evil to him which God intends for his benefit if the Judgment was medicinal or that we increase the load already great enough to sink him beneath his grave if the Judgment was intended for a final abscission 7. Fourthly But if the Judgments descend upon our selves we are to take another course not to enquire into particulars to find out the proportions for that can only be a design to part with just so much as we must needs but to mend all that is amiss for then only we can be secure to remove the Achan when we keep nothing within us or about us that may provoke God to jealousie or wrath And that is the proper product of holy fear which God intended should be the first effect of all his Judgments and of this God is so careful and yet so kind and provident that fear might not be produced always at the expence of a great suffering that God hath provided for us certain prologues of Judgment and keeps us waking with alarms that so he might reconcile his mercies with our duties Of this nature are Epidemical diseases not yet arrived at us prodigious Tempests Thunder and loud noises from Heaven and he that will not fear when God speaks so loud is not yet made soft with the impresses and perpetual droppings of Religion Venerable Bede reports of S. Chad that if a great gust of Wind suddenly arose he presently made some holy ejaculation to beg favour of God for all mankind who might possibly be concerned in the effects of that Wind but if a Storm succeeded he fell prostrate to the earth and grew as violent in Prayer as the Storm was 〈◊〉 at Land or Sea But if God added Thunder and Lightning he went to the Church and there spent all his time during the Tempest in reciting Litanies Psalms and other holy Prayers till it pleased God to restore his favour and to seem to forget his anger And the good Bishop added this reason Because these are the extensions and stretchings forth of God's hand and yet he did not strike but he that trembles not when he sees God's arm held forth to strike us understands neither God's mercies nor his own danger he neither knows what those horrours were which the People saw from mount Sinai nor what the glories and amazements shall be at the great day of Judgment And if this Religious man had seen Tullus Hostilius the Roman King and Anastasius a Christian Emperor but a reputed Heretick struck dead with Thunderbolts and their own houses made their urns to keep their ashes in there could have been no posture humble enough no Prayers devout enough no place holy enough nothing sufficiently expressive of his fear and his humility and his adoration and Religion to the almighty and infinite power and glorious mercy of God sending out his Emissaries to denounce war with designs of peace A great Italian General seeing the sudden death of Alfonsus Duke of Ferrara kneeled down instantly saying And shall not this sight make me religious Three and twenty thousand fell in one night in the Assyrian Camp who were all slain for Fornication And this so prodigious a Judgement was recorded in Scripture for our example and affrightment that we should not with such freedom entertain a crime which destroyed so numerous a body of men in the darkness of one evening Fear and Modesty and universal Reformation are the purposes of God's Judgments upon us or in our neighbourhood 8. Fifthly Concerning Judgments happening to a Nation or a Church the
the Angel's coming because it was a great necessity which was incumbent upon our Lord for his sadness and his Agony was so great mingled and compounded of sorrow and zeal fear and desire innocent nature and perfect grace that he sweat drops as great as if the bloud had started through little undiscerned fontinels and outrun the streams and rivers of his Cross. Euthymius and Theophylact say that the Evangelists use this as a tragical expression of the greatest Agony and an unusual sweat it being usual to call the tears of the greatest sorrow tears of 〈◊〉 But from the beginning of the Church it hath been more generally apprehended literally and that some bloud mingled with the 〈◊〉 substance issued from his veins in so great abundance that they moistened the ground and bedecked his garment which stood like a new firmament studded with stars portending an approaching storm Now he came from Bozrah with his garments red and bloudy And this Agony verified concerning the Holy Jesus those words of David I am poured out like water my bones are dispersed my heart in the midst of my body is like melting wax saith Justin Martyr Venerable Bede saith that the descending of these drops of bloud upon the earth besides the general purpose had also a particular relation to the present infirmities of the Apostles that our Blessed Lord obtained of his Father by the merits of those holy drops mercies and special support for them and that effusion redeemed them from the present participation of death And S. Austin meditates that the Body of our Lord all overspread with drops of bloudy sweat did prefigure the future state of Martyrs and that his Body mystical should be clad in a red garment variegated with the symbols of labour and passion sweat and bloud by which himself was pleased to purifie his Church and present her to God holy and spotless What collateral designs and tacite significations might be designed by this mysterious sweat I know not certainly it was a sad beginning of a most dolorous Passion and such griefs which have so violent permanent and sudden effects upon the body which is not of a nature symbolical to interiour and immaterial causes are proclaimed by such marks to be high and violent We have read of some persons that the grief and fear of one night hath put a cover of snow upon their heads as if the labours of thirty years had been extracted and the quintessence drank off in the passion of that night but if Nature had been capable of a greater or more prodigious impress of passion than a bloudy sweat it must needs have happened in this Agony of the Holy Jesus in which he undertook a grief great enough to make up the imperfect Contrition of all the Saints and to satisfie for the impenitencies of all the world 7. By this time the Traitor Judas was arrived at Gethsemani and being in the vicinage of the Garden Jesus rises from his prayers and first calls his Disciples from their sleep and by an Irony seems to give them leave to sleep on but reproves their drousiness when danger is so near and bids them henceforth take their rest meaning if they could for danger which now was indeed come to the Garden-doors But the Holy Jesus that it might appear he undertook the Passion with choice and a free election not only refused to flie but called his Apostles to rise that they might meet his Murtherers who came to him with swords and staves as if they were to surprise a Prince of armed Out-laws whom without force they could not reduce So also might Butchers do well to go armed when they are pleased to be afraid of Lambs by calling them Lions Judas only discovered his Master's retirements and betrayed him to the opportunities of an armed band for he could not accuse his Master of any word or private action that might render him obnoxious to suspicion or the Law For such are the rewards of innocence and prudence that the one secures against sin the other against suspicion and appearances 8. The Holy Jesus had accustomed to receive every of his Disciples after absence with entertainment of a Kiss which was the endearment of persons and the expression of the oriental civility and Judas was confident that his Lord would not reject him whose feet he had washed at the time when he foretold this event and therefore had agreed to signifie him by this sign and did so beginning war with a Kiss and breaking the peace of his Lord by the symbol of kindness which because Jesus entertained with much evenness and charitable expressions calling him Friend he gave evidence that if he retained civilities to his greatest enemies in the very acts of hostility he hath banquets and crowns and scepters for his friends that adore him with the kisses of Charity and love him with the sincerity of an affectionate spirit But our Blessed Lord besides his essential sweetness and serenity of spirit understood well how great benefits himself and all the World were to receive by occasion of that act of Judas and our greatest enemy does by accident to holy persons the offices of their dearest friends telling us our faults without a cloak to cover their deformities but out of malice laying open the circumstances of aggravation doing us affronts from whence we have an instrument of our Patience and restraining us from scandalous crimes lest we become a scorn and reproof to them that 〈◊〉 us And it is none of God's least mercies that he permits enmities amongst men that animosities and peevishness may reprove more sharply and correct with more severity and simplicity than the gentle hand of friends who are apter to bind our wounds up than to discover them and make them smart but they are to us an excellent probation how friends may best do the offices of friends if they would take the plainness of enemies in accusing and still mingle it with the tenderness and good affections of friends But our Blessed Lord called Judas Friend as being the instrument of bringing him to glory and all the World to pardon if they would 9. Jesus himself begins the enquiry and leads them into their errand and tells them he was JESUS of Nazareth whom they sought But this also which was an answer so gentle had in it a strength greater than the Eastern wind or the voice of thunder for God was in that still voice and it struck them down to the ground And yet they and so do we still persist to persecute our Lord and to provoke the eternal God who can with the breath of his mouth with a word or a sign or a thought reduce us into nothing or into a worse condition even an eternal duration of torments and cohabitation with a never-ending misery And if we cannot bear a soft answer of the merciful God how shall we dare to provoke the wrath of the Almighty Judge But in
Iron and that for three years and an half together as in the case of 〈◊〉 's prayer if he say to the Sea Divide 't will run upon heaps and become on both sides as firm as a wall of Marble Nothing can be more natural than for the fire to burn and yet at God's command it will forget its nature and become a screen and a fence to the three Children in the Babylonian Furnace What heavier than Iron or more natural than for gravity to tend downwards and yet when God will have it Iron shall float like Cork on the top of the water The proud and raging Sea that naturally refuses to bear the bodies of men while alive became here as firm as Brass when commanded to wait upon and do homage to the God of Nature Our Lord walking towards the Ship as if he had an intention to pass by it he was espied by them who presently thought it to be the Apparition of a Spirit Hereupon they were seiz'd with great terror and consternation and their fears in all likelihood heightned by the vulgar opinion that they are evil Spirits that chuse rather to appear in the night than by day While they were in this agony our Lord taking compassion on them calls to them and bids them not be afraid for that it was no other than he himself Peter the eagerness of whose temper carried him forward to all bold and resolute undertakings intreated our Lord that if it was he he might have leave to come upon the water to him Having received his orders he went out of the Ship and walked upon the Sea to meet his Master But when he found the wind to bear hard against him and the waves to rise round about him whereby probably the sight of Christ was intercepted he began to be afraid and the higher his fears arose the lower his Faith began to sink and together with that his body to sink under water whereupon in a passionate fright he cried out to our Lord to help him who reaching out his arm took him by the hand and set him again upon the top of the water with this gentle reproof O thou of little Faith wherefore didst thou doubt It being the weakness of our Faith that makes the influences of the Divine power and goodness to have no better effect upon us Being come to the Ship they took them in where our Lord no sooner arrived but the winds and waves observing their duty to their Sovereign Lord and having done the errand which they came upon mannerly departed and vanished away and the Ship in an instant was at the shore All that were in the Ship being strangely astonished at this Miracle and fully convinced of the Divinity of his person came and did homage to him with this confession Of a truth thou art the Son of God After which they went ashore and landed in the Country of Genezareth and there more fully acknowledged him before all the people 6. THE next day great multitudes flocking after him he entred into a Synagogue at Capernaum and taking occasion from the late Miracle of the loaves which he had wrought amongst them he began to discourse concerning himself as the true Manna and the Bread that came down from Heaven largely opening to them many of the more sublime and Spiritual mysteries and the necessary and important duties of the Gospel Hereupon a great part of his Auditory who had hitherto followed him finding their understandings gravelled with these difficult and uncommon Notions and that the duties he required were likely to grate hard upon them and perceiving now that he was not the Messiah they took him for whose Kingdom should consist in an external Grandeur and plenty but was to be managed and transacted in a more inward and Spiritual way hereupon fairly left him in open field and henceforth quite turned their backs upon him Whereupon our Lord turning about to his Apostles asked them whether they also would go away from him Peter spokes-man generally for all the rest answered whither should they go to mend and better their condition should they return back to Moses Alas he laid a yoke upon them which neither they nor their Fathers were able to bear Should they go to the Scribes and Pharisees they would feed them with Stones instead of Bread obtrude humane Traditions upon them for Divine dictates and Commands Should they betake themselves to the Philosophers amongst the Gentiles they were miserably blind and short-sighted in their Notions of things and their sentiments and opinions not only different from but contrary to one another No 't was he only had the words of Eternal life whose doctrine could instruct them in the plain way to Heaven that they had fully assented to what both John and he had said concerning himself that they were fully perswaded both from the efficacy of his Sermons which they heard and the powerful conviction of his Miracles which they had seen that he was the Son of the living God the true Messiah and Saviour of the World But notwithstanding this fair and plausible testimony he tells them that they were not all of this mind that there was a Satan amongst them one that was moved by the spirit and impulse and that acted according to the rules and interest of the Devil intimating Judas who should betray him So hard is it to meet with a body of so just and pure a constitution wherein some rotten member or distempered part is not to be found SECT IV. Of S. Peter from the time of his Confession till our Lord's last Passover Our Saviour's Journy with his Apostles to Caesarea The Opinions of the People concerning Him Peter's eminent Confession of Christ and our Lord 's great commendation of it Thou art Peter and upon this Rock c. The Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven how given The advantage the Church of Rome makes of these passages This confession made by Peter in the name of the rest and by others before him No personal priviledge intended to S. Peter the same things elsewhere promised to the other Apostles Our 〈◊〉 discourse concerning his 〈◊〉 Peter's unseasonable zeal in disswading him from it and our Lord 's severe rebuking him Christ's Transfiguration and the glory of it Peter how affected with it Peter's paying Tribute for Christ and himself This Tribute what Our Saviour's discourse upon it Offending brethren how oft to be forgiven The young man commanded to sell all What compensation made to the followers of Christ. Our Lord 's triumphant entrance into Jerusalem Preparation made to keep the Passover 1. IT was some time since our Saviour had kept his third Passover at Jerusalem when he directed his Journy towards Caesarea Philippi where by the way having like a lawful Master of his Family first prayed with his Aposlles he began to ask them having been more than two Years publickly conversant amongst them what the world thought concerning him They answered that
Epistles to the seven Churches of Asia all planted or at least cultivated by him the doctrine in it suitable to the Apostolick spirit and temper evidently bearing witness in this case That which seems to have given ground to doubt concerning both its Author and authority was its being long before it was usually joyned with the other Books of the holy Canon for containing in it some passages directly levell'd at Rome the Seat of the Roman Empire others which might be thought to symbolize with some Jewish dreams and 〈◊〉 it might possibly seem fit to the prudence of those Times for a while to suppress it Nor is the conjecture of a learned Man to be despised who thinks that it might be intrusted in the keeping of John the Presbyter Scholar to our Apostle whence probably the report might arise that he who was only the Keeper was the Author of it 15. HIS Gospel succeeds written say some in Patmos and published at Ephesus but as Irenaeus and others more truly written by him after his return to Ephesus composed at the earnest intreaty and sollicitation of the Asian Bishops and Embassadors from several Churches in order whereunto he first caused them to proclaim a general Fast to seek the blessing of Heaven on so great and solemn an undertaking which being done he set about it And if we may believe the report of Gregory Bishop of Tours he tells us that upon a Hill near Ephesus there was a Proseucha or uncovered Oratory whither our Apostle used often to retire for Prayer and Contemplation and where he obtained of God that it might not Rain in that Place till he had finished his Gospel Nay he adds that even in his time no shower or storm ever came upon it Two causes especially contributed to the writing of it the one that he might obviate the early heresies of those times especially of Ebion Cerinthus and the rest of that crew who began openly to deny Christ's Divinity and that he had any existence before his Incarnation the reason why our Evangelist is so express and copious in that subject The other was that he might supply those passages of the Evangelical History which the rest of the Sacred Writers had omitted Collecting therefore the other three Evangelists he first set to his Seal ratifying the truth of them with his approbation and consent and then added his own Gospel to the rest principally insisting upon the Acts of Christ from the first commencing of his Ministery to the Death of John the Baptist wherein the others are most defective giving 〈◊〉 any account of the first Year of our Saviour's Ministry which therefore he made up in very large and particular Narrations He largely records as Nazianzen observes our Saviour's discourses but takes little notice of his Miracles probably because so fully and particularly related by the rest The subject of his writing is very sublime and mysterious mainly designing to prove Christ's Divinity eternal pre-existence creating of the World c. Upon which account Theodoret stiles his Gospel 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a Theology which humane understandings can never fully penetrate and find out Thence generally by the Ancients he is resembled to an Eagle soaring aloft within the Clouds whither the weak eye of Man was unable to follow him hence peculiarly honoured with the title of The Divine as if due to none but him at least to him in a more eminent and extraordinary manner Nay the very Gentile-Philosophers themselves could not but admire his Writings Witness Amelius the famous Platonist and Regent of Porphyries School at Alexandria who quoting a passage out of the beginning of S. John's Gospel sware by Jupiter that this Barbarian so the proud Greeks counted and called all that differed from them had hit upon the right notion when he affirmed that the Word that made all things was in the beginning and in place of prime dignity and authority with God and was that God that created all things in whom every thing that was made had according to its nature its life and being that he was incarnate and clothed with a body wherein he manifested the glory and magnificence of his nature that after his death he returned to the repossession of Divinity and became the same God which he was before his assuming a body and taking the humane nature and flesh upon him I have no more to observe but that his Gospel was afterwards translated into Hebrew and kept by the Jews 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 among their secret Archives and Records in their Treasury at Tiberias where a Copy of it was found by one Joseph a Jew afterwards converted and whom 〈◊〉 the Great advanced to the honour of a Count of the Empire who breaking open the Treasury though he missed of mony found 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Books beyond all Treasure S. Matthew and S. John's Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles in Hebrew the reading whereof greatly contributed towards his Conversion 16. BESIDES these our Apostle wrote three Epistles the first whereof is Catholick calculated for all times and places containing most excellent rules for the conduct of the Christian life pressing to 〈◊〉 and purity of manners and not to rest in a naked and empty profession of Religion not to be led away with the crafty insinuations of Seducers antidoting Men against the poyson of the Gnostick-principles and practices to whom it is not to be doubted but that the Apostle had a more particular respect in this Epistle According to his wonted modesty he conceals his name it being of more concernment with 〈◊〉 Men what it is that is said than who it is that says it And this Epistle Eusebius tells us was universally received and never questioned by any anciently as appears 〈◊〉 S. Augustin inscribed to the Parthians though for what reason I am yet to learn unless as we hinted before it was because he himself had heretofore Preached in those Parts of the World The other two Epistles are but short and directed to particular Persons the one a Lady of honourable Quality the other the charitable and hospitable Gaius so kind a friend so courteous an entertainer of all indigent Christians These Epistles indeed were not of old admitted into the Canon nor are owned by the Church in Syria at this Day ascribed by many to the younger John Disciple to our Apostle But there is no just cause to question who was their Father seeing both the Doctrine phrase and design of them do sufficiently challenge our Apostle for their Author These are all the Books wherein it pleased the Holy Spirit to make use of S. John for its Pen man and Secretary in the composure whereof though his stile and character be not florid and elegant yet is it grave and simple short and perspicuous Dionysius of Alexandria tells us that in his Gospel and first Epistle his phrase is more neat and
〈◊〉 non sunt 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 judicium 〈◊〉 at 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 his 〈◊〉 quibus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 S. Gieg. Acts 5. 41. 1 Cor. 10. 16. * 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 distributum 〈◊〉 corpus suum 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 est corpus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 id est figura 〈◊〉 Figura a 〈◊〉 non fuisset 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 corpus 〈◊〉 lib. 4. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 cap. 40. 〈◊〉 si quicquid 〈◊〉 in os in 〈◊〉 abit in 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 cibus qui 〈◊〉 per verbum Dei 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 quod 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Origen in 15. cap. S. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Theod. Dial. 2. Idem disput 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Christi Naturam conversum iri in Divinam 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 modo quo 〈◊〉 in corpus Christi 〈◊〉 Certè 〈◊〉 scil 〈◊〉 hoc est 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. Our 〈◊〉 Saviour who hath called 〈◊〉 the 〈◊〉 Bread and a Vine hath also honoured the visible Signs with the title and 〈◊〉 of his Body and Bloud not changing their Nature but adding to Nature Grace See the Dialog called the Immoveable 〈◊〉 quae suminus 〈◊〉 Sanguinis Christi divina res est 〈◊〉 quod 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 consortes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 non 〈◊〉 esse 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 natura 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Corporis 〈◊〉 Christi in actione 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 P. Gelasius libr. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Non 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 panis poculum sanguis sed quòd 〈◊〉 corporis 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Facundus Si n. 〈◊〉 quandam 〈◊〉 non 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 quarum sunt sacramenta omnino sacramenta non essent ex 〈◊〉 a. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 actipiunt 〈◊〉 S. Aug. 〈◊〉 23. 〈◊〉 contr 〈◊〉 Manich. lib. 10. c. 2. Quod ob omnibus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 est 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in quo caro Christi post 〈◊〉 per 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Apud Grauanum de Consecrat dist 2. c. 48. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in 〈◊〉 virba Sicut 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 qui 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 est suo 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Corpus Christi 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 corporis Christi 〈◊〉 viz. quod visibile quod palpabile 〈◊〉 in 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ipsa 〈◊〉 carnis quae 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Passio Mors Crucifixio non 〈…〉 quod 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 est * Si 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 vasa 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 est in quibus non est 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Christi sed mysterium corporis 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 mag's vasa corporis 〈◊〉 c. S. Chrysost. Opere imperf in 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in 〈◊〉 ad Caesarium in 〈◊〉 Pp. 〈◊〉 1618. 〈…〉 illum sanctificante gratiâ 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 quidem est ab 〈◊〉 Panis dignus autem 〈◊〉 est 〈◊〉 Corporis appellations 〈◊〉 natura Panis in 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. 1 Cor. 10. 16 17. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 non 〈◊〉 Panem esse 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 sed 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ut 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 corpus Domini 〈◊〉 fiant unum participans 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Caro. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 partem aliquam sibi 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 particips est 2 Cor. 6. 1. * 〈◊〉 calix 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ad 〈…〉 〈◊〉 ad 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 exsi 〈◊〉 S. Cyp. di 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 John 6. 〈◊〉 * 〈◊〉 2. 〈◊〉 ‖ 〈◊〉 1. 〈◊〉 * Col. 3. 4. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 apud S. Ignat. ep ad 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Optar Milevit 〈◊〉 6. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 S. Joh. 6. 54. Qui 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in novissimo 〈◊〉 Colos. 3. 3. S. Cyril Alex. l. 4. in Joh. c. 14. Et Irenae l. 4. c. 34. Sic 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 percipientia 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 non sunt 〈◊〉 spim 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 * 〈…〉 S. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 quo 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 S. Ambros. Ser. 15. in Psal. 118. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Homer * 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Cor. 11. 28 29. Concil 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 3. S. 〈◊〉 l. 2. de Bapt. c. 3. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 S. 〈◊〉 l. 6. c. 37. in Luc. 9. Vbique 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 per 〈…〉 in 〈◊〉 S. Ambros. Si Dux quispiam si Consul ipse si qui 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 indigne 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 si ipse pellere non 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 non 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 fieri 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Dominicum 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 S. 〈◊〉 hom 83. in 〈◊〉 * Exta 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 inter 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 omnia In 〈◊〉 Regis 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 visum 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 oscula Phaedr Jab 80. * 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Rom. 5. Const. c. 16. ab Hilario ca. 30. in 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 l. 3. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. 13. a Ruperto Hildebrand Cenoman 〈◊〉 * 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 quenquam 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 consessum aut in 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 seculari 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Judicio 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 convictum S. Aug. l. 50. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 50. S. Thomas 3. p. q. 81. a. 2. * 〈◊〉 15. 19. Synes ep 79. Theod. 〈◊〉 l. 5. 36. 〈◊〉 tom 5. A. D. 425. Sect. 16. * Clem. Rom. l. 8. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 20. Concil Tolet. 1. c. 11. S. Aug 〈◊〉 23 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 107. lib. 4. de 〈◊〉 c. 10. ‖ 〈…〉 quà m 〈◊〉 sed 〈◊〉 de iis 〈◊〉 quos 〈◊〉 mortalia 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Gennad l. 3. de Eccl. 〈◊〉 c. 53. 〈◊〉 olim actum est cùm 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Philo. * Gennadius c. 54. de Eccl. s. dogmat Epist. 80. ad Lucinum 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 vel jejunare semper vel semper 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Dominicum 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Domini 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. Idem * Concil Lat. De Sacram l. 5. c. 4. 〈◊〉 accessum sola 〈◊〉 integrltas facit S. Chrys. Joan. Gerson in Magnificat 〈◊〉 in horto tanquam in 〈◊〉 S. Chrys. 〈◊〉 laborem minuat 〈◊〉 se 〈◊〉 Theophyl 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Luke 22. 44. Extensius orabat sic Latinus Interpres 〈◊〉 Alii 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 per 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 sed 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 quae 〈◊〉 non minuit 〈◊〉 magis auxit 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 est ex 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 non 〈◊〉 doloris 〈◊〉 Beda in Lucae 22. Cum 〈◊〉 solamen 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 solatur 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Res miranda 〈◊〉 dans 〈◊〉 Rex à 〈◊〉 sumit 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Anglus * In c. 24. Mat. ‖ In 22. 〈◊〉 Justin 〈◊〉 Dial 〈◊〉 Athan 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 6. 〈◊〉 Beat. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Aug. 〈◊〉 6. 〈◊〉 5. de Consecr 〈◊〉 Hier. l. de 〈◊〉 Heb. Iren. l. 4. 〈◊〉 31. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Idem aiunt Dionys. Alex Aymonius Epiphan 〈◊〉 * Lib. 6. in 〈◊〉 * O signum 〈◊〉 O 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 osculo incipitur 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 pacis 〈◊〉 pacis 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Aug. 〈◊〉 12. ‖ Si 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Domine 〈◊〉 Amici 〈◊〉 Qu 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Qui 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Hondem de Passione * 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 S. Cyril S. 〈◊〉 S. 〈◊〉 c. Isai. 52. 6. * Simovit 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 non 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 solum 〈◊〉 illud opus salutis 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Regnantis 〈◊〉 non 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 opus est S. Cyril ‖ Dominum omnium 〈◊〉 non arma 〈◊〉
kept the same form and power in the several Families which were in the original yet it introduced some new necessities which although they varied in the instance yet were to be determined by such instruments of Reason which were given to us at first upon foresight of the publick necessities of the World And when the Families came to be divided that their common Parent being extinct no Master of a Family had power over another Master the rights of such men and their natural power became equal because there was nothing to distinguish them and because they might do equal injury and invade each other's possessions and disturb their peace and surprise their liberty And so also was their power of doing benefit equal though not the same in kind But God who made Man a sociable creature because he knew it was not good for him to be alone so dispensed the abilities and possibilities of doing good that in something or other every man might need or be benefited by every man Therefore that they might pursue the end of Nature and their own appetites of living well and happily they were forced to consent to such Contracts which might secure and supply to every one those good things without which he could not live happily Both the Appetites the Irascible and the Concupiscible fear of evil and desire of benefit were the sufficient endearments of Contracts of Societies and Republicks And upon this stock were decreed and hallowed all those Propositions without which Bodies politick and Societies of men cannot be happy And in the transaction of these many accidents daily happening it grew still reasonable that is necessary to the End of living happily that all those after-Obligations should be observed with the proportion of the same faith and endearment which bound the first Contracts For though the natural Law be always the same yet some parts of it are primely necessary others by supposition and accident and both are of the same necessity that is equally necessary in the several cases Thus to obey a King is as necessary and naturally reasonable as to obey a Father that is supposing there be a King as it is certain naturally a man cannot be but a Father must be supposed If it be made necessary that I promise it is also necessary that I perform it for else I shall return to that inconvenience which I sought to avoid when I made the Promise and though the instance be very far removed from the first necessities and accidents of our prime being and production yet the reason still pursues us and natural Reason reaches up to the very last minutes and orders the most remote particulars of our well-being 11. Thus Not to Steal Not to commit Adultery Not to kill are very reasonable prosecutions of the great End of Nature of living well and happily But when a man is said to steal when to be a Murtherer when to be Incestuous the natural Law doth not teach in all cases but when the superinduced Constitution hath determined the particular Law by natural Reason we are obliged to observe it because though the Civil power makes the instance and determines the particular yet right Reason makes the Sanction and passes the Obligation The Law of Nature makes the major Proposition but the Civil Constitution or any superinduced Law makes the Assumption in a practical Syllogism To kill is not Murther but to kill such persons whom I ought not It was not Murther among the Jews to kill a man-slayer before he entred a City of Refuge to kill the same man after his entry was Among the Romans to kill an Adulteress or a Ravisher in the act was lawful with us it is Murther Murther and Incest and Theft always were unlawful but the same actions were not always the same crimes And it is just with these as with Disobedience which was ever criminal but the same thing was not estimated to be Disobedience nor indeed could any thing be so till the Sanction of a Superior had given the instance of Obedience So for Theft To catch Fish in rivers or Deer or Pigeons when they were esteemed ferae naturae of a wild condition and so primo 〈◊〉 was lawful just as to take or kill Badgers or Foxes and Bevers and Lions but when the Laws had appropriated Rivers and divided Shores and imparked Deer and housed Pigeons it became Theft to take them without leave To despoil the Egyptians was not Theft when God who is the Lord of all possessions had bidden the Israelites but to do so now were the breach of the natural Law and of a Divine Commandment For the natural Law I said is eternal in the Sanction but variable in the instance and the expression And indeed the Laws of Nature are very few They were but two at first and but two at last when the great change was made from Families to Kingdoms The first is to do duty to God The second is to do to our selves and our Neighbours that is to our neighbours as to our selves all those actions which naturally reasonably or by institution or emergent necessity are in order to a happy life Our Blessed Saviour reduces all the Law to these two 1. Love the Lord with all thy heart 2. Love thy neighbour as thy self In which I observe in verification of my former discourse that Love is the first natural bond of Duty to God and so also it is to our Neighbour And therefore all entercourse with our neighbour was founded in and derived from the two greatest endearments of Love in the world A man came to have a Neighbour by being a Husband and a Father 12. So that still there are but two great natural Laws binding us in our relations to God and Man we remaining essentially and by the very design of creation obliged to God in all and to our neighbours in the proportions of equality as thy self that is that he be permitted and promoted in the order to his living well and happily as thou art for Love being there not an affection but the duty that results from the first natural bands of Love which began Neighbourhood signifies Justice Equality and such reasonable proceedings which are in order to our common End of a happy life and is the same with that other Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you do you to them and that is certainly the greatest and most effective Love because it best promotes that excellent End which God designed for our natural perfection All other particulars are but prosecutions of these two that is of the order of Nature save only that there is a third Law which is a part of Love too it is Self-love and therefore is rather supposed than at the first expressed because a man is reasonably to be presumed to have in him a sufficient stock of Self-love to serve the ends of his nature and creation and that is that man demean and use his own body
in that decorum which is most orderly and proportionate to his perfective End of a happy life which Christian Religion calls Sobriety and it is a prohibition of those uncharitable self-destroying sins of Drunkenness Gluttony and inordinate and unreasonable manners of Lust destructive of Nature's intendments or at least no ways promoting them For it is naturally lawful to satisfie any of these desires when the desire does not carry the satisfaction beyond the design of Nature that is to the violation of health or that happy living which consists in observing those Contracts which mankind thought necessary to be made in order to the same great End unless where God hath superinduced a restraint making an instance of Sobriety to become an act of Religion or to pass into an expression of Duty to him But then it is not a natural but a Religious Sobriety and may be instanced in fasting or abstinence from some kinds of meat or some times or manners of conjugation These are the three natural Laws described in the Christian Doctrine that we live 1. Godly 2. Soberly 3. Righteously And the particulars of the first are ordinarily to be determined by God immediately or his Vicegerents and by Reason observing and complying with the accidents of the world and dispositions of things and persons the second by the natural order of Nature by sense and by experience and the third by humane contracts and civil Laws 13. The result of the preceding discourse is this Man who was designed by God to a happy life was fitted with sufficient means to attain that End so that he might if he would be happy but he was a free Agent and so might chuse And it is possible that Man may fail of his End and be made miserable by God by himself or by his neighbour or by the same persons he may be made happy in the same proportions as they relate to him If God be angry or disobeyed he becomes our enemy and so we fail If our Neighbour be injured or impeded in the direct order to his happy living he hath equal right against us as we against him and so we fail that way An dif I be intemperate I grow sick and worsted in some Faculty and so I am unhappy in my self But if I obey God and do right to my Neighbour and confine my self within the order and design of Nature I am secured in all ends of Blessing in which I can be assisted by these three that is by all my relatives there being no End of man designed by God in order to his Happiness to which these are not proper and sufficient instruments Man can have no other relations no other discourses no other regular appetites but what are served and satisfied by Religion by Sobriety and by Justice There is nothing whereby we can relate to any person who can hurt us or do us benefit but is provided for in these three These therefore are all and these are sufficient 14. But now it is to be enquired how these become Laws obliging us to sin if we transgress even before any positive Law of God be superinduced for else how can it be a natural Law that is a Law obliging all Nations and all persons even such who have had no intercourse with God by way of special revelation and have lost all memory of tradition For either such persons whatsoever they do shall obtain that End which God designed for them in their nature that is a happy life according to the duration of an immortal nature or else they shall perish for prevaricating of these Laws And yet if they were no Laws to them and decreed and made sacred by sanction promulgation and appendent penalties they could not so oblige them as to become the Rule of Vertue or Vice 15. When God gave us natural Reason that is sufficient ability to do all that should be necessary to live well and happily he also knew that some Appetites might be irregular just as some stomachs would be sick and some eyes blind and a man being a voluntary Agent might chuse an evil with as little reason as the Angels of darkness did that is they might do unreasonably because they would do so and then a man's Understanding should serve him but as an instrument of mischief and his Will carry him on to it with a blind and impotent desire and then the beauteous order of creatures would be discomposed by unreasonable and unconsidering or evil persons And therefore it was most necessary that Man should have his appetites 〈◊〉 within the designs of Nature and the order to his End for a Will without the restraint of a superior power or a perfect Understanding is like a knife in a child's hand as apt for mischief as for use Therefore it pleased God to bind man by the signature of Laws to observe those great natural reasons without which man could not arrive at the great End of God's designing that is he could not live well and happily God therefore made it the first Law to love him and which is all one to worship him to speak honour of him and to express it in all our ways the chief whereof is Obedience And this we find in the instance of that positive Precept which God gave to Adam and which was nothing but a particular of the great general But in this there is little scruple because it is not imaginable that God would in any period of time not take care that himself be honoured his Glory being the very end why he made Man and therefore it must be certain that this did at the very first pass into a Law 16. But concerning this and other things which are usually called natural Laws I consider that the things themselves were such that the doing them was therefore declared to be a Law because the not doing them did certainly bring a punishment proportionable to the crime that is a just deficiency from the End of creation from a good and happy life 2. And also a punishment of a guilty Conscience which I do not understand to be a 〈◊〉 of Hell or of any supervening penalty unless the Conscience be accidentally instructed into such fears by experience or revelation but it is a malum in genere Rationis a disease or evil of the Reasonable faculty that as there is a rare content in the discourses of Reason there is a satisfaction an acquiescency like that of creatures in their proper place and definite actions and competent perfections so in prevaricating the natural Law there is a dissatisfaction a disease a removing out of the place an unquietness of spirit even when there is no monitor or observer Adeo facinora atque flagitia sua ipsi quoque in supplicium verterant Neque frustra 〈◊〉 Plato sapientiae firmare solitus est si 〈◊〉 Tyrannorum mentes posse aspici laniatus 〈◊〉 quando ut corpora verberibus ita saevitia libidine malis consultis animus dilaceretur